Memorial Day: A Look at The Special Forces

From FoxNews:

...The battalion commander, Lt. Colonel Christopher Riga, confirms the danger. Without emotion he explains “most of our deployments and most of the operations that we execute are very high risk. Everyday our soldiers are in harm’s way. They are at the tip of the spear and executing operations that are extremely dangerous and complex.” The battalion’s A teams typically travel out to remote locations and often live with the populace – in the villages – conducting possible combat missions and also trying to gather intelligence and information.

Twenty nine year old Captain Aaron Baty is an A-team leader whose dad was in a Special Forces unit for 22 years. Following in his father’s footsteps, Baty was commissioned as an officer in 2003 and was itching to get assigned to a unit that would deploy in the aftermath of September 11th. This husband and father of three is deploying for the third time. When asked about what he is giving up when he deploys, he does not explain that he might miss out his young daughter’s first steps or first words. “You could potentially be giving up everything when you deploy. You always make that plan for when I get back what will I do but in reality you don't know if you're coming back... You give up the possibility of seeing your kids graduate high school and walking your daughters down the aisle, waiting for my son to stop being a seven year old boy and start being a man that I can do things with”...

Full Story

For Memorial Day, a Classic!

Game on!

... Let's Go Blackhawks!!!

The History of Memorial Day

Ordination Day - Chicago

Today was a special day as I had a chance to attend my first-ever ordination mass at Holy Name Cathedral here in Chicago.

During the mass fourteen men, including a friend of mine, were ordained to the priesthood by Chicago's archbishop Francis Cardinal George. (Profiles of the new priests can be found here.)

As these new priests were being ordained, I could not help but to reflect upon the priests that have been influential in my life, as well as the countless priests who have served the Church throughout the centuries dating back to the time of the Apostles.

I was quite moved by the whole experience.

The day was filled with memorable moments: my first look at the splendor of the newly renovated cathedral; the incredible entrance procession of a half dozen bishops, dozens of priests, and the fourteen ordinandi; the beautiful music and singing of the choir; the Litany of the Saints;, the laying on of hands; the applause for the newly ordained; and the first blessings.

At the end, I felt renewed, and I left the church filled with joy and with great hope for the future!

Notes:

1. My favorite video about the priesthood, "Fishers of Men" can be viewed here.

2. A neat video from Grassroots films: "Ordination, 2009" can be viewed here.

3. Information on vocations to the priesthood can be found here.

4. A look at 7 reasons to consider becoming a priest can be found here.

Most entertaining political campaign ad of the year

I rank this one up there with the entertaining Mike Huckabee/Chuck Norris commercial of two years ago.




The story behind the ad can be found here.

Eric Holder has a bad week

Democrats and liberals used to incessantly accuse the Bush Administration of being ideological and incompetent. I never bought into these criticisms and often found them to be over the top.

It is, therefore, with great amusement that I watched the Attorney General flail about this week. One moment he was twisting himself into ideological knots so he would not have to say the phrase "radical Islam" at a congressional hearing. Another moment, caught him sheepishly admitting he had not read the controversial Arizona immigration law despite his having criticized it publicly on multiple occasions.

That is two major missteps for Holder in one week: one of them blatantly ideological, the other reeking of incompetence (and perhaps ideology as well).

Check out the videos below. They are painful to watch. Holder's evasiveness in the first video is in vivid contrast to the forthrightness of New Jersey's governor, Chris Christie, in the video I posted late last week (found here).

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Holder on "Radical Islam:"




Holder admits he did not read the Arizona law:



H/T Jill Stanek

Japan is dying...

...a demographic death.

Excerpts from the National Catholic Register:

...Perhaps I should not have been so surprised. My job required me to sometimes visit local kindergartens and day care centers, and the schools I visited were clearly built for larger numbers of children than were present. Sometimes the disparity was great. One nursery school I visited was built to accommodate 50 children. It had an enrollment of only eight.

Starker still was an elementary school built for a student population of about 100. I was astounded to discover, upon my first visit, only one student. The teacher explained that the school had to remain open until transportation arrangements could be made to bus the boy to a neighboring village. The teacher reminisced with sadness about a time when the school resounded with the sounds of children at play. My mind flashed back to the birth of my son and the 18 empty bassinets..

AND:

...On last year’s Children’s Day, the government noted that the number of children in Japan had declined for the 26th consecutive year. Over the past decade, more than 2,000 junior and senior high schools closed due to lack of students to teach. As I recently viewed a report on Japanese television stating that more than 60,000 teachers are unemployed, I couldn’t help but wonder if that teacher I met at the one-student school still had a job. That same program reported that nearly 100 children’s theme parks have closed in recent years and that more and more pediatricians are switching specialties to become geriatricians...

Full Story

Note: As one who finds children to be one of the great joys in life, I find this story to be very sad.

Chris Christie: A Breath of Fresh Air in New Jersey

Illinois could use a governor like the new one in New Jersey.

Blunt, to-the-point, a straight shooter, unconcerned about reelection, and willing to make tough decisions. And, best of all, a proponent of limited government.

This video of his takedown of a reporter is classic!

A New Prime Minister in Britain

I have long been captivated by British politics, and found the transition of power yesterday to be fascinating.

Although I am not a big fan of Gordon Brown, I could not help but be moved at the conclusion of his statement as he and his wife retrieved their kids from the Prime Minister's residence to walk out the the awaiting cars to take them away. There is a mood of melancholy and sadness.

Juxtaposed to this image was the arrival of David Cameron at 10 Downing Street hours later. He also makes a statement and, upon its conclusion, turns and enters the residence with his wife. They are visibly happy, almost jubilant. After they enter, the door closes leaving the leaving a lingering shot of the #10 on the door. Brilliant!!

Check it out below! (The videos are oversized and I couldn't figure out how to shrink them. Sorry!)


Gordon Brown's Resignation Statement:




David Cameron's Statement upon becoming Prime Minister:

The 50th Anniversary of the "Pill"

This week's National Catholic Register cover story looks at the failed promises of the Pill and at the increasing openess of young Catholics toward the Church's teaching against contraception:

Frannie Boyle, a 21-year-old Catholic at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., ignited a campus-wide debate when she repudiated the practice of casual sex and binge drinking.

That happened thanks to a recent CNN feature on this widely publicized trend.

“Casual hook-ups fueled by alcohol may be the norm across college campuses,” reported CNN, but Boyle “chose to stop. Her reasons to quit hooking up echo the emotional devastation of many college students, particularly girls whose hearts are broken by the hook-up scene.”

Vanderbilt’s fraternity leaders disputed Boyle’s portrait of campus socializing, while feminists chided the college junior for suggesting that female students wanted more from sex than their male counterparts. But the controversy helps explain why many Americans are not prepared to allow a related historical event — the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill — to glide by without scrutiny.

Decades after “The Pill” was supposed to secure a gender-free utopia — in sexual relationships, the home and the workplace — the data suggest it has produced a much more complicated legacy. The pill has been held responsible for unleashing the sexual revolution and for advancing the inclusion of women into the workplace, for fostering female independence and discouraging men from committing to marriage and children.

In the opinion pages of The New York Times, Elaine Tyler May’s “Promises the Pill Could Never Keep” suggested that contrary to the excited predictions of mid-century birth-control enthusiasts, the advent of the pill did not mark the decline of poverty rates, divorce or unwanted pregnancies. Quite the contrary.

Yet May, a professor of history at the University of Minnesota and the author of the forthcoming America and the Pill, argued that this new technology still fulfilled its fundamental mission: helping women “gain control of not only their fertility, but also their lives. They could decide whether to have children, and when. They could take advantage of new opportunities for education, work and participation in public life that opened up in the years following the pill’s approval,” she asserted.

This conflicted assessment of the pill’s impact on both individual lives and the broader culture underscores the difficulty of measuring its precise role in the ongoing transformation of American attitudes about the purpose and meaning of sex, the morality of abortion and contraception, women’s roles in the home and the workplace, and the relationship between human fertility and poverty rates.

For May, and many of the pill’s feminist supporters, the rise of woman-controlled fertility is a milestone in the fight for liberation. But some Catholic theologians, historians and natural family planning (NFP) experts contend that the push for “control” — though possibly well intentioned — unleashed destructive forces that still bedevil efforts to strengthen marriages, encourage mutual respect in college socializing, and embrace the full meaning and purpose of the human body, including the gift of fertility... Continued

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For further reading, try the following links:

Reflections on Pope Paul VI’s prophetic “Humanae Vitae.”

The Benefits of Natural Family Planning.

Natural Family Planning resources and links.

Overpopulation is a Myth - Video 3 (plus videos 1 & 2)

The latest in the series:



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Here is a reprint of my February 19 post which includes videos 1 & 2:

The Population Research Institute has released a second video examining popular misconceptions about global population.

While most people believe overpopulation is a global threat, the reality is just the opposite. Below-replacement birth-rates in many parts of the world are the real threat to global prosperity and stability.



One thought comes to mind: Here in the US, the biggest threat to our future prosperity is the looming Medicare & Social Security crisis due to the impending retirement of the massive baby boom generation. There simply will not be enough younger workers paying payroll taxes to keep the system solvent.

One cannot help but think we might be in a much better position to handle the situation if the 50 million babies aborted in the US over the last 30+ years had been allowed to be born, grow up, get jobs, and pay taxes.

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Here is the first video in the series for those who have not yet seen it:



These videos were produced by the Population Research Institute. The companion website for the videos is found here.

London Telegraph Endorses Tories in Tomorrow's Election; Lessons for this Side of the Pond

Perhaps there are some lessons for us here in the US to be found in this editorial. I highlight in red some items that caught my attention.

Excerpts:

...This newspaper was never convinced by the New Labour experiment. We believe that the past 13 years rank as a wasted opportunity of historic proportions. Elected on a wave of near-euphoria at the start of a decade-long economic boom, Labour was better placed than any post-war government to change this country for the better. Yet Tony Blair's "project" was undermined from the start by two fundamental flaws. The first was the conviction that only big-government solutions can bring about lasting change; the second was the belief that to throw money at a problem is to solve it. The consequence was a spending binge of unparalleled profligacy conducted by an ever-expanding state machine – almost a million people have been added to the government payroll since 1997. When Labour came to power, public spending accounted for 40 per cent of GDP. Last year, the figure was 52 per cent. Following the worst downturn in 70 years, and burdened as we are with a deficit of gargantuan proportions, the unbalanced nature of our economy will hamper British recovery...

Seems like the above criticism of Blair can be easily applied to the Democrats' approach to governing here in the US. For them more government and more spending is the answer to almost every problem (the big exception of course being national security). No big surprise then that President Obama has drastically increased the scope of government and planned federal spending. In my home state of Illinois, controlled top to bottom by Democrats, reckless spending has us teetering on the precipice of insolvency. Their proposed solution? Big surprise, more taxes!

...Labour's approach to the public services was at least well-intentioned. The same cannot be said of its deplorable handling of immigration. It has presided over the biggest influx of immigrants in our history – over the past 12 years, three million have made this country their home. This used to be attributed to sheer incompetence, a failure to control our own borders. It emerged earlier this year, through a leaked Whitehall document, that the influx was a deliberate policy to make this country "truly multicultural" – with the added bonus, for Labour, of providing large numbers of new voters...

I can't help but suspect that similar notions may lie at the heart of Democrat resistance to immigration controls and their desire for widespread amnesty.

Given all this, it is unsurprising that in this election campaign the voters have been taking a closer look at the other Left-of-centre party – and liking what they see. Nick Clegg has proved his mettle since his electrifying performance in the first televised leaders' debate. He is the very model of the modern politician – young, telegenic, fluent, and with a freshness that appeals to young voters. Yet he is let down by his party's irresponsible policies.

People these days seem attracted to superficial attributes at the expense of substance. Sounds like the Obama phenomenon of two years ago in the US. No?

...Character always matters in politics, and it matters more than ever now. The age of austerity that will shortly be upon us will require some hard decisions. There will be bruising battles with the public-sector unions; the might of the Whitehall establishment will have to be taken on. The scale and role of government will have to be fundamentally re-assessed because the deficit will demand it...

How many American politicians are being honest with the American people about the difficult choices we have looming before us. Not many. Certainly not the President who has been in office 16 months and has yet to address the deficit problem in any substantive way. Unless, of course, we count massive new spending as the solution to our spending problem!

The Tory vision of the Big Society plays strongly into these new political realities. Built on the concept that the state should do less, better, and that decisions are best taken as closely as possible to where they impact, it addresses the straitened circumstances of the time. There is a coherent body of policies to support this vision, notably on education, welfare, law and order, and immigration. A smaller state means lower taxes and the Conservatives have shown the right instinct in their pledge to reverse part of the National Insurance rise and their determination to lift the threshold on inheritance tax. Crucially, they have indicated that they are ready and willing to take the unpopular measures that are vital if the deficit is to be brought under control. Difficult times lie ahead for Britain. We believe that only a Conservative government can restore the nation's fortunes.

If Republicans in regain power in this country, will they make the hard choices? Are they willing to face the inevitable wrath of the people who have come to rely on the government to take care of them? They failed in this regard the last time they were in power.

Simply Catholic

H/T American Papist