From: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/03/world/main6169405.shtml

So, Iran has a space program that Ahmadinejad is apparently very proud of. Speaking about the recent launch of an Iranian orbital rocket carrying live animals, he bragged:

The scientific arena is where we could defeat the (West’s) domination

Given the fact that our Idiot-in-Chief just gutted the budget of our own space program, I’m sure the Iranian “President” will make good on that promise, even if progress is made at a turtle’s pace. One thing is for certain, space program or not, Iran is going to be a nuclear nation soon and there isn’t a damn thing Obama, or his pathetic UN, can do about it. Frightening.

I wonder if the PETA zealots will cry for the little astronauts doomed to die for the Iranian space program?

So, the [arguably] most liberal state in the nation is sending a Republican to Washington to derail an incredibly unpopular, bloated and corrupt “health care” bill. More importantly though, this is a rejection of big government and the socialist agenda Obama is spearheading. Granted, they could still ram the bill through before Scott Brown is seated, but doing so would amount to political suicide and even greater losses in the coming elections. With luck, this bill with die quickly and our government can return to the drawing board to seek a bipartisan solution with sensible reforms. Although our healthcare system can be improved, it is still one of the best systems in the world. This fact is constantly underscored by the number of people seeking treatment in the United States.

Earlier tonight I had the desire to listen to how the liberals were going to spin this loss, so I turned on MSNBC with Keith Olbermann covering the election results. His facade of professionalism evaporated when Martha Coakley conceded the race. His broadcast quickly devolved into a frustrated, emotional, bitter and hateful litany of insults beginning with his “apology” to Brown for the following diatribe:

In short, in Scott Brown we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees. In any other time in our history, this man would have been laughed off the stage as an unqualified and a disaster in the making by the most conservative of conservatives. Instead, the commonwealth of Massachusetts is close to sending this bad joke to the Senate of the United States.

During his apology he repeated his words and then joked about forgetting to call Brown sexist. Once this was established, he repeated his insults yet again including the new addition. His broadcast subsequently featured classy words like “crap” and “teabagging” (a sexual reference). It is not surprising that only a handful of viewers (aka left-wing ideologues) take this guy and his network seriously. I could barely watch an hour of this filth before returning to Fox News. Thank you Mr. Olbermann for reinforcing my view that the media is horribly biased and corrupt, and that leftists such as yourself are emotional, dogmatic, whiney and incredibly intolerant [of politicians with whom you disagree].

This political disaster may be the best thing to happen to the Democrats, assuming they take notice of the current political climate. Anyone who follows politics in the US knows that the Dems are headed for a crushing defeat later this year and in 2012 if they don’t reverse course. Unfortunately for them, the progressives at the helm of their party will undoubtedly sacrifice their own to push their unpopular agenda forward.

Fringe leftists and tea partiers gathered together to form a unified front of protest against the Hussein Regime in San Francisco!? We live in interesting times.

http://zombietime.com/sf_obama_protest_10-15-09/

Of course our corrupt media wouldn’t cover this…

Last year on Thanksgiving Day our family received the sad news that my uncle (also Siena’s Godfather) had passed away. He was 49. I owe much of who I am today to my Uncle Patrick’s active role in my formative years. I was also named after him.

Little Red Hen and I returned to California with our one-month-old baby to attend his funeral service, a beautiful Latin Requiem Mass. Even though she didn’t understand the concept of death, Siena was able to see her Godfather for the first time and say goodbye in her own way. She also brought hope and smiles to our grieving family. We later flew to Colorado to attend his burial. Patrick finally returned home.

While Thanksgiving Day will always be tainted by this sad event, I do have much to be thankful for – such as my uncle’s influence on me, his support and his example.

I wrote the eulogy for his funeral program and I would like to share that with you:

Patrick was well known for his love of the rugged wilderness. It was here that he ventured as a young man and longed to revisit as an adult. It was here that he felt the closest to God and the most in touch with himself. Patrick was a student of American history, learning the forgotten ways of the Native Americans and survival techniques used by the early fur traders. However, just reading about these remarkable times never satisfied him. He lived his passion and used his immense knowledge of wilderness survival to venture into the mountains with a rifle and a few basic tools. In an act that would have left many frozen and starving on the mountainside, Patrick was at one with the wilderness and returned to civilization at the time of his choosing. Hunting, fishing, and exploring the Rocky Mountains are among his fondest memories, in solitude and with those he loved. The unexplored and wild reaches of our nation’s backcountry, he often remarked, was a perfect reflection of God’s majesty.

Patrick’s Roman Catholic faith was as solid as the Rocky Mountains he loved. His trust in our Lord and His Church was unwavering. From this solid foundation, he derived great strength that he drew upon throughout his life. This inner strength was reflected outward in the form of uncompromising integrity, trustworthiness, and a compassionate demeanor. These attributes echoed in everything he did, from his personal relationships to his business activities. Like his father, he was known as a man of honor who commanded respect.

Perhaps it was Patrick’s inner strength that formed a beacon of hope for so many whose lives he touched. Perhaps it was his jolly sense of humor or his limitless stories about mountain expeditions that so entranced family and friends. Whatever the reason, he was immensely likable. All those who interacted with Patrick learned about themselves in the process. Children and adults alike found their sense of adventure as he conveyed in dramatic prose his many exploits. Wayward souls found in Patrick a well of strength, a role model, and a guiding light. His life experience and great wisdom were gifts he imparted onto his friends and anyone who sought advice or needed help. His family was infinitely blessed by his kindness, love and support, knowing that they could count on him to make time for their needs. Fulfilling a promise to his father, he spent his final days caring for his beloved mother, always her guardian. Patrick was a gift to us all.

Patrick lived his life for others, often at the expense of pursuing his own dreams. He frequently spoke of his desire to return to the mountains and build a cabin on a few acres of his own. He is there now, camping on a rugged moonlit peak with his outfitters tent and a blazing fire. He is looking down on us with a smile. His spirit and his memory are that of a grizzly bear: strong and enduring. He will be sorely missed.

Rest in Peace Uncle Pat.

We hope you had a safe and happy Halloween. Here are a few pictures from our day. A year ago Siena was 3 days old! http://www.hawkinwinter.com/weblog/?p=356

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What a crazy summer its been. LRH and I have been so busy we haven’t had time to blog in months. We need to change that :(

With the completion of my night flights, I’m almost done with flight training. I had to log one cross country flight at night and Aurora made a great destination. After taking off, I just flew in circles to gain enough altitude to see the Portland lights. The local airfield is set in a valley, making it somewhat dangerous on a moonless night since the ridges are cloaked in darkness. As we ascended to our cruising altitude, my flight instructor asked me if I had ever done a stall-spin at night. I replied with, “No let’s do one! In fact, why don’t we descend to 3000′AGL so there is no room for error.” Fortunately we were both joking!

After we reached 7500′MSL, we tuned Seattle Center and requested VFR flight following (asking for radar tracking). Soon after, we were handed off to Portland approach at PDX and headed west across the Cascades toward the city. En route, we listened to radio conversations between the PDX tower and 737 captains inbound for landing. The best of these conversations featured a Quantas captain complete with an Australian accent :)

It was an amazingly calm and clear night. I could see the tail lights of other air traffic as clearly as the sea of stars above us and the blanket of electric lights below us. As we approached Aurora, we descended and tuned the local CTAF in preparation for landing. There were three other airplanes in the pattern, including an experimental home-built RV. Landing at night was just as tricky as taking off at night. It’s difficult to judge distance and depth with the ground dimly illuminated by electric lights.

The return trip took us north to the gorge and we followed the Columbia River back home. As we we flew just east of the class C airspace surrounding PDX, a 737 passed under us during its descent to landing – a bit too close for [my] comfort :-)

This flight easily ranks as one of the top-ten most incredible things I’ve experienced. I can’t wait to take my wife on a night flight!

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Looks like they are arming the bobbies with submachine guns.

England is a case study in the deterioration of a country where liberals socialist-indoctrinated, nanny-statist, multicultralist, secular-progressive leftists are allow to have their way for years and years completely unchallenged. In fact, most burglaries in England take place while the victims are at home (contrasted to the United States where the opposite is true). The “subjects” of England are completely at the mercy of heavily armed criminals and are too stupid to realize they gave their freedom away. It is amazing to think that a country that today produces such degenerate trash once gave birth to the fathers of brilliant thinkers and champions of liberty such as Benjamin Franklin, who said “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”.

I woke up this morning and it was snowing! That’s right, it was snowing in October. Maybe if I start a bunch of international hysteria about “global cooling” and then make a movie about it I’ll win a Nobel Prize in 2010.

Since Nobel Prizes are now apparently given out for promises of future accomplishments, I’ll just post this to my blog and expect to win – sweet!

Last Tuesday’s flight lesson started out no different than all the previous lessons. I did a preflight check of the Cessna, my flight instructor joined me and we taxied out to the runway. It was a calm morning so the departure and flight were smooth. I flew to Lost Lake and Bull Run Lake, both located near Mt. Hood, taking pictures along the way. My flight instructor had just visited the lake with his wife and pointed out the available activities (boating, camping, etc.) as we performed a steep turn over the lake on our way back to the airfield. It was a perfectly windless, scenic, half-hour morning flight. Upon returning to the airport, I did a few more practice landings concluding with my flight instructor endorsing my pilot logbook and asking me to complete three patterns solo (takeoff, circle around the airfield and land). My response was simply “Oh @#$@ are you serious?” as he stepped out of the airplane.

The first solo flight is an important milestone in flight training and I reached it without a problem. After my first solo landing, my flight instructor congratulated me over the radio with “good job flyboy!” Two patterns later and I was on the ground again having my shirt cut off my back. This tradition dates back to the early days of aviation when student pilots flew in tandem trainers where the instructor would sit behind them. Without radios the flight instructor had to tug on the students shirttail to get his attention before yelling into his ear. Cutting the shirttail off is a symbolic gesture indicating that the instructor has enough confidence in his student to allow him to fly solo, thus the shirttail is no longer needed.

In fact, the removed piece of cloth is a trophy for the instructor who proudly displays it on the wall of the flight school (or FBO in my case). My instructor wrote down the date of my solo, July 28, 2009, our names, and my first words upon landing after the third pattern, “I survived!”.

Since soloing, I’ve moved into a more advanced phase of training. Earlier today I was maneuvering over the Columbia River at 5000 ft performing power on stalls. Essentially, a power on stall is a maneuver where the airplane pitches up to lose enough airspeed to stop flying and instead start falling like a rock. Fortunately, the fall lasts for only a few seconds since the maneuver concludes by recovering from the stall. Still, thats a terrifying few seconds!

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General Aviation News recognized my wife’s incredible support and posted about it on their blog. They also linked her recent post about flying with me last week. Check out the blog entry here.

General Aviation News’ Main Website is here.