- It was very nice to finally meet Freiheit and his family today. I must get the recipe for his wife’s cake.
- Notes for the NFL:
- The children from Sandy Hook Elementary did indeed sing very beautifully. It was good to see that the tragedy they lived through doesn’t keep them from being used to score cheap political points.
- Jennifer Hudson did the best Ray Charles impression I’ve ever heard. Well done.
- Alicia Keys gets an 80 on her rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner”. She didn’t appear to lip synch, she seemed to be accompanying herself on the piano, and she hit the notes. If she could have made it not sound like cool jazz at the end, I’d have scored her higher.
- I can’t say I’m sad I missed Beyonce performing during half time.
- Did anyone perform at the Super Bowl that hasn’t supported President Obama?
- I saw approximately 8 minutes of the Superbowl tonight before it was time to go in to work for a couple of hours.
- I walked back in the door about a minute after the end of the game.
- No, I don’t own a DVR.
- I normally double the amount of time I think I need for a task when I’m doing my planning. I think that may be too conservative.
- The local news just showed an employee of my indoor range speaking in support of universal background checks. I’ve reached out to their management to see if that is indeed their position on the new gun control issues.
- I hope that this was just someone popping off. The person they spoke to is not the owner or his wife, and to be honest, I didn’t recognize him.
- I’ll name names once I hear from their management.
All posts by daddybear71
Thoughts on the Day
Posted by daddybear71 on February 4, 2013
https://daddybearsden.com/2013/02/04/thoughts-on-the-day-93/
Repost – The Four Chaplains
How many of you all heard about this anniversary in today’s sermon? Bueller?
This was originally published on February 3, 2011
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On this day, in 1943, the USAT Dorchester, a troop transport taking soldiers across the Atlantic, was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-Boat. On board were four chaplains: Reverand George Fox, Rabbi Alexander Goode, Father John Washington, and Reverand Clark Poling. These saints in the flesh not only provided a calm hand to guide men to lifeboats and assisted the wounded, but they also gave up their own life vests so that others might have a better chance at survival. Soldiers and sailors who survived the sinking remember watching these men pray together on the deck of the ship as it went down. Their sacrifice probably saved more than a few lives that night, and has been an inspirational example to me since I first heard their story.
Military chaplains are the quiet heroes among the rough men and women that make up our armed forces. They provide moral guidance to leaders, comfort the wounded in body and spirit, and remind all of us that there are better things than the heat, cold, sand, mud, and heartache that comes with the military. They act as staff confessor, conscience, and counselor to most military units. Any soldier knows that if he has a problem, he can go to the chaplain, if for nothing else than to find someone who will listen attentively and make suggestions that are reasonable. On more than one occasion I have taken Holy Communion from the back of a truck, with the Father just as wet, cold, and miserable as the rest of us. The difference was that he chose to leave the relative warmth and comfort of the TOC to make sure that the soldiers in his flock were taken care of.
I have known chaplains that were saints walking among men. I have known chaplains who were only slightly more holy in their manners than the men and women they tried to guide to a better life. One Catholic chaplain I served with was Airborne, Air Assault, and Ranger qualified, could drink like a fish, would flirt with waitresses as much as the rest of us, and was as viciously loyal to Notre Dame football as anyone I ever met. He was also the man who baptized my oldest son, blessed my marriage to his mother, and helped to bring me peace when I came home from a particularly hard assignment heartsick and broken.
To all of our chaplains, I say thank you. There are some debts that can never be repaid, but I hope that my words have some worth in that process. Even though a good minister can always find a comfortable, safe posting if they look hard enough, they go into the wilderness to preach to and care for the men and women who need them the most.
Posted by daddybear71 on February 3, 2013
https://daddybearsden.com/2013/02/03/repost-the-four-chaplains/
Blogs Roundup
- Tam lists out some of her pet peeves. I have some of my own. People, for instance, get on my nerves.
- Reason lists out four states that they expect will reform their marijuana laws. I see marijuana as the other 10th Amendment fight that’s brewing. With the repeal of Prohibition in the 1930’s, does the Constitution grant the federal government the power to tell states what they can and can’t make illegal in their border when it comes to intoxicants?
- LawDog hits another one out of the park. If you’re not 100% safe in a building crawling with armed law enforcement, how safe are you when they’re making best safe speed down dark streets after you take the time to call 911?
- Borepatch is a freaking genius. I must try this!
- Wirecutter demonstrates something I’ve always believed – Naturalized citizens seem, as a group, to be more knowledgeable about our country and our Constitution than a lot of natural borns, and the most patriotic Americans I’ve ever known were citizens by choice, not by chance.
- Wing demonstrates that ‘clean’ does not exactly mean ‘devoid of life other than human’. I wonder how that young lady will handle a dorm bathroom when she goes to college.
- The Big Guy is my new hero.
Posted by daddybear71 on February 3, 2013
https://daddybearsden.com/2013/02/03/blogs-roundup-26/
Today’s Earworm
Posted by daddybear71 on February 2, 2013
https://daddybearsden.com/2013/02/02/todays-earworm-313/
Thoughts on the Day
- Girlie Bear got taken out to buy a brides maid’s dress this afternoon. I wonder if the dress stores have customer loyalty cards?
- I had a Christian thought at the grocery store today.
- Well, sort of.
- Actually, it was along the line of “Lady, you cut me off with your cart full of junk food one more time, and I’ll sideswipe your cart so hard you’ll see Jesus.”
- To the skinny guy wearing a pink sweater and skinny jeans in the produce area who took offense when I asked him to watch his language because of the presence of old ladies within earshot, I am not a homophobe. I don’t care who you sleep with; you’re just a foul-mouthed twit and I was raised right.
- Stopped at the liquor store for beer and bourbon. The clerk didn’t bat an eye when I remarked that the Eagle Rare was for sipping and the Jim Beam was for cooking.
- The nouveau redneck transplant who was buying a bottle of Blanton’s “because it has the prettiest bottle” had to have it explained to him.
- I was gentle and courteous. I was new here once myself.
- Moonshine weighed in at 40 pounds today when we visited the vet. He’s 18 weeks old. I may have to start going to the vet that services the thoroughbred farms.
- It started snowing last night, and so far we’ve gotten a couple of inches. I have yet to see a snow plow with his blade down.
- I have, however, seen two four-wheel drive SUV’s in the ditch.
- My rear wheel drive pick-up seems to be doing OK, however.
- One of my senators voted to send F-16 fighters and M-1 tanks to Egypt. It’s Mitch McConnell, head of the Republican minority. As of this moment, he has lost my vote. It’s going to take a lot of pro-gun activism on his part to win it back.
- If President Obama shoots a Browning shotgun, and Vice-President Biden says that if you want to have a gun for self-protection, then you should get a shotgun, can we expect that both their personal protection details will be decked out with over-and-under shotguns the next time we see them?
- I know, I’m always the starry-eyed optimist.
- I simply cannot wait for the Cabela’s up the road to open. I want to walk those aisles denuded of ammunition and see all the empty gun racks.
Posted by daddybear71 on February 2, 2013
https://daddybearsden.com/2013/02/02/thoughts-on-the-day-92/
News Roundup
- From the “Par for the Course” Department – A former FBI official in Minneapolis has written to members of the U.S. Senate to complain about President Obama’s nominee to run the BATFE. He asserts that she is capricious, inconsistent, inexperienced, and incompetent. In other words, she’s a perfect fit for the administration.
- From the “Whoopsie” Department – Congress seems to be awakening to issues at the BATFE after a botched sting operation in Milwaukee ended up with a ton of cost and a missing automatic rifle. Agents set up a fake convenience store and used it as a place to buy guns and drugs. Few arrests have been made, and the agency is probably on the hook for bills and the cost to the property owner of cleaning up after them. In addition, when the operation was shut down, the site wasn’t sanitized properly, and information about the operation and the people who were involved in it was left behind. Man, that’s a whole lot of messing up in one small package there. If I wrote a story where the government set up a convenience store in a bad neighborhood, ran a bumbling sting operation, lost a bunch of money by paying too much for drugs and guns and not paying the bills, lost a machine gun, and then left behind everyone’s real identity when the shop was closed down, y’all would laugh me off the Internet.
- From the “Cruel and Unusual” Department – The Louisville corrections department has gotten itself a new gadget – a powerful all-body scanner. It appears to be similar to the ones that are being pulled out of airports by the TSA, but much more powerful. Apparently, it can see into body cavities, where the ones in airports stopped at the surface of the body. I guess this is one more reason to not be a repeat customer at the gray bar hotel. I wonder if they’ll be informing inmates of the radiation exposure because it’s their right to know.
- From the “Beachcomber” Department – A man in Great Britain is being offered 50,000 euros for a piece of whale vomit he found on the beach. Ambergris, a substance coughed up by whales, is valuable for use in perfumes. I expect to see a “Spew Hunters” reality show on the Discovery Channel anytime now. I can see it now – guys being followed by camera crews as they walk along the beach, picking up rocks and sniffing them. The big payoff will come when one of them actually finds a piece of ambergrys, but then he has to get it to market without being robbed or being overcome by the smell.
Posted by daddybear71 on February 2, 2013
https://daddybearsden.com/2013/02/02/news-roundup-173/
Today’s Earworm
Posted by daddybear71 on February 1, 2013
https://daddybearsden.com/2013/02/01/todays-earworm-312/
Thoughts on the Day
- Famous last words – “It’s a no-impact upgrade”.
- I must remember to bring that up in the post-mortem for the unexpected outage.
- My orthopedic weather predictor woke me up out of a dead sleep this morning. Since it was a tad warm, and that twinge always means a change in the weather, I dressed for cold.
- That paid off when it got chillier as the day wore on.
- I figured out how to give Boo a haircut without having the neighbors call the police: have him give me one first.
- Luckily, I’m cutting my hair really short anyway, so trimming it down to even it out was easy.
- Boo was happy all the way through his haircut and I didn’t even nick him with the clippers.
- Not sure if the kids will have school tomorrow. We’ve gotten a couple of inches of snow since dinnertime, and the wind is really howling.
- It’s almost like home.
- I haven’t heard thunder during a snowstorm in a long time.
- We tried our home-canned barbecued pork tonight. The canning process cooked the sugar in the barbecue sauce a bit too much, but it was still tasty. Next time we’ll just can the pulled pork and then sauce it once we heat it up.
- My next experiment will be in canning our own chili beans.
- Thanks to Freiheit when he found great deals for them, I bought two Ruger Airhawk air rifles the other day. They’ll be good for us to practice with in the basement or back yard. I think I may take the scope off of one of them and put the same kind of sights Girlie Bear uses on her competition rifle to make her practice better.
Posted by daddybear71 on January 31, 2013
https://daddybearsden.com/2013/01/31/thoughts-on-the-day-91/
Thoughts on the Day
- Last night I dreamed about a “Greg The Bunny”/”Firefly” mashup. It was pretty awesome.
- I woke up at 3:50 AM, 5 minutes before the tornado siren a block from the house went off.
- By 4:30 AM, the kids were in the basement, along with all of our things we needed, and Irish Woman and I were upstairs speculating on the odds of the worst part of the storm making it to hour house.
- The difference in our marriage:
- By 5 AM, Irish Woman was in the kitchen making pancakes and eggs for breakfast, because people get hungry.
- By 5 AM, I was unconscious on the couch, because hey, it’s a good time to be asleep.
- Today I found myself getting irritated with computers who did what I told them to do, not what I meant for them to do.
- By the time my latest project plan actually gets to implementation, it’s going to be so shot to hell that it’ll form paper dolls if I unstaple it.
- Sequence for the commute home tonight:
- Almost make it to my car before it starts to rain.
- Drive though rain for about 15 minutes
- Break through the rain and get ahead of the storm for 5 minutes
- Hit a traffic snarl, sit in traffic for 10 minutes, get overtaken by the storm
- Get though traffic, speed through storms edge for 5 minutes, take off ramp from freeway.
- Wait 5 minutes to make right turn off of freeway. Get overtaken by storm.
- Get rained on by the storm for rest of drive home
- Get home just in time to walk through the same rainstorm I almost beat when going out in the first place.
- I will never understand why some people get offended when you ask them a direct, job-related question instead of dancing around a subject that they don’t want to confront.
Posted by daddybear71 on January 30, 2013
https://daddybearsden.com/2013/01/30/thoughts-on-the-day-90/
Today’s Earworm
Posted by daddybear71 on January 30, 2013
https://daddybearsden.com/2013/01/30/todays-earworm-311/
DaddyBear
DaddyBear’s Den 