Tag Archives: als

Chris Rodda, Gen Marty France “Malign” ChristianFighterPilot.com

Christine “Chris” Rodda is Michael “Mikey” Weinstein’s research assistant for his “charity,” the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. She wrote a blog late last Friday and posted it on Daily Kos and Medium, attacking ChristianFighterPilot.com by claiming retired Air Force Captain Cole “Twitch” Holloway was “maligned” in an article posted here on Thursday.

It’s odd that Weinstein and Rodda chose to go after that article.  It’s a short piece, and its tone is benign.  There are many more articles here of more direct impact to the MRFF — say, those noting Weinstein is a charity millionaire or that Rodda’s outrage is quite selective — yet they chose to go after one that didn’t even mention them.  Presumably, Rodda thought they could get emotional value out of the topic — so long as people didn’t bother to read the original article, and instead only saw her “interpretation” of it.

(Why not engage over an article that actually discusses the MRFF and religious freedom? For all his bluster and bloviating, Mikey Weinstein is scared. But that’s a topic for another time.)

As is typical, Rodda struggled with the truth.  She titled her blog “The “Christian Fighter Pilot” Sinks to New Low — Maligns Pilot with ALS for Not Being Christian”. Despite the fact she intentionally didn’t link to the article, many are aware of it, and even some of Rodda’s own readers were unable to find where anyone had been “maligned” within it. In her defense, Rodda did Read more

How an Air Force Fighter Pilot Faces His Approaching Death. How would you?

Air Force Captain Cole “Twitch” Holloway was a US Air Force F-15 fighter pilot last year, flying out of Okinawa, Japan. At some point he started noticing “something weird” was going on with his body — symptoms like unexplained muscle weakness. That led to a diagnosis of ALS last October. (Left unsaid is whether the symptoms of the undiagnosed disease were the source of his callsign, “Twitch”.)

ALS has a post-diagnosis life expectancy of two to five years. There is no cure.

Since then (the Air Force article on Holloway was written last year but only recently published), Holloway has been medically retired from the Air Force and he’s living his life knowing it won’t last:

The couple plans to travel, experience life and Read more

DoD Issues Ban on ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in Uniform

The US military told its service members not to participate in the near-viral “ice bucket challenge” while wearing a military uniform:

“ALS Association is a national non-profit organization,” [Army spokeswoman Tatjana Christian] wrote. “As such, participating in this event is subject to concerns about implied endorsement.”

The ban due to “implied endorsement” is interesting, given how many other things the US military has apparently endorsed — from a homosexual activist group, to Mikey Weinstein, and even the New England Patriots. Current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Marty Dempsey famously sang when he endorsed ThanksUSA, a “national non-profit organization” — just like the ALS association. Read more