CHRISTMAS

 

Since I was a little boy, Christmas has been my favorite holiday.  Perhaps it all started when I was two when my Father decided I wanted or needed a toy train set.  One of my earliest memories is playing happily inside the boxes the train set came in while my Dad put the set together and then played with it all day long.  Merry Christmas Dad!

 

Later after my two younger brothers came along , Christmas became a group conspiracy  with begging and pleading aimed at my sainted Mother who had to weather the annual assault of needs, desires and demands for various toys that held a heroin like hold on our imaginations. Merry Christmas guys!

 

 

I remember I always wanted a dog ( this actually lasted well unto my adulthood) but we rented and the lease specifically stated "no pets".  If truth be told my Mother had a deathly fear of dogs, cats or any other creatures that she believed did not belong in a dwelling with people, so being a smart ass I would remind her that the baby Jesus was born in a manger with all sorts of animals.  This was called invoking the "big guy" and was clearly my version of the nuclear option.  My father then would say something profound like "The question is no!!!" followed by ..."and your not Jesus".  This from a man who started his working career as a Shepard while a boy in his native Sweden!  

 

My mother would always include clothes wrapped as gifts to inflate the 'haul" beneath the tree but my brothers and I learned to unwrap these with the same kind of reverence we held for toys and later baseball gloves, footballs, tennis rackets and basketballs.   It made my Mother feel better that while my parents could not give us everything we craved..they gave us things we liked.

 

We would usually go to my Aunt's house for Christmas dinner which would be a Norman Rockwell feast with turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, fresh rolls,string beans and carrots and at least four kind of pies.  (My grandmother lived with us while I grew up and she had this fantastic habit of baking at least two pies a day).  Over time we developed a custom of holding some gifts aside to take to my Aunt's where the extended family and friends of my Aunt and Grandmother would join us.  One Christmas during my teen years, my Grandmother's oldest friend ...who was notoriously cheap and just as rich ...gave my Mother as a present, a box of yellowed waxed paper which clearly had been originally  purchased immediately after the fall of Tobruk, 

 

 

I was confounded by two distinct  sensations...the need to suppress a tsunami wave of laughter that was about to consume me and an intense intellectual curiosity as to how my always polite and kind mother would respond to this unique gift from another era.  She did not disappoint.  In a response worthy of a seasoned diplomat she said " Thank you so much...you can always use waxed paper!"  That was my Mom!   Merry Christmas Mom!

 

I was raised as a Protestant...a Baptist if you will... largely due to the fact that one of my Aunts was a ferocious church lady who every Sunday would pick up my brothers and myself plus at least seven other urchins in danger of losing their immortal souls, for Sunday school where I dutifully learned about  Christianity and particularly the spiritual aspects of Christmas and Easter.  My Aunt was a formidable force of nature who would not take no for an answer when it came to issues of faith and the Bible.  My Father had been baptized a Lutheran and my mother like my Grandmother did not belong to an organized church, so this pretty much was a weekly abduction since no one ever asked my brothers and myself what we wanted. 

 

One Christmas Eve at my Aunts is particularly memorable due to the fact that my family was notoriously against the imbibing of spirits in any form.  This was hard on my Dad since he was Swedish and loved his beer.  Out of respect for my Grandmother who raised me while my Mom worked and who was known to pack up and flee if she smelled demon rum or any other variation of beer or liquor on someone's breath, he never ever brought a beer into our house when she lived with us.  Merry Christmas Grandma!

 

However he did come home in a jolly mood one Christmas Eve and fell into bed so hard,  while singing loudly in Swedish, that my poor Mother was catapulted out of a sound sleep on to their bedroom floor. 

 

But I digress... my Aunt the church lady  always pretended even to her best friends, that she was a non drinker.   Well it appeared that she had fooled all of us because on this occasion after her friends had left,  she ordered my Uncle to get her annual "Christmas medicine" in a yellow Dixie cup.  The medicine was Southern Comfort and she drank it like a truck driver at a "honky tonk" roadhouse.  Imagine the sound of an empty Dixie cup hitting the bar with a smack!   Merry Christmas  Aunt "Noni" and Uncle Vern.

Meanwhile, little did my family know save my Aunt "Rut",  that I had secretly begun a romance with the Roman Catholic Church that first began during grammar school when I would ride my bike over to the convent at St. Mary's each and every Saturday to ask the nuns if they had any errands for me to run.  Later my attraction to Catholicism would manifest itself at Christmas when I would go to Midnight Mass with friends or a girlfriend and be utterly entranced by the Latin, the candles, the music, the incense and the fact that if I went into any Catholic Church anywhere in the world, the mass save the homily would be comprehensible if you knew your Latin and your Catechism.  It was at Midnight Mass that I begin to take what I had learned at Sunday School and incorporate it into a spiritual journey that would end up lasting a lifetime centered around the real meaning of faith and especially Christmas.  My Aunt "Rut" was my only confidant.  Merry Christmas Aunt "Rut"!

 

I also as a teen became enchanted with the Christmas books of Charles Dickens and was especially fond of the Alastair Sim film version of "A Christmas Carol" which is now having it's 63rd anniversary.  I also came to love Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" which is having it's 67th  anniversary. I never miss these!.

 

Somehow over the years all of the above have combined to put Christmas for me,  in a rich and rewarding perspective that goes beyond the presents and the food and the music and the books and films and even the attendance at Mass, which I truly love.  In this age of disbelief...this age of vulgar appetites and cultural nihilism... Christmas is critical to and indeed responsible for putting the best attributes of humankind on display if even just for the brief season of Christmastide. 

 

Christmas is under attack by those who fear the best of us and who would be content to make it a secular event for commercial reasons thereby reducing it to a mere reason to shop.  But they will not win because the spirit of Christmas is too strong.  The presents of Christmas represents generosity and caring...the food of Christmas represents the family and friends that enrich and fulfill our lives...the  music of Christmas represents the surrender to the best emotions that we harbor within ourselves but often suppress...the books and films of Christmas represent our need to see these noble feelings manifested and vindicated...and the celebration of Christmas in a place of worship or simply in a place of prayer reminds us that the divine can enter our lives not just at Christmas but when ever we have the courage to summon it.

 

 

Christmas makes us better people...Christmas makes the world a better place...Christmas makes us holy whether one believes in God or not... Christmas is an announcement that joy is our inheritance if we choose to believe that there is more to life than just us...Christmas beckons everyone who believes in the redemption and salvation of love...

 

To all my kids, family and friends ...here and on the other side.. Merry Christmas... and to my wife who is Christmas for me.. 365 days a year... 143.

ERLANDSSON

DEATH BY GOVERNMENT

 

In 2008 Barack Obama surfed a wave of symbolism and emotion that at times resembled a political tsunami.  He told the country on election night that "change had come to America".

 

The problem was that almost everybody outside of his small but hard core progressive palace guard had stunningly different ideas of what change was.

 

The variations of the theme of change were as numerous as the stars in the night but "Obamachange" had several overarching sub-themes that time would prove amounted to little more than buzz words.  "Fairness", "fair share" and "level playing fields" for the middle class were three such examples.  However redistribution of wealth from the "haves" to the "have not's" was studiously avoided.

 

The political calculation by "Team Obama" was that this would be a killer of a deal breaker with the voters particularly when you did the math and the "haves" included the middle class that Obama had sworn to protect.

 

Obama, it turned out, was the tribune for every left wing, social justice cause imaginable.  Over time the progressive left had swallowed up everyone and every group who hated America, Israel, oil, coal, capitalism, hetero-sexuals, men, Caucasians, Republicans, the military, the Constitution, working for a living and the Catholic Church.  It had done so using the money and resources of people like George Soros and its army encompassed much of the mainstream press and media, academia, unions, militant  feminists, militant gays and lesbians, illegal immigrants, Islamists and anarchist fringe groups like the occupy movement.

 

This coalition of the perpetually outraged had assumed control of the Democratic Party which became a party of negativity with a totalitarian impulse, disguised as the "happy face" wave of the future.

 

Throughout the honeymoon of the first term, the fawning press allowed Obama, leeway's never before granted an American President in the modern television era.  They either misled or failed to report with the vim or vigor they had used with LBJ or Nixon and all their successors  save # 44.

 

And with these leeway's,  the scandals and lies mounted, many of which were and remain impeachable offenses if linked directly to the President or any of his inner circle.  And then he told lies which effected every single man, woman and child in the nation.  He had told other lies equally bad but they had little or no gravity with the average person who by 2012, was for the most part concerned primarily with keeping their head above the flood waters of a recession so grim and deep that many did not know what the future would bring.  A recession it should be added, made grim and deep by the policies of the 44th President.

 

"Obamacare" passed the Congress in 2010 with only Democratic votes.  It has come back to haunt this President, his party and the nation.

 

"Obamacare",  at its core means to redistribute the money of those who work to the pockets of those who don't.  It uses the rationale of the delivery of needed health care to the uninsured.  The fact is that only 8 to 10 million people needed health care and could not get it.  To allegedly service these people, Obama and the Democrats, decided to resurrect "Hillarycare" and turn the entire American health care system on its head.  They decided to put bureaucrats between a Doctor and his or her patients and they justified it by claiming that the cost of health care for all would down and the quality of health care for all would go up.  All of this was a lie.  "Obamacare" is built on one lie after another.  

 

More ominously "Obamacare" will also cause people to become sicker and die.  "Obamacare" does not simply  contain "death panels"..."Obamacare"   is a death panel.

 

Consider the following..."Obamacare is supposed to give quality, affordable health care to all.  However if you liked your current health plan and the Doctors and Hospitals you had ...you could keep them ...period!  This was both the promise of this President and how and why the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" passed to begin with.  All of this was a lie!

 

As we approach the rollout of "Obamacare" on January 1st, 2014 we discover that up to a third of the country will lose their current health insurance and instead find themselves with plans they can't afford containing services they don't need, dispensed by Doctors and Hospitals they don't know who will give them medicines that don't work!  The end result of this is that people will get sicker and die.

 

They will be faced with premiums and deductibles  they can't pay and if this is not reversed...people will die.

 

They will lose their Doctors who know them and if this is not reversed...people will die.

 

They will lose access to  both nearby and specialized hospitals and if this is not reversed... people will die.

 

They will be denied medications and, procedures they need and if this is not reversed...people will die.

 

Research and  innovations in drugs and devices will be thwarted by  the regulations of the bureaucrats  and the the realities of the new Obama  market place and if this is not reversed ...people will die.

 

Obamacare is so bad that the IRS "Obamacare" enforcers want to force Volunteer Firefighters to be covered as "employees"  and if this takes place, volunteer firehouses all over the nation will close...and people will die.

 

You have to ask yourself what kind of people would design something so monstrous and so harmful to the people they are sworn to serve,protect and defend?  What in God's name was and is in their hearts and minds when they created this and today, continue to defend it.

 

The Democratic Party owns "Obamacare".  It is an act of war against the American people.  Barack Obama as its political architect, is the "Bernie Madoff " of Presidents or perhaps Madoff was the Barack Obama of "Ponzi kings".  It is a bait and switch unknown in American politics and if it is not reversed...people will die.  It will be death by government.

 

ERLANDSSON

 

December 7, 1941

 

The first American casualties of WW ll did not occur at Pearl Harbor.  Some say the first hostile action happened in the Yangtze River outside Nanking on December 12, 1937 where the USS gunboat Panay was sunk by  Japanese aircraft, killing three and wounding 45.  Others maintain that since WWll was not yet officially under way on that date, the first Americans to die in action were on October 17, 1941 when the USS Kearney, a Benson-Livermore Class Destroyer was attacked off the coast of Iceland, by the U-568 which was part of a wolf pack eviscerating a convoy that the Kearney was trying to protect.  11 US sailors were killed and 22 were wounded in the fight.  

 

All of this is a reminder that great and terrible events do not happen in a vacuum. 

 

For most of the 1930's, America in proud and defiant isolation caused in part by the Great Depression, watched as both Asia and Europe became engulfed in war and dictatorship.  FDR eventually turned America into the Arsenal for Democracy after WWII began on September 1, 1939.  Politically however Roosevelt had to walk a fine line with regard to American neutrality even as Churchill pressured him to join the fight and as anti-Japanese and anti-German feelings began to emerge domestically on the political left, particularly after Hitler invaded the USSR.

 

On October 16, 1941, the Japanese Prime Minister Prince Konoe resigned and General Hidecki Tojo assumed the post and the planning for an attack on the American Pacific Fleet was set in motion. 

 

Simultaneously, in Washington, Japanese Ambassador Nomura Kichisaburo  continued his efforts to negotiate a peace treaty between the US and Japan, unaware of what Tojo and the Japanese military were planning.  He continued his diplomatic efforts becoming more belligerent right up to December 7th when he was coldly informed by Secretary of State Cordell Hull that the attack had already begun.

 

The plan for the attack was the work of the Commander in Chief of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Isokoru  Yamamoto who had studied in the US and privately was against the attack which had as its political aim to so cripple the American Pacific Fleet that Japan could go into the Dutch East Indies for the oil and rubber they urgently needed without fear of retribution.  He believed the War that would follow would allow him to "run wild for the first six months" but he had no confidence as to the second and third years.

 

On November 20, 1941 Japan issued an ultimatum to the U.S. demanding non-interference for Japanese actions in China and Indo-China thereby escalating the tensions between the two countries.

On November 26th the Japanese Hawaii task Force left the Kurile Islands bound for Pearl Harbor.  On the same day the U.S. Secretary of State demanded the Japanese Imperial Army leave China immediately.  In Tokyo, Tojo declared this to be an ultimatum, cynically using it as justification for a sneak attack he had already set in motion.  The next day the United States military was placed on high alert.

 

Admiral Husband Kimmel was the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet  at Pearl Harbor.  His Army counterpart was Lt.  General Walter Short.  In the days after the attack both men would come under intense criticism for their lack of preparedness and eventually would be forced out of the military.  Both had determined that an attack on Pearl was extremely unlikely notwithstanding the heightened state of alert, Nor did they respond with alacrity to the sinking of a Japanese Midget Sub just before the first wave of the attack began or radar showing a large number of aircraft approaching Oahu. 

 

The attack began at 7:48 A.M. on a beautiful tropical and peaceful Sunday morning when the  first wave of 183 aircraft carrier based planes open fire.  The 70  U.S. combat ships and 24 auxiliary ships  were all lined up on Battleship Row providing excellent targets for the  air forces led by Commander Mitsuo Fuchida.  Likewise, were the 400 Army, Navy and Marine Corps aircraft  lined up wing to wing on three nearby airfields.

 

The fist wave lasted until 8:30 A.M. and inflicted horrible damage on a half dozen ships including the Arizona, the Oklahoma and the California.  The second wave came at 9:00 A.M. under the command of Lt. Commander Shigekazu Shimazaki and lasted for an hour. No third wave materialized.  

 

 The United States lost  3,600 men killed or wounded including 1,177 killed on the USS Arizona alone.  21 ships were sunk or damaged , 188 aircraft were destroyed and 159 were damaged out of 400 total. The Japanese lost 55 airmen and 9 submariners. The attack it should be remembered took place before any formal Declaration of War was ever issued by Japan.

 

There were numerous incidences of incredible bravery exhibited that day by both military personnel  and civilians.  129 medals, including 15 Medals of Honor were awarded to American servicemen.  68 civilians were killed and 35 were wounded coming to the aid of their country.  

 

Mess attendant Doris "Dorie" Miller won the Navy Cross for his actions that day.  Miller was aboard the USS West Virginia when the attack began.  He carried his wounded Captain to a safer place on the ship and while untrained, manned a .50 caliber antiaircraft gun until he was ordered to abandon ship.  Two years later Miller died in action.

 

Perhaps no one described the horror of that day better then Seaman Second Class Eddie Jones of the USS California who wrote the following:

 

"When that big bomb blew up and they put the fire out, I looked down in that big hole that went down three or four decks. I saw men all blown up, men with no legs on, men burned to death, men drowned in oil, with oil coming out of their eyes and their mouth and their ears. You couldn't believe it was happening. You could see it in front of your eyes, but you couldn't believe it. Here it was, a beautiful day -- a beautiful Sunday morning -- and you see everything blowing up and ships sinking and men in the water. And you think, we're at peace with the world. This can't be happening".

 

The next day, December 8th, FDR called December 7th , "a day that will live in infamy" and asked Congress for a declaration of war against the Empire of Japan.  Two days later Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy declared war against the US playing right into Churchill's hands.  In the days, months and years to come in the Pacific theater Americans would learn the geography of war in far away places with exotic names like Corregidor, Bataan, Wake Island, Tawawa, Kwajalien, Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Saipan, Guam, The Coral Sea, Midway, The Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, Peleliu, and Okinawa. 

 

  No one knew immediately after December 7th what the outcome of this titantic struggle would be save perhaps the architect of the attack, Admiral Yamamota who lamented "I fear all we have done today is to awaken a great, sleeping giant." Thus America cast off the shackles of isolationism and became in time a superpower...but a superpower built on the patriotism and sacrifice of  the Greatest Generation comprised of  young men and women who left the villages, towns, cities and farms of America to go off to war against some of the most evil forces in the history of the world.  In the words of the old WW II song we remember them today and say "Bless them All".

 

ERLANDSSON

THE AUDACITY OF A NARCISSIST 

 

 

Barack Obama is becoming a man alone with his self aggrandized vision of greatness that people around him have nurtured since he was a child.

 

ObamaCare is a daily reminder of the old adage that "Pride goeth before the fall".   In a column this week George Will referenced David Remick's worshipful biography entitled“The Bridge:The Life and Rise of  Barack Obama.”  On  page 274, Remick quotes Obama's gate keeper Valarie Jarrett about Obama and then Will opines as to her description of Obama.  Jarrett said:  

"I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is...He knows how perceptive hs is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability -- the extraordinary, uncanny ability -- to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them, and make sense out of them, and I think he has never been really challenged intellectually. I mean, he's the kind of guy you'd hate in law school, who would pick up the book the night before the final, read it, and ace the test. So what I sensed in him was not just a  restless spirit but someone with extraordinary talents that they had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy." 
 

Will then added: "Leave aside the question of whether someone so smitten can be in any meaningful sense an adviser. About what can such a paragon as Obama need advice?"
 

In point of fact Barack Obama has rarely if ever been challenged about his ideas, policies or programs.  His life while at times strange, has largely been one of accommodation and not conflict.  He has glided through his career  because of his "amazingness".   He has eluded criticism because of his "uniqueness".  He has been hyped and won election twice as a new kind of leader for the new millennium. 
 

and then there's this from EAG News;
 

"A Common Core kid’s book teaches 3rd graders that Barack Obama is honest, kind, fair and godlike...On the heels of a controversial children’s book about Barack Obama – which stated “white voters would never vote for a black president” and that “Barack’s former pastor” said “God would damn the United States for mistreating its black citizens” – comes a new lesson that casts America’s 44th president in a messianic light. Literally...And – surprise – it’s Common Core-aligned. 
 
 

The lesson plan and accompanying visual presentation were authored by Sherece Bennett, and is for sale onTeachersPayTeachers.com. It’s all based on a book titled, “Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope,” by Nikki Grimes.  In one passage, a young Obama sees beggars and wonders, “Will I ever be able to help people like these?”  “Hope hung deep inside of him,” the book adds. Another excerpt from the book reads: “Before dawn each morning, Barry rose – his mother’s voice driving him from dream land. ‘Time for learning English grammar and the Golden Rule. Be honest, be kind, be fair,’ she taught him.” ". 

This adulation of Obama  is unprecedented in American history and incredibly creepy to boot.  It supplies part of the answer as to why his policies have been so disengenuous, misguided, un-American and destructive to the nation.

Obama and his acolytes believe that the act of thinking about a problem privately followed by the act of articulating those thoughts publicly and being applauded for doing so by either a backdrop of grinning drones or an adoring media is the same as solving the problem.  When reality steps in and the the problem grows worse, the default reaction for this President is to deny knowledge and responsibility while blaming the growing debacle on others and in particular his political enemies.

At a private Democratic fundraiser in Beverly Hills, Calif., Obama again lauded himself  and Democratic leaders for surpassing the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

in a text of these remarks, released by the White House he said “We have accomplished as much, if not more, than any time in our history."

 Take a moment and think about the myriad domestic and foreign crises and scandals of this Presidency and ask your self which of these were truly ever solved or resolved  and  which were self inflicted to begin with?  Who got blamed for them, who got fired for them and who absolved himself or any one close to him of any responsibility?  And finally who lied about them to the American people at every opportunity?

Overwhelmingly you will find if you look at facts and not feelings that the American public has been harmed over and over for naked ideological and political reasons.  And this brings us to the other side of the Obama analysis.  This President is and has been since a child, a creature of the hard left which has a world view that denies human reality and human history and seeks to replace it with a mythical counter history supposedly based on "the real truth".

The new progressive left like it's Marxist and National Socialist predecessors, believes in a utopia governed by an elite who will exercise total control over all those who are ill informed or outright inferior because of their beliefs.   Privately they hide their true feelings about gender, race and religion because that would compromise their political agenda which seeks to use minorities, women and non-believers as victims for their "Brave New World". 

Barack Obama promised in 2008 that he would bring "Hope and Change".  He failed in the first instance and succeeded in the second. The country is like a punch drunk fighter as they absorb one political blow after another.  Slowly some are realizing that he is a man who preaches the golden rule but practices class, gender and race warfare.  His is the politics of  unmaking the American experience and the American dream.

He is a man who doesn't know what he doesn't know.  But he does know what he believes and he does knows what and who he hates.  His belief in his own greatness and his inability to even understand that there is another point of view that is legitimate which may be contrary to his own, will prove ultimately to be his undoing. 

 

His is the "Audacity of Narcissism" coupled to  an ideology that believes in the 21st Century version of the creation of the "new Soviet man and woman".  But as we discover who he is and what makes him tick, we stumble upon a bigger story.  It is the story about us...about we the people who were gullible or desperate enough to elect him twice as our President.  It is a story about who we may have become as we surrender our independence for the false safety of the all embracing but ultimately carnivorous  nanny state. 

ERLANDSSON