BEING STUNNED AND AMAZED

Be sure to click the header when you're finished reading this. . I don't know about you, but I am always amazed when things I thought I knew about, turn out to be apparently false. Or at least not correct. . Maybe it's just the fickleness of facts. Maybe Chaos has arrived. Maybe you assumed something and you shouldn't have. Maybe you should have assumed something and you didn't.

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In any case, I'm stuck on one those horns now.

When I was a sophomore in University, I got interested in the FBI. In those days, it was honorable to admire organizations that had a reputation for prestige, straight shooting and honesty. (The straight shooting was no problem. I had scored marksman on the shooting range.) I was aware that the FBI was created to investigate only crime within the U.S. borders. That was fine with me. I was prepared to defend my country, again, but this time within its borders.

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So one summer, I visited the local FBI office and spoke to a very nice agent there about working for Hoover's gang. We had a long, interesting chat and I walked away with the application papers and a number of other papers defining what they wanted in an agent and what college degrees were needed to work for them. I even got the government ratings for different positions and the pay scale. As I recall, the scale was pretty good even for a starter position.

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There was only one drawback. The job requirements. At that time (I do not know what present day requirements are) you had to either have a degree in law or be a Certified Public Accountant. Now that was a kick in the butt. Recognizing my own distaste for pencil pushing and a sedentary desk job, there was no interest on my part in being a CPA. None. Zilch. Nada. That left the study of law. I talked to the Dean of the Philosophy School and he was noncommittal and mumbled something about the joys of taking on Locke and the gang. So I talked to the Dean of Psychology and he pointed out the joys of helping people and being a published authority in the field to me. But he knew nothing about the FBI. So I talked to the Dean of English and she said I would be wasting my "talent" by becoming a lawyer.

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I avoided the Dean of Accounting and visited with the Law Dean. He told me about the hard work, the fact that very few passed the bar exams on their first or second try, but that I might luck out and pass it the third or fourth time. (I decided then that if that department couldn't teach any better than that, I probably should find a different school or forget it.)

But I gained a lot more respect for FBI Agents. Lots of schooling behind them. These people had smarts galore.

So when I read that the FBI was in Iraq, I was surprised, because I was pretty sure Iraq was not a part of the U.S. And now this showed up in the news:

Who's in charge of phone bills?

The FBI has failed to pay phone bills on time, causing telecommunication firms to temporarily cut off wiretaps used for terrorism investigations, an audit found.

In a review of the FBI's handling of special funds used for secret operations, the Justice Department's inspector general found an archaic payment system that goes through disorganized third-party offices.

A summary of the audit released Thursday noted that a telecommunication specialist pled guilty in June 2006 to stealing more than $25,000 in confidential funds.The audit found that the employee had taken advantage of the FBI's mismanagement of bills to steal money from refund checks, as the agency even has trouble cashing refunds from overpaid bills.

The audit concluded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was particularly bad about paying phone bills by their due date.

One would think that with all the accountants on the payroll, someone would have experience in bill paying and forensic accouting.

I'm kind of glad that I didn't make the choice to join this organization.

HILLARY SPEAKS, TIM GRILLS

Yeah, I know. Anyone can have ridiculous and painful pictures taken in an instant.

But Hillary Clinton showed up on Tim Russert's Meet The Press show this a.m.

(I really hate that they have an ugly logo on the base of the screen, when the entire back wall is plastered with the name of the show.)

The word "overkill" comes to mind.

You can visit MTP by clicking the header.

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I have been trying to avoid saying very much about the Dumocrat candidates. With one exception, that is.

But something really stood out in this interview. I should have counted, but, as usual, the idea came to me half way through the interview.

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Now, without looking back, how many times has the word "I" been used in this post?

It is realised here, that a blog is a very personal thing and one should be allowed certain leeway. It's our contribution to the egotism pool after all.

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If you watch that video, you can count the "I's". And then reflect on this: You have to have an enormous ego to even consider running for President. (As well as enormous money for the campaign. But that's another post.) If that were the only consideration, I think Hill would get the nod from the populace.

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But, after Hillary's (some say faked) breakdown into tears on national television in front of God and all, the thought occurred to me about the Russian ICBMs being shipped into Cuba and what JFK did about it. The pressures on him were enormous. World War III was on the brink of breaking out if he did not handle it correctly. He was a combat warrior who had his PT boat shot out from under him and knew what war was all about. Whether you liked him or not, you had to admire the way he handled the situation.

Hillary, on the other hand, is as blind as Dubya about real war. Neither she nor her husband have ever experienced it up close and ugly.

I got thinking about what if she had been President then? Would she have broken down into tears in the War Room? On television? In the Oval Office?

Any possible chance of my voting for her disappeared with that episode.

Menopause is a bitch.

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One final thing (for now, anyway) was her non reaction when her Hubby said that oral sex isn't real sex.

I tried telling that to a young lady after the Clinton episode. You can use your imagination about what she told me.