Thoughts for the Day, April 11, 2023: Heroes in Louisville

Orchid of the Day:  Louisville police officers Cory Galloway and Nickolas Wilt. I am praying for their full physical and mental recovery.

Quote of the Day: ”It’s easy to tell an officer that you have to run towards gunfire. It’s another thing to actually do it,”  Louisville Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey.

From Yahoo News. The response by Louisville Metro Police Department officers during the shooting at Old National Bank Monday undoubtedly saved lives, police said while they released body camera footage Tuesday.

Body camera footage released during the news conference Tuesday afternoon showed the response of the first two officers, Nickolas Wilt, who was sworn in as an officer March 31, and his training officer, Cory Galloway, who has been on the force since 2018. They ran toward the bank building even after their vehicle was fired on as they arrived.  See my Video of the Day.

Both Galloway and Wilt were shot, police said. Galloway suffered non-life-threatening injuries, but Wilt has been in the hospital in critical condition since the incident occurred.

Humphrey said as officers assess an active-shooter situation, they must consider first whether there are victims or hostages. Next, they look at whether there are bystanders in the area and then assess officer safety.

He said the suspect “has the ultimate control” in such a situation.

”Tragically, lives were lost, but countless lives were saved,” Humphrey said of the officers’ response. He called their actions “superhuman.”

Once again, we are praying for the victims and their families of a mass murder where the assailant had a gun that was legally purchased and had the ability to shoot multiple rounds in a very short time-period. I am reasonably confident that this type of gun is not what our founding fathers had in mind when they drafted the second amendment.

I am in the middle of reading over 4,500 pages and nineteen western novels by Zane Grey. Throughout the first 1,000 pages and the first five novels there is a common theme about the scarcity of water in the west and how finding water and knowing where the watering holes were located was a key to survival.  The Colorado River is prominent in many of his books. It was instrumental in survival and the growth of the area.

The Colorado River is back in the news today, as once again it is instrumental in the survival and growth of the area. Unlike in Zane Grey time when it served a limited amount of people and farmland it now supplies over 40 million Americans with drinking water, irrigates 5.5 million 5.5 million agricultural acres and its two main dams power millions of homes and business. It makes today’s announcement by the Biden administration so important and so alarming.

Per the NY Times, after months of fruitless negotiations between the states that depend on the shrinking Colorado River, the Biden administration on Tuesday proposed to put aside legal precedent and save what’s left of the river by evenly cutting water allotments, reducing the water delivered to California, Arizona and Nevada by as much as one-quarter. The size of those reductions and the prospect of the federal government unilaterally imposing them on states have never occurred in American history.

Overuse and a 23-year-long drought made worse by climate change have threatened to provoke a water and power catastrophe across the West.  

We have our issues in Michigan, but access to fresh water is not one of them.

Congratulation to the 10-0 Tampa Bay Rays for their great start to the major league baseball season. They are the first team since 1982 to start 10-0 and only the seventh team in history to do so.

Any time a team gets off to a great start like this, it always brings back memories of the 1984 Tigers who had the best forty game start in the history of the MLB when they started the season 35-5.  To put that in perspective, the Rays would need to go 25-5 in their next 30 games to tie the Tiger’s start. 

I hope the Ray’s continue their great start and put the Yankees and Red Sox in their review mirror as the Tigers did to the American League teams in 1984.  I am going out on a limb, but I feel confident the Tiger record of 35-5 will still be intact after the Ray’s play their 40th game.

Feel free to share my blog or to sign up to receive it directly in your email.  See the sign-up at the bottom of the blog below the video.

Quote of the Day: See above.

Orchid of the Day: See above.

Onion of the Day: The three idiot passengers from Spirit Airlines who attacked a Spirit employee after the employee announced the flight was cancelled after multiple previous cancellations.

Question of the Day: How is it that our police officers are no better armed than the assailant in so many instances and the extreme gun rights advocates think that is OK and that is what our founding fathers wanted?

Video of the Day:

Heroes in Louisville.

LMPD Body Camera release from 333 Main St. on 4-10-23. – YouTube

2 thoughts on “Thoughts for the Day, April 11, 2023: Heroes in Louisville

  1. Jeff Hamal

    Tom, I was stuck in Americam Airlines hell last week. Our flight to ORD out of TVC was delayed for six hours. We missed our connection in Chicago and subsequently the next available flight to DC was canceled, we ended up flying back to TVC the next day. I don’t condone rowdy and boorish behavior by airline passengers; however, the frustrations that all airlines put travelers trough certainly makes it somewhat understandable. Jeff

    • Thomasdbiggs Post author

      Jeff,
      I agree with your assessment. You would think after all these years they would figure out how to handle cancellations in a manner that is customer friendly.
      Biggs

Comments are closed.