Does anyone know what’s up with this?
In a heretofore unpublicized recent memo, the Pentagon delivered an order to shutter Stars and Stripes, a newspaper that has been a lifeline and a voice for American troops since the Civil War. The memo orders the publisher of the news organization (which now publishes online as well as in print) to present a plan that “dissolves the Stars and Stripes” by Sept. 15 including “specific timeline for vacating government owned/leased space worldwide.
And…let’s do some fundraising. People wanted to focus on Texas. I think it’s a great idea. If Texas becomes the next Virginia/Colorado, Dems will have a real edge in the electoral college.
Let’s continue fundraising for the Dallas and Tarrant County Democratic parties. There are lots of pick-up opportunities there in the state lej (and also in Congress).
I also got a request to raise money for the Texas state Democratic party.
Texas State Democratic Party
I also got a special request to keep raising money for the Maricopa County Democratic party in Arizona. The HQ there were burned down by an arsonist and they are rebuilding.
germy
Vandal defaces Tedra Cobb campaign signs; paints racial slur on home
GREENWICH — Police are searching for a suspect after someone defaced two Tedra Cobb for Congress signs and spray painted a racial slur on a nearby home Thursday.
According to NewsChannel 13’s media partners at The Post-Star, someone vandalized a Black Lives Matter sign at a home on Salem Street. The paper reports that the vandal spray-painted through the screen and over the glass to hide the sign. The vandal then wrote a racial slur, prefaced with the word “white,” on the side of the home.
Police say a nearby resident spotted a man with a bowl-style haircut near the area around 5:30 a.m. Officers say they are reviewing video cameras from nearby businesses for more information.
A Tedra Cobb sign was defaced in 2018 prior to the election.
waspuppet
Trump found a newspaper he had the power to shut down, so he shut it down. Just in case anyone still wondered about his thoughts on the press.
Elizabelle
Momentarily: WaPost:
Martin
So, apparently the WH zeroed out the Stars and Stripes budget back in Feb. So it’s not recent. But there was speculation at the time it was retaliation for unflattering coverage of the president.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
My understanding is that it was just a budget proposal by the Trump admin for 2021. I thought Congress had to approve this cut? Or perhaps they already had?
Either way, the Biden admin will need to revive the Stars and Stripes newspaper. Add it to the list
dmsilev
@Martin: And Congress put the money back in to the Pentagon’s budget.
So, this might also be a dominance thing, “nobody tells me what I can and can’t do”.
West of the Rockies
@Martin: I hope Joe and Kamala systematically undo everything Trump has done. Watching him and his supporters munching on shit burgers will be hilarious.
Frankensteinbeck
I don’t worry about Trump overturning the election. I do think we’re going to see some shit like this, where out of spite he’ll try to destroy government agencies in ways that cannot easily be reversed.
Martin
@dmsilev: The House did. The Senate has not.
dmsilev
@Martin: Ah. That figures.
Has Susan Collins expressed concern(tm) yet?
Mike in DC
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think if he loses badly in November, he’ll try to pull out of NATO and Japan and South Korea unilaterally. I do think the treaty process requires congressional signoff and it can be easily reversed by Biden, though.
scav
Which god is it that is in charge of phenomenally excellent bad-timing? I need to make an obeisance and offering.
Mike in NC
@Frankensteinbeck: An ad that ran a month or so ago alluded to Fat Bastard being like a bull in a China shop, as if anybody would think that was a good thing. Maybe some of his demented cultists do.
jonas
It’s gonna take an entire new cabinet position and the creation of a Department of Unfucking Everything.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mike in DC:
Yeah, definitely a thing he might do.
jonas
He wants to get rid of Stars and Stripes? Not surprising. Don’t forget he also put a bunch of crazy batshit flunkies in charge of the VOA network in order to push stories more favorable to him.
How *anyone* in the military, or any vet, can still have a favorable opinion of this guy is beyond my comprehension. I guess it must just still be that, ahem, “economic anxiety” so many white guys suffer from these days.
Leto
@dmsilev: The Great Furrowed Brow of the North East remains great and furrowed.
SiubhanDuinne
Biden up, talking about Atlantic article.
ETA: Oooh, and Joe is PURELY PISSED.
Elizabelle
BIDEN UP. Talking about The Atlantic article. About Beau not being a sucker.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?475440-1/joe-biden-remarks-august-2020-jobs-report&live
burnspbesq
As Dr. Dick used to say, there’s fuckery afoot.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Came out blazing. Called the story disgusting, and said Trump is not fit to be CIC.
No lie told.
Joe bringing up Trump calling TBI “mere headaches.” Now about bounties.
SiubhanDuinne
You and I are having a bit of mind meld :-)
Immanentize
@scav: I had the same thought — “God knows justice but waits.”
Frankensteinbeck
@jonas:
‘The military’ = ‘the troops’ = war is the dominant mental paradigm in conservative philosophy, and I have personally observed how military training makes soldiers vulnerable to it. Democrats are mostly anti-war. Republicans are mostly pro-war. Democrats mostly think the military budget should be smaller. Republicans mostly think the military budget cannot ever be big enough. It doesn’t matter what the money is being spent on, and it doesn’t matter that part of Democrat thinking is that less war is helping the troops. One side gets the big fuzzy anti-military label, and the other side gets the big fuzzy pro-military label.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
Good. There’s video of those things. Tie it all together. Trump gets no benefit of the doubt.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Joe normally has such an affable, easy-going demeanour that when he lets genuine anger show, you know he means it!
Elizabelle
K-shaped recovery.
Interesting term. Agree; the wealthy are banking it. Seeing articles about real estate being snapped up. The market has been bipolar.
Elizabelle
NEW THREAD on Joe Biden’s speech on the economy.
SiubhanDuinne
New Biden thread one flight up.
J R in WV
Obviously Trump’s minions have been told to punish the troops for not loving him — and henceforth they are to be kept in the dark and fed horseshit. That was pretty quick after the Military Times released their poll that shows the military will not be helping to re-elect Herr Drumpf!
Every day, in every way, Herr Drumpf shows us another horrible side of his despicable and malformed personality. Is there anyone he doesn’t hate? SATSQ, Nope!
His whole world is composed of suckers… what a miserable way to live. I’m glad his life is like that. Nothing can help him to be happy, and that’s a good thing. The more miserable the better. I can’t wait until his family abandons him into a care facility and never visits because he’s a despicable creep. Even if the cafe facility is the Marsh a Lago, or more likely a Drumpf Tower somewhere without an extradition treaty.
ETA typo…
Roger Moore
@Mike in NC:
Someone at the time pointed out this Mythbusters episode that showed a bull in a china shop is actually very cautious to try to avoid bumping into anything.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Not quite, Republicans think the Military can’t be big enough, but they don’t want to pay for it. I am sure it drives them nuts they can’t find free market solution to war.
Subsole
@jonas:
It is simpler than that.
Everyone tells them to be Liberal is to be a pussy. It is a matter of life and death that they never, ever be pussies. They must be dicks. The most dick move on earth? Voting Republican.
It really is that simple.
Jinchi
I’ve seen a few articles about Trump’s attack on the Stars and Stripes over the last few months, but my guess is the main factors are this:
and this
He’s doing similar things to the Voice of America radio broadcast agency. Trump wants a propaganda ministry, not independent news.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I’d make a different connection: The Republicans think the budget for defense contractors should be bigger. Giving money and benefits to the war fighters just gets in the way of that.
The ideal defense budget would just shovel the money straight to the contractors without requiring them to actually develop anything and reduce their profit margin.
feebog
I would like to see an all-day event where VP Harris hands President Biden executive order after executive order reversing all of Trumps fuckery. About an hour in, Harris will start giggling, then Biden, and pretty soon they will both be handing, laughing and signing for hours.
Mom Says I*m Handsome
In the 1970’s my family lived in Indonesia, which at the time was run by the Suharto regime. Our periodicals (especially Time & Newsweek) arrived after having gone through the government’s censors, so it wasn’t unusual to receive mangled issues with paragraphs or even entire pages clumsily inked over or torn out. Stars & Stripes came through a different channel, through the US military & diplomatic pouches, and was never censored. As a precocious ten-year-old I started to notice those stories that the totalitarian regime wanted hidden, yet were described openly in innocuous detail in Stars & Stripes. I internalized the message that censorship is bad, and that bad people hide information — an apt lesson for today
PS/ETA – Once again I have to appreciate DougJ for the title. In the “Stay Free” podcast on Spotify about the Clash I learned how revolutionary it was when their first album dropped, because listeners could finally understand Joe’s lyrics (heretofore only a roar during live shows) & how that added the critical political dimension to the band. “The only band that matters”, indeed!
Citizen Alan
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I’m pretty sure that’s what Erik Prince is for.
KSinMA
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
True.
Uncle Cosmo
Malarkey. They are perfectly aware of “the free market solution to war” – they got an object lesson between 1938 and 1945.
Not from the USA, from the Third Reich – which damn near fought the rest of the world to a draw when the German economy should have collapsed years before.
Unfortunately the “solution” involves invading other countries and forcing them to capitulate, then raiding them for food, raw materials, industrial plant and slave labor to keep the home front in fine fettle while the Untermenschen die off. And that’s only “unfortunate” to those monsters because not even a hyperpower like the US can pull that off these days without turning half the planet into a nuclear wasteland.
I only wish I were joking….
Searcher
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I’m, like, not entirely opposed to that.
My ideal military budget would be to pay to maintain domestic industrial capacity — factories, tooling, trained workforce, design expertise — while producing a relatively small number of arms, tanks, fighters, etc. I’d rather know we’re ready to ramp up to a wartime economy at a moment’s notice than stay on one indefinitely while looking for wars to justify it.
Ocotillo
@jonas: Showing age here but when I was a kid (1960s) by USAF Dad would show me the Air Force Times whenever Congress had voted on whether the military should get a pay raise or not and even back then the Yay’s had D by their name and the Nay’s had R. The Troops have always been a prop for Republicans and nothing more.
Elizabelle
@Mom Says I*m Handsome: Interesting comment. Thank you.
patrick II
Stars and Stripes will be replaced with a more efficient profit making private entity — The National Enquirer.
Will K
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
The Republicans have pushed the privatization of the military for years. Today’s military is riddled with contractors – all of them costing twice as much as having a soldier do the same job.
fancycwabs
Well, considering he called Stars & Stripes “a loser paper for losers written by losers,” it’s not hard to follow.
Vhh
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: see Milo Minderbinder in catch 22.
Roger Moore
@Searcher:
That’s closer to what we’re doing now than you think. The whole thing about the modern MIC is that we’re spending a huge amount on R&D and then buying relatively few of the things we’re spending our money researching and developing. The real goal is to maintain our capacity to develop and produce weapons rather than to build them in mass. There are really two problems with our current system:
joel hanes
I was in the Army in Germany (draftee), and watched Watergate through the coverage in The Stars And Stripes. It was muted but even-handed.
This one goes out to efgoldman, peace be upon him and upon his memory
joel hanes
In what passes for his mind, Trump feels that The Stars And Stripes is insufficiently pro-Trump, so he wants to destroy it.
Now consider this: Trump feels that nearly every organization and sentient being is insufficiently pro-Trump.
patrick II
@Roger Moore:
I used to design large military logistics systems. Some time during the 80’s we were instructed to add a data element to each repair part used on a weapon system showing the congressional district it came from. You could then print out a report of the money being spent in each district on the repair and maintenance of an Apache helicopter for instance.
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: There’s a notion that countries that are linked in a mutual web of capitalist commercial interdependency will never go to war with one another. I’m pretty sure there are counterexamples, but it sounded good during the Cold War. (And just before World War I.)
But Trump’s economic-isolationist streak works against that line, too.
Ohio Mom
feebog @36: What a splendid image you’ve drawn! We will all be giddy (the powers of the universe willing) when that day comes.
I have every confidence that there is a committee keeping track of everything that needs undoing, by what method, in what sequence, by who, and that they are a very overworked and frazzled group.
Frank Wilhoit
@Mike in DC:
“…requires Congressional signoff…”
John Yoo has told Trump that if Congress “fails to act”, the [Republican] President can rule by decree.
joel hanes
I think Watergirl is going to put up a piece I wrote about this, tomorrow.
I know the blog has a regular schedule of events.
But damnit, we’re running out of time to save the nation and the world.
DO THIS NOW.;
https://twitter.com/mradamscott/status/1301985962222739457
SeniorMoment
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