Marine Aviation is 100 Years Old: Semper Fidelis!

H/T: rutusmc

Tennessee College Republicans Know

H/T: edscis

FR. Barron on The Holy Spirit

Veni Sancte Spiritus.

Obama's Enemies List and The American Dream

This video was posted at The Foundry, the Blog of The Heritage Foundation, with the following comment:

Frank VanderSloot grew up a poor kid in rural Idaho. His father made $300 a month. His clothes came from the Salvation Army. Yet through determination and hard work—and with the help of America's free-enterprise system—today he's the successful CEO of a global supplier of wellness products.

VanderSloot said his life changed forever on April 20. That's when President Obama's campaign created the first presidential "enemies list" since the Nixon era. Eight private citizens were singled out for their donations to Romney. They committed no crimes, sought no attention, and yet they became the subject of Obama's scorn.

Click the below link to read the Kim Strassel column referred to in the video.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304070304577396412560038208.html

Here are some excerpts:

Here's what happens when the president of the United States publicly targets a private citizen for the crime of supporting his opponent.

Frank VanderSloot is the CEO of Melaleuca Inc. The 63-year-old has run that wellness-products company for 26 years out of tiny Idaho Falls, Idaho. Last August, Mr. VanderSloot gave $1 million to Restore Our Future, the Super PAC that supports Mitt Romney.

Three weeks ago, an Obama campaign website, "Keeping GOP Honest," took the extraordinary step of publicly naming and assailing eight private citizens backing Mr. Romney. Titled "Behind the curtain: a brief history of Romney's donors," the post accused the eight of being "wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records." Mr. VanderSloot was one of the eight, smeared particularly as being "litigious, combative and a bitter foe of the gay rights movement."

About a week after that post, a man named Michael Wolf contacted the Bonneville County Courthouse in Idaho Falls in search of court records regarding Mr. VanderSloot. Specifically, Mr. Wolf wanted all the documents dealing with Mr. VanderSloot's divorces, as well as a case involving a dispute with a former Melaleuca employee.

Of course the mainstream media is all over this, right?  To read our earlier post on this topic, with a link to an earlier Kim Strassel column, and comment from Brit Hume, go HERE.

Trifecta: One Giant Step for American Exceptionalism

http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=105&load=7013

Bill Whittle, Scott Ott, and Steve Green are ecstatic (as all Americans should be) over the latest outstanding, and classic American, achievement in space.  President Obama, albeit for all the wrong reasons, did the world a great favor when he decided we could no longer afford our space program (because he needed that money to buy votes for his reelection).  The exploration of space will henceforth belong to the private sector (at least in the United States), and just imagine how much red tape will not be needed to forge ahead to newer and newer horizons.  Even before Obama made Muslim outreach the number one priority of NASA, that government bureaucracy had lost its edge and could no longer be characterized as innovative.   So, the private sector has responded, and pretenders better get out of the way.  It's a triumph for something in which President Obama has never believed: American Exceptionalism. 

Memorial Day, May 28, 20012

The Descent of the Holy Spirit Upon the Apostles

Today is Pentecost Sunday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVqalU2yKjI&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLA376B134D6684618

The following is from jpitera123, who posted the above video on YouTube:

For the Feast of Pentecost, I present the collection of slides starting with Holy Trinity picture, followed by the image of dove representing the Holy Spirit and collection of art clips of the Holy Spirit descending on the Apostles and Our Lady gathered in the Upper Room after Our Lord Ascension. The next several images show descend of the Holy Spirit as hand painted in the manuscript of the Holy Scriptures. These are followed by Holy Spirit stained glass collection. The slide show is concluded by the vintage Holy Card of children receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation. The background music is Veni Creator Spiritus and Veni Sancte Spiritus chants by Benedictine Monks of San Domingo Silos Monastery and Come Holy Spirit hymn from the track "God of Loveliness" by Singing Nuns from Spokane, WA.

Have a Beautiful Pentecost Sunday.

Lying for Diversity at Claremont McKenna

"The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie."
Joseph A. Schumpeter

Score another victory for Diversity over Truth.

Charles C. Johnson, a Los Angeles based writer and graduate of Claremont McKenna College, wrote a very sad piece for City Journal about his alma mater.  Seems this once great college has been lying about the SAT scores of students admitted there ("in some years, some individual SAT scores were simply made up") in order to expand racial preferences in its admissions. "It’s probably no coincidence" that the manipulations began soon after the college received a $700,000 grant to do just that.

To read the whole piece go HERE.  A clip that summarizes the fraud follows:

Vos (dean of admissions) was an enthusiastic supporter of racial preferences and a vocal critic of California’s Proposition 209, which in 1996 banned state colleges from admitting students on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex. During his tenure, CMC’s admissions policies led to higher acceptance rates for blacks and Latinos and lower ones for whites and Asians. According to the Claremont Independent in 2006, “statistics provided by the admissions office show that it admitted roughly 45 percent of both black and Hispanic applicants, [versus] 22 percent of the white applicants and 17 percent of Asian applicants.” Given this history, it’s probable that Vos’s preferential policies resulted in lower average SAT scores than he would have liked and led him to make his disastrous fabrications.

"The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear."
Herbert Agar

Only In America: Top Ten

From a friend via E-Mail:

1) Only in America could politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a $35,000 a plate campaign fund raising event.

2) Only in America could people claim that the government still discriminates against black Americans when we have a black president, a black attorney general, and roughly 18% of the federal workforce is black, but only 12% of the population is black.

3) Only in America could we have had the two people most responsible for our tax code,Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department and Charles Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee, BOTH turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.

4) Only in America can we have terrorists kill people in the name of Allah and have the media primarily react by fretting that Muslims might be harmed by the backlash.

5) Only in America would we make people who want to legally become American citizens wait for years in their home countries and then pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege while we discuss letting anyone who sneaks into the country illegally just become American citizens.

6) Only in America could the people who believe in balancing the budget and sticking by the country's Constitution be thought of as "extremists."

7) Only in America could you need to present a driver's license to cash a check or buy alcohol, but not to vote.

8) Only in America could people demand the government investigate whether oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas went up when the return on equity invested in a major U.S. oil company (Marathon Oil) is less than half of a company making tennis shoes (Nike).

9) Only in America could the government collect more tax dollars from the people than any nation in recorded history, still spend a trillion dollars more than it has per year for total spending of $7 million PER MINUTE, and complain that it doesn't have nearly enough money.

10) Only in America could the rich people who pay 86% of all (FEDERAL) income taxes be accused of not paying their "fair share" by people who don't pay any (FEDERAL) income taxes at all.

H/T: mlees

Fr. Barron: Catholic Seminaries and Evangelization

On May 10, 2012, Fr. Barron was appointed Rector and President of Mundelein Seminary, located just outside Chicago.  He will assume his new post in July, and will continue as Director of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, which is very good news.

"NO THEY CAN'T" John Stossel on Uncommon Knowledge

This is the entire five part interview of John Stossel about his new book: NO THEY CAN'T, by Peter Robinson of The Hoover Institution for Uncommon Knowledge.

Vortex: Pelosi and Catholic Dogma

Nancy Pelosi is as much a part of The Catholic Church as Elizabeth Warren is a part of The Cherokee Nation.

Our Divider-In-Chief Should Try The Truth

Our Divider-In-Chief should watch and ponder the below linked video about our so far only Civil War, which was caused when Americans allowed themselves to become divided over certain issues important to each side.  One of the many responsibilities of the president is to heal rifts between different segments of society before they boil over into conflagrations, and President Lincoln did everything he could to prevent the war that cost more American lives than any other in our history.  Comes now President Obama, who is spending inordinate amounts of time and tax-payer money, traveling around the country spreading his message of class warfare, seemingly without a clue as to what can result from such invective.  We've come to expect such behavior from the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, but it is disappointing in the extreme when it's propagated by our elected president.

http://www.schooltube.com/organization/121351/

H/T: txmcks

On Pilgrimage at EWTN and The Shrine

We're on pilgrimage here in Irondale, Alabama at the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) studios since yesterday, and after Mass at the Chapel (top photo) this morning and a tour this afternoon, will drive up to Hanceville to visit the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament (bottom photo) until Sunday.  Tomorrow is a special Mass at The Shrine to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Our Lady of The Angels Monastery.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RH1qa4QjFM&feature=related

Have a Beautiful Sunday.

Trifecta: More on Obama's Oil Scarcity Myth

It would be difficult to name the greatest scandal of the current administration in Washington, but the continuing lies being put out by the president and his people - especially Energy Secretary Steven Chu - about our oil reserves would have to rank pretty high on the list.  As Bill Whittle makes clear: Obama will not even admit the existence of our vast amounts of oil let alone actually drill for it, but it will still be there when he's gone.  Keep that in mind on November 6th.

http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=105&load=6956

Fr. Barron on Religious Liberty

Ramirez: The Greatest Generation R.I.P.

(click to enlarge)

Firewall: Bill Whittle and the Beta male

The always politically correct Bill Whittle discusses the most potent weapon in the Conservative arsenal: The Alpha Male.  Try as they might the Left in this country will never cause the majority of our citizens to prefer an Alan Alda to a John Wayne.  Good for us!

Ramirez on Obama's Evolution

(click to enlarge)

Vortex: Obama and Evil VI

Obama's Oil Scarcity Myth

(click to enlarge)

From Powerline on Saturday:

America has more fossil fuel resources than any other nation. Russia is second, Saudi Arabia is third. On Thursday, a representative of the Government Accountability Office testified before the House Science Subcommittee on Energy and Environment that the Green River Formation alone–it is located at the intersection of the states of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, and mostly underlies federal lands–contains as much oil as the entire proven reserves of the rest of the world combined. America is uniquely blessed in its energy resources. Two questions remain: 1) will Obama finally abandon his moronic two percent claim, and 2) will Obama, in a possible second term, block the development of the resources that can assure America’s economic supremacy for generations?

And this is from a Research Brief of The Rand Corporation:

The Oil Shale Resource Base

The Green River Formation, which covers parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, has the largest known oil shale deposits in the world, holding from 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels of oil. Of that, roughly 800 billion barrels are recoverable — more than triple Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves. Present U.S. demand for petroleum products is about 20 million barrels per day, so 800 billion barrels would last for more than 400 years if oil shale could be used to meet a quarter of that demand.

So, the next time a Liberal environmental wacko tries to tell you the United States is sitting on only 2% of the world's oil supply, feel free to call him a liar.

A Special Mother's Day for a Special Mom

From YouTube:

People ask her why she didn't choose to abort her boy. They stare at both of them. They talk behind her back. But none of that matters because this mother knows that her boy is beautiful just the way he is.

 HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

Sundays are for Beauty: Feast of Our Lady of Fatima

Ninety-five years ago today, The Blessed Mother appeared to three children in Fatima, Portugal. She asked the children to: “Pray the Rosary every day to obtain peace for the world!” 

Have a Beautiful Sunday.

Tell Georgetown to Cancel Sebelius

This is from The Cardinal Newman Society:

In what can only be interpreted as a direct challenge to America's Catholic bishops, Georgetown University has announced that "pro-choice" Catholic Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and lead architect of the Obama administration's assault on religious freedom through the HHS contraception mandate, has been invited to speak at one of Georgetown's several graduation ceremonies.

The Cardinal Newman Society has posted a petition to protest this outrage here: http://GeorgetownScandal.com. It has also alerted Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl and sent a letter to Georgetown President John DeGioia urging him to immediately withdraw the invitation.

Bret Stephens Should Replace Sebelius at Georgetown Commencement

Bret Stephens is the deputy editor of the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.  He normally writes clear and concise editorials about foreign affairs, but earlier this week he did something a little different: he offered to the college graduating class of 2012 the best advice they could possibly receive on their way back home to live with their parents (thereby keeping intact their health insurance thanks to Obamacare).

Too bad most graduates will never hear this advice because so many colleges will instead call on the likes of Kathleen Sebelius (talking about you, Georgetown) to enforce the nonsense with which they have been filling their brains for the past four years.

Click on the link below to read this important piece, and share it with those you think might benefit from reading it.

http://online.wsj.com/article/global_view.html


H/T: rmck1

Thomas Sowell: More on Intellectuals and Society

From the website of The Hoover Institution at Stanford University:

On the occasion of the publication of a new edition of his book Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell returns to Uncommon Knowledge for a wide-ranging interview.

This is the entire five parts of the latest interview of Dr. Sowell by Peter Robinson at The Hover Institution.  It's typical Sowell: full of wisdom that can be at the same time pithy and humorous.  Please don't miss any of the 52+ minutes of the interview; you can watch one segment at a time and return and pick it up where you left off.

The Revised and Expanded edition of the original Intellectuals and Society is available at Amazon.Com.  The original edition by Dr. Sowell was published in 2009.

For additional posts on Thomas Sowell, you can type his name in the "Search This Blog" box under the flags on the right.

American Crossroads: Operation Hot Mic

For those who think this is over the top: consider how much media attention this open mic incident would have garnered had it been George W. Bush rather than Barack Obama delivering that message to his Russian friend.


H/T: jpa1948

Marines Taking Care of Marines

True story of the recovery of 19 US Marines Killed in Action on Makin Island in WWII and their return home to Arlington National Cemetery 58 years later. Story: Pat Mendoza. Music arranged by Pat Mendoza Trumpet: Steve Wiest. Singers: the Islanders and Pat Mendoza

One of the most moving videos ever posted on YouTube demonstrates how much Marines believe in taking care of their own.  God bless the U.S. Marines.

SEMPER FIDELIS!

H/T: edscis

Afterburner: "Love of Theory is the Root of all Evil"

Bill Whittle goes on a tear deconstructing theories (such as global warming) that cannot stand up to facts on the ground.

http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=56&load=6888

Sundays are for Beauty: Andrea Bocelli, Panis Angelicus

Panis Angelicus is part of the hymn, Sacris solemniis, written by St. Thomas Aquinas for the Feast of Corpus Christi.  

Have a Beautiful Sunday.

Judge Mukasey on Heroic Actions of Presidents

Judge Michael Mukasey is the man who tried the "Blind Sheikh" for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and sentenced him to life in prison.  He also served as the 81st Attorney General of the United States.  He is not one to leap to criticize political or philosophical opponents, but the recent self-aggrandizing statements by our narcissistic president apparently caused him to pick up his pen.

He wrote this Opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal this week, comparing Obama's grandiose credit-grabbing statements with statements by previous presidents who were statesmen.  Herewith some highlights:

The first anniversary of the SEAL Team 6 operation that killed Osama bin Laden brings the news that President Obama plans during the coming campaign to exploit the bragging rights to the achievement. That plan invites scrutiny that is unlikely to benefit him.

Consider the events surrounding the operation. A recently disclosed memorandum from then-CIA Director Leon Panetta shows that the president's celebrated derring-do in authorizing the operation included a responsibility-escape clause: "The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven's hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out."

Which is to say, if the mission went wrong, the fault would be Adm. McRaven's, not the president's. Moreover, the president does not seem to have addressed at all the possibility of seizing material with intelligence value—which may explain his disclosure immediately following the event not only that bin Laden was killed, but also that a valuable trove of intelligence had been seized, including even the location of al Qaeda safe-houses. That disclosure infuriated the intelligence community because it squandered the opportunity to exploit the intelligence that was the subject of the boast...

While contemplating how the killing of bin Laden reflects on the president, consider the way he emphasized his own role in the hazardous mission accomplished by SEAL Team 6:

"I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority . . . even as I continued our broader effort. . . . Then, after years of painstaking work by my intelligence community I was briefed . . . I met repeatedly with my national security team . . . And finally last week I determined that I had enough intelligence to take action. . . . Today, at my direction . . ."

That seems a jarring formulation coming from a man who, when first elected, was asked which president he would model himself on and replied, Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln, on the night after Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender ended the Civil War, delivered from the window of the White House a speech that mentioned his own achievements not at all, but instead looked forward to the difficulties of reconstruction and called for black suffrage...

The man from whom President Obama has sought incessantly to distance himself, George W. Bush, also had occasion during his presidency to announce to the nation a triumph of intelligence: the capture of Saddam Hussein. He called that success "a tribute to our men and women now serving in Iraq." He attributed it to "the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator's footprints in a vast country. The operation was carried out with skill and precision by a brave fighting force. Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers. . . . Their work continues, and so do the risks."

He did mention himself at the end: "Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate them."

That is not to say that great leaders, including presidents, have not placed themselves at the center of great events. But generally it has been to accept responsibility for failure...

Dwight Eisenhower is famous for having penned a statement to be issued in anticipation of the failure of the Normandy invasion that reads in relevant part: "My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame attaches to the attempt it is mine alone."

President Obama has had almost four years to "grow in office;" he hasn't.

Georgetown Scandal: Sebelius as Commencement Speaker

The Cardinal Newman Society sent the following letter to the president of Georgetown University requesting he withdraw his invitation to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to speak at the Commencement Ceremony on May 18th.  The link below is to a petition which you can sign to indicate your objection to this Catholic University honoring this Catholic-In-Name-Only after she issued her now infamous HHS Mandate requiring nearly all health insurance plans cover female sterilization and contraceptives (including abortifacients) free of charge.

Dear President DeGioia:

It has come to the attention of The Cardinal Newman Society and the following signers that U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has been granted the honor of speaking at the commencement ceremony for Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute on Friday, May 18.  We strongly urge you to withdraw the invitation to Secretary Sebelius immediately.

It is scandalous and outrageous that America's oldest Catholic and Jesuit university has elected to provide this prestigious platform to a publicly "pro-choice" Catholic who is most responsible for the Obama administration's effort to restrict the Constitution's first freedom -- the right to free exercise of religion -- while threatening the survival of many Catholic and other religious colleges and universities, schools, charities, hospitals and other apostolates.

Georgetown insults all Americans by this honor.  The selection is especially insulting to faithful Catholics and their bishops, who are engaged in the fight for religious liberty and against abortion.  The contrast is stark between Georgetown University and those faithful Catholic colleges and universities that have stood for faith and freedom.

Sincerely,

Patrick J. Reilly

President

Regardless how many of us object by signing the petition, it is most unlikely that President DeGioia will rescind the invitation.  After Father John Jenkins ignored a massive outcry from alumni and friends of Notre Dame when he chose to honor President Obama by naming him Commencement speaker at the University of Our Lady in 2009, he suffered no personal consequences.  That, of course, is no reason not to sign the petition against this scandalous action by another "Catholic" university.

Georgetown Scandal

Obama's Nemesis of Hubris

J.R. Dunn, consulting editor of American Thinker, wrote what could very well be a prescient column today entitled Obama Meets His Nemesis.  You can read the whole piece by clicking on the link. Herewith some clips:

Nemesis is what is taking down Barack Obama.  Not politics as such, not the actions of his opponents -- at least not yet -- not any disaster or setback in the world as a whole.  Obama is in the process of being ablated as the result of his own actions, born from his own personal flaws.  There's a certain type of personality that constructs a life out of the nurturing and protecting its own failings rather than attempting to resolve or overcome them.  This is the only formula that is required to understand Barack Obama...

Nobody acts with the arrogance of an Obama without paying for it.  In the ancient dramas, it was called hubris...The hero apes the gods; begins to view himself as more than human, beyond the laws that prevail even on Olympus; and the machinery of fate starts grinding.  And once that machinery goes into motion, it doesn't stop until its victim has been reduced to dust...

Obama is one of the most arrogant figures ever to sit in the White House.  John Adams, Andrew Jackson, and Teddy Roosevelt do not have a thing on this man.  There has been considerable speculation that his condition is clinical, that he is in fact a narcissist in the psychological sense, and there is evidence to back this contention.  The public sneer, the smirk, the upthrust chin, the repeated use of the personal pronoun at times when it is far from appropriate (e.g., the speech announcing the shooting of Osama bin Laden, where you'd be forgiven, from the way he told it, in believing that Obama himself  took the old butcher out in single combat).  The remarks like "I won" in circumstances where they are completely uncalled for.  He required no help, on taking office, in boosting his already mammoth ego to the level of near-megalomania, but he got it anyway.  Obama, we were told, was "kind of God."  He was the One, the Messiah, the "Alpha and Omega," in the words of a chant repeated by some of his followers -- a description that in the Old Testament was limited to the Almighty and none other...

The odd thing is, he didn't actually do much.  He didn't really put a lot of work into it.  Like a Divine Right princeling, he thought that all he needed to do was make his wishes clear for them to be realized -- an odd conception of the presidency that I think is unmatched anywhere else in the record.  Obama wanted millions of shovel-ready jobs; he sent his Ivy League-trained economists out to arrange it.  He wanted a health-care revolution, and he turned that over to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.  And so on down the line -- every revolutionary program was assigned to some secretary or czar or union goon...

The results have been what any normal individual might have expected.  As Americans, we have gotten next to nothing out of all this wasted effort and energy and cash.  But that's more than what Obama got.  Because the only thing he got was nemesis...

Arrogance begets arrogance.  The United States was born out of a reaction to imperial flunkies who truly believed that they could behave as vaingloriously as their monarch and his corrupt nobility.  The Bourbons were brought down not so much by their own actions (Louis XVI was in fact something of reformer) as those of their out-of-control bureaucrats.  It's no different today.  We see it in the GSA scandal, the Secret Service hooker scandal, and above all in the Justice Department's Fast and Furious scandal.  All these result from hirelings mimicking the activities and attitudes of their bosses, including their ultimate boss in the Oval Office.  Each is rooted, and obviously so to even to (sic) most blasé observer, in arrogance.  Fast and Furious reveals the blueprint: a crazy scheme (gun-running on one hand, ObamaCare on the other) that no commonsense individual would ever consider for a moment put into play despite protests, disaster ensuing by leaps and bounds, deliberately ignored because the scheme "has to work," a climax amounting to complete collapse, with the protagonist (Holder, Obama) acting as if none of it has anything to do with him, as if he can simply walk off without so much as a word spoken...

This is pure arrogance, and it is a hallmark of nemesis.  Because none of this is going away.  The current scandals will continue to snowball, and there will be more coming over the next months as the seeds scattered by Obama in his first years burst into bloom. 

H/T: rutusmc

President Reagan's Prayer for America

This video was posted on YouTube by a member of the Bel Air Presbyterian Church, who included this note:

Ronald Reagan's church put this together to commemorate the birthday of Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately the war against the evil of liberalism is still alive and well, and we fight it even at Bel Air Presbyterian. The liberal Presbyterians are doing all they can to pervert the church from the inside out. Fortunately the conservative Christians are strong at Bel Air. Ronald Reagan loved Bel Air Presbyterian as I do...Enjoy!

We'd like to add that a similar war is ongoing in the Catholic Church here in America, and we Traditional Catholics are winning.

H/T: maejean