He was my father-in-law, and thus I’ve been in his debt ever since that wonderful day when I first met my wife. There is, in one sense, only a little to be said, but that is only because he was “just” a good man.
He worked, all his life. From childhood when he used to help his father deliver ice in New York City, to just a short while ago when he was still giving aid to the crew doing some modifications to his garage. This is what men of his time did: they worked. His main job of his life was working in iron – some of those fire escapes you can still see in New York were built by him. He started out doing that sort of work in the shipyards of World War Two, until Uncle Sam decided that he could just as well do that in the Navy. He might have made the Navy his career, but the death of his father meant that he was needed back at home, to help take care of his mother and his sisters.
He got married: another thing men of his time did. There was no need to run around – you found the girl you liked, and you married her. And then stayed married. Joe and Dolores were together for more than half a century, until she died in 2009. They had three children together and they did their best by them. Those kids have now turned into five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
He was not just my father-in-law: he was my friend. I’ve learned a lot from him. How to be a bit tougher. How to apply just a little more elbow grease to problems. How to not complain and just get the job done. I’m going to miss him.
UPDATE: Turns out, the old guy died on July 5th – his birthday. Little screw up in recording of times.
Blogs For Victory 
Sorry for your loss Mark. Events like this give us proper perspective on life and how it is to be lived. Family is everything, politics is just sport. Reach out to everyone you care about today and just say hi – because you still can.
Mark, it sounds like your father in law lived a good life, a full and productive life, and ended it with a family that loved and respected and admired him. That is a pretty good accomplishment—we should all be so lucky. I am sure you miss him, but just be grateful he was in your life.
We just lost a wonderful young man, 26 years old and already a man to be admired as well as loved, so the idea of having to say goodbye to someone is fresh in my mind. But as we got together on the 4th, we were able to talk about how much he had meant to us.
I gave my cousin a book I found while sorting through some books, a book called “We AreTheir Heaven” about how those who have passed get great happiness and satisfaction from seeing us happy.
Mark,
You father-in-law sounds a lot like my father-in-law, a man I admired immensely. There was something about many in that generation that may never be duplicated again, at least on that scale. Deepest condolences.
Thanks, guys – it is hard to be too sad about a guy who made it to 90, but it is still a missing piece of life, now. Apparently, he died just some minutes after midnight; guess he didn’t want to go on his birthday!
Just a reminder, Steve Scalise remains in ICU after being shot by a violent socialist Democrat. You won’t hear anything about this in the media, so report back here for updates.
Scalise is in my prayers. I’m hoping that there is a silver lining in this tragedy. First of all, the only fatality has been the shooter, which is as it should be. Secondly, particularly if Scalise makes a full recovery, the lesson to those wild-eyed Leftists who think a revolution sounds cool, is that many of them will wind up the same as the D.C. shooter. Even if it deters a few, that’s a step in the right direction.
I know there are some — OK, many, on the right who are sitting on large arsenals of weapons and ammunition, just waiting for the Left to start something. I’m not one of them, and I pray that those who would start such a conflagration think (I know that’s going to be a task for many) long and hard, maybe study the Civil War, and see how that turned out.
I just have to say – I think Trump’s foreign policy so far is exceptional. He is actually performing better on the foreign side of the ledger than he is the domestic side, and I didn’t expect that.
Mark, my condolence. Those of us lucky enough to have wonderful spouses and have great relationships with our in-laws are blessed. Some people think, in order to be extraordinary you have to do something beyond measure, but in reality there are scores of people who are extraordinary simply by the fact that they live good lives and inspire other to be to be better for having been a part of their lives.
Derek Hunter has a good recap of the last week at Town Hall this morning. Favorite part:
I have noticed that the most predominating characteristic of most Leftists is some form of negativity—anger, hatred, surliness. It is, in their minds, directed toward their concept of “the Right” but if you manage to pin one down you quickly learn that this is a vague and formless concept they can’t really explain. It is seldom based on actual political philosophy, as what passes for “political philosophy” usually boils down to “well, I, uh, I like think that, like, things should just be fair and equal and mean people suck…” All they “know” about the Right is that all it cares about is money, and oh, yeah, everyone on the Right is a racist. It extends to nearly all of life in this country, which they find distasteful, and all they can do is blame this malcontent on the Right. It can’t be something about the way their minds work—it has to be the fault of someone else.
When you stand back and look at these people, you realize that they have CHOSEN to be angry, have CHOSEN to see the world through a negative lens. It is their default position. It doesn’t depend on anything outside their own heads. When the Left controlled all three branches of government and their idol, Obama, was ruling the nation from the Oval Office with no regard for Congress or the Constitution, they were still furious. Absolutely furious.
What enraged them? Pretty much everything. Even when they ran the country the way they thought it should be run, they had no love for it, no respect for it, no loyalty to it.
Looking at this mindless, baseless rage, which is really rage at the lack of meaning in those lives, I think of the term “nihilist”—-a term we don’t hear much of these days, which is odd because it seems to describe the state of mind of nearly half of the people in this country.
A general definition of “nihilist” is ..a person who believes that life is meaningless and rejects all religious and moral principles.. A historic definition is …a supporter of an extreme Russian revolutionary party c. 1900 which found nothing to approve of in the established social order… Merriam-Webster says nihilism is (a)..a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless. Nihilism is a condition in which all ultimate values lose their value. (b) a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially of moral truths …
Sounds like a spot-on description of most Leftists. Maybe we should start using it more (to describe them).
I absolutely think we need to start describing them in technical terms. In this case, a Lib who is called a nihilist might bother to look it up. An argument would ensue, of course, but most would (a) have to agree that these are accurate descriptions of how they feel, followed by (b) claims that this is, of course, the superior way of thinking. But the term does have negative connotations, and we need to start letting these people know of the low esteem in which we hold them.
Back when Obama came on the scene with his silly “Hope and Change” meme, I told a Lib that this was absurd, as it basically said the nation was so awful that any change at all would be an improvement, and his response was “Well, yeah”.
That pretty much summed up the Lib mentality, and it hasn’t changed much, even when they are running the show and ought to be pretty pleased with what they are accomplishing.
This is not only an excellent article, it is the first I can remember that uses the term “nihilist”. Maybe someone is listening to us, Spook…
Western values, Judeo-Christian at base but also to some degree influenced by Greco-Roman views on philosophy and politics, are under threat from within by a nihilist “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Western Civ has got to go” mentality. President Donald Trump told Poles fighting a version of that mindset that he was with them—and the American left had a freakout.
Said freakout is, to be honest, well deserved. If Trump carries through with a campaign to defeat the multicultural assault on Western civilization, he would be finally responding to what has been a sustained and, so far, singularly successful leftist attempt to fundamentally transform America and her European allies.
http://dailysignal.com/2017/07/08/the-lefts-revealing-freakout-over-trumps-defense-of-the-west
Sorry to use your father-in-law’s memorial as an open thread, Mark. Hopefully he’d approve.
You had to know that sooner or later a definitive, peer–reviewed study showing that most of the global warming hype has been nothing but just that — HYPE. Well, along with a good bit of dishonesty, manipulation and fraud.
The people who have perpetrated this fraud have had the unmitigated gall to suggest that those of us who don’t buy into it should be prosecuted (read – persecuted). I think it’s time that the opposite happened.
Exposing the Bums and Frauds
Remember TV infomercial pitchman Kevin Trudeau? Anyone who watched late night TV knows him. His 30-minute infomercials ran day and night on cable TV channels for the past decade. The government claimed that his product (a book about losing weight) was a fraud. The result? Kevin Trudeau was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in federal prison in February 2014.
This is an example of what needs to be done to those spreading blatant lies and the climate change groups certainly comes to mind for a place to start.
I think Mr. Walinski would approve of the additional comments. He was obviously a man of great common sense and therefore that makes him anti progressive.
I see that Donald Trump Jr met with a Russian lawyer prior to the election and of course this has the brain trust at Morning Joe all in a twitter this morning. This is very serious according to Mika. I guess it’s not as serious as Putin invading, occupying and annexing Crimea as he did under Obama because according to Mika, the people of Crimea welcomed the Russian state at that time (maybe that was the flexibility Obama spoke of). Nor was it serious when Obama discovered the Russia alleged intrusions into the 2016 campaign in October 2016 but said and did nothing. Because of course Hillary was expected to win, and nobody wanted to interrupt her path to the coronation. This narrative also doesn’t hold up well to Trump’s confrontation with Russia in Syria, Trump’s expanded domestic energy policies which will eventually hurt Russia, or Trump;s most recent visit to Poland where he applauded them for their resistance to Russian aggression.
The leftist MSM media has become a complete joke. David Ignatius is a clown.
I got an MSNBC blog in my email this morning so I opened it. (I’m now looking for a way to safely disinfect my computer, as my original impulse to pour bleach over it doesn’t seem wise.) But I did note the usual dependence on crystal balls—the claimed ability to have deep and accurate insight into the hearts and minds of anyone doing anything. So they know—they just KNOW—why such a meeting took place. And then they tell us.
I also noted the by-now-familiar refrain of “with ties to the Kremlin”. That must work with Lib sheeple, because it gets used a lot. But what does that mean? It seems to be applied to every Russian who ever spoke to any Republican. When examining propaganda, it’s important to pick up on these efforts to push perceptions into certain directions, and this little phrase is one of those efforts.
And I also noted the assumption that if a “Russian hacker” did something, it was done for political purposes. That one slipped under my radar for a while, but it has been repeated so often it finally struck me. So my question is, if there is some evidence (1) that a system was “hacked”—-and here I need to digress a little, as using a password gotten by phishing is not the same as “hacking”, which involves penetrating the actual code of the site and not just guessing that some moron used the word “password” as his password, or responded to a phishing effort—-and (2) that the person or persons who did the hacking were Russian, isn’t there a pretty good chance that these were just plain old everyday criminals, the kind who penetrate data bases on a nearly daily basis?
In other words, has there been any evidence, much less proof, that these “Russian hackers” who allegedly penetrated the data bases or election records or whatever in several states were doing so on behalf of the Russian government? Did they have “ties to the Kremlin”, maybe even working out of the basement of the Kremlin for all we know, or were they just Russian identity thieves pillaging data bases out of Brighton Beach? My point is, a lot of fuss has been made over a couple of very incomplete bits of information.
Way back when, before this whole “Russian collusion” thing assumed terminal velocity on the Left, a government agency (one of ours, I think the FBI) noted that the most recent hacking they were looking at was very different from prior examples. The source said that prior Russian hacking was very very sophisticated and hard to track, while the most recent one was clumsy, full of footprints, and lacking the traits of former Russian hacking. This is what led me to my comment that the “hacking” of whatever Dem data was allegedly “hacked” at that time was set up to look like it was Russian, almost to the point of leaving a note in the wastebasket saying “Boris—we need more vodka”.
I am seeing a lot of hysteria over a few breadcrumbs scattered to lead people in a certain direction, but with no real connection among those breadcrumbs other than speculation or invention.
Democrats are so predictable.
From your linked article:
The premise of the “Better Deal” talk is this: Trump says he’s a great negotiator. But we can do better than his proposed robust and privately-backed infrastructure improvement
Well who can argue with that? The Democrats did such an outstanding job with infrastructure improvement while they were in charge. Who can forget this?
In 2009, the newly elected president had success in getting Congress to approve money for infrastructure. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — the stimulus bill — allocated tens of billions to highways, rail, and transit improvements.
And I think we are all enjoying the improvements made to our “roads and bridges”. Right?
Has anyone looked into where those tens of billions of dollars went? Were they spent at all, or just “allocated” as part of a head-fake?
As for “transit improvements” I wonder how much money went to that light rail boondoggle in California. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444262/california-high-speed-rail-unworkable-money-pit
Has anyone looked into where those tens of billions of dollars went?
A not insignificant amount was spent on signs.
I used to joke that all the money went to buy signs touting projects that were never done. Now it seems that while not “all” of it went to signs, a lot of it did. Almost as soon as the bill passed a big sign went up near my property explaining that thanks to Obama a wonderful project would soon begin. There hadn’t even been planning for the “project” and the only thing we ever saw was the sign. It was there for years, still there when I moved.
I’ve often referred to what I call “the shortcut to the Higher Moral Ground” of Leftists thinking that merely being FOR something imputes moral superiority, and the term “virtue signaling” had a too-short period of use as it refers to a similar tactic. Today I ran across another great term. (Spoiler alert for Mark—the article is quite critical of Pope Francis, an opinion with which I agree.)
one of the characteristic vices of our time, moral exhibitionism, which is the espousal of generous sentiment without the pain of having to think of the costs to other people of the implied (but unstated) morally-appropriate policy…..
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/449338/popes-distorted-view
I’m sensing a definition of Leftism forming around the terms nihilism and moral exhibitionism.
Wading through the hysteria of the varied Russian claims, something jumped right out at me.
Can anyone come up with an explanation for the presence of Jamie Gorelick in the new White House lineup? Yes, the same Jamie Gorelick who was responsible for the infamous wall designed to keep federal intelligence agencies from communicating with each other in an effort to stymie investigations into her boss’s illegal foreign campaign contributions. (Bill Clinton, for those who don’t remember the act, or the reason for the act, that may have led to the intelligence failures that allowed 9/11.) Yes, the same Jamie Gorelick who was then rewarded with a cushy Fannie Mae job where she got millions in “bonuses”.
Now she is representing Jared Kushner. WTH?
http://abcnews.go.com/topics/news/whitehouse/jamie-gorelick.htm
Refreshing our memories about Jamie Gorelick (emphasis mine)
Jamie “The Wall” Gorelick and the 9/11 Commission
From 1994 to 1997, while serving in the Department of Justice as a deputy attorney general, Gorelick wrote a 1995 memo, creating what in time became known as the “Gorelick Wall.”
Basically, the Gorelick memo set in stone the Clinton-era doctrine that terrorism was to be regarded as a criminal justice problem, such that information developed by intelligence agencies was not to be shared with criminal investigative units, including the Department of Justice, largely because the regulations under which intelligence agencies operate did not necessarily protect the civil rights of criminal suspects under U.S. law.
Gorelick’s role in writing this memo was not generally known until she was appointed by then-Senate Democratic Party minority leader Tom Daschle to serve as a commissioner on the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, commonly known as the 9/11 Commission.
Her participation as commissioner became controversial when then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, in his testimony to the 9/11 Commission, declassified and brought to light the 1995 Department of Justice memorandum authored by Gorelick.
Appearing before the 9/11 Commission, Ashcroft testified, “Although you understand the debilitating impact of the wall, I cannot imagine that the commission knew about this memorandum, so I have declassified it for you and the public to review. Full disclosure compels me to inform you that its author is a member of this commission.”
Ashcroft contended the document authored by Gorelick helped establish the “single greatest structural cause” for 9/11, which was “the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents.”
Since Ashcroft’s disclosure, controversy has swirled over the possibility that had intelligence and law enforcement agencies fully shared information about prospective terrorist attacks, 9/11 might have been prevented.
Specifically, critics have argued that in the days before 9/11, the “Gorelick Wall” prevented FBI officials in Minnesota from getting a search warrant to search the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, the reputed “20th hijacker,” who was placed in custody on Aug. 16, 2001, by the FBI and INS agents and charged with an immigration violation after suspicions were raised concerning Moussaoui’s intentions in pursuing flight training.
Jamie, the “million dollar exec” at Fannie Mae
In the aftermath of the 2008 U.S. government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in midst of the subprime mortgage crisis, attention focused on three prominent Democrats who served as Fannie Mae executives:
• Franklin D. Raines, former Clinton administration budget director;
• James Johnson, former aide to Democratic vice president Walter Mondale; and
• Jamie Gorelick, former Clinton administration deputy attorney general.
All three earned millions in “compensation” while serving as top Fannie Mae executives.
• Raines earned $90 million in his five years as Fannie Mae CEO, from 1999 to 2004;
• Johnson earned an $21 million in just his last year serving as Fannie Mae CEO from 1991 to 1998; and
• Gorelick earned an estimated $26 million serving as vice chair of Fannie Mae from May 1997 to May 2003, according to a May 2006 Special Examination of Fannie Mae conducted by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight
All three subsequently were involved in mortgage-related financial scandals concerning their stewardship at Fannie Mae.
https://www.infowars.com/white-house-leak-central-kushners-lawyer-jamie-gorelick-a-decades-long-clinton-loyalist/
Note that Gorelick failed to inform the 9/11 Commission of her involvement in the blocking of information sharing among intelligence agencies. One can assume that Tom Daschle knew. Not mentioned is the speculation that the real reason for the “wall” was to stop the sharing of information about foreign nations making illegal campaign contributions to her boss, Bill Clinton.
Also note the more than $100 million paid out to Dem loyalists for their positions in a failed and failing and corrupt Fannie Mae, and its relationship to the subsequent housing bomb that had such a terrible impact on the nation and its economy.
Now she represents the president’s daughter and son-in-law, who also hold high positions in the new administration.
That’s not good
It isn’t good, but keep in mind that Ivanka and Jared are well to the left of Donald Trump ideologically speaking, although if they are primary influences in the President’s decision making process, it isn’t openly evident. If the roles were reversed, the MSM would be falling all over themselves about how bad the “optics” are.
One would think, though, that being part of the Trump administration, working for a president who ran as a conservative, would result in better decisions about who to bring into the Inner Circle. They might learn a little from the Dem House debacle, in which Pakistanis were given access to confidential information from permanent members of security committees, without any prior vetting or security clearances.
But then the Dems are still defending the decision to hire this family—if “hire” is the right word for paying unqualified, unskilled people large amounts of money to do no work.
True. Ivanka and Jared are definitely left of center and run in those circles, but I think Gorelick is scum …… but no one ever consulted with me LOL
I will say that the media was not kind to Ivanka over the weekend for “filling in” for her Dad. Had the roles been reversed, one might say that the media was engaging in misogyny.
Progressives really do have the best for this country at heart. (now where is that sarcasm button?)
http://www.dailywire.com/news/18437/bad-worse-mizzou-closes-seven-dorms-cuts-400-jobs-hank-berrien#exit-modal
I just saw that Spook posted this earlier, but worth another mention:
Now who would have expected this?
A new peer-reviewed bombshell study concludes that three key global temperature data sets used in recent climate change models have been “adjusted” in such a way as to not be “a valid representation of reality.”
http://www.dailywire.com/news/18433/uh-oh-new-report-just-dropped-bomb-key-climate-james-barrett
Just a couple of updates: Despite the Democrats best efforts, Steve Scalise is still alive although still in ICU and Charlie Gard is still alive.
Excellent piece by Dennis Prager at Town Hall this morning on the Left’s attempts to destroy Western Civilization. And one of the commenters makes a salient point:
Are white people the only people guilty of past transgressions? The Japanese, Chinese, Arabs, Muslims, Persians, Latino’s, Sudanese, etc., etc. – none of these people ever committed atrocities against others? Are we to assume that if white people were not on the planet, that this would be utopia?
What disturbs me most about this line of thinking is that progressives with this mindset must obviously think that white people are superior. How else are we to explain their rush to defend any non white person from even the slightest perceived slight? How else to explain policies that “promote equality” for non white people? How else to explain Jesse Jackson’s and Al Sharpton’s non stop, victim based tirades? Are white people that powerful that even our presence creates anxiety and feelings of inequality. We must really be powerful. I had no idea.
What a neat story, and what an outstanding individual General Mattis is. Since we hijacked Joseph Wilinski’s memorial, I fell it only fitting to submit this story in his and Mark’s father’s honor.
It is a great story, and it balances out the story that he has a bear rug in his quarters—the bear isn’t dead, it’s just afraid to move.
But seriously, what he is saying to this young man is what fathers in this country used to tell their children as a natural part of parenting and of being an American.
I think conservatives should impale progressives on their climate change and equality hysteria. Take it to the extreme and let them defend their positions. Reverse Alinsky.
OR — we could just line them all up against the wall and shoot them like they do in Cuba. They LOOOOOVE Cuba so much, they probably wouldn’t even object.
If there was ever any doubt as to who ANTIFA (anti-fascists) really are, this should pretty well clear it up.
Has everybody heard that 27,000 people a year will die if ObamaCare is repealed? The plus side is that they will almost all be Democrats, heh. A twofer anyway you look at it.
Climate change is going to catastrophically change our way of life in just a few short years according to the NYT, so I don’t know why healthcare is such a big issue. Shouldn’t we be riding bikes anyway?
If only 27,000 people will die every year if we repeal Obamacare, we should get that done right away. Of course we will need to figure out what to do with the approximately 2.4 million who will not die because we did. We’ll be stacking people up like cordwood but hey—if if only saves one life……
How many people die in the USA every day?
https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-die-in-the-USA-every-day
According to the United Nations, 2,473,018 people died in the United States in the most recent year data is available, 2008. That means 6,775 per day