POLITICAL REALITY

World politics is (thankfully) about as far from my consciousness as it's ever been, and except for Rumsfeld having a house just north of town, those guys in Washington might as well be on another planet.

That's why it woke me up this morning to read this letter to the editor in the Taos News. Hope it wakes you up too:

"Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 500 employees and has the following statistics?

• 36 have been accused of spousal abuse
• 7 have been arrested for fraud
• 19 have been accused of writing bad checks
• 7 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least two businesses
• 3 have done time for assault
• 71 cannot get a credit card because of bad credit
• 14 have been arrested for drug related charges
• 8 have been arrested for shoplifting
• 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits
• 84 were arrested for drunk driving last year

Can you guess which organization this is? It's the 535 members of the United States Congress ... the same group that cranks out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line. Perhaps this info leaked out to the religious political insurgents in the Middle East, along with our military invasion, the killing of more than 12,000 Iraquis and our policy of "Democratization" of the Middle East has caused them to become even more motivated religious political insurgents. But rest easy America ... Runsfeld just assured us that with the help of the competent organization above (and Halliburton), the Middle East debacle should be over in 12 years. If you don't like the above organization, be sure to vote!

Harold Timber
Taos"