Marine Corps Birthday...Ready...Two

Following up on the post just below this one, the Birthday dinner was terrific. I didn't know anyone when I got there, but I did when I left. One of my table mates was a Captain in 10th Marines (artillery). He was at Camp Lejeune when I was there and went on a Med cruise with my old outfit, 3/8, a year or so before I got there. Neither of us had met anybody else that had been to Vieques so we had a lot to talk about. That was brought home by Mrs. G when I noticed I was the last one eating - "Well of course you are! You haven't shut up since the food got here!". Heh.

Dinner was soup, salad, rolls, a humungoid ribeye done perfectly to my specs ("Tear off its horns, wipe its ass, and walk it through a warm room!"), baked potato (the finest butter/sour cream/chives delivery system known to man), and some veggies that were a little too al dente for my no dente. It was excellent. And of course, a piece of birthday cake.

Following tradition, the first and second piece of cake go to the oldest and youngest Marine present. Here they cut it together with a very nice cake knife:

Click to embiggen

The gent on the left enlisted in 1942 and spent WWII in the Solomon Islands (Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Vella Lavella, etc.) as a ground crew chief in the Marine Air Wing.

The younger gent enlisted in 2001 and did a tour each in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tradition was served. The older generation symbolically handed down the tribal memory to the younger.

Me 'n Mrs. G had a great time and will be back next year.

As an afterthought, I didn't notice the blonde in the blue dress until I downloaded the photo. I'll definitely be back next year!

Marine Corps Birthday

Today is the 235th birthday of the Marine Corps. I have decided I'm not going to be able to improve on the post I wrote in 2005. Please go read "The Birthday Ball".

This Message from the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen James F. Amos, and the Sergeant Major of The Marine Corps, SgtMaj Carlton W. Kent, marks the 235th birthday of the United States Marine Corps.

Please notice that the new Commandant (who has already tripped over his dick on DADT. Heh.) and the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps are delivering their message from our masthead photo at 1:37. You're welcome and it is our pleasure, gentlemen.

Of note in the video:

The custom is that a person is considered to be a Marine upon completion of boot camp. Pvt. Hector Cafferata was in a reserve unit which was activated and sent to Korea before he had a chance to do that. I think he qualifies as a Marine anyway.

Lt. Chew-Een Lee was just a fightin' m**********r who could yell at the Chinese in their own language.

Thanks to JMFiorato1986.

I'm going to a Birthday Dinner this evening at the Sierra Valley Lodge up in Calpine (ePodunk), which is where people go to get away from the hustle and bustle of our Big City of 14,000 people. Sierra County has so few people that it doesn't even have its own jail.

If I'm back at this pop stand tomorrow, it went well.

Semper Fi.

"Us hate truth."

Go read Joe Wilson on Bush's new book.

My expectations for truthful revelation in Bush's book, after his comment, were naturally low. I have not been disappointed. In fact, Deception Points might have been a more appropriate title.

I think that's becoming the generally accepted opinion.

The president appears in this book to live in Htrae, the Bizarro world of DC Comics where society is ruled by the code that "Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!" To that might be added: Us hate truth

The Chimp'll sell a million copies of his self-serving tripe. To journalists and pundits on both sides who will either consider it proof of his greatness or to debunk his criminal chimpness.

Palin's a hole-y warrior

Will Bunch

Yesterday afternoon, Sarah Palin showed up at a Christian school in a Philadelphia exurbs bearing sugar cookies. By the time she left night, the former governor and possible would-be 45th president of the United States had launched nothing less than a holy war for the nation's political future.

Most people in the media paid more attention to the cookies.

And rightly so. She's done the most damage to this country that is conceivably possible in the longest fifteen minutes of fame in recorded history. I hope her fifteen minutes is about up.

The Twit 'fesses up

Think Progress

Tucker Carlson Sent Insulting E-mails To Philadelphia Columnist While Posing As Keith Olbermann

After MSNBC host Keith Olbermann was briefly suspended for making campaign donations to three Democrats, Philadelphia Daily News Stu Bykofsky columnist wrote a piece about the controversy. Bykofsky sought comment from Olbermann, e-mailing the address keith@keitholbermann.com. Shortly after publishing his column, he receieved a reply. The e-mail, claming to be from Olbermann, insulted Bykofsky, calling him “pathetic” and “beneath contempt.” It went on to insult MSNBC chief Phil Griffin, saying that he isn’t “intellectually qualified” to be Olbermann’s boss. Here is the reply in its entirety:

Ooh! Not nice!

Yet Yahoo News soon discovered that the e-mails were not from Olbermann at all. In a statement given to the site, MSNBC confirmed that the e-mails were not from their host. “Mr. Bykofsky has been, I would suggest, hoist on his own petard,” Olbermann told Yahoo News.

So who was replying from the address keith@keitholbermann.com? Yahoo News’s Michael Calderone reported this past summer that Tucker Carlson, the editor-in-chief of the conservative blog The Daily Caller, purchased the address. “We want to be the Keith Olbermann superstore,” Carlson said at the time. “We want to be your first and last stop for Keith Olbermann analysis.” In a phone interview with Carlson Tuesday night, Yahoo News confirmed with Carlson that he was behind the emails. “Could you resist?” Carlson told them. “It was just too funny. The flesh is weak.”

Ah, but the void between his ears is strong.

Carlson’s juvenile attacks do not reflect well on The Daily Caller. At the time of the Caller’s launch, Carlson wrote that it is “primarily a news site. We see our core job as straightforward: Find out what’s happening and tell you about it. We plan to be accurate, both in the facts we assert and in the conclusions we imply. If we’re not, tell us. We’ll fix it immediately.” One has to wonder how Carlson plans to fix his latest act of deception.

Fuck him. He's slid from being resident wingnut asshole understudy to Bob Novak at CNN to being the editor of a blog nobody's ever heard of. Not much of a job to get fired from and he's his own boss, but I hope he does the right thing for once in his pathetic life and fires himself. As a 'journalist', The Twit's career has already peaked with his appearance on 'Dancing With The Stars'. The bottom's not much farther, and this incident will hopefully be the final push he deserves.

Update:

Just for fun, go sample the comments on this post at HuffPo.

Christie got 'car service' on our dime

Raw Story

Caught: Justice Department probes GOP governor for lavish spending on cars, hotels

The Republican governor of New Jersey spent big money on luxury hotels without proper justification, a new Justice Department report reveals.

The Justice Department's inspector general also found that Christie had "excessive" charges for travel. In the two trips to London and Boston cited, the governor spent $798 on car service.

If bobbers in the limo qualify as 'car service', I got no problem with it if next time, Christie, you get two blow jobs and give me one of 'em.

This is the same asshole who raised taxes, including seniors' property taxes, and cut state funding to a variety of things including education. Don't you dare run for President on 'cut taxes', dickhead. Never mind. You will.

We all know that taxes are going to go through the roof one of these days, and government spending needs to be sharply reduced, and it's Repug liars like this one who caused it. They'll just blame Democrats.

A Few Random Observations Regarding the Re-Emergence of George W. Bush

By The Rude Pundit:

But, seriously, there's gotta be some dark shit in there, where you're eyeballs deep in a pile of Bolivian blow in some rathole motel in Nuevo Laredo, cutting yourself with the shattered remains of a bottle of Jack Daniels you just polished off, getting your asshole eaten out by an old Mexican whore while jacking off on a picture of your mom, screaming, "I got your pearl necklace, Mother, I got it right here." That's a fuckin' drinking story.

4. You write about 9/11, "We were going to find out who did this, and kick their ass." How'd that work out?

5. Fuck you. Fuck your bullshit justifications. We were there. Some of us know what really happened. So fuck your impenetrable clusterfuck rationalizing, your tautology of excuses. You're pissed that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, but you doesn't regret the war. You actually come across convinced of your lies, and now your former employees are out there making sure that you are remembered as the guy who took tough, decisive action when it was necessary. And even if that's true, taking action doesn't mean that you did the right thing. You can firmly say, "Here's the road we're traveling on." Doesn't mean that it ain't the road to the mine field and sodomy pit. The failure to admit that is the damnation we all have to deal with. But your lackeys want us all to just get over it and move on.

You can smooth those edges, W. The hole you left, though, well, we'll all be long gone before we see if it ever closes.

Bush needs a long time in a small barred room to ponder the wrong he has done without any ameliorating influences.

And to quote The Rude One: Fuck you, Bush, you lyin' sack of elite shit.

What the Democrats can learn from California

Dante Atkins at Kos:

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Not this year. This was the year that Democrats had a gubernatorial nominee in Jerry Brown who was too old and disconnected to be able to appeal to the Democratic base that he would need. This was the year that Meg Whitman would absolutely overwhelm the market with her unlimited personal fortune and allow the other Republicans not to have to worry about resources. This was year that Barbara Boxer was supposed to get her stiffest challenge yet from a "moderate Republican" in Carly Fiorina who would be able to peel off the women that Boxer needed to win re-election in an uphill environment. The year that there wouldn't be any way for Democrats to hold the office of attorney general because they had nominated a multiracial woman from San Francisco to run for the top law enforcement office in the state. The year where we could have also lost the spot of lieutenant governor because we had a supposedly polarizing figure in Gavin Newsom going up against a "moderate" Republican Latino, Abel Maldonado.

None of it happened. The statewide races were all routs, with the exception of the attorney general's race, where Harris has for most of the counting held a sliver of a lead. So the question is...why did the red tidal wave halt at the Sierra Nevadas? And how can Democrats elsewhere take advantage?

Why did the red tidal wave halt at the Sierra Nevadas?

Because I'm standing here, silly. Heh. Oh, and it's Sierra Nevada.

And how can Democrats elsewhere take advantage?

Don't waste your breath.

More.

Quote of the Day

From "Negotiating with Nutjobs":

In the witty 1966 classic cult film King of Hearts, a British soldier shows up in a French village run by lunatics after they'd escaped from the local insane asylum as the German Army retreated. Given the number of electoral victories by crazies in the mid-term elections, President Barack Obama might learn more from watching this movie than listening to all the talking heads in Washington.

Headline of the Day

Were American Voters Victims of the Stockholm Syndrome in 2010?

Oops...

Following up on Fixer's post, boy, when the cruise ship engine failed, it was spectacular! Musta filled up from the wrong pump. Heh.

Via Raw Story. Video from NOLINKNEWS.

Missile contrails from Vandenberg AFB were a fairly common sight in L.A. years ago. The best ones were the ones that went crazy, followed shortly by a lovely explosion!

Update:

Note to Chinese/North Korean/Iranian submarine designers: Don't put the button for jettisoning the garbage next to the one for the missiles. It confuses the mess cooks.

Thought on my first cup of coffee

The Chimp oughta call his book "Burger King" 'cuz it's the home of the whopper.

Cruise suckage ...

As most of the regulars around here know, I've had some SNAFUs when on cruises, having to blow off ports because of weather, getting shanghaied by the U.S. Coast Guard for rescue duty, going through Force 9 gales at sea, diverting thanks to a sick passenger, but those all pale when you're stuck on a dead ship:

An engine room fire that began early this morning on board CARNIVAL SPLENDOR has been extinguished but the ship remains without engine power while emergency generators are in use for ships’ services.

The 113,000-ton CARNIVAL SPLENDOR was on the first leg of a seven day cruise from Long Beach, CA and remains drifting approximately 55 miles west of Punta San Jacinto, Mexico with 3,299 passengers and 1,167 crew members on board.

...

I can happily say that (after 20 years and 30-odd cruises) I've never been on one that had to get towed in.

Government is too big!

Oh ... wait:

darrell issa plans on running up the deficit

by planning hundreds of hearings, investigations and creating oversight committees. aren't the rethugs complaining on how much the government is spending? yet, it's ok to splurge on these unwarranted "investigations" into things that are only in their imagination. how much of the taxpayers money did kenneth starr use to find out that *gasp* president clinton had a consentual affair with an intern?

...

We're gonna party like it's 1994!

Stay out of "God's" way ...

And you won't get run over. Continuing our downward spiral into Third World Toiletry:

...

Of course. These Master of the Universe are the producers, the people who make this nation's wealth so that parasites won't starve. They can't be held to the same silly standards of behavior to which the rest of us are held -- if they have to take something as prosaic as "risk" into account, the whole system will break down. And if these Very Superior People (also known as "Gods") are kept down by some bourgeois notions of "personal responsibility" it will be the poor who end up paying the price because there won't be any small change available to help the unfortunates they runs over with their Bentleys.

...

The rules are different for the filthy rich.

Boehner will fail

Kos, in of all places, The Christian Science Monitor.

Republicans didn't sweep these elections for grand ideological reasons, but because not enough of the Democratic base showed up to vote. Exit polls also show that angry voters who flocked to Republicans will end up disappointed in their actual policies. And in 2012, Democrats will be ready.

Think so, huh? Democrats? Ready? With the balls to take advantage of a political gimme if it pisses off the Repugs? That'll be the day.

He's ba-ack!

Fixer predicted that K.O. would be back on the air today. Pretty close!

Thanks to MOXNEWSd0tCOM.

It just goes ta show ya that if you violate company policy by donating to Democratic candidates without approval and get into a pissin' contest with management by refusing to apologize on air, that if you're making enough money for one of the largest companies in the Military Industrial Complex you get a well-deserved long weekend as punishment.

The 250,000+ protest signatures probly didn't hurt.

Atheists Don't Have No Songs

I saw this on Austin City Limits last night and just had to share with the rest of you godless commies:

From Austin City Limits (2010) Steve Martin & the Steep Canyon Rangers perform his original a capella "gospel" tune for the non-believers among us.

Thanks to 9firefly9.

Bush Publishes 'I Can Has Prezidensy'

Borowitz via YubaNet

Bush's memoir is a quick read, since 95% of it has been redacted by Dick Cheney

The Chimp can have his people un-redact it shortly. The word on the street is that The Dick is going to run out of unicorn blood and die pretty soon since his people didn't find any in Iraq.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

World's Largest Statue of Jesus Being Erected in Poland
Polish Catholics, pigeons rejoice.

Rare Picture of Henry VIII’s Lost Palace for Sale by Christie’s
Unfortunately, most potential bidders spent their money on Tea Party candidates.

Bush Memoir: He Considered Dumping Cheney in '04
But feared being shot in the face.

I don't believe anything Bush says. Period. Anyway, Cheney would never have given him permission to do that.

REMINDER

The rich people have spoken.