On October 12, 2000, eight years ago today, the guided missile destroyer USS Cole, DDG 67, was docked in Aden, Yemen, for a refueling stop.

A small boat loaded with an estimated 400 pounds of explosives cruised towards it’s port side mid-ships, the two men on board smiling and waving at crewmen working on deck.

The explosion ripped a 40′ high and 60′ long gash in her side, killed 17 US sailors and wounded another 39.

After massive damage control efforts by the Cole’s crew, the flooding was controlled, her list was righted, and the ship was saved.

On April 19 2002 the repaired USS Cole left Pascagoula Mississippi and rejoined the Atlantic Fleet at her home port of Norfolk Virginia, deploying again for a six month pump in November of 2003. She had been hit hard, but she did not die, and less than 18 months after a crippling blow she was back at sea, back in the fight. Less than a year after the Cole attack the same terrorist group that tried and failed to kill her, tried again, this time here at home. While they hit us hard, they failed then also. We did not crumble, we did not die, and we did not give up. And they will continue to fail, as long as we remember the souls of those lost in defense of our freedom, and as long as we remain true to the virtues they died for.

Fair Winds and Following Seas, sailors of the USS Cole.

Kenneth E. Clodfelter, 21 Hull Maintenance Technician 2nd Class

Richard D. Costelow, 35 Chief Electronics Technician

Lakeina M. Francis, 19 Mess Management Specialist Seaman

Timothy Lee Guana, 21 Information Systems Technician Seaman

Cherone Louis Gunn, 22 Signalman Seaman

James R. McDaniels, 19 Information Systems Technician Seaman

Marc Ian Nieto, 24 Engineman 2nd Class

Ronald Scott Owens, 24 Electronic Warfare Technician 2nd Class

Lakiba Nicole Palmer, 22 Seaman

Joshua L. Parlett, 19 Engineman Fireman

Patrick Howard Roy, 19 Fireman

Kevin Shawn Rux, 30 Electronic Warfare Technician 1st Class

Ronchester M. Santiago, 22 Mess Management Specialist 3rd Class

Timothy L. Saunders, 32 Operations Specialist 2nd Class

Gary Swenchonis Jr., 26 Fireman

Andrew Triplett, 31 Lieutenant J.G.

Craig B. Wibberly, 19 Seaman

The Puppy Blender (does anybody even remember the origins of that friendly joke anymore other than me?) gets an email from a libertarian/conservative whose political opinion and pedigree is so close to my own that I must issue a disclaimer right away: It wasn’t me! But it could have been.

This is surely small of me, but if Obama wins, I plan on giving him as much of a chance as the Democrats gave George Bush. I will gleefully forward every paranoid anti-Obama rumor that I see, along with YouTube footage of his verbal missteps. I will laugh and email heinous anti-Obama photoshop jobs, and maybe even learn photoshop myself to create some. I’ll buy anti-Obama books, and maybe even a “Not My President” t-shirt. I’m sure that the mainstream bookstores won’t carry them, but I’ll be on the lookout for anti-Obama calendars and stuff like that. I will not wish America harm, and if the country is hurt (economically, militarily, or diplomatically) I will truly mourn. But i will also take some solace that it occurred under Obama’s watch, and will find every reason to blame him personally and fan the flames.

There is more.

Glenn is sad that this is where our country has come to. So am I. And that’s as far as I’ll go down that road. I’m sad, but I also realize just who exactly is responsible for that, and I fully intend, should the ObamACORN win, to start giving those leftist swine a heavy dose of their own medicine. Nothing will be off-limits. Except for breaking the law, that is, which will put me heads and shoulders above the level of moral turpitude that the liberals have made their own over the last 8 years.

But other than that, every last bit of smearing, lying, finger-pointing etc. will be the order of the day, on top of all of the true claims against him I can find, and they’re already piling up deep and high. Nothing will be too low, every slightest rumor will be picked up and broadcast with a spin that would make David Axelrod blush, and it will be a relentless barrage from the day he takes office ’till the day he leaves it. And I will enjoy every second of it. I will willfully and gleefully sabotage every single thing that he tries to achieve in any way that I can and when he fails, I’ll put all of the blame on him.

Him and his leftist brownshirt goons will get a heaping helping of the same bullshit that they’ve been flinging at us for the last 8 years, and they will get it with interest and then some. See how he likes it.

Don’t give me any “but we’re better than they are” bull either. Yes, we are, and once we’ve gotten rid of that plague, we’ll go right back to being good again. Just as I’ve said a thousand times about nitwits who insist that our brave men and women should be forced to fight with one or both hands tied behind their backs, a mindlessly retarded and treasonous practice that has gotten hundreds, if not thousands of them killed, all to show how much “better than the terrorists we are:” Yes, we are, and we don’t need to do jack fucking squat to prove it, so take off the damn gloves and quit getting our brave men and women killed with your PC “kinder, gentler war” crap.

We didn’t hold off bombing Germany and Japan to prove how much better we were than Tojo and Hitler, did we? We didn’t insist that German POWs be granted full Constitutional rights and be released into the U.S. of A. on their own recognizance, did we? Because we didn’t have a single fucking thing to prove! It’s laughable on its face that there even exists morons so terminally assbrained today that they’ll say out loud that we need to prove that we’re better than al fucking Qaeda. In a normal world, those asshats would keep their mouthes shut for fear of being ridiculed to death.

Yes, we’re better than our enemies, both military and political, and we don’t have to prove that. But we will have to get our hands dirty.

Thatisall.

Any day now. Somewhere after the thirty-second of never.

I was at a Sarah Palin event in Philadelphia, at the Park Hyatt Hotel - late Saturday afternoon (Oct. 11th). If you are easily grossed out by the “C” word, I am sorry. But as Andrea says below, if McCain supporters wore a shirt that said “Obama is a ___” or even “Obama is a ____” or “Obama is a ____” at an Obama Rally, they would either be thrown off the premises, have their heads kicked in, or even be detained at the local police station (I know this for a fact: I just had on a McCain button at a recent Obama event and I didn’t think I was going to get out alive).

Sorry the picture is not clearer. But these four young people were right in front of the hotel. They have on the nicest shirts. There were worse. There was group as well carrying around a fake dead fetus - exclaiming that “abortion should have been the path for Bristol(?) Palin”. And quite a few smoke bombs, etc. etc.

There’s more. Much more.

Oh, and the picture of those nice liberals expressing their inclusive, tolerant feelings?

Yes, it’s been censored a bit, but not by us. And yes, that four letter word beginning with a “C” right after “Sarah Palin is a…” is exactly the word that you think that it is.

We fully expect the Obamedia to launch into a full-scale feeding frenzy of thermonuclear hysteria tomorrow, wringing their hands over the obvious misogyny and hatred towards women that is being fired up, deliberately stoked, even, by the dangerous rhetoric of the Obamessiah campaign, and demanding that the Chosen One “tone it down a bit.”

That, too, was sarcasm. We don’t expect to hear a solitary peep from the Obamedia. Nor will we. Ever.

His Majesty is sure that you, too, are choking on the monumental displays of hypocrisy shown by the Obamedia these days, hyperventilating about “angry mobs” of Republicans and the whassisface?/Palin campaign “stoking the fires” with their “angry rhetoric” because of one or two angry Republicans at campaign rallies shouting angry stuff.

This after 8 years of liberals openly and publicly fantasizing about murdering Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove and just about every other Republican with a pulse, liberal Congressmen openly and publicly accusing our troops of being Nazi camp commandants, cold-blooded murderers and even terrorists and only G-d knows what else, and the Obamedia keeping their fat, lying mouthes absolutely zipped about the subject.

Now, after one lady at a whassisface? rally said that she didn’t trust the Obamessiah in the White House because “he’s an Arab”, something the Obamedia couldn’t even bring themselves to quote correctly, they turned it into her “being scared because he’s an Arab terrorist“, something she never said but, as they say in the Obamedia, if we can’t get the story we want, we’ll just make shit up, and after another guy at a Palin rally yelled “Kill him!” in reference to Bill Ayers (something I thought we were supposed to do in this Long War on, ahem, terror), after those two happenings, the Obamedia are in full screech mode, comparing whassisface? to George Wallace and suggesting that the campaign is really trying to get some lynchings going.

We have to admit: Every single time we hear about the massive weekly layoffs in the Obamedia, we smile so hard it almost splits our face.

So where are we going with this? Glad you asked. On September 21, a group of Republicans had the nerve, the nerve to march peacefully through Manhattan with their whassisface?/Palin signs, expressing this freedom of expression thing that we’re always told that they embrace so much and will forever fight to protect. Their reception in this liberal bastion of tolerance and inclusiveness was, of course, warm and welcoming as the liberals respectfully lined the street and congratulated their Republican opponents on their display of their equally worthy opinion in this world where there is no black or white and nobody is better than anybody else.

Well, actually no:

If only the liberals of New York City hated al-Qaeda half as much as they hate their own countrymen…

Stephen Hayes, from whom we got this clip, then goes on to muse, in light of the latest barrage of bullshit from the Obamedia:

After the outpouring of anti-McCain sentiment at yesterday’s Obama rally in Philadelphia I’m sure David Gergen is going to call for the Democrat to tone down his rhetoric. And the mainstream media will start reporting on the dangerous left-wing “rage” that’s taking over the campaign in its final weeks.

We needn’t tell you that the above is sarcasm, do we? We thought not.

P.S.: For a brief summary of some of the actual liberal hatred and actual incitement to murder and worse over the last 8 years, LC & IB Michelle delivers. And that’s only the surface. And all the while the Presstitudes of the Lame Stream Media were quiet as little miceses.

Oh, the hypocrisy. Now shut up, you lying liberal hacks. First against the wall… First against the wall.

Remember the M/V Iran Deyanat? The ship that was hijacked by Somali pirates enroute to Europe? The ship that later became famous, or infamous if you prefer, for having a cargo that made the pirates’ hair fall out, their skin burn and various other maladies until it killed a bunch of them, all within days?

At the time, people were talking about it being “dangerous chemicals” that were to blame for it. Now, I know a thing or two about “dangerous chemicals”, since chemicals used to be my professional bailiwick, and although I can’t say for sure, not knowing every single chemical compounds and its effects on people getting in contact with it, it sounded one heck of a lot more like radiation poisoning to me. For instance, I know of no chemical compounds that lead to loss of hair unless you either ingest them or rub your scalp with them. Radioactivity, on the other hand, is known for doing just that if the dosage is high enough. Ditto for burns, but any number of chemicals can do that too.

One thing I knew was that, if it was radiation sickness, then it would have to be some seriously sinister shit, the kind of radioactive stuff that would make a Geiger counter sound like a cloud of horny cicadas.

Which brought up the next question: Why on G-d’s green Earth would the Iranians be shipping toxic stuff like that to Europe? Really, now. It’s not like it’d stand a chance of getting anywhere near customs, much less through it. And then, through sheer laziness and pre-occupation with other less important nonsense, I shoved it on the back burner.

Then, today, I read this.

And all of a sudden it all makes sense. Sense to the point where I slapped my forehead, went “d’uh!” and resolved to be very, very reluctant to as much as hint at my analytical faculties, because they’d taken the day off that day for sure. Sheer, lazy dumbassery on my part, and I don’t even have an excuse for it since I know the geography of that region very well.

If you are off the coast of East Africa and you’re going to Europe, what route would you take? Why, the Suez Canal, of course, unless you were planning on emulating the Vikings of old and disassemble your ship, then carry it across Africa. I feel immensely stupid now. Because what is on the northern end of the Suez Canal, just a short hop, skip and a jump to the east? Why, Eretz Yisroel, of course. What direction does the wind like to take in that area? West to east. So what might an Iranian ship loaded with extremely radioactive light sands want to do?

I’m sure you already did the math. What pains me is that I didn’t.

I’ll be over in the corner sporting a brand new dunce cap.

D’UH!

No, the irony of Somali pirate scum maybe being responsible for averting the greatest disaster to befall the Jewish people since the Shoah isn’t lost on me either.

Remember McCain’s “celebrity” ad where they made fun of The Obamessiah’s Cult of Personality? Pretty good one, that was.

The PUMAs have made their own version and, we must admit, it edges McCain’s out by quite a bit.

That self-centered narcissist clown and his delusions of adequacy would be hilarious if it wasn’t so scary.

…in which we, once again, find ourself indebted to LC & IB Blackiswhite, who was the first to let us know of this video.

We still find ourself deeply in doubt about the “Hawaii COLB is Fake” claim. A lot of people, including the Hawaii government, attested to its genuine nature but his case is still intriguing, particularly when presented by Mr. Berg himself. It’s far from the ONLY question raised and is, indeed, rather minor compared to the rest.

As he points out: When McCain was challenged on his birth and background, he immediately released every scrap of evidence so people could have a look at it. No stalling, no legal action, nothing. Just “you wanna see it? Sure, here it is.”

That’s how somebody who HASN’T got anything to hide works and, as a result, the questions about McCain became moot overnight.

So tell us again: If there is indeed absolutely no doubt about Obambi’s eligibility for office, and that might very well be the case, why the obfuscation? Why the massive outlay of funds and time to prevent those easily producible documents from being released? Why, indeed, is this the case with any papers pertaining to Obambi’s background? His health records, his school records etc. etc.

Is this the behavior of somebody who has absolutely nothing to hide?

Not in our book.

Also, normally we wouldn’t do this, we’d just send you over there to watch the video there, but if you’re not visiting LC & IB Blackiswhite’s site on a regular basis already, then something is profoundly wrong with you. And, more importantly, this video needs to flood the zone before YouTube again, mysteriously, yanks a video critical of the Anointed One™.

Tenuously sourced, but not at all unlikely given whassisface’s recent outbursts of brotherly love towards the Obamessiah:

With his electoral prospects fading by the day, Senator John McCain has fallen out with his vice-presidential running mate about the direction of his White House campaign…

Mark Salter, McCain’s long-serving chief of staff, is understood to have told campaign insiders that he would prefer his boss, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, to suffer an “honourable defeat” rather than conduct a campaign that would be out of character – and likely to lose him the election.

This could be another cunning plan, but just in case that it isn’t, His Majesty would like to issue the following statement to whassisface’s:

Listen, Twinkletoes, we already know that nothing matters more to McVain than McVain and how he thinks that the liberal Obamedia sees him. You’ve proven that abundantly already and we were hoping against hope that maybe the fact that they turned on you as one when you weren’t running against a REPUBLICAN would have clued you into the fact that they don’t give a shit about you no matter how much they tonguebathed your shriveled testicles back when you were busy undermining the Administration every change you got.

Apparently not even that was enough to hammer a clue through the massive wall of narcissistic ignorance surrounding whatever the fuck it is you keep inside that noggin of yours.

All that aside, we would like to remind you that the rest of the nation doesn’t really give a fuck if you can call yourself Miss Manners as you look at yourself in the mirror every night when you brush your teeth. You may be perfectly willing to suffer an “honorable” defeat rather than “dirtying” yourself by actually running against your opponent, but we’d like to remind you, once again, that this election ISN’T all about you.

If you allow yourself to lose an election to an avowed radical Marxist and thus place the future of our nation in the hands of somebody who likes to play kissy-kissy with Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko and assorted Hamas and PLO terrorists, then “honor” is a concept that you can forever wave goodbye to.

His Majesty would have thought that a military person with a service record as indisputably distinguished as yours would be familiar with the concept “mission first.” Or even “country first.” You sure as hell don’t seem to have a problem waving the latter around as you tour the country. But maybe you aren’t. Maybe it really is true, as we’ve come to suspect over the years, that the only thing that you put first is yourself. Which, ironically, would make you pretty much the same as the scumbag you’re running against.

Allow us to repeat ourself: This election ISN’T about you, no matter how much you might like for it to be so. It’s about this nation that you claim to love. It’s about the FUTURE of this nation that you claim to love. It has fuck all to do with your chances of scoring speaking engagements after November 4th or how nicely the communists of the Obamedia will talk about you then. It is also about the hundreds of thousands of CONSERVATIVE voters who, in spite of themselves, have decided to bite the bullet and donate their money and time to your campaign.

Let us tell you something: They’ll be more than a LITTLE bit pissed off if it turns out that you allowed yourself to lose in order to avoid looking “mean.” And if you think that you can find refuge amongst your former Democrat pals now that they don’t have any use for you anymore, think again.

You might as well go ahead and change your last name to “Arnold”, because that’s how you’ll be viewed by the nation that you betrayed.

Now, we still harbor in our heart a faint hope that this is all subterfuge, that your campaign has several other tricks up its sleeve and is planning to play them all in order to prevent this far-left terrorist-sympathizing kook from becoming President, but we want to make one thing clear: If it ISN’T the case, then G-d have mercy upon you.

Because the American people won’t.

Thatisall.

LC’S and G.L.O.R’s, it has come to the attention of His Imperial Highness, and his duly appointed Officer of the Empire (Pacific Operations Command), that a goodly number of our patrons are given to this strange compulsion to utter the word “FIRST” when entering a new thread.

It seems odd to His Majesty™, since the statement “FIRST” contains no information that cannot already be identified by the numerical indicator on the page where said comment appears.

If you have a relevant comment to make, fine. If it contributes to the thread and topic, fine, in which case there is no need to claim “first”…this is about what you have to say, not how often you say it.

Be it therefore commanded, under pain of mockery, and a week of being subjected to the undivided and uncensored attention of Our Imperial Torturer™, that the practice of “FIRST” shall cease herewith.

By proclamation of a hot and very annoyed Emperor, as relayed by his humble servant.

CC: BC, Imperial Torturer™ and Henchman

…now the fucking A/C died.

As if we didn’t have enough shit to deal with currently… I’ll be outside, cursing my cruel fate… At least there’s a wind out there, making it feel cooler than inside the Imperial Sauna Palace…

Damn… damn, damn, DAMN…

UPDATE: Several hours and one tech visit, a bunch of repairs and the accompanying nosebleed later (these things just HAVE to die on weekends), but at least the air is flowing again. And if you don’t realize that this fact in itself is a vital necessity, then you sure ain’t from Texas.

I suppose it could’ve been worse. It could’ve been July. At least these days the temperatures are at a balmy, cool 90-some degrees. With about 98% humidity, of course. Or maybe less. Slightly less.

…and the Zionist case too, which means that it’s my case as well.

LC & IB Ben Shapiro, that incredibly bright youngster (at my age, anybody who isn’t yet dreading the annual prostate exams is a “youngster”, so no offense intended, my friend), has produced an excellent three part series on just why Jews should think long and hard before considering voting for the Obamarxias, and I’m more than happy to plug it.

It has always puzzled me why Jews tend to vote Democrat in such large numbers, since it would be a bit of a stretch to call Democrats “Friends of Israel”, but this time the reasons why they shouldn’t are even more obvious and frightening than usual.

The trailer:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Mazel Tov, my friend!

…things keep getting more and more puzzling.

Again: What puzzles us primarily here isn’t whether plaintiff’s claims are accurate or not, it’s why on EARTH the Obamarx continues stalling and refusing to release papers that are easily producible if, as he and his counsel claims, plaintiff’s claims are ridiculous. Particularly since throwing those papers at plaintiff, if Obamarx’s claims are accurate, would make the whole case moot.

Obambi sure must love spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on silly suits, just for the sheer fun of it.

Or…?

It’s no secret that His Majesty hates HOAs and the Nazis that tend to run them with a purple passion, which is why we would never touch a property that had one if they gave it to us.

Having been around for a while, it takes quite a bit for us to be surprised at their brownshirted antics, but this story, sent to us by Alert Reader Al, managed to do it just fine:

BAYONET POINT — On Friday morning, Joseph Prudente put on a pair of shorts and his “Grandpa Gone Wild” T-shirt. He took off his wedding band and put his heart medication in a plastic Wal-Mart bag.

Then his daughter drove him to jail. Grandpa had time to do.

His crime? He had disobeyed a court order that he sod the lawn at his Beacon Woods home.

His bail? Zero.

Prudente, 66, must stay in the Pasco County jail in Land O’Lakes until the required sod work is completed, under a September court order signed by Circuit Judge W. Lowell Bray.

Mr. Prudente’s problem was that he, like so many others, had fallen on economic hard times and couldn’t afford sodding the sodding lawn. It ain’t cheap, you know. So what’d the HOA do? Did they act like good neighbors and work something out with him, maybe running a fundraiser in the neighborhood or loaning Mr. Prudente the money? No they didn’t. They sued him and made sure that he got thrown in jail for not obeying their orders, orders that he would like to follow, but couldn’t follow.

That’s a real Christian thing to do, you know. The only thing more Christian and compassionate would be to get him thrown out on the street, and they’re probably working on that as we speak.

Fucking brownshirt Nazi arseholes.

And a hearty “fuck you” to the Judge as well. Your profession just sunk even lower in our esteem. We had to use a backhoe for that, by the way. A backhoe that we first had to lower into the chasm where our esteem was already located.

Not that we’re going O’Reilly on you here, but it just struck us: Now that crude is down below $80/barrel, why on Earth is His Imperial Poverty-Strickenness still paying $3.25/gallon?

The last time crude was in that price range, September of 2007, we were paying about $2.60/gallon, so it seems to us that somebody is being ripped off here, and somebody is getting mightily pissed off about it too. Sure didn’t take them long to jack the prices UP when crude got more expensive, did it?

Just a thought.