SPRING TRAINING T-MINUS 10 DAYS AND COUNTING!

 

 

WEDNESDAY'S HERO This Weeks Hero Was Suggested By LeAnn

On May 9th 2004, SFC Lloyd A. Heinrichs Jr was down at the Ocean front in Virginia Beach when a 'Swimmer in Distress' call came in to the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Dispatch office about noon. Myself (Gary Couch, Dive 8), SFC Heinrichs and Petty Officer First Class Scott Weil of the U.S Navy, volunteered to respond the call. There were a total of 3 people in the water that were being pulled out to sea by the current. The temperature of the water was only around 65 degrees Fahrenheit with the air temperature at 78 degrees Fahrenheit. The undertow was very extreme that day with the beach already "Red Flagged" due to the strong currents and excessive waves. Upon arrival to the scene, SFC Heinrichs and PO1 Weil identified the victims. Without hesitation and with total disregard for their own safety each grabbed a torpedo buoy and entered the water. SFC Heinrichs went for the first victim to the South of 36th Street while PO1 Weil went for the second and third victims, which were hanging on to each other to the North of 36th Street. As I observed SFC Heinrichs and PO1 Weil, once they were waist deep, the current rapidly pulled them out. SFC Heinrichs made his way to the first victim and started fighting his way back to shore. Once SFC Heinrichs reached his victim, he calmed her down, making the attempt to head back to shore. Several times SFC Heinrichs and his victim were rolled under by the enormous waves and undertow. His victim was completely exhausted from the ordeal. Once he reached shallow water, he assisted his victim to shore. The victim was an older heavy-set lady, early forties. The Virginia Beach Fire Department Paramedics placed the victim on a stretcher and the Virginia Beach Volunteer Rescue Squad took her to Virginia Beach General Hospital. SFC Heinrichs was extremely exhausted and fatigued from the rescue. He turned to check on PO1 Weil and notice that PO1 Weil had reached the other two victims, a male in his late twenties and a female in her early forties. PO1 Weil was struggling with his two victims giving a hand and arm signal for 'Help'. The female was almost passive from near drowning, and the male who had initially swum out to help her was becoming a victim himself. Without hesitation, SFC Heinrichs picked himself up and ran back into the water to assist PO1 Weil while PO1 Weil did what he could to keep them calm and afloat until help arrived. Once SFC Heinrichs reached PO1 Weil and the other two victims, they were all rolled by several consecutive waves, pinning SFC Heinrichs under the two victims. A few moments later, SFC Heinrichs emerged between the victims with both lanyards of the torpedo buoys wrapped around his neck, gasping for air. As the situation went from bad to worse, PO1 Weil tried his best to help SFC Heinrichs with untangling the lanyards from his neck while trying to hold his passive victim's head out of the water. SFC Heinrichs took a deep breath and submerged himself in the attempt to free his neck. As each wave came over the top of PO1 Weil and the victims, we kept waiting for him to resurface in bated breath not knowing that the lanyards kept tightening around SFC Heinrichs' neck. While continuous waves were tossing PO1 Weil and the victims, SFC Heinrichs reemerged on the side of the victims. He had been under for over thirty seconds trying to get loose. We began to worry weather or not he was going to come back up. You could hear the heavy sigh of relief from all the EMS personnel on the beach once he resurfaced. He grabbed a hold of the male victim and started for shore. The victims once, on shore, were taken away for medical attention. PO1 Weil and SFC Heinrichs were taken to an ambulance and checked for possible hypothermia and released.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero. It Is Foolish And Wrong To Mourn The Men Who Died. Rather We Should Thank God That Such Men Lived This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. If you would like to participate in honoring the brave men and women who serve this great country, you can find out how by clicking here.

 Today is an abbreviated posting.  If you scroll down to my Thursday Thirteen list of things I finally managed to get around to doing today, you will find I have been extremely busy all day.  I want to finish early enough to watch Lost this evening.

THE GREAT CAT SOAP OPERA

Today is a huge news day.  I finally trapped Bat Masterson, who is soon going to have the “Big Snip” and the ultimate front paw manicure!  He’s a little ticked, to put it mildly.  I have the trap set to get other felines.  Naturally I just caught Brunhilda who managed to give my ‘security system’ the slip and is now chowing down on fancy feast salmon.  She’s so light now she doesn’t even spring the trap.  The little red kitten (formerly known as Hoss) has officially been adopted.  My mother’s house sitter’s eight year old niece had a tragedy the other day when her two year old cat managed to sneak outside and lost her life under the wheel of a pick-up truck.  After being assured this would not be repeated, and seeing the child’s face with the kitten, and the kitten with the child, it was literally a match made in heaven.  They look alike.  They have the same color hair and eyes!  He has tabby stripes, she has freckles.  We’re talking cute, definite cute.  I am certain the little guy has a good home.  She’s thinking of naming him Jennifer!

 

I transported Bat Masterson to the Vet.  He was not pleased, Bat, not the vet.  Rumsfeld rode along for the sport of it.  I had to smack his little tushie once.  He was a horror, as usual.  I get home, no action in the trap.  I did a few things, and looked over at it.  The can of salmon cat food was gone, the trap still sprung.  Rumsfeld had managed to get into it, remove the can, and exit without springing it. Some trap!

 

Monster cat is hiding in the bat cave.  He is a typical bully.  He knows his days are numbered.  I have perspective homes for Mommy Cat and Redford, as soon as I can catch them.  Then I need to get Little Joe in for her surgery. 

 

I’ve mentioned before that I spent Monday and Tuesday being the ‘guest’ speaker for my friend Alicia’s sixth grade class.  What I saw made me so sad, and almost angry.  First I, I went to the wrong door. If I’d not made plans with Alicia I would have walked off the principal was so nasty about it.  I had to sign in, and practically do a DNA scan to get a guest pass.  I am perfectly aware we have serious problems and need security, but this is insane in many ways.  I don’t like the whole lock-down idea.  I was molested by my elementary school principal.  If conditions then mimicked conditions today I would be another statistic.  My mother had to force her way into his inner office and break into the closet where I was being held, locked in a closet.  When I see what a person must do to get into a school, I think about the fact that, next to family members, more children are molested by educators than by anyone else.  Today’s situations make it much easier for a child to be molested and no one can penetrate a school’s defenses for a rescue.  (Check out Absolute Zero, fighting pedophiles)  

 

My heart hurt for some of the children I met.  People ought to be licensed before they are allowed to have children!  These kids would break your heart.  Let’s face it, so darn many of their problems were created by their stupid parents it is just plain criminal!  I wish I could tell some of the stories, but I cannot.  Let’s just say I now understand why there are some schools who allow kids who have gender identity problems to just go ahead and be who they want to be.  Then there is another child who is, I swear, a sociopath in training.  You look into their little eyes an they are so hurt, so hurting.  And, from what I’ve been told, their parents are so screwed up I wonder if there is any how.  This brings me to the next comment.  If these are the adults of tomorrow, our society is in extremely deep you know what.  What is going to happen to our country? 

 

I swear parents should be licensed.  Those who keep pushing the stupid button should be sterilized and their children taken away from them and given to families where they can have the love, training, and education – both sociological and learning to make them successful human beings. Okay I’m ranting, but you get the picture.  Go volunteer to sit in on a few classes at your local school. You will be absolutely shocked.

 

Our schools are in trouble.  The only think GWB has done of which I do not approve is No Child Left Behind.  the ones who would be left behind are improving.  The bright kids are being neglected, they are bored, their grades are falling, and they are forced to learn at the pace of the slower kids.  This in itself isn’t all that bad, considering that’s how most of us grew up, but other things compound the problem.  First, there is such an emphasis on reading that the kids no longer enjoy reading.  They are no longer reading for the joy of reading but to make points – and we’re talking a tremendous amount of reading, double what I did at their age.  There is so much emphasis on writing correctly (things I did not do until the 9th grade) early, that basic social studies and history are falling by the road side.  They may be able to do incredible math and know how to write their results, but we are raising a nation of cultural and historical illiterates.  This too, added with the abject poverty of brain trust and abject incompetency of many parents is truly and seriously a major problem.

 

This ignorance of culture, history, and society is going to make it much easier for this up and coming generation to be co-opted by obscene and false intellectual premises like Islam.  The great tragedy is the fact that we are fighting a war on terror, but yet have degraded our educational system to such a point where we are going to fall from within.  I shudder for the future.  In many ways these kids have no future because they have no past.

 

I’ve not even touched on the problems teachers are having because of administers, paperwork, and political correctness.  My friend, who loves teaching, says it gets more and more difficult each week.  She doesn’t know how much longer she is going to continue.  Her future students are the ones who are going to suffer.

 

IMMIGRATION

  

Those idiot close the border RIGHT whacked out conservatives want Bush impeached if something happens to one of those Border Patrol agents who are imprisoned for violating the law.  I just love the way these people pick and choose what they want to believe.  It never ceases to amaze me how they ignore the obvious, and believe only what they want to believe.

 

“…Much of the public outrage over the episode arose not just from the fact that Sutton brought the case, but from the tenacity with which he prosecuted it. The agents' union and Republican members of Congress have called for investigations. "This U.S. attorney is closely allied with the president of the United States," said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union for border agents. Sutton has a long association with President Bush. From 1995 to 2000, he served as then Texas Gov. George W. Bush's criminal justice policy director.  Before he was appointed to the post of U.S. attorney, Sutton served as a policy coordinator in the Bush-Cheney transition team when the president was first elected. As for granting immunity in this case, Sutton said Aldrete-Davila left no fingerprints in the van with the marijuana, leaving law enforcement powerless to prosecute him. "I had the choice of prosecuting nobody or prosecuting these officers who covered up the scene of the crime [by removing spent shell cartridges]," Sutton said. "We didn't give up much in the use of immunity. We offered immunity. Otherwise, he would not come back from Mexico," he said. In the region he covers, there has been 14 shooting incidents by border agents in the last nine years, four in which the suspect was killed, Sutton said. Each time, he said, the agent wasn't prosecuted, because they had reasonable explanations for using deadly force. "Most Border Patrol agents know what the facts are and are outraged with the agents," Sutton said. "Ninety-nine point nine, nine, nine of Border Patrol agents do it right. The idea that they would support agents that would shoot an unarmed man running away, cover it up and file a police report is outrageous," he added….”

 

They also fail to mention that T. J. Bonner is a union hack, and president of the Union (a division of the AFL-CIO).  The Border Patrol is completely unionized.  Funny how, when it suits their purposes, RIGHT conservatives will pander to anything.  Bonner has long been an opponent of the Bush Administration, it should also be noted. 

 

Why has no one asked the following question:  Is it proper for a union rep to be so closely aligned with allegedly conservative causes when all their money goes to the AFL-CIO?  Isn’t all this anti-immigration rhetoric of his a conflict of interest?    If Bonner is so ‘perfect’ and such an advocate for right and wrong, why does he hang whistle-blowing BP agents out to dry? 

 

Then there is the BP confiscation racket. Bonner presides over a union representing an agency that is seriously broken, but no one will admit it. 

 

My next question, why doesn’t Bonner come to the aid of BP agents who are whistleblowers then targeted by the BP?  Does he only support BP agents who are tough on Hispanics?  Something isn’t right here.  Anyone with half a brain can see it.  Problem is, when it comes to immigration, must conservatives have parked their brains at the border.  Read what Andrew C. McCarthy  had to say the other day in NRO.

  

You need a Hispanic take on things.  Interesting here because Raoul Lowery Contreras mentions that Bonner, Gilchrist (who was in the middle of this)etc. all  hate the President.  Interesting.  There is a heck of a lot more to this story than meets the eye. 

 

These aren’t the first BP agents charged or sued for abuse of Illegals.

List of BP offenses. 

Bribery

 

DEMS & LIBERALS BEHAVING STUPIDLY

Now they want to regulate when and where you can use your cell phone and Ipod.  GOP Bloggers Called as Seen 

AJ Strata on the Wilson-Plame criminal conspiracy? Flopping Aces  

More on Pelosi One  GOP Bloggers 

 

 

PRIMARIES 2008

Dick Morris has an interesting take on Hillary & Giuliani. 

NYTimes on the Edwards’ bloggers.  Malkin on the great Edwards’ blogging debacle.

Newt isn’t going to cut it with his health-care plan.  Eye on 2008’s humorous take on the Giuliani strategy.  And Eye on 2008’s take on Romney’s “Christian” supporters going after Giuliani.  I noticed this today during the fifteen minutes I could stomach listen to Rush. /  Now the MSM is after Rudy for his speaking fees.  

  

THURSDAY THIRTEEN

Thirteen Things I FINALLY managed to get around to doing today

  1.  Caught Bat Masterson

  2.  Transported Bat Masterson to the Vet for the big snip and extreme manicure

  3.  Interviewed perspective adoptive grandmother for little red kitten

  4,  Approved adoption of little red kitten to adorable 8 year old

  5.  Activated my father’s XM radio (Christmas present)

  6.  Set up XM radio in boom box (also a Christmas present)

  7.  Gave XM boom-box to my father (who has been waiting for it since Dec 31!)

  8.  Set up new 5.2 gz phone system

  9.  Threw out old phones, before new ones were charged

10.  Picked up laundry

11.  Throwing out last of Christmas packing boxes

12.  Clean out Durango, throw out remaining boxes

13.  Improved my bitchy disposition considerably