dream report

Trapped on an island where only diplomats live. Transportation failing--my bus and an ambassador's plane stopped dead on the highway. No one can get any reliable information.

morning drive

When I got into the car, my local news radio station was airing the CNN Headline News feed about Colin Powell's impending address to foreign ministers, making a case for war against Iraq.

Then they cut that off to air a live feed from the Johnson Space Center. For four minutes I listened to prayers in English and Hebrew.

When the choir started to sing, they cut that off to bring us traffic and weather. There's a dead animal on 237 near the 85 exit.

paranoid style

Michelle Goldberg's Salon article about the Conservative Political Action Conference is good reading, at least if you're in the choir and you don't mind a little preaching.

To attend CPAC is to crash through the looking glass into a world where passionate worship of the president is part of a brave rebellion against government, where Sweden is a hellish dystopia and Tom Daschle a die-hard Marxist. It's to realize that, despite the conservative hold on the White House, the Congress and the Supreme Court and the utter dejection among Democrats, right-wingers still fancy themselves an embattled minority facing an army of wily, ruthless leftists, who they hate with the righteous fury of the downtrodden.

My favorite line, not particularly relevant to the article's thesis, is about the aforementioned dystopia:

"Sure, some people there might be happy," he allowed, "but how do you define happiness?"