Humbug!

On the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor my thoughts go out to a sailor who, as a favor to a buddy who wanted a sea billet, switched billets with the guy to the naval base at San Diego from the battleship Tennessee just a month before the Japanese attack. His buddy survived but called him afterwards to jokingly accuse him of "knowing something."

He got over to Pearl anyway later in the month. He was an Electrician's Mate so they sent him into the capsized battleships first to wade through the garbage, oil and bodies of his fellow sailors and string lights so that salvage could begin. This was certainly his most vivid memory of the war and something that choked him up on the retelling even sixty odd years after the attack.

He may not of won the Medal of Honor but gramps was still a hero.



(If you're trying to figure out how the Christmas Carol quote works with the attack on Pearl Harbor - it doesn't. It's just something the sailor I'm talking about used to like to say this time of year.)

Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy. The United States Of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked.

Rather than mark the 911 attacks by laying a wreath at ground zero, President Bush would be better served by repeating his actions on the day of the attack: listening to a children's story and then hiding under the bed on Air Force One as it flew him to Nebraska.

Since this date has become an odd sort of holiday with the expectation that everybody take a moment and remember what they were doing on that horrible day here's mine: I spent the day wishing Bill Clinton was still the President rather than a fucking incompetent frat-boy.

Strangely enough I've had no problem remembering that feeling in the years that've followed.