Dumb ass of the day award

Last night we had a disturbance at a local bar. One person fled on foot on police arrival. He dropped his drivers license at the scene and it was put in to our property room. He called tonight demanding its immediate return. "Sure, come on in!" was our cordial response. He is now cooling his heels in the County Lock Up trying to come up with bail for his three warrants. Nice.

While the Second Amendment remains intact...

1 dead, one injured in Miami Burger King shooting
By ROBERT SAMUELS AND JENNIFER LEBOVICH
jlebovich@MiamiHerald.com
One man was killed and another seriously wounded in a shootout inside a Miami Burger King on Tuesday, officials said.
Police said a man wearing a ski mask walked into the store at Biscayne Boulevard and 54th Street and demanded money from a clerk.
A customer, who has a concealed weapons permit, pulled a gun, said Officer Jeff Giordano, a Miami police spokesman.
The customer and robber exchanged fire.
The robber was shot dead at the scene.
(from the Miami Herald)

Sometimes its just this simple

Boo Hoo Barney

Representative Barney Frank, recently so far out of the closet that he is standing in the front flower bed was quoted today as saying about the Defense of Marriage Act "I wouldn't want it to go to the United States Supreme Court now because that homophobe Antonin Scalia has got too many votes on this current court." Just to put things in proper perspective from what I can glean as I peruse his online bio, Frank never did an honest days work in his life electing instead to enjoy the parasitic route of being involved as a mover and shaker (please excuse the obvious pun) in Massachusetts politics from an early age while teaching part time and generally trying to shape the world by taking shots from the cheap seats. Recently he has been featured on shows like O'Reilly dodging responsibility for legislative catastrophes he has engineered from his seat of power (sorry, I just can't stop doing that).

Conversely, springing from humble roots in Trenton, New Jersey Justice Scalia established solid credentials as a legal academic before being appointed to the bench in 1982 by President Reagan. He has never dodged a tough question and in service to his country has been strict protector of the US Constitution while raising his nine children among whom are a couple of university professors, a West Point Graduate and a Roman Catholic Priest.

Barney Frank could not be a pimple on Justice Scalia's derriere.

Look whats always bubbling just under the surface

This little tidbit I found over at McNamara's Blog is just one of several entries about anti Catholicism that are part of his tremendous collection of Roman Catholic History particularly around the Archdiocese of New York. Its worth a visit.

March Madness

No not the NCAA. The annual parade season is almost at an end! Gratias Deus! My legs and my liver need the rest. Photo from the Home News Tribune.

Special shout out to left coast conservatives!

Earlier this week my daughter came home with a Flat Stanley (you parents out there will know of what I speak). But who to saddle with such an important task? Someone fun, articulate and well travelled. There could only be one choice, thus flat Stanley departs tomorrow for Sunny California. Having sent a "heads up" to my intended recipient, a few days ago I received an email response from my good friend "The Nad" who left the picturesque vistas of New Jersey over twenty five years ago to find his fortune, and a fine wife out there where conservatives hide at night from the secret police. I think out there they call it the Diane Feinstein Militia or the Barbara Boxer Brownshirts. Anyway, while I owe him a huge email (which as long as there isn't a large surge in tap water fueled criminal activity tonight he will most certainly receive) I wanted to take a minute to acknowledge my friend the conservative interloper, his wife the Headmistress and their very talented son who will soon be achieving the rank of EAGLE Scout. Email on the way!!!

Back to the Future?

Thanks to Mulier Fortis for the pictures of Laetare Sunday Mass at Our Lady of the Rosary, Blackfen, UK. What Holy Mass used to look like. What I hope it looks like more and more.

Four more heros fall

If you have an ounce of charity in your heart you were appalled today when you read the news about the Four Oakland Police Officers Killed in Shootout. It is horrifying when any one member of the thin blue line has their life snuffed out in a moment of senseless unprovoked violence. Particularly when the product of a failed judiciary is the culprit and should be locked in a cage somewhere.

Having worked in both Corrections (in our State’s only maximum security lockup) and in the streets for a good part of the last twenty five years it never ceases to amaze me that even the most hardened criminals with violent tendencies are let loose to resume their predatory behaviors on the rest of productive society. While I am against the death penalty for reasons that encompass both moral and fiduciary beliefs there are ways to segment these bottom dwellers from their feeding grounds. The movement for rehabilitation confinement has its merits. First offenders deserve a chance to repent and turn their lives around. That being said it should be equally clear that those who would rape, rob and murder will not benefit from college classes and therapy. What is the benefit, a more educated recidivist? A good case in point is an alumnus from my Maximum Security days who I recently encountered after his violent shoot out with the police. It would appear that paroling him only twenty five years in to a sixty year sentence for his last armed robbery wasn’t the best idea after all.

Within twelve hours of the deaths of the first three Oakland PD officers this blog post appeared. If we stopped catering to the likes of its author there might be not be four California families their husbands and fathers this day. Then again, if we stopped taxing the life out of working Americans to pay for the shortcomings of absent fathers who drop babies like cigarette butts on the street instead of raising their children and directed the funding to long term confinement without conjugal visits maybe our world would be a safer place.

May they rest in peace.

Many thanks to Stephanie over at The Digital Hairshirt for the information on this one.

Comments

I just received a comment from my post Irony Defined in which the subject of my post sent a polite note defending her material support of Planned Parenthood and their activities. In her missive she states "besides abortion.......". I am going to stop there because that is precisely the point. It does not matter what other services that Planned Parenthood offers. Whether they offer free pap smears or help old ladies across the street the fact that they provide unrestricted access to abortion on demand negates any possible positive impact they may have on society. In retrospect I probably should not have called her an imbecile. In my defense at least I did not call her an accessory to murder.

An Island is born

I stumbled across this video while reading a story about a tsunami warning in the South Pacific. It seems a whooper of a quake (7.9 on the open ended Richter Scale!!) struck near the island Tonga. Not long after the quake lo and behold, an island is born. Pretty Cool stuff and kind of scary too.

Post #100 for all my Irish Cop Friends

And thanks to Warner Brothers for many hours of side splitting laughter.

You want me to what?

From FoxNews.com:

LEXINGTON, Va -- Americans today are self-indulgent and don't make the sacrifices that their parents and grandparents did, and the nation's leaders don't ask people to act for the higher good, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said Monday at a Virginia college in a rare public speech.

"Our country and our principles are more important than our individual wants," Thomas told close to 400 people who greeted him with a standing ovation at Washington and Lee University, a Shenandoah Valley liberal arts school.

Yes! As anyone knows we are all called to service for the common good. We are obliged as citizens of this great nation to work hard, better ourselves and contribute in a positive way to our society by any means within our abilities. Of course for many of us this comes as no surprise. And if more people thought like this brilliant man instead of standing around with a sign that says "Obama pay my mortgage" we wouldn't be in the maelstrom of economic and social upheaval we are in know. Here is a man who overcame poverty and racism to rise to the highest court in the land despite the despicable attempts of Kennedy and his fellow swine to besmirch his good name. Take a good look at this man and Justices Scalia, Roberts and Alito. Its a safe bet you won't see any like minded appointees in the next four years.

I also found this part of the article interesting.

The court's only black justice spoke with reverence of the priests and nuns who taught him at what had previously been an all-white Roman Catholic school that he began attending in 1964.

"They were the ones who taught us we were inherently equal," said Thomas, a Georgia native.

Another reason you should hit me in the head with a 9 iron if you ever hear me complain about tuition payments again.


Buy it, Read it!

Looking for an excuse to become politically active?

This today from Yahoo.com:

WASHINGTON, March 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The leader of the nation's largest veterans organization says he is "deeply disappointed and concerned" after a meeting with President Obama today to discuss a proposal to force private insurance companies to pay for the treatment of military veterans who have suffered service-connected disabilities and injuries. The Obama administration recently revealed a plan to require private insurance carriers to reimburse the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in such cases.

Not satisfied with legalizing infanticide, robbing your accumulated wealth and just generally destroying our freedoms one diabolical step at a time the Obama White House has cooked up this little gem to really screw those men and women who have been maimed in the ongoing War on Terror. You remember that, right? Airplanes crashing into buildings, thousands of American lives snuffed out by mutants. That's right boys and girls, the war didn't end after we turned over the keys to the liberals.

Time to fire up your word processors and fire off a few quick jabs to your elected officials. This move is consistent with the complete absence of humanity that the liberals accuse the right of all the time.

After the election I took solace in the statement of an even keeled friend of mine who said "remember, it took four years of Carter to get eight years of Reagan". Problem is, at this rate I don't know if we can make it for the full four years.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day 2009

To all of my friends who have proud roots on the Emerald Isle I would like to extend my best wishes for a happy and blessed Saint Patrick's Day 2009. Spending most of my work hours locked in an office with the local leader of Clan Fitzsimmons I have grown to appreciate the intricacies of Irish culture. Most of them deliciously stereotypical and entertaining. Irish cooking tips (put potato and meat into boiling water until all taste is removed), Irish Alzheimer s (you forget everything but a grudge) and the ever popular daily reading of the Irish sports page (the obituary column). So with a special shout out to Clans Doyle, Frain (a Hun apparently), Semple and Fitzsimmons I would like to thank you and your countrymen for your contributions to the great mosaic that is our country. Without your efforts how could a Polish guy get to run around in a kilt several weekends in March while downing many pints and get away with it. In that spirit, a bit of holiday mirth from Family Guy courtesy of the folks over at Adult Swim.

No its not a planet....

....and yes it remains the same size even when I am not trying to hit that high A with a reed that is terribly underused and like trying to blow through plywood.

(from The Home News Tribune)

I love this photographer

I would like to thank this fellow who was kind enough to wait to snap this picture until the patient lying on the cot was obscuring my belly. I always wondered what I would look like if I were thin.

Recidivism

A tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behavior.

In the twenty five years or so since I left the employ of the NJ Department of Corrections to find my fortune in the milieu of police work and EMS I like to think I have grown in many ways. Even beyond my over forty food tumor I think that through hard work and the judicious examination of life's lessons I have become a better person. Occasionally I wonder what happened to the hundreds of inmates that I had come to know in my four years in the service of the State of New Jersey. Frankly, most of the convicts I knew are still locked up even after these long twenty five years.

Yesterday there was a bank robbery in Franklin. After a high speed chase and running gun battle through two towns I was sent to the scene of a shooting where three suspects had sustained gun shot wounds. Imagine my surprise as I gazed upon a fellow lying on the ground with several extra holes in his extremeties and was able to say, "hey I know you. You used to lock on 6 Left." He smiled and said "Hey Officer Ski." Heartwarming isn't it? If nothing else it should give you confidence in our society's ability to rehabilitate criminals.

You wouldn't want to rush things

So as I sit here perched on the big blue chair I get some bizzare calls from time to time. I just got off the phone with a fellow who says he was robbed at knifepoint about an hour ago but he has since returned to his home some twenty miles away. He was wondering if it would be okay to come in and report it tomorrow. Oh, did I mention that he said he knows one of the guys that robbed him? Sure buddy, take your time.

And people wonder why they are victimized. As I have said many times, if it wasn't for the stupid I would be working in Home Depot.

The attack begins

Well it didn’t take all that long. Bigotry has raised its ugly head in the realm of government. You would think that since we are now led by an African American President bigotry would be a thing of the past in our beloved country. Sadly you are mistaken.

A bill was introduced this week in the Connecticut legislature that if signed in to law would legislate the way religious institutions can regulate and control their financial affairs. Ignoring the Constitutional separation of Church and State for a moment be aware that this particular piece of legislation is tailored to address only one Church. Anyone care to hazard a guess as to which denomination is being singled out for this government attention? I will give you a hint. Its initials are RC and it stands against everything the current majority party (including the marginally Catholic Speaker of the House) are trying to impart on the masses.

That’s right ladies and gentlemen. In the spirit of the Know Nothing Party that regulated Catholic discrimination in the early days of our country unnamed bottom dwellers of the Connecticut legislature introduced a bill that is moving through committee at a pace only rivaled by the abrupt dismissal of all of the family friendly laws that have been passed in the previous decade. To add insult to injury the cowards did not even have the courtesy to put their names on the bill hiding in the shadows of a bill introduced by committee.

To their ongoing credit the Knights of Columbus is gearing up to fight the measure. More to follow their progress.

H O P E ?

The economy is in the toilet. The DOW is plummeting toward 5000. North Korea and Iran are heating up. The Russians are getting frisky and the President’s best advice it to not stuff your money in a mattress because only unbridled spending will fuel the economy. Anyone out there still filled with HOPE? Hey, how about you folks in the expensive Alternative Minimum Tax box seats? Anyone?

Welcome Wagon

Please join me in welcoming a local conservative to the blogsphere. His new venture can be located at The Most Evil Man in America or by clicking on his link on my blog roll. A great guy and master of sarcasm who just happens to leap from the same gene pool as me.

A study in contrast

Thanks to the Digital Hairshirt and Doug over at the Porch for finding this one. It really does not need any commentary. Just watch the entire thing.

No Hitter!

It is with great pleasure that I announce that last night I enjoyed one of the rarest of all events in EMS. The no hitter. Not one crackle, beep or fizzle from the pager for an uninterrupted 12 hour stretch. Like any true professional I endeavored to spend as much of the time as possible in a horizontal position. As the morning sun began to bathe the room with its warmth on this frigid daybreak I cracked my eyes open only to be confronted by a very disturbing sight. Apparently during my dalliance with Morpheus someone had made an attempt to pelt me with fruit as my first view of the new day was what appeared to be a wilted grapefruit lying on the couch across the room. See for yourself.



It was only after I vigorously rubbed the sleep from my eyes that I discovered it was in fact............my partner's head.

Up yours Summer Solstice!

Sometimes its just good to be a big black furry dog.

Snow Day!

I don't know who was happier that there was no school today in our neck of the woods.

Snow, Barbie Jeeps and the death of professionalism in EMS

Much to the chagrin of those dedicated and professional members of the Emergency Medical Services community, both basic and advanced, they will never be on equal footing with their brothers and sisters in the Police and Fire Services. This is because of volunteers.

Now I know what you are thinking. He is going to rant about Volunteer First Aid squads. Well, as accurate as that would be in many instances this hypothesis is based on the behavior of a more specific type of EMS Volunteer. The paid professional who freely prostitutes himself in the hopes of public adulation.

So I was making lame attempts to clean my garage today. (Bear with me. I will get to the point sooner or later) In the course of this activity I endeavored to discard items belonging to two categories. Those that are useless to anyone and those that were only useless to me. Falling in to the second category was a six year old electric Barbie Jeep which since its purchase has given countless hours of joy to both my niece and my daughter ages 12 and 8. Now they spend their leisure times in activities more age appropriate. Polack (I am allowed to use the P word because I am one) that I am I could not bear the thought of just throwing out an item that was both a)very expensive when I purchased it and b)still in very great shape. So, I began working the phones in an attempt to give it (yes, we Polish are thrifty but not entirely mercenary) to someone with a daughter or effeminate son of an appropriate age.

Success was realized with my first call to Mikey the Fisherman an EMS colleague of mine who has a young daughter, a large yard and probably much to his chagrin a recently cleaned garage that is just screaming for a large item like a Barbie Jeep. He was happy to have it and as a bonus was working the ALS truck in my town this very night. After making some quick arrangements I loaded the thing in to the millennium Falcon with plans to leave early for my midnight shift and make the drop off thus ridding myself of the thing once and for all. I then went to bed for a quick nap. Then the plan began to fall apart.

Having been ripped from my tropical paradise (hey, you dream the way you want to) by my daughter and niece and their never ending need to run around the house like marauding buffaloes I went outside to make some preparations for the forecasted snow tsunami when my cell phone rang. Sadly he had to defer delivery tonight as the truck that he is normally assigned to was not going to be staffed tonight and he was being moved to our northern location. Historically there has to be a near world ending catastrophe for this truck to go out of service. And while that sometimes causes me some personal inconvenience I don’t complain because being well over forty and fat it gives me great comfort that there is a Paramedic Unit only minutes from my home. And since there is supposed to be a major snow tonight it raises my comfort level exponentially.

Naturally I was curious as to why the truck was going out of service. He explained that he was supposed to be alone tonight (not an unusual occurrence on the weekend) but then a medic assigned to the north truck called out and he was being moved since no one else would come in. Then he told me why the medic had called out. It was at this point I should have put on my shower cap in case my head exploded.
The guy that was supposed to work tonight is a nice guy. Personally, I really like him. He is smart, well educated runs a really big EMS operation in a neighboring city and enjoys a sterling professional reputation. We have worked together frequently over the years and have enjoyed each others company. But he called off tonight to be ready to respond to snow related emergencies in his role as a VOLUNTEER EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT COORDINATOR. Are you freakin kidding me! It is no wonder why people in the other two services never take us seriously.

First, there are very few paying jobs in Emergency Management. There is a good reason for that. Its like the Land of Make Believe. A guy with good emergency services credentials spends many hours in a cubicle coming up with written protocols as to how State, County or Municipal agencies will respond to a large scale emergency. Great idea. If you have an emergency, you have a plan. That’s the idea. When the emergency happens, you roll out the plan and those resources needed to implement it. Nowhere in this myriad of protocols does it necessitate middle aged men putting on a queer plastic helmet and vest to heroically sit in front of a bank of radios to wait for a little snow to fall. This is New Jersey, we see snow periodically. In fact sometimes we see a foot of snow. There is no reason to be alarmed. If we were in Phoenix, well ok. I might even overlook the helmet and vest. But in the name of all that is right and natural in the universe why must we take a needed ALS unit out of service in order to sit around and do nothing based solely on the firm possibility of a slim maybe? Do we station an ambulance outside of every location fat people and smokers congregate? No.

This is really simple. Cops and Firemen get to do the hero stuff. We in EMS do a dirty and under appreciated but really important job. With the exception of some really odd circumstances we are not going to get the adulation that the other two uniformed services get. It’s a fact. It’s not a secret.

So put away the helmet and the vest. Store the stork and CPR save pins. Sleep the sleep of the just knowing that in your career you have probably saved more lives than both of the other services combined. Just get in the truck when the pager goes off and save a life. Maybe, just maybe when you get there the volunteer squad will say "canceled" instead of pudding.

And for no reason in particular a video of King Louie from Disney’s The Jungle Book.

It wasn't me

Just a day or two ago I made a fleeting reference to that scion of radio Paul Harvey. Sadly he died not long afterward leaving a void that will likely not be adequately filled by lesser talents. I listened to Paul for many years and usually got a chuckle. I just hope my post did not hurry his demise. Just in case though, anyone heard any recent news about..........

No I can't. Its Lent. But it is pretty funny.

Where I am supposed to be...

I was supposed to chant at ten o'clock with our Schola this morning. I was then supposed to drive an hour to Belmar and march in the first Saint Patrick's day parade of our season.

As it turns out, all of the scientific data we have been exposed to about a diet consisting largely of roasted meat being bad for you has some merits. You may refer to my previous post about rodizio for the root cause of my current absence from those two activities.

I really should have gone to the parade. Its a shame to miss a teachable moment. If nothing else it would have been a great answer to the tired old question "hey, do you wear anything under your kilt?"

Say it! SAY IT!

I have it on good authority from a learned colleague that the inspiration for the following commercial is actually taken from an EMT class where the instructor is trying to get the students to utter the phrase "you are cancelled".



Gotta love those wacky volunteers.

Hunkering down

If the weather forecast is to be believed (that has rarely been the case this winter) we are in for a whopper of a snowstorm starting this evening and lasting until sometime Monday night. Last night's educated guess of 9 inches has been upgraded to 14 big ones. So, while I planned to clean the large intestine of my home (more commonly referred to as the garage) I instead forged some pathways and readied the BEAST for manly snow removal operations. Just as a precaution I also obtained two large bags of ice melt in an effort to get an early start on the event and hopefully reduce the carnage.

Having suitably prepared perhaps I will now cruise the parking lot of the local grocery store and laugh at the people lined up to buy milk, bread and toilet paper. Much the same way they will cruise by my house in June when I am finally draining the unused gas from my snow thrower and figuring out where I am going to store eighty pounds of unused ice melt.

Gotta love Portuguese BBQ

Last night we went with four other couples to Fernandes Steakhouse in Newark for rodizio. Roasted meat on huge skewers How can you argue with that? Well I could not. While there are other more famous places in the Ironbound section of the city that offer the same fare this place is absolutely top of the mark.