Cheesy, I Know, But Hey…

It’s home.

500,000 People Now

The pictures on the live feed from the NBC affiliate are mesmerizing, horrifying and spectacular ~ fire showers raining down against a black sky, or molten pillars thrusting skywards against the darkness. Lord.
Plus interviews with evacuees at Qualcomm ~ to a one, calm and saying ~ like the little fellow they just interviewed ~ “Thanks. It’s amazing. We have everything we need.”

Oh, San Diego…

En fuego. 250,000 evacuated so far and more to come, including my cousins who are trying to figure out how to get to Qualcom Stadium. My aunt in Carlsbad is frantic. Not only is she worried about the kids and their family not being able to make it north, my uncle (Col. USMC/Ret) took off this morning to teach a tax class to Marines getting out at Miramar MCAS. I-15 is closed and I-5 is now a parking lot. Sometimes that Irish stubborness works against you…
Live feed from the NBC affiliate.
It’s staggering.

Whoa…DUDE!

You wanna ‘splain this to us?

“nightfly is a clapton album“

Or not, if you feel it’s intrusive.

In Spite of Everything They Threw at Him

…Bobby Jindal is the new governor of Louisiana.

U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal became the nation’s youngest governor and the first nonwhite to hold post in Louisiana since Reconstruction when he carried more than half the vote to defeat 11 opponents.
Jindal, the Republican 36-year-old son of Indian immigrants, had 53 percent with 625,036 votes with about 92 percent of the vote tallied. It was more than enough to win Saturday’s election outright and avoid a Nov. 17 runoff.
“My mom and dad came to this country in pursuit of the American dream. And guess what happened. They found the American Dream to be alive and well right here in Louisiana,” he said to cheers and applause at his victory party.

It looks like he blew the Democrats out of the water. Not surprising considering the filthy stunts they pulled, but heartening considering Louisiana’s recent, self induced political travails. I hope he can get something rolling.
Congrats and good luck!

Pardon My Skepticism and Wet Blanketness a la SkylaEr

…on the eve of their first World Series ever, BUT…I hope they turn this down.

Rockies aim to trademark ‘Rocktober’
Slogan describes club’s run to National League Wild Card, World Series

Exposing my ancient roots to derision, I have to protest. In the early/mid ’80’s, “Rocktober” was a big part of the KROQ/KLOS ~but especially~ KMET (‘The MIGHTY Met’) SoCal FM experience for us ~ stuck in traffic on the 405 heading home, or jettin’ out to Newport Beach or Balboa on the weekends.

It’s not a Rockies original. So print your t-shirts, fellas, but leave the memories alone.

A Programming Note

FOX To Air Controversial Documentary on Islam
A controversial film that PBS axed from its documentary series about the post-Sept. 11 world will be broadcast for the first time nationwide this week by the FOX News Channel.
The documentary, originally titled “Islam vs. Islamists,” was produced by ABG Films with $675,000 in public funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It was originally slated to run earlier this year as part of PBS’ “America at a Crossroads” series.
The film follows moderate Muslims who have challenged the “Islamists” who espouse a more radical view of their religion. The film shows the Islamists advocating, among other things, the imposition of Sharia law on Muslims in the West, the stoning of women who commit adultery, and even violence and terrorism.
“Islam vs. Islamists” will be seen in its entirety as part of an all-new FOX News Channel special. The 90-minute FOX program, called “Inside Islam: Faith vs. Fanatics,” includes interviews with “Islam vs. Islamists” director and producer Martyn Burke and executive producer Frank Gaffney. It will be broadcast at 9 p.m. ET on Saturday, Oct. 20.

Might as well, since we’ve already paid for it.

Horror In Pakistan

Damn Presbyterians

KARACHI, Pakistan – A top provincial security official said Friday that the suicide attack on Benazir Bhutto bore the hallmarks of an al-Qaida-linked, pro-Taliban warlord based near the Afghan border.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf labeled the attack part of a “conspiracy against democracy,” reaching out to the former prime minister with whom he is trying to forge a pro-U.S., anti-militant alliance.
The “signature at the blast site and the modus operandi” suggested the involvement of militants linked to warlord Baitullah Mehsud and al-Qaida, said Ghulam Muhammad Mohtarem, the head security official in the province where Mehsud is based.
…Officials at six hospitals in Karachi reported 136 dead and around 250 wounded, making it one of the deadliest bombings in Pakistan’s history.

Unbelievable.

I’ve Joined PETA

You too can join here.
You know you want to.

‘Don’t Know Why There’s No Sun Up in the Sky…’

I do. Stormy weather. Downtown Bangla-cola.

We’ve been pretty popular on CNN today, too.
Now, back to poppin’ ‘ludes.

Read more »

Today’s Chuckle

Comes to us via our naughty friend Theo Spark

A U.S. Marine squad was marching north of Fallujah when they came upon an Iraqi terrorist, badly injured and unconscious. On the opposite side of the road was an American Marine in a similar but less serious state. The Marine was conscious and alert and as first aid was given to both men, the squad leader asked the injured Marine what had happened.
The Marine reported, “I was heavily armed and moving north along the highway here, and coming south was a heavily armed insurgent. We saw each other and both took cover in the ditches along the road. I yelled to him that Saddam Hussein was a miserable, lowlife scumbag who got what he deserved, and he yelled back that Ted Kennedy is a fat, good-for-nothing, left wing liberal drunk who doesn’t know how to drive.Then I said that Osama Bin Ladin dresses and acts like a frigid,mean-spirited lesbian! He retaliated by yelling, “Oh yeah? Well, so does Hillary Clinton!”

Read more »

Like the Song Says: “I Want MONEY!”

“OOO! Oo-oo OOO! That’s all I want!”

Law firm’s gifts to Democrats bring questions
Despite scandal, top candidates still taking donations from Milberg Weiss
Over the years, as it became Exhibit A for critics of shareholders’ class-action lawsuits, the law firm of Milberg Weiss often enjoyed the support of Democrats who called the suits an invaluable weapon in the universal conflict between big business and the little guy.
The Democrats, in turn, enjoyed the support of Milberg Weiss and its partners, who together contributed more than $7 million to the party’s candidates since the 1980s.
Last year, the firm was indicted on federal charges of fraud and bribery. But the political partnership has not been entirely severed…

Estonia to Vlad:

“BITE me.”

Russia on Tuesday accused Estonia, its small Baltic Sea neighbour, of “rudeness” and violation of a United Nations maritime convention by refusing permission for a seabed survey linked to the construction of a gas pipeline from Russia to western Europe.

Further diplomacy/bear wrastlin’ on hold until the Russian president fulfills the remainder of his 9 week commitment to a Poughkeepsie Community Theatre ‘Streetcar’ revival.

Getting All Prickly Over a Little

…Tong.

A junior trader suing one of the world’s biggest hedge funds, claiming a boss forced him to take female hormones, also says he was the victim of a sexual assault at work, sources told The Post.
Andrew Tong has produced “scientific evidence to corroborate the traumatic events that form the basis of his claims” against SAC Capital Management, said his lawyer, Gerry Filippatos.

(WHAT management?!?! I’m dying here…)
Hormone replacement therapy causes more kinds of trouble…

I Don’t Know That I’d Be So Quick to Action

…in poison dart land.

Amazon: Activists Surrounded by Loggers
Hundreds of loggers and angry residents have surrounded eight Greenpeace members who tried to leave an Amazon town with a scorched tree trunk for an exhibit on global warming, the environmental group said Wednesday.
The activists are holed up in the makeshift headquarters of the federal environmental agency in the town of Castelo dos Sonhos, Greenpeace campaigner Andre Muggiati said.

“They are still surrounded and the situation is tense,”

he said by telephone.

It’s like messin’ with Sasquatch. You don’t do it.

Don’t Mess With Hill…

Ayatollah you so

Hillary Clinton today moved to secure her position as the most hawkish Democrat in the 2008 presidential race, saying she would consider the use of force to compel Iran to abandon its nuclear programme.
In an article for Foreign Affairs magazine intended as a blueprint for the foreign policy of a future Clinton White House, the Democratic frontrunner argues that Iran poses a long term strategic challenge to American and its allies, and that it must not be permitted to build or acquire nuclear weapons.
…”True statesmanship requires that we engage with our adversaries, not for the sake of talking but because robust diplomacy is a prerequisite to achieving our aims.”
She says she would even consider offering incentives to Iran in return for a pledge to disarm. However, she sets out a series of stringent conditions that are virtually identical to current White House policy.

Here’s my “incentive”: if you build centrifuges we will blow them up.
Hill has always been the most hawkish of the Dems; her domestic agenda will be horrible but she’s the only one of them that I think I could trust to defend us. She’s much more decisive than Bill ever could be.

Peace

…be with you.

…And leave us remember three statements our Nobel Prize winning former Vice President-cum-almost-President Al Gore once said after shaking hands and shaking the trees at a Buddhist temple fund-raiser: 1) It wasn’t a fund-raiser, it was a “community outreach event.” 2) It wasn’t a fund-raiser, it was just “finance-related.” 3) It wasn’t a fund-raiser, it was a “donor-maintenance meeting.”

I’d forgotten what a prize Al…
…really is.

Oh Man

Damn. Damn. Chris Muir lost his sister Friday ~ to colon cancer, if I can read her blog correctly through the tears. It hits home in a peculiar way when you see your birth year on a memorial page, especially when the girl at the keyboard looks so vital. So alive. Bingley and I lost a vibrant, feisty, IRISHY aunt to colon cancer. Tore us up. And she had been the fruit/vegetable/athletic one of all the 6 siblings. It’s a scourge. An almost completely preventable scourge. And I don’t think we start checking for it soon enough.
Stephen Green asks that we send love and, if I could figure out how, I would. If someone has an email for Chris, let us know, eh?

Oh, Fer Chrissakes

Take a frickin’ picture, jackass.

Adlee Bruner’s fishing story is about the big one that didn’t get away.
Bruner and five friends headed out Saturday morning on a charter boat, hoping to catch some grouper to enter in the annual Destin Fishing Rodeo.
Instead, Bruner landed a gargantuan 844.4-pound mako shark, setting a new record for the decades-old tournament.

The money quote…

…“Ninety-nine percent of the time we catch sharks and let them go. (But) it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Blech. It’s easy to be a catch and release afficianado. Until the BIG one…the schmaybe once in every twentieth person’s lifetime… comes along, which SHOULD leave one in a moral quandary. (‘Should’ being the operative word.)
Thank goodness he got his trophy so no one else would have to wrestle with the choice.
But seein’ as how old shark was 844.4 pounds…maybe someone else had made a different decision…a coupla hundred pounds…and decades ago.

How Awful to Be Hounded…Have Your World Upset

…by an ‘unfounded claim‘.

A former Duke University men’s lacrosse coach has sued the university after resigning earlier this year under the pressure of allegations that three of his players raped a stripper, school officials said Friday.
Mike Pressler’s lawsuit apparently stems from a financial settlement the school reached earlier this year with Pressler, although school officials did not give details.
“Mr. Pressler, aided by his attorney, reached a fair and final financial agreement with Duke University in the spring of 2007,” Pamela Bernard, Duke’s vice president and general counsel, said in a statement. “We are disappointed that he is now trying to undo that agreement with an unfounded claim against Duke.”

Ah. Irony so dee-licious, I could eat a bowl full.

That SUCKING Sound You Hear

…is the A[ss- kissing] P[ornographers] workin’ Gorezilla over tag-team fashion.

Nobel Vindication for Gore, Scientists
For years, former Vice President Al Gore and a host of climate scientists were belittled and, worst of all, ignored for their message about how dire global warming is.
… Gore, who learned of his award from watching the live TV announcement—hearing his name amid the Norwegian—was not celebratory Friday. His tone was somber. He spoke beside his wife, Tipper, and four Stanford University climate scientists who were co-authors of the international climate report. Outside the building, schoolchildren held a sign saying, “Thank you Al.”
For years, there was little thanks.

Pity the poor pudgiferous prophet ~ crying in the wilderness, naked and mewling for succor.

Cry me a wet hankie. Why do I ALWAYS find this revolting drivel right before dinner?

The Marines Want to Take Over the Afghanistan Show

Marines Press to Remove Their Forces From Iraq
The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send Marines instead to Afghanistan, to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials.
The idea by the Marine Corps commandant would effectively leave the Iraq war in the hands of the Army while giving the Marines a prominent new role in Afghanistan, under overall NATO command.

Letting a MAGTF do it’s thing would be an interesting demonstration of what they’re designed to do to begin with. For those unfamiliar with the Marine Corps air/ground doctrine, it is a mighty thing.

The Marine Air Ground Task Force is the Marine Corps’ principle organization for conducting missions across the spectrum of military operations. MAGTFs provide combatant commanders or joint task force commanders with scalable, versatile expeditionary forces able to respond to a broad range of crisis and conflict situations. They are balanced, combined-arms force packages containing organic command, ground, aviation, and sustainment elements.A single commander leads and co-ordinates this combined-arms team from peacetime training through deployment. MAGTF teams live and train together,further increasing their cohesion and fighting power.

Marines bring EVERYTHING they need to operate with them, as well as the supplies to keep going. Marine Air is already in place and operating when the ground pounders call a strike in.
I was heartened by this paragraph…

…It is not clear whether the Army would support the idea. But some officials sympathetic to the Army said that such a realignment would help ease some pressure on the Army, by allowing it to shift forces from Afghanistan into Iraq, and by simplifying planning for future troop rotations.

…because of a disturbing policy that has kept me and major dad pissed off beyond all reckoning. Something we’ve spoken personally to outraged parents about. And we’ve yet to see anyone address it or write about it. Watching the Honor Rolls on news programs (as it does on The News Hour on PBS) that run when they’ve pictures and names of the fallen, you may have noticed the odd E-1 to E-3/4 Navy or Air Force casualty. One would normally think ‘Dang! This isn’t a naval war! Must be a corpsman or something.’ But it’s not.
It’s some junior enlisted Navy or Air Force reservist who’s been called up…to fill Army billets on convoys, security duties, in supply…whatever hole the Army can plug an untrained body into. And they have minimal combat training.
And we think that’s wrong.
As is what is happening within reserve units who finally get home…

Army Denies Guard Members Education Benefits
More than 1,000 members of the Minnesota National Guard who returned from Iraq this summer have been denied full education benefits under the GI Bill.
All the soldiers served nearly two years in Iraq, but half were told they served only 729 days, one day short of qualifying for full education benefits.

That would be a unit with a happy taste in its mouth, I’d say.

A Little Unintended Hilarity in Today’s Dreary Wal-Mart Line

The bigger calenders speak for their licentious selves…

The smaller desktops scattered above them?
The spiral bound version of this…

Praying for the souls of oglers? Praying for deliverance?
Or praying for the delivery of something worth ogling?
I report, you decide.

The Nobel Peace Prize To Gore

Oh Jimminny H Christmas on a pogo stick, what has he actually done to deserve this?

(CNN) — Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their work to raise awareness about global warming.
“An Inconvenient Truth,” a documentary featuring Al Gore, won two Academy Awards this year.
Gore said he was “deeply honored,” adding that “the climate crisis is not a political issue it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity,” according to a written statement.
The former vice president said he would donate his half of the $1.5 million prize to The Alliance for Climate Protection, a U.S. organization founded by Gore that aims to persuade people to cut emissions and reduce global warming.
During its announcement, the Nobel committee cited the winners “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

As my Bride and I were discussing last night, the US Military and specifically the task force headed by the USS Abraham Lincoln have done a hell of a lot more to provide peace and humanitarian assistance in a real way to impoverished people than Globe-Tromping Gorezilla and his “Cannes-Do” lifestyle ever has.
This award has completed its slide into total irrelevance and political feel-goodery. It is a blatant attempt to influence the next US election cycle. Luckily, the good people of the United States are far more interested in the Britney Spears than they are Nobel laureates.

If You Read One Thing Today

Make it this. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is someone we need to listen to.
Thanks to Hot Air.