31 December 2006, we made it this far...just one more day...

A rainy morning, there went my chances of a fire out in the yard to burn up the leaves, et al.  No, I didn't get around to putting a tarp over them to keep them dry, what did you expect?  I'd rather blog.

And Carol sent me an interesting link this morning, because on it I found a federal judge letting 'former ambassador' Joe Wilson's attorney know how the cow ate the cabbage:

Borders on unethical conduct, and if you didn't know before you sure know now.  But how would she know, her client is one of the world's champion liars.  What's that?  Libby is on trial for perjury and Wilson is not?  Very good point...when they put Wilson under oath he actually told the truth, which is why the 9/11 Commission called him a liar, not a perjurer.

And I could count on the New York Times, as always:

Very profound.  Those who thought nothing would change and those who thought everything would change have just been profoundly enlightened.

Now, about that bridge I have for sale at a very good special price, only for you, only for today...

As for entering Iraq four years ago with a broader foreign policy, one built on democracy and the rule of law, here's what Bush said:

Oops, sorry, it wasn't Bush who said that, after all.  Well, maybe later on he did, but American policy regarding Iraq had already been established by that time. 

You mark my words: in due course both of the Clintons will be boasting about this.  Other portions of Public Law 105-338 state emphatically that Saddam's government is in "material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations" and PL 105-235 "urged" Clinton to do something about it.

It's unacceptable, we urge you to make it acceptable.  Please.

It also "urged" the president to get a war crimes tribunal going for the purpose of "indicting, prosecuting and imprisoning Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi officials" for genocide, among other small offenses.

The Beirut political science professor who can't see success for failure is a direct beneficiary of spreading democracy in Lebanon, because if anyone thinks Syria would have yielded its occupation for any other reason should be your next buyer for the bridge.

Like it or not, imperfect or not, shaky or not, there are now democratically elected governments in Afghanistan and Iraq, where before there were none.  Literally millions of Afghans and Iraqis voted for the first time in their lives, even while risking them in the process.  A constitution was written and approved, something the democratic European Union has so far not managed to do.  The professor would like all of these things not to have happened, so he simply refuses to see that they did.

Whether you like it or not, democracy has been spread.  It might not be your particular favorite variety of democracy (the last I've heard from some anti-Iraq-war people they don't even care for our own US democracy very much, either), but Bush said clearly--if you were listening--that he didn't expect it would be like America's democracy but something more appropriate to their own way of life in Iraq.

Clinton said, emphatically, that he knew the Iraqis could do it!  Trust me on this one, he'll soon be reminding you that this was his idea all along!  Bush jumped on his bandwagon, he'll tell you, and thereafter did things wrong, but he was for overthrowing Saddam, trying him and punishing him for the crime of genocide, ad a minimum, and thereafter establishing a democratic regime in Iraq.

Try as you might, you cannot subtract Clinton's eight years from the Iraqi equation.  Clinton had the right instincts, he just lacked the will to do anything meaningful.  In turn he "urged" the United Nations, who in turn "urged" Iraq, who in turn "urged" the UN inspectors out of the country, in what we non-sophisticates call a circle-jerk.

Now Bush's critics call him the jerk, but whether they like it or not, whether the Beirut professor can see it or not from his ivory tower, the whole region has, in fact, been jerked awake to the possibility of democratically-elected governments. 

If you doubt this, ask the Saudi despots how they're sleeping these nights.  Ask Syria's big-wig how easy lies the head that wears a crown.  Even the rulers of Iran are recognizing that their false veneer of democracy is wearing thin in spots...the people are starting to ask, finally, that their ballots actually get counted afterwards.

As for the execution of Saddam, it's time and place and manner, those were the decisions of the elected Iraqi government according to their own rules of law, not ours.  We didn't execute Saddam on one of the holiest days in the Muslim year, they did.  (We don't even recognize our own holy days any more.)

The rhetoric of the Arabs often tends towards the bizarre.

The logic in this argument would be that justice could not be found until after every person with a complaint against Saddam had had his day in court.  Or perhaps it means that anyone who commits multiple crimes must be tried for each and every one of them before sentence can be passed on any of them.  This notion is a bit silly on its face, the spectacle of the Oklahoma City bomber, McVeigh, in separate trials for each and every person he murdered cannot possibly fit anyone's idea of justice other than maybe a trial lawyer's.

Wasn't he caught because he was pulled over for speeding?  I wonder if he went to court over that traffic ticket?

What would "justice" have been for Saddam?  Or is "justice" for the victims?  No, we say that we bring the criminal TO justice.  Justice is in the court-room, the blindfolded lady with the sword and the scales.

In this case, Saddam committed a crime for which he was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Bringing a series of multiple trials after that might have made Saddam's surviving victims feel better, true, but is that what is meant by "justice"?

Frankly, I was a bit surprised that they tried him first on what might be considered a lesser charge...killing only a few hundred, certainly far below his record kill.  I wonder if the prosecutors thought he might not get the death penalty for the first few cases and intended to bring increasingly greater grievances until that sentence finally occurred?

Here's what I call a slipsie:

See, you can't really defy the feelings of Muslims by invoking sectarian strife between Muslims.  If they were united in their feelings there wouldn't be any sectarian strife in the first place.

Saddam's trial and punishment were called for by Clinton, this wasn't Bush's new policy, Clinton even, amusingly enough, cited Saddam's attempted assassination of the first president Bush (nobody knew at that time there would even be a second president Bush) as one of the casus belli for his, Clinton's, policy.

Clinton wanted a trial under U.N. auspices, of course, whereas we've somehow given the Iraqis the idea that they are a sovereign country once again, able to try their own criminals.

And there's another laugher for you.  The people who scream the loudest about Bush acting illegally by invading a sovereign country also scream that we should be telling the new Iraqi government what to do and not to do about a wide variety of things.  The Democrat grinning idiot savant foreign policy expert who wants to be president is rather outspoken about how he'd break the country up into three parts, after which he would...  No doubt in his mind about who really owns Iraq.

Two more items from this great article before I go:

Your exam question is: what is a "true democracy"?  For bonus points, cite three examples.

A guy named Jihad with an attitude like his would have been the perfect unbiased juror, of course.  Somehow I don't think he is really well-qualified to be a critic.

Okay, okay, I can't quit yet...for SUPER bonus points, describe where the unbiased juror pool is located.

And now I come to our own version of the nutty Arab political science professor, Richard A. (they never listened to me soon enough) Clarke.  He says our focus on Iraq has left seven other important things overlooked, but first he manages to put in:

Yes, I know...if Clarke had actually HAD any real information to provide, that would have left a week in which to round up the other 19 hijackers.  He called a meeting, because that's what bureaucrats do.  At the meeting he probably suggested forming a committee.  Perhaps modestly willing to assume its chair.

Assuming, without the Patriot Act even in the planning stage, there had been adequate legal grounds on which to arrest the at-the-time-only-potential hijackers.  The ACLU would have been screaming their heads off.  Even today we find the Flying Imams being defended and the airport security attacked for taking notice of their bizarre behavior. 

Since the US lacked legal grounds to even look inside Moussaoui's laptop computer, I think Clarke is, as usual, full of self-importance...

...he left the administration when he found they no longer considered him to be one of the barons...

...and hot air.  He proves that by listing his #1 overlooked complaint: 

Whacko time.  Clarke not only is not correct about the conclusions of the world's scientists but he obviously doesn't really believe them, himself, or he wouldn't say "if".  I wonder if Clarke even knows there have been previous ice ages and periods of global warming?  Hmmm...do his world's scientists?

It sounds rather like he thinks Bush should have followed Reagan's lead and put Putin on the Evil Empire list.  I know others who feel the same way, whenever they're not complaining that Bush isn't diplomatic enough.

It would appear that Latin America is a really big place.  Maybe people who speak Spanish, even Portuguese, are all alike?  Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, Chile, Brazil...all alike, really.  How about the idea that "cooperation" with Mexico means the US should forget about immigration laws and border controls?  Where is the "co" part in cooperation? 

Shouldn't Mexico be the one standing up like an adult and assuming responsibility for controlling their own border?

Who knew that's all that was lacking to tame a continent teeming with trouble?  If only our troops weren't dying in Iraq they could be dying in Darfur.  See, the small group would be leading the UN forces...we always take the lead, no matter how small our presence.  Mr. Clarke is nothing if not humble.

Elsewhere in today's Post the news is that Bush is tripling aid to Africa.  Sorry, Richard, bad timing for your column.  However, while I understand the necessity for acting in our own national self-interest in Iraq and the Middle East, I am less certain of the necessity of interfering in every aspect of African warfare, disease, famine, and so on.  Perhaps Clarke no longer sees the United States as a nation with national interests but more as a Worldwide Red Cross/Salvation Army organization?

If the US wasn't involved in Iraq then it could have gotten involved in Darfur or Somalia (I thought Clinton took care of that one?), that seems plausible enough, but that's a lot like saying if I hadn't been at the gas station buying gasoline then I could have been at the grocery store buying milk.  You can't do everything at once.

Oh, my.  Mr. Clarke does not even seem to know what a Treaty is, a contract in writing between two or more political authorities.  The hitch is that one of the contracting political authorities no longer existed.

Look, Mr. Clarke, when you are married and then your wife dies, the marriage contract between you no longer exists.  You cannot enforce it and you cannot get a divorce from it.  (Perhaps, if you are Catholic enough, you can get it annulled.)

Bush was, in my opinion, dumb for even bringing up the subject, just like he could easily have skipped the WMD argument in Iraq entirely and gone back to open combat in Iraq simply on the basis of the "material and unacceptable breaches" that Clinton complained about in 1998 and Congress "requested" he do something about.  (Unfortunately, the 'something' was vague and Clinton was nothing if not good at vague.)  Saddam's violation of the cease-fire agreement was adequate reason.  Further, it would have had the advantage of being able to invoke the cooperation of the original coalition members.

There's a warning about not trying to gild the lily, and Bush found out why he should not have tried.

The ABM Treaty with the Soviet Union served a purpose.  With the Soviet Union gone, the idea of the ABM Treaty only served afterwards to prevent the United States from creating a defensive system rather than an offensive one.  You'd think peaceniks would be applauding, he wanted a system to prevent getting hit rather than bigger missiles to hit others, but no...it was Bush's idea, you see, therefore it must be bad.

However, now that North Korea has shown they have the chance to touch one off that can reach the US, suddenly everybody on the West Coast thinks that Reagan's Star Wars is a dandy idea and one which should have started sooner and progressed faster.  To them it's Bush's fault that he hasn't done enough.  (Nancy Pelosi says her tactic is going to be spending more time in Washington DC.)

One wonders if  Clarke is smoking some.  Did he nod off through all the complaints about the Bush administration illegally monitoring international telephone calls and bank deposits?  Not national phone calls, not calls involving only US citizens, but international calls from known criminals?  Ha! 

I found this fascinating.  Does Clarke realize he just dinged the effectiveness of NATO forces?  Does Clark think Afghanistan is a sovereign state or that US forces can simply act there at will?  Does Clarke believe the US military has been created to act as an international drug police force?  How about it, soccer moms, do you want your kid to die while trying to keep Europeans and Asians from satisfying their drug habit?  Isn't there enough criticism of what we have been trying to do in Columbia?

No mention of whose watch it was on which AQ operated, perhaps even Mr. Clarke's.  Still, the fact is that unless Clarke wants us to keep on invading sovereign countries at the wave of his finger, we have to deal with Musharraf via the diplomatic route.  If his measures seem half-hearted to Clark then maybe he hasn't taken into account the fact that Musharraf has to deal with several different factions in his own country, himself, and it's somewhat more difficult even than getting Democrats and Republicans to work in a bipartisan manner.

Frankly, we're lucky to be getting as much cooperation as we are.  What Mr. Clarke would just as soon overlook is the fact that Bush, personally, is the one who gained Musharraf's cooperation, while walking a delicate line by not provoking India at the same time.  Indeed, our relations with India are excellent.  Oh.  That international relationship.

Clarke, in my opinion, fails to understand that if the US is not perceived to 'win' in Iraq then the Middle East will suffer the same fate that Indo-China did after we were perceived as 'losing' in Vietnam.  Several million people lost their lives after we left and the North Vietnamese violated their peace treaty agreement and reinvaded South Vietnam.  (We 'lost', as a result, because we did not promptly go back and enforce it.  Nor did the fabulous United Nations.  It is almost amusing to read the historical revisionists who are now claiming the US suffered a huge military defeat in 1975, after which North Vietnam took over the country.  These people are proudly flaunting their ignorance.)  Millions of refugees, those who survived the purges, fled by boat to the US, if they could manage to survive that trip.

Judged by those standards, Clarke's presumed Magnificent Seven problems are actually more like the Seven Dwarfs.

One of them will have to be Snow White, though, because Clarke has already taken Dopey's role. 

Jim Hoagland on Saddam's execution attitude:

I would hope never to find out, but I'm pretty sure that I would, too.  Contemplating the imminence of death would be difficult enough without being able to see what was happening.  I can't imagine a hood being of any comfort but for the executioners.  Nor would I die "with dignity" or cooperate in any way...you guys want to kill me then you are going to do it over my dead body, so to speak.

What the writer doesn't mention is that the number is, well, ah, below the daily average.  But who wants to write "killings down after Saddam executed"?

James G. Zumwalt writes about listening to the right voice in Iraq:

Speaking of listening to the right voices, if you've heard Algore on inconvenient truths then you really should go to www.junkscience.com/greenhouse and read a very interesting technical-but-understandable article about greenhouse gases and global warming.  While it deals to a large extent with only known temperature data from the last few centuries, there was this:

Put another way, Algore is barking up the wrong tree, and people who confidently tell you, like Clarke, what the world's "scientists" think about global warming, only reveal their own appalling ignorance.

Costa Rica break time

It's going to be a looooong evening.  Tony has blown hot and cold today, he's excited by the fact that the neighbors are sitting outside and he's friends with the little girls.  Carol is trying to figure whether another neighbor's invitation to drop by meant this early, or later, upset with Tony not behaving.  It's only 6:30 but people have started on the fireworks already, so Poco is a quivering mass of Jello under my feet.  He feels safest in what is ordinarily Trinket's private corner, so she's snarling at him for invading her space.  Tony is outside jabbering away a mile a minute at anyone within listening distance, he's Bill-Bill II.

Only Sabrina and I are trying to remain above the confusion.  'Sabrina' is some kind of code word for 'serene' and 'brainless', she's an affectionate dog representing their blonde world.  I don't know if you ever saw the old Gary Larson cartoon about "what dogs hear" which showed the guy talking to the dog in English and the dog hearing "blah blah blah Rex blah Rex blah blah blah blah Rex" but Sabrina can focus on my face the same way and you can almost hear the wheels turning in her head...he's saying something but I wonder what the heck it means?

We're kindred spirits, I guess.  Five and a half more hours of this to endure, I'm afraid.  I guess we might as well let Tony stay up until he drops.  Me, too.

Luis worked today and will be back tomorrow, we're building a swing-set for Tony.  I direct, he welds.  We're using some of the left-over metal pipe and pieces from the construction phase.  The job was mostly finished today, tomorrow he needs to do some finishing work and then we'll move it out into the yard, onto the grass.  It should get painted, too, if the day is nice enough.

I suppose I should build him a sandbox with the left-over sand, it's just sitting there in a pile and I don't know when we'll use it again.  Might as well build him a sandbox in the meantime.  We have some left-over cinder-blocks to enclose it...maybe I'll make it 4'x8' and build his playhouse up above it?  Carol is against the idea of going as high above the ground as I planned, but now that he has a swing set I don't need to go as high. 

Thank goodness, a lull in the fireworks, I can think again...

Niall Ferguson in the Telegraph:

Enough dictators have gotten away with it that I guess the odds are on their side.  Still, Saddam's execution has to have a couple of them thinking harder.  Ferguson should try it for himself:

Some invention, some truth, all malarkey.  You can look at the record and you won't find any claim made that Saddam had a part in the 9/11 attack, only that he was a supporter of terrorists like those who participated in 9/11.  For some odd reason, the jetliner fuselage the Iraqis practiced on in Salman Pak, in Iraq, didn't seem to count to liberals.  Nevertheless, it cannot be argued that Saddam was not both a supporter of terrorists and an enemy of the United States...he was firing rockets at US planes every time he got the chance in open defiance of the cease-fire he signed.  Amazingly, for liberals that was not considered provocation enough.  Maybe if one of our pilots had managed to die that would have been better for them.

(Aside: I've always been wryly amused that if a guy shoots at you and dodge the bullet, or are wearing a protective vest, or he just plain misses due to incompetence, the charge is only attempted murder, a lesser charge than if he had succeeded in his original intent.  Preventing your own murder is an assist to your would-be murderer when he gets to court.  Liberal Logic.

Conservative Logic?  Carry a gun while committing a crime, automatic jail sentence.  Fire a gun while committing a crime and the charge is murder, no matter whether the criminal succeeded in committing it or not.)

Ferguson's second item is almost comic in tripping over it's tongue...the evidence for the existence of WMD was woefully thin, he says, while acknowledging that Bush's pre-emption theory was to eliminate Saddam BEFORE he acquired them.  Duhhhhh.

Likewise, Bush never argued any superiority of democracy over dictatorship, he just pointed out that experience had shown democracies were less likely to engage in warfare against one another, so since the US was a democracy...well, you figure it out.  As for imposing it with a gun, that's simply a ridiculous notion.  The Taliban and al Qaeda both tried to PREVENT the Afghans and Iraqis from voting by threatening them with the barrel of a gun. 

Once again, Ferguson is either oblivious to the fact, or thinks you are, that creating a democratic regime to follow Saddam was American foreign policy before George Bush appeared on the scene.  It was policy under Clinton and would still have been policy if al-Gora had been elected instead of Bush.  Bush did not come into office and invent it on the spot.

It demonstrates an incredible stupidity on Ferguson's part to think that any democracy, anywhere, has ever been imposed by gunpoint, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world.  Does he think his readers are fools?  (Yes.)

Truth in both statements.

Bush is clearly right, Iraq has been unable to go forward while Saddam lived.  My goodness, kids, the events of the last several years have shown that to be the case, the country has obviously had a difficult time.  Was that at least partly because Saddam was still alive and had a theoretical chance to come back to power?  Hell, some Democrats were even trial-ballooning the idea!  If I had been an Iraqi, and heard them, I'd be doubly wary of American duplicity, especially after Bush-the-father's record for getting them killed after he "defeated" Saddam, with Colin Powell's assistance.  Simply defeating Saddam, the Iraqis have learned the hard way, is not good enough.

Will things get better now?  We'll get a chance to find out now that Saddam is dead.

Was it an act of vengeance?  Perhaps, probably, maybe.  Is the court-ordered death of any murderer completely without feelings of vengeance?  Besides, what's the moral argument here: that vengeance is never justified, even when the courts are used to extract it?  Hmmm...sounds like you're almost preaching Christianity here...

But even Christopher Hitchens gets lost in his own beliefs:

This simply was not true, not according to Saddam's history, at least.  Several times Saddam had been believed to be overthrown, to be inches from death, only to miraculously come back into power again.  Saddam lost a war against the whole world in 1991, and yet remained in power, killing tens of thousands of his enemies in punishment for their disloyalty to him.

Hitchens, in his arrogance, may believe that Saddam had no chance of regaining power, but the Iraqis had no similar arrogant self-assurance to fall back upon.  Whenever Saddam rose up with an insane grin and shouted "I'm baaaaaack!" the Iraqis knew Hitchens would not be there to save them, any more than the first Bush was.  Or the United Nations.

And, like I said, some prominent Democrats were even wondering aloud if Iraq might not be better off with Saddam.

Hitchens has simply turned his brain off on this one.  Hitchens prefers to see the death of Hussein as some sort of cancellation of the past:

But you see what he admits?  Iraqis could not feel secure or have peace of mind without Saddam dead.  And why would that be, except for the fear that he might, after all, somehow come back to power again.  What other reason would there be for feeling insecure?

Hitchens, you see, is certain that his vision of justice is the only proper and correct one.  He's perfectly willing to tell the Iraqis how to run their government and their country, their courts and their lives.  The British, after all, have a long heritage of teaching the wogs the proper way to live.  (On the other hand, I have to grant him that for the most part they seemed to be right...)

For some reason Salena Zito's article wouldn't load completely, so I had to settle for this gem:

I cannot tell you how delighted that makes me.

Dave Barry works hard to write a funny column about 2006 and occasionally succeeds:

I'm amused by the global warming people, who last year spun every storm as 'proof' that global warming was a fact sinister, but this year say that any one storm or any one year aren't important because single events do not matter.  Remember, Algore's global warming film ends with an ice age caused by global warming.  And some people think he makes sense.

I'm also amused by the people who complain Americans don't know the difference between Sunnis and Shia.  They probably don't even know the latter word is both singular and plural, and if you asked them to tell you the difference between Baptists and...well, even from among the other Baptists, they'd be stumped.

Mark Steyn, funny as always while making a serious point:

Because the Democrats are in office and what he did is not something they consider corruption?

It's amazing how the Democrats overlook things like this when done by their own.  Tom DeLay was vilified for far less than this, one of his major crimes being the taking of political donations given for one political purpose and transferring them to a similar but slightly different political purpose, without keeping any for himself in the process.  Bad man.

Muslim terrorists have to be laughing their asses off at us.  We simply aren't really, really serious about this war yet.

Right on.

Waiting for the New Year...will I watch it or not?  Will I have a choice of going to sleep?  Tony is in bed, despite the noise, but I'm sitting here listening to lout music and a sing-along group in the next block on karaoke...living on the 2nd floor does have some disadvantages, it seems...and they have TERRIBLE voices, really bad.  Bad enough to make me laugh, actually.  But if I want to go to sleep now that might be a problem...an hour and a half to go.

Also, what to do with the dogs if I go to bed.  Fireworks going off here and there, haphazardly, no time or schedule evident just whenever the urge becomes too much to resist, all the dogs huddled underneath my feet.  Literally.  Hey, I like that, they're the pick of my litter!   No, make that the pack of my litter.

My God but the guy singing now is bad!  He sounds drunk, his friends sound drunk, but they're having a good time and not killing others, that's hard to complain about.   No drunk drivers in our neighborhood tonight.

I just saw my typo, above..."lout music"...I'll keep it.  It was unintentional, but appropriate.

I'm sitting here, mellowing out with my rum.  Carol has mellowed out totally, she'll discover the New Year tomorrow unless I wake her.

When you relax your mind it does some funny things.  I suddenly remembered Rea's and my first New Year's Eve.  We wound up interrupting our party to rush one of her friends--I can almost say her name, it's on the tip of my tongue--to the hospital to have her baby.  Was it the first baby of the new year?  I don't remember that, so maybe not, but I remember watching the new year come in while I saw in my car in the dark parking lot, alone, while Rea was inside with her friend. 

The event might have saved my life, as I had been drinking Gibsons like there was no tomorrow.  I got so sick that I wasn't able to even smell a cocktail onion for dozens of years afterwards.

Those were the New Year's parties, back then, weren't they?  Totally ripped.  I don't miss them, but I remember some of them fondly.

This will be a good year to have behind me, but 2007 doesn't promise to be easy.  Lots of hanging-on problems need to be resolved this year, cleaned up and gotten out of the way.  From tonight's viewpoint I see it as a very challenging year for me to face up to dealing with successfully..  Somewhat oddly, I find that I am not overly dismayed by that prospect.

Must be the rum.

We have an excellent rum down here, made in Nicaragua.  Called Flor de Caña.  It doesn't taste like any rum you have ever tasted before.  I prefer the 5-year-old as the one with the best flavor, even though they produce longer-aged varieties for more money.  I cannot see that it gets any better after the 5th year, so why pay the price?  From 4 to 5, though, there's a big difference.

My beverage of choice used to be E&J brandy, from California.  Hard to find here and when I do find it, it is too expensive.  I find that I am not all that fond of Spanish brandies, the local alternative.  But I'm not all that fond of most rums, either, it turns out.  I am very partial to high-priced Scotch and Irish single malts, but my budget is not.

Midnight is here.  The world around me is exploding.  The neighborhood is going nuts.  Carol is sleeping soundly, as is Tony, the dogs are huddling around me seeking reassurance that all is well.  The house is dark, except for my computer screen, but the sky is flashing lights in all directions.

On the floor I spot a strange and very tiny flashing light.  I can't quite believe what I am seeing.   Am I really that drunk?

No.  It is a lightning bug, come to visit.  Just one.  And in my house, on the floor by my feet, where I would see him.

Right at the stroke of midnight!  And I mean exactly, I was just accessing the official time site on the internet to set my computer clock when I saw the flashing light on the floor out of the corner of my eye.  For a moment I wondered if I was hallucinating, or seeing reflections from the lights in the skies.

Truly amazing.

Even more so because he/she was the only one and he/she has disappeared now.  No more flashing lights, the New Year instant has come and gone and midnight is now memory.  I cannot find the creature again.

Go ahead, try and tell me this is all by accident.

Want more?  Okay, here it is.

On our first trip to Costa Rica Carol and I had some very stressful experiences.  Very. 

At the end of one of the worst of them, a lightning bug landed on our windshield and started flashing at us.

We interpreted that to mean that the worst was over, all was well, keep on going.  And it was.

I still think that was the message being sent to us back then, from out of the somewhere.

And my single, lone flasher tonight, down on the floor beneath my feet, amid the dogs...sending the same message.  He kept on keeping on until I finally saw him and turned on my receiver.  Keep on keeping on, he said. 

There is my New Year's message, folks, if you needed one.

Happy New Year!