Being Obvious

Why is it that Senators and Representatives love to show how stupid they are about the facts, even in the face of the facts? This baffles me everytime I hear the exchange between a member of a Congressional committee and a witness before the committee. And they're consistently constant at proving their stupidity.

Ok, a bit much. Well, maybe not. I was listened to the House committee overseeing federal employees, specifically TSA, which is comprised of both federal employees and contract employees. The Representative proposed a bill to prevent TSA employees from going on strike, and he was specific to include federal employees.

What he knows is that all federal employees are prohibited from going on strike. The only federal employees in a union who could strike were the FAA folks, but their union was dissoved and their jobs replaced with non-union federal employees when they went on strike and almost all lost their job, and the Postal Service folks, specifically carriers and other non-management staff. But they are also limited with any strike.

Government employees are allowed to form and join a union, and those unions can lobby Congress for the employees, but those union have no negotiation authority and have no power to tell an employee what to do. They are simply cosmetic and political, nothing else. I never joined one because it didn't do anything beyond taking my money.

What this Representative is proposing a law to cover is already law. It's redundant. They want to make a political point for publicity and votes. The President can, and I understand has or will, issue an executive order prevent the TSA federal employees from collective bargaining including going on strike, except that too is redundant. It's already an order from the previous president.

The second is Senators asking the CIA at a committee hearing what they knew of the uprising in Egypt and when did they know it. The second in charge of the CIA said they had hints and ideas but like almost all uprisings they didn't know when and how extensive.

They probably knew Mubarak was at the end of his regime, and probably has some cracks for oppotunity to overthrow his government. All the dominos have been lining up to fall with him at the end. He will lose and he will have to leave office. The question is when.

But my point is that why do we really care to find blame someone didn't know this would happen to inform the President. That happens in the world. The CIA can't keep track of every country and every leader and government. They don't have the resources, no thank to Congress for moving a lot of intelligence work to the Defense Intelligence Administation relating to war and inspring insurgencies - something Reagan started.

And no thanks to the Presidents who have keep changing the CIA's work and focus for their political agenda and not for the overall watching of the world. Everything now is focused on counter-terrorism and terrorists and not rebellions and more so uprisings.

Congress and the President told the CIA what to focus on and now when something else happened, to their amazement, they want a scapegoat, a head on a platter, but forgetting the obvious one, their own. They are their own enemy and scapegoat, but will we see them admit that?