Medary.com

If you go to Citgo gas stations, maybe you should think again.  You're supporting totalitarian Hugo Chavez, as Citgo is owned by the Venezuelan state oil company, and is stopping distribution of gasoline in a large swath of the U.S.

Citgo, which is wholly owned by Venezuela’s state oil company, currently has to purchase 130,000 barrels a day from third parties in order to meet its service contracts at 13,100 stations across the U.S.

This is less profitable than selling gasoline directly from its refineries.
Instead, the Houston-based company has decided to sell to retailers only the 750,000 barrels a day that it produces at three U.S. refineries in Lake Charles, La., Corpus Christi, Texas and Lemont, Ill., according to a statement late Tuesday.

That will mean that over the next year Citgo will cease distributing gasoline in 10 states and stop supplying some stations in four additional states, Citgo spokesman Fernando Garay said today.
. . .
The states where Citgo will stop selling gasoline are: South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma. A limited number of stations in Illinois, Texas, Arkansas and Iowa will also be affected.

Go to Shell, go to BP, go to Quik Trip, go anywhere but Citgo for your gas.

Apropos of nothing, how about a franchise named

The Buffalo Wings?

They played in Roller Sports International--a roller hockey league, from 1997 to 1999.

Apparently it was a good name but a not so good franchise.

Going with this particular stream of consciousness--Snookums wants to go to a Roller Derby match . . . do they still play that thing?  

Now, we see the Lebanon-based Hezbollah kidnapping Israeli soldiers.  Israel calls it an "act of war."

Israel does not have the luxury of patience with their homicidal neighbors.  They're calling up the reserves for action against Lebanon.

This Is Not Good.

Bombs in Mumbai.

The deficit is smaller.  Bush not blamed.

From a brief perusal of my RSS feed's headlines, it looks like it's one of those days when nothing is especially interesting:

The Chinese say they're going to try to talk some sense into the North Koreans;
Iran, blah blah blah;
Duct tape in space, blah blah blah;
Stupid soccer player, blah blah blah.

In other words, the world is still going to hell in a handbasket, just like always.

It's just as well.  I've got a lot of stuff to do around the Palatial Abode.  I'll start just as soon as I have another cup of coffee.  Or three.  Maybe a couple of eggs for breakfast, too.

Ralph Peters, writing in the New York Post, gets down to business:

Violent Islamist extremists must be killed on the battlefield. Only in the rarest cases should they be taken prisoner. Few have serious intelligence value. And, once captured, there's no way to dispose of them.

Killing terrorists during a conflict isn't barbaric or immoral - or even illegal. We've imposed rules upon ourselves that have no historical or judicial precedent. We haven't been stymied by others, but by ourselves.

The oft-cited, seldom-read Geneva and Hague Conventions define legal combatants as those who visibly identify themselves by wearing uniforms or distinguishing insignia (the latter provision covers honorable partisans - but no badges or armbands, no protection). Those who wear civilian clothes to ambush soldiers or collect intelligence are assassins and spies - beyond the pale of law.

Traditionally, those who masquerade as civilians in order to kill legal combatants have been executed promptly, without trial. Severity, not sloppy leftist pandering, kept warfare within some decent bounds at least part of the time. But we have reached a point at which the rules apply only to us, while our enemies are permitted unrestricted freedom.

The present situation encourages our enemies to behave wantonly, while crippling our attempts to deal with terror.
. . .

Our policy toward terrorists and insurgents in civilian clothing should be straightforward and public: Surrender before firing a shot or taking hostile action toward our troops, and we'll regard you as a legal prisoner. But once you've pulled a trigger, thrown a grenade or detonated a bomb, you will be killed. On the battlefield and on the spot.

Isn't that common sense? It also happens to conform to the traditional conduct of war between civilized nations. Ignorant of history, we've talked ourselves into folly.

And by the way: How have the terrorists treated the uniformed American soldiers they've captured? According to the Geneva Convention?

Fighting a war without donning a uniform is the act of a barbarian.  Some scoff at the concept of a "civilized war" thinking that all war is barbarism.  Sadly, every so often we must re-learn why the Geneva Convention was a good idea in the first place

Hat tip:  Power Line

via Fark, and highly informative, ReligionFacts.com has a handy pull-out chart (OK, it's on line, so the pulling out is a bit dicey) to keep track of today's and tomorrow's sectarian strife.  Follow the link and enjoy!  The introduction to the chart:

Please read this first: The ReligionFacts Big Religion Chart is an attempt to summarize all the complexities of religions and belief systems into tiny little boxes on a single, quick-reference comparison chart. As we always warn with our comparison charts, this is no substitute for reading about religions in greater detail. But this religon comparison chart can (hopefully) be a useful and accessible way to "get the gist" of some unfamiliar groups and compare basic beliefs and practices of the world's religions.

We have been very inclusive with what is regarded as a "religion" for purposes of this comparison chart. The grounds for a group's inclusion in this index is generally that it provides a set of teachings and/or rituals that deal with the traditionally "religious" issues of ultimate reality, the meaning of life, and/or how to find fulfillment, spiritual health or salvation. All the groups listed below can be found in dictionaries of religion.

Inclusion of a group on this list does not mean that the group is a "religion" per se (note that Atheism is the first group listed!) or a "true religion" or that "[one listed group] is just as much a religion as [another listed group]." Similarly, if a group does not appear on this chart it doesn't mean it's not a religion. Listing of groups separately does not mean they are mutually exclusive, nor does grouping them together mean that they are the same thing. This is not an authoritative list of religions, simply a resource on some worldviews and ways of life that hopefully some will find useful. The chart is not comprehensive and it will probably always be under construction.

Related to yesterday's Medary.com article How it's supposed to work, there's this American Thinker article titled Hoekstra notes the CIA war on Bush, quoting House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra:

I understand that Mr. Kappes is a capable, well-qualified, and well-liked former Directorate of Operations (DO) case officer.  I am heartened by the professional qualities he would bring to the job, but concerned by what could be the political problems that he could bring back to the agency.  There has been much public and private speculation about the politicization of the Agency.  I am convinced that this politicization was underway well before Porter Goss became the Director.  In fact, I have long been convinced that a strong and well-positioned group within the Agency intentionally undermined the Administration and its policies.  This argument is supported by the Ambassador Wilson/Valerie Plame events, as well as by the string of unauthorized disclosures from an organization that prides itself with being able to keep secrets.  I have come to the belief that, despite his service to the DO, Mr. Kappes may have been a part of this group.  I must take note when my Democratic colleagues -- those who so vehemently denounced and now publicly attacked the strong choice of Porter Goss as Director -- now publicly support Mr. Kappes’s return.

This is NOT how it's supposed to work.

Here they come again . . .

Advocates who say black Americans should be compensated for slavery and its Jim Crow aftermath are quietly chalking up victories and gaining momentum.

Fueled by the work of scholars and lawyers, their campaign has morphed in recent years from a fringe-group rallying cry into a sophisticated, mainstream movement. A pair of churches apologized recently for their part in the slave trade, and one is studying ways to repay black church members.

It is difficult to think of an effort which is more corrosive to public harmony than to hold people living today responsible for acts which occurred over 150 years ago.  That's why the Old Testament stated:

"The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself."

Sadly, all too many people fail to see the wisdom in this simple statement.

When Snookums and I were at my sister's place in rural South Dakota, our main worries were eating too much and setting off the tinder-dry grass with the fireworks.  We returned to Kansas City and turned on the news, and were assaulted by a lengthy series of stories featuring rape, murder, car crashes, and (yes) fireworks-related death and mayhem.

This may partially explain why I'm not particularly moved by the continuing drip of stories alleging rape and murder by U.S. forces in Iraq.  I don't doubt that some of that goes on.  You put 150,000 people anywhere, and a small fraction will be bad people who look for opportunities to do bad things.  But bad things happen everywhere, on a regular basis.

Throw in a tribally-based culture where blood money is expected and (let's be honest) lying is considered acceptable behavior in certain circumstances, and, in retrospect, this seeming parade of miscreants in military uniform should have been expected.  I also have a strong suspicion that some of these accusations are a coordinated propoganda campaign.  The many inconsistencies of the Haditha case, for instance, not only cast doubt on the accusations but point back towards an organized conspiracy among the accusers.

The response of good people is the same.  Find the truth, punish the guilty (whoever they may be), console the victims (whoever they may be).  As far as I can tell, that's exactly what the U.S. military is doing.