The truth hurts. And it is the truth.

BZ

P.S.
Thanks to Tim Frazier for the original video posting!

My father passed away three years ago, today, at the age of 88. Wednesday, February 11th of 2009.

That first night of the 11th, I had a dream. I awakened with it in my head. Carole King was singing “So Far Away.” I remember that most distinctly.

Dad cut a regal jib as an student aviator.

He learned how to fly for the US Army Air Corps, the precursor to the US Air Force. Here he is at flight school, in front of a huge radial-engined Harvard.

Here, my father is an AAF Captain at Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico, which opened in 1941 as a flight school. He was a flight instructor with his friend, Joel Kuykendahl.

He married my mother, Betty, on April 24th of 1942.

My father, Richard, was proud of having served in the United States Air Force during World War II and Vietnam.

Our family lived in this house for almost 60 years. My father said his first payments were $42 a month and, with a new family, he had no idea how he was going to make it on his salary.

Those days, the father worked and the mother stayed home and took charge of the children and the household. Our back yard was manicured to the Nth degree, even in the final years of my mother’s life. She passed away on May 14th of 2002, having just celebrated her 80th birthday. She also lived to see her 60th anniversary.

I was very surprised. Dad lived another seven years past Mom; I wasn’t sure that would occur. But Dad was, as were many men of his generation, The Greatest Generation, tough as nails. He’d survived and pulled through five major open-thoracic operations for cancer and tumors. In his 80s.

My father’s funeral featured an official contingent from the Travis AFB Elite Honor Guard.

I’ve rewritten this post twice. The first went into much, much more detail. Now, I’ve kept it much shorter and concise.

I miss you Dad, very much. I think of you frequently. I’ll never stop loving you as my father, my hero.

BZ

Here, my 4th Fornicalia District representative, Tom McClintock, questions the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas Elmendorf in a House Budget Committee hearing which occurred last week:

Pressed with questions, the overall economic outlook under Mr Obama according to the CBO Director doesn’t appear to be quite so rosy, now, as compared to inauguration day.

Rep. McClintock also skewers — and rightly so — GW Bush for his profligate spending in terms of a contrast and comparison.

“This recovery has been very unusually weak by US historical experience,” Mr Elmendorf admits.

Make no mistake: history and experience tends to illustrate that one should not come unarmed to an open session with Mr McClintock. Whereas some people quantify Newt Gingrich as “the smartest man in the room,” I would offer Mr McClintock as the Actual Smartest Man in the Room in terms of DC budgets today. As opposed to some personnel, he needs no TelePrompter or rarified air.

Attempting to argue budget and history with Mr McClintock is akin to a man wielding a rock vs an opponent with a Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle at a thousand yards.

Not much of a contest, really.

BZ

Another in a continuing series of reasons I call Islam nothing more than a Death Cult for the ignorant and the barbaric:

The Iranian government, through a website proxy, has laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its people.

The doctrine includes wiping out Israeli assets and Jewish people worldwide.

Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a “‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

The article, written by Alireza Forghani, an analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.

And on a final note, thank Mohammad that at least a few clerics are warning all good brain-damaged Muslims not to observe Valentine’s Day, as it is against Sharia Law.

Inshallah!

BZ

“You have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it.”

–Nancy Pelosi on ObakaKare, one of the most idiotic statements ever made in politics

And apparently people are beginning to finally realize what’s in it, and they’re not much amused. Particularly when people sense that it declares open war on the Catholic faith.

Let me make this clear: I’m not Catholic. I keep my religious faith close, not public. And I realize that the Catholic Church isn’t perfect — certainly not any number of its priests. As a matter of fact, I may as well write it now: I’m not a large believer in organized religions. When I wrote the post “Church or Heart,” I summed it up: I keep God in my heart. I don’t believe you need an edifice to worship the Lord. Jesus didn’t need one. And, frankly, I’m not much of a “joiner.”

That said, here is a truthful letter from Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput which sums up Obama’s assault on religion:

February 1, 2012

Dear friends in Christ,

The United States Department of Health and Human Services announced on January 20 that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.

In so ruling, the current Administration has undermined both the principle of religious conscience and the First Amendment to the Constitution in an unprecedented way. Unless the ruling is overturned, faithful Catholics will be forced either to violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees and suffer the penalties for doing so. The Administration’s only concession was to give our institutions a one-year delay to comply. This is not merely inadequate. It is dangerous. And it betrays the good faith of many Catholics who — until now — have supported the current Administration with an honest will.

Bishops and lay Catholic leaders across the United States have made it clear that we cannot comply with this unjust law without compromising our convictions and undermining the Catholic identity of many of our service ministries. This is not just another important issue among the many we need to be concerned about. This ruling is different. This ruling interferes with the basic right of Catholic citizens to organize and work for the common good as Catholics in the public square.

Today, I ask of you two things. First, we need to pray for our country, for our Church, and for our own right to work freely as a believing community through our ministries in the public square. Second, we need to act. Please visit the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference website at www.pacatholic.org to learn how to contact your federal Representative and Senators. Write them, call them, visit them — and help them understand the deep resistance of Pennsylvania Catholics to this dangerous ruling. Please also visit www.usccb.org/conscience, to learn more about this attack on religious conscience, and how to work to reverse the Administration’s decision.

Your action on this issue matters — not just today but for many years to come; and in ways that will shape the ability of the Church to witness the Gospel publicly through her ministries well into the future. Please know that you have my gratitude and daily prayers. And please remember me in your prayers as well.
Sincerely yours in Christ,

Most Reverend Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. Archbishop of Philadelphia

ObakaKare mandates that hospitals — all hospitals — provide, essentially, free hot and cold running abortions. And not only if you “take” federal funds. Across the board. Period.

Hugh Hewitt writes about this here, and here, and here, and here.

Finally, let me close with this quote, please:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

Our current completely secular government is coming for the Catholics. Clearly, they’ve purposely managed to not read any of the quotes literally “etched in stone” on numerous historic DC buildings, the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

And this is wrong.

You have made a terrible, terrible mistake, Obama, and HHS.

BZ