W

atch this two-minute clip - even if you have to hunker down in your cubicle with the volume turned down as your boss lurks nearby.  The premise is simple:  The Marines welcome Bush/the Marines welcome Obama; the Marines say goodbye to Bush/the Marines say goodbye to Obama. 

God bless the Marines - they just don’t mask their feelings about their Commander in Chief well at all.

A big hat-tip to Infidels are Cool for this one, especially since Infidelesto grabbed this freeze-frame from the video that pretty much says it all:

at-tipee extraordinaire Jim, true to his form of finding the most interesting stuff wherevre it might be lurking, just sent over this:

T

he thick smoke we saw this morning turned out to be a motel a block away from my first house here in OC - and just another site where U.S. Marines showed their valor and bravery.

As fire began racing through America’s Best Value Inn, six off-duty Marines who were staying there rushed through the facility, dodging flames, to pound on doors and windows to ensure that all the guests were safely evacuated. Reports the OC Register:

Amy Amadito-Phelps, who was staying in a room on the second-floor of the third-story structure, said she, her husband and 14-month-old son would probably have died if not for the Marines.

“We were right next to a room completely on fire and we couldn’t smell smoke,” Amadito-Phelps said. “No fire alarms were going off. The only thing we heard was Marines banging on our windows and telling us to get out.”

The six Marines, all enlisted men, were Josh Hernandez, Thomas O’Brien,Adam Reidling, Jedediah Stock, John Mick, Josh Hernandez and Colton Oliver, who said:

“Everybody was out by the time the firefighters got here. It’s what we’re trained to do.”

OC Fire Authority Capt. Steve Pardi spoke for all of us:

“I’d call them absolute heroes.”

Many of those rushing away from the flames, including Amadito-Phelps, were living at the hotel and lost most of what they own. They lost their apartment when her husband’s income fell due to a slowdown in his segment of the economy: flooring.

What a tough break for these families.

It’s just the typical, infuriating Berkeley stuff: The City Council decides freedom actually is free, and votes to kick the Marine recruiting station out of town, calling them “unwelcome intruders.”

I wonder if the citizens of Rome’s more “enlightened” quarters took the same sort of actions against the Roman Legions’ recruiting office … just before the Huns showed up.

The Council let Code Pink park in front of the recruiting station, broadcasting hate speech. And the city stood by for 7 1/2 hours as three aging war protesters chained themselves to the recruiting station door to block access to the building — something that is a Great Sin to the Left if done to a baby-killing emporium, but apparently is acceptable in this case.

Some on the sane side of the political spectrum blogged about this as it was occurring. For their efforts, the SF Chron — supposedly an objective newspaper, he noted wryly — led off its article:

As the right-wing blogosphere railed …

You have to be right-wing to see the US military as a force for stability and good in the world? You are railing if you criticize such foolishness? Aren’t the left-wing City Council and Code Pink the true railers? (The Chron did not, as you can guess, refer to the Council or the protesters as left-wing; does that mean they’re mainstream?)

Into all this, as those of you who followed this story as it unfolded know, waded the Republican senator from South Carolina (home of a gazillion military families), Jim DeMint:

DeMint began drafting legislation Friday to cut $2.1 million in federal funding to Berkeley in a current congressional budget bill and transfer the money to the Marine Corps. The funding would include $750,000 for prospective ferry service, $87,000 for the Berkeley Unified School District nutrition education fund and $243,000 for the Chez Panisse Foundation, which promotes nutritional awareness in school lunch programs.

“The First Amendment gives the city of Berkeley the right to be idiotic, but from now on they should do it with their own money,” DeMint said in a statement.

He called the council’s vote “a slap in the face to all brave servicemen and women and their families.”

Can you say “died in committee?” DeMint’s bill will never make it to the floor, but as symbolism goes, it’s better than a bunch of aging anti-Vietnam war protesters chaining themselves to a door.

I’d amend the bill to de-fund the Berkeley police department, because as public sidewalks were being illegally blocked, the commerce of the nation illegally halted, and individuals’ rights to enlist in military service trampled upon, here they were. Across the street. Hands in pockets. Doing nothing.

The National Guard came to the aid of Oakland, Berkeley’s neighbor, during the devastating fires in 1991, to the tune of $1.3 million in time and materials. Should something similar happen in Berkeley, let’s hold the Guard at the city boundary. Commanding officers can instruct the troops that saying “Neener! Neener!” is optional.

Update: Sign Move America Forward’s petition to the Berkeley City Council here.

Hat-tip: memeorandum