Meet the Neighbors!

So, I have this dog.

He's cute and all, but as is the case with all dogs, he requires a certain amount of care - care in this case equating to endless walks around the neighborhood, as a little known fact about his breed is that if they don't get a specific minimum amount of exercise every day, they explode.

Now, I've always had a passing familiarity with the areas around my home, but you aren't really familiar with an area until you've passed over it twice a day for 6 months, with an animal whose only goal in life is to minutely inspect every leaf and blade of grass along the way.

In general, my neighbors are a genteel, affable bunch, except for the time somebody stole our "Friends of Magnuson Park" sign out of our yard, and simultaneously called the city to cite us for our overgrown hedge...not that I'm bitter... But there's this one house.

Actually, it's this one SUV, really. I noticed it during last year's elections, when the owner applied a sticker stating "10 out of 10 terrorists agree: Anybody But Bush". OK, fine - if you want to buy into the whole "we're fightin' terrorism in Iraq!" bullshit, that's your prerogative. It's not like 8 consecutive years of Dubya hasn't already convinced me that 51% of the residents of our proud nation are gullible idiots, so finding one in my own backyard shouldn't surprise me.

But now, they've added an "I (heart) Gitmo - Lock the Terrorists Up!" sticker. Guantanamo Bay. You know, the place where we locked up the Afghans without trial (you see, we didn't declare war in Afghanistan, so we don't have to extend the protection of the Geneva Convention to the combatants or anyone else we pick up there - actually, they don't have any rights at all, so we get to lock them up until...well...we decide not to). But, of course, our government wouldn't actually lock up innocent people for years, right, nor would they abuse helpless prisoners?

Gah. Politics aside, there are some things that civilized people should be opposed to (or at least embarassed about), no matter which side of the political spectrum you are on. We're supposed to be the good guys, remember? Even if other countries refuse to play by the rules, that's not how we do things here. Is it?

Anyhow, I pass by this SUV every day. Every. Day. It's driving me nuts. And I still have some leftover "Republicans for Voldemort" stickers that look like they'd be really hard to take off...