When I first graduated from university, I got a job out here in the L.A. area with a large aerospace corporation. The subsequent 6 years (minus 13 months I spent in Orlando, FL) were my introduction and acceptance of the Dilbertesque experience of work in a big aerospace defense contractor. I quickly became disillusioned of my career in the space program. My life as a "rocket scientist" consisted of writing programs in Fortran to massage data sets spit out by another large Fortran program that modelled the ascent of the space shuttle.

The cap of my tenure there, the crowning glory so to speak, was the mandatory ethics training all employees were forced to take. We had to spend a few days, if I recall correctly, in the temporary trailers set up in the parking lot used for various educational seminars and such, learning not to take bribes when dealing with customers and other banal topics. It was all very obvious stuff, and it gave me pause to think that someone somewhere felt it was necessary to make us go through it -- as if the wisdom they were imparting in the course was going to save a poor soul from committing some transgression. It struck me as being so incredibly absurd that this training was viewed as beneficial. And it struck me as so incredibly disheartening that human beings would behave so unethically that this kind of thing was even necessary. I guess I am one of those people who hate mankind, but with crap like this, who could blame me?

Now I find out that Prez Bush has mandated that all white house staff go through I can only assume similar ethics training. As if doing so is going to wash away the taint of shadiness that oozes off the current administration, scaly bastards that they are. I bet Dick Cheney isn't going to have to take the course and go fuck yourself if you think this is improper. Actually, I bet he will get some flunky to take the course in his name.

Now, all those bad feelings I had about humanity when I had to go through my own ethics training are resurfacing. What have we come to as a country and even as a species when shite like ethics training has now reached the White House? Either Bush really believes this joke of a course is going to make a difference, or he is just pandering to a public that will see this some indication of his basic honesty and desire to make things right. It is neither. It is a base, dishonest sleight-of-hand trick to deflect the attention of the public away from the fact that the current administration is a bunch of slimy eels engaged in fucking over the US public for the gain of their good old boy network of oil cronies.