Does Anyone Know Anything?

Man arrested for groping
nurse’s breast, forced to miss
girlfriend’s birth of his child.

I have been forced to come to the conclusion that many of our problems stem from the fact that most of our elected and appointed governmental officials simply do not know what they are talking about. I strongly suspect that they rarely, if ever, even bother to read the bills and such they are required to vote for or against. They certainly did not read the Patriot Act before they eagerly passed it. And I seriously doubt that any of them have read the Health Care Bill. Or, if they do read them, they don’t reflect on the consequences of voting one way or another. A minor case in point is the recent bill introduced by Al Franken that would have given some protection to rape victims. Thirty Republicans voted against this bill, thus leading many to say they voted for rape. They are now outraged about this and accuse Franken of pulling a fast one to embarrass them. It seems they either did not read the bill in the first place, or if they did, they failed to realize the obvious consequences of their votes. At the least this would seem to indicate a lack of interest in what they are doing. This inattention to the bills and their implications probably has something to do with the fact that whichever party is promoting a bill quite likely doesn’t even want the opposition to read it, because if they did there would be so many objections, qualifications, amendments, arguments, and so on, nothing would ever get passed. So they write the bills behind closed doors, present them at the last minute, and insist on a quick vote. This can hardly be said to represent good government, it is more like a bunch of clowns trying to one-up each other.

Similarly, it seems to me our officials do not know nearly as much as they claim to know, or if they do, they do not tell the rest of us. Now we learn that the head of Blackwater has also been for years a CIA operative, involved in who knows what all clandestine activities, including apparently death squads. Frankly, I don’t know if this surprises me or not. The case of bin Laden continues to fascinate me in much the same way. An official of the Pakistan government has recently claimed that bin Laden is not in Pakistan (contrary to what we have been led to believe). Indeed, others claim bin Laden probably is not even alive, and still others doubt that he is living in a cave somewhere. So, do we know where bin Laden is or not? He has apparently not been seen for a long time. He was said to have been on a dialysis machine. He could well be dead. Does anyone really know? Dead or alive he certainly keeps giving us an excuse to attack Afghans, killing lots of civilians in the process. Indeed, if there was no bin Laden there would have been little excuse for our attacking Afghanistan in the first place, and his continued presence there keeps on giving even now. This is amazing, given that we don’t seem to know whether he is there or not, whether he is alive or dead, or where he actually is if he is somewhere. It is claimed that we had him trapped in Afghanistan and (deliberately?) let him escape. Bin Laden is known to have been a CIA asset during the Russian “war” in Afghanistan. Could it be he is still a CIA asset? Obviously, I don’t know. But on the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised. If anyone in our government truly knows, they aren’t telling. In fact, the situation with respect to what we are being told leads me to suspect that what is going on in the world has nothing whatsoever to do with what we try to think is going on. Does our stubborn clinging to the “war” in Afghanistan have anything to do with the pipeline the oil companies want to go through there thus bypassing Russia? If it is, why don’t they just admit it. Why don’t they just say, we need a pipeline through Afghanistan to bypass Russia because we desperately need access to oil from inner Asia, instead of feeding us nonsense about spreading democracy and all that bunk? It is pretty clear to me by now that our officials believe, as Hitler did, that citizens just don’t think. Unfortunately, that seems largely true here in the U.S. But even if we did think, and had attention spans longer than that of a fruit fly, how could we ever come to any reasonable conclusions when we are forced to start from dishonest premises? I do not believe we are being told the truth about much of anything. Is it any wonder that our Congress acts independently of the public interest? It is not at all clear that most of them know any more than we do, but presumably, if that is true, they are not doing their jobs as they, at least, are supposed to know something, even if we are not.

See Sarah
See silly Sarah
See silly sophomoric Sarah
See silly sophomoric Sarah sink scurrilously
Selling souvenirs, successfully scrounging stupid supporters,
Slowly, steadily, slovenly, saccharinely, sanctimoniously, sadistically,
Slothfully, shooting salaciously salient sanguinary salutations sassily,
Sans savoir faire.

I apologize, just playing. Mori.