Category: Military

New Mexico governor yanks National Guard from the border

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❝ Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) on Tuesday ordered the withdrawal of most New Mexico National Guard troops assigned to the state’s southern border.

Lujan Grisham said some troops would remain in the southwest part of the state to provide humanitarian aid assistance for migrants and asylum-seekers who have arrived in recent weeks.

❝ “I reject the federal contention that there exists an overwhelming national security crisis at the southern border, along which are some of the safest communities in the country,” said Lujan Grisham in a statement Tuesday. “However, I recognize and appreciate the legitimate concerns of residents and officials in southwestern New Mexico, particularly Hidalgo County, who have asked for our assistance, as migrants and asylum-seekers continue to appear at their doorstep.”

❝ In addition to withdrawing the majority of troops, the governor asked Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Wisconsin to pull out their troops who were ordered to the border by President Trump in October.

Maybe the national Democratic Party should ask NM Dems how to run a campaign against Republicans who kiss Trump’s sacred butt. They performed in mediocre fashion the last 8 years. Got Liberal/Progressive religion and backed Michelle Lujan Grisham against a Republican who brought in Trump and ran out a platform slightly to the Right of Attila the Hun. MLG won!

U.S. Navy Wants Killer Robot Ships

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❝ Defense News reports that the U.S. navy is planning to unleash unmanned surface combatants — military robot warships, basically — to accompany other boats that are controlled by a human crew.

Last year’s naval National Defense Strategy — when it was announced at the beginning of 2018 — was focused on backing up existing aircraft carriers and bolstering peacekeeping efforts. The new focus differs: smaller surface combatants, many of which will be unmanned, and equipped with state-of-the-art sensors.

The idea is to overwhelm the enemy and make it difficult for them to track a large number of smaller ships. Having a larger number of autonomous ships will also make sensor data collection more reliable and accurate.

❝ One such autonomous warship has already made headlines in the past: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Sea Hunter is a submarine-hunting warship that can operate without humans on board for 60 to 90 days straight. Details are becoming more sparse about the Sea Hunter since the Navy recently classified any information about its future.

Might be nice if the Feds and our military didn’t just pour taxpayers dollar$ into the ocean like so much laundry detergent. Proof of concept, prototyping, pilot projects are accepted as useful in any industrial project that doesn’t involve someone in a uniform with lots of stars on his hat.

Someday, an American government will grow cojones big enough to tell the military industrial complex to go raise their own money. Have a bake sale or something. Leave taxpayer dollar$ for healthcare, education, the legitimate needs of the whole populace.

Army unit cancels ban on “rubbing, humping, grinding” for sexual gratification

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❝ For nine harrowing days, one Grafenwöhr, Germany-based Army unit was barred from engaging in a laundry list of sexual acts and forms of physical contact, all in the name of vehicle and equipment upkeep…

❝ “Effective immediately, personnel are prohibited from engaging in sexual intercourse, acts that are sexual in nature, or acts that are done with the intent to sexually gratify any person in the Grafenwoehr Training Area,” according to the memo, which specified “agricultural cleaning and preparing our vehicles, equipment, and personnel to return to Fort Hood, Texas” as the reason for the coitus crackdown…

❝ It remains unclear whether this was a problem before. Could this battalion — the identity of which was redacted in the memo — have so severely neglected basic duties in favor of sexual escapades that a 17th century Quaker abstinence policy was warranted?

And why are other sex-having service members around the world perfectly capable of performing these bare essentials?

No doubt, having sex with anything from mules to motor vehicles would have been acceptable once they returned to Texas.

A dog’s service is never done

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❝ Sully, the service dog of former President George H.W. Bush, spent Sunday night lying before Bush’s flag-draped casket in Houston.

Jim McGrath, spokesman for the Bush family, tweeted out a photo on Sunday night, captioning it “mission complete…”

❝ Sully became the late president’s service dog in June, a couple of months after former first lady Barbara Bush died.

The yellow Lab was trained by America’s VetDogs, which places service dogs and guide dogs with veterans, active-duty service members and first responders.

Our fake president would likely forbid such dedication — if he thought he could get away with it.

Fake President spent Veterans Day being a Fake Commander-in-Chief

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❝ “Two days after skipping a visit to an American military cemetery near Paris because it was raining, President Donald Trump called for effectively disenfranchising overseas military members voting in Florida, raising further questions about the draft-evading president’s commitment to the armed services…

❝ “It’s a nice commentary from the commander-in-chief on Veterans Day,” said Will Fischer, who served in Iraq as a Marine and is now with the VoteVets group.

❝ Less than two-and-a-half hours after Trump’s 7:44 a.m. tweet, the White House announced that Trump would remain there with no public events for the rest of the day.

“He’s not going to Arlington. He’s not even going up to Walter Reed,” Fischer said. “Once again, Donald Trump only sees the military as props. If it doesn’t benefit him, he’s not going to do it..”

❝ The White House did not respond to repeated queries about the president’s lack of a schedule on Monday. Nor did it respond to questions about Trump’s decision to cancel a visit to the American cemetery in France on Saturday and instead remain indoors tweeting, rather than go to an alternate site closer by.”

The gang of pretend-Republicans currently stealing DC blind will – of course – back their Fearless Leader all the way.

US Navy took delivery of an aircraft carrier missing elevators to bring bombs to aircraft

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❝ The $13 billion Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, the U.S. Navy’s costliest warship, was delivered last year without elevators needed to lift bombs from below deck magazines for loading on fighter jets.

❝ Previously undisclosed problems with the 11 elevators for the ship built by Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. add to long-standing reliability and technical problems with two other core systems — the electromagnetic system to launch planes and the arresting gear to catch them when they land…

Problems with the elevators add to questions about the Navy’s plan to bundle the third and fourth carriers in the $58 billion Ford class into one contract. It’s part of the service’s push to expand its 284-ship fleet to 355 as soon as the mid-2030s.

❝ Congress gave the Navy permission for the two-at-once contract in this year’s defense spending and policy bills despite the unresolved technical issues and the lack of a Navy estimate so far of how much money it would save the service…

Same as it ever was. At least since the end of World war 2.

This F-16 pilot was ready to give her life on 9/11

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❝ Late in the morning of the Tuesday that changed everything, Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders: Bring down United Airlines Flight 93. The day’s fourth hijacked airliner seemed to be hurtling toward Washington. Penney, one of the first two combat pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it.

The one thing she didn’t have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to throw at a hostile aircraft.

Except her own plane. So that was the plan.

❝ For years, Penney, one of the first generation of female combat pilots in the country, gave no interviews about her experiences on Sept. 11…But 10 years later [and since], she is reflecting on one of the lesser-told tales of that endlessly examined morning: how the first counterpunch the U.S. military prepared to throw at the attackers was effectively a suicide mission.

I know the feeling. On the ground, though, and not in the US military. In my experience, one of an all-encompassing fatalistic calm. If you made the decision, you left it at that. You have already run past all the alternatives, results, challenges. Instantly. All that is left is the responsibility you have assumed.

Remember McCain – Fake President Obviously Doesn’t

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Screen Grab from MSNBC-TV News

Flags at Washington Monument remain at half staff honoring the late John McCain.

Meanwhile, the Fake President has the White House flag returned to top as soon as regs allowed. Real concern (NOT) for military veterans?

Thanks @SRuhle

By the end of the day, reason prevailed among enough White House hacks to push King Combover into enacting the sort of order – automatic for Obama or either Bush – that put the American flag back at half staff for John McCain.

Pentagon censoring war news

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❝ [We have] an increasingly adversarial relationship between Defense Secretary James Mattis’ Cabinet department and the reporters who cover it. Chief among the complaints, according to defense reporters who spoke to POLITICO, are declining access to Mattis and other military officials, as well as a sense that reporters are not receiving the information they need to keep the public informed about America’s military activities.

Mattis has not briefed reporters on-camera in the Pentagon since April, while his chief spokesperson, Dana White, has not done so since May.

❝ Kevin Baron, the executive editor of Defense One, said Trump’s simultaneous war on the press and hyperfocus on media have combined to fundamentally change interactions inside the Pentagon.

“It’s definitely like no time that I’ve ever seen, and this is my 10th year on the Pentagon beat,” he said. “We used to have the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs side by side in briefing room at least once a month, and if we didn’t get once a month, we complained. We’re so far beyond the way things used to be, and it’s all because of Trump.”

“In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.” Hugo Black, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1971.