$894 later, i have my car back. WHEEEE! complete with a shiny new inspection sticker (which cost me 2 new tires, new front brakes, new disc rotors, and some wiring repair) and a new fuel pump (which is what finally got the car running again). so what was that? 4-ish months, total. oy.

in other news, consider the following as you try to decide whether going to war in iraq was worth it. whether catching saddam, which seems to be one of the administration's best pieces of evidence that we did the right thing, was worth all the flag-draped coffins coming home from the middle east.

mithras, as fables of the reconstruction quotes jesse from pandagon:

I look at something like that Saudi deal, and I can't help but feel that we're being charitable. We've been saying Bush lied about the war (and he did) - but it turns out he lied about the war, compromised national security, and struck a deal with a terrorist-supporting state, a real one, for cheap oil prices near election time. The darkly insinuated (and stated) reason for offense at Kerry's "foreign leaders" remark was that Kerry was going to somehow sell out our national security for their support, that he'd promised them things if they'd just do things to support his presidential run.

Bush has done exactly that.

...I feel as if we're almost running behind the true political depravity. We find out Bush lied, and we say it, and by the time that the full-throated denunciations of anyone who dares advance that rather obvious truth begin, we find out something worse. The leadership in the occupation of Iraq was completely incompetent. Bush focused more on brush-clearing than terrorism before 9/11. And now, this.

We don't have to peer in the dusty corners for dark secrets these days. Every time we turn around, there's something new, bright and shiny and just plain wrong in our face. I'm a liberal because I support what government can do and what America can become. I'm also a liberal because I despise what the people in charge of our government are doing with the tools we gave them, and what they're making America into.

We need a change in the White House not because of partisan distinctions, but because government is ultimately supposed to be responsible to us...and Bush is responsible only to himself.

mithras's well-put follow-up:

I think there are two kinds of people who still support Bush. The hard-core cynics who put their own interests above those of the nation first, last and always. And those who, for whatever reason, simply can't accept, despite all the evidence, that the President of the United States is part of the first group.