Lovely Rainy Day

With the determined kind of air about it that lets you know that this is only the first of a predicted three days of Heavy Rain.  The birds are loving it (you can tell by their Rain Songs) and I am feeling oh so cozy, deeply secure, like any native of the Pacific Northwest feels when it rains. Catching up on my reading: the Transcendentalists, by one Barbara L. Packer, is the best book I've ever read on the subject, bar none, both in grandly comprehensive understanding of its subject, and in the tart, dry, savorous perfection of its prose--all the better because I had thought that this kind of excellence, on this subject,  was unattainable by any woman (Pace Elizabeth Peabody, Margaret Fuller, Helen Waddell).

There are items of interest in the news, not all of them reported in the same place, though obviously they are connected.  I'll make a couple of connected paragraphs of them:

1.  The top four generals of Ecuador's despised-and-feared Military have resigned, along with the Defense Minister, following public criticism by Ecuador's President, Rafael Correa, of the military's subservience to the CIA, particularly during the recent murderous incursion into Ecuadoran territory by Colombian Para-Military Forces, led and participated in by the CIA. It has been established that one of those killed during the raid was an Ecuadoran citizen.  Correa's popularity among the people of Ecuador has "spiked" to an unprecedented level.

2.  "ABC has two stories on President Bush's polar [I think what is meant is bi-polar] behavior over the last two days.  On Tuesday, the President had tears streaming down his face during a ceremony for a Navy Seal who had given his life in Iraq....Today, for the third time in recent months he publicly reflected on his drinking problem*...."  In a not unrelated statement on Chris Matthew's Morning Show, The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan said: The latest revelations on the torture front show the memo from John Yoo...means that Don Rumsfeld, David Addington and John Yoo should not leave the United States any time soon.  They will be, at some point, indicted for war crimes."  "Really!" said Matthews, and went to a commercial.