Maybe Nikita Khrushchev was right when he said...

"Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build bridges even where there are no rivers."

 Here's the complete article mentioned above.

Looking at the news lately, I can't help wondering if there's any kind of 'honest' government anywhere. In Russia, it has been said that President Putin is on friendly terms with a man reported to be perhaps the most powerful mobster in the world. In the USA, the billionaire Koch brothers, fourth and fifth richest men on the planet, are doing their best to buy the US Government, with a network of 'think tanks' and political-influence peddling, and direct contributions to various candidates running for office, including those seeking the Presidency in the next election in 2016.

In recent times, there's been a lot of press devoted to the gun problems, and the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its nitwit leadership pandering to the gun manufacturers, and long rants about the Second Amendment to the American Constitution - which was written long before the invention of any of our modern firearms, by the way. One wonders if perhaps all that has been some kind of elaborate 'smokescreen' to distract us from the fact that a couple of oil and chemical company billionaires from Kansas are doing their damnedest to pick and choose which politicians get elected to the US Government, and from whom they will take directions.

If we put that together with the military-industrial clout of Lockheed Martin, the huge defense contractor, with tentacles into at least twelve government departments, including the FBI, CIA, NASA, and even the US Postal Service, it makes the phrase "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave" seem hollow. And one wonders just who the hell really is running the country. It certainly seems like it isn't the guys in the front window smiling for those photo ops. And we seldom see the ones in the back room pulling the strings.