Well, you learn something every day. I was watching Monty Python on PBS just moments ago, and they mentioned the Ford Popular. Well, I’d never heard of such a thing. Apparently, it wasn’t marketed here in the Colonies, yes?
And now for something completely different.
This news item will lift your spirits, I think! It sure lifted mine!
I volunteer for an organization called IMOM.org. The blonde lady in the photo is one of my fellow IMOM volunteers.
God shines through children.
An insightful and exhaustive analysis of US presence in, and withdrawal from, Iraq. Here’s a sample:
Democracy cannot be installed by outside powers, at gunpoint. Genuine democracy can come about only through the struggle of people for control over their own lives and circumstances, through movements that are themselves democratic in nature. When confronted with such movements, such as the 1991 Iraqi uprising, the U.S. government has consistently preferred to see them crushed than to see them succeed.
A poll last week found that voters, by 50% to 37%, would prefer the Democrats to win control of Congress. If Bush’s opponents find themselves in a position of power, the temptation to humiliate him is likely to be irresistible.
The movement to impeach has left the fringe, says the Times Online.
If few senior Democrats are calling publicly for Bush to be placed in the dock, plenty are flirting with the idea. One of them is Al Gore, the defeated 2000 presidential candidate, who is increasingly talked up as a serious anti-war contender at the next election.
Gore said recently that Bush’s “unlawful” eavesdropping was part of a larger pattern of “seeming indifference” to the American constitution, which could well be an impeachable offence.
Don’t you think that people need to be shaken from their denial when they’re doing something ugly? I do. This house is located here in my town. The second story was just added, and rumor has it the owner went to great lengths to get the City to let him put a tile roof on this California Ranch tract house.
Now I like a nice tile roof as much as anybody. I love Spanish and Mediterranean architecture. But this isn’t a Spanish style home. This roof is like putting lipstick and a dress on your cat; it just looks stupid. What poor little moron over at City Hall caved in and let the owner do this?
Yes, I understand the owner is Latino. And I respect his impulse to express himself through the aesthetics of his heritage. And no, I’m not a bigot. People with bad taste come in all flavors, and this is simply bad taste. The roof is nice, the house could be nice, but they don’t go together. And since I live here, I have a right to say Yuck. And I have to wonder who goes around teaching rednecks of all stripes to park on their everfriggin’ lawn.
Anyway, this is the kind of house you put a tile roof on, Hoss.
Andrew Sullivan at Time.com is really on a roll today. Check out this great column on the pitiful exhaustion endemic to the West Wing.
Image of instruction card issued to troops, on how to treat prisoners in Vietnam, from Andrew Sullivan’s TIME blog. … “Always treat your prisoner humanely.” It includes the following quotation:
“The courage and skill of our men in battle will be matched by their magnanimity when the battle ends. And all American military action in Vietnam will stop as soon as aggression by others is stopped.”
— Lyndon B. Johnson
Those were the days, huh?
It was good to go to the rally today. I posted a couple of photos on Flickr . It’s good to protest, and to be among like-minded people. As they say, all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. The speakers were all good, especially Hannah-Beth Jackson, and Steve Sherrill from Veterans for Peace. It’s right to applaud when someone calls for bringing the troops home, ending the slaughter, impeaching the very bad president. But there is, regrettably, the small matter of futility.
The word juggernaut was used by speakers today, and the thing about a juggernaut is that it’s hard to stop. Once set in motion, a juggernaut of war and hate creates its own fuel, its own momentum. It’s a chain reaction, because hate begets hate, and violence begets violence. This ravenous beast was conjured in the dark heart of fanatical self-righteousness, by men of unqualified power and corrupt moral vision. After three years, it’s just as lumbering, roughshod and hungry as it ever was.
This is a strange and bitter kind of war. It’s not over territory, or riches, or power within a traditionally calculable scope. By the Bush administration’s own admission, this is, “global struggle against violent extremism.” (Donald Rumsfeld.) Perhaps only the Third Reich had such broad ambitions for a new world order, and so little respect for its place among nations.
“It ought to be ‘the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world.’ ”
— George W. Bush
The goal is to conquer the consciousness of the world. We haven’t won until the Stars & Stripes are planted in Thought itself, until the conscience of the free world has supplanted by force all opposing conscience. Bush has made enemies with whom he cannot hope to make peace, and every effort to destroy them creates exponentially more of them. (And aren’t they people, after all? Damn it, when did our language make room for eradication of men, as though they were vermin?)
The end can never be in sight, because no end is contemplated. In the frigid thorax of this beast, there is nothing but the vacuum of obsession. I’m afraid that George W. Bush has opened Pandora’s Box, and he couldn’t close it, even if he wanted to.
Nevertheless, we stop at nothing but to say Impeach Bush, wrest Congress from the Republicans in November, hope the Democrats grow a backbone by then, and always Pray for Peace.
On a lighter note, I just think this is pretty funny.
What were those prirates smokin’, to think they should fire on Navy warships? Must’ve been something that made the ships looks reeeealy small.
I got home a short time ago from the peace march and rally in Santa Barbara. I’ll have something to say about it later, and maybe a few photos. For now, I want to say that I almost didn’t go. My stomach’s been bugging me a little today. I was tempted just to stay here in my comfy place, where the only noise is that of children playing outside. But then I turned on the computer and saw this photo. 
Blood drips from the head of a blindfolded suspected insurgent inside an army headquarters in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad March 18, 2006. Three years after the war, dreams of a bright new future have died as insurgency and rising sectarian violence have brought new fears, and more poverty.
REUTERS/Helmiy al-Azawi
Hard to look at, isn’t it? And you see why I couldn’t stay here in my soft chair, sipping coffee and watching CNN, while the world devolves into blood and weeping. Not today.
Peace.
You will all be relieved to know that metaphor has been reviewed by the eminent techies at blogger, and officially certified unspamish. All sanctions have been lifted, and we can get back to the serious business of stopping at nothing.
Well, Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you. It’s a lovely, green day here in wee Carp. Where the debris meets the sea and leprechauns run free. Just damp and dark enough for a good cable-knit sweater. I’m wearing the green, as we all may if we choose. The Irish people have been so integral to the founding and building of America, that maybe we’re all a little Irish. And I happen to be part Irish. I’m a mutt. And I’m a Christian and Patrick is one of the Saints.
So here I am, as from inside the monitor looking out, wearing the green today. 
A fine specimen of a lad.
I don’t drink green beer, though. Point of fact, I haven’t had beer of any color in almost two years. It’s just so very fattening. And it does tend to fog the mind a bit. My mind needs all the clarity it can get.
St. Patty’s Day holds some grim memory for me. My very good friend and ex-roommate Mark died, at the age of 30, on March 17, 1995. Eleven years, hard to believe. I have some photos of him somewhere, though on apparently on this computer. I should find and scan them.
Mark was a good guy, an excellent friend. A calm and sincerely young man. I saw him get angry, but never mad. I knew him for over 10 years, and don’t think I ever knew him to raise his voice. When I was down, he was there. So if you’re out tonight, drinkin’ a bit of green Guinness, raise a glass to my friend.
Metaphor 
