Imagine if you woke from an operation and discovered that your tumor was gone. You�d think: I suppose that�s a good thing. But. You learned that the hospital might profit from the operation. You learned that the doctor who made the diagnosis had decided to ignore all the other doctors who believed the tumor could be discouraged if everyone protested the tumor in the strongest possible terms, and urged the tumor to relent. How would you feel? You�d be mad. You�d look up at the ceiling of your room and nurse your fury until you came to truly hate that butcher. And when he came by to see how you were doing, you�d have only one logical, sensible thing to say: YOU TOOK IT OUT FOR THE WRONG REASONS. PUT IT BACK!
...
So what were all these people against, exactly?

A free press in Iraq. Freedom to own a satellite dish. Freedom to vote. A new Constitution that might actually be worth the paper on which it�s printed. Oil revenues going to the people instead of Saddam, or French oligopolies. Freedom to leave the country. Freedom to demonstrate against the people who made it possible for you to demonstrate.

Freedom. More freedom now than before, and yes it comes with peril; it always does, at first. But freedom is either in retreat, or on the advance. These people marched to protest the premature bestowal of freedom by exterior forces. Better the Iraqi people live under the boot for 20 years, and rise up and get slaughtered and rise up again and slaughter those who killed their kin, then have Bush push the FF button and get it over with now. Better they suffer for the right reasons than live better for the wrong ones.--- Lileks.

As they say, read the whole thing.

One of the local geocachers got this list going.

An old BBS friend wrote this. I didn't know he was geocaching because until yesterday, he's never logged a cache on the site.

ObGoe. Those were the days.

Today was real bad for my mutual fund, after a three-week slide. After three years, yesterday, my account is down 34%. However, a year from the low point of March 11, 2003 I was up 22% from that point. There is hope, though this last three weeks has been scary.

I couldn't resist the People magazine with The Apprentice on the cover. Omorosa says she's misunderstood. While I understand some of it is the editing, I hardly saw the "professionalism" she, uh, professes. From the time she claimed "racism" when another woman said something about "the pot calling the kettle black" to the massive drama over having her head hit (what a wimp. After two sets of doctors told her she wasn't hurt she was still milking her "concussion" for all it was(n't) worth.) she was a backstabbing b-word. They couldn't edit the material if she hadn't provided it. All is explained when you learn she was in the Clinton White House.

Yesterday it was time to go back to Lincoln and finish up that cache. The first stage, with the tape recorder that says "smoke...smoke...smoke...poof!" is gone so the cache is disabled, but we knew for sure (having had complete instructions from the hider... we were on the east side of the town square and the container is on the west) where the second stage was. And indeed, so it was, and we went off to the final stage. It was scattered all over, though nothing had been taken. I found all the bits and signed the logbook and put it together again.

Then there was another multi, but it was pretty easy if I could actually add 2 and 4 and get 6, not 7. (I carried 1 when I needn't.) This one is up in the crook of a eucalyptus, and it's covered with eucalyptus bark so it is hard to see.

On we went to the north where a couple of the best cachers in the area had left a little one on an old bridge. Saturday about 30 or so of our group went up in this area on a blitz, and this was one of their stops. We do want to go back to Spenceville pretty soon, but this is close to Lincoln and so we wanted it to get the area cleaned out. These are nice little backroads with lots of wild turkeys, and we are afraid they'll all be freeways and housing in our lifetime. Sigh.

Back to Clark Tunnel Road, where we found the third stage of another one the last time we were in Lincoln. The two stages are on either side of that one (which has been re-opened). The last one is close to the tunnel, and Rich wanted to see it... he had a hard time climbing up the slope, and he had the camera so I couldn't take a picture of him surfing down. That's what it looked like, the way he had his hands and legs placed!

Our last cache was in Gold Hill cemetery. There's a fenced plot with three children in it... one was born in May of 1859 when his sister was dying, and hung on till August by which time his brother had also died. Cemeteries are full of stories!

Rich tried mowing the lawn and has decided Sears didn't do a good job of repairing the mower.

Today we went bowling. Both of us lost a pin off averages. It was awful. The old ladies on the other team started covering their ears when Rich bowled. Then we went to pick up the top cache on our list, at the light rail station near Pagan's folks' house. We also looked to see if we could get to the unregistered cache mentioned in the article above. It's close to that BBS friend's house, but on the River with no visible access nearby, and since it doesn't count even if it's still there, we left it alone.

I see Saruman was killed by the Israelis. I looked at the people wailing and I try to be sad for them, but these are the same people we saw celebrating 9/11....

We got a fundraising letter for the University of Sacramento, the new Christian Brothers school that will be opening north of us. Their motto is "Vince in bono malum." Heh.

Glenn comments on the protests:

When Palestinians blow up Israelis school buses, that's understandable anger. When America defends itself, that's indefensible. When dissent is crushed with secret police and torture chambers, that's not worthy of comment. When some people point out that traitorous behavior is unadmirable, that's the recapitulation of Nazi Germany.

Lt. Smash interviews a nutcase protester.

Yesterday there was the Hero of Chappaquiddick, the Raddled Old Drunk, on Meet the Press. He really had to do some fancy footwork to defend Kerry. Here are two veteran's sites about Flipflop John.

More on Kerry-as-traitor.

LA Times bias, and about Kerry and the VVAW:

the Times leaves it out. It fails to mention--at all--the assassination plot and the controversy surrounding Kerry's knowledge of it. It fails to mention that Kerry may have been an accessory to the crime of conspiracy in failing to report the plot to law enforcement.
...
This is not a small, nitpicking point. John Kerry may have had knowledge of a plot to kill elected officials of the US government and failed to report it to proper authorities. In a time of war. It's hard to find a more relevant issue than whether a current candidate for president once knew of and failed to report a plot to kill American officials, especially when the nation is again at war.

Best of the Web:

Boy is this campaign getting negative. John Kerry has come under attack as "reckless" and "irresponsible" for voting last October to defund the military and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here's what Kerry's critic had to say: "I don't think any United States senator is going to abandon our troops and recklessly leave Iraq to whatever follows as a result of simply cutting and running. That's irresponsible."

Who is waging this harsh campaign against John Kerry? None other than John Kerry.