It's Friday! Time to take aim at the weekend! Also means it's time for another one of those #fridayfreewrite posts! I've been a bit distracted for the past couple weeks by a card/computer game but I'm back at it again.
I started doing the freewrite as a way to deal with writer's block and make posting a bit more fun but I invite y'all to join in. It's not exactly caught on but since 
Too much news is probably not a good thing but I can't help myself sometimes. I saw this morning that Kandahar and Herat had fallen to the Taliban in Afghanistan and that they now control half of the provincial capitals in the country. According to a leaked US intel assessment Kabul could be isolated in 30 days and fall in as little as 90.
The media is already making references to the fall of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) in 1975, seems history is repeating itself again. You gotta love it when the talking heads rediscover history and start making superficial comparisons to past events... There is one historical parallel I'd love to hear'em talking about but somehow I suspect that is unlikely. Starting with the post-WWII attempt by the French to reclaim their colonial empire, the US spent decades pouring money, men, and material into Vietnam to prop up a series of corrupt and incompetent regimes, all in the name freedom. Starting to sound familiar yet?
With the spectacular optics of capitals falling and all the talk of battles and fighting it's easy to overlook the human aspect of all that's going on. Can you imagine living in a country that's been at war for 40+ years? Since the Soviets invaded in 1979, Afghans have had warfare as a constant companion (even when the Taliban was in control before the Northern Alliance was still battling them). To add insult to injury, the Iranians were dragooning Afghan refugees into militias and sending them off to fight in Syria to prop up Assad.
On a much more local note, our esteemed Kentucky senator Rand Paul seems to have been doing a bit of insider trading. I'm hoping 'the dog ate it' works as well with disclosures as it did my homework. I can't decide if ol' Rand is an embarrassment or a hilarious joke. So most professional occupations have some sort of process for accreditation, making sure you have some notion of what you're doing. Rand is an ophthalmologist and decided to created his own board, fill it entirely with family members and then have it certify him with an open book take home test that he'd helped write. I'd always thought that if you wanted to make easy money you had to start a megachurch but Rand may be on to something here.
The early bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese! Does that mean you should do as you please? I've rambled on enough for one day, y'all have a good weekend and remember: Admit nothing, deny everything and make counteraccusations!
