sacred bird » politics and government

greene for president in 2012?

630 — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:02:10 +0000

there was a lot of speculation about fraud and other such nonsense when alvin greene won the democratic nomination for us senate in south carolina beating out a former judge who had been considered a shoo-in. no one knew anything about greene except that we was an unemployed veteran. greene has been a little more visible these past couple of weeks with his first public speech the other day and today we find out more about why he left the military. in a military performance report , a reviewer wrote that green was “”usually capable of handling mundane tasks with supervision” but is “not able to adapt to any changes to daily routine”. greene “required a daily to-do list” to perform his regular duties and had a “consistent inability to follow instructions or maintain basic job knowledge”. greene of course is refuting what was written saying problems with his computer “can often make it impossible for me to accomplish tasks in a timely fashion” and that it was a “hostile work environment”. i don’t know what he’s complaining about. sounds like his personality is perfect for the senate.

[ap]

limiting the advancement of one colored person

180 — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 01:22:52 +0000

the national association for the advancement of colored people (n.a.a.c.p.), the champion of civil rights can now take responsibility for the limiting of one colored person named shirley sherrod. ms. sherrod, up until yesterday, worked for the department of agriculture. she was forced to resign because a video of her giving a speech about the perils of racism was edited to look like she was a racist. in reality in the speech she gave last winter to the n.a.a.c.p. ms. sherrod explained that her work more than two decades ago with a white farmer taught her overcome her discriminatory beliefs and made her realize that there was no place in the world for racism in editing, it was made to look like she was denying service to or was providing a lower level of service based on the fact that the white farmer was white.

the n.a.a.c.p., wanting to look good, called her out and said something about a yardstick and civil rights. fox news, wanting to look like, fox news, wanted to make her, the government, and the n.a.a.c.p. look bad. and the federal government, wanting to look decisive, pressured her to resign and so she did.*

fast forward less than 24 hours and the real tape revealed that she was making an anti-racism speech. secretary of agriculture vilsack has called her back and offered her her new job. i’m guessing she’s going to look for employment elsewhere.**

* it’s got to be said that the feds acted faster on firing this poor lady than they did fix the oil spill.

** one that offers mutual respect and common civility.

[nytimes, naacp pledge]

now you’re asking them to tell?

180 — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 05:14:29 +0000

in an unprecendented move, the military is asking the forces what they think about gays in the military. they’re doing it by electronic survey distributed last week distributed to 400K active duty personnel. it’s unprecedented because they didn’t do this when, say, they were integrating the military or when they were including women and many think it is a way to slow the process of repealing ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’.

senator levin, democrat from michigan and chairman of the senate armed forces committee says that while the survey is unusual, he supports it. the chairman believes that the policy should be repealed but says “I think it’s okay, even though it’s kind of unprecedented…I can understand the resentment, by the way, in the gay community, that this occurs now but not with those other efforts”. the efforts he was referring to were the aformentioned inclusion of blacks and women in the military ranks.

the survey data will be included in a final report on about ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ due to be delived to the president on december 1, 2010.

[washington post, photo of relesased lt. dan choi via bilerico]

tehran makes ‘the fonz’ cool

180 — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 07:24:44 +0000

the iranians are in the news again. this time, they’ve released a set of approved haircuts for men, an alternative to the soon to be illegal decadent western haircuts like the mullet. according to time magazine “You’re in the clear if you have a short, conservative haircut – and you can use hair gel, just not a lot. The government is even cool with side parts and Elvis-style poufs. But if your hair is long, spiky, or be-mulleted, beware. And don’t you dare think of plucking your unibrow.” if you get busted with one of the hair don’ts, you’ll get your hair cut the first time and fined the second time.

and like lindsay lohan, you’ll probably get sent to jail the third time.

[time]

in under the radar…out under the wire

180 — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 05:57:37 +0000

remember when we mentioned the spy ring last week? seems the f.bi. busted the ring when they figured out that one of the members of the spy ring was making a break for it–he was leaving the country. i think i know why he was checking out: next week, u.s. passport fees will increase. that’s right, if you want to get your passport or visa renewed, you should get it done before next week because 27 of those fees are changing to cover the true costs of the services which, according to u.s. law “must be recovered through collection of fees.” so if you want a new passport for that quick getaway, you’ll required to shell out a couple extra bucks (follow the link below for the full list of fees).

type of passport | old fee | new fee
Passport Book – adult | $100.00 | $135.00
Passport Book – minor | $85.00 | $ 105.00
Passport Book Renewal – Adult | $ 75.00 | $110.00
Passport Card – Adult | $45.00 | $55.00
Passport Card – Child | $35.00 | $40.00

i say, enjoy america–remember that you don’t need a passport to go to some lovely u.s. destinations.

[us bureau of consular affairs]

south american ingenuity

180 — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 13:48:38 +0000

the drug trade in colombia is alive and kicking–two instances over the past week prove this.

not-so-golden trophy: officials at the airport in bogota happened upon a replica of the world cup trophy that happened to be made out of, you guessed it, cocaine. the found trophy was headed for spain and was 35 cm in height and contained about 11Kg of cocaine worth about $1.5M. officials were tipped off by the bad paint job.
not-yellow submarine: a sub was found in ecuador along the colombian border containing up to 12 tons of cocaine. the vessel was designed to travel under water undetected–and it’s not the first of its kind–the d.e.a. has found a couple of these things while fighting the war on drugs.

where there’s a will, there’s a way.

[guardian, bbc image via mykl roventine]

they have more restrictions on lindsay lohan

180 — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 16:15:33 +0000

by now you’ve heard of the mr. and mrs. smith like existence of the russian spy ring caught by the f.b.i. this week. the f.b.i. had been following them for years and they’d been living happy suburban lives in virginia, new jersey, new york, and massachusetts. some of them had facebook accounts, many have kids, and others were great gardners.

their alleged ring leader, christopher metsos was arrested in cyprus while trying to board a flight for hungary. the authorities there must have thought he was much less worrisome than say, lindsay lohan ’cause they let the dude go after he surrendered his passport and posted about $25K for bail. shocker, he hasn’t been seen since.

have the cops learned nothing? lindsay was forced to wear an alcohol monitoring bracelet after she missed a court hearing in los angeles (she was ’stranded’ in canes because someone had lifted her passport she says). that’s the least they coulda done with christopher metsos. am i right?

[nytimes, ny post, lohan scram bracelet photo, facebook accounts via gawker]

don’t worry general, this cover caused trouble too

180 — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 04:24:25 +0000

if you haven’t heard by now, general stanley a. mcchrystal, commander of nato’s international security assistance force and u.s. forces-afghanistan screwed up big time when he ran his mouth to a reporter for rolling stone. in it he referred to vice president biden as ‘bite me’, said he thought the president was basically clueless, and called the head diplomat in afghanistan a ‘wounded animal.’ in all honesty, i read the article and they made it sound a lot worse than it is–the kinda stuff you say after a long day and after a long 9 years fighting in iraq and afghanistan i might be inclined to give him a little break.

admittedly the dude and his executive team do have a little lot jack nicholson/a few good men/ ‘you can’t handle the truth’ mixed with alec baldwin/malice/ ‘god complex’ in them but isn’t that what we want in the team responsible for bringing calm to one of the most desolate and dangerous places on earth?

the general is on his way to the white house for a little pow-wow with the president and it’s not clear whether he’ll get canned (the new york times is reporting that mcchrystal has drafted a resignation letter and it probably isn’t in powerpoint). before you count him out, remember that britney spears had her trouble too and look how she bounced back. america loves a great comeback story.

[rolling stone, nytimes]

if this doesn’t work, maybe they’ll get a grammy

180 — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 00:39:59 +0000

the senators of louisiana passed a resolution proclaiming sunday, june 20 as a day of “divine intervention” to stop the oil spill in the gulf. about the resolution, stephen adley said “Thus far efforts made by mortals to try to solve the crisis have been to no avail…it is clearly time for a miracle for us.”

as i said, if this doesn’t work, maybe they’ll get a grammy, musicians in all genres of music always thank the lord for their win. stranger things have happened (like this and this), right?

[fox news]

costner dances with wolves

180 — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 02:05:22 +0000

kevin costner testified in front of congress today about the oil spill advocating for a machine that his scientist brother is building and in which costner himself has invested $20M. he said the machine “could separate oil from 200 gallons of polluted water in a minute [and that] BP, the company that owns the well that exploded in the gulf, has ordered 32 of these machines” in testimony in front of the house committee on science and technology.

during the testimony, costner called out regulators and oil industry peeps for being bureacrats and eejits.* he said the regulators were caught int he never ending circular cycle that forbids untested machines at oil spill sites he reminded regulators that machines meant to clean up oils spills need to be tested at….oil spills. and he called out oil industry peeps because they were too clueless to even imagine that a spill could happen so they wouldn’t therefore invest in the tool.

costner was pretty honest that he was shilling his own product but it’s interesting to consider his motives. maybe he saw the urgency of saving the earth after the recent birth of his daughter grace on june 3. maybe he wanted everyone to remember that cameron (a.k.a. mr. titanic/ monsieur avatar) isn’t the only academy award winning director with an idea. maybe he thought that saving the oceans would make people forget that stinker waterworld.

* a shout out to friends in ireland who use this word so well

[nytimes, huffington post]