The Watering Hole: December 16 — Happy Birthday Jane & RUCerious!

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In honor of our Critters’ shared birthday, red velvet cake for everyone!

Y’all sing, too.

This is our daily open thread — and our all day birthday party for RUC & Jane!!

Happy Birthday!

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128 thoughts on “The Watering Hole: December 16 — Happy Birthday Jane & RUCerious!”

  1. Happy Birthday, Jane and RUCerious!

    That’s some tasty looking cake. Save me a slice for after work.

  2. I think it was in a college statistics class where I learned the odds of two people out of N people having the same birth month and day. I don’t remember what N was but it is really a low number.

    Who else here shares a birthday ? Mine is 14 August, what’s yours?

    Happy Birthday Jane and RUC, save me some cake too.

    • Mine is March 5 and I have one acquaintance that shares that date. My husband and my mother share the same birthday of October 14. I have a friend whose birthday is the same as my brother, February 14th. Her mother had the same birth date as my father. That’s two shared birth dates within the two families.

    • Over the years, I have met many people who have the same birthday as myself… it’s really quite odd when we come across each other.

      One year I took my daughter to Disneyland on her birthday when they were having specials for bday people — it was cool to see so many people sporting an It’s my Birthday button in one place.

    • My eldest missed your birthday by one day — August 15. Contrary thing, he was a week late getting born anyway!

      My ex and his brother share a birthday — February 2. I’m sure you can imagine the fun I had with that — which was completely unappreciated, I might add. :D

  4. Just thought of some great news: 2012 is a leap year, right? That means an entire extra day of “youth” before I roll over two numbers!

    Meanwhile, Happy Birthday Jane and RUC!

  5. Happy Birthday Jane & RUC! Hope you both don’t have to work today. Another year we’re all together is amazing. Yay us. :)

    • Unfortunately, the company I work for has a holiday sales blackout period. All corporate worker bees are required to be at their posts between Nov1 and….today…But, I have a secret mission today. It involves a certain cartoon character who works with Dilbert…and whose name is Wally…

    • Just judging by the number of posts and notice of Hitchens passing, he was one of the foremost journalists/essayists of our time no question.

      I respected the guy, I think he was wrong on his support for Bush on Iraq of course, but his reasoning was more realpolitik than the venal greed of Butsh-Cheney co and at least I could respect it.

      His insight, wit and command of an argument were something to witness.

  9. So Mark Meckler the Tea Party higher up who brought a gun on a plane in New York thought his license to carry in California was valid in New York. Does this mean he isn’t for states rights? Just shows the Tea Party as the fools they are.

    • Quick pass the NDAA, ship this terrorist’s ass to Gitmo so we can explore his dietary canal with a broomstick!

  11. Happy birthday Jane!

    I heard some rumblings late last night about some deal being done in the senate…I’m almost afraid to learn what the wimpocrats gave up this time to appease the political terrorists from the right.

  12. And of course President Bush Obama has stated that he won’t veto the National Defense Authorization Act bill….great! See you all in Guantanamo, we can work on our tans between sessions of waterboarding and other forms of torture for standing up and speaking out against our corporate/financial overlords and their impotent puppets in DC.

    *Yeah, comparing Obama to Bush was pretty harsh but…*

    • I think it was Chomsky who correctly predicted that aggregation of power and especially power that erodes civil liberties goes on under both parties. He knew that Obama would never repeal the Patriot Act and that taking even more away was possible.

      That kind of power is useful to both parties. They don’t care about you or me.

  13. Senator Ron Wyden (D) working with congressjerk Paul “Eddie Munster” Ryan to privatize parts of medicare…hmmmm…The one party system has to go! It only represents 2% of the population. Phuck em, phuck em all! Can you tell I’m a bit cranky this Friday morning? Must have something to do with an anal boss and no raise or Christmas bonus….Bahhhh humbug!

    • Are you intending to pick a man’s pockets on Christmas Day too IP? And get yourself back all the earlier on the 26th too…

      /Scrooge off

  15. Lets see….high unemployment continues, good paying manufacturing jobs gone forever overseas, no jobs bill passed….Hey, you think maybe we should reconsider our trade agreements or something????

  16. Saw some idiot republican congressass from Texas yesterday morning attacking Planned Parenthood. I guess he was given some information from former Planned Parenthood employees (let me guess…they are registered republicans). Sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me, but when do the liars on the right ever fact check information given to them?

  19. Reading some obit material on Hitchens today. Best quote I have found so far:

    “Perhaps the clearest empirical proof of the non-existence of God, or of gods, is that he, or they, have given up on the battle against stupidity altogether.”

  20. Thanks everyone! What a nice surprise!
    Happy B-Day Jane!
    And a happy Friday to y’all!
    Gawd, I loves me some Swedish Chef

  21. Happy Birthday Cad Jean Run, Cad Jean Urn, Aced Jar Nun, Dace Jar Nun, Dance Jar Nu, Caned Jar Nu, Card Jean Nu, Acne Jar Dun, Cane Jar Dun, Can Jade Run, Can Jade Urn, Can Jar Nude, Can Jar Dune, Narc Jade Nu, Arc Jade Nun, Arc Jean Dun, Car Jade Nun, Car Jean Dun, And Jean Cur, Jean An Crud, Jean An Curd, Jean Ran Cud, Jar An Dunce, Cad Jar En Nu, Can Jar Ed Nu, Jar An Cud En, Jane and RUC!

  23. Another year has gone by,
    my how they fly…
    Happy Birthday Jane and RUC! Have a fun day both of you!

  24. Happy Birthday, Jane and RUC. I believe this one makes RUC and I the same age, at least until April.

    And, if I’m right, it’s also the age Christopher Hitchens had reached when he died.

    • Thanks zxbe! Do me a favor today. Find a low information voter and tell them something true, would you?!

  27. A Happy Birfday to Jane and RUC. Did you know you can hook a ShopVac up backwards to help with the candles? ;)

    • Thanks Ebb! Grand should just about do it. Am now working as our company’s first and only data steward, trying to figure out what that means and how to do it should be an absolutely GRAND adventure!

      • Does that mean you get to wear one of those nifty white mess jackets and ask folks if they want their data straight up or on the rocks?

        • Were that it was that simple.
          I get responsibility for capturing the definitions of the ‘things’ in the business, glossarizing them, and likewise with business and data quality rules.

          Fun stuff….zzzzzzz….

  34. Lest we forget, two other important birthdays today…

    Ludwig Von Beethoven

    and.
    …drumroll
    Dick Clark…

    • I share my birthday with exciting people like Bobby Vee. On the other hand, it’s the date Washington was inaugurated and marks the fall of Saigon.

  35. “If they gave [Jerry Falwell] an enema, they could bury him in a matchbox.” — One of my favorite Christopher Hitchens’ quips

  36. Two more favorite Hitchens’ rants:

    “[Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?”

    “[Princess Diana] was in Angola on her landmine campaign, and there was a hushed, reverent BBC commentator. And he said, ‘The thing about mine fields is that they’re very easy to lay, but they’re very difficult and dangerous, and even expensive to get rid of’ – the perfect description of Prince Charles’s first wife,” – Hitchens , on CBS.

    • The War on Christmas is primarily over the use of northern European pagan expressions of the Yule that were appropriated by Christianity in their never ending quest to be relevant. Modern American Xtians have embraced crass commercialism to express their faith and belief in an imaginary concept that has nothing to do with Jesus.

  40. Thanks for the Hitchens’ clips. He was a most interesting fellow. Pity he won’t be around to push back against those that would turn America into a theocracy.

  41. Conspiracy Theorists Believe Actual Republican Candidates Are Tied Up Somewhere
    Obama a Prime Suspect

    DES MOINES (The Borowitz Report) � A growing number of conspiracy theorists believe that the Republican candidates who keep showing up for televised debates are impostors and that the actual GOP candidates are tied up in a warehouse somewhere.

    “There’s no way that these people are the actual candidates,” said Tracy Klugian, a leading conspiracy theorist who subscribes to the warehouse theory. “The American people need to stand up and demand the return of the real ones.”

    Mr. Klugian, who started the website WhereAreTheRealOnes.com, said he started suspecting “something was up” months ago when the “supposed Republican candidates started debating,” but last night’s debate in Iowa left little doubt in his mind that the actual Republican candidates have been detained elsewhere.

    “When the most sensible person onstage is Ron Paul,” he said, “you know that what you’re witnessing is an elaborate hoax.”

    Conspiracy theorists like Mr. Klugian leave little doubt who might be behind the conspiracy to tie up the actual candidates at some remote location: President Barack Obama.

    “If you could ensure that you’d be running against Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney, wouldn’t you?” he said. “When the truth about this conspiracy comes out, it’s going to make what happened with the aliens at Roswell look like a game of duck-duck-goose.”

    Meanwhile, Mr. Klugian said he remains “baffled” by people who insist on believing that the seven people who debated last night in Iowa are the actual Republican candidates.

    “There’s no way you can believe that if you actually watched the debate,” he said. “It was like a sitcom with no main characters and just wacky neighbors.”

    • A true conspiracy theorist would realize that Rupert is behind it. Not only would Faux get to script the idiocy but they could then point the finger at the President. This fits precisely with their continuing agenda.

  42. Excellent analysis of the “why” behind the Iraq war, by Robert Parry

    Excerpt:

    The ‘Clean Break’ Doctrine

    Another thing the neocons don’t want is for the American people to connect the painful and costly disaster in Iraq to neocon plans for using U.S. military power to advance Israeli security interests, though that is what the historical record points to. In the neocon fantasies of a decade ago, the invasion of Iraq was supposed to transform it into an ally of Israel and a base to pressure other anti-Israeli Muslim states for “regime change,” especially Syria and Iran.

    Then, once “regime change” came to Syria and Iran, the neocons believed support would dry up for Hezbollah in Lebanon and for Hamas in the Palestinian territories, freeing Israel to dictate terms to its Arab neighbors and thus bring a form of enforced peace to the region.

    The early outlines of this aggressive concept for remaking the Middle East predated the 9/11 attacks by half a decade, when a group of American neocons, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, went to work for Israeli Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu during his 1996 campaign for prime minister.

    The neocon strategy paper, called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” advanced the idea that only regime change in hostile Muslim countries could achieve the necessary “clean break” from the diplomatic standoffs that had followed inconclusive Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

    Under the “clean break,” Israel would no longer seek peace through mutual understanding and compromise, but rather through confrontation, including the violent removal of leaders such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

    The plan called Hussein’s ouster “an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right,” but also one that would destabilize the Assad dynasty in Syria and thus topple the power dominoes into Lebanon, where Hezbollah might soon find itself without its key Syrian ally. Iran also could find itself in the cross-hairs of “regime change.”

    But what the “clean break” needed was the military might of the United States, since some of the targets like Iraq were too far away and too powerful to be defeated even by Israel’s highly efficient military. The cost in Israeli lives and to Israel’s economy from such overreach would have been staggering.

  43. Happy Birthday and best wishes to Jane and RUC.
    I’ll raise a glass to you both as soon as I get this wine open…long but fun day. I took the 2 year old granddaughter to see Santa.

  44. And off come the work shoes, on go the fleece-lined moccasins and the feet say, “Aaaahhh. We’re home!”

    Where’s my cake?

    • Thanks Pete! I didn’t know I shared a bday with the illustrious and prolific grand master of sci-fi!

      Yes, Boston Tea Party was today as well.
      Too bad the current crop of Teabagging swill aren’t at Boston Harbor tossing themselves into the frigid water to protest the lower taxes Obama has arranged for them!

      • You’re welcome, RUC. Many happy returns.

        I would just love to see the GOoPers ideas for disguising themselves as natives. Their racist stereotypes would prove most enlightening and disgusting.

  46. Here’s a story that every paper in the country, especially in Minnesota, should run in it’s entirety and every talk show should invite the author to appear. The author explores the mind numbing dishonesty of Batscat Bachmann. Like the author, I too find it impossible to tell whether she realizes she’s lying so I don’t know where to place her on the “crazy vs. stupid scale”. Of course, since the two are not mutually exclusive, she scores towards the top of the scale in both categories which puts her firmly in the class of pathological liars.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/omar-baddar/michele-bachmann-politifact_b_1153964.html

  51. It’s hard pulling chicken off the bones when there’s two piggy dogs drooling behind your back.

  54. Zooey, I saw that you wished Margaret and Helen “Happy Holidays” — Was that intentional? ;-)

    • Heh, I’m wishing everyone “Happy Holidays” this year. I’m all about being all-inclusive, and sticking it to morons.

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