Paint, house work, and torture

I meant to go over to the house today to paint my railings before I put on the second coat of Floor & Porch paint (Behr, in the color Pooh's Thoughtful Spot). I was going to paint the railings with Satin Black Rustoleum after first scraping off the loose rust. Yessir, that was the plan. If only I hadn't forgotten to buy one little item during last night's after-work shopping trip:

The paint.

Well, this didn't deter me much. I did have a trusty can of Rustoleum Rusty Metal Primer, which I could use to cover up the rusty spots for now. It would look like hell - I think it's a fun Rust color - but it would keep my newly-painted porch from developing rust stains (also a fun Rust color) every time it rains.

I meant to get out of the house by 9:00 this morning. I barely got out of bed by 9:00. I didn't start making breakfast (Apple Fritters) until about 10:30, didn't get in the shower until nearly noon, and wasn't ready to get out of the house until after 12:30. Which is when it started to rain.

It wasn't supposed to rain today. At least, none of yesterday's forecasts predicted it. Tomorrow, sure. But today was supposed to be cloudy, cool, and dry.

Screw it, I thought. There's plenty of stuff to do inside. I had two lamps to assemble, plus a chrome storage rack that I bought about three years ago. I also had to replace the batteries in all of the window candles that help give the appearance that the house is lived in. I had some new homemade magnetic poetry to install on the refrigerator, based on the opening paragraphs of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. If I had time, I would assemble the microwave cart that I bought yesterday, too.

I got all that stuff done, except for the microwave cart. I only had about four hours to work after I finally got my butt in gear, because by 5:00 I had to start getting ready for my cousin's daughter's birthday party.

Anyway.

I've been thinking about some stuff I read yesterday. The Senate reached a compromise with the Bush Administration that will make some (but not all) of our torture practices officially disallowed, while officially sanctioning broad swaths of things that the Administration was doing anyway. On the one side, some are lamenting the loss of a principle apparently held dear by our Founding Fathers, a critical element of our Constitutional Democracy - namely, the inalienable and God-given right to waterboard anyone we damn well please. On the other side, folks are seeing this as the end of America as any sort of shining beacon of hope in the world as we have officially chosen to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Spanish Inquisition and the Khmer Rouge on the subject of human rights.

The way I see it, this is simply a natural consequence of the theft of the 2000 Presidential election. Once that happened - whether it was allowed to happen by a bored and listless electorate, or whether it was an engineered inevitability that could not have been averted by normal means - everything that came after was merely another consequence, another pin knocked down, another opprotunity seized and exploited. The disaster was six years ago; this is the aftermath.

Can we survive the next two years with our national soul intact? Will things ever change? Will anyone ever be held accountable?

I guess the answer to the first question is, "We'll see." The answers to the next two are, "Well, that's up to you, isn't it?"

Sadly, the answer to that last question is, "Maybe not." Maybe it is too late, after all.