BOTH DONALD LUSKIN AND LYNXX PHERRETT HAVE GONE TO THE TRANSCRIPTS on the Financial Times budget-deficit story that everyone’s been talking about. They agree with the Powerline post I mentioned above that the story is bogus. The sad thing is that this is likely to make reporters less willing to post interview transcripts, because then they can’t get away with anything.

The good news is that when they do, they can’t get away with anything. And post-Blair, I’d like to see this made standard practice. Server space is cheap.

Meanwhile the question is, will this deconstruction make the Sunday talk shows? Or are they too far behind the Blogosphere curve?

UPDATE: Billy Beck writes:

There, you can read a transcript of a Financial Times interview with one Kent Smetters who, as an assistant deputy Treasury secretary for economic policy, led the work on the study that’s got everyone’s asses up in flaming boils. And if you follow my advice, dear readers, and go see what he has to say, then you will discover that, of the $44 trillion (yes, that’s right) that everybody is fainting about, more than $36 trillion is devoted to Medicare.

Do you understand this?

Thirty-six trillion dollars of these deficits projected into the future are about the degree to which America has achieved socialized medicine, and only that. . . .

The flap going on out there is about the Bush tax cuts, and how they’re going to wreck everything, and I want you to watch and see how many people — if any at all — are alert enough to grasp what the real nut of this is. They are fretting their little nerves over $350 billion in tax cuts in the face of $44 trillion in projected deficits, and the matter of $36 trillion of that going to Medicare alone is somehow getting past them.

Read it all, and don’t miss the Zappa quote.