HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Today is Thanksgiving. I hope everyone who reads this has a great holiday. I will be thinking about all I have to be thankful for this holiday. I have a lot to be thankful for and I know it. I have a job, a happy healthy family (for the most part) and a safe, secure, warm home in the greatest country in the world to come home to. So yeah I am pretty thankful.

At the same time my sister’s husband is deployed overseas, my uncle is sick with Cancer, and there are plenty of people out there without a job. Keep them all in your prayers.

Tonight I am working. The firehouse doesn’t close because of the holiday. That means I’ll have  dinner around 1pm at home then go in early so I can relieve the day shift Lieutenant. That way he can get home at a reasonable hour to have dinner with his family. That’s what makes this job special. The way we take care of each other. It’s something you learn early in your career, part of our tradition.

Tonight I’ll have another dinner at the station with my second family. We’ll be cooking turkey and hoping for a quiet night. There’s nothing worse than a house fire around the holidays. It compounds the tragedy in my book. I never liked working the holidays for that reason. It’s tough to see someone’s house destroyed at any time of the year let alone during the holidays.

On a side note the boy is singing in his school’s choir and they will be taking part in this years Thanksgiving parade down town. They will be on the steps of The Philadelphia Museum of Art (where Rocky ran up). He left grumpy and tired at 7am but should be home around 11. We will be looking for him on TV. Should be memorable.

Now it’s nap time for me. Have a great day everyone.

WHITE NEW HAVEN FIREFIGHTERS WIN MASSIVE VICTORY

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) – A federal judge has ordered Connecticut officials to promote 14 firefighters who won a reverse discrimination case in a landmark ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.

U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton ruled Tuesday that the civil rights of white New Haven firefighters were violated when city officials threw out the results of a 2003 promotion exam when too few minorities did well.

Her ruling followed the Supreme Court’s instructions.

In 2006, Arterton had thrown out the white firefighters’ lawsuit. A federal appeals court upheld her decision before the Supreme Court overturned both rulings in June.

City spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said Tuesday that New Haven intends to promote the firefighters “as soon as practicable.”

Six firefighters are set to be promoted to captain and eight to lieutenant. LINK

It’s hard to overstate the impact of this massive victory on the American fire service thanks to those brave New Haven firefighters. In order to understand what they have done, or the magnitude of their bravery, we have to look at the fundamental situation those firefighters faced.

PIC OF THE DAY: CAT BLOGGING

Came out of the firehouse the other day to find dopey the cat lounging on the hood of my truck. Must have been a warm place to lay out because the cat hung out for a while. It finally took off but not after we played with it for a while. A slow day’s diversion.

No you can’t reach the birds no matter how high you climb.

Ball on a string: hours of fun for the entire family!

INTELLECTUAL FRAUD: THE LIES OF THE LEFT LAID BARE

Scientific progress depends on accurate and complete data. It also relies on replication. The past couple of days have uncovered some shocking revelations about the baloney practices that pass as sound science about climate change.

It was announced Thursday afternoon that computer hackers had obtained 160 megabytes of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in England. Those e-mails involved communication among many scientific researchers and policy advocates with similar ideological positions all across the world. Those purported authorities were brazenly discussing the destruction and hiding of data that did not support global-warming claims.

Professor Phil Jones, the head of the Climate Research Unit, and professor Michael E. Mann at Pennsylvania State University, who has been an important scientist in the climate debate, have come under particular scrutiny. Among his e-mails, Mr. Jones talked to Mr. Mann about the “trick of adding in the real temps to each series … to hide the decline [in temperature].” LINK

It should come as no surprise that the wheels are starting to come off the scam that is Global Warming, just like they are coming off the federal governments attempted take over of our health care system. Just like they came off ACORN…

ROCK A ROLLA TUESDAY- AC DC. WHY NOT?

Get some.

JOE LIEBERMAN: THE MOST IMPORTANT MAN IN THE WORLD

DOES JOE LIEBERMAN HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO SAVE THE WORLD?

Now that the Democrats have lined up enough votes to advance their corrupt health care bills, it remains to be seen if they will be able to pass one at the end of the day. This weekends partisan vote fly’s in the face of all of Obama’s lofty campaign rhetoric about “transparency”, “openness”, “bi-partisanship” and cooperation. It’s clear when Obama talks about cooperation it is with people hostile to America and not the loyal opposition in  his own government. 

With just sixty votes the health care bill has advanced for debate. But that vote includes Independent Joe Lieberman. The used-to-be Democrat and one time Vice Presidential candidate could emerge as the man who can literally save the world. Without Liebermans vote Obamacare most likely can’t pass. Lieberman is already on record opposing any bill with a so-called “public option”. It’s unclear if that is a bedrock position for Lieberman or if he is just posturing for a big payoff.

When the democrat leadership doesn’t flinch at giving Sen. Mary Landrieu 300 MILLION DOLLARS for her vote you can only wonder what Liebermans price will be. I’m hoping that he has no price. Let’s hope that there is at least an honest majority in our Congress that will defeat this monstrosity and save our country and quite possibly the entire free world. Imagine the level of corruption that must be involved in this health care bill if they are ok with giving 300 million dollars to ONE Senator. How many poor people could be taken care of for that kind of money?

Answer: They could cover about 125, 000 people with one of those so-called “Cadillac” health plans for a year at that price. 

This alone illustrates the clear facts that this entire fiasco is not about health care or poor people or insurance reform. It is about Big Brother socialism and using the power of the federal government to dominate the lives of every American citizen. The shocking aspect of this legislation is that Congress have exempted themselves from participation. That’s a gigantic red flag in my book. Maybe we should adopt a red flag as the symbol of our disgust.

BILLION DOLLAR UNIVERSE

CERN- Scientists working on the world’s largest atom smasher say they are now circulating beams of protons in opposite directions at the same time in the $10 billion machine after more than a year of repairs.

Steve Myers, the director for accelerators at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, says the development Monday brings the Large Hadron Collider closer to full operation.

The aim is to hurl protons into each other at close to the speed of light in order to simulate conditions shortly after the Big Bang – which scientists think marked the creation of the universe billions of years ago.

Scientists at the organization, known as CERN, hope this will help them to unravel the origins and the nature of matter itself.

I think this is just wicked-cool. Although I will never have the mathematical aptitude for physics, I find the theoretical end of it fascinating. I love watching science shows on the History or Learning channel. Steven Hawking is my favorite. In fact Peach and I both love watching science shows and make it a point to watch them together when we can. Tuesday nights will find us curled up on the couch watching the history of the Universe or the Big Bang. Sometimes it gets a little deep but I am happy that we have a common interest that we can share.

I can hardly wait to see the results this 10 billion dollar machine will produce. I can’t even begin to imagine the complexity of this machine. Nor can I imagine what it’s like to be the guy who BROKE it! Doh! 

SHOP TALK

A five-alarm fire ripped through an apartment building in Northeast Philadelphia, injuring more than a dozen people and leaving many more homeless.

There is no word yet on conditions or possible fatalities in the fast-moving blaze at the Austin Manor Apartment building on the 7000 block of Rising Sun Avenue in the Burlhome section.
 
Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers said firefighters had to rescue residents from the three-story building and others jumped in a bid to escape the flames.
 
The fire was reported about 4:30 a.m. and escalated to five alarms before firefighters could bring it under control at 6:30 a.m. LINK

Five alarms worth of fire equipment in this city is a tremendous amount. This fire was not far from my house here in N.E. Philly. The fire companies in this section of the city are widely dispersed as opposed to on top of each other like they are in other parts of town. Philadelphia’s fire protection layout is a byproduct of an earlier time when the city was a manufacturing center. Enormous mill buildings dotted the city landscape surrounded literally by rows and rows of homes that housed the workers who provided the labor for the American manufacturing industries. Fire companies needed to react quickly in order to prevent the massive conflagrations that happened from time to time.

PLAYING HOOKEY

Today the boy skipped his Saturday morning German class. Not to fear though as it was for a good cause. His Boy Scout pack participated in a holiday food drive. Earlier this week flyers went out informing everyone that the Scouts would be collecting canned goods this week. The food collected will help the needy during the upcoming holiday season. This morning we spent a couple hours driving around the neighborhood collecting the donations people left on their steps. When it was all said and done we had filled about ten boxes with donations.

I’m still kind of impressed the boy likes the Scouts so much. So far he seems to like participating no matter what the activity. Giving up a morning to collect canned goods and fill boxes for the needy is a great lesson in charity. It’s the kind of thing you want your kids to learn but don’t always know how teach them. Hopefully he carries these lessons from scouting with him throughout his lifetime.

ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC (EPIC-FAIL) HOLDER

After Lindsey “(Grahamnesty) Graham’s piss poor stance on illegal immigration I had no use for him. He has finally started to redeem himself. He still has a long way to go but this is a start.  I watched some of Eric Holder’s nonsense this week and I know political horse shit when I smell it. This testimony vindicates those of us who have agreed with the Bush administration on the issue of “Illegal Combatants” from the beginning. These terrorists are war criminals. They belong in front of military tribunals no federal courts.

There are significant differences between crime, (even politically motivated crimes) like bombings and kidnappings that terrorists usually perpetrate and acts of war. I’m glad Graham destroyed Holder on a professional level. He took Holders disingenuous legal maneuvering and half-baked legal theories and tossed them right back in his lap where they sat like a grenade without a pin. Hopefully more Republicans will pay attention to how you defeat the lefts psycho-babble.