Sounds like the title of a children’s book, but its what the only senator with a beard will be, come January. I haven’t payed to much attention to John Corzine’s campaign, so we’ll have to wait and see what he does for the Garden State.
Let’s hope when he appoints his replacement to the senate, he finds someone with a beard. Just kidding.
This is not a political blog! That is only one of its many topics, as the recent post on rice milk should convince you. We just live in such a political world! (tee hee).
Anyways, HuffPo, the saint it is, linked me to a Harper’s article entitled “Revision Thing” subhead “A history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies”. Now I was intruiged enough to click on it, although I expected it might be some of the “liberal propaganda” that doesn’t get us anywhere, and lets people like Ann Coulter make fun of us, hypocritical though that is, and I’m like five levels from my original thought and I really shouldn’t use stream of consciousness….
But no, it wasn’t just someone’s speculated history about how the Iraq war could have gone well. It was far more interesting, for declared boldy in italicized font before the text was this: “All text is verbatim from senior Bush Administration officials and advisers. In places, tenses have been changed for clarity.” Now Harper’s wouldn’t make this sort of a claim unless it were true, I’m pretty sure, I mean being like “good” is their whole niche right?
Anyways, read the article, keeping in mind that indeed, the average American (those who are not us and don’t spend like an unholy amount of time reading up-to-the-minute news sources online, and don’t deny you are one of them, you are reading a Nth rate blog (good blog at least…) by someone who has no writing credentials at all) could actually have heard this as the story of the Iraq war.
So I read a Washington Post article about how President Bush is sending his staff to attend Ethics refresher courses. Now, I know it seems totally silly, and completely like “these people are evil and so they actually need an ethics course”—in fact my first thought was “wtf! hah… brb” and I went to fill up my pitcher of water—but after those sips of cool and refreshing water I want to say a couple different things about this, hopefully giving a slightly different and original angle.
As the post title suggests, yes, I think it’s too little too late, considering that the country is at war, in part because of a breach of ethics by Scooter Libby and possibly other government officials. This is sort of like like promising me bacon after killing my pet pig. However, however late and silly this gesture sounds, all the ridicule comes from the need (perceived or real? probably real) for people in positions of power, especially appointed positions of power, to understand their position and act ethically.
So, yes, I think these briefings are a good idea, just too late. In fact, every government official (appointed and elected) should have to go through some sort of ethical course, probably every time they enter a position. People put into positions of such power aren’t suddently gifted with any new virtues. They come in with their own prejudices, goals, ethics, and morals. It is actually pretty naive of us to hope that any such official will be remotely ethical. It can’t hurt to have a few reminders that you know things that you shouldn’t say, and that you can do things that you shouldn’t do. Not a cure-all in any sense, but even grocery-store produce-section employees get briefed on ethics when they are hired. And these jobs require a much more specific know-what when it comes to the to-do.
Now back to the Washington Post article. They quoted our president as saying, “I think it’s important for the American people to know that I understand my job is to set clear goals and deal with the problems we face.” I do want to point out that our President doesn’t realize his job description is available in Article 2 Sections 2 and 3 of a public domain document of which paper and electronic (and probably other types of) copies are freely available, and it ain’t that. That is, in fact, the job of Congress, but whatever, that’s just me poking fun for no real reason.