On Aug. 16, 1960, as research for the then-fledgling U. S. Space Program, Air Force Captain Joseph Kittinger rode a helium balloon to the edge of space, 102,800 feet above the earth, a feat in itself.

 Then, wearing just a thin pressure suit and breathing supplemental oxygen, he leaned over the cramped confines of his gondola and jumped--into the 110-degree-below- zero, near-vacuum of space. Within seconds his body accelerated to 714 mph in the thin air, breaking the sound barrier.

 After free-falling for more than four and a half minutes, slowed finally by friction from the heavier air below, he felt his parachute open at 14,000 feet, and he coasted gently down to the New Mexico desert floor.

 Kittinger's feat showed scientists that astronauts could survive the harshness of space with just a pressure suit and that man could eject from aircraft at extreme altitudes and survive.

 Upon Kittinger's return to base, a congratulatory telegram was waiting from the Mercury seven astronauts-- including: Alan Shepard and John Glenn.

 More than four decades later Kittinger's two world records-- the highest parachute jump, and the only man to break the sound barrier without an aircraft and live--still stand. We decided to visit the retired colonel and Aviation Hall of Famer, now 75, at his home in Altamonte Springs , Florida , to recall his historic jump.

 FORBES GLOBAL: Take us back to New Mexico and Aug. 16, 1960. Joe Kittinger: We got up at 2 am to start filling the helium balloon. At sea level, it was 35 to 40 feet wide and 200 feet high; at altitude, due to the low air pressure, it expanded to 25 stories in width, and still was 20 stories high! At 4 am I began breathing pure oxygen for two hours. That's how long it takes to remove all the nitrogen from your blood so you don't get the bends going so high so fast. Then it was a lengthy dress procedure layering warm clothing under my pressure suit. They kept me in air-conditioning until it was time to launch because we were in the desert and I wasn't supposed to sweat. If I did, my clothes would freeze on the way up.

How was your ascent? It took an hour and a half to get to altitude. It was cold. At 40,000 feet, the glove on my right hand hadn't inflated. I knew that if I radioed my doctor, he would abort the flight. If that happened, I knew I might never get another chance because there were lots of people who didn't want this test to happen. I took a calculated risk, that I might lose use of my right hand. It quickly swelled up, and I did lose use for the duration of the flight. But the rest of the pressure suit worked. When I reached

102,800 feet, maximum altitude, I wasn't quite over the target. So I drifted for 11 minutes. The winds were out of the east.

What's it look like from so high up? You can see about 400 miles in every direction. The formula is 1.25 x the sq. root of the altitude in thousands of feet. (The square root of 102,000 ft is 319 X 1.25 = 399 miles.)

The most fascinating thing is that it's just black overhead, the transition from normal blue to black is very stark. You can't see stars because there's a lot of glare from the sun, so your pupils are too small.

I was struck with the beauty of it. But I was also struck by how hostile it is: more than 100 degrees below zero, no air. If my protection suit failed, I would be dead in a few seconds. Blood actually boils above 62,000 feet. I went through my 46-step checklist, disconnected from the balloons power supply and lost all communication with the ground. I was totally under power from the kit on my back. When everything was done, I stood up, turned around to the door, took one final look out and said a silent prayer: "Lord, take care of me now." Then I just jumped over the side.

What w ere you thinking as you took that step? It's the beginning of a test. I had gone through simulations many times--more than 100. I rolled over and looked up, and there was the balloon just roaring into space. I realized that the balloon wasn't roaring into space; I was going down at a fantastic rate! At about 90,000 feet, I reached 714 mph.

The altimeter on my wrist was unwinding very rapidly. But there was no sense of speed. Where you determine speed is visual--if you see something go flashing by. But nothing flashes by 20 miles up-- there are no signposts there, and you are way above any clouds. When the chute opened, the rest of the jump was anticlimactic, because everything had worked perfectly.

I landed 12 or 13 minutes later, and there was my crew waiting. We were elated. How about your right hand? It hurt--there was quite a bit of swelling and the blood pressure in my arm was high. But that went away in a few days, and I regained full use of my hand.

What about attempts to break your record? We did it for air crews and astronauts-- for the learning, not to set a record. They will be going up as skydivers. Somebody will beat it someday. Records are made to be broken. And I'll be elated. But I'll also be concerned that they're properly trained. If they're not, they're taking a heck of a risk.

What Is A Veteran? A "Veteran" whether active duty, disch arged, retired, or reserve, is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America" for an amount of "up to, and including his life." That is honor, and there are way too many people in this country today, who no longer understand that fact.

The Obama-ites are frenziedly trying to damage control yet another bad association the Senator had in his murky past.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GuyBenson/2008/04/24/debunking_obamas_ayers_fact_sheet

We knew very little about this charismatic, idolized young “agent of change” a year or two ago and the MSM would have liked to have kept it that way. Not like it matters with his acolytes. Being Liberals, they’re more concerned with how he makes them “feeeeeel” and don’t want to be bothered with facts. Like Chris Matthews “chill running up his legs” when Obama speaks. I’m not even touching the complete gay nature of that comment. I’ll just focus on the fact that it is coming from a supposed “journalist”. I’ve blogged about that idiot in the past.  But here’s further proof of his man crush on the young Senator.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MikeGallagher/2008/04/25/media_jumps_the_gun_for_barack

I don’t hold people to the follies of their youth. I know I have my fair share, but I’m not running for President of this great nation; and yes, I hold that office and whoever occupies it to a slightly higher standard. But we’re not talking about a naïve, obsolete and isolated association with a questionable character. We’re now talking about a pattern of association with some of the NOTORIOUSLY worst anti-American, racist, anarchist, socialist, leftist people in the country. 

All he offers as a defense is either “I didn’t know…” or “that’s irrelevant…” or “I didn’t know…” (I listed it twice to make the point). Well, Senator, if you’re gonna expect to hold the reigns of our national defense and security you should make it a point to know who you associate with and you cant think I’m obtuse enough to think that your associations, close associations despite what you say, are irrelevant. I for one hold you to them. 

A word about a great majority of the blacks in this country. The OJ Simpson trial taught me droves about the views of a HUGE majority of them. Events like the LA Riots, Hurricane Katrina, the Jenna Six, the Duke Lacrosse and Don Imus fiascos don’t make the community look any better. The huge numbers the Senator is getting everywhere he goes also defines their agenda. I don’t shy away from stating the obvious. It’s not that sinister really. If you’re a black Democrat, both your candidates have the same agenda/philosophy, so given the choice, you identify with and vote for the black candidate. What’s bothersome is that they vote for him BECAUSE he’s black. Can’t sugar coat that. 

Of course the over riding reason is that he’s a liberal since Alan Keyes and Condoleeza Rice would not register on their list of possibilities. Not that I blame them, they’re only following the cues of their leadership.  Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson et al. What’s insulting to them, or at least should be, is the condescension. What’s worrisome to me, is the inherent racism. Something that the other side is constantly being labeled with. So again the contradiction still being propagated by things like Jet magazine, BET (who ironically doesn’t like Obama), and all the other exclusive Black organizations in this country (not to mention Hispanic). It’s okay for the black goose, but not for the white gander.

I’ve been meaning to blog about race for quite some time. I’ve touched on the subject briefly on a couple of old blogs, but I’ve been meaning to cover it more in depth for quite some time.  I never directly blogged about the issue (save for one on my physical similarity to Arabs). I haven’t done it for two reasons. One, every time I began to write on the subject it became as long as my four part series on how to survive a mass shooting. Also, to be honest, I was holding off because I intended to do some research and write an article I was going to submit for paid publication. My memories of the effort I expended getting my Black Belt magazine article published for the payout I received has discouraged me from that avenue. 

Then John Hawkins’ wrote a column that inspired me to finally put down my thoughts on the subject. 

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2008/04/04/six_uncomfortable_truths_about_race_in_america?page=1

Kick back boys and girls, this one may get rather long, but I believe it’s topical.

I’m uniquely qualified to talk about the subject. That doesn’t make any one else unqualified to discuss it as we all can draw on our personal experiences. The problem is the injection of filters. Admittedly I have my own, but my experience is a unique one. Ironically and in many ways it is very similar to Senator Obama’s, although I derived something very different from mine. 

Ethnically speaking, I’m just as much a mongrel as anyone in the US, or the entire planet. My father’s heritage is Scott Irish (with other’s mixed in as well). He was born and raised in Michigan. My mother is Puerto Rican (which is of itself a mixed ethnic group). She was raised on the island.  I spent some time looking into my ancestry and was surprised by what I discovered, as I’m sure most people would be if they took the time. For example, the Hubble Family Society says that every single Hubble in the US (regardless of whether you spell it Hubble, Hubbell or Hubel) all come from the same descendant. This means that I may be related to Edwin Hubble the astronomer. I find this staggering! Particularly since I haven’t received a single residual from whatever money’s been made off that telescope. I’m still looking into it.  Plus I’m partly Canadian and I have an actual Scottish Clan tartan.

I was raised partly in the US, Puerto Rico and Europe from birth to age six. Then we settled in Puerto Rico when I was seven until I joined the Navy at age seventeen. The amalgam of my parental cultural heritage and my upbringing has made me an enigma to some people who (human nature being what it is), try to put me into some comfortable shelf in order to define “what” I am. I don’t blame them. I confuse myself sometimes. 

My unique perspective stems from how people who come in contact with me treat me. For example, while being raised on the island, because of my last name and the fact that we spent the first few years of our lives off the island, most of the islanders referred to my siblings and I as “Los gringos del barrio”. 

You would think calling me a gringo is funny, considering my appearance, but Puerto Rican’s are a bit unique when it comes to physical appearance. In PR, they don’t separate themselves by color into different ethnic groups. Color is mostly a descriptive. You’re either a blonde haired, blue eyed Rican or a black as night Rican. Either way you’re Puerto Rican. We long ago stopped raising eyebrows at couples who were distinctly and physically different in color.  In fact, the supposed “classic” Rican is defined as a combination of Spaniard, African and Taino (Arawac) Indian.  I believe this is historically inaccurate and there are many more. In my own family on the island there’s even a direct French ancestor. Then there’s the fact that Puerto Rico has been a US Commonwealth for over a hundred years.  There were plenty of horny gringos at the beginning of the last century planting their seeds all over the island. But I’m digressing.

By the same token, outsiders are defined as such regardless of skin color.  I wasn’t treated poorly as a “gringo” on the island. In fact, after a brief introductory period when I’d infrequently get into a fight with some wannabe comedian for mangling my last name and using it to make fun of me, I fit right in. The fact that I was a “gringo” became one of those things they’d remember only occasionally (usually when my last name came up again). I’ve heard at least ten phonetic pronunciations of Hubble. The first day of school always made me cringe.  I’m sure anyone with an odd surname can relate.  However, the anomaly of being slightly different always gave me the perspective of an outsider looking in. It bothered me sometimes and sometimes I used it to my advantage. The advantages usually outweighed the problems it created.

Then, when I joined the Navy and came back to the continent I was called “the Puerto Rican guy”. Physically that fit, but I was actually born in Seattle Washington. How funny is that? Some people thought I was from New York. I had not spent a day in New York, but apparently I had a New York accent. This is because where I was raised on the island most people spoke English like either Desi Arnaz or Tony Soprano. I apparently adopted the Tony Soprano inflection, but believe you me, I have many relatives on the island who talk just like Desi. The point being that now I was being put into another slot that “differentiated” me. 

When I reported to my first ship, the Puerto Ricans and other Latinos expected me to immediately hang with them in their Latino cliques.  For a brief period I actually welcomed this bonding, until I figured out that none of them actually shared my “heritage”. Some of the Ricans from NY (we call them Niuyoricans on the island) didn’t even speak a lick of Spanish. They were very proud to call themselves Puerto Rican, but they had no clue about their ancestral heritage from the island. They in fact put me in yet another sub-group since I was from the island itself. They called me Jibaro, which to them meant I was “fresh off the boat”. They didn’t even know the origin of that particular moniker (it was a term used by a Spanish author by the name of Miguel Alonso in a book by the same name about three hundred years ago). I had absolutely nothing in common with any other Latino group. 

Ironically, I got along very well with a guy whose family came from Cuba. He was a blonde haired blue eyed guy named Rodriguez. He spoke better Spanish than most of the Ricans on the ship. We often joked that we should swap last names because of our incongruous physical features.  This even led me to briefly giving some thought to legally changing my last name to my mother’s (Torres).  

My very first experience with racism came from a Latino guy on that very ship. He was a Chicano (this was a moniker he gave himself) from East LA. I had befriended a guy named Mike Melko. He actually wound up being the best man at my first wedding. We were all in the Deck division of the ship. The Latinos had a clique of about six guys in the division. Their latin cultural heritage was as diverse as any other. When I began hanging out with Mike, the Chicano approached me and asked me why I was hanging out with that “guero”. His tone was that of a cross parent addressing a wayward child. He was about six or seven years older than I was so I guess he thought he was entitled. His problem became two-fold. One, I was very resistant to authority in my teen years. Two, I didn’t take kindly to people telling me what to do, regardless of age. The subsequent exchange sealed my fate with that particular Latino clique.  Now I was a gringo again.

I discovered something very quickly on that first ship. First of all, I figured out that being Latino did not immediately qualify someone to be a friend of mine. Let’s face it, there are assholes everywhere. There are plenty of assholes on the island I wouldn’t give a minute of my time to and that applied universally. The Latino guys who became good friends of mine did so in spite of their ethnicity. One of them a Niuyorican who spent the latter part of his teen years on the island and another a Tejano from Kerville Texas. 

So if being Latino did not immediately qualify someone for my friendship, then it certainly didn’t qualify you for my vote, my patronage or my support. In other words, I learned to deal with people on their merits. Thankfully, at a very young age. 

I’ve only been called a Spic two times to my face in my life. In only one occasion was it done in anger (some guys don’t react very well when the women they have designs on opt for a better option). I’ve only met one person who I’d call a true racist. Ironically he was one of the best Chief’s I served under in the Navy and even he never held me back. 

The various other non-insulting things I’ve been called (Gringo, Jibaro, Puerto Rican, Boricua) were names other people gave me (I’ve also been called Arabic, Italian, Greek and on one strange occasion, Philipino). 

Here’s the thing; I have never been denied a single opportunity because of my ethnicity and skin color. Even if it had been done, unbeknownst to me, my ethnicity and skin color would be the last thing I’d use as an excuse. For one thing they’re factors out of my control and I’m very big on controlling my fate and destiny. For another, once you go down the victimhood road you might as well go down it with your pants around your ankles. 

What is my point? That a-holes come in all colors? That ignorance is just as universal? That there is no pure race, therefore, there should be no racism?  

To be perfectly honest, I really don’t give the subject much thought anymore. Or I at least don’t let the militants, extremists and opportunists bother me as much anymore. I think that people who make excuses for themselves will use the most convenient of excuses and people who hate will find a reason to hate no matter what color you are. People’s perceptions are their realities and you can’t shake them from their trees if they were on fire.

What makes me ultimately comfortable is the fact that most people are just like me. Reasonable and rational. We take people at their merits and based on how they treat us. We’re proud of our uniqueness, but don’t wear our ethnicity on our sleeves. And thankfully, regardless of our individual colors and ethnic backgrounds, we are still in the majority. We just don’t make as much noise.

John Stossel wrote a non-committal and fair column regarding the recent decision of a California appellate court stating that parents have no constitutional right to homeschool their children. The fact that this occurred in Commifornia is no surprise to me. They would be the state to first seriously try to outlaw homeschooling. 

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2008/04/02/threat_to_homeschooling?page=1

In a nutshell, Stossel got it right. The Constitution does not PROHIBIT home schooling. Neither does California law. As any Constitutional idiot could tell you, what is not prohibited by law is therefore, by default reserved by the citizens as a right. Simple. 

This subject is near and dear to my family and me. My wife has homeschooled all four of our children. Our eldest two began in 5^th and 6^th grades respectively when we became completely disillusioned with two supposed “Blue Ribbon” schools in Virginia. Our youngest two, who are High Schoolers, have never attended a schoolhouse except to compete against them as members of our sports league in sporting events. My wife and I are board members of the Christian Home Educators of Cochise County (CHECC), an organization for Christian homeschoolers. It is a very active organization with hundreds of local members. Arizona is a very homeschooler friendly state.  I’m also a member of the Home School Legal Defense Fund. You can bet your arses that the HSLDF will be involved in this one. This California kangaroo court and it’s socialist, union kowtowing judge have stepped in deep excrement. 

Believe me, I’ve heard every single argument against home schooling and I can rip each and every one of them to shreds. The statistical data Stossel provides is part of it, but my own personal experience with my children is the only data I need. I’m not too worried about this puny little judge’s ruling. I predict the ruling won’t even make it past the California Supreme Court, but if it goes to the US Supreme Court it will be like shooting at a weather balloon on a skeet range. PULL! 

To be honest, I’m kinda looking forward to it.