Category Archives: World
Out of this World ISS Music Experiment
Kudos to Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield who performed and produced an out of this world music video redition of David Bowie’s 1969 hit “Space Oddity” while aboard the International Space Station. The music video was made with the full cooperation of the Canadian Space Agency and has gone viral as it has been played over 11 million times.
This was the third time that the 53 year old former Royal Canadian Air Force officer has been to space. This time Hadfield was ISS Commander of the Soyuz capsule as part of Expedition 35′s five month mission orbiting the Earth.
 |
| ISS Expedition 35 landing |
Even though Hadfield landed in Kazhakstan on May 13th, it may take months for him to enjoy his cosmic celebrity status on the world-wide-web, as Hadfield will require a couple of months of physical therapy to recover from effects of weightessness on bone density and muscle mass.
 |
| Crew of ISS Expedition 35 after landfall. |
A small price to be paid for sitting in a tin-can far above the moon and cutting a music video which truly makes Hadfield a renowned Starman.
The District of Calamity Recipe for Burnt Rice (sic)
The House Oversight and Investigative Committee hearings on Benghazi held by Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA 49th) has shown that the State knew from the get go that the attack on the Benghazi consulate was not due to a spontaneous demonstration about an anti-Islamic internet video.
So as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D-NY) famously asked in the earlier Benghazi hearing– “What difference does it make?”
Briefly, the testimony from the three high level diplomats to Libya showed decision making with eschewed customary operating procedure, it alluded to political pressure on career State Department bureaucrats to silence the Benghazi bungle (which in the law is called Obstruction of Justice), highlights an Obama Administration more intent on campaigning to get re-elected rather than governing in America’s interest. This sort of testimony could give someone a headache (sic).
Moreover, it shows that the most of the media are Obama Administration toadies who will ignore and obfuscate rather than pursue the truth to a scandal larger than Watergate where four brave Americans died. And most of the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee ran interference to denigrate the witnesses to protect Mrs. B.J. Clinton’s presidential prospects in 2016.
Well, this lie emanating from the Oval Office and the State Department was a recipe for burnt rice from a willing dupe. Maybe the recipe came from the cookbook for 3 am snacks, right next to Stand By Your Man cookies.
A Bit of the Hub of Strange Activity With the Boston Bombing
One of the nicknames for the city of Boston is “The Hub” as Bostonians consider themselves living in “The Hub of the Universe”. Alas, after the Boston Marathon Bombing, it has become the hub of strange activity. The race of government investigators to find those responsible for exploding two IED bombs that currently have killed three people and severely injured at least 150 has been conducted over a strange path indeed.
On the one hand, it is wise to remember in breaking news stories that initial reports are often wrong and the fog of war can obscure the truth. Yet on the other hand, the Fort Hood shootings and the Benghazi bungle has shown how the Obama Administration will consciously publicize false stories, obstruct the truth and deny responsibility when it comes to linking the White House to foreign inspired terrorism during President Obama’s watch.
***
Yesterday was a strange day in the Lamestream Media. Major news organizations like CNN and Fox News were reporting at 1:30 EDT from tips from high placed police sources that a suspect in the Boston Bombings was going to be arrested. CNN’s John King reportage revealed that it was a “dark skinned man, but he did lingustical gymnastics so as not to report that he was foreign or a Muslim.
The media expected a 1 PM FBI briefing on the impending arrest that was delayed five times then cancelled. It is strange that two prominent media sources were burned with this explosive information.
But putting these strange events in the Hub can best be understood by breaking the Bostonian conceit that it is the Hub of the Universe. Events our nation’s Capital, the District of Calamity (sic) may have severely impacted the Boston Bombing investigations.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry had a photo op scheduled with a Saudi counterpart. At the last minute, the meeting became a closed door meeting and the photo op was explained away as a scheduling mistake. It is strange that Foggy Bottom would have set up a photo op for a scheduling mistake.
On Wednesday, President Barack Obama had an unscheduled meeting with the Saudi Ambassador. It was a “walk by” meeting, so as not to have it on the White House schedule. The procedure is for a lower level Executive Branch official to have a meeting with an open office door and the Chief Executive walks by and notices someone and then has a closed door meeting.
What makes these instances of Executive Branch minutia relevant is how the story changed in Boston. Sudden, there was no suspect that was going to be arrested. In fact, the Saudi who had been a person of interest was suddenly slated to be deported.
This repatriation to the Saudi Arabia for 20-year-old Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi was being framed as being close to his family. But Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi comes from a prominent Saudi family which may be supporters of Wahabbism (the sect of Sunni Islam that inspires Al Qaeda). So the young Saudi with powder mark burns on his hands would be an embarrassment to the Saudi Kingdom and might cause a diplomatic fissure with the United States.
***
 |
| A hospitalized Abdul Rhaman Ali Albabi [photo: Okaz] |
When Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi was considered a person of interest, an event file was created. According to ICE, the reason is under section 212 3B — “Security and related grounds” — “Terrorist activities”. Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi ‘s visa had been revoked and he had submitted to voluntary departure. But before these public papers were classified and he was quietly shuffled off to Saudi, The Blaze exposed the situation and officials are reconsidering their strategy. But the Saudi newspaper Okaz reports that the Saudi consulate has been assured that all Saudis have been cleared, including Alharabi and Nura Kahlid Saleh al-Ajaji
***
So if the reports about the linkage with the Saudis and dark skinned males are accurate, it does not fit the narrative which the Obama Administration would approve.
***
Before jumping to conclusions, it would be wise for the facts to shake out. Unfortunately, experience has taught that the Obama Administration and the compliant Lamestream Media are happy to shun inconvenient truths. And the hub of strange activity around the Boston Bombing has done nothing to dispel this perspective.
Strange days indeed.
SEE MORE at DCBarroco.com
//
Barack Obama Taxman
When President Barack Obama gave his Deficit Reduction speech in 2011, which scathingly condemned Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI 1st) blueprint to fiscal sanity through some budgetary belt tightening, one can only conclude that Obama’s answer is to tax the rich.
Since it is April 15th, the traditional tax filing deadline date, it is fitting to serenade the occasion with an apropos tune.
The original version of this George Harrison song was on Revolver, the Beatles” 7th album, released in 1966. The song attacked the high level of progressive taxation in the United Kingdom under the leadership of Labor Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
If one is lulled by the Beatles Taxman cartoon into believing that it has always been this way, wait until next year when Obamacare Qualified Health Plans kick in for almost all Americans. Remember, it’s a tax. The original Obamacare enacting legislation allowed for hiring 16,000 IRS agents to enforce provisions. And the IRS believes that it can read your emails without a warrant.
Marylanders do not have to wait until next year to experience egregious taxing tyranny. Now the so called “Free State” has imposed a rain tax.
Lauding Medal of Honor Recipient Father Emil Kapaun
 |
| President Obama Giving Medal of Honor to Fr. Kapaun’s nephew Ray |
Father Emil Kapaun is a Kansas born US Army Chaplain who was post-humously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor six decades after his death in a North Korean prisoner of war camp. Fr. Kapuan is the fifth Catholic chaplain who has been given the Nation’s highest honor. Fr. Kapaun has been recognized as a Servant of God, meaning that a case has been opened at the Vatican to explore beatification.
Fr. Kapaun’s Congressional Medal of Honor was presented to his nephew Ray. President Obama’s remarks at the award ceremony captured the valor which Fr. Kapaun displayed as well as demonstrating the value of the chaplaincy to the troops, especially in the duress of enemy captivity.
***
 |
| Statue of Chaplain Kapaun, Pilsen, Kansas |
What jumped out from this tribute was the observation from one of his POW comrades was how Fr. Kapaun’s very presence could make a mudhole seem like a cathedral. The presence of a positive and faithful priest gives a glimpse of the Kingdom of God so the the mundane transcends into the magical. The humility, self-sacrifice and ridicule which Fr. Kapaun displayed followed the hard teachings of the Messiah is inspiring. And the hope that Fr. Kapuan instilled in the internment camp gave them a reason to survive their hellish treatment by the enemy mirrors Passiontide.
It is sad that the public has been conditioned to bemoan the tragedies of warfare without really appreciating the heroics of our brave troops, particularly from a chaplain 62 years later.
May we all be inspired by the valor which Fr. Kapaun displayed on the field of battle and suffering in prison for righteousness. And may we remember that we have a G.I. intercessor in heaven.
 |
| Army Chaplain Fr. Kapuan offering Mass on the Korean battlefield, Oct. 1950 |
Lord Jesus, in the midst of the folly of war, your servant, Chaplain Emil Kapaun, spent himself in total service to you on the battlefields and in the prison camps of Korea, until his death at the hands of his captors. We now ask you, Lord Jesus, if it be your will, to make known to all the world the holiness of Chaplain Kapaun and the glory of his complete sacrifice for you by signs of miracles and peace. In your name, Lord, we ask, for you are the source of peace, the strength of our service to others, and our final hope.
Amen.
Amen.
Chaplain Kapaun, pray for us.
SEE MORE at DistrictofCalamity.com
Which Victims Ought the Bully Pulpit Exploit?
As former Obama Chief of Staff now Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel (D-Chicago) once said “Never let a crisis go to waste”. Unless it’s about the blunder in Benghazi, when the rule is to stonewall, obfuscate and send out a Secretary of State to eventually say “What difference does it make”?
Etty Hillensum on Faith
Note how all traffic stops on ten lanes of the busy Ayalon highway in Tel Aviv, Israel when the sirens sound marking the moment of silence to remember victims of the Holocaust.
Understanding What We Must Never Forget
In the last quarter century, there has been a progressive effort from intellectual iconoclasts to revise history about the Holocaust to besmirch the Catholic Church and particularly Pope Venerable Pius XII.
***
This sensational charge of “Hitler’s Pope” flies in the face of contemporaneous praise of Pius XII as a righteous gentile by prominent Jewish leaders, as well as documentary evidence from the likes of historian Rabbi David Dalin that Pius XII ordered Vatican envoys to aid persecuted Jews in occupied Europe and the Catholic Church opened facilities in the Vatican and Rome to shelter thousands of Jews from the Nazis.
***
Holocaust historian Rafael Medoff has published “FDR and the Holocaust: A Breach of Faith” which examines the action (or lack there of), attitudes and apathy that FDR and the American government had during the Second World War as it relates to saving Jews from the Shoah. Medoff charges that the FDR Administration failed to do relatively simple measures which would have saved many Jews, because FDR’s vision of America only encompassed having a small number of Jews. Medoff wrote that: “In his private, unguarded moments, FDR repeatedly made unfriendly remarks about Jews, especially his belief that Jews were overrepresented in many professions and exercised too much influence and control on society.” Hence his Administration went out of its way to discourage and disqualify would be Jewish immigrants.
***
SEE MORE at DCBarroco.com
Pope Francis’ Urbi et Orbi Excerpt
Pope Francis gave his first Easter Blessing to the crowd gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the Urbi et Orbi. His remarks resounded in the message of the Resurrection:
We too, like the women who were Jesus’ disciples, who went to the tomb
and found it empty, may wonder what this event means (cf. Lk 24:4). What
does it mean that Jesus is risen? It means that the love of God is
stronger than evil and death itself; it means that the love of God can
transform our lives and let those desert places in our hearts bloom. The
love God can do this!
This same love for which the Son of God became man and followed the way
of humility and self-giving to the very end, down to hell – to the abyss
of separation from God – this same merciful love has flooded with light
the dead body of Jesus, has transfigured it, has made it pass into
eternal life. Jesus did not return to his former life, to earthly life,
but entered into the glorious life of God and he entered there with our
humanity, opening us to a future of hope.
This is what Easter is: it is the exodus, the passage of human beings
from slavery to sin and evil to the freedom of love and goodness.
Because God is life, life alone, and we are his glory: the living man
(cf. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 4,20,5-7).
Dear brothers and sisters, Christ died and rose once for all, and for
everyone, but the power of the Resurrection, this passover from slavery
to evil to the freedom of goodness, must be accomplished in every age,
in our concrete existence, in our everyday lives. How many deserts, even
today, do human beings need to cross! Above all, the desert within,
when we have no love for God or neighbor, when we fail to realize that
we are guardians of all that the Creator has given us and continues to
give us. God’s mercy can make even the driest land become a garden, can
restore life to dry bones (cf. Ez 37:1-14).
Pope Francis’ message of humility and the love of God transforming our lives is an interesting contrast to the Easter message by Rev. Luis Leon that President Obama heard. Unlike the sermon at St. John’s Episcopal, Pope Francis’s fuller remarks failed to include smack talk about sports however considering the trouncing the that Jumpin’ Jesuits of Marquette experienced in the March Madness Elite Eight, perhaps it was better to pray for peace.
