Vast Conspiracy Uncovered!

Media Silence Suspicious,

Government is Mum

Look to your left. Look to your right. Unless you see someone reading this over your shoulder, you are about to become privy to information so undisclosed that even the day before the once-in-a-lifetime Moment, few knew.

And if that Moment has already come to pass and you find yourself still able to read this, you are very fortunate indeed, but no thanks to your government. There was no mention of the Moment on the White House web site. And while the Department of Homeland Security said the threat level overall was “elevated” and even “high” for airlines, not one specific word about the Moment was to be found.

Coincidence?

Hardly.

Conspiracy?

The Obama administration makes a big deal of bipartisan cooperation and working with the media. You didn’t know about the Moment until there was nothing you could do about it. Think that’s just more coincidence? Consider:

n The Republican National Committee website is silent on the Moment, its “news” category showing nothing after July 2. Sure, the zipper issue whether on lips or elsewhere has been big, but not one mention?

n The Democratic National Committee is also silent here. When was the last time you remember Democrats being silent on anything?

n You also didn’t hear about it in The New York Times, or on its website. At least on July 7. True, the Times did say something in 1989, but it hasn’t made a mention since, and who among us will remember that slip 20 years later in what is obviously a long-running silence?

n And you didn’t hear about it from Bill O’Reilly, who often covers things the powers that be wish he wouldn’t. Could this have reached even Bill? A search for the Moment’s unpublished number on his website came up zip.

President Obama was in Russia the day before the Moment. Russia and the rest of Europe won’t feel the Moment’s effects until next month, making those places safe at least for now. Another case of undisclosed location?

In all things of government, you must consider only the facts and not jump to conclusions. A senator tapping his foot in a Minneapolis airport men’s room stall could be just recalling his favorite Lawrence Welk show. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announcing her resignation and going fishing could just mean the sled dogs won’t go hungry.

Or there could be other meanings. Clarity seldom visits public discourse. But we are going to make an exception here about the Moment.

The Moment will occur for you when it is 12:34:56 in the afternoon of July 8, 2009, or, as it would be written in all numbers in the American form, 12:34:56 07/08/09. The last time this particular straight time/date sequence happened was in 1909, although as the Times noted in 1989, an early-morning observation on June 6 produce the sequence 1:23:45/6/7/89.

Europe, being perversely European, handles day/month notation differently, putting the day before the month, so their experience of the Moment won’t happen until August 7, when it will be 12:34:56 07/08/09.

There you have it. You are One of Those Who Know, even though the mainstream media didn’t prepare you.

Aren’t you glad?

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A Tortured Republican Argument

 

The United States of America routinely tortured suspected terrorists during the administration of Republican George W. Bush, in flagrant violation of American law and tradition.

 

And it’s all Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s fault.

 

The Republican National Committee’s website at gop.com, has a page titled “Nancy’s Debunked Denials,” where the text begins in boldface: “New Intelligence Documents Prove That Pelosi Has Not Been Honest About What She Knew And When She Knew It.”

 

The Republican reasoning is that since Pelosi knew about what the RNC stubbornly calls “enhanced interrogation techniques” and failed to stop them, she is complicit in their use.

 

And since she’s complicit in the use of torture, she shouldn’t make it a “political issue,” which is how Republicans prefer to describe conduct that would be a crime if it took place in a police station or jail.

 

The GOP says Pelosi learned about the torture (oops! Enhanced Interrogation) in a Fall 2002 briefing. Pelosi says that briefing’s only mention of water boarding, the torture technique of choice, was that it wasn’t being used.

 

Thoughtful Republicans – there must be a few somewhere – might recall that the “what knew/when knew” query reached its sloganeering peak in the Watergate burglary hearings about another GOP guardian of our liberties, Richard M. Nixon. But let’s not focus on the past, especially the past in which Republican operatives broke the law.

 

We should stay focused on the present in which Republican operatives broke the law because the Democrats failed to stop them.

 

Never mind that Democrats were in the minority in 2002. Today’s Minority Leader John Boehner, Republican of Ohio, is quoted in Wednesday’s New York Times as saying “It’s pretty clear that they were well aware of what these enhanced interrogation techniques were; they were well aware that they’d been used; and it seems to me that they want to have it both ways. You can’t have it both ways.”

 

Sure you can John. You can do the crime, and when you’re caught, you can blame the cops for not preventing you.

 

Not to be outdone by the John Boehner Theory of Criminal Law, Republican Senator Kit Bond of Missouri thundered from his web site: “Instead of prosecuting or persecuting, our country should be supporting our intelligence professionals who work to keep us safe.”

 

Senator Bond’s four-paragraph statement made no mention of who would keep us safe from our intelligence professionals.

Let’s just say that when looking for an answer to that question, the present Republican Party doesn’t immediately spring to mind.

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