Aug. 04, 2002 - 20:06 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Smoke ?

Guess it was in Alice In Wonderland where the word "Curiouser," popped up, I think Lewis Carrol put it in his book. It sure as heck applies to many things now, it seems to me.

Beats the heck out of me where an administration, including this one uses terms like Homeland Security, makes me feel that some one behind me is Achtunging at me. We have and have had through the years in Washington many Czars. Now we have a Czar on the War on drugs. To me war means cannon, bombs, men killing each other indiscriminately, although it is bad form to cause "collateral damage", another euphemism to indicate that one or a group have killed one or more people who are plainly on the same side or nationality. Towns demolished. Now really, is that what a Czar of the War On Drugs is going to do ? Does a democratic nation have Czars ? So why not get real and instead of calling an implement a hand operated instrument for manually moving mineral material, call it a damn old shovel. Euphemisms are smoke screens.

It seems to me that administration after administration has had propaganda Czars who spend their time coining words, phrases and euphemisms which they turn over to the Czar on speechwriting to string them together so they say little or nothing.

An article in a recent Denver paper,"Bush recount committee flew to Florida on corporate jets." "George W. Bush's 2000 election recount committee used corporate jets owned by 10 companies, including three now under federal investigation." The three under investigation ? Guess what, Enron Corp., Halliburton Co. and Reliant Energy Inc.

Here in Denver there are so many articles on Qwest. Damn, those guys can't spell and want the world to know it. One of the men who formed Qwest is billionaire Anschutz. Puzzles me that the buyer put in a CEO who would run Qwest into the ground and then himself depart with millions while the stock was nosediving. How the heck can they pay a CEO to trash a company ? How can a CEO dare accept the filthy lucre (How's that for a euphemism ?) that he dealt for, when he can't even man an oar on his own boat ?

Two articles on the professional and political trashing of Thomas N. Slonacker who was the appointed official to overseeing he untangling of up to $10,000,000,000 - that enough zeros for a billion ? in disputed Indian trust accounts long hanging, some of them for generations. From all I have read, that for quite a long time it seems to be there are people in our governmant who are loath to let Indians have what they are owed. So, once again another step on the trail of broken promises. Indians are only asking for what our government owes them. Slonacker was I guess stirring things up and trying to get results - so the biggies forced him out. The Indians had little luck in taking over a town in the Northeast part of our country in the last few years which was built on land belonging to them nor did they receive compensation for same, I think. It wouldn't suprise me that the Indians go away empty handed - - - - again.

The odyssey of Con Agra meat. Looks like it traveled around a bit. Anyway enough cows were slaughtered in April 2000 to compose 80 tons of frozen meat which was shipped from a Con Agra plant in Dumas, Texas to California in May of 2000, then shipped by boat to South Korea in May 2000. Where Listeria was allegedly discovered in the meat. So, meat was shipped from South Korea to Hong Kong, Guam and Hawaii in August 2000. Also there is questioning by a group of our Congressmen about the delay in recall of 19,000,000,000 pounds of meat suspected of harboring E. coli bacteria. Con Agra seems to be keeping a low profile on this matter.

Although Congress sent Pesident Bush a $28,900,000,000 counter terrorism package Wednesday, it looks to me like some our Senators and Representatives want to have a better look at the whole Homeland-security plan. I have sincere hopes that the Justice Department is ordered to guarantee that our citizen's rights will never be in danger and that those in durance vile at least be publicly identified as being held and have a lawyer working for them regardless of their nationality . But, are our days as a free society nearing an end ?

Seems from what I read in Sunday's paper some unrest is going on in Europe now. They seem to have the ancient idea that pay is for a productive job well done, on time, happily -- bonuses for exceptional work which profits the company greatly. Expect there would be some grumbling about those competing estates to Versailles being built by those "Robber Barons." Don't think here that any of our CEO's who sold out their stock before the company's stock dropped on the way down because they put the company down the tubes even came close to doing a good job. What would have happened to me as a worker if I had committed one millionth of the offenses the Purple Robed CEO crowd did ?

Another article reveals that the INS is so far behind on record keeping that documents have been warehoused in a complex outside Kansas City, Missouri. In that batch are 200,000 change-of-address notices which could result in deportation of foreign people here because there is no record of their change of address if the newspaper article is true, also it is said that in there are 300,000 applications for citizenship. Somewhere around 2,000,000,000 documents are warehoused there. To my eyes it could simply be that there are not enough Indians to do the grunt work while the chiefs won't get their hands dirty.

Our beloved country has problems. In the words of Walt Kelly's Opossum -- POGO, "We have met the enemy and he are us !" Is our country in the process of spontaneous combustion ? Is it now that we can't see the fire for the Smoke ? . . . . . . . . .

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