I’ve been battling with folks on the left for almost a decade and can look back 25 years when I battled alongside them and reach some sober conclusions.  First, I usually wasn’t sober when I was involved with radical leftist groups.  As no one made me take the drink I can’t dismiss once playing for the other side.  All I can do is now work to make right the wrongs I committed against my God and my country.  The second thing I’ve noticed is the left can’t seem to make logical connections.  Which is why I guess the government schools are constructed in the current tense.  You create more liberals when Johnny can’t read and has only the dole as his only resort.  Last week a writer at The Christian Science Monitor bemoaned the lack of modern critical thinkers.  This infers critical thinking is something you can teach.  It may just be some folks are wired differently and can think on several levels at any given time while others don’t have the talent.  I believe I can make this statement because the left argues wiring is the root of all differences between people we used to consider just making lifestyle choices.  Notice I wrote I believe and not I feel.  The only thing I feel is the sometimes knot in my stomach when I’m asked to cheerlead for a cause that makes me uncomfortable.

A Roman Catholic Bishop I once heard saying a homily claimed the knot was part of God’s wiring and a reminder ethics aren’t situational. 

Over the weekend I had quite a bit of time for reading and came across the words of a columnist at The Washington Post.  Jim Hoagland writes the American people are getting angry.  Very, very angry and the anger he believes may get very, very ugly.  Hoagland, from what I know, has never been a paragon of the political right.  He’s just an observer witnessing what a great many others are seeing.  This morning I received an email from one of my friends serving in Iraq.  He was telling me 50 percent of working Americans are just two paychecks away from disaster.

Yesterday I attended a committee meeting of the Sussex County Community Organized Regiment.  A local man with a house just a few miles from where I live hosted it and he has a family, pets and a very good job.  These aren’t people frothing at the mouth and searching for a revolution.  There were ten people in attendance ranging from 19 years old to retired.  There had been an earlier committee meeting where something called “Victory Garden” was a discussion topic.  It appears these bitter clingers have ten acres of land available for tilling and planting.  Members of the group will grow vegetables and then, say it isn’t so, can them for what could be tougher months later this year and early next.  Any member who works on these plots is entitled to share in the bounty.  The barter economy is back. 

Before the session wrapped up there was light banter about the public reaction to creation of the organization.  Liberal bloggers in Wilmington are railing against the toothless right wing goons inhabiting the forests below the ditch.  You know the story.  The salons of the state’s biggest city can’t conceive of how folks can survive without big government.  Worse yet they can’t understand why you wouldn’t want the nanny state in your lives.  The beautiful crime and drug free streets upstate should be convincing, I guess.  Someone mentioned the follow up posts at the blogs contained liberal fears about the good people of Sussex County.  Some worry they’re at a disadvantage because we can handle guns and they can’t but if the figures are correct most of the “Wards of the State” locked up in prisons originally called New Castle County home.  The wards are often locked away because they committed gun crimes and often against liberals even more fearful of weapons they could use in self-defense against criminals. 

I don’t speak for the members of the Regiment but if things get interesting this summer some hungry lefties may be looking for a bite to eat.  God help them.  He just might if they could come to their senses.

 

Man-made or space aliens?  While some of the very elaborate crop circles that have been found in England and other places have been attributed to humans – not all have. 

Sussex County, Delaware has its own version of crop circles as I discovered one day while playing with the hybrid version of Google maps.  But what is making these?  While some are indeed circles – others are more reminiscent of Pac Man running rampant across our corn or soybean fields. 

As I scrolled around through Eastern Sussex County – I decided to see if these circles were found all over the county – and yes – they are – around Coverdale Crossroads and Seaford just to name a couple. 

I had an idea that the cause of the Sussex County’s crop circles is spray irrigation or wastewater irrigation.  Just to be sure, I asked Mike McGrath – with the Delaware Agricultural Lands Preservation Foundation what might be the cause.  He agreed that it was spray irrigation… ” I’m not sure whether or not they are wastewater spray…”

Next I went to a source closer to home – County Engineer, Mike Izzo who told me…

“You are correct, the circles are the result of irrigated fields, however they may not necessarily be wastewater irrigated. Standard “groundwater only” irrigation systems will likewise produce the circle effect. The specific locations you reference in your e-mail, i.e. Wolfe Neck, near Mountaire in Millsboro are wastewater -related. I’m not sure why the wastewater standout as much, but it may be related to the time of year that the photo was taken. Often, such photo’s are taken in the winter as you can see more with the leaves off the trees. Standard water only systems don’t pump in the winter because there is generally not a crop or it doesn’t need irrigation. But with wastewater, if it’s not freezing, we’re spraying.”

And looking at the area near Lewes, where the Wolfneck Rd Wastewater Treatment facility is – I saw more circles that along with the ones I saw near Mountaire tell me they really are spray irrigation – of one sort or another. 

These ‘circles’ are nothing that you will see from ground level, but I’m sure planes flying overhead as well as the satellite that snapped the Google images, have no trouble seeing the less-adorned Sussex County crop circles.  Mystery solved.

On Wednesday the 60-cent-a-pack tax increase on cigarettes will take effect.. According to the State News, this will raise the total per-pack tax to $1.15.

In 2003, Gov Minner raised the cigarette tax $0.31.. Meaning, in 2003, prior to the initial tax-raise.. smokers were paying only an extra $0.24 per pack… Still a great bit lower than the city of New York’s awesome tax-hike

from the Cato Institue in 2003: Mayor Michael Bloomberg hiked the city’s cigarette excise tax from 8 cents to $1.50 per pack. That hike, coupled with a series of recent increases in the state cigarette tax, has pushed the price of legal brand name cigarettes to more than $7.50 per pack.

It’s a paradox really, though… How can the state and it’s imfamous Quit-Line (pictured left) allow people to quit… but still bring in all of those lucrative nicotine stained tax dollars?

Ah, yes.. raise the tax more and more and more… But, what do we do when those fed up with the tax-hike then quit smoking? Which is one of Minner’s goals, right? To decrease childhood smoking? (Tell that to the family in Lone Star Steak House that I witnessed allowing their 14-year-old so enjoy that sweet Carolina smoke even more than he enjoyed that Awesome Blossom).

Wow, that does look awesome… I want to share with you an e-mail I received today on the smoking tax coming direct from my inbox to your eyes… enjoy:

Having been out of town, I return to be greeted by the States’ latest visit to the Cigarette ATM machine. Cigarette smokers already pay more taxes than other Delaware (indeed, US) citizen.  Democrats in Congress are moving to add .61 cents to a pack of cigarettes.  I don’t believe that there is conclusive evidence of the health drawbacks.  Cigarettes are being taxed again and again because having demonized cigarette smokers, it is a popular tax. Those who don’t foresee that the next ATM tax will be on THEIR particular vice (pleasure), have their heads stuck in sand.  Politicians would happily tax alcohol and beer, however the number of those who like to drink constitutes far too many voters to irritate.  Especially in an election year.  From the information available, politicians view cigarette taxes as their own slush fund.  They should think about killing the golden goose however.  I read recently that the number of cigarette smokers have declined. The article stated - “new smokers wanted”. Recently thieves stole several thousand dollars worth of cigarettes in Magnolia, Delaware. This type of theft will probably greatly increase as it did when the first cigarette taxes arrived. It’s time (past time, really)  to let up on taxing cigarettes and to work at better managing government and state finances.