Sure, these firemen are South Boston Masshole hockey players, but on most days, they are the face of good and salvation to people in grave danger.

As most other folks must be doing, ‘Puter’s spent some time thinking about the Boston Marathon
bombings and what, if anything, we can learn from them.

‘Puter submits the following philosophical and apolitical thoughts for your review and comment.

• Evil will dog mankind until the end of our days. It is inherent in the human condition.
• Evil cannot be banned or legislated away.
• Evil cannot be bargained with or accommodated.
• Even in dark moments of great evil we can find instances of good, such as selfless bystanders and first responders rushing towards danger to assist the wounded and the dying.
• In combating evil, we must carefully balance trading essential freedoms for an illusory safety. 
• Evil wins when we fail to pick ourselves up and get on with our lives.
• Evil wins when we lose faith in God, not trusting that despite His seeming absence, God is everywhere at all times, ready to assist us in all things.

Here are some off the cuff and overtly political thoughts, also for your review and comment.

• President Obama is wrong on just about every major issue facing our country today. That said, ‘Puter will not believe that any American president, no matter how horrible, actively wishes for or permits harm to befall Americans. ‘Puter ascribes good intentions to even his opponents until proven otherwise. For the more cynical among us, presidents don’t want harm to befall Americans because it harms their presidency, weakening them and their ability to achieve their goals.  Either way, for good reasons or bad, President Obama wants to provide America security.
• People who used yesterday’s bombings to score political points or badmouth Obama while victims’ blood still flowed down Boylston Street’s gutters are morally reprehensible.  When Democrats immediately politicized Newtown, conservatives rightly called them out as the soulless bastards they were. Conservatives must not hesitate to call out the soulless bastards on their own team as well.
• ‘Puter thinks that the Boston bombings are being treated differently than Newtown, perhaps unintentionally, because there’s no political party advocating for the free and ready availability of shrapnel laden bombs to the general public.  In the Newtown tragedy, there is a massive and lobby immediately ready to push new gun control measures on one side and an equally massive and understandably testy lobby protecting Second Amendment rights on the other side.  Had the Boston terrorists used gun, ‘Puter’s betting it would’ve taken about a nanosecond for Harry Reid to take to the floor of the Senate and call for an immediate vote on the pending legislation.  Newtown immediately divided the nation largely along party lines as Democrats sought to advance an anti-gun agenda. Boston has not done the same, at least to this point, largely because there’s not a lurking, hot button political issue in the background.
• Be wary of politicians, both in Massachusetts and in Washington, rushing through legislation promising safety for all in the wake of this terrorist act. No law, no matter how strict, can ever make us truly safe.  All life is a risk.  All that ill-considered and hastily passed laws do is steal more and more of our freedoms, transferring them to an ever-growing government.  Each law that makes Americans less free makes the government more powerful, and that should frighten both liberals and conservatives. A good rule of thumb is that legislation that is named for someone or has a heart-tugging acronym (see, e.g., New York’s SAFE Act) is a naked power grab crammed through while emotions are still hot.  Watch for this in the coming days.
• A 26.2 mile straight line marathon route running from Hopkinton to Boston, trod by thousands of runners and tens of thousands of spectators is impossible to secure. People criticizing the security precautions should shut up until a thorough investigation can be made. If there were errors made, we will know soon enough.
• MSNBC has an obligation to fire Chris Matthews for his unwarranted and unsupported conjecture, repeatedly made, that the Tea Party was responsible for the Boston attacks. Even so-called opinion telejournalists have an ethical obligation not to knowingly misinform the public, and a moral obligation not to purposely inflame public sentiment at a time of national crisis on unsubstantiated gut feelings.

That’s all ‘Puter’s got for now.  Until we know who committed this atrocity, which will lead us inevitably to the why this atrocity was committed, we cannot really do much more.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.