A hero for our time
-Headline of the day-
"North Carolina state employee forced to retire for refusing to honor Jesse Helms."
L.F. Eason, a 29-year veteran of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, "instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the U.S. or North Carolina flags at half-staff Monday, as called for in a directive to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley."
"Regardless of any executive proclamation, I do not want the flags at the North Carolina Standards Laboratory flown at half staff to honor Jesse Helms any time this week," he told employees in an email. He also told staffers that he thought honoring helms was inappropriate because of his "doctrine of negativity, hate, and prejudice."
For recognizing what no one else seems to have realized -- that Helms was an evil racist piece of shit -- Eason was given the choice of compliance or retirement. He made the right choice.
If you see him out there someplace, buy him a beer for me. (Think Progress)
-ohyesyouare.net-
Concrete magnate Martin Ozinga III of Illinois is running for the seat vacated by retiring Rep. Jerry Weller (R-Ill.). Ozinga, a Republican himself, is running an ad about "his enthusiasm for work and serving the community" and highlighting his registered URL, iamnotapolitician.com.
Of course, the fact that Ozinga's raised a $800,000 so far suggests he actually is a politician and the fact that he's actually running for freakin' office kind of clinches the deal. He's a politician.
I'm guessing iamnotarepublican.com was already taken. It'd be just as dishonest, but probably more effective. (Politico)
-Not extremely helpful-
At a campaign stop, John McCain was informed that trade between Iran and the US had risen tenfold during the Bush years. Accounting for a significant part of that trade was sale of US cigarettes to Iranian smokers.
"Maybe that's a way of killing 'em," Shecky McCain joked, then realized that maybe that wasn't the smartest thing to say. "I meant that as a joke," he said, "as a person who hasn't had a cigarette in 28 years, 29 years"
Well good on you, Johnny. Smoking's bad for you. So is suggesting that killing Iranians is a positive. If you're looking to rid yourself of that "warmonger" label, a different approach might work just a tiny bit better.
The report reminded Reuters of another "let's kill Iranians" joke that Slappy McCain told:
At a campaign meeting in South Carolina last year the Arizona senator, asked if there is a plan to attack Iran, began his answer with a variation on the lyrics of a well-known pop song, Barbara Ann.
"You know that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran?" he said, then sang "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" before discussing what he considered Iran's serious threat to Israel and international security.
You stay classy, John. (Reuters)
