So what?

Bank teller fired for
violating policy and
capturing bank robber.

Pardon my increasing cynicism, but I don’t know what else to say lately to the goings-on in D.C. except “so what.” It seems that Karl Rove and ex-President Bush were much more involved in the Department of Justice firings than previously thought. So what? You don’t see anything happening about it do you? We already know that Dick the Slimy was responsible for torture and withholding information from Congress, both blatant violations of the law, but so what, nothing seems to be done about it. We know that Bush’s pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, a country not a threat to us, was a violation of International and U.S. law, but so what, he’s still walking around dragging in huge speaking fees. We know that Bush illegal wiretapped U.S. citizens but, once again, so what. It seems there is just nothing these war criminals can do that might bring about some form of accountability. I suspect George W. Bush could be seen having sex with a goat on the steps of Congress and nothing would happen. Nothing. Of course recently there is talk of Eric Holder appointing a special investigator to look into some of the more egregious violations of the law and constitution, but I guess he is just thinking about it. By the time he’s through thinking about it the perpetrators will be dead and gone, leaving their ill-gotten loot to their children who will no doubt carry on in their fathers’ footsteps. It’s the American way.

There are a few developments that I can’t say so what about, at least not yet. Although many say that health care legislation is dead or dying, it appears that there may actually be a vote at some point about a single-payer system (I saw somewhere today that Nancy Pelosi indicated as such). If this is true it would be quite a positive development and not deserving of a so what moment. Of course such a vote will probably fail, but perhaps we may salvage at least a public option out of all this (perhaps, that is). I find it maddening, as well as outrageous, that a few so-called Blue Dog Democrats seem to believe it is okay for them to withhold health care from 47 million of their peers. Oh, I forgot, they are not their peers, Congressmen with power believe they have no peers. After all, they’ve got health care and others don’t. Not only will they not support health care for 47 million others, they will also not support reform to those with health care who just get ripped off endlessly by the Insurance companies. It seems Insurance companies are good, decent and universal health care is bad.

It seems that GE, the corporation that owns MSNBC, has muzzled Keith Olberman and told him to stop picking on O’Reilly, bad for business, you know. I’m not surprised. Rachel Maddow will be next, we can’t have anyone actually telling us the truth about anything and refusing to dumb down the news. I guess the Olberman/O’Reilly feud was good for the ratings for a while but too many stockholders began to complain. It’s certainly not that O’Reilly didn’t deserve the drubbing he was getting from Olberman, he shouldn’t be allowed on the air in the first place. But, much to my amazement, and chagrin, he does have an audience, and in contemporary TV that’s all that matters. Look at Glenn Beck, a TV personality so awful he should be put quietly to sleep, but he amazingly seems to have an audience (there seems to be an endless supply of idiots in the U.S.). I will not be at all surprised if Olberman and Maddow are replaced with one or another of the endless supply of young, attractive women trained to read flawlessly about Michael Jackson and car chases from the teleprompter.

Sybil Edmonds has now claimed (and I tend to believe her) that Osama bin Laden was paid by the CIA right up to 9/11. I knew that bin Laden was a CIA asset during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan; now, if Edmonds is correct, he continued being one until at least 9/11. I have long suspected that the reason we have not captured or killed bin Laden was because he was a CIA asset (although I sort of believed this I resisted believing it entirely as too far-fetched). But if he continued until 9/11, even if he no longer continues, the CIA must owe him something. Could that something be a guarantee of safety? Knowing what we now know of the Bush/Cheney administration, and the behavior of the CIA, I no longer regard this as far-fetched. I wonder if all the illegal machinations of the Bush/Cheney and CIA activities will ever be revealed. Even if they are you can be pretty sure there will be no accountability. It seems the Obama administration, along with Congress, are far too spineless to take action against anyone, no matter how obvious and odious their crimes.

LKBIQ:
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
Umberto Eco

TILT:
Joan of Arc was only 19 years of age when she was burned at the stake.