Brutally Honest

Chuck Pagano, leader of men & life

Guest posted by tim, The Godless Heathen

Sometimes in life, circumstances can…well, let’s not beat around the bush folks, they can suck. We can decide to let them define us and how we live our life. Or we can envision how we want life to be and how we will deal with the adversity.

This video is about that. But first a little setup is needed.

The man you’ll see speaking is Chuck Pagano. Chuck spent 28 years toiling as an assistant in college and  the NFL before becoming the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts this year. Chuck hasn’t been on the sidelines since late Sept. when he found out he has a treatable form of leukemia.

Also relevant, the Colts were a dismal 2 & 14 last year. They completely rebuilt the team, less a handful of veterans they kept, and are just a bunch of rookies and castoffs nobody wanted. They were picked by everyone, including this diehard Colts fan of 40 plus years, to win no more than 5/6 games.

Chuck is about to receive his second round of treatment but managed to go see his team play yesterday. They won to improve to an improbable 5 & 3 and are in the hunt for the playoffs.

Here is Chuck Pagano addressing his team post game.

Via Colts.com:

Steve, A Briefer Introduction

With thanks to Mr. Brutally Honest, and in acknowledgment of my good friend CitizenScribe, I am also stepping in to provide some perspectives on things for a spell.

My introduction, however, is not really about me. I'm not cool enough to share with you a picture of a typewriter. I'm not deft enough to reference my beloved Monty Python as skillfully. I'm also not famous enough to drag in a massive following to this fine blog. I actually come with no following. I'm not a hermit. Most folks simply wish that I would embrace the concept.

But I love Liberty. Personal, individual, rarified Liberty. That which truly makes ours an exceptional nation. And I understand that the Declaration of Independence boldly embraced the concept of individual liberty, and that the Constitution put into place an imperfect but carefully crafted form of government with checks and balances for the sole purpose of preserving that liberty - personal, individual and rarified.

And though I don't write much these days, when I do, fire tends to leap from the lips, for it's usually the abject assault on said Liberty which drives a man to reach for the pen - or keyboard - to express displeasure and enter into the battlespace of the mind.

For America is, after all and above all, an idea - Liberty. Personal, individual and rarified. We are not our borders or the dirt within. We are not a language, a cuisine or a specific regionalized culture (ie, Franch, German, Chinese, etc.).

We are Liberty. We are the idea that the individual is greater than the whole of a government. We are the concept that government's purpose is far less to serve men than to stay out of his liberty-filled life as much as possible. And this is why our rights are codified, delineating where government must not venture so as to preserve Liberty and the American idea.

We have, in just a few short generations, ignored this. The assault has become the new normal over the past 75+ years, and it grows and rarely recedes. And now, even if only visible to many in the form of deficits and budgets, the growth of government means a corresponding shrinkage of Liberty. 

This cannot stand. It must not stand. Or we are no different as a nation than Greece, Spain, Venezuela or any other nation in any hemisphere. 

It is more than an election. It is more than many elections. It is far far more than any man or men. It is a battle for the American identity, the American psyche. So we enter onto the battlefield of ideas, confident, free and proud yet humble. Tomorrow is too late.

Engage.

Paul Ryan and Catholic Social Teaching

Want to know more about subsidiarity, solidarity, and Paul Ryan-arity?

Listen to Fr. Barron expound... good stuff:

Ryan's Healthcare Summit takedown of ObamaCare in 2010 deserves our attention

This is who Romney has chosen, someone with a full grasp of budget costs, of controlling and minimizing deficits and of taking the fight directly to the President.

Watch this... pass it on... it's good and it's a metric by which we can judge who Paul Ryan is:

"Confirmation that you are in rebellion against Jesus Christ and should repent"

Mark Shea to Nancy Pelosi in what I would simply call a teachable moment as to Catholicism: 

Sorry, Nancy, but the Catholic faith is not esoteric. It is not “whatever I feel deeply in my heart”. It is the faith once given to the apostles and handed down to us through the Holy Catholic Church.

Here is what your faith *actually* teaches about marriage:

1601 “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.”84

I. MARRIAGE IN GOD’S PLAN

1602 Sacred Scripture begins with the creation of man and woman in the image and likeness of God and concludes with a vision of “the wedding-feast of the Lamb.”85 Scripture speaks throughout of marriage and its “mystery,” its institution and the meaning God has given it, its origin and its end, its various realizations throughout the history of salvation, the difficulties arising from sin and its renewal “in the Lord” in the New Covenant of Christ and the Church.86

Marriage in the order of creation

1603 “The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. . . . God himself is the author of marriage.”87 The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics. Although the dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity,88 some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in all cultures. “The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life.”89

1604 God who created man out of love also calls him to love the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. For man is created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love.90 Since God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man. It is good, very good, in the Creator’s eyes. And this love which God blesses is intended to be fruitful and to be realized in the common work of watching over creation: “And God blessed them, and God said to them: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.’”91

1605 Holy Scripture affirms that man and woman were created for one another: “It is not good that the man should be alone.”92 The woman, “flesh of his flesh,” his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by God as a “helpmate”; she thus represents God from whom comes our help.93 “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.”94 The Lord himself shows that this signifies an unbreakable union of their two lives by recalling what the plan of the Creator had been “in the beginning”: “So they are no longer two, but one flesh.”95

Here is what your faith *actually* teaches about homosexuality:

Chastity and homosexuality

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”142 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

If you feel something deeply in your heart that is directly contrary to the faith handed down to the Church, that is not a confirmation from the Holy Spirit that you are right and the Church is wrong. It is confirmation that you are in rebellion against Jesus Christ and should repent. You are also, in this case, giving public scandal (i.e. tempting others to sin) and stand in grave danger of tying a millstone around your own neck as you tempt little ones to sin. God forgive you.

Show of hands... how many of you Catholics just learned something?

Komen sez goodbye to Planned Parenthood

Big tip of the hat to the breast cancer awareness charity:

In what looks to be a break between two organizations dedicated to women's health, a national breast cancerawareness group said it would stop providing funds to Planned Parenthood centers for breast cancer examinations and other breast health services.

Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a leader in fundraising for breast cancer research and famous worldwide for its iconic pink ribbon, said Tuesday that it was halting all partnerships with Planned Parenthood affiliates because of recently adopted criteria that forbid it from funding any organization under government investigation.

In September, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) launched an inquiry to determine whether Planned Parenthood uses public money to fund abortions. Planned Parenthood receives federal money but cannot use it to provide abortions.

Komen has a long history of providing funding to various Planned Parenthood affiliates for such services as manual breast exams and referrals for mammograms and biopsies to check suspicious lumps for cancer. Although that money is not used for abortions, the Komen Foundation may have yielded to demands from antiabortion groups to sever its ties to Planned Parenthood.

"We had the sense this was coming and that they were under pressure," said Sue Dunlap, chief executive of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles. "I find this really disappointing. I think when women's health is more of a political conversation than a conversation about healthcare and taking care of people, then we've gone too far."

Actually, going too far is couching an organization purposed in killing the unborn as one that takes care of people.  Death is on the docket for every abortion planned.  50% of patients involved in an abortion are killed.  100% of those under the age of infancy.

Taking care of people my arse.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

The Imaginarium of Barack Obama

By tim, The Godless Heathen

Victor Davis Hanson -

The presidency of Barack Obama is full of funny things that need not follow any sort of logic. Images and ideas just pop in and out, without worry of inconsistency, contradiction or hypocrisy. It’s a fascinating mish-mash of strange heroes and bogeymen, this imaginarium of our president.

In the imaginarium, there are no revolving doors, earmarks, or lobbyists. So Peter Orszag did not go from being OMB director to a Citigroup fat-cat. Once chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel did not make $16 million for his well-known banking expertise. The more you damn the pernicious role of lobbyists and the polluting role of big money, the more you must hire and seek out both. Public financing of campaigns is wonderful for everyone else who lacks the integrity of Barack Obama who understandably must renounce such unfair impositions.

Those who now vote against raising the large Obama debt ceiling are political hucksters and opportunists; those who not long ago voted against raising the smaller Bush debt ceiling were principled statesmen. “Unpatriotic” presidents borrow $4 trillion in eight years; patriotic ones we’ve been waiting for can trump that in three.

Catching known terrorists and putting them in Guantanamo is very bad; killing suspected ones by drone assassinations—and anyone unlucky enough to be in their general vicinity —is exceptionally good. Tribunals, renditions, preventative detention, and all that were bad ideas under Bush-Cheney, but could become good ideas under Barack Obama, the law professor who often sees no need to follow the law when an immigration or marriage statute is deemed regressive.

A million Iranians protesting a soon to be nuclear theocracy is false revolutionary consciousness and to be left alone; a few thousand Israelis wanting to buy apartments in the Jerusalem suburbs is subversive and worthy of presidential condemnation. And when atoning for supposed American lapses, what better place to begin apologizing than in Turkey, the incubator of the Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish mass killings? We need to deny history to make the case that America is not exceptional, and to invent it to persuade us that the Muslim world is extraordinary.

Twenty-four months of a Democratic Congress, and over $4 trillion in spending, resulted in 9.1% unemployment and near nonexistent growth. Yet the culprit for the current slows is ten months of a Republican-controlled House that has yet to approve another $500 million of borrowing. In the imaginarium, just a little more of the massive amount that has failed will not fail. But if the Republicans are to be blamed for not wanting to waste the last half-trillion, are the Democrats to be praised for borrowing the first wasted $4 trillion?

The rest here.

H/T American Digest

Gingrich on the Fed and assigning responsibility

By Locutisprime

Newt pulls no punches. He directs his fire with specificity and facts. An excerpt from the Dartmouth debate: 

"Start with Barney Frank & Chris Dodd"

 

"Bernake has in secret spent hundreds of billions of dollars bailing out one group and not bailing out another group, I don't see anybody in the news media, demanding the kind of transparency at the Fed, that you would demand of every other aspect of the federal government and I think it is corrupt and it is wrong for one man to have that kind of secret power."

Dear Mr. Freeman

A Tea Party member pens a letter to Morgan Freeman... and it's good... damned good:

Dear Mr. Freeman,

My name is Ali Akbar. I’m a 26 year-old African-American small business owner and a tea party activist. I’m not writing to rake you over the coals in the way that many conservatives have done in the last 48 hours. Heck, I wrote a passionate open-letter refuting many of your claims already, but this is not that. This is an honest and standing invitation. I do believe that you are wrong in what you said about the tea party, but I would rather prove it to you than castigate you for your comments.

I also understand that your reflexive comments came from experience. You grew up in a different America than the one that I was blessed to be born into. We both grew up in the south, but I never saw ‘White Only’ signs. I’ve been called a name or two in my three decades, but racism has always been the exception in my life, not the rule, as it probably was in your youth. I understand your suspicion of conservative political movements. It is rooted in pain and fear and memory, and though I never saw the horrors of segregation that you did, we share that cultural heritage.

I’ve been a fan of yours all my life. From “Driving Miss Daisy” to “Lean on Me” to “The Shawshank Redemption,” I idolized you as a boy. Growing up without a father, you were one of the strong black men in my life who gave me a model to follow. Each of the characters you played had dignity and confidence. I tried to emulate the strength you projected. While many of my friends headed down the all-too-familiar path of drugs, unwed pregnancies and crime, I’ve striven to live a life with dignity, be an example for my brothers and make my mother proud.

My favorite of your movies was “The Power of One.” I must’ve watched it a hundred times, crying every time when your character Geel Piet was killed by the racist South African. Geel Piet was brave and heroic, even in the face of death, because he knew that the hate that killed him was a trifle in comparison to the love that PK’s anti-apartheid movement was spreading. It is with that spirit that I’m writing to you this morning.

I’ve attended dozens of tea party events. I’ve helped organize them, and I’ve even spoken at a few. The tea party is not what is often depicted in the news. It is people of all colors who are terribly concerned about the direction that America is heading. We don’t trust big government to make decisions for us. And we fear that the present administration’s spending is going to lead our country down a path to insolvency, much like what Greece is currently facing.

Your comments about the tea party have caused me physical pain. You’ve rekindled the old painful paradigm of Uncle Tom – that any black man who votes Republican is some kind of sellout. It’s not true. I work hard, pay my taxes, love Jesus, and I’m good to my family and community. In effect, your comments have stereotyped an entire group of people. And I know in my soul that you must regret that on some level.

There’s already plenty of groupthink among American blacks. Over 90% of us vote Democrat with religious regularity, and we have been doing so for over fifty years. For a short time, I was one of them. I realized a few years ago that the Democrats’ promises of equality bestowed by government wasn’t working and will never work. I came to believe that redistributionist policies with the goal of social justice was essentially creating a new plantation within the federal government. Scraps might be thrown our way, but dependence on the plantation would be the inevitable result.

Over half a century since we started voting for Democrat policies, blacks in America are worse off than before. Black Americans are more likely to get involved with drugs, go to prison, and die younger than our white counterparts. Over 70% of our children are born out of wedlock. Our abortion rate has never been higher. There are two explanations for these results. 1) Blacks are an inferior race and can’t take care of themselves. 2) Despite the best of intentions, the government has created and implemented “social justice” policies that promote perpetual dependence. I choose to believe the latter. Therefore, I have become a Republican.

Mr. Freeman, I’m not asking you to adopt my political views. You’re in your seventies, and a political shift is not in your future. I’m reaching out to you because...

I suggest you read it all and pass it on.  Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Freeman will read it... and respond.

Via Pradheep Shanker.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

The red bandana

I am more frequently these days wondering about the mark I'll leave on this Earth once my time here is done. That may seem somewhat macabre to some but I suspect many of us have similar thoughts.  How will we be remembered? Will we have fulfilled our purpose? Have we done what the Good Lord wanted us to do?

My brother John turned me on to the following story where we find someone who I believe firmly answered those questions positively and confidently.

Might we all live up to the standard set by Welles Crowther.

Crossposted at Wizbang.