My latest at The Stir:

On Monday, Helen Thomas retired from her career as a journalist forUnited Press International at the ripe old age of 89. The now former member of the White House Press Corps did not step out gracefully with a Costco cake and warm wishes for happy golden years fromPresident Obama.

Ms. Thomas retired after making some spectacularly inappropriate comments that even White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbscondemned. He stated in a press conference Monday morning,”Obviously those remarks do not reflect the opinions of most of the people in here, and certainly not of the Administration.”

So what did Helen Thomas say? Remember, this is a woman that called sitting President George W. Bush the worst president in history. You think that she’d be old enough to remember what journalistic integrity was, but I guess not. But even that inappropriate, off-the-record comment pales in comparison to what she said last week.

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I. Am. Shocked.

I am usually impressed by what our Vice President has to say, but it’s usually more in the “I’m impressed this idiot ended up as the VP of our country” category. Heck, he even has his own category on this blog- Did Joe Biden really just say that?

A few days ago, Mr. Biden made some comments about this whole Flotilla thing. Flotilla is a fancy word for small group of ships, it has nothing to do with carne asada or guacamole.

The Flotilla thing in a nutshell- There’s this tiny strip of land in the middle east called Gaza, and it’s bordered by Israel on three sides, and water on the fourth side. It’s filled with people that loathe the Israelis and want to kill them. They bomb Israel all the time, mostly with petty little bomb thrown over the border that don’t do substantial damage, but still suck and people do die. I wrote a little bit about the whole situation here, if you’d like more background.

Ok, so last week a Turkish charity group tried to bring aid into impoverished Gaza. MSNBC reports that the super mean Israelis boarded the ship and started killing the poor sweet protestors. Ok, I’m paraphrasing, but not by much. Go ahead. Click the link. If you can stomach it.

It has since come out that that “aid” was sent by a Turkish “charity” group with terrorist ties. And that the flotilla carried Jihads openly ready to be martyrs. In other words, they came looking for a fight.

Here’s the thing that Joe Biden said. That I totally agree with.

“They’ve said, ‘Here you go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship — if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza,’”, he said. “So what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza? Well, it’s legitimate for Israel to say, ‘I don’t know what’s on that ship. These guys are dropping… 3,000 rockets on my people.

“Look, you can argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not — but the truth of the matter is, Israel has a right to know — they’re at war with Hamas — has a right to know whether or not arms are being smuggled in.”

During the interview, Biden also blamed Hamas for the crisis that has wracked the coastal territory and for the ongoing state of conflict with Israel.

“As we put pressure, and the world put pressure on Israel to let material go into Gaza to help those people who are suffering, the ordinary Palestinians there, what happened? Hamas would confiscate it, put it in a warehouse [and] sell it.

I wonder what MSNBC has to say about that.