Yet we made it through, with a modicum of liberty and a splash of human kindness, and now democracy is springing up like mushrooms everywhere you look, poverty is steadily decreasing, though perhaps not as fast as we'd like, and wars are killing fewer and fewer humans each decade. The world is a pretty good place to live, and getting steadily better for almost everyone. As flawed as the human race is, we seem to be a lot better than the doomsayers think at muddling through.---Megan McArdle

We wanted to take Alex her presents (magnetic dinosaur board and the javelina and "The Three Little Javelinas" book) so today after church and a quick trip to the local cactus show, we were off to Novato. Well, we did have a few delays. We stopped in Davis at one called "Stripes" to be sure I'd figured out the puzzle back weeks ago. Sure enough, there was an old stretch of highway where it seems the roadguys test their striping paint before actually using it, and next to it, right at the coordinates, the cache!

Then, although Rich couldn't sell them any softballs, we went on to San Rafael. It's disappointing about the softballs. Rich saves them the best, and they've doubtless bought inferior balls, which means they don't need his, but it also means that they won't sell quickly so they won't need his later. If they had his, they would sell and then they would need more.

Anyway. There was a cache called "Education" and he said to remember 80s rock. Sure enough, it was a hollowed out brick in the wall. Neat. Another was in an area that was just too busy. We went to the first premium cache (I was shamed into paying some money to geocaching, but so far there have been no benefits) and it was too hard and complicated to get to. Then there's a new one called "Vampires" which I understood the minute we pulled into the bloodbank parking lot. Sunday is a good day to look for this cache. I left a travel bug. Back in the car, I spied a guy right near the cache. First thought, "whew, he didn't see us!" and second was "oh, he's a cacher!" so we met yet another wild cacher. At Roni's house I logged the TB, nothing else, just to make it work.

We then went on to Roni's. Rich and I watched the Kings. R.J. watched the Sharks. Both won. Alex liked the book and toy. She spent a lot of time playing with dinosaurs and having long conversations with them.

They haven't actually gotten the scissors they were going to get right away last month. We went over to the park, and noticed this strange looking "dog"... no, it's a goat on a leash! There was one scary moment when the goat got in the way of Alex's swing, but it was just a glancing blow and didn't hurt either kid. The little kid is a month old, named Princess, and was having a great time eating leaves.

I was slightly dissatisfied with the visit... it's probably trip letdown, combined with Roni still being a)in mourning for her cat and b)in her cast, still healing from the knee surgery. We couldn't really talk because she was distracted. It's too bad we couldn't do the Bay to Breakers. That's always fun.

Since R.J. was marinating steaks we got interested and stopped (after one more cache) at the local Black Angus. The cache was a tiny bubble container just thrown into some leaves, not a complicated hide, but someone had left some real goodies in the dumpster... a dead clown (stuffed, clean), a kid's fielder's mitt (hello, Casey!) and an electronic game and a flashlight and both working!

----

The political storm over prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and, to a lesser extent the decapitation of Nick Berg, has effaced the really important story in the Iraqi campaign: the US has just beaten back a major counteroffensive by Syria and Iran.

Iraq the Model, Not in My City.

WHAT? Did I see the **NEW YORK TIMES ** say this?

"...Despite being a crucial front in the war on terrorism, Iraq presents a very different situation."

Ajami on our mistakes.

Zel Miller, attack dog.

Condi speaks at Vanderbilt

Catfight!

George Bush, as my fave t-shirt puts it, is "saving your ass, like it or not."

Mark Steyn says now is not the time for Bush to go soft.

The American people, no thanks to their media, still understand what's real and what's just cheesy Beltway dinner-theater. That's why the Abu Ghraib scandal is dead, even if the networks don't yet know it. It was dead before Nick Berg. It died because the Democrats and their media groupies overplayed their hand, as usual, and so turned a real scandal into just another fake scandal for senatorial windbags to huff and puff over.
....
The administration, in trying to see its way through both the phony crossfire and the real one, has been rattled by the fake war. Someone in the White House needs seriously to stiffen the Bush rhetoric. When the president talks about ''staying the course'' and ''bringing to justice'' the killers, he sounds like Bill Clinton, who pledged to stay the course in Somalia and bring to justice the terrorists, and did neither. Bush has to go back to speaking Rumsfeldian, not Powellite: He has to talk about winning total victory, hunting down the enemy and killing them.

...
We always come back to that strong horse/weak horse thing. But the point to remember is that Osama bin Laden talked about who was seen as the strong horse: It's a perception issue. America may be, technically, the strong horse but, thanks to its press and its political class, the administration is showing dangerous signs of climbing into the rear end of the weak-horse burlesque suit. If America retreats into its own fatalistic apathy, there will be many more Nick Bergs in the years ahead.

Another picture from Abu Ghraib.

John Fund to Donks, you can't keep hating forever.