How can a man soar with the eagles, when he's shackled to his desk? What mountains are set before me? What challenges? What triumphs? What risk? This life of comfort and safety, begone! Your comfort is the comfort of the tomb! Your safety is a safety devoid of spirit. This fine wine tastes like ashes; give me blood instead. It is better that I choke on my own blood, than drink my fill of your poison. Your soft pillows would smother me. Give me instead the hard stone to rest my head.

 

You too must learn to fly, or else be taught to fall faster.

Today I heard from a friend of mine who lives near Grand Forks AFB, home of the 319th Refueling Wing.

 

Apparently, some time during the last week, a number of KC-135 Stratotankers were deployed out of Grand Forks to parts unknown. For those of you who don't know, the KC-135 is the Air Force's primary mid-air refueling vehicle. You don't deploy a KC-135 unless you need to do some mid-air refueling, and you don't deploy a SQUADRON of them unless you are planning an airstrike in the very near future.

 

I've always said that the final warning that an airstrike on Iran was imminent would be the deployment of Stratotankers, and here they are. They should be in-place just in time to welcome the Eisenhower Strike Group to the middle east. (The Eisenhower was rushed through the last month of refurbishment and set sail for the Gulf of Arabia on Oct 3. They will arive in-theatre on or around Oct. 24.) So, let's do the math:

 

Eisenhower Strike Group, complete with minesweepers enroute

Enterprise Strike Group in-theatre

Kittyhawk Strike Group on standby in the Indian Ocean

Expeditionary Strike Group 5 on standby in the Indian Ocean

At least a squadron of KC-135's deployed to (probably) Diego Garcia

 

I sure hope I'm wrong, but it looks as if the party is about to start.

This story comes to us from our friends at morons.org:

 

It's a story familiar to us all. Child assigned a book to read. Child takes book home. Parent finds out about objectionable content in book. Parent seeks to have book banned.

This story is little different. Diana Verm, a student at Caney Creek High School in Houston, Texas was assigned a book to read. She was bothered by some of the language in it, so she brought her concerns to her father, Alton. Her father concurred (though he never read the book), and so last week he filed a "Request for Reconsideration of Instructional Materials" with the school district to have the book removed from the curriculum.

Turns out the Verms should have read the book first, and maybe paid attention to the date. You see, last week was Banned Books Week, a week in which the ALA celebrates the first amendment and cautions against the dangers of banning books. As though that weren't amusing enough, this particular book: Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

Fahrenheit 451 is a classic novel. You probably read it yourself in school; I know I did. In it, Bradbury paints a dystopian future, one in which the job of a fireman is not to put out fires, but rather to set them in order to burn books, as all books have been banned.

That's right. Alton Verm chose Banned Books Week to seek the banning of a book, the major theme of which is the problems to be faced by a society when access to literature and similarly recorded knowledge is restricted or entirely curtailed.

I imagine he might have some egg on his face right about now.

Oh, incidentally, the school has a policy allowing students to read a different book with similar themes if they find the content objectionable, an opportunity our Diana took full advantage of. Seems it's not enough for her father that she doesn't have to be exposed to the horrors of taking the Lord's name in vain, though. He has to try and rob this great story from everyone else as well.

-David Kleppinger