In one of the interior pages of the NY Times this morning, there was a short report on the puzzling disappearance and reappearance of the Ozone hole.  This should be of critical importance for the teams that are girding for battle to win another four years for this current president.  They, however, AND the rest of us cannot gather the energy or the imagination to pour resources to keep that hole from getting bigger.  We know why the ozone layer is necessary to sustain life against harmful solar and other celestial radiation.  The enlargement, once again, of that hole in the ozone layer should have all the pundits and all the president’s men working furiously to put brakes on and find answers to closing down that hole. Whatever happened to the hole in the ozone layer is that it didn’t go away and has come back to disturb the peaceful sleep of the happy election warriors who kind of suspect that their candidate is a shoe in.

What ever happened to our two old nemeses?  We still do not have answers to the whereabouts of the reputed mastermind of acts calibrated neatly to bring down American icons and humiliate the greatest super power on the face of this globe. Neither Osama bin Laden nor Saddam Hussein had the power to do what the hole our science has created – pose the threat of destroying all life on the whole of the planet Earth.

We are trying to assess the plight of our dear Saudi Arabian friends who have found that the bin Laden family, a very large segment of the very rich upper class in Saudi Arabia, are an embarrassment to them. We have learned that if we do not know where the black sheep of that family is, we do know that the numerous sons of relatives are right here in the United States where they are making themselves comfortable.  The Saudis are uncomfortable with this numerous clan and are trying to get rid of them. They know that our present discomfort with being pictured as anti-Muslim or intolerant of the Islamic religion as practiced here will make us practice tolerance with much more patience.

As for Saddam Hussein, his disappearance has America in a tizzy for he and his regime were the chief targets of our invasion and occupation of Iraq.  Now we are stuck there. To our astonishment, we find that Afghanistan for the Russians is now Afghanistan AND Iraq for the Americans.  Our allies, the “consortium” of friendly nations who support the idea of getting rid of Saddam and his regime will not consider sending their soldiers to die for our cause.  Whatever happened to this evil man?  We simply do not know.  While wondering, we find ourselves hip deep in manure of our own making while the cosmic rays pour down on us through that hole up there.