Monthly Archives: March 2013
GOTP House’s refusal to fix budget stops funding for tuition assistance for troops
According to the Army News Service funding for tuition assistance has fallen as a casualty of the ongoing budget sequester battle between the Republican Tea Party (GOTP) controlled House and the President; as a result, soldiers cannot submit new requests for tuition assistance, according to LTG Howard B. Bromberg, deputy chief of staff, G-1.
Approval for the tuition assistance (TA), stoppage came from Secretary of the Army John McHugh, and affects Soldiers from both the active and reserve components.
While it’s reported that soldiers currently enrolled in courses approved for TA are not impacted, and will be allowed to complete their funded coursework, there will be no further expenditures until the current impasse has been breached.
According to LTG Bromberg, the suspension in funding “is necessary given the significant budget execution challenges caused by the combined effects of a possible year-long continuing resolution and sequestration, and will remain in effect until the fiscal situation matures.”
Bromberg also said, “The Army understands the impacts of this action and will re-evaluate should the budgetary situation improve.”
While the TA funding, which is funded from the Army’s budget, soldiers can continue their education using alternate methods; those methods include GI Bill funding, which is derived from the Department of Veterans Affairs, is available and Soldiers can continue their education using this benefit. The GI Bill includes the Montgomery GI Bill, Post 9/11 GI Bill and several other education programs.
So, basically the GOTP has once again stuck it to the soldiers. When everyone stepped up after 9-11 there were crowds of conservative Americans waving flags and proclaiming how they supported the troops. If you still support the troops, step up and tell Congress to fix this now, if you’re unwilling to do that, well, then it’s time to take your patriotic ribbon magnet off your car, and stop being a hypocrite.
Williams shifts blame to researcher?
Wow, first Breitbart fabricating its news stories, and then celebrated FOX News talking head Juan Williams is caught plagiarizing.
Salon’s Alex Seitz-Wald reported William’s paper “The Hill” was forced to change Williams’ most recent piece after it learned large portions of it were stolen from a Center for American Progress report.
Williams, it seems, has decided that rather than walk the “virtuous” path of taking responsibility for his own actions, he’s going to take the typical conservative pundit’s chicken way out and blame a researcher, who he said gave him what Williams thought were “his words and summaries” of the CAP report. Guess Juan was sleeping in class the day his teacher talked about using others writing as his own?
Not really surprising though, most right-wing talking heads regularly make stuff up, so why not use other people’s work and claim it as your own as well? When you work for FOX it appears it’s not only acceptable it’s encouraged; the FOX News mantra of the future may very well be, “We make it up – or steal it – you decide.”
Of drones and assault rifles?
Twelve people are gunned down and 70 are wounded in a movie theater in Colorado, gun nuts scream about their rights to own whatever kind of weapon they want and rush out to buy assault rifles and high capacity magazines; Twenty-six people, including 20 first graders, are massacred in an elementary school in Connecticut, the same gun nuts become hysterical about their Second Amendment rights and start throwing around words like “revolution”.
The United States Attorney General says under “an extraordinary circumstance” the government might use drone strikes against its own citizens on U.S. soil, and now suddenly the exact same whack jobs are anxious about enacting legislation concerning what weapons can and cannot be used in the United States.
It seems the right for people to own weapons capable of murdering 20 six and seven-year-olds in a matter of minutes is OK, but targeting domestic terrorists is an outrage? Both are offensive and wrong, it’s time for Republicans, Libertarians and Tea Party types to pull their heads out of their collective fourth point of contact, to grow up and start acting like adults. The Constitution no more guarantees your right to own assault rifles and high capacity magazines than it provides for the Federal Government to target citizens to a blazing death from above.
Drone Strike to Kill U.S. Citizen on American Soil Legal?
Holy time warp Batman, according to news reports the United States Attorney General thinks it could use military force to kill an American on U.S. soil in an “extraordinary circumstance”; no we’re not talking about George W. Bush’s administration here, we’re talking about President Barrack Obama’s, but fortunately it has “no intention of doing so,” at least according to a letter from General Eric Holder.
The letter was disclosed by Republican Tea Party (GOTP) Senator Rand Paul, who had asked whether the Justice Department believed the President had legal authority to order a targeted strike against an American citizen located within the United States.
According to Holder, while the President rejected the use of military force where “well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat.” Theoretically, it’d be legal for the him to order such an attack under certain circumstances, he claimed.
“The question you have posed is therefore entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no president will ever have to confront. It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States,” Holder wrote.
“For example, the president could conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances like a catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001,” Holder continued, referring to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Holder said he would “examine the particular facts and circumstances” if such an emergency were to arise.
On this issue the Attorney General needs his head thoroughly examined; there are no legitimate uses of drone strikes within the United States on its own citizen’s, period. There is no “theoretical” for which this would ever apply, period. Would the Attorney General also “theorize” there are legitimate times when the President would authorize the use of nuclear weapons by the government on American soil against its own?
Just as the Bush Administration was wrong on everything from failing to protect the United States against terrorists, to lying about WMDs in Iraq to approving water boarding and torturing of prisoners, so too is the Obama Administration wrong on this. Fix it Mr. President; if we’d wanted more of the same we’d have elected the other guy.
McCain and Graham continue to whine about Benghazi?
According to the Associated Press (AP) Republican Tea Party (GOTP) Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain are continuing to whine about wanting answers from the Obama administration over Benghazi and are threatening to oppose (yet again) the administration’s choice for another cabinet level appointment, this time it’s the new CIA director.
Graham mewed during CBS “Face the Nation”, he and his buddy, “are hell-bent on making sure the American people understand this debacle called Benghazi.” He also said wants to understand what happened in September at the U.S. consulate in Libya that left four Americans dead.
Perhaps the Senators should have been attending security briefings on Benghazi in November where everything was discussed instead of holding a press conference complaining about not receiving all the information on the attack? Just a thought.
McCain says he also wants answers about policies on torture and the Arizona senator says he deserves answers.Poor Senator McCain, perhaps in a more lucid moment he’ll remember President Bush is no longer in charge; but then again he was also heard saying, “I also want answers on who took the Strawberries, and, by-the-way, I like cheese.”
The Liberty Tree 