What needs to start sinking in, somehow, is that while arsenals matter, what matters even more is the set of rules and values that a regime defends and its leaders live by. This, more than anything signed on paper or offered as totalitarian propaganda, tells us where the worst dangers lie. We have heard by now too many discussions in which mass graves, mass starvation, conventional mass murder and terrorist trafficking are all somehow hived off from the high and nuanced talk of geostrategy, of bomb estimates and inspections, so scientific but imprecise.--- Claudia Rosett

Long ago, Rich used to take the Boy Sprouts camping at Spenceville Wildlife Reserve near Camp Far West Reservoir. He went to visit it again while I was up in the plane with Commander Bill, but I've only been in the area once before, many years ago. And look! There are caches there! The weather was cold and foggy, but we decided to get up there today.

On the way, we spied lots of hunters. I imagine they are after pheasant. We did see a pheasant on the way home.

The first cache was a miss, supposed to be at a corral, but the arrow pointed up a hill over a fence on posted land. We gave up on that one and found another, just off the road. We had to hop a fence here, but it worked out after all. I was worried, till we found one, that maybe the GPSr was somehow broken and we'd be off all day. At this one, we traded a frog for a squid.

Rich wanted to show me where they'd camped. Then we realized that was the trailhead for another cache, so we parked and off we went. Camping is no longer allowed there because of mitigation from an old copper mine. It used to be sulphuric acid was leaking into the creek... I'm surprised the boys didn't all come home with three eyes or something. The toxic cleanup ended last month and now they're watching it.

The San Francisco Paint Company produced �Spenceville Red� from the mine�s tailings. While the color was brilliant, the paint had an unfortunate side effect: Its acidity ate away at the nails holding buildings together.

This was a nice walk along an unused road with lovely views of the blue oak forest. When we found the cache, we took a tiny car and left a superhero guy we'd picked up in Petaluma or Napa. I sure hope they don't build the dam they're talking about!

The Yuba County Water Agency (YCWA) is proposing a multiple dam complex to flood the Spenceville Wildlife Area to store water for sales to southern California. These sales would be subsidized, at a loss, with taxpayer's money - the Green Scissors report found that as little as 50 cents in benefits would accrue tax payers for each dollar spent. This proposal, called the "Waldo Reservoir," would inundate more than 4,200 acres of public and private property, 3,560 acres of which is within the Spenceville Wildlife Area. The height of the reservoir would be 200 feet, covering a portion of Dry Creek and its riparian habitats.

Private property owners in the area would have their land taken again, as occurred during World War II when thousands of acres were purchased against the owners' wishes by the Federal government to create a mock German town for military practice.

Next was one close to the road, and then we skipped another that was at or near a corral... no luck with corrals today... because a rider was coming there. Then there was a virtual, and then we drove up the side of a hill, disturbing a couple in a car watching submarine races, to find one near the old Smartville cemetery. This one is inside a gorgeous abalone shell, and the signature item is a turtle, which I almost took. I ended up with a keychain from a Honda place in Mississippi. En route we passed the Yuba Blue quarry. SO beautiful!

We were then on highway 20 heading towards Marysville. It was late enough we decided not to go on any other backroads, because we were hungry! We did go into Hammond regional park and stopped overlooking the Yuba river. First we walked back down the road and saw an old homestead and ruins, and found the hard cache in a wall. The second cache, the "easy" one, took us a lot longer. When I did find it, THEN the GPSr started to point to it. "It's over here!" "It's in this tree!" "It's under this log" then when you do find it, "It's right there!"

Lunch was a cardiac special, a guacamole bacon cheeseburger. Oh, it was good, though I paid for it the next day.

We drove back to Lincoln to try again for the second stage of "I Spy." Again we had no luck. I emailed the hider for some hints. We did look where he said, but not carefully enough, I guess, because he checked and says it's still there.

Finally, we stopped and got two in Roseville. The first was near where Rich used to camp with the Boy Scouts. I was out there to watch the Civil War reenactment once. I'm not convinced McMansions are an improvement... I miss the pistachio trees! This one involved making it down to a path with a box that really smells. We watch too much CSI but Rich snuck a look and it wasn't human. After that, a pleasant hike. The other one was along "Dry Creek" which is a definite oxymoron. Never live along a Dry Creek.
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John Kerry is the winner here--and the only winner. It's a wash for John Edwards, who was never expected to come close to winning New Hampshire and who moves South beginning next week. Everyone else is a loser.

It's hard to see why anyone would vote for Wesley Clark after his dismal showing. If you want a war hero, there's Kerry. If you want a Southerner, there's Edwards. If you want a crackpot, there's Dean (though we'll grant that Clark is more of a crackpot).

It's also hard to see where Dean goes from here. Iowa and New Hampshire were supposed to be his big states, and it's hard to think of any other state except Vermont where he's going to be the favorite.
...
Sadly, Joe Lieberman is finished, and even more sadly, everyone knows it but him.
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According to Associated Press figures, two write-in candidates got enough votes in the Democratic primary to be counted: George W. Bush, with 112 votes, and Hillary Clinton, with 54. That's right--President Bush beats Sen. Clinton by more than 2 to 1 among Democrats and independents! If, as William Safire sort of predicts, Hillary gets the nomination at a brokered convention, the president may be headed for the biggest landslide since James Monroe in 1820.

Wonkette: "Dean is replacing him [Trippi] with Gore's advisors. Because, uhm, yeah, they did such a great job for Gore. To review: Joe Trippi helped bring Dean from being an obscure governor of a tiny state to a national front-runner. Al Gore's advisers managed to fumble one of the surest bets in campaign history."

Or, as I said when I heard it... yeah, THAT'll work.

Clinton or Carter in the Middle East? Yeah, THAT'll work.

Don't they know there's a war on? Many of the Donks are SO 9/10.

In the radio we heard William Saletin on Kennedy: "his greatest feat during the VietNam was was swimming ashore at Chappaquiddick." He's hardly the one to comment on Kerry's bravery, but irony is lost on the raddled old drunk.

Ah, Zero Tolerance :

Three boys at Bemiss Elementary School in Spokane, Wash., have been suspended for bringing "toy guns" to school, the Spokane Spokesman-Review reports. Now at first glance this may not seem wholly unreasonable--after all, children have been shot by policemen who mistook toy guns for the real thing.

But there wasn't much danger of that happening in this case. Terry Wilson-Spence, whose eight-year-old son was among the suspended students, tells the paper that "the toy guns her son carried in his pocket were for GI Joe action figures. The guns are from only 1 inch to 3 inches long--half the size of a pencil."