The Snarky Files - Euripides' Views on the Week (May 15)

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi declares that the CIA misleads members of Congress all the time. The CIA says it told the truth about waterboarding. This is government at its best.

The Snarky Files. Snarky means several things. I prefer the definition of "sharply critical." Here's my take on some news stories this past week. No real news here, just snark.

The Pot and the Kettle
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has recently come under fire from the media, questioning how much she knew about the waterboarding of Gitmo prisoners. CIA director Leon Panetta says she was informed of the torture. Pelosi denies the allegation. The accusations from both sides continue on, as America watches two masters of deception. Which side do we believe? Do we go with the CIA, an agency whose very function is to gather information and keep state secrets? Or do we side with Nancy Pelosi, who represents all that is wrong with big government and abuse of power?

Here's Peolosi's current argument:

The agency released an account of a September 2002 meeting that the CIA says Pelosi attended and at which those harsh techniques were discussed. Pelosi said the CIA account was wrong and then went a step further. She said briefers in that meeting explicitly said water-boarding was not being used. We now know that at the time Abu Zubaydah had been water-boarded 83 times. Pelosi charged the agency with deliberately misleading Congress as part of the larger effort to mislead the nation in the run-up to the Iraq war. (Slate Magazine)

Here's Panetta's statement to the CIA:

"Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values. As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing “the enhanced techniques that had been employed.” Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened." (Glenn Thrush from Politico)

Here's my take. The primary function of government is to provide entertainment. (That is why government is so expensive. We pay a lot in this country for entertainment.) From that perspective, it doesn't matter who is lying to whom. This whole debate is just plain amusing to watch. Maybe if we're lucky, both will go down in flames together.

Government's True Function
Speaking of the entertainment value of government, here's Greg Morton, a comedian who isn't too proud to make fun of the current administration.



I Stimulate Dead People
My Fox NY reports that stimulus checks, sent by the Social Security Administration, are being mailed out to dead people:

Antoniette Santopadre of Valley Stream was expecting a $250 stimulus check. But when her son finally opened it, they saw that the check was made out to her father, Romolo Romonini, who died in Italy 34 years ago. (myfoxny.com)

I don't know about you, but a $250 check from the government certainly isn't enough to wake the dead. My Fox NY estimates that the Social Security Administration mailed 8,000 to 10,000 checks, amounting to millions of dollars, to dead people. There remains several questions: Can stimulus checks to dead people really spark the economy? Do I have to be dead to receive my "free" money from the government? And, are these the same dead people who voted the democrats into office in the first place?

The Audacity of Debt
President Barack Obama made an interesting observation this past week:

“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.” (Bloomberg)

Obama and Congress know that outrageous deficit spending is bad for the country. They know this. It's been, what, three months since the spending and budget were swept through Congress and past the president's desk and now Obama has the audacity to tell us that huge debt spending may have an effect on the future? Isn't that what conservatives have been saying all along?

President Obama has audacity. That much is certain.

Here are the new numbers, if you care to look at them:

Earlier this week, the Obama administration revised its own budget estimates and raised the projected deficit for this year to a record $1.84 trillion, up 5 percent from the February estimate. The revision for the 2010 fiscal year estimated the deficit at $1.26 trillion, up 7.4 percent from the February figure. The White House Office of Management and Budget also projected next year’s budget will end up at $3.59 trillion, compared with the $3.55 trillion it estimated previously. (Bloomberg)

More Government Programs
Bob Menendez, a Democrat senator from New Jersey announced this week support of a bill to create new federal programs to teach students what to avoid in cyberspace. This coming from a rash of news stories about teen sexting and the problems stemming from this stupid practice.

Here's my suggestion. How about if parents don't give their children texting on cell phones, open access to the internet, and access to chat rooms. Yes, cyberspace can be a dangerous place. But we need good parents, not another government program to teach us how we ought to behave.

Pro-Life
A recent Gallup Poll shows some startling and good news.

A new Gallup Poll, conducted May 7-10, finds 51% of Americans calling themselves "pro-life" on the issue of abortion and 42% "pro-choice." This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995. (Gallup.com)

What the trend means is unclear, but it does show a turn toward conservatism and away from the amoral values of pro-abortionists.