Bravo Zulu USS Bulkeley!

Congratulations to the men and women of the DDG84. Last month, (my boy, lol) Admiral Gary Roughead awarded the officers and crew of the USS Bulkeley the Arizona Memorial Trophy. This award recognizes the Bulkeley as "the Naval Surface Force's most combat ready ship during the two-year compettitive period of 2005-2006."
'The Bulkeley is being recognized for maintaining high combat readiness in anti-surface warfare, surface fire support and strike warfare during training and deployment. The Navy is also recognizing the Bulkeley for its actions while deployed to the Persian Gulf area of operations."
They do their namesake proud! In the words of VADM Bulkeley, "You engage, you fight, you win. That is the reputation of our Navy, then and in the future."

Maria Callas Butterfly-Puccini

Maria Callas passed on this day in 1977. The celebrated soprano died in Paris at the age of 53.

I will never understand the Onassis thing. I didn't understand it with Jackie and I don't understand it with Callas. Mama Kelley used to emphasize the middle part of his name, lol. He was despised in
Charlestown.

Callas had the most amazing voice, I am listening as I type this. Just amazing.

Happy Birthday WK!!!!!

To my friend and my blogga-sista, Were-Kitten!!!!

Although I'm not entirely certain who this is a present for.........

I can't (or just know how to) embed links in these posts with YT vids. So just go here:
http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2007/09/happy_birthday_3.html
and leave a present!

So.....Before I Got Distracted......

I was over at the Corner (NationReviewOnline) to link to a post about the Armorer and his unbelievably great day!

So.....go here. Follow the link and go here......and don't miss this.......or this.

Congratulation John!

That was what I should have been focusing on instead of stupid James Brolin! But when you go over to the Corner......there's so much stuff!!!!! For a political junkie like me, it's crack.

WTF?

James Brolin on the Chaz & AJ Show saying one of the most inappropriate things about 9/11 since Ward Churchill. I think he even beats my stupid governor.

The snippett of video is here at Breitbart TV. I found it via The Corner Online.

In this audio clip Brolin says "Right! Oh yeah. Oh Happy 9/11!"

????????????

Deval Patrick - Donkey

No, I don't mean donkey like the symbol for the Democratic party. I mean donkey like stupid animal. When my mother would get really, really frustrated with us.....when we would do something really, really stupid......she would screw her face up and say "Listen, you DONKEY...." LOL, it was pretty rare, I was stupid, but not spectacularly so. When my kids or their friends did something dumb, I would refer to them as "mutton".

But we're not talking about me here, or the kids. We're talking about the Governor of the Commonwealth, Deval Patrick. I was listening to Howie, that agitator, discuss Deval's 9/11 ceremony remarks. I couldn't believe it. I had to go look it up. Here they are:

‘‘Among many other things, Sept. 11 was a failure of human understanding. It was a mean and nasty and bitter attack on the United States,’’ said Gov. Deval Patrick. ‘‘But it was also about the failure of human beings to understand each other and to learn to love each other. It seems to me that lesson and that warning is something that we must carry with us every day.’’

".....a failure of human understanding."......WHAT.....THE....FUCK?

Let me tell you what I fail to understand. I fail to understand how this nitwit made it to the corner office. I fail to understand how the supposedly apolitical committee in charge of today's State House ceremony didn't see that it would look funny to dump Ogonowski as a featured speaker in favor of a hack. I fail to understand why the Lt. Governor handled the flag instead of someone who lost a loved one on 9/11. I fail to understand how a guy who is supposed to be so bright, as we are told Deval is...didn't to hire a speech writer to keep him from inserting his foot in his mouth. I fail to understand how a guy whose liberal beliefs would have him near the front of the execution line in any society that follows Sharia law (does Deval know what a caliphate is? Will he figure it out before they stone him?) would talk about "learning to love" muslim extremists.

Governor, you are a DONKEY. You are a braying, stupid donkey. Jackass fits too.

I'm not the only one who thinks so, here's the editorial staff at the Herald weighing in.

The Boston Globe Nails It

MoveOn's McCarthy moment
By Peter D. Feaver September 11, 2007

IN THE SPRING of 1954, the US Senate convened hearings at the instigation of Senator Joseph McCarthy to press his anticommunist investigations into the Department of the Army. The hearings were broadcast live on television, and the American public was able to witness firsthand the tactics McCarthy used to intimidate his foes. At a critical moment in the hearings, a key governmental witness, Army lawyer Joseph Welch, rose to defend one of the junior Army lawyers whose career, Welch alleged, McCarthy had destroyed. Welch turned to McCarthy and memorably intoned: "Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"It was remarkable political theater and historians credit it with breaking the back of McCarthy's attack on the Army, which in turn broke the back of his anticommunist efforts. In short order, McCarthy's allies abandoned him, he was discredited, and he left the Senate in disgrace.

We may be about to witness a McCarthy-Army-Welch moment in the debate over Iraq. This time, the role of McCarthy is played by MoveOn.org, a liberal political group that launched its own attack on a respected US Army figure. In yesterday's New York Times, the day that General David Petraeus would give his long-awaited, congressionally mandated report on his military activities in Iraq, MoveOn.org ran a full-page advertisement that accused Petraeus of activities befitting a traitor. The advertisement alleges, without evidence, that Petraeus is not going to give his honest, professional assessment of the situation in Iraq but instead will be "cooking the books" to curry favor with the Bush White House. The heart of the advertisement is a juvenile pun on Petraeus's name: General Betray Us?

The MoveOn.org ad is vicious, and would garner comment even if it were merely one more primal scream in the coarse blogosphere debate over Iraq. But it is not an angry e-mail or blog entry. It is a deliberate attack on the senior Army commander, in a major daily newspaper, with the intention of destroying as much of his credibility as possible so that his military advice could be more easily rejected by antiwar members of Congress.

The attack was part of an elaborate effort to undermine public support for the Iraq war, and was foreshadowed by an unnamed Democratic senator who told a reporter, "No one wants to call [Petraeus] a liar on national TV . . . The expectation is that the outside groups will do this for us." The effort is funded by powerful special interests, and has all the trappings of a major political campaign.

Precisely because it is so vicious, so public, and so deliberate, the attack on Petraeus cannot be ignored by either side in the Iraq debate. Supporters of the war are duty-bound, like Joseph Welch, to rise and ask of war opponents, "Have you left no sense of decency?" Antiwar members of Congress, like Senator McCarthy's allies, are obliged to answer.

Let us be clear. It is legitimate to grill Petraeus on his testimony and to ask him tough questions about the strategy he has been pursuing. It is legitimate to disagree with him, or to conclude that an alternative course of action has a better chance of advancing US interests in the region. Healthy civil-military relations do not depend on accepting uncritically anything a senior military officer says. Quite the opposite, they depend on a full and frank exchange of views.

It is not legitimate, however, and it is exceedingly corrosive of healthy civil-military relations to question the general's patriotism when his views differ from yours and are inconvenient for one's political agenda.

This is a defining moment for the antiwar faction. They can continue on the path on to which they have veered, repeating some of the worst mistakes in American history. Or they can make a clean break with the past, police their own ranks, and promote a healthy, critical, public debate about the best way forward in Iraq.

Peter D. Feaver is a political science professor at Duke University and author of "Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations." He served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush.

8:46 AM

We were still working in the old location and I was at my desk. Being a news junkie I had WRKO on through the computer. At the time it was the morning show that had Peter Blute and a cohost I can't quite remember. I think it was Osterlind because he was kind of an irreverent guy and I remember blaming him for what I thought was a bad joke.

They reported the first impact as a small plane.....I heard and moved on. Working, fielding phone calls, typing orders, whatever. Then they reported the second and I thought "This is a prank." And I remember being really peeved. Peeved to the point where I was going to dial up the station and beef.

That's when Mark came in from the warehouse and asked me what was going on. I knew Mark only listened to sports radio. He heard the same story somewhere else. Little prickles ran from my feet up my body to dance on the top of my head and sting my eyes. "I thought it was a joke. They told you on 'EEI?" He nodded. He was standing at the fake windows between the office and the warehouse where sometimes I would pass him paperwork and he would ask for fries with it. In my head I screamed it's bad, IT'S BAD!!,.....out of my mouth came the words "Let me poke around, I'll find something." At the time you could get MSNBC and FOX to stream live, and I did and I saw them.

This was the time before SouthieBoy, I think he would have been my first phone call. He was 8 time zones away.

Then the Pentagon. My sister Jennifer called. "Is this real?" I told her it was. "Tell me what this means?" In my head I thought "It means they can touch us. Really touch us, not like the first one with six people dead. Really touch us, not like the Millennium thing." But I didn't say that. "Who is it?" Images of the Cole and the Marine Barracks and the Embassies and Khobar Towers flashed through my head. That story in Jane's about Massoud being killed......was it yesterday? Or the day before? But all I said was "We'll know soon enough."

People came by my desk all day, asking me questions. Friends called. After all, what's the point of having a geek if you can't question her at a time like this? But I kept my answers short and didn't really convey what I thought. I didn't want to be Cassandra. Why upset people with the horror that was in my head. I figured they'd know soon enough. Days later I remember scoffing at people who accused Condi Rice of now knowing who Al Qaeda was.......I knew. If I knew, she damn sure did and that's what I told people who asked what I thought.

Just before noon, I became obsessed with talking to the two people who were safer than all the rest of us. If America was under attack, of all my loved ones, my parents were the safest. They were in Ireland with my mother's brother and his wife. It was a tour going through several towns. Which town were they in now? It was easily their fourth or fifth trip. The anxiety had long ago worn off and we didn't ask for itineraries anymore. I called several hotels asking for the Irish equivalent of "Smith" and "Jones". It was hours before I found them.

And then........I had nothing to say, so my father laughed and told me they were fine.....how were his children, his grandchildren? "Here, tell Mummie hi." That pulled me back. He always makes me laugh when he refers to her that way. Like I'm 5 again.

My own were safe. Others weren't. I went to Mass.

You should also read the Chief's post over at the Castle. Also, Beth at her place.

An Oldie But a Goodie!

That was one of Mama's favorite sayings. Anyway, this is from V29 by way of the Chief.

On the first day of school a first grade teacher explains to her class that she is a Yankees fan. She asks her students to raise their hands if they, too, are Yankees fans.
Wanting to impress their teacher, everyone in the class raises their hand except one little girl. The teacher looks at the girl with surprise, "Janie, why didn't you raise your hand?"
"Because I'm not a Yankees fan," she replied.
The teacher, still shocked, asked, "Well, if you are not a Yankees fan, then who are you a fan of?"
"I am a Red Sox fan, and proud of it," Janie replied.
The teacher could not believe her ears. "Janie, why pray tell are you a Red Sox fan?"
"Because my mom is a Red Sox fan, and my dad is Red Sox fan, so I'm a Red Sox fan too!"
"Well," said the teacher in a obviously annoyed tone, "that is no reason for you to be a Red Sox fan. You don't have to be just like your parents all of the time. What if your mom were an idiot and your dad were a moron, what would you be then?"
"Then," Janie smiled, "I'd be a Yankees fan."

Love that one!

Petraeus.....

on CSpan 3 right now........watching Rep. Ike Skelton talk.
******************
8 minutes....25 seconds of Skelton explaining this will be bad news before Petraeus or Crocker open their mouths.
Now it Lantos, the bad driver.
*****************
Now it's Rep. Duncan Hunter giving Skelton and Lantos a hard time for talking smack before hearing what's going to be said.
***********************
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is up at bat.
***********
Protesters ejected at 42 minutes! I missed some of it......darn it! Real life in the for of work interfering with live blogging!
****************
1330 Petraeus gets to speak! Imagine that?
*********************
Skelton interrupts to say the members should have a copy of the chart in front of them. The one on the wall is difficult to see...........WTF? You interrupt for that?
******************************
More protesters! How do these people get past security? One minute interruption.
*****************************
Petraeus concludes his remarks.
More protesters at 2:00 pm. She's a real screamer!
****************************************
Now Crocker speaks.
***********************************
Work is too much of a distraction. I'll have to listen to the replay later.
*********************************
Here is the text of General Petraeus' remarks from Army.mil

We Have Met The Enemy........

and they are ours....."

Today in Navy history - September 10th

1813 - In Battle of Lake Erie, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, flying his "Don't give up the ship" flag, defeats British squadron and says: "We have met the enemy and they are ours..."

Another famous phrase that people know only part of. It's like "Live Free or Die". The actual message to Harrison was"

"Dear Gen'l: We have met the enemy, and they are ours, two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop. Yours with great respect and esteem. H. Perry."

US Navy In The News

070907-N-1189B-048 PUERTO CABEZAS, Nicaragua (Sept. 7, 2007) - Citizens of Puerto Cabezas rush to get Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) that were dropped from an MH-60S Seahawk helicopter attached to the multi-purpose amphibious assault ship USS WASP (LHD 1). U.S. Southern Command diverted Wasp from an international maritime exercise in Panama to the coast of Nicaragua Sept. 5 to assist with disaster relief efforts in areas affected by Hurricane Felix. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Zachary Borden (RELEASED)

Police Officer Wendell Adams.....

....needs to get over himself!

Oversalted burger leads to charges
A McDonald's employee spent a night in jail and is facing criminal charges because a police officer's burger was too salty, so salty that he says it made him sick.
Kendra Bull was arrested Friday, charged with misdemeanor reckless conduct and freed on $1,000 bail.
Bull, 20, said she accidentally spilled salt on hamburger meat and told her supervisor and a co-worker, who "tried to thump the salt off."
On her break, she ate a burger made with the salty meat. "It didn't make me sick," Bull told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
But then Police Officer Wendell Adams got a burger made with the oversalted meat, and he returned a short time later and told the manager it made him sick.
Bull admitted spilling salt on the meat, and Adams took her outside and questioned her, she said.
"If it was too salty, why did (Adams) not take one bite and throw it away?" said Bull, who has worked at the restaurant for five months. She said she didn't know a police officer got one of the salty burgers because she couldn't see the drive-through window from her work area.
Police said samples of the burger were sent to the state crime lab for tests.
City public information officer George Louth said Bull was charged because she served the burger "without regards to the well-being of anyone who might consume it."

For heaven's sake! She ate one herself. How can someone put her in jail for the night over this? I saw it on TV, she has young children. She's out there trying to make a living and she goes to jail for oversalting the meat? Give me a break. I completely agree with her when she asks why the officer didn't just take a bite and spit it out. He ate it until it made him sick? And then put her in jail for it? Maybe he's a little piglet who should chew his food more carefully. Not everything that happens to you is a crime or even an overt act, Officer Adams.

"Police said samples of the burger were sent to the state crime lab for tests."

Cut the shit!

My Bad Boyfriend At The Debate

I skipped the New Hampshire GOP debate on Wednesday the 5th to drive aimlessly around Newport listening to the Red Sox lose to the Blue Jays.

This is part 5 of a multipart series posted over on YouTube by CSPANJUNKIE.

He kills me when he talks like this! Thank God Jen only reads that parts of the blog I send her. If she knew I was still mooning over McCain, she'd kill me!

The Plan vs. Reality

The plan:
Work until 2000 hours or so
Home to laundry
Blog some stuff I have stacked up
Scrub the tub because my manicure is already ruined....in for a penny, in for a pound
Catch up my Osama viewing/reading
Get to bed early because I was out so late last night

Reality
Driving the drunk bus

On the bright side, I caught that gay striptease Cabrera did in the 4th.

Services for Boston Firefighter Paul Cahill

Firefighter Cahill's Funeral Video

I don't know how long these links will work. They are from NECN and I don't know how long they leave video up. There are some on YouTube that I will post later on this weekend.

The first is Father Mahoney's homily. It's 8 minutes and 29 seconds. I had already written about part of it here.

This is Paul's brother James who spoke very movingly. “All the darkness in the world cannot put out the light of one candle. Paul is that candle. Shine on Paul, shine on.”This video shows Paul and Anne's sons, Adam and Brendan.

Shine on Paul, shine on.

September 7, 1940

Nazi Germany launched the London blitz, a bombing that Adolf Hitler believed would soften Britain for invasion. The invasion never materialized.

September 7, 1892

On this day, John Greenleaf Whittier passed away.

When I was in 5th grade Sr. Mary Esther, O.P. had me memorize "Barbara Fretchie" a poem by Whittier. I can still say most of it. It suits me.

Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the September morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick stand,
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
Round about them orchards sweep,
Apple and peach tree fruited deep,
Fair as the garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished rebel horde;
On that pleasant morn of the early fall
When Lee marched over the mountain wall,
Over the mountains winding down,
Horse and foot, into Frederick town.
Forty flags with their silver stars,
Forty flags with their crimson bars,
Flapped in the morning wind: the sun
Of noon looked down, and saw not one.
Up rose old Barbara Freitchie then,
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;
Bravest of all in Frederick town,
She took up the flag the men hauled down;
In her attic window the staff she set,
To show that one heart was loyal yet.
Up the street came the rebel tread,
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
Under his slouched hat left and right
He glanced: the old flag met his sight.
"Halt!"- the dust-brown ranks stood fast;
"Fire!"- out blazed the rifle-blast.
It shivered the window, pane and sash;
It rent the banner with seam and gash.
Quick, as it fell from the broken staff
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf;
She leaned far out on the window-sill,
And shook it forth with a royal will.
"Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country's flag", she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came;
The nobler nature within him stirred
To life at that woman's deed and word;
"Who touches a hair of yon gray head
Dies like a dog! March on!" he said.
All day long that free flag tost
Over the heads of the rebel host.
Ever its torn folds rose and fell
On the loyal winds that loved it well;
And through the hill-gaps sunset light
Shone over it with a warm good-night.
Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er,
And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.
Honor to her! and let a tear
Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.
Over Barbara Frietchie's grave,
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!
Peace and order and beauty draw
Round thy symbol of light and law;
And ever the stars look down
On thy stars below in Frederick town!

I've looked at Frederick, Maryland on the internet. It seems to be a town that has some great historical stuff. I want to go and stay in one of the bed & breakfast and poke around there.

Firefighter Paul Cahill's Funeral

From Boston.com The Rev. Daniel J. Mahoney, chief chaplain of the Boston Fire Department, described Cahill and Payne in his homily as the "latest heroes in the long blue line.""Once more the muffled drumsOnce more the skirling pipes. Once more the tears. And once more the hymns," Mahoney said, looking out at Cahill's casket, draped in a white baptismal cloth. A firefighter's helmet adorned with the number 30 was laid at a table at his feet, next to a dress blue hat.
"How much sorrow can Paul's family suffer?" Mahoney asked. "How much pain can the Boston Fire Department endure?"
"The citizens of Boston know when the bell rings, when the box is struck, Boston firefighters -- like all firefighters -- respond, no matter the risk, no matter the cost," Mahoney continued. "But how grievous the cost is that brings us together here in Holy Name this morning."Having Father Mahoney as an important part of my life for nearly forty years now........I can hear those words in my head as I read them. Unless you have personally witnessed something like this, you can never know. Last June, when I attended Paul Barry's funeral, was when I realized this. I had seen funerals on TV. I remembered watching the coverage of the last Boston firefighter to die in a fire, Stevie Minehan. But to read about it, or to watch it on TV, is to scrape the surface. I struggled to describe how it felt and in the end, the word that came closest was - beautiful. "Awesome" comes close. Not in the way we use it now-a-days to describe something good, but as in something that fills you with "awe", to be awestruck.

You know, Paul's got a"straight ticket" to Heaven.

*the top photo is from boston.com and the rest are from AP via Yahoo news photos.*