This is always such an interesting time of year.  Election Day–and I use that term loosely as, given the plethora of ballot issues, there is always more at stake than who we elect to represent us–is six weeks away.  This means there’s a lot of fodder for bloggers like myself right now.  I could probably do a rant on one political topic or another almost daily for awhile.  In fact, I have already written next Monday’s rant.  I won’t post it until then, however; such things get old fast if done too often.

So instead I will turn my attention to a matter I consider to be somewhat important which is interesting to quite a few people:  Extraterrestrials.  You’ll notice I did not use the term “UFO.”  That’s because UFO is an acronym for Unidentified Flying Object, and such things are not necessarily extraterrestrial in origin.  Most of the time, they become reliably identified as something terrestrial.  I believe that sometimes a UFO has an extraterrestrial origin, but I also believe this is the exception, not the rule.

Having said that, I call the folks enthused about this topic the “UFO community” as that’s how they typically identify themselves.  Not unlike how many people identify themselves as something-American, where “something” is some geographic term which has nothing to do with their immediate heritage.  It’s not particularly accurate, but it’s not wholly inaccurate either, as the heritage is there (however distant it may be) just as some UFO’s are (in my belief) extraterrestrial.

There are a couple of things which bring this topic to the forefront of my mind.  The first is that it seems–and this is my own personal perception, which may or may not have anything to do with reality–the UFO community has been heating up a bit in the last few years.  Not by having more sightings, per se, but simply by an increased amount of discussion on various levels and more calls for disclosure by one government or another of what they, as a government entity, know.  There is, in fact, an organization called the Disclosure Project whose purpose is full disclosure of alien contact.

Now, I confess I have never, to my knowledge, seen a UFO or met an extraterrestrial.  I am not one who typically cares for accepting eyewitness accounts to prove something is true or false.  There is, however, something to be said for the sheer quantity of data on this subject.  Many people, including military (usually former military) personnel and folks who are not given to flights of whimsy or practical jokes, have reported sightings of one sort or another.  I wish there was a physical object people could incontrovertibly point to as evidence, but if it exists, it has not been revealed to the general public.

The argument has been made–and not just about the UFO conspiracy–that if there were such a conspiracy, there would be too many holes to plug to keep a lid on it.  Somebody would talk.  Well, some folks have.  Recently, former military personnel had a press conference where they revealed UFO’s visited nuclear weapons facilities and sometimes appeared to turn systems off.  A couple of years ago, a fellow on his deathbed told of seeing alien corpses at Roswell.  The list of such accounts is extensive to the point of, in my opinion, being too much.

France has repeatedly called for full disclosure from the U.S. on extraterrestrial contact.  The French government published a report about their investigation into extraterrestrial UFO incidents, with the conclusion it was a very real possibility which their military needed to be prepared for.  The British have opened up a lot of their previously secret documents on the subject and while none of it is conclusive, some of it leaves quite a few questions without answers.

So I make this plea, which I have probably made before and probably will again:  Mr. Obama, please blow this particular topic wide open.  Find out and disclose what the U.S. government knows about extraterrestrial contact.  Even a monsignor from the Catholic church as asserted extraterrestrials have made contact.  If representatives of the Catholic church–which will have some explaining to do to its faithful if / when extraterrestrial existence is proven–can make this kind of statement, the U.S. government should be able to do so as well.  The time has come for disclosure, and I believe we are ready for it.