Syria

Was watching the Sunday news shows this morning and there are two talking head topics; the debt thing that happens Friday and Syria.  One of them was about really stupid and cruel leaders putting their interests above the very life's breath of their nation and so was the other.

We are now hearing that out government's inability to cope with the issue will have a silver lining; that when this sequester business takes hold there will be a spending cut that is needed anyway so all the dire predictions, the doom and gloom, is just the typical liberal nonsense and hand-wringing.  Oh, there is also talk of restoring the military cut so they don't have to feel that minuscule pinch.

A little over 30 years ago I was in Moscow. The cold war was perking along. Never better in fact.  Reagan had taken office. I was looking to the sky for the incoming missiles and my Russian scientific friends were visibly afraid.

At the far end of Red Square there is an entrance gate to the Kremlin and I was near it when a long line of those "Mr. Big" limos rolled by....you know those "Zils".  I took a picture of this. At gun point I surrendered my camera.  The guards were polite but I was in trouble and questioned for a while on how it was that what I had done was possibly OK.

In their little guardhouse, I went on at length about how in the US our leaders led the nation on the people's behalf and if not, we tossed them out. We held them accountable. We had the vote.  Therefore it was an honor for an elected official to have his picture taken by someone who elected him - his constituent - his reason for being in office. The laughter was so intense they let me leave.

Now I would worry about going to Washington and approaching Congress and getting mowed down by limos carrying who knows what lobbyists and congress persons about on business not our own but theirs. Of taking a picture and being questioned about it as to motive; of having to explain to someone that our congress works for us and having them erupt in laughter.