Speaking to a crowd of union members at the old Tiger Stadium in Detroit on Labor Day, Vice President Joe "the Plagiarizer" Biden said, "It's time to take America back."
I'd like to know from whom? Or from what? This is the same thing the Democrats were saying in 2008 when Obama was running for president. Led by Michael Moore it became almost a leftist chant. "We want our country back," they shouted.
In 2008 the question was the same. From whom? Or from what? The leftist anti-God, gay-loving, abortion worshipping America the Democrats were clamoring for then had never existed. Leftist morality, or should I say immorality, and godless values had been slowly strangling America since at least the 1960s when God was thrown out of our public schools and government institutions. Abortion, which has always been an abomination to anyone with a conscience and love of humanity, suddenly became a woman's right to choose in 1973, and since then nothing has been the same. Jimmy Carter gave us big government and feckless leadership, and after a revival of real American values in the 1980s, Bill Clinton gave us a playboy nonchalant skepticism for anything truthful or righteous. W started out well, but after six years of an unending strategy in the War on Terror that refused to recognize Islam as the enemy, and his unwillingness to control the national debt resulting in even bigger government, there was a resurgence of the Democrat Party in 2006 leading to the election of Obama in 2008.
Now we have feckless disdain for the Constitution, as well as America, sitting in the White House. We have a president with a weak-kneed inability to make command decisions, combined with an arrogant, deliberate disregard for the truth, absolutely devoid of any character, probity or righteousness. We have a bigger government than ever, and a national debt that is spiraling out of control to heights we never even dreamed of. We have surrendered our morality to a homosexual agenda seeking to destroy marriage and the family, we have a gun control lobby that argues that even if we save one life it is worth it, while the same people push for government paid abortions on demand to the tune of 4,000 a day, without regard for the lives of mothers lost or damaged from botched abortions (which are not minimal), not to mention the babies slaughtered. In Obama we have Carter, Clinton, Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson all wrapped up in one package.
Moore and the leftists didn't take their country back, they stole it from true patriotic Americans and remade it into a new one. We are no longer the country our Founding Fathers created or envisioned.
So the question is, what America is Biden talking about? Is this an admission that Obama's radical left wing American destroying polices are wrong? Is he unhappy with the moral sewer Obama has taken us into? Is he unhappy with the disrespect and disregard we are given by Putin, North Korea, Iran, and just about everybody else in the world? Is he saying we need to take America back to where it was before Obama? Is that W's America? Reagan's America? How about Clinton's America?
At least Clinton had the sense to get before the public and apologize for his failures. Obama blames Bush. Is Biden tired of playing second fiddle to the Nero in the White House?
It is time to take America back alright. Back to the principles and vision of the Founding Fathers and lawful government under the Constitution. Back to the God of our Fathers.
Democrats tend to ridicule and mock anyone espousing the Founders' vision as unprogressive and going back to a primitive time where women were chattel and abortions were performed in back alleys. Neither of these are true, and no true conservative wants to take away the gains women, or minorities, have made that are constitutionally lawful, such as voting and equal opportunity. But a women's right to choose abortion and homosexual marriage are not constitutional rights. Neither is it progressive to continue a political, economic, social or military agenda that is driving America to the ash heap of nations.
"We all want progress," C.S. Lewis wrote, "but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."
So is this what Biden is talking about? Or was his meaning a little more focused like getting back to the days when corrupt union bosses controlled labor? Or is this just another of his monumental gaffes, like the paper he plagiarized to get his college degree?
Maybe it's time conservatives started clamoring, "Let's take America back." The November elections are a good place to start.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Friday, August 15, 2014
Robin Williams
It's a sad thing when someone reaches a point of such depression and helplessness that they see only one final way out. In Robin Williams's case it seems particularly sad since in a movie he made called World's Greatest Dad, he makes the comment, "Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem." I was surprised, however, at how much attention his death received on the news channels. For 24 hours it was almost the only thing on Fox. You would have thought the whole world had stopped while they paid homage.
My introduction to Robin Williams was on the TV sitcom, Mork and Mindy. He made such a splash and was so funny, that I still remember the first time I saw the show. It was around Christmas 1978, and I was on my way home to Denver from college in Springfield, Missouri. I traveled with my roommate, Terry Andrews, to his home in Wichita, and stayed several days before heading on. One night there we watched this new sitcom about Mork from Ork. It was unbelievably and ridiculously hilarious.
I watched the show whenever I could over the next couple years, but when I saw a stand-up comedy act Williams did on some other program I turned him off. The routine was a vile, profane mockery of Christianity and the Bible. I got the impression he was an atheist. Now the news reports are that he grew up Episcopalian, so maybe not atheist, but his attack on the Word of God and fundamental Christian doctrines such as the Virgin Birth made it pretty clear that he did not believe the Bible in the least.
The only movie I've watched of his since then was Night at the Museum. He played a very heart-warming role as Teddy Roosevelt and I enjoyed the movie. It's unfortunate, I suppose, because from all I'm reading and hearing on the news he played some very good roles and he was as good as a serious actor as he was a comedian. Then there are his visits to entertain our troops, and his respect for them and To the Colors, which interrupted one of his performances. Testimonials tell of how generous he was, how many people he helped, and how he was a friend to everyone he passed on the street or anywhere else. Fame had not gone to his head. He was as humble and kind and generous as a human being could be.
I guess I didn't really appreciate his talent after that comedy routine, but he apparently was an incredible person and I think maybe it's a shame that more people don't share his outrageously humorous look at life. One poignant thing that Williams's death reveals, however, is that for all of his humility, all of his kindness, his generosity, his friends and family, all of his laughter, his fame and fortune, none of it was enough to overcome the depression that led him to his permanent decision. His successful achievements, public acclaim, material wealth, and all that comes from the world, could not drive away the dark shadows in his mind and bring him peace. Peace in the world, as well as peace in the heart, is only found in the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, the very one Robin Williams so irreverently scorned.
My introduction to Robin Williams was on the TV sitcom, Mork and Mindy. He made such a splash and was so funny, that I still remember the first time I saw the show. It was around Christmas 1978, and I was on my way home to Denver from college in Springfield, Missouri. I traveled with my roommate, Terry Andrews, to his home in Wichita, and stayed several days before heading on. One night there we watched this new sitcom about Mork from Ork. It was unbelievably and ridiculously hilarious.
I watched the show whenever I could over the next couple years, but when I saw a stand-up comedy act Williams did on some other program I turned him off. The routine was a vile, profane mockery of Christianity and the Bible. I got the impression he was an atheist. Now the news reports are that he grew up Episcopalian, so maybe not atheist, but his attack on the Word of God and fundamental Christian doctrines such as the Virgin Birth made it pretty clear that he did not believe the Bible in the least.
The only movie I've watched of his since then was Night at the Museum. He played a very heart-warming role as Teddy Roosevelt and I enjoyed the movie. It's unfortunate, I suppose, because from all I'm reading and hearing on the news he played some very good roles and he was as good as a serious actor as he was a comedian. Then there are his visits to entertain our troops, and his respect for them and To the Colors, which interrupted one of his performances. Testimonials tell of how generous he was, how many people he helped, and how he was a friend to everyone he passed on the street or anywhere else. Fame had not gone to his head. He was as humble and kind and generous as a human being could be.
I guess I didn't really appreciate his talent after that comedy routine, but he apparently was an incredible person and I think maybe it's a shame that more people don't share his outrageously humorous look at life. One poignant thing that Williams's death reveals, however, is that for all of his humility, all of his kindness, his generosity, his friends and family, all of his laughter, his fame and fortune, none of it was enough to overcome the depression that led him to his permanent decision. His successful achievements, public acclaim, material wealth, and all that comes from the world, could not drive away the dark shadows in his mind and bring him peace. Peace in the world, as well as peace in the heart, is only found in the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, the very one Robin Williams so irreverently scorned.
Monday, August 4, 2014
Muslim Contributions
If you know American history, which Obama apparently does not, you are probably as frustrated as I am every time you hear his asinine comments about Muslims building America. It's something I've been thinking of writing about, but then I came across this article by Robert Spencer. I couldn't say it any better than this with one exception. In item number four on slavery Spencer equates the Bible with the Koran in condoning slavery. The two cannot be compared. The Bible view of slavery is more along the lines of servanthood. The slave, or servant, is to be treated humanely, and there is always a time limit on how long the individual can be kept, so that he is not perpetually a slave. It should also be noted that it was Christians who were behind the abolitionist movement. That could be a longer discussion for another time, but for now, thank you Mr. Spencer for a very delightful as well as insightful article.
Five Ways Muslims Have Contributed to ‘Building the Very Fabric of Our Nation’
Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch
August 2, 2014
Last Sunday, in his message congratulating Muslims on Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, Barack Obama wrote: “Eid also reminds us of the many achievements and contributions of Muslim Americans to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy.” That’s right: he said “many achievements and contributions.” I could only think of five. Maybe you will be able to think of some more.
5. Getting us here in the first place
This one predates the United States as a nation, but without it, the United States would not exist. Every schoolchild knows, or used to know, that in 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered America while searching for a new, westward sea route to Asia. But why was he searching for a new route to Asia? Because the fall of Constantinople to the Muslims in 1453 closed the trade routes to the East. This was devastating for European tradesmen, who had until then traveled to Asia for spices and other goods by land. Columbus’s voyage was trying to ease the plight of these merchants by bypassing the Muslims altogether and making it possible for Europeans to reach India by sea.
So the bellicosity and intransigence of Islam ultimately opened the Americas for Europe – and made the United States possible.
4. Slavery
Slavery is condoned in the Qur’an as well as the Bible, and has been taken for granted throughout Islamic history, as it was in the West until the advent of the great abolitionist movements in the U.S. and Britain. The opening of the transatlantic slave trade provided Muslim slave dealers in Africa with a lucrative new market – one that they cheerfully and energetically exploited.
One consequence of this has been claims by the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Islamic advocacy groups in the U.S. that the first Muslims in the U.S. were slaves imported from Africa. This, of course, feeds the sense of victimhood that CAIR so assiduously cultivates for the political power that it offers, but it cuts in the other direction as well: not only the slaves, but the slave traders who sold them to Europeans and Americans who brought them to the New World were Muslims, operating in accord with the sanction of slavery given by Muhammad and the Qur’an.
Arguably, then, if it weren’t for the Islamic slave industry on the African continent, there would have been no slavery in the New World, and none of the attendant national traumas that reverberate down to this day. This means, of course, that one way that Muslims have contributed to building the very fabric of our nation is by setting in motion the chain of events that led to ongoing racial tensions in the U.S., and ultimately to the election to the presidency of Barack Obama.
3. The Marines
“From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli…” The line from the Marines’ hymn commemorates the Marines’ actions during the First Barbary War (1801-1805), the first war the United States fought against Islamic jihadists. The war came about because President Thomas Jefferson refused to accede to the Barbary states’ demands for tribute payments – demands made in accord with the Qur’an’s dictum that the “People of the Book” must be made to “pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (9:29). The Barbary pirates, also acting in accord with Islamic law regarding the kidnapping, enslaving and ransoming of non-Muslims, were seizing American ships and enslaving the crews, demanding exorbitant ransoms for their release.
The Marines put a stop to all that, and the line from the Marines’ hymn shows how pivotal their actions on the Barbary coast were to forming the Marine ethos. So for the Marines, too, we have Muslims to thank.
2. A drastically weakened economy
Osama bin Laden explained that he mounted the 9/11 jihad terror attacks in order to weaken the American economy. In October 2004 he exulted: “Al-Qaeda spent $500,000 on the event, while America, in the incident and its aftermath, lost — according to the lowest estimate — more than $500 billion, meaning that every dollar of al-Qaeda defeated a million dollars.” Then there are the further billions lost since 2004, and the billions wasted on the nation-building misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan – such that if he were alive today, bin Laden could look with satisfaction on an America with a severely weakened economy, high unemployment, and no imminent prospects for genuine recovery.
We experience the effects of this every day in a thousand ways, large and small – in an America that is poorer, uglier, meaner, more dangerous, less productive and less efficient than it was on September 10, 2001. A veritable contribution to the fabric of our nation indeed.
1. The TSA
Once romantic and even glamorous, air travel today is an uncomfortable, uncertain, unpleasant, inhospitable, cramped affair involving intrusive and inefficient security procedures that annoy and humiliate travelers. At least everyone is humiliated equally. Passengers are poked, prodded, threatened, herded like cattle, beleaguered with delays, and treated as if they were criminals in a politically correct attempt to avoid focusing on the true source of the problem.
Meanwhile, the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security are two new bloated and ever-growing bureaucracies, further draining the already depleted American taxpayer.
And that, surely, is the crowning contribution that Muslims have made to “building the very fabric of our nation” as it stands today.
Five Ways Muslims Have Contributed to ‘Building the Very Fabric of Our Nation’
Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch
August 2, 2014
Last Sunday, in his message congratulating Muslims on Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, Barack Obama wrote: “Eid also reminds us of the many achievements and contributions of Muslim Americans to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy.” That’s right: he said “many achievements and contributions.” I could only think of five. Maybe you will be able to think of some more.
5. Getting us here in the first place
This one predates the United States as a nation, but without it, the United States would not exist. Every schoolchild knows, or used to know, that in 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered America while searching for a new, westward sea route to Asia. But why was he searching for a new route to Asia? Because the fall of Constantinople to the Muslims in 1453 closed the trade routes to the East. This was devastating for European tradesmen, who had until then traveled to Asia for spices and other goods by land. Columbus’s voyage was trying to ease the plight of these merchants by bypassing the Muslims altogether and making it possible for Europeans to reach India by sea.
So the bellicosity and intransigence of Islam ultimately opened the Americas for Europe – and made the United States possible.
4. Slavery
Slavery is condoned in the Qur’an as well as the Bible, and has been taken for granted throughout Islamic history, as it was in the West until the advent of the great abolitionist movements in the U.S. and Britain. The opening of the transatlantic slave trade provided Muslim slave dealers in Africa with a lucrative new market – one that they cheerfully and energetically exploited.
One consequence of this has been claims by the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Islamic advocacy groups in the U.S. that the first Muslims in the U.S. were slaves imported from Africa. This, of course, feeds the sense of victimhood that CAIR so assiduously cultivates for the political power that it offers, but it cuts in the other direction as well: not only the slaves, but the slave traders who sold them to Europeans and Americans who brought them to the New World were Muslims, operating in accord with the sanction of slavery given by Muhammad and the Qur’an.
Arguably, then, if it weren’t for the Islamic slave industry on the African continent, there would have been no slavery in the New World, and none of the attendant national traumas that reverberate down to this day. This means, of course, that one way that Muslims have contributed to building the very fabric of our nation is by setting in motion the chain of events that led to ongoing racial tensions in the U.S., and ultimately to the election to the presidency of Barack Obama.
3. The Marines
“From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli…” The line from the Marines’ hymn commemorates the Marines’ actions during the First Barbary War (1801-1805), the first war the United States fought against Islamic jihadists. The war came about because President Thomas Jefferson refused to accede to the Barbary states’ demands for tribute payments – demands made in accord with the Qur’an’s dictum that the “People of the Book” must be made to “pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (9:29). The Barbary pirates, also acting in accord with Islamic law regarding the kidnapping, enslaving and ransoming of non-Muslims, were seizing American ships and enslaving the crews, demanding exorbitant ransoms for their release.
The Marines put a stop to all that, and the line from the Marines’ hymn shows how pivotal their actions on the Barbary coast were to forming the Marine ethos. So for the Marines, too, we have Muslims to thank.
2. A drastically weakened economy
Osama bin Laden explained that he mounted the 9/11 jihad terror attacks in order to weaken the American economy. In October 2004 he exulted: “Al-Qaeda spent $500,000 on the event, while America, in the incident and its aftermath, lost — according to the lowest estimate — more than $500 billion, meaning that every dollar of al-Qaeda defeated a million dollars.” Then there are the further billions lost since 2004, and the billions wasted on the nation-building misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan – such that if he were alive today, bin Laden could look with satisfaction on an America with a severely weakened economy, high unemployment, and no imminent prospects for genuine recovery.
We experience the effects of this every day in a thousand ways, large and small – in an America that is poorer, uglier, meaner, more dangerous, less productive and less efficient than it was on September 10, 2001. A veritable contribution to the fabric of our nation indeed.
1. The TSA
Once romantic and even glamorous, air travel today is an uncomfortable, uncertain, unpleasant, inhospitable, cramped affair involving intrusive and inefficient security procedures that annoy and humiliate travelers. At least everyone is humiliated equally. Passengers are poked, prodded, threatened, herded like cattle, beleaguered with delays, and treated as if they were criminals in a politically correct attempt to avoid focusing on the true source of the problem.
Meanwhile, the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security are two new bloated and ever-growing bureaucracies, further draining the already depleted American taxpayer.
And that, surely, is the crowning contribution that Muslims have made to “building the very fabric of our nation” as it stands today.
Friday, July 18, 2014
The Tranquility of the Global Community
Robert Gibbs was the White House Press Secretary for the first two years of the Obama administration. He was inept, tongue-tied, often unknowledgeable of the events he was being questioned about, and helped promote the image of obfuscation rather than transparency in the Obama White House. I've often wondered if he was removed for poor performance, or if he had just had enough of trying to cover for the Obama lies and couldn't take it anymore.
He was followed by Jay Carney, who held the job for nearly five years. Carney took the skill of lying through his teeth to new levels. How he could sleep at night is a mystery to any honest person. Carney continued to spew the Obama spin until the day he left the position. Border security, the success of obamacare, a video that caused Benghazi, there was no limit to his adroitness in weaving the administration's story, and he stuck with his comments, even when the press corps laughed at his answers.
Apparently Carney had enough, and now we have Josh Earnest. Earnest wasted no time in proving his own ability to muddy the waters with circumlocutory rhetoric. In answer to a question by Fox News's Ed Henry about the president being a bystander in the midst of all the crises going on he said:
I think that there have been a number of situations in which you’ve seen this administration intervene in a meaningful way that has substantially furthered American interests and substantially improved the tranquility of the global community.
Right. That comment belongs in the spin Hall of Fame. Where in the world is there any tranquility right now?
Benghazi still unanswered and Libya more unstable than ever.
Egypt still in turmoil.
An invasion of illegal immigrants, drug dealers, thieves, and terrorists over the Mexican border, as well as Mexican army helicopters invading U.S. airspace, and soldiers firing on American border agents.
An American Marine unjustly held in a Mexican jail.
Civil war in Syria.
Iraq falling to Isis.
Afghanistan becoming more unstable as U.S. troops prepare to leave.
Iran thumbing its nose at the U.S. while it continues to develop nuclear power.
Russian invasion and theft of the Crimea.
A civil war backed by Russia erupting in Ukraine.
A belligerent Vladimir Putin continually challenging U.S. resolve.
Hamas rocket attacks on Israel and an Israeli invasion of the Gaza strip.
And now a Malaysian 777 airliner shot down with a Russian missile in the eastern Ukraine with possibly twenty-three Americans on board.
The world is falling apart, Americans are being murdered, and Obama, apparently unconcerned, tells jokes and then goes to eat a cheeseburger for another photo op (the one's he's not interested in) before going to another fund raiser. Business as usual, nothing serious enough to demand his time, everything lovely in the Obama utopia.
No doubt in his little mind more concerned with spinning his socialist or Muslim agenda, the world is a tranquil place. The reality is there has never been a president more out of touch with the plight of not only his own country, but the whole world. No president has been more disengaged and inactive in the face of crises since James Buchanan right before the U.S. Civil War.
And Josh Earnest? Another small-minded Obama worshipper. How can he ever do better than the delusional statement he just made? It will be interesting to see if he will be so lacking in character and personal integrity as to keep his job for the next two and half years.
He was followed by Jay Carney, who held the job for nearly five years. Carney took the skill of lying through his teeth to new levels. How he could sleep at night is a mystery to any honest person. Carney continued to spew the Obama spin until the day he left the position. Border security, the success of obamacare, a video that caused Benghazi, there was no limit to his adroitness in weaving the administration's story, and he stuck with his comments, even when the press corps laughed at his answers.
Apparently Carney had enough, and now we have Josh Earnest. Earnest wasted no time in proving his own ability to muddy the waters with circumlocutory rhetoric. In answer to a question by Fox News's Ed Henry about the president being a bystander in the midst of all the crises going on he said:
I think that there have been a number of situations in which you’ve seen this administration intervene in a meaningful way that has substantially furthered American interests and substantially improved the tranquility of the global community.
Right. That comment belongs in the spin Hall of Fame. Where in the world is there any tranquility right now?
Benghazi still unanswered and Libya more unstable than ever.
Egypt still in turmoil.
An invasion of illegal immigrants, drug dealers, thieves, and terrorists over the Mexican border, as well as Mexican army helicopters invading U.S. airspace, and soldiers firing on American border agents.
An American Marine unjustly held in a Mexican jail.
Civil war in Syria.
Iraq falling to Isis.
Afghanistan becoming more unstable as U.S. troops prepare to leave.
Iran thumbing its nose at the U.S. while it continues to develop nuclear power.
Russian invasion and theft of the Crimea.
A civil war backed by Russia erupting in Ukraine.
A belligerent Vladimir Putin continually challenging U.S. resolve.
Hamas rocket attacks on Israel and an Israeli invasion of the Gaza strip.
And now a Malaysian 777 airliner shot down with a Russian missile in the eastern Ukraine with possibly twenty-three Americans on board.
The world is falling apart, Americans are being murdered, and Obama, apparently unconcerned, tells jokes and then goes to eat a cheeseburger for another photo op (the one's he's not interested in) before going to another fund raiser. Business as usual, nothing serious enough to demand his time, everything lovely in the Obama utopia.
No doubt in his little mind more concerned with spinning his socialist or Muslim agenda, the world is a tranquil place. The reality is there has never been a president more out of touch with the plight of not only his own country, but the whole world. No president has been more disengaged and inactive in the face of crises since James Buchanan right before the U.S. Civil War.
And Josh Earnest? Another small-minded Obama worshipper. How can he ever do better than the delusional statement he just made? It will be interesting to see if he will be so lacking in character and personal integrity as to keep his job for the next two and half years.
Friday, July 11, 2014
Twenty-Five Years Ago Today
Twenty-five years ago this morning I was awakened by a phone call from the Assistant Squadron Duty Officer at VT-25 with the words no pilot ever wants to hear. "Mr. Patterson, we need you to come in right away. There's been an accident."
I was on the night schedule and had landed close to midnight, and didn't get to bed until about 2 a.m. I was scheduled for another night flight so I had slept in that morning. The call came at 8:30. "I'm coming," I said. I threw on a flight suit, quickly shaved and ran out to my car. Chase Field at Beeville, Texas was about ten miles from my apartment, but I walked into the Ready Room before nine.
I was the acting squadron Safety Officer while we waited for a pilot to complete Safety School at Monterey, California. An investigation was already being launched and I would be a big part of it. A UH-1 Huey helicopter was coming up from Corpus Christi to fly a Navy photographer and two other investigators to the site, but I decided to go in a van with supplies and equipment for the investigation rather than wait. It was about 45 miles to the crash site in a wooded farmer's field north of Naval Auxiliary Field Goliad, and as we passed a Navy fire truck returning to base we waved them down to get directions. We weren't far, a right turn on the next dirt road and a couple miles to a gate in the field. Military police had already cordoned off the area. We found the site, set up and started walking the crash area. We got there before the Huey.
Six students on an early event had taken off from Chase in TA-4J Skyhawks and made the five minute trip to Goliad to practice landings for their upcoming carrier qualifications. One by one they reached the initial and turned south for the Goliad runway. Something went wrong with the fifth student to arrive and he flew into the ground. The student behind him was the only witness to the crash. The investigation would determine that in turning to the field, the pilot had apparently been distracted changing radio frequencies. The initial was only 600 feet above the ground, and at 400 knots in a tight turn the plane lost altitude. The pilot apparently looked up to see his predicament at the last second. The wings came level, but the rate of descent was too great.
When we arrived the area looked like a battlefield; small fires, blackened earth and scorched bushes, smoke drifting across the scene and the smell of sulfur. We found some broken tree tops and lights from the plane where it had come down, and then the spot where it had hit the ground. It landed on a tree and flattened it, ripping the roots out so quickly that the dirt came up from the ground and covered the tree. The plane then caught a very hard mesquite tree at the root of the right wing. The wing ripped off and the plane began to tumble end over end. The engine at full bore kept on going until it had shed itself of the entire plane and finally stopped about four hundred yards from the initial point of impact.
We at first were puzzled about what happened to the wing. The plane was in a million pieces, but we couldn't find any wreckage of the wing. We finally found the landing gear at the base of a very large tree and then looked up. The entire wing was hung up in the branches of the tree. Moving forward through the scattered wreckage we started finding body parts. Then in the crook of a little v-shaped tree I knelt down over the most horrible thing I have ever seen. (Stop if you're squeamish.) The left side of the pilot's head, down to the jaw, the face gone, the left half of the neck down to the shoulder, and the left arm, all connected, lay right in the crook of that little tree. Just above on a branch parallel to the ground hung his g-suit without a burn mark on it. The positive ID was made from the dental records on that jaw, but we already knew who he was. Farther ahead we found his feet, one in a boot and one out. Then the cockpit where his pelvic and femur bones, completely devoid of any flesh, still sat in the seat. Then we found his heart with the aorta still attached.
I've never been in combat. I don't know how soldiers and Marines on the battlefield are able to cope when they see their comrades blown apart. I don't know how emergency crews that clean up after terrorist bombings or airline disasters handle it. All I know is that for me for weeks afterward every time I bent over the sink to brush my teeth the vision of those remains in the crook of that tree were in front of me.
As an instructor I made it a point every time I flew with a student for the first time to give him a Gospel tract and invite him to church. Only a couple ever came and none more than once. This particular student was a Marine and I had given him a tract. The last time I had flown with him was two months earlier. He was about to start the Air Combat Maneuvering syllabus, and he got into my back seat to go along for the ride on an ACM hop that I was leading. We did several setups with a student pilot in that stage. I remember his enthusiasm for the flight when in one engagement in a maneuver called a rolling scissors with student behind me I pulled the nose of my airplane up into a stall forcing him to fly out in front of me, and as I dropped the nose he was a sitting duck.
"Wow!" my passenger shouted over the intercom. "That was awesome." He was a nice young man by everybody's account. He had done well in training up until that one momentary lapse. I had the privilege of flying in a Missing Man formation over the base at his memorial service.
We picked up the body parts, put them in bags, and put them in coolers with ice to transport back to the flight surgeon for the autopsy, but we ran out of ice and room in the coolers so some bags were just sitting on the floor in the back of the van. Before we got home the van smelled like a meat locker at a butcher shop. The interesting thing was there was no blood, just chunks of flesh. The flight surgeon told me later it was the result of something called the Venturi effect, which happens when a body is torn apart so violently that the blood literally evaporates.
I never knew his spiritual condition. He was just a good guy, didn't get into trouble. But I couldn't get passed the question, Had I done enough? I think it must be that those in combat develop a coldness of heart, a way to put it behind them and forget it. It almost seems the only way they could keep their sanity. I don't say this as a criticism, but just as a way of trying to reconcile what I saw one time, with what some people have seen multiple times. For me, I don't want to forget. I don't want to lose the conviction of that question that was so penetrating then. "Have I done enough?"
Twenty-five years ago today.
I was on the night schedule and had landed close to midnight, and didn't get to bed until about 2 a.m. I was scheduled for another night flight so I had slept in that morning. The call came at 8:30. "I'm coming," I said. I threw on a flight suit, quickly shaved and ran out to my car. Chase Field at Beeville, Texas was about ten miles from my apartment, but I walked into the Ready Room before nine.
I was the acting squadron Safety Officer while we waited for a pilot to complete Safety School at Monterey, California. An investigation was already being launched and I would be a big part of it. A UH-1 Huey helicopter was coming up from Corpus Christi to fly a Navy photographer and two other investigators to the site, but I decided to go in a van with supplies and equipment for the investigation rather than wait. It was about 45 miles to the crash site in a wooded farmer's field north of Naval Auxiliary Field Goliad, and as we passed a Navy fire truck returning to base we waved them down to get directions. We weren't far, a right turn on the next dirt road and a couple miles to a gate in the field. Military police had already cordoned off the area. We found the site, set up and started walking the crash area. We got there before the Huey.
Six students on an early event had taken off from Chase in TA-4J Skyhawks and made the five minute trip to Goliad to practice landings for their upcoming carrier qualifications. One by one they reached the initial and turned south for the Goliad runway. Something went wrong with the fifth student to arrive and he flew into the ground. The student behind him was the only witness to the crash. The investigation would determine that in turning to the field, the pilot had apparently been distracted changing radio frequencies. The initial was only 600 feet above the ground, and at 400 knots in a tight turn the plane lost altitude. The pilot apparently looked up to see his predicament at the last second. The wings came level, but the rate of descent was too great.
When we arrived the area looked like a battlefield; small fires, blackened earth and scorched bushes, smoke drifting across the scene and the smell of sulfur. We found some broken tree tops and lights from the plane where it had come down, and then the spot where it had hit the ground. It landed on a tree and flattened it, ripping the roots out so quickly that the dirt came up from the ground and covered the tree. The plane then caught a very hard mesquite tree at the root of the right wing. The wing ripped off and the plane began to tumble end over end. The engine at full bore kept on going until it had shed itself of the entire plane and finally stopped about four hundred yards from the initial point of impact.
We at first were puzzled about what happened to the wing. The plane was in a million pieces, but we couldn't find any wreckage of the wing. We finally found the landing gear at the base of a very large tree and then looked up. The entire wing was hung up in the branches of the tree. Moving forward through the scattered wreckage we started finding body parts. Then in the crook of a little v-shaped tree I knelt down over the most horrible thing I have ever seen. (Stop if you're squeamish.) The left side of the pilot's head, down to the jaw, the face gone, the left half of the neck down to the shoulder, and the left arm, all connected, lay right in the crook of that little tree. Just above on a branch parallel to the ground hung his g-suit without a burn mark on it. The positive ID was made from the dental records on that jaw, but we already knew who he was. Farther ahead we found his feet, one in a boot and one out. Then the cockpit where his pelvic and femur bones, completely devoid of any flesh, still sat in the seat. Then we found his heart with the aorta still attached.
I've never been in combat. I don't know how soldiers and Marines on the battlefield are able to cope when they see their comrades blown apart. I don't know how emergency crews that clean up after terrorist bombings or airline disasters handle it. All I know is that for me for weeks afterward every time I bent over the sink to brush my teeth the vision of those remains in the crook of that tree were in front of me.
As an instructor I made it a point every time I flew with a student for the first time to give him a Gospel tract and invite him to church. Only a couple ever came and none more than once. This particular student was a Marine and I had given him a tract. The last time I had flown with him was two months earlier. He was about to start the Air Combat Maneuvering syllabus, and he got into my back seat to go along for the ride on an ACM hop that I was leading. We did several setups with a student pilot in that stage. I remember his enthusiasm for the flight when in one engagement in a maneuver called a rolling scissors with student behind me I pulled the nose of my airplane up into a stall forcing him to fly out in front of me, and as I dropped the nose he was a sitting duck.
"Wow!" my passenger shouted over the intercom. "That was awesome." He was a nice young man by everybody's account. He had done well in training up until that one momentary lapse. I had the privilege of flying in a Missing Man formation over the base at his memorial service.
We picked up the body parts, put them in bags, and put them in coolers with ice to transport back to the flight surgeon for the autopsy, but we ran out of ice and room in the coolers so some bags were just sitting on the floor in the back of the van. Before we got home the van smelled like a meat locker at a butcher shop. The interesting thing was there was no blood, just chunks of flesh. The flight surgeon told me later it was the result of something called the Venturi effect, which happens when a body is torn apart so violently that the blood literally evaporates.
I never knew his spiritual condition. He was just a good guy, didn't get into trouble. But I couldn't get passed the question, Had I done enough? I think it must be that those in combat develop a coldness of heart, a way to put it behind them and forget it. It almost seems the only way they could keep their sanity. I don't say this as a criticism, but just as a way of trying to reconcile what I saw one time, with what some people have seen multiple times. For me, I don't want to forget. I don't want to lose the conviction of that question that was so penetrating then. "Have I done enough?"
Twenty-five years ago today.
Friday, July 4, 2014
July 4
I hate being overseas on July 4. I hate being separated from my children. I hate missing baseball games, hot dogs, apple pie, BBQ cookouts, fireworks, patriotism and Mom. (Not necessarily in that order although it’s hard to put anything ahead of baseball ... or Mom.)
I hate being away at a time when the country is in such turmoil and uncertainty about who we are and our place in the world. We have a president who is a complete failure as a leader, who is completely devoid of honesty and probity, whose domestic and foreign policies are total disasters that have led to the border crisis and the crumbling of the Middle East. Obama and Napolitano assured us that the border with Mexico had never been more secure. Now there is such a flood of illegals crossing that the government can’t handle them.
Obama assured us that his anti-military decimation of our Armed Forces and his persona of good will would bring Iran to the table and result in a peaceful Middle East. He boasted in 2012 that he had killed bin-Laden and that Al Qaeda was on the run. Now the sacrifice of thousands of Americans in Iraq is being squandered as the ISIS terrorist army, which is bigger than Al Qaeda ever hoped to be, rolls over Syria and Iraq, and Iran, with Russia’s help, is still working on a nuclear weapon and refuses to come to the table for talks. And Russia, unafraid of any Obama red lines, has stolen the Crimea from Ukraine.
America, the benefactor nation of the earth, is mocked, disrespected, and reviled worldwide by the same ungrateful nations that receive free handouts, and Obama, seemingly oblivious of the world that is falling apart around him, plays golf. At least Jimmy Carter could point to the Camp David Accords. Under Obama’s watch all the gains of the last thirty years are being lost. Obama compares himself with Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln, and has been compared by his lemmings to Jesus Christ. A more accurate comparison would be to Neville Chamberlain or Judas Iscariot.
I hate the Obama view of an unexceptional America where the Constitution, patriotism and love of country is mocked and despised. I’ve had numerous debates over the internet with liberals who have so little knowledge of our country and its founding, and so little understanding of history or the world events that made us what we are today, that they consider us all to be illegal aliens and therefore should leave the borders open for “undocumented immigrants,” that we must then take care of because it’s unfair that we have worked hard, achieved, and gotten wealthy while the illegals haven’t.
These are the low-information voters, the Blame-America-First crowd, that the left so lovingly courts, whose only contribution to intelligent discussion is ridicule and name-calling. They blame everything on racism, and bewail that we stole the whole continent from the Native Americans and ought to give it back. When confronted with action, however, not one of them is willing to give back what they personally own or have accumulated to the Indians.
I’m tired of this anti-American crowd that has no appreciation for their freedom, or the blood shed to secure it for them. I’m tired of a community organizer president who is so ignorant as to believe that Muslims had a great part in building America. I’m tired of the hypocrisy of Godless leftists who “boo” God, who rewrite history books and deny the Christian heritage of our Founding Fathers, who condemn Conservatives for violating the separation of church and state because they hold Christian values, and then quote Scriptures that they don’t believe when it is convenient. I’m tired of the moral decay and the spiritual deadness that is leading America to the “ash-heap of nations.”
You know what? I don’t care what the anti-American crowd thinks.
This morning I began my day with The Star Spangled Banner. You can find it on my blog at http://american-flyer.blogspot.com under the picture of the Flag Raising at Iwo Jima. This version by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is, I think, the best choral performance ever recorded. After that I linked to the Whitney Houston rendition at the 1991 Super Bowl. I think that is the best performance bar none that anybody has ever done of our National Anthem.
I couldn’t hold back the tears. I got my patriotism stirred up. At home or abroad, I love America, I love our history, I love our Christian roots, I love our Constitution, I love our progress in spite of our faults, I love that we have become and still are the greatest nation on earth. I love it because, “This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Psalm 118:23). Let us preach it, and enjoy it, and do all we can to turn our country back to the God of our Founding Fathers.
It was George Washington who wrote, “The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations.”
This Independence Day let us acknowledge our obligations to God and country. Let us thank God for granting us the privilege to be born in the greatest country in the history of the world, and let us love America because it is the greatest country on earth. Let us not be ashamed of American exceptionalism. Rather, let's promote it. Let us be thankful because we are a free people and it is our right to play baseball, gorge ourselves on hotdogs, and proudly wave the flag!
“Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I’m not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be.” – John Wayne
I hate being away at a time when the country is in such turmoil and uncertainty about who we are and our place in the world. We have a president who is a complete failure as a leader, who is completely devoid of honesty and probity, whose domestic and foreign policies are total disasters that have led to the border crisis and the crumbling of the Middle East. Obama and Napolitano assured us that the border with Mexico had never been more secure. Now there is such a flood of illegals crossing that the government can’t handle them.
Obama assured us that his anti-military decimation of our Armed Forces and his persona of good will would bring Iran to the table and result in a peaceful Middle East. He boasted in 2012 that he had killed bin-Laden and that Al Qaeda was on the run. Now the sacrifice of thousands of Americans in Iraq is being squandered as the ISIS terrorist army, which is bigger than Al Qaeda ever hoped to be, rolls over Syria and Iraq, and Iran, with Russia’s help, is still working on a nuclear weapon and refuses to come to the table for talks. And Russia, unafraid of any Obama red lines, has stolen the Crimea from Ukraine.
America, the benefactor nation of the earth, is mocked, disrespected, and reviled worldwide by the same ungrateful nations that receive free handouts, and Obama, seemingly oblivious of the world that is falling apart around him, plays golf. At least Jimmy Carter could point to the Camp David Accords. Under Obama’s watch all the gains of the last thirty years are being lost. Obama compares himself with Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln, and has been compared by his lemmings to Jesus Christ. A more accurate comparison would be to Neville Chamberlain or Judas Iscariot.
I hate the Obama view of an unexceptional America where the Constitution, patriotism and love of country is mocked and despised. I’ve had numerous debates over the internet with liberals who have so little knowledge of our country and its founding, and so little understanding of history or the world events that made us what we are today, that they consider us all to be illegal aliens and therefore should leave the borders open for “undocumented immigrants,” that we must then take care of because it’s unfair that we have worked hard, achieved, and gotten wealthy while the illegals haven’t.
These are the low-information voters, the Blame-America-First crowd, that the left so lovingly courts, whose only contribution to intelligent discussion is ridicule and name-calling. They blame everything on racism, and bewail that we stole the whole continent from the Native Americans and ought to give it back. When confronted with action, however, not one of them is willing to give back what they personally own or have accumulated to the Indians.
I’m tired of this anti-American crowd that has no appreciation for their freedom, or the blood shed to secure it for them. I’m tired of a community organizer president who is so ignorant as to believe that Muslims had a great part in building America. I’m tired of the hypocrisy of Godless leftists who “boo” God, who rewrite history books and deny the Christian heritage of our Founding Fathers, who condemn Conservatives for violating the separation of church and state because they hold Christian values, and then quote Scriptures that they don’t believe when it is convenient. I’m tired of the moral decay and the spiritual deadness that is leading America to the “ash-heap of nations.”
You know what? I don’t care what the anti-American crowd thinks.
This morning I began my day with The Star Spangled Banner. You can find it on my blog at http://american-flyer.blogspot.com under the picture of the Flag Raising at Iwo Jima. This version by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is, I think, the best choral performance ever recorded. After that I linked to the Whitney Houston rendition at the 1991 Super Bowl. I think that is the best performance bar none that anybody has ever done of our National Anthem.
I couldn’t hold back the tears. I got my patriotism stirred up. At home or abroad, I love America, I love our history, I love our Christian roots, I love our Constitution, I love our progress in spite of our faults, I love that we have become and still are the greatest nation on earth. I love it because, “This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Psalm 118:23). Let us preach it, and enjoy it, and do all we can to turn our country back to the God of our Founding Fathers.
It was George Washington who wrote, “The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations.”
This Independence Day let us acknowledge our obligations to God and country. Let us thank God for granting us the privilege to be born in the greatest country in the history of the world, and let us love America because it is the greatest country on earth. Let us not be ashamed of American exceptionalism. Rather, let's promote it. Let us be thankful because we are a free people and it is our right to play baseball, gorge ourselves on hotdogs, and proudly wave the flag!
“Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I’m not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be.” – John Wayne
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Prisoner Swap
I'm a little amused but more frustrated by all the pundits wondering what in the world Obama is doing swapping the five most dangerous terrorists in the world for Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl in Afghanistan. Obviously, if nothing else, Obama has broken the law in this prisoner swap, but the bigger picture is the danger negotiating and giving in to terrorists puts American citizens abroad in. Either Obama is totally inept, not only in foreign policy, but in economics and constitutional law as well, or he is an enemy who has infiltrated the highest level of American government with the intent of bringing America down. The cries of treason and impeachment are starting to get louder as the lawless president continues to run the show like a dictator. It's about time.
Obama supposedly taught constitutional law, so he knows exactly how he is trashing it. Ironically, the very ways he accused President Bush of violating the Constitution, spying on Americans for example, are the ways he is actually violating it, and to a much greater degree than President Bush was ever accused of. His policies on the environment, energy production, climate change, illegal immigration and Obamacare are so damaging to the overall economy that he has to be either an absolute idiot (along with all the Democrats and media that support him), or this is part of a well thought out plan to bring about chaos and a constitutional crisis in which he will attempt to turn America into a complete communist state. A brief look at history will reveal that this is the same way Lenin and Hitler consolidated power.
Anyone paying attention should have seen it the moment Obama announced his campaign for the presidency. He said he was going to fundamentally change America. Early on he called for a national police force which everyone scoffed at, but over the last five years several federal departments have been buying up ammunition by the millions of rounds. Departments like State and the Post Office, which have no need for a hundred rounds, much less millions, are spending untold tax dollars on bullets. For what purpose? When someone finally asked what was going on the answer was that it had been a clerical error. But the error hasn't been corrected and now more bureaucratic agencies are buying rounds than before.
It is becoming increasingly clear that every word out of Obama's mouth is a lie. So many lies, in fact, that even the conservative media can't keep up with them. Two weeks ago when Obama gave his short speech about the Veteran's Administration scandal, he made the comment that he was not one to blame others so he took the responsibility for it. Did you catch it? This is the man who blames President Bush for everything, and anything he can't pin on Bush he declares he only learned about it on TV. It's always somebody else's fault. How did Rush and Sean and Greta and O'Reilly and everybody else miss that one?
The problem is Obama has ruled (not governed) and lived extravagantly like a petty third world dictator for almost five years without opposition. The mainstream media never vetted him, conservative media, while they complained about it, refused to follow the birth certificate trail, the conscienceless Democrat Party has fallen all over itself to be the first to bow at Obama's feet regardless of his lawlessness, and until the Obamacare roll out, the Republican Party hardly offered any opposition. Obama has gotten virtually a free pass on everything.
But this is what is happening. Thinking that by now he can get away with whatever he wants, Obama has overreached too far, too fast. Had he squelched his greed until after the November elections he might have gotten away with it, but with scandal after scandal breaking almost daily, and with the lies becoming so incredulous that reporters are openly laughing at administration spokespeople, even some of his most ardent supporters, like Chris "tingly-leg" Matthews, are starting to question his credibility. Well duh!!!
The VA scandal is the one that according to Charles Krauthammer, Brit Hume and others is going to unravel Obama's presidency. So to get attention off of it, Obama releases five terrorist commanders for a "prisoner of war" thinking it would make him look more like a hero to the country for not leaving our boy behind. The problem is it backfired. The country doesn't want a traitor back, especially one who hasn't even called his mother yet since he was repatriated. Furthermore, thinking people don't buy the "leave nobody behind" policy when he abandoned Ambassador Stevens and three others in Libya. And while "I don't blame anybody else" Obama at first took credit for the exchange and defiantly defended it, now he is throwing the blame for the terrorist debacle on Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, but Hagel isn't taking the fall for it. According to him it was Obama's decision.
And now, just when it looks like things couldn't get any worse for Obama, the Benghazi hearings are about to get under way. This is becoming a very bad year for Obama, but it might be the undoing of Hillary Clinton as well. We can only hope that it will be, but what is becoming increasingly frustrating about the whole thing are all the pundits wondering why and unable to figure out what's going on in Obama's head.
It's not hard to understand. Obama is a Muslim. He's anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-white. His concern is leveling the playing field so Islam can take over America. He's trying to do it by destroying not only the military and the economy, and by engendering racial strife, but by corrupting the morality of the nation. The irony of it is, if Sharia Law is ever implemented, all the gays are going to get their throats slit, feminist activists will be enslaved, and Obama will be nothing in a Muslim caliphate because of his support for gays and women's rights. He's brilliant in that he's placed the most liberal anti-American people around him who will support his agenda seemingly to the death, and with the help of sold out Democrats and the lock-step, non-discerning media he's gotten away with it so far.
At the same time he's a stooge. His strings are being pulled by communist ideologues who want to destroy a free America and will throw him to the dogs as soon as they're done with him. Obama is a traitor at least, but more likely he's a criminal illegal alien plant who should be arrested and sent to Guantanamo Bay in place of the terrorists he let out.
Obama supposedly taught constitutional law, so he knows exactly how he is trashing it. Ironically, the very ways he accused President Bush of violating the Constitution, spying on Americans for example, are the ways he is actually violating it, and to a much greater degree than President Bush was ever accused of. His policies on the environment, energy production, climate change, illegal immigration and Obamacare are so damaging to the overall economy that he has to be either an absolute idiot (along with all the Democrats and media that support him), or this is part of a well thought out plan to bring about chaos and a constitutional crisis in which he will attempt to turn America into a complete communist state. A brief look at history will reveal that this is the same way Lenin and Hitler consolidated power.
Anyone paying attention should have seen it the moment Obama announced his campaign for the presidency. He said he was going to fundamentally change America. Early on he called for a national police force which everyone scoffed at, but over the last five years several federal departments have been buying up ammunition by the millions of rounds. Departments like State and the Post Office, which have no need for a hundred rounds, much less millions, are spending untold tax dollars on bullets. For what purpose? When someone finally asked what was going on the answer was that it had been a clerical error. But the error hasn't been corrected and now more bureaucratic agencies are buying rounds than before.
It is becoming increasingly clear that every word out of Obama's mouth is a lie. So many lies, in fact, that even the conservative media can't keep up with them. Two weeks ago when Obama gave his short speech about the Veteran's Administration scandal, he made the comment that he was not one to blame others so he took the responsibility for it. Did you catch it? This is the man who blames President Bush for everything, and anything he can't pin on Bush he declares he only learned about it on TV. It's always somebody else's fault. How did Rush and Sean and Greta and O'Reilly and everybody else miss that one?
The problem is Obama has ruled (not governed) and lived extravagantly like a petty third world dictator for almost five years without opposition. The mainstream media never vetted him, conservative media, while they complained about it, refused to follow the birth certificate trail, the conscienceless Democrat Party has fallen all over itself to be the first to bow at Obama's feet regardless of his lawlessness, and until the Obamacare roll out, the Republican Party hardly offered any opposition. Obama has gotten virtually a free pass on everything.
But this is what is happening. Thinking that by now he can get away with whatever he wants, Obama has overreached too far, too fast. Had he squelched his greed until after the November elections he might have gotten away with it, but with scandal after scandal breaking almost daily, and with the lies becoming so incredulous that reporters are openly laughing at administration spokespeople, even some of his most ardent supporters, like Chris "tingly-leg" Matthews, are starting to question his credibility. Well duh!!!
The VA scandal is the one that according to Charles Krauthammer, Brit Hume and others is going to unravel Obama's presidency. So to get attention off of it, Obama releases five terrorist commanders for a "prisoner of war" thinking it would make him look more like a hero to the country for not leaving our boy behind. The problem is it backfired. The country doesn't want a traitor back, especially one who hasn't even called his mother yet since he was repatriated. Furthermore, thinking people don't buy the "leave nobody behind" policy when he abandoned Ambassador Stevens and three others in Libya. And while "I don't blame anybody else" Obama at first took credit for the exchange and defiantly defended it, now he is throwing the blame for the terrorist debacle on Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, but Hagel isn't taking the fall for it. According to him it was Obama's decision.
And now, just when it looks like things couldn't get any worse for Obama, the Benghazi hearings are about to get under way. This is becoming a very bad year for Obama, but it might be the undoing of Hillary Clinton as well. We can only hope that it will be, but what is becoming increasingly frustrating about the whole thing are all the pundits wondering why and unable to figure out what's going on in Obama's head.
It's not hard to understand. Obama is a Muslim. He's anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-white. His concern is leveling the playing field so Islam can take over America. He's trying to do it by destroying not only the military and the economy, and by engendering racial strife, but by corrupting the morality of the nation. The irony of it is, if Sharia Law is ever implemented, all the gays are going to get their throats slit, feminist activists will be enslaved, and Obama will be nothing in a Muslim caliphate because of his support for gays and women's rights. He's brilliant in that he's placed the most liberal anti-American people around him who will support his agenda seemingly to the death, and with the help of sold out Democrats and the lock-step, non-discerning media he's gotten away with it so far.
At the same time he's a stooge. His strings are being pulled by communist ideologues who want to destroy a free America and will throw him to the dogs as soon as they're done with him. Obama is a traitor at least, but more likely he's a criminal illegal alien plant who should be arrested and sent to Guantanamo Bay in place of the terrorists he let out.
Monday, May 26, 2014
Two Memorial Day Birthdays
Today is Memorial Day, the day we honor our heroes, the ones who have given "the last full measure of devotion." It is a day we take off to relax with family and friends and celebrate the good things those heroes have preserved for us. In all our barbecues, ball games, and fun, let's not forget that it is all possible because somebody spilled his blood to ensure our freedom to take the day off.
Today is also the birthday of two great Americans. One everybody knows, even world wide. He was Mr. America. Born in Winterset, Iowa in 1907, he rose from obscurity to be one of Hollywood's greatest stars, but more importantly, the greatest cheerleader of true American values in the last hundred years. Even though he passed away thirty-five years ago, his popularity and influence has not subsided. When other superstars pass from the scene they are relatively forgotten in a short time. The legacy of John "Duke" Wayne, however, has never declined, and today he is as popular as he ever was. Good, honest patriotism, shoot straight, tell it like it is, stand up for the little guy. John Wayne - American.
The other is also well known on a world wide scale, although not by as many perhaps as Duke Wayne. He is also a patriot, having served in Patton's Third Army in World War 2, landing at Utah Beach in the D-Day invasion. Also born in Iowa, in the little town of Ringsted in 1925, he grew up through the depression in the most difficult of times and situations. He often had to be out in the fields working the farm when he should have been in school, because his father was sick with a bad heart, asthma and rheumatism. And somehow the family survived. After the War he enrolled in Bible college, served under Harvey Springer at the First Baptist Church of Englewood, Colorado, and then founded the East Side Baptist Church in 1956. In 1972 he became the Missions Director of the Baptist Bible Fellowship, International and began a ministry of overseeing and encouraging missionaries, raising funds for their work, and preaching at mission conferences in all fifty States and in dozens of countries around the world.
His legacy is not on celluloid; it is in souls. Tens of thousands have been won to Christ because of the burden and passion of my uncle, Dr. Carl Boonstra. He turns 89 today, and even thought his eyesight is going bad and he can hardly drive anymore, he still preaches dozens of times every year. He is my spiritual father, mentor, and hero and I love him with all my heart.
Happy Birthday Uncle.
Today is also the birthday of two great Americans. One everybody knows, even world wide. He was Mr. America. Born in Winterset, Iowa in 1907, he rose from obscurity to be one of Hollywood's greatest stars, but more importantly, the greatest cheerleader of true American values in the last hundred years. Even though he passed away thirty-five years ago, his popularity and influence has not subsided. When other superstars pass from the scene they are relatively forgotten in a short time. The legacy of John "Duke" Wayne, however, has never declined, and today he is as popular as he ever was. Good, honest patriotism, shoot straight, tell it like it is, stand up for the little guy. John Wayne - American.
The other is also well known on a world wide scale, although not by as many perhaps as Duke Wayne. He is also a patriot, having served in Patton's Third Army in World War 2, landing at Utah Beach in the D-Day invasion. Also born in Iowa, in the little town of Ringsted in 1925, he grew up through the depression in the most difficult of times and situations. He often had to be out in the fields working the farm when he should have been in school, because his father was sick with a bad heart, asthma and rheumatism. And somehow the family survived. After the War he enrolled in Bible college, served under Harvey Springer at the First Baptist Church of Englewood, Colorado, and then founded the East Side Baptist Church in 1956. In 1972 he became the Missions Director of the Baptist Bible Fellowship, International and began a ministry of overseeing and encouraging missionaries, raising funds for their work, and preaching at mission conferences in all fifty States and in dozens of countries around the world.
His legacy is not on celluloid; it is in souls. Tens of thousands have been won to Christ because of the burden and passion of my uncle, Dr. Carl Boonstra. He turns 89 today, and even thought his eyesight is going bad and he can hardly drive anymore, he still preaches dozens of times every year. He is my spiritual father, mentor, and hero and I love him with all my heart.
Happy Birthday Uncle.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Tea Party Agenda
In 2009 my wife and I attended a Tea Party event in Springfield, Missouri. We liked and supported the Tea Party's efforts and as you remember, the 2010 midterm elections were a conservative landslide. The Tea Party fired up a successful grassroots movement that caught the attention of America and drove a conservative agenda that took control of the House of Representatives, but even with their successes, they put their support behind some candidates that were less than optimum, and lost races that may have been won with other candidates.
Three candidates, two women and one man as I remember, vied for the nod to run against Harry Reid. The Tea Party came out heavy in support of Sharon Angle, over the man (whose name I don't remember) who was a much better qualified candidate. Angle was a good woman, but she was outclassed by Reid in debate and the opportunity to win the seat was thrown away. The same thing happened with a Senate seat in New Jersey.
I support the Tea Party and its positions on limited government, closing the IRS and secure borders. I think, however, that the most important thing for conservatives in the coming 2014 elections is to gain control of the Senate and to increase the Republican majority in the House. To that end Tea Party conservatives and establishment Republicans need to begin to work together to ensure a united front and victories in the coming elections.
The Tea Party Agenda includes removing those they consider to be RINO Republicans, and they are supporting candidates across the country against the minority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, against the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, and others such as South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. In time perhaps these men should be replaced with more conservative candidates, but for the coming elections it is more important that Democrat candidates be defeated first. Once the Republicans have control of Congress then they can work at making the party more conservative.
The Tea Party has had victories in Nebraska and West Virginia and they are supporting conservative candidates around the country, but supporting candidates against entrenched incumbents who are not likely to lose is a waste of money that would be better spent in the general election against the Democrats. In North Carolina the Tea Party gave its support to two candidates who split the vote against the establishment choice. Their support was wasted. With that in mind, however, the same applies to the establishment Republicans. The Tea Party engineered the House majority in 2010 and they are gaining momentum for the coming elections. The establishment cannot just ignore them. There needs to be a consensus and a working together to ensure victory this November.
Ann Coulter recently wrote a column about stupid Republicans who throw away elections by fighting each other rather than concentrating on their Democrat opponents. She showed how at least five Senate seats could have been won in 2012 by Republicans if they had stopped attacking themselves and united for the better good.
In the coming elections she should take her own advice. There is not a better example of Republican cannibalism than that of Todd Aiken in Missouri in 2012. Aiken, a strong conservative, was leading in the polls against ultra liberal Claire McCaskill. Then he made an off-the-cuff comment about rape that was nothing short of ignorant. He immediately apologized and tried to explain himself, but the damage was done. His destruction, however, was done by Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and the establishment Republicans who excoriated Aiken, were relentless in their criticism of him, and made every effort they could to make sure he did not win the Senate seat in Missouri. The Republican Party as well as the Tea Party abandoned Aiken and the seat went to McCaskill. The Republicans did all the campaigning for the Democrats and gave the seat to McCaskill. And Ann Coulter still calls Aiken an idiot. You have to wonder who the real idiot is.
I'd like to ask Coulter and all the rest of them, how big of an idiot is Claire McCaskill, and how many stupid things has she said in being the most liberal Obama supporter in the Senate? So Aiken made one stupid comment. Has Ann, Rush or Sean never made a comment that they later regretted making? Wouldn't it have been much better to have Aiken with his one dumb comment than McCaskill and her 100% support of all of Obama's dumb comments?
Wake up Republicans. Wake up Tea Party. We may have some differences of opinions, but we're on the same side. The only way we're going to win in November is to stop fighting ourselves and concentrate on the Democrats who are rubber stamping Obama's train wreck to destruction.
Three candidates, two women and one man as I remember, vied for the nod to run against Harry Reid. The Tea Party came out heavy in support of Sharon Angle, over the man (whose name I don't remember) who was a much better qualified candidate. Angle was a good woman, but she was outclassed by Reid in debate and the opportunity to win the seat was thrown away. The same thing happened with a Senate seat in New Jersey.
I support the Tea Party and its positions on limited government, closing the IRS and secure borders. I think, however, that the most important thing for conservatives in the coming 2014 elections is to gain control of the Senate and to increase the Republican majority in the House. To that end Tea Party conservatives and establishment Republicans need to begin to work together to ensure a united front and victories in the coming elections.
The Tea Party Agenda includes removing those they consider to be RINO Republicans, and they are supporting candidates across the country against the minority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, against the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, and others such as South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. In time perhaps these men should be replaced with more conservative candidates, but for the coming elections it is more important that Democrat candidates be defeated first. Once the Republicans have control of Congress then they can work at making the party more conservative.
The Tea Party has had victories in Nebraska and West Virginia and they are supporting conservative candidates around the country, but supporting candidates against entrenched incumbents who are not likely to lose is a waste of money that would be better spent in the general election against the Democrats. In North Carolina the Tea Party gave its support to two candidates who split the vote against the establishment choice. Their support was wasted. With that in mind, however, the same applies to the establishment Republicans. The Tea Party engineered the House majority in 2010 and they are gaining momentum for the coming elections. The establishment cannot just ignore them. There needs to be a consensus and a working together to ensure victory this November.
Ann Coulter recently wrote a column about stupid Republicans who throw away elections by fighting each other rather than concentrating on their Democrat opponents. She showed how at least five Senate seats could have been won in 2012 by Republicans if they had stopped attacking themselves and united for the better good.
In the coming elections she should take her own advice. There is not a better example of Republican cannibalism than that of Todd Aiken in Missouri in 2012. Aiken, a strong conservative, was leading in the polls against ultra liberal Claire McCaskill. Then he made an off-the-cuff comment about rape that was nothing short of ignorant. He immediately apologized and tried to explain himself, but the damage was done. His destruction, however, was done by Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and the establishment Republicans who excoriated Aiken, were relentless in their criticism of him, and made every effort they could to make sure he did not win the Senate seat in Missouri. The Republican Party as well as the Tea Party abandoned Aiken and the seat went to McCaskill. The Republicans did all the campaigning for the Democrats and gave the seat to McCaskill. And Ann Coulter still calls Aiken an idiot. You have to wonder who the real idiot is.
I'd like to ask Coulter and all the rest of them, how big of an idiot is Claire McCaskill, and how many stupid things has she said in being the most liberal Obama supporter in the Senate? So Aiken made one stupid comment. Has Ann, Rush or Sean never made a comment that they later regretted making? Wouldn't it have been much better to have Aiken with his one dumb comment than McCaskill and her 100% support of all of Obama's dumb comments?
Wake up Republicans. Wake up Tea Party. We may have some differences of opinions, but we're on the same side. The only way we're going to win in November is to stop fighting ourselves and concentrate on the Democrats who are rubber stamping Obama's train wreck to destruction.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Brother Joe
Last Saturday, April 20, we said goodbye to Jose "Brother Joe" Ornias. He had been in poor health for awhile, and sometime early Tuesday morning in his sleep he passed through the portals of heaven. His earthly travail ended at age 65.
I had kind of a love-hate relationship with Bro. Joe. A lot of people did. He had a way of irritating even his friends, but he was full of charisma, a very compelling person. It was almost impossible not to like him, and then like him again after the next irritation.
I first met Bro. Joe almost 29 years ago. The day was hot and muggy when I stepped off the Flying Tigers 747 at Clark Air Base in Angeles City. A van from my new squadron was waiting to pick me and about six enlisted sailors up and take us to Subic Bay. We drove out of the city, across a wide flood plain, over some low jungle covered hills and then down a long straight section of road under an archway of tall trees. At the end of the stretch we crossed a bridge and I noticed to my left down the hill a house by the creek. Quaint, I thought and took note of it.
Three days later I went out to town looking for a particular church I had been told about, Bible Baptist. The roads were so full of potholes in those days and some of them could almost swallow a small car and as one of my squadron mates drove me out we passed right by the church and didn't see it for all the signs and marquees and holes. At the corner of tenth street, however, I saw a sign that said, Fundamental Baptist Church, Services in English. I said, that must be it, and I went in. It wasn't the church I was looking for, but it was a church that would be a part of my life until this day.
One of the first people I met at the church was Bro. Joe. Medium height, round belly, and a toothy grin from ear to ear. He talked loud and enthusiastically and told me all about the church. He wanted to show me his "farm." I didn't know what to think, he was kind of overbearing. Two weeks later I was back to the church and he set it up for me to sing a song while he played. (That was the day I met Lhey, my future wife, and she thought I was stuck up and said to herself, Lord, that man will never be my friend!) I still remember I sang "It Will Be Worth It All."
After church Bro. Joe took me in his old blue Tamaraw, kind of like a jeepney only smaller, over the highway known as the "zig-zag," because it went around several hairpin turns going over the hills, out to the farm. It was the house on the side of the road that I had noticed coming in. He showed me pictures of his adopted children, Arthur and Jackie. Later we went into town and picked up so many kids in the Tamaraw that they were hanging on the sides and brought them to church for a Bible club meeting. After church he took me and Lucy Delgado, one of the church workers, around the bay to the White Rock Beach hotel and resort. He said it was the best restaurant in town. I thought, how cool, he's buying me dinner. Then the check came. He turned and looked in the opposite direction and the waiter dropped it in front of me. That became routine with Bro. Joe. He was always scheming or scamming trying to raise money, and always looking for a way to get a free meal.
He seemed to know everybody. Every policeman on every corner was his friend. He told me he knew Mayor Gordon, but I didn't believe him. I learned today that he actually did know the mayor. He knew everything about the town, and he took me everywhere to see it all. One day we went to the police station and he introduced me to the police captain, Noli Tejada. He really did know a lot of policemen.
One time we climbed the mountain behind his home. He had a garden up there and a cashew tree. The cashews had been picked but there was one left and he gave it to me. I'll bet you didn't know the fruit above the nut is really quite good. You could see over the green forested hills forever, all the way to Subic Bay five miles away. In 2011 we climbed up there again. He said he wanted to build a youth camp. At the time he was using a cane, and the climb was harder because of a new highway that cut across the side of the mountain. To cross we had to go through a culvert that was about five feet high under the road and climb out on a ladder. He made it all the way up there, cane and all, and shared his vision to reach more young people.
Besides the church, Bro. Joe's passion was Bible Basketball. Every year he organized a league, and this time as they were getting ready to start he told me that I was the chaplain. He didn't ask, he just appointed me. Ten or twelve of the young college students at the church had gotten kids together from their neighborhoods and formed teams and they had a round robin tourney, but before they played every night they had to attend the Bible study. Through that I got to lead three young boys to the Lord. My first "mission" experience. The winning team was sent by the church to the Word of Life camp in Laguna.
About that time Bro. Joe decided I was right for his niece, and he brought her up from wherever to try and set me up with her. I wasn't interested. He had other connections that got him on the base, and he kept bringing her by my room. I told her I wasn't interested but I couldn't make her understand or him until at Christmas when she gave me a gift and I gave it back. She was hurt, and he was angry, and he started spreading rumors about me, and I was furious. It got so bad I almost quit the church, but one night I had it out with him. If we'd been in the States I'd have knocked him on his can, but US-Filipino relations were tense in those days and an American could get arrested for almost looking at somebody wrong, and I didn't trust Bro. Joe. Anybody who thinks I'm short tempered should have seen me restrain myself that night. But after we yelled and shouted, we prayed and settled our differences. We continued to hang out together and I continued to buy dinner.
In the Spring of 1986 our church young people had gone to youth camp in Masinloc, about two hours up the coast. Paul Fernandez, another sailor attending the church, and I had supported some of the young people, so on Friday we took off work early and Paul drove us up along with Bro. Joe and two others, Jimmy Agabon and Sam Abad. We spent the night at the camp, then drove up to the Coto Mines, where another of our church Bible college students, Boyet, was doing his summer internship at the church in the mining camp. On the way a big mining truck cut us off at a curve and ran us off the road. They stopped and helped us get the car on the road, but the steering was messed up and we couldn't turn full to the right. At some of the curves we had to stop and back up to make little turns to get around. At the mines they had a mechanic who fixed the car enough so we could get home. That night we all slept at the pastor's house on straw mats on a hard wood floor. Only slightly better than the straw mats on the concrete floor we'd slept on the night before. Bro. Joe, on his back, snored so loud I'd never heard anything like it, and I finally went out and laid down in the car.
Bro. Joe had family in Seattle and he lived there for a number of years and wasn't here when Mt. Pinatubo erupted. The roof on his house collapsed but he came back and fixed it up. There were too many people depending on him to leave it. He finally moved back here permanently some years ago, but we'd only see him occasionally whenever we passed through the Philippines on our way to Kenya or back. In 2005-06 we took a hiatus from Kenya and I pastored this church trying to help them find a new pastor. When we arrived back here again last August they were without a pastor again, and Bro. Joe began campaigning for them to call me. At first I said no, because we had other plans, and they were candidating people. But they didn't get anyone, so I said I would help on an interim basis if they wanted and in January the church called me.
Bro. Joe's health had been fading. His kidneys had shut down last fall and he was swollen twice his normal size. We visited him in the hospital. After they drained the fluids he was back home, but getting weaker. In January he was in the hospital again and really looking bad. We thought he might die then. One night we got some church members and we went to the hospital and anointed him with oil and prayed for him. He started to improve. They drained the fluids, his kidneys started working, and he went home again. He was in a wheel chair, but on our church anniversary he determined he would be there and he came. We carried him in and he sat right up front. We paid him a visit a couple weeks later and he was still unable to walk, but then at his birthday in February he invited us out. We were happily shocked to see him walking around and looking very good.
Our schedule has been so full the last two months and with my masters studies I've hardly had spare time, so we hadn't been back out to the farm. Just last week Lhey and I were talking that after Easter when things slow down we had to go visit him. And then we got the text message Tuesday. The vigil started that night. About forty people from our church went out. Al Bondad, who was a groomsman in our wedding, is a pastor and he spoke. Wednesday we couldn't go because of church services, but our "daughter" church that we started in 1991 in that area, held the service. Thursday and Friday we held the service at the farm. I had another pastor friend of Bro. Joe's, James Reyes, preach Thursday, and I did Friday. There were over 100 people at the house. At 7:30 Saturday morning we had a service at the church. They brought the body in. Over 80 people came and the former pastor, Jihan Senina preached. As we closed the service I led the congregation in the Doug Oldham song, To God be the Glory, and the church sang like there was no tomorrow. It was a rousing end to our celebration of his life before going out to the cemetery.
Bro. Joe was an enigma. He could be a scoundrel and somehow a humble servant of God at the same time. He always had a plan. He was always scheming some way to raise money, and he knew he could get it from Americans. I don't know where he had his connections, but every time the fleet was in he was finding sailors somewhere and bringing them to church and trying to talk them into supporting the work. I never trusted Bro. Joe when it came to money, but deep inside he had a big heart.
I think a lot of people don't know it anymore, but Bro. Joe was quite talented musically. He could play the piano well and sing. He used to play and sing solo specials at church. His favorite was the one we sang Saturday morning. "How can I say thanks, for the things you have done for me?" He would do a big arpeggio on the piano, and he was so expressive when he sang.
In 1975 Dr. Manuel Badar, who was president of the Baptist Bible Seminary and Institute in Manila and really a great man of God, preached a service at Bible Baptist Church in Olongapo. Lhey went forward in the invitation and it was Bro. Joe that prayed with her while she accepted the Lord. Later that year Bro. Joe, along with Lhey's Aunt Wilma, and another friend, Doctora Cacho, left Bible Baptist to start a new work. They struggled for a number of years, meeting in different locations, until Sam Butcher, the creator of the Precious Moments figurines and cards, donated money to buy property and build a building. Sam Butcher had a doll factory in Iloilo here in the Philippines, and I'm certain Bro. Joe got hold of him some how and charmed him into making a donation. It was a worthy gift as the church continues to this day. It speaks of Bro. Joe's vision, however. He was always thinking of how to reach and help people (after he padded his pocket).
Bro. Joe used the Bible Basketball ministry to reach the youth in the town, and he reached hundreds of them. One of them was Noli Tejada, who went on to become the police captain. Another was Ramon Reyes. You might remember when we were here in 2011 that I preached a funeral service for Ramon. He had been killed in a car accident. Ramon had been a gang leader. He was a rough and tough street fighting kid. Bro. Joe worked with him for three years before he got saved. Ramon brought his whole family to the Lord, went to Bible college, worked at the Word of Life camp, and pastored a church. And he was only one. Another that I know is Godfrey Santonil, who pastors a very large church today south of Manila. Bro. Joe's son, Arthur, had been a ten year old drug dealer when Bro. Joe brought him in. Arthur said at the funeral that he counted at least 60 young men that Bro. Joe had reached that had gone into some kind of Gospel ministry, some temporarily and some permanent.
Bro. Joe was never married, and I don't think any of his kids were legally adopted. He picked them up off the street, others had widowed mothers or very poor families. I think there are five that he considered his, and who all called him Papa, but there were many others he helped along the way.
Bro. Joe was always laughing and smiling. He saw humor in everything. One time I was flying out to Okinawa the next day and I was trying to learn Tagalog. So before I left church I said, "Ako ay babalik." I shall return. Bro. Joe started yelling, "Oh! MacArthur!" Then he had everybody laughing. How fitting it was when Jackie went into his room Tuesday morning and found him he had a smile on his face. No doubt when the angel came and said it's time, his lips turned up into a smile as he got up to cross the river.
All week long I've had a tune running through my head with a slight variation of the words. Anybody remember Hank Williams and Jambalaya?
Goodbye Joe, he gotta go, me-o-my-o. He gotta go pole the pirogue down the bayou.
It seems appropriate. I can just see Bro. Joe standing in a flat-bottom scow with that great big smile on his face, waving as he poles his way into the mist across the swamp and on into glory.
Well, I've practically written his biography now, and if you've read this far, thanks for letting me take your time to reminisce about a very unusual character who has been a part of my life. I think someday up in heaven he and I are going to climb a mountain somewhere together and look out over the jungle-covered hills out to the ocean and eat cashews.
I had kind of a love-hate relationship with Bro. Joe. A lot of people did. He had a way of irritating even his friends, but he was full of charisma, a very compelling person. It was almost impossible not to like him, and then like him again after the next irritation.
I first met Bro. Joe almost 29 years ago. The day was hot and muggy when I stepped off the Flying Tigers 747 at Clark Air Base in Angeles City. A van from my new squadron was waiting to pick me and about six enlisted sailors up and take us to Subic Bay. We drove out of the city, across a wide flood plain, over some low jungle covered hills and then down a long straight section of road under an archway of tall trees. At the end of the stretch we crossed a bridge and I noticed to my left down the hill a house by the creek. Quaint, I thought and took note of it.
Three days later I went out to town looking for a particular church I had been told about, Bible Baptist. The roads were so full of potholes in those days and some of them could almost swallow a small car and as one of my squadron mates drove me out we passed right by the church and didn't see it for all the signs and marquees and holes. At the corner of tenth street, however, I saw a sign that said, Fundamental Baptist Church, Services in English. I said, that must be it, and I went in. It wasn't the church I was looking for, but it was a church that would be a part of my life until this day.
One of the first people I met at the church was Bro. Joe. Medium height, round belly, and a toothy grin from ear to ear. He talked loud and enthusiastically and told me all about the church. He wanted to show me his "farm." I didn't know what to think, he was kind of overbearing. Two weeks later I was back to the church and he set it up for me to sing a song while he played. (That was the day I met Lhey, my future wife, and she thought I was stuck up and said to herself, Lord, that man will never be my friend!) I still remember I sang "It Will Be Worth It All."
After church Bro. Joe took me in his old blue Tamaraw, kind of like a jeepney only smaller, over the highway known as the "zig-zag," because it went around several hairpin turns going over the hills, out to the farm. It was the house on the side of the road that I had noticed coming in. He showed me pictures of his adopted children, Arthur and Jackie. Later we went into town and picked up so many kids in the Tamaraw that they were hanging on the sides and brought them to church for a Bible club meeting. After church he took me and Lucy Delgado, one of the church workers, around the bay to the White Rock Beach hotel and resort. He said it was the best restaurant in town. I thought, how cool, he's buying me dinner. Then the check came. He turned and looked in the opposite direction and the waiter dropped it in front of me. That became routine with Bro. Joe. He was always scheming or scamming trying to raise money, and always looking for a way to get a free meal.
He seemed to know everybody. Every policeman on every corner was his friend. He told me he knew Mayor Gordon, but I didn't believe him. I learned today that he actually did know the mayor. He knew everything about the town, and he took me everywhere to see it all. One day we went to the police station and he introduced me to the police captain, Noli Tejada. He really did know a lot of policemen.
One time we climbed the mountain behind his home. He had a garden up there and a cashew tree. The cashews had been picked but there was one left and he gave it to me. I'll bet you didn't know the fruit above the nut is really quite good. You could see over the green forested hills forever, all the way to Subic Bay five miles away. In 2011 we climbed up there again. He said he wanted to build a youth camp. At the time he was using a cane, and the climb was harder because of a new highway that cut across the side of the mountain. To cross we had to go through a culvert that was about five feet high under the road and climb out on a ladder. He made it all the way up there, cane and all, and shared his vision to reach more young people.
Besides the church, Bro. Joe's passion was Bible Basketball. Every year he organized a league, and this time as they were getting ready to start he told me that I was the chaplain. He didn't ask, he just appointed me. Ten or twelve of the young college students at the church had gotten kids together from their neighborhoods and formed teams and they had a round robin tourney, but before they played every night they had to attend the Bible study. Through that I got to lead three young boys to the Lord. My first "mission" experience. The winning team was sent by the church to the Word of Life camp in Laguna.
About that time Bro. Joe decided I was right for his niece, and he brought her up from wherever to try and set me up with her. I wasn't interested. He had other connections that got him on the base, and he kept bringing her by my room. I told her I wasn't interested but I couldn't make her understand or him until at Christmas when she gave me a gift and I gave it back. She was hurt, and he was angry, and he started spreading rumors about me, and I was furious. It got so bad I almost quit the church, but one night I had it out with him. If we'd been in the States I'd have knocked him on his can, but US-Filipino relations were tense in those days and an American could get arrested for almost looking at somebody wrong, and I didn't trust Bro. Joe. Anybody who thinks I'm short tempered should have seen me restrain myself that night. But after we yelled and shouted, we prayed and settled our differences. We continued to hang out together and I continued to buy dinner.
In the Spring of 1986 our church young people had gone to youth camp in Masinloc, about two hours up the coast. Paul Fernandez, another sailor attending the church, and I had supported some of the young people, so on Friday we took off work early and Paul drove us up along with Bro. Joe and two others, Jimmy Agabon and Sam Abad. We spent the night at the camp, then drove up to the Coto Mines, where another of our church Bible college students, Boyet, was doing his summer internship at the church in the mining camp. On the way a big mining truck cut us off at a curve and ran us off the road. They stopped and helped us get the car on the road, but the steering was messed up and we couldn't turn full to the right. At some of the curves we had to stop and back up to make little turns to get around. At the mines they had a mechanic who fixed the car enough so we could get home. That night we all slept at the pastor's house on straw mats on a hard wood floor. Only slightly better than the straw mats on the concrete floor we'd slept on the night before. Bro. Joe, on his back, snored so loud I'd never heard anything like it, and I finally went out and laid down in the car.
Bro. Joe had family in Seattle and he lived there for a number of years and wasn't here when Mt. Pinatubo erupted. The roof on his house collapsed but he came back and fixed it up. There were too many people depending on him to leave it. He finally moved back here permanently some years ago, but we'd only see him occasionally whenever we passed through the Philippines on our way to Kenya or back. In 2005-06 we took a hiatus from Kenya and I pastored this church trying to help them find a new pastor. When we arrived back here again last August they were without a pastor again, and Bro. Joe began campaigning for them to call me. At first I said no, because we had other plans, and they were candidating people. But they didn't get anyone, so I said I would help on an interim basis if they wanted and in January the church called me.
Bro. Joe's health had been fading. His kidneys had shut down last fall and he was swollen twice his normal size. We visited him in the hospital. After they drained the fluids he was back home, but getting weaker. In January he was in the hospital again and really looking bad. We thought he might die then. One night we got some church members and we went to the hospital and anointed him with oil and prayed for him. He started to improve. They drained the fluids, his kidneys started working, and he went home again. He was in a wheel chair, but on our church anniversary he determined he would be there and he came. We carried him in and he sat right up front. We paid him a visit a couple weeks later and he was still unable to walk, but then at his birthday in February he invited us out. We were happily shocked to see him walking around and looking very good.
Our schedule has been so full the last two months and with my masters studies I've hardly had spare time, so we hadn't been back out to the farm. Just last week Lhey and I were talking that after Easter when things slow down we had to go visit him. And then we got the text message Tuesday. The vigil started that night. About forty people from our church went out. Al Bondad, who was a groomsman in our wedding, is a pastor and he spoke. Wednesday we couldn't go because of church services, but our "daughter" church that we started in 1991 in that area, held the service. Thursday and Friday we held the service at the farm. I had another pastor friend of Bro. Joe's, James Reyes, preach Thursday, and I did Friday. There were over 100 people at the house. At 7:30 Saturday morning we had a service at the church. They brought the body in. Over 80 people came and the former pastor, Jihan Senina preached. As we closed the service I led the congregation in the Doug Oldham song, To God be the Glory, and the church sang like there was no tomorrow. It was a rousing end to our celebration of his life before going out to the cemetery.
Bro. Joe was an enigma. He could be a scoundrel and somehow a humble servant of God at the same time. He always had a plan. He was always scheming some way to raise money, and he knew he could get it from Americans. I don't know where he had his connections, but every time the fleet was in he was finding sailors somewhere and bringing them to church and trying to talk them into supporting the work. I never trusted Bro. Joe when it came to money, but deep inside he had a big heart.
I think a lot of people don't know it anymore, but Bro. Joe was quite talented musically. He could play the piano well and sing. He used to play and sing solo specials at church. His favorite was the one we sang Saturday morning. "How can I say thanks, for the things you have done for me?" He would do a big arpeggio on the piano, and he was so expressive when he sang.
In 1975 Dr. Manuel Badar, who was president of the Baptist Bible Seminary and Institute in Manila and really a great man of God, preached a service at Bible Baptist Church in Olongapo. Lhey went forward in the invitation and it was Bro. Joe that prayed with her while she accepted the Lord. Later that year Bro. Joe, along with Lhey's Aunt Wilma, and another friend, Doctora Cacho, left Bible Baptist to start a new work. They struggled for a number of years, meeting in different locations, until Sam Butcher, the creator of the Precious Moments figurines and cards, donated money to buy property and build a building. Sam Butcher had a doll factory in Iloilo here in the Philippines, and I'm certain Bro. Joe got hold of him some how and charmed him into making a donation. It was a worthy gift as the church continues to this day. It speaks of Bro. Joe's vision, however. He was always thinking of how to reach and help people (after he padded his pocket).
Bro. Joe used the Bible Basketball ministry to reach the youth in the town, and he reached hundreds of them. One of them was Noli Tejada, who went on to become the police captain. Another was Ramon Reyes. You might remember when we were here in 2011 that I preached a funeral service for Ramon. He had been killed in a car accident. Ramon had been a gang leader. He was a rough and tough street fighting kid. Bro. Joe worked with him for three years before he got saved. Ramon brought his whole family to the Lord, went to Bible college, worked at the Word of Life camp, and pastored a church. And he was only one. Another that I know is Godfrey Santonil, who pastors a very large church today south of Manila. Bro. Joe's son, Arthur, had been a ten year old drug dealer when Bro. Joe brought him in. Arthur said at the funeral that he counted at least 60 young men that Bro. Joe had reached that had gone into some kind of Gospel ministry, some temporarily and some permanent.
Bro. Joe was never married, and I don't think any of his kids were legally adopted. He picked them up off the street, others had widowed mothers or very poor families. I think there are five that he considered his, and who all called him Papa, but there were many others he helped along the way.
Bro. Joe was always laughing and smiling. He saw humor in everything. One time I was flying out to Okinawa the next day and I was trying to learn Tagalog. So before I left church I said, "Ako ay babalik." I shall return. Bro. Joe started yelling, "Oh! MacArthur!" Then he had everybody laughing. How fitting it was when Jackie went into his room Tuesday morning and found him he had a smile on his face. No doubt when the angel came and said it's time, his lips turned up into a smile as he got up to cross the river.
All week long I've had a tune running through my head with a slight variation of the words. Anybody remember Hank Williams and Jambalaya?
Goodbye Joe, he gotta go, me-o-my-o. He gotta go pole the pirogue down the bayou.
It seems appropriate. I can just see Bro. Joe standing in a flat-bottom scow with that great big smile on his face, waving as he poles his way into the mist across the swamp and on into glory.
Well, I've practically written his biography now, and if you've read this far, thanks for letting me take your time to reminisce about a very unusual character who has been a part of my life. I think someday up in heaven he and I are going to climb a mountain somewhere together and look out over the jungle-covered hills out to the ocean and eat cashews.
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