Tag: Red Tape

Dec 20 2010

On Actually Ending DADT, Or, “Could It Really Take Another Year?”

So we got the good news that legislative repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy that kept LBGT folks from openly serving in the military has occurred, as the Senate voted Saturday to first cut off debate on the question (that’s the vote that required 60 Senators to pass) and then to pass the actual repeal legislation (which also garnered more than 60 Senate votes, even though it only needed 51).

Most people would assume that once Bill (remember Bill, from Schoolhouse Rock?) made it out of Congress and over to the President to for a signature that the process of repeal will be ended-but in fact, there’s quite a bit more yet to do, and it’s entirely possible that a year or more could go by before the entire process is complete.

Today we’ll discuss our way through why it’s going to take so long; to illustrate the point we’ll consider an actual military order that is quite similar to the sort of work that will be required from the Department of Defense (DOD) before the entire “DADT to open service” transition is complete.

Apr 22 2010

Homeland Insecurity Catch-22

This is an essay about what’s wrong with Amerika since DHS was invented. I am thoroughly pissed, and am about to reveal extremely personal information about myself because… because… it doesn’t fucking matter what I care to reveal about myself, since I have been officially informed by both state and federal authorities that I do not exist.

Now, that designation wasn’t a problem back when we were involved in some serious skullduggery on the ‘official’ federal level investigations end of things nasty and nuclear, but that was more than 30 years ago. We’ve lived a quiet life for the most part since then, and just live on our homestead and work wherever we can for enough money to stay. Grow some food, raise some kids and grandkids, do a little entertaining here and there as clowns, puppeteers, jugglers and fire-eaters. Being officially non-existent on the skullduggery end so the nuclear mafia will stop shooting is fine. Being officially non-existent in the real world and still having to pay taxes is downright ridiculous.

Deal is, my Mother-In-Law is dying in another state, last parent we’ve got on the planet. Hubby and I flew out there a couple of months ago to get her into assisted living, but she lasted less than a month before having to be hospitalized with end-game dementia and unidentified infection. She’s in the hospital and going down fast. So it was decided I should fly out there again to help spell other family per the death-watch, as hubby won’t have time off again until late May.