I Knew It Was Going To Be A Bad One...

...when I left my house at 0545 for work this morning, and by about 0630 it was a lot darker out than it had been when I left home. I had to pull off of the highway as I headed into a surveillance site in Brooklyn the wind was blowing so hard and the rain coming down in sheets so thick it looked as if someone had smeared about a 1/4 inch of petroleum jelly over my windshield. I will say this though, the lightning and thunder put on one heck of a show. I have not been that rattled by thunder in many a year, and I mean not rattled as in afraid, but rattled as in vibrated by the power of it, and I was inside my car when it did so. Lightning and thunder simultaneously coming from at least 4 different directions all around me within split seconds of each other. This went on for about an hour of my drive, a drive that normally would take about an hour and I had only gone about 1/3 the way in the time. Still some peckerwoods (no better description) were doing about 60 or 70 in the thick of it. I waited for it to slow down quite a bit, only about 10 or 15 minutes of waiting) before I drove on, and I still got there on time.

When I arrived on scene for our surveillance, we found a few different neighborhoods in Brooklyn had been smashed. Tree limbs and trees down all over the place, and big ones at that. Cars and trucks smashed by those trees, houses missing siding and roofs, windows smashed, business signs on the streets. Not a thing that usually happens in Brooklyn, and plenty of people were saying a tornado had touched down. Well this evening, when I was driving home at about 1900 (7PM, and yes it had been a long day), I heard on the news radio that a tornado did indeed touch down at several locations right in the area in which we later did our surveillance.

I guess that means my mother's prediction, of many years ago (probably back when I was not yet a teenager), came true. She said back then that we were having tornadoes in the USA in places where we had never had them before, and she predicted that it would get to the point where we would have them in New York. It has happened a few times now in New York State, and less in NYC - but it has come to pass. I don't think my mom gives Al Gore much credence on his stance on global warming, so maybe we are safe on that one; but as for tornadoes - watch out.

All the best,
Glenn B

Let's Be Thankful...

...that it wasn't a suicide monkey, see Airplane Passenger Smuggles Monkey Under His Hat Into U.S. @ http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,292496,00.html.

Not only did DHS/CBP (Customs and Border Protection) apparently fail to catch this at the border, but DHS/TSA apparently failed to catch it in Florida. I am not necessarily faulting anyone, I know better in this case because I worked for Customs for about 15 years at JFKIA (not doing inspection work, but often working with inspectors). It would be something easy to miss, but so too would some plastic explosives. I am faulting the system, the airlines, politicians, and travelers in general - all who don't want to accept a much stricter system of checks at the airports and who accept the risk of taking chances with homeland security for all of us. I can tell you one airline on which this be much less likely to occur - El Al. They know how to check folks and secure an aircraft.

All the best,
Glenn B

Socialized Medicine For All...

...can be expected to come up with results like this one: Infected Foot Blister Kills British Man that I just read about at FoxNew.com. Remember that England has socialized medicine, the same typ of health care that the deomcrat candidates want to push onto all of us here in the USA. Sure this type of negligence could happen abnywhere, and happen under our current system of health care too; but one thing you won't see with our health care system is the fatal finality of the words spoken by the fater to his daughter when she told him he needed to see a doctor about his condition:

" "There was a hole in his foot. I told him he had to go to the doctor but he said: 'They have discharged me." "

Do you get the picture, they discharged him, so there was no going back! His words certainly rang of fatal finality.

No thanks Hillary, not thanks Obama, no thanks $400 hairdo boy, no thanks to all of you liberals who want the same system here; I would rather work my butt off to pay for my own health insurance than to have you tax me into the poorhouse and then allow doctors to treat me like dirt.

All the best,
Glenn B

Lack of Blog Power

Way too busy to blog yesterday. Tough day at work, so when I got home I was pooped. Besides that we had to go to JFK Airport last night to pick up my daughter Celina, who just came back from vacation in Germany. Nice to have relatives over there (on the wife's side) - it makes for long inexpensive vacations.

More blogging tonight, if I am not stuck late at work.

All the best,
GB