Gawrsh Mickey
I'm goin' to...
DisneyLand!
------
"You can't just do that to a baby," she said. Her voice rose to a near yell. "That's a life."

Forgive them, Father.
For they don't really know what they're doing.

A long week, but Friday comes.
As the kids say:
I like to moove it, move it...

...

And you shake your head
(hrmphf)
and say it's a shame...

When you change with every new day
Still I'm gonna miss you

...like 7 inches from the midday sun...

Definitely

Santana

weather.

Time for America to put its diplomatic muscle where its mouth is,
or Dear Mr. Bush.
(read the whole thing)

GWB: No Winston Churchill

Next myth is Dems will free terrorists
by Tom Blackburn
Palm Beach Post Columnist
Monday, July 10, 2006

After the Supreme Court ruled that he may not be prosecutor, defense counsel, witness, judge, jury, jailor and executioner on his own say-so, President Bush had a curious message for the public: The terrorists at Guantanamo Bay won't walk freely on the streets of America while he's on the job.

But no one ever said they would. Mr. Bush said they won't — twice in seven sentences. The justices hadn't been asked to release the prisoners, and they didn't. No one said the prisoners should be turned loose. Mr. Bush's comment had nothing to do with the court's decision. But it could have plenty to do with what comes next.

No objective observer thought that the Constitution would let the president usurp legislative and judicial power to set up "military tribunals" for the dubious cases, mopes and hard-core bad actors at Guantanamo. The fact that three justices said he can shows how partisan the court is becoming since it took to deciding presidential elections. Justice Clarence Thomas' positively purple dissent shows again that he wasn't the best man for the job.

The question, really, was what to do with the people who are probably hostile and possibly dangerous and who get scooped up in this not-strictly-defined war. Mr. Bush had thought no more deeply about that than he had about the aftermath of the battle of Baghdad. The court majority tossed that decision to Congress, where it always belonged.

There still are 450 detainees at Guantanamo. Fewer than 20 have been charged with anything. This hardly suggests that the administration has a series of slam-dunk cases lined up after four years to prepare.

If the administration is willing to make itself legal, Mr. Bush's gratuitous comment sets the terms for the debate. He will want Congress to authorize him to do what he already claimed he didn't need permission to do. Whatever the Democrats support as an alternative will then become the agenda to "turn terrorists loose" in the mouths of his conservative echo chamber.

Democrats haven't offered a plan. Maybe their focus groups haven't been polled enough. They probably can't do better than to support Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who wants to use a modified version of court-martial procedure, the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That would have such pluses as procedures that are well-understood and a record of producing what can be recognized as justice.

Sen. Graham's approach is sensible but not invented by Karl Rove or Dick Cheney, so there's little hope that Mr. Bush will like it.

Everyone has noticed that, with Mr. Rove embedded in the White House, it's more natural for Mr. Bush to try to wrong-foot Democrats than to fight terrorists. He even reaches for attack slogans before he knows he will need them.

It should be added that this White House puts down Republicans when they don't sing in its Amen chorus. That would include, on the war, Sens. Graham and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. Sen. John McCain got a law against torture passed. Mr. Bush signed it along with his "finding" that the law doesn't mean what lawmakers who voted for it thought it means.

Mr. Bush's admirers like to say that he is a fan of Winston Churchill and sees himself in a similar position in his war to Mr. Churchill's in World War II. But Mr. Churchill formed a coalition with Labor Party members and worked with Josef Stalin, whose ideology Mr. Churchill abhorred, and President Roosevelt, who didn't share Mr. Churchill's regard for the British empire. As British historian Stuart Ball reminds us, some Conservatives felt that their leader wasn't doing enough for the party, and, indeed, they lost the 1945 elections. But Mr. Churchill, Mr. Ball writes, wanted "most of all to succeed as a war leader, and all else was secondary."

With Mr. Bush, sometimes it seems as if Osama bin Laden is secondary to keeping Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi in outer darkness. He invited us all to a war, but then he told everyone else to keep their noses out of it. Americans who take the right-wing rhetoric seriously must be quaking every time they get on Interstate 95 knowing that the guy in the Lexus behind them might be a liberal plotting their misery and their country's downfall.

But the adult majority ought to take the Supreme Court's decision as a signal to assert itself on how, when and where the battles against terrorists are to be fought. These battles are too important to leave to Mr. Bush and his echo chamber.

On Independence

Yesterday, pulling into Fleet Farm around 5:30pm for an item or two, I noticed the garage was open until 8pm. Only one bay open, and no workers in sight. Usually, they run at least an hour or two wait time. I checked with the woman working the auto desk, and she confirmed that while they only had one guy on, he didn't have any tickets up and there was not much wait. So I left my keys for the tires to be balanced and rotated, and went in to shop briefly.

My car was up when I entered the waiting room. Behind the bay, an older truck and boat trailing behind, had parallel parked across all the bays. Meanwhile, I caught the woman who had written up my ticket, while she was out looking at the size of the trailer tire to sell to the guy inside.

He was a real work. Called out to the guy servicing my car -- say, I want to get this new one on and it's needs a bit of air. Can I give you $10 to just get me out of here real quick. The mechanic just laughed, said he'd get to it, and kept on balancing my tires. The guy asked -- should I leave this here (new tire) or do I take it to pay for it. Since you don't pay for anything in the garage, the mechanic said, "Take it up to the front and pay for it first."

Now, 2 things: When I saw the woman outside, before the guy even came in, I walked over and asked her: "Say, ok to tip this guy a few bucks?" It was humid out there, a holiday weekend, and mostly I thought of it since my job was "free" = I bought my tires there with lifetime rotation. She just shook her head, and said it's against the policy, which makes sense. That was why it was so funny, a few minutes later, to hear the guy call out his offer.

Under his breath, as he lifted my tires back on, the mechanic said he was going to ask for $20. He was kidding, in that mechanic way, but I can see where if you haven't been around blue-collar humor much, you might be inclined to take everything literally. Don't.

Second, when I had returned to the garage area after shopping, there was one other fellow sitting waiting, and other had come in, ticket in hand, to pick up his vehicle that had been serviced earlier. So when the boat guy returns, he's not just talking to one guy in the garage, with a customer standing outside the bay, casually watching and listening. He goes out into the garage, interrupts the mechanic now using the air gun to tighten my lug nuts, and shows him a business card from where he works, explaining how he's going to "take care" of him. I assume he worked at, or owned, a restaurant or other such place.

So, I did it. I spoke up. Calmy, respectfully. With two men waiting at the desk behind me (my car was almost done; I was just waiting on the keys.) The mechanic had called me over to show me one of my lugnuts was almost stripped, and on my way back to the desk, I just mentioned to the long-haired, bearded and sandaled, almost hippie-type looking guy, "That's not cool to tip your way to the front of the line. When he's working on my car, I want his full attention to be ... on my car." (He was having a little trouble earlier balancing one of the tires, so it wasn't as routine a procedure as maybe I'm leading you to believe.)

The guy laughed it off, a bit. "I'm paying him $100, you know." and then, "Look, I could do this myself (fill the air) if he'd just let me use the tools." I was serious, and not upset since I was on my way out. Just wanted to get speak up, get that off my chest.

I said, "That's between you and him. All I know is, I want to drive out of here in confidence, knowing that when he was working on my car, he was paying full attention to his work. That's not right, you jumping in when he's working on something else. That's why there's a no tipping policy, presumably."

The mechanic looked at me as he was lowering my car, and said, "thank you". He would have taken the $10, I'm sure of it, and if the shop had been as slow as it originally seemed, it wouldn't have been a big thing. But why push your luck with the special treatment, when you can look back into the faces of the people waiting their turn?
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As for me, on the road again... Big fleamarket weekend, doncha know?

Happy Independence Day! If you've got it, cherish it. If you don't, keep working for it. You'll know when you achieve it -- it's more a feeling of lightness and fluidity, imo, than status and power, which may explain why so many seek to firmly grasp it, yet come away empty handed. Sometimes you have to plan, and wait, and make better plans the next time after learning from the waiting. And don't forget to speak out, if you can when you can. That "thank you" was sincere, that much I know, and if it cost him a $10 tip, maybe the sight of that guy sitting waiting his turn while the folks at the desk were helped in order, was worth it. Still, with our attitudes these days, I smell more trouble ahead: You can't really buy independence, but you do pay for it. And if you can't learn to take responsibility, always expecting somebody else to take special care of you, good luck with the independence thing.