Allan Tarasiewicz - Not Like Any Other

I searched the internet looking for information on Allan Tarasiewicz so that I could attempt to create a post in his memory that would make his family smile. The one thing that kept coming into my mind was that he seemed like an ordinary guy. I mean, I knew that if I met him at the supermarket or just walking down the street, I wouldn't have known that I had just met a hero as he didn't wear an "S" on his chest. He would have seemed like a just a regular guy. But that's not true, he wasn't a regular guy. He was a hero. Not just to his family, his loving wife of almost 25 years Patricia Ann (Patty) Whitfield, not just his daughter Melissa or his son Allan T., and not just to his mother Connie, or his two brothers, Harry Joseph Jr. and Mark, and his sister, Cathy Mizzi-Gili. He was a hero to every child that looked at a fireman and said that's what I want to be when I grow up (as Allan Tarasiewicz did). He was a hero to every man, woman, or child that called for help during the most traumatic events in their lives ~ a fire. He was a hero because Allan Tarasiewicz did the opposite of what the majority of us want to do in the face of danger ~ run in the opposite direction. No, Mr. Tarasiewicz didn't run in the face of danger, he ran into danger because he loved his job, he loved helping people. He was a hero.

I can give you links to several stories that give you the stats of his life: he was 45 when he died. He was the shortest man in his firehouse so the rest of the guys in his firehouse built him a booster step so he could easily climb onto the rig. He was the prankster of the firehouse; one time serving up a meal of breaded chicken cutlets. It wasn't until someone complained about the toughness of the chicken that they found out that they were actually eating breaded and fried dirty, old sponges. He was a member of Rescue 5 (who lost 11 men on 9/11). And he loved being a fireman.

But I think his daughter said it best in her tribute to firefighters:

"Firemen, you are not like any other. You are our heroes, the men all kids dream to be. When everyone's at their weakest, you stay strong and never give up hope. If we could only have more people like you in this world, maybe, just maybe, it really could be a perfect world."

Thank you Mr. Tarasiewicz, for being our hero. May you rest in peace.

You too can own one!

Some things just leave me speechless.

UK: 21 drawings attributed to Hitler to be auctioned

Drawings made when Nazi leader was a soldier serving in Flanders during World War; auctioneers say some could sell for up to USD 8,000

Associated Press Published: 08.26.06, 01:11

Twenty-one watercolors and sketches attributed to Adolf Hitler will be sold by a British auction house on September 26, officials said Friday.

The drawings were made when Hitler was a soldier serving in Flanders during World War I, said Ian Morris, auctioneer at Jefferys Auctioneers at Lostwithiel in Cornwall in southwest England.

The images, mostly pallid landscapes, are not regarded as adept, but the auctioneers say some could sell for up to 5,000 pounds (USD 8,000) a piece.

"They were painted in his formative years before he became political," Morris told British Broadcasting Corp. Television, "so you could look at the pictures and see the psychology inside the man's head, rather than what he became."

Holocaust survivor Ellen Davis said the sale was an attempt to remember Hitler as an artist, "when he is remembered as a monster. He was not an artist."

"If I had it (a painting) in my house, I think I would have my house fumigated - I would put it out on my lawn and set a match to it," she said.

Speechless, but nauseous.

The "Human Rights Watch" Watch, Installment 1

This is an excellent piece written by Allen Dershowitz. The opening paragraph:

"Who will guard the guardians?" asked Roman satirist Juvenal. Now we must ask, who is watching Human Rights Watch, one of the world's best-financed and most influential human rights organizations? It turns out that they cook the books about facts, cheat on interviews, and put out pre-determined conclusions that are driven more by their ideology than by evidence.

These are serious accusations, and they are demonstrably true.

Tihs was published in today's Jerusalem Post. Unfortunately, they don't have an online version of the article so here's a link to the article on an online blog. Read the article, skip the idiotic comments after the article.

All your fakes are belong to us

Pretty cool comment on the latest fauxtagraphy scandles, starring Green Helmet and Flat Fatima. Not to be missed.

The Red Cross Ambulance Incident

How the Media Legitimized an Anti-Israel Hoax and Changed the Course of a War

Ok, this is pretty long. Follow the link above but try not to look at how far away the bottom of the page is from the top because then you might not read it. And it's pretty important that you do read it. It's amazing. The entire story. You see, the entire world press reported on an incident that simply never happened.

On the night of July 23, 2006, an Israeli aircraft intentionally fired missiles at and struck two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances performing rescue operations, causing huge explosions that injured everyone inside the vehicles. Or so says the global media, including Time magazine, the BBC, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and thousands of other outlets around the world. If true, the incident would have been an egregious and indefensible violation of the Geneva Convention, and would constitute a war crime committed by the state of Israel.

But there's one problem: It never happened.

I'll give you picture as a tease and ask you to look at it closely ...... see anything fishy?




No? Ok, try this one. It's the same ambulance, different lighting.



Now I'm no expert on fauxtagraphy or ambulances or forensic evidence but if the top of that ambulance was hit by a missile, wouldn't you expect the edges of that huge whole to be jutting down into the ambulance instead of being so neatly folded over the outside????

Click the link. Read the story. Just do it!!

The sky didn't fall!

We're all still standing!! That's the good news. The bad news is that Amnesty International is accusing Israel of war crimes. So what else is new?

Amnesty: Israel deliberately hit civilian targets

Rights group Amnesty International accused Israel on Wednesday of deliberately targeting civilians during its campaign against Hizbullah in Lebanon and said the Jewish state may be guilty of war crimes.

So my question for Amnesty International is whether or not Lebanon is guilty of war crimes for harboring and abating a terrorist army within their sovereignty that calls for the genocide of the Jews?

And then of course, there's the thousands of ketusha rockets aimed and directed at civilian targets by the Hezbollah, causing over 100 deaths, 100s of injuries, and a million people to either flee the north to refugee camps in the south or retreat to bomb shelters for a month. That barely got a mention in their (cough cough) report.

It's 3:00 PM

And all is well. No sign of Armageddon (yet).

The Sky is Falling!

Today might be our last full day on this earth. Tomorrow is August 22 and, according to Muslim legend, might have a great significance for us this year.

What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

So tomorrow might just be our last day on earth. If it's going to be my last day on earch, gosh darn it, I'm going to enjoy. First of all, I'm not going to the gym. As a matter of fact, I don't plan on sweating at all tomorrow. I'm going to turn the air conditioning on bright and early. I'm going to go out for lunch. A good lunch. A nice, thick hamburger and definitely ice cream for dessert. The real stuff. The stuff they sell in the Italian ice cream parolor down the road ~ not the low fat, no carb stuff that currently fills my freezer. Yum!

I asked Noga (my dog) what she would like to do on her last day on earth and she's still contemplating it. I'm thinking an open field might in order for her to run a bit. She doesn't have the same no sweating rules as I do. I asked Michel what he thinks about for his last day on earth. He said he'd get back to me on Wednesday.

Cartoon of the Day

Today's cartoon comes from Cox & Forkum.



I've also included a quote from their explanation of the cartoon, via the Boston Herald, in an article entitled "With doublespeaking French, honor gets lost in translation."

In recent weeks, France stepped forward to act as a broker of peace in Lebanon. “Act” is the key verb in that last sentence, as it now would seem that the only other verifiable part of the sentence is “in recent weeks.”

To correctly parse that sentence, one must understand that when France suggested it wanted to broker peace in Lebanon, it did not necessarily mean “broker” or "peace” or “Lebanon” in the way we might understand those words. The same is true when France further suggested it wanted to “lead” a “strong” “multinational” “force” there.

I don’t speak French, so I have no idea what the actual French words are for those concepts or what possible nuances there may be. I’ve been relying on news reports in English, which now inform me that the French do not intend to send any significant number of troops to what is supposed to be a force of 15,000 in Lebanon, like everyone thought they said they would.

The heady moment of peace brokering having passed, uponsober reflection, the French now say they already have a general and some staff in south Lebanon ordering about UNIFIL, the U.N. monitoring entity there. That’s plenty of leadership, the French suggested: All France needs to contribute now is another 200 combat engineers.

In tactical terms, when it comes to securing a Middle East conflict zone, that can be referred to as “squat.”