All posts by Jim

Left HS before report cards came out. Enlisted in the Marines for four years. By the time those years were over, I was hooked - they had me for life. Spent nearly ten years as enlisted. Received a Silver Star, Bronze Star w/V, Purple Heart as a Sgt during first RVN tour. Upon returning to the State's received a combat commission to 2Lt. Retired after 36 total years as a Colonel. Book follows my career, but is more about the heroes with whom I served, the great mentors I had, and the leadership principles they instilled in me.

To Pennsylvania With Love

NOT!

I cannot get over what has happened to the Keystone State. As a kid growing up in MD with the Bathurst clan still living in the Altoona area, we traveled there often. Dad and I used to fish the trout streams and hunted deer in PA. When he and Mom retired they moved back to PA. Therefore, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for the state, always thought it was beautiful and clean, and even considered moving there when I retired. What in hell happened? It has definitely become the Twilight Zone. We are now hearing “rumors” that Fetterman is actually brain dead but still one of their senators. Of course, I always thought he was brain dead to begin with. In case you don’t know it, the town of Elysburg that Greg’s article speaks to is in PA.

 

 

Twilight Zone America                                              By: G. Maresca

If you are not convinced a spiritual war for the American soul is smoldering, consider the recent FBI memo leaked from their Richmond, Virginia field office.  The eight-page report is titled: “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.”

Perhaps the FBI should have simply composed it in Latin.

The leak underscores the dystopian state of a divided nation.

The only thing missing is Rod Serling fingering a cigarette saying, “The FBI was clueless about 9/11, ignores Hunter Biden’s laptop charades and overlooks the lethal amounts of fentanyl streaming across our border – daily. Instead, the FBI is coming after traditional Catholics as the nation’s newest domestic threat in a relentless vortex of the Twilight Zone.”

The report stated how “radical traditional Catholics have a frequent adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology” and their worship preference is the Traditional Latin Mass.  Catholics are maligned since they adhere to the biblical belief that marriage only exists between one man and one woman and thus paints them “anti-LGBTQ.”

The Latin Mass may have been a threat when Nero was feeding Christians to the lions at the Roman Colosseum as it evolved into the Mass of the Ages and is still celebrated every Sunday at the monastery in Elysburg.  Moreover, being prolife gets you labeled as being anti-women and a domestic terrorist.  The memo’s lack of evidence is telling as it attempts to connect anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic behavior to dutiful Catholics, too. Note to the obtuse FBI, the Church is certainly a catholic (universal) immigrant church with longstanding diplomatic relations with Israel.

Since the leak, the FBI has recanted saying the memo, “does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI.” Whatever that means. Nevertheless, reversing course because you got caught is just damage control.

Provided the memo was not leaked leaves many unanswered questions.

What is unquestionable are the nearly two dozen acts of vandalism perpetrated against prolife organizations and Catholic churches over the last year with no arrests.  However, Catholics are the domestic threats along with those conservative parents who publicly question school boards. Conservative and religious is a toxic combination making you unmistakably guilty.

The Department of Justice is nothing less than the Democrat Party’s thought police.  The FBI was once run by the peculiar J. Edgar Hoover that has devolved into the more convincing Fascist Bureau of Intimidation. NOTE: I like that. With all those dangerous Catholics on their knees in worship at The Latin Mass, there won’t be much time to investigate anything else. The FBI is a greater threat to Americans than any foreign spy agencies.

The Biden administration and the federal bureaucracy are rife with Christ haters. All one has to look at is the concerted effort during the Obama presidency to drive Christians out of positions of influence in government and replace them with wokesters.

And “Catholic” Biden is leading the charge.

Attorneys general of 20 states so far have spoken out but that is not nearly enough. Where is the United States Council of Catholic Bishops?  Practicing Catholics are on their own, like the faithful in China. Perhaps the church can counter by getting the Jesuits after the FBI.

There is a long, documented history of discrimination against American Catholics. The late historian Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. called anti-Catholicism, “the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people.”

This is nothing new.

German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoller’s 1946 poem “First they came” put it best: “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Cue Rod Serling: “As Catholics defend the unborn and condemn the LGTBQ+ agenda as immoral, persecution will continue and intensify. Welcome to 21st-century America where ignorance is no defense in the Twilight Zone.”

Otherwise, all’s well in America, that is if you’re living under a rock!

Originally posted 2023-03-03 11:19:03.

Paradise Lost

 

Critical things to think about in 2023

I never dreamed I would have to face the prospect of not living in the United States of America, at least not the one I have known all my life and the one I served for nearly thirty-six years. I have never wanted to live anywhere else. This is my home—I was born here. But now every day when I wake up and have my morning coffee, I come face to face with the reality that everything is changing for the worse. No matter how I vote, no matter what I say, no matter how much I pray, something evil has invaded our nation, and I personally believe our lives are never going to be the same.

I have been confused by the hostility of family and friends. I look at people I have known all my life—so hate-filled that they agree with opinions they would never express as their own. I think I may well have entered the Twilight Zone. We have become a nation that has lost its collective mind!

You can’t justify this insanity:

If a guy pretends to be a woman, I am required to pretend with him.

Somehow it’s un-American for the census bureau to count how many Americans are in America. I have a neighbor who was a census taker. He told me he counted everyone in the house, legal or not. When ask why, he said it means more money for the county.

Russians influencing our elections are bad, but illegals voting in our elections are good.

It was cool for Joe Biden to “blackmail” the President of Ukraine. He laughed while bragging about it.

Hunter Biden is a crook, but the DOJ nor any of its agencies will investigate him. He has literally become untouchable no matter how much wrongdoing he commits.

Twenty is too young to drink a beer, but eighteen is old enough to vote.

People who never owned slaves should pay reparations to people who have never been slaves.

People who have never been to college should pay the debts of college students who took out huge loans for their degrees, many of which were in majors that they now cannot find jobs, but oh it was fun.

Immigrants with tuberculosis and polio are welcome, but you’d better be able to prove your dog is vaccinated.

Irish doctors and German engineers who want to immigrate to the US must go through a rigorous and lengthy vetting process, but any illiterate gang banger or terrorist who jumps the southern fence is welcome.

Five billion dollars for border security is too expensive, but $1.5 trillion for “free” health care to those who jumped the fence is okay.

If you cheat to get into college you go to prison, but if you cheat to get into the country you go to college free.

If you cheat in an election nothing happens to you, but if you point out the mathematical errors of that election you are a conspiracy theorist & disdained.

People who say there is no such thing as gender are demanding a female President.

We see other countries going Socialist and collapsing, but it seems like a great plan for us.

Some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while others are not held responsible for what they are doing right now.

Criminals are caught-and-released to hurt more people but keeping them in custody is a violation of their rights.

The imbeciles in this country elected—with the help of outright fraud from a group of about five key states—an incompetent president who can’t string a series of words together into a coherent sentence. We as a nation have become the laughingstock of the entire world—no nation will ever trust us again.

Nothing makes sense anymore—no values, no morals, and no civility. People are dying of a Chinese virus, but it’s racist to refer to it as the China virus even though it began in China.

And, of course, pointing out all this hypocrisy makes me a “racist!”

We are clearly living in an upside-down world where right is wrong and wrong is right, where moral is immoral and immoral is moral, where good is evil and evil is good.

Our once viable political parties are in shambles. One is run by a collection of minority misfits appointed by leaders whose interests are self-centered and self-fulfilling. While the other is run by a collection of old, tired, worn out has-beens who have made their fortunes in the political arena and need to be ousted, and some new breeds who know what needs to be done, but are shouted down and suppressed by the has-beens.

And the biggest has been of all is one who did a good job as president but did not know how to win friends and influence people. And as a result was hated so much even by some members of his own party. Yet, he continues to run his mouth and talk ill of fellow party members thinking that will put him in good graces with the members at large. He would do well to remember a phrase from the greatest GOP president in my lifetime, “No Republican should ever speak ill of another Republican.”.

Wake up America, the once great unsinkable ship  America has hit an iceberg and it’s taking on water and sinking fast. We are being shouted down by the generation who came of age during the participation trophy era and believe everything needs to be fair and everyone deserves what they want, regardless of the cost to society. We Americans are drowning. Speak up while you still have a breath and a voice, for soon you will have neither.

This needs to be sent on to a lot of people. Please do it.

 

Originally posted 2023-02-28 13:18:12.

Lest We Forget

Yesterday, 19 February, was the 78th anniversary of the landing of the Marines and sailors on the island of Iwo Jima. Each year on this date I am reminded by many fellow Marines of the speech given by Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn at the dedication of the Fifth Marine Division Cemetery shortly after the battle ended. Of late I find myself wondering how those of whom he speaks feel about what they see looking down on this once great nation for which they gave their lives. Most Americans today, especially the younger ones cannot even venture a guess of what happened on this small Pacific island so many years ago.  And, sadly, many could care less. But I still care, I care very much for he speaks of my brothers

Should you have some free time today on Presidents Day, you may want to click on the lnk I have provided and learn something about this significant event in our nation’s history, that is before it is erased by those who choose to change our history.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo_Jima.

Please read it slowly and carefully so as to not lose the full impact of his words to us all.

By Rabbi Roland Gittelsohn

This is perhaps the grimmest, and surely the holiest task we have faced since D-Day. Here, before us lie the bodies of comrades and friends. Men who until yesterday or last week laughed with us, joked with us, trained with us. Men who were on the same ships with us, and went over the sides with us as we prepared to hit the beaches of this island.

Men who fought with us and feared with us. Somewhere in this plot of ground there may lie the man who could have discovered the cure for cancer. Under one of these Christian crosses, or beneath a Jewish Star of David, there may rest now a man who was destined
to be a great prophet — to find the way, perhaps, for all to live in plenty, with poverty and hardship for none. Now they lie here silently in this sacred soil, and we gather to consecrate this earth in their memory.

It is not easy to do so. Some of us have buried our closest friends here. We saw these men killed before our very eyes. Any one of us might have died in their places. Indeed, some of us are alive and breathing at this very moment only because men who lie here
beneath us had the courage and strength to give their lives for ours. To speak in memory of such men as these is not easy. Of them too can it be said with utter truth: “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here.” It can never forget what they did
here.”

No, our poor power of speech can add nothing to what these men and the other dead who are not here have already done. All that we even hope to do is follow their example. To show the same selfless courage in peace that they did in war. To swear that by the grace
of God and the stubborn strength and power of human will, their sons and ours shall never suffer these pains again. These men have done their job well. They have paid the ghastly price of freedom. If that freedom be once again lost, as it was after the last war, the unforgivable blame will be ours not theirs. So it is we the living who are here to be dedicated and consecrated.

Too much blood has gone into this soil for us to let it lie barren. Too much pain and heartache have fertilized the earth on which we stand. We here solemnly swear: This shall not be in vain! Out of this, and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this, will come — we promise — the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere.

Let us as Marines and Sailors never forget what this photo means to us

Originally posted 2023-02-20 10:40:08.

Commercial Break

Well, after a little more than a year I finally received a book trailer I had requested and paid for back in January 2022. So, I thought I’d give it a try out here on the blog. LOL I just wanted to get it out there and see what it looks like and how it’s accepted. There is a gross error in it however. The book is NOT available on Amazon anymore at their highly inflated price that they never shared with me. Talk about a rip off. Anyway, I cut ties with the publisher and Amazon at the same time. Until I find another publisher, I do have a few of the hard covers that survived the hurricane here in September, and I do have a few that did get a little wet which I will sell really cheap. The others I’ll let go for $30 personally inscribed and I will eat the postage to you. Anyway, let me know what you think of the trailer.  You may have to copy and paste the URL below to see the trailer. I hope you enjoy it.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s2eNGB3KzRT4sqISHc-G_pJxsDX4uSeI/view?fbclid=IwAR3MLHR-WiCt2a9qBCYSo9PIX5E9aBq2L3Wzw6JifAb_NRvAgbtA024lAXA

 

 

Originally posted 2023-02-18 16:44:27.

SOTU – Nothing but a Pack of Lies

Before I introduce this post I need to update you on my battle with USAA. The inevitable finally happened; all these years, 49 as of this month to be exact, I bragged about not hearing this from my bank, insurer, brokerage firm, mortgagor, and all around favorite organization in the U.S. But, it has happened. I called last week to discuss something with them and this is what I heard, “Welcome to USAA, press one for English.” That did it for me for I do not do business with a company that  doesn’t understand where they are and what language we speak. I am not trying to disparage those who speak Spanish, I am merely saying, if you want to live in the U.S. learn our language. If I would happen to move to some South American country would I expect them to speak my language? Hell no I wouldn’t; it would be my responsibility to learn their language.

So, starting this week I re-joined and began moving everything to NFCU to which I belonged starting in 1967 when I returned from RVN. I stayed with them until I moved to USAA in February 1974. Needless to say, I am really impressed with what they offer and am sure I will be happy with them. 

Okay, now to the post. Another good one from my friend and fellow Marine Greg, I did not watch the SOTU address as I knew it would be nothing but one lie after another and sure enough that appears to be exactly what it was. I have convinced myself that his election was, in fact, fraudulent in every aspect. I mean, do we really have that many stupid idiots in America that thought he was the best choice. I don’t think so, the problem is Trump just pisses everyone off all the time. He has certainly ruffled my feathers of late by his disparaging remarks against my Governor. I don’t think he knows DeSantis very well as he is not one he wants to spar with. And now that Haley has thrown her hat in the ring, he is even attacking her.  What does he think he is going to gain by doing that? I remember my favorite president of all times, Ron Reagan saying, “A Republican should never speak ill of another Republican. ” Trump had best shut his mouth. If the primary were held today, I would not be voting for Trump as I personally believe he hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of becoming president again. Shut the hell up Trump!!

Smoke, Mirrors, and Balloons                                                                                  By: G. Maresca
Since the Biden Administration took office, their billowing nonstop smokescreens are asphyxiating. Consider the humiliating withdraw from Afghanistan to the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine to record inflation claiming food, energy, and a stagnant stock market.

The mirrors are as plentiful as a carnival funhouse with the daily flood of illegals pouring across our Southern border as Biden toasts “President Harris,” while calling out to dead congresswomen and confusing Cambodia with Colombia. Biden’s response: blame Donald Trump.

Then there was the manifestation of a series of flying objects – the first one identified as a Chinese spy balloon. Four more objects appeared within days. Coincidental or is the logical conclusion too overwhelming? If Biden doesn’t know what these are, we should know.  For half a century, Washington claimed Biden doesn’t know anything, but when he admits he didn’t know anything, nobody believes him.

With layer upon layer of bureaucratic red tape that holds Washington hostage, we were fortunate that when Biden finally gave the order he didn’t shoot down the Goodyear blimp at the Super Bowl.  Popping China’s spy balloon was the first thing Biden did to reduce inflation since taking office. With Biden at the helm, it is like watching a kindergartener juggling hand grenades.

It took some cowboys in Montana to call attention to the first balloon. Then Biden claimed it posed no threat, only to shoot it down.  One more downed balloon and Biden gets the top prize at the funhouse.  The balloon didn’t penetrate Washington airspace because the Chinese knew there was no intelligence there to collect.

Being a national security issue, this is the bipartisan concern the nation has been searching for as China is testing American resolve. The communist Chinese must exit from our universities, research facilities, corporations, and from any land acquisitions.

President Obama’s East Asia Strategy afforded the Chinese plenty of intelligence correlated electronics, hardware, and software. Recall the 2009 hack of F-35 fighter-jet blueprints to the continuing theft across the board of intellectual property through clandestine cyberattacks. China’s thievery of American data and technology continues to be met with little to no consequences.  How much American technology was attached to that balloon?

The Rutherford Institute reports foreign entities owned 40.8 million acres of American agricultural land with China owning nearly 192,000 acres that were all near military bases. Customs and Border Protection reported a 700% increase in Chinese migrants at the Southern border as we witness the consequences of open borders and air space.

China is on a ceaseless campaign to embarrass and humiliate America while becoming the world’s dominant military. The obvious seems lost on those shining a seat with their groove thing in the Oval Office and throughout the Pentagon. How long have these flights been going on without a response and why? Sadly, the military is too consumed with reducing their carbon footprint and pushing their diversity inclusion and equity (DIE) agenda.

Biden appears compromised, yet Congress does nothing.

Since this is the Chinese “year of the balloon” and for better protection of their fleet of spy balloons in the future, the Chinese will be changing from white balloons to rainbow-colored ones stenciled with the letters: BLM.

From all these classified documents and balloons floating around and Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals, and the “big guy’s” stake in them, where are the straight answers? The nation’s media, its fourth estate, does not have the slightest intention of pursuing any of this.

American companies that deal in technology should not be doing business in and with communist nations. This did not occur during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, so why is today any different. Let China have the NBA. They deserve each other.

If anything, a Chinese balloon has brought to the forefront our military vulnerabilities that must be addressed. As a nation, we are not isolated from foreign military threats, and our pathetic response begs many questions about our military preparedness.

Meanwhile, at the southern border ….

We are trying to solve a spiritual problem through political means. Until we realize this, the situation and all the hot air surrounding it will only continue to inflate, and those Chinese spy balloons will be the least of our concerns.

Originally posted 2023-02-18 10:10:46.