5 posts tagged “department”

The Virginia Capitol Police is the oldest police department in the country. Judging from the morbidly obese specimen I saw on his beat in the Library of Virginia, it may also be the fattest. Apparently this department doesn't have any physical standards whatsover. This guy was a a walking heart attack about to happen and the taxpayers are going to have to pay for it. To kill a perp, he doesn't have to use his gun. All he has to do is fall on him. The department needs to turn the Seal Team PT loose on him or fire him. Is this a patronage job where you have to know someone to get it?

It takes a coward to be a bully! - Henrico County Sheriff Mike Wade

The New York City Police Department - NYPD Blue? I'm going to give you the blues.

The Virginia State Police - rednecks in grey uniforms. What's the difference between George Michael and a Virginia State policeman in a bathroom at a highway rest stop? George Michael has come out of the closet. What's the difference between the KKK and the Virginia State Police? The KKK don't take bribes from truck stop operators who deal in drugs and prostitution. What's the motto of the Virginia State Police? "There's always something wrong with your car if we don't like you." There is no truth to the rumor that Colonel W. Steven Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, is a transvestite.

The Henrico, Virginia Police Department - rednecks in grey uniforms. I'm beginning to see a trend...

Richmond, Virginia Commonwealth's Attorney Michael Herring - resign or be prosecuted.

The Richmond Police Department: corrupt, brutal, authoritarian, twitchy, arrest-happy, trigger-happy, murderous, badly trained, overweight, out-of-shape, inefficient. What's not to like? I rarely see the RPD and the HPD at the Krispy Kreme on West Broad Street. That's one reason I go there - that and the dee-licious doughnuts. Mmmm, doughnuts. We know why Homer Simpson and Chief Wiggum are so fat, but why are the RPD and VCU police? What are these guys eating, if not doughnuts? Fried lard? (I knew a guy who actually ate fried lard: a Chinese astrophysicist. We watched the Tiannemen Square Massacre together. It was a moving experience. Afterwards, he wanted to move to the U.S.) They've got more junk in their trunks than Fred Sanford's scrap yard. Newsflash: 911 is still a joke.

The Richmond Sheriff's Department - you tried to kill me. The penalty for that is...

The FBI - losers in bad suits.

The Secret Service - if you're so secret, why are you listed in the phone book?

U.S. Attorney's Office - when you call their office, tell them you want to discuss corruption in the Richmond Police Department and they say they'll call you back, that's called failing the smell test.

Paul Reichkoff

[If this man dies in a suspicious auto accident, I had nothing to do with it. "I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing!"]

Paul Reickhoff did a reading for his new book, "Chasing Ghosts: A Soldier's Fight for America from Baghdad to Washington,"  at Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia Wednesday. He's a lot more impressive in person than he is on the radio - perhaps because he's reined in by FCC and DOD regs. Though he modestly wants to give the mantel to Tammy Duckworth, Reickhoff is probably the highest-profile Iraq veteran/activist in the country.

Paul is the Executive Director and Founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1998 and served a tour of duty in Iraq lasting from April 2003 to February 2004. During that time, Paul was a 1st Lieutenant, and served as an Infantry Platoon Leader in the 3rd Infantry and 1st Armored Divisions. Paul's Platoon conducted over 1,000 dismounted and mounted combat patrols, and was centered in the Adamiyah section of central Baghdad.

Prior to going to Iraq, Paul worked as a high school football coach and an Investment Banking Analyst on Wall Street. Paul received a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Amherst College and continues to serve his country as a 1st Lieutenant and Detachment Commander in the New York Army National Guard.

- Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

He's more dynamic, charismatic, and forceful in person - George Patton - if Patton were played by a young Telly Savalas - but by his own account, with the same short fuse when he came back from the war. With the shaved head, the less kind would say the overall effect is that of a Baby Huey, a big, overgrown child acting out in hopes an adult will pay attention to him and spank him. Hmm, Janeane Garofalo's baby fever is outta control.

Sgt. Elias: Barnes believes in what he's doing.
Chris Taylor: And you?
Sgt. Elias: Back in '65? Yeah. Now, no. What happened today is just the beginning. We're gonna lose this war.

- Platoon

Like Janeane, he's contempuous of the celebrity-driven news/rumor cycle. Like Patton, he's naive about the limits of military power. You can't win an insurgency with 500-pound bombs, checkpoints, up-armored Humvees, or even size 19 sneakers. To don a flack jacket is to admit you've lost. The British knew that in Basra, but then the British weren't smart enough to avoid showing up for Mesopotamia, The Sequel. They are still going to have to leave - as will we. Has there been any counter-insurgency that's been successful since World War II with the exception of the British in Malaysia against an ethnic communist Chinese minority? (Juan Cole, Informed Comment) We shouldn't be fighting insurgencies. We should be creating them, or aiding and abetting them, the way the French did in the American Revolution. The US had the right idea with the Special Forces - to liberate the oppressed. Unfortunately, that turned out to be like Ghandi's description of Christianity: a great idea - too bad it's never been practiced, except with the Hmong. We need to align ourselves with the nationalism and aspirations of oppressed peoples everywhere, to be a light unto the world.

Paul is right. We need to go to war with the best army we can buy, not the army we have. If this weren't a low intensity, low-involvement war, SecDeaf Donald Rumsfield and Senator John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, would be facing mobs with torches and nooses for their criminal negligence in failing support the troops with anything other than empty rhetoric, just as Les Aspin should have been strung up or at least hung out dry, not twist in the wind, for his command failure in Somalia. A system that punishes people for reporting the truth, even it is bad news, is suffering from systemic failure. We saw that in Vietnam.

Paul is also right about the myopia of the civilian leadership at the Pentagon. The United States Marine Corps can develop a sophisticated warfighting doctrine, the three-block war, and the commandant can tout it all he wants on "Nightline." However, it means nothing if the SecDeaf thinks all the military is good for is killing people and blowing things up real good. And all it takes is a few psycho frat boys in Haditha to ruin the corps' good name for a long time. The knowledge about counter-insurgencies learned and earned with blood and treasure in Vietnam disappeared into musty warehouses and was never used in Iraq, like the Ark of Covenant in "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

Bluto's right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with conventional weapons that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. - Otter, "Animal House"

One of the lessons of Iraq is that a volunteer army works but I need a much larger one if I'm going to slug it out toe-to-toe with the Chinese Army. The Powell doctrine of overwhelming force may have worked in Iraq. It certainly makes sense if I'm going to conquer China in the largest land war the world has ever seen. That's one reason I favor easing immigration restrictions: a bigger pool for the armed forces to draw from. I'll bet my people's revolutionary army and navy can beat up their people's revolutionary army and navy. The Chinese Communist leadership will kowtow to me before I shoot them in the head and make their women sex slaves of my Japanese and Korean cohorts. I'm going to stash my 10,000 Chinese concubines in the Imperial Palace and build a pleasure dome where I decree. I'm going to turn China into one giant brothel of the Western imperialist running dogs. Forget it, I'm rolling.  BWAHAHA!

The other day, Janeane's proxy, Maurice, asked me if I were bilingual. This may reference Janeane's search for a cunning, bisexual linguist. Given that I only read French and am a heterosexual, perhaps she should have stuck with Fred Armisen, but he had the good sense to dump her once he realized he had a tiger by the tail. Or it could be a way to express concern over the impact of a large influx of immigrants (supporting diversity has never been Janeane's strong suite except when it comes to sexual preference). The Hispanic Maurice introduced me to had a permanent resident card but didn't speak English. He told me his corazon was in El Salvador. That may be true, but your ass in the U.S.A. I don't plan to learn to speak Spanish because the only Latino ass I'm ever going to kiss belongs to Jennifer Lopez or Rosario Dawson. And I'm not worried about immigrants. I had a Portuguese great-uncle who lived in a fishing village in Massachusetts and never learned to speak English. He was a productive member of American society and his son graduated from Georgetown University, served in the Navy, and became an IBM executive. Moreover, the armed forces have always been a way for America to assimilate foreigners into the mainstream of American society. The language barrier has never been a serious problem for armies in the past. The British have done fine with the Ghurkas and the French with the Foreign Legion. All you need is NCO's who speak both languages.

Sadly, I may not have time to read "Ghosts" since I haven't even got around to reading "A Bright and Shining Lie" by Neil Sheehan, which Janeane Garofalo gave me. Nor did I get around to reading the cheesy medical thriller she also passed on to me. [Update: she just gave me a thriller about post-war Germany in which George Patton, an admirer of Germany, plots to assassinate Harry Truman. This suggests that Janeane believes that war hero Paul (Patton) wants to kill blunt-spoken me (Truman). Hmm, maybe I shouldn't have called him a dolt and a big baby...

I should get used to people wanting to kill me by now. There was the time the Richmond Sheriff's Department sicced a psycho on me in the maximum security lockup of the Richmond City Jail. And the six-foot five, 300-pound motorcycle gang member working for the Richmond Police Department bent on doing me serious bodily harm until I pulled out a garrotte. On the other hand, Janeane spends more time manipulating reality than the characters in "The Stunt Man." And she has a suspicious resemblance to Barbara Hershey. Or maybe she means that comedian Patton Oswalt, a comedian friend of hers on "King of Queens" with whom she shares agents, wants to kill me.] I'm still too busy decoding that stack of "Badly Drawn Boy" CDs. Instead, I donated them to the circulating library at Kari's Coffee Shop. I said I would read "Ghosts," but given that I have a shelf with a dozen unread books on it, I may have to wait for the movie. Perhaps Janeane can play Paul's girlfriend. HAW! HAW! HAW!

Fountain Bookstore

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804-788-1594

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fountain.bookstore @ verizon.net

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