A few weeks ago, I opined that I wanted to know how much of my gasoline purchase was going to the gas station and the petroleum company, and how much was going to Uncle Sugar.

Looks like the state of Tennessee was way ahead of me:

According to the attendant at the gas station, it’s a statewide requirement.  While I still had to do the math to figure out how much I gave to the state and federal governments while filling up the truck, it’s better than anywhere else I’ve been.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has decreed that his government will no longer allow NATO forces to bomb Afghan homes that are being used by Taliban or Al Qaeda insurgents.  Everyone wants to eliminate or at least minimize civilian casualties. However, the enemy we fight in Afghanistan mixes with the civilian population specifically because we may pull a punch when there’s the chance of harming non-combatants.  By putting such places off limits, President Karzai provides the Taliban with a safe haven to retreat to in a fight and lay low while they plan their next operation. Effectively, he’s made all of the cities and a large part of the country into no-go zones for NATO troops, since unless they can call down the hammer of the gods, they’re unlikely to engage the enemy in any concentration.

Since President Karzai has decided that he’s capable of telling us where and how we can fight in defense of his regime, I say we let him stand his own army on the firing line for a change.  I mean, it’s only been a decade since we started trying to make a cohesive Afghan national army so we could go home.  It’s not like we didn’t create the circumstances that allowed him to become president in the first place, or that we haven’t spent billions of dollars and the lives of over 1500 American soldiers to prevent his execution at the hands of his countrymen.

Listen up, sparky:  About 15 minutes after the last C-141 takes off out of Bagram, you, your family, and everyone associated with you is going to be put against a wall, beheaded, hung, or set on fire.  The only thing that’s keeping your heart beating is the fact that Americans are more willing to put steel on target than your own soldiers are. How about instead of kvetching about the methods, no matter how sloppy we use, to try to root out the Taliban, you get off your well dressed backside and get your bloody army into the field and trained to actually do more than march in a straight line on a parade field?  Keep dictating to us the methods by which we keep your bloody heart beating, and you just might wake up and find yourself with a country devoid of American guns and soldiers. 

A mother’s gift to her country’s cause is a story yet untold

She had three sons, three only sons, each worth his weight in gold

She gave them up for the sake of war, while her heart was filled with pain

As each went away, she was heard to say, he will never return again

CHORUS

One lies down near Appomattax, many miles away

Another sleeps at Chickamauga, and they both wore suits of gray

‘Mid the strains of “Down to Dixie”, the third was laid away

In a trench at Santiago, the Blue and the Gray

She’s alone tonight, while the stars shine bright, with a heart full of despair

On the last great day, I can hear her say, my three boys will be there

Perhaps they’ll wait, at the heav’nly gates, on guard beside their guns

Then the mother true, to the gray and blue, may enter with her sons

—The Blue and The Gray, by Paul Dresser

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. — Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address

In Flanders fields the poppies blow       Between the crosses, row on row,    That mark our place; and in the sky    The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.

— In Flander’s Fields, by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

This is one of the millions of cicadas that have been our companions this weekend. When the shooting stops, it sounds like someone’s running a giant weed whacker.

A study in the UK confirms what a lot of parents have known for years:  Taking your kids to the zoo is more effective at teaching them about the environment and conservation than having them sit in a classroom and learn the same material.

Guys, if you have to have a study to figure this kind of thing out, hang it up.  It should surprise no-one that kids respond better to hands-on, entertaining experiences with a dash of education thrown in than they do to textbooks and overhead slides.  Anyone who’s ever taken a 6 year old to see the gorillas and read the placards about how fragile their natural habitat is and how few of the animals there are in the wild knows how interested the little tykes are about their hairy cousins after that.  Heck, our kids could recite obscure facts about the flamingo, the emu, and the polar bear before they could say their ABC’s.

Kids learn best through play.  That’s why I always make it fun when I take Girlie Bear to the range, or work on ABC’s and 1 2 3’s with Boo by playing with blocks or coloring books.  Heck, I even knew this when I taught in the military.  I always spent the minimum necessary time going through the dry lecture material so that we could get to simulations where students learned and then applied the knowledge that they had heard in lectures.

Someday I’m going to ditch the day job and just start writing applications for grants so I can study the phenomenon of meat becoming inedible if left out in the sun, or that if left to its own devices, the chlorophyllic organisms in the American lawn will gain in height.

A company in Los Angeles is reporting that a truckload of crab that was supposed to be delivered to Seattle has disappeared.  The paperwork the trucker used to pick up the load was forged, so authorities are working on the assumption that this is the work of organized crime.

The two things that went through my mind while reading this was:

“Hey buddy, wanna buy some of this crab that I got in the live well of my Volare?”

and

I wonder if the trucker will sleep with the shellfishes if he cooperates with the police?

Representative Barney Franks, Democrat of the Volksrepublik of Massachusetts, has denied using his position and power to get a job at Fannie Mae for his significant other in the 1990’s.  All he did was “casually recommend” him for the job.  You know, like Don Corleone casually recommended that his godson be put in as the lead in a film.

I can see it now:  “Hey, nice mortgage company you’ve got here.  Be a shame if something were to happen to it.  Oh and by the way, my boyfriend needs a job.  You guys got anything for him?”

I’m sure that everything was on the up and up here.  I can’t imagine the recommendation of a Congresman to a company he helps to oversee and regulate would have tipped the scales one way or another.  I mean, come on.  Don’t all of us get our jobs because our spouse or significant other put in the good word for us?

Apparently the quasi-governmental company was more than happy to hire the young man, and it’s only a coincidence that he left his position with them soon after breaking up with the good Congressman.

Congressman Franks needs to remember that we’re not as stupid as he seems to think we are.

Non Sequitur shoots and scores!