Why I haven't missed apartment living

Two things about living in an apartment have recently started to bug me:  Parking spaces and the fitness room.

First, the fitness room:  It's a minor annoyance to me when I go to work out, but I've just become accustomed to holding my finger on the VOLUME down button until the decibel levels have dropped from something I could hear at my house back in Minnesota to what is a decent volume for a human being who hasn't subjected himself or herself to a lifetime of rock concerts, demolition, or working at the airport.  I've come to the conclusion that people don't understand that modern TVs come with support for closed-captioning so that you can simply read the dialogue rather than turn the volume up so you can hear it over a treadmill.

But I shouldn't be surprised. Other people at this apartment complex have some sort of learning disability.  For instance, there is the nimrod who is occupying 1-1/4 spaces in front of my building.  Apparently, it snowed here over the weekend while I was enjoying the benefits of my house's garage.  Apparently, the nimrod doesn't realize that three parking spaces could become the actual four that exist in front of the building if he would park a little closer to the snow bank.  I'm not saying he has to put his car right up next to it, but a little closer would be great.  Or he could let me park there, as I have no compunction about putting my vehicle right up against the snowbank.  Know why?  Because I back into the space.

UPDATE:  Someone else has taken the space.  And they backed in.  But they too are morons, as they left about a frickin' quarter mile on the passenger side of their car.  So now they are taking up even more of the adjacent parking space.  Not to disparage the town that's given me employment, but do Iowans learn to drive and park tractors and then assume everything else is the same size???

Seemingly just another day for other people...

It was a year ago today, around 1:30 in the morning, when my girlfriend yelled to me from downstairs.  I'll never forget those words:  "Something's wrong with Cosmo!"

I have never run so fast in my life, nor skipped quite so many steps going down the stairs.  It didn't matter how fast I could have run:  It was too late to save him.

Cosmo was quite young when he died, only about two and a half years old.  He'd never had any problems with his health.  He once chewed up a plastic food dish, and it never bothered him.

Despite the cost, I had a necropsy done on Cosmo. I just had to know what had befallen him.  He was always in the best of health.  Bailey, by comparison, caused my girlfriend and me a few sleepless nights at the emergency vet in the first years we had her.  After shedding some unhealthy weight and bonding with Morgan, she's back to an ideal weight and she's learned to pace herself with food.  She has chosen a sedentary lifestyle.  She'll never be an agility star like Cosmo, but she'll always be a cuddler.

But the necropsy demonstrated how little is known of rabbit physiology.  As far as animals go, their bodies are built for breeding more than for individual resilience to disease and injury.  If there is a Heaven, and should I ignore the advice of many whom have suggested my final destination be a little bit warmer, I figure I'll find out what happened to 'mo someday.  Until then, I can only wonder.  And miss my agility star.

As this day draws to a close for me, I reflect on a sad year for Rabbit Agility.  Cosmo, Goldy, Chester, Josephina.  All gone.  And last night, I heard Daisy, one of my former students, has crossed the Rainbow Bridge.  So sad.  And yet, I smile as I think about Dell, the woman who started it all, teaching these former students in the Great Beyond.  No doubt about, Rabbit Agility is probably a big hit in Heaven.

So as I drove home from work this afternoon, I listened to a local liberal-- excuse me, "progressive" talk radio host as he berated a caller.  I wasn't privy to the start of the conversation, but it devolved within seconds of my tuning in.  Both sides engaged in framing the other in the lowest of terms.  The show's host characterized the caller as being okay with torture, and the caller characterized the host as unwilling to do what must be done to keep the country safe.

It's spurred me to lay out my thoughts on the subject.

Torture is a subjective term, loaded with connotation and emotion.  But is it torture?  "Torture" is often gratuitous, with little interest in information.  And we're endlessly reminded of how "torture never produces reliable intel."  Well, yeah.  Duh!  But what we're talking about, I would postulate, is not torture, but what the Bush administration characterized as "enhanced interrogation techniques."  It's not done for sadistic purposes.  It's done to achieve our national security goals.  Now, as far as these techniques not producing reliable information, do these liberals think that we set foreign policy based on single data points?  No, corroboration is the cornerstone of intelligence work.  Do liberals think the portrayals of intelligence work by Hollywood is how it really works?

Moral discussions aside, I think it's time to set the record straight on the legal issues.  Many on the left want their pound of flesh.  They want to see Bush and Cheney frog-marched before the cameras.  They accuse them of war crimes.  So is what transpired at Gitmo such an egregious violation of the law?

First, consider that these enemy combatants were captured on a foreign battlefield trying to kill American soldiers and civilian contractors.  The knee-jerk reaction on the left is to treat them as POWs.  After all, it's war.  Not so fast.  The treatment of prisoners of war is something covered by the Geneva Conventions.  But lefties like to quote selectively from that list of rules.  As a non-uniformed combatant, your average scumbag Taliban fighter or Al-Qaeda terrorist has zero protection under the most-hallowed of war rules documents.  In truth, the Geneva Convention sought to protect civilian populations and uniformed soldiers from reprisals for actions of non-uniformed combatants.  Consider the following examples:

• A member of the French Resistance during World War II bombs a Parisian eatery frequented by German soldiers.  The bomber is apprehended and summarily executed without trial.
• A team of uniformed American infantry are trapped behind enemy lines and commit acts of sabotage to slow the enemy's advance.  They are captured and summarily executed without trial.
• An air force pilot is shot down after bombing enemy cities.  He is detained in a POW camp, given three hots and a cot, and is treated with dignity and respect.  He manages to escape twice from the camp, but is re-captured and sent back to the camp.

Only the second bullet demonstrates a war crime.  Once the infantry were captured, they were entitled to Geneva Convention protections, provided the army which captured them was a signatory to the Convention.  What distinguishes the American personnel from the French Resistance member?  The American personnel were uniformed.  They were clearly identifiable as members of an opposing army.