Your voluntary sacrifice wouldn't even be noticed by those collecting the rent. The bigger problem is that neither will the sacrifices of the thousands more that will be expected to die without any such choice.
Re: placing the graduating West Point class in harms way.
That the Superintendent of West Point would even consider such an order makes one wonder.
What's to wonder? The Superintendent is a 3-star general. Military through and through. His orders may seem unusual but they are not illegal in a Nuremberg sense and they are not unconstitutional. There is no reason to question. At least not publicly.
There should be no doubt that the military see the Orange Bastard for the incompetent narcissistic idiot that he is, but in this instance, as in so many others, this is not sufficient reason to violate those orders. Even going in harm's way.
Re: placing the graduating West Point class in harms way.
Of course it's unreasonable. We're talking Donald Trump here.
But it is not illegal and military duty is to obey the legal orders of the Commander In Chief regardless of risk or circumstance. In this country military command is not allowed to substitute its own political judgement in place of its civilian leadership. That would be a violation of their oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution which specifically gives the President the right to issue such legal, if questionable, orders.
do you think Trump spends more than a fleeting moment thinking about the service men under his command?
Trump doesn't spend more than a fleeting moment thinking. And those limited synaptic energies are dedicated to the aggrandizement of his own ego exclusively.
I was never a Bush 2 fan but I must admit his video, as unexpected and unnecessary as it was since he is no longer in office, is a welcome sincere comfort from a republican operative. I would not have thought this of Bush 2 but I'm thinking he released this video as a counter to the lack of sympathetic leadership by Trump. To, in some small way, fill a glaring hole in the Republican leadership. I won't ever like him, but I will commend him for this effort.
There have been some posts in these forums about Trump's potential use of the military to enshrine his power should he not win a second term.
These last two days have seen some extraordinary developments within the military community.
Former Defense Secretary and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. James Mattis published a scathing Op-Ed piece where he took the president to task for abuse of power.
quote:Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.
We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.
Emphasis mine.
Then there was this from our current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs:
Note the written date and the side note. This memo was written days, weeks ago and has been held in abeyance probably hoping never to be issued.
I cannot emphasise how powerful this statement is coming from a sitting officer at the top of our military structure. Those who have been in the officer corps and recognize the military-eze in this memo will recognize the set up.
This memo, couched in subtle terms, lays out the justification to refuse to follow command authority orders that the Joint Chiefs find in violation of their oaths. The Joint Chiefs are telling the civilian authority presently in charge that there are limits beyond which the United States Military will not move and those limits deal with "our national values and principles" and to "protect lives and property, preserve peace, and ensure public safety."
The Joint Chiefs have just told the president they will not move against the American People.
This is not a coup and the Chiefs are making no threats of such certainly.
But the Chiefs have put the president and all the military commands on notice that there are limits to civilian leadership of the United States armed forces in this nation.
With everything else that has happened this year this fascist president continues to poison this country's values and principles.
In my opinion here is the most important aspect of Justice Gorsuch’s majority opinion:
quote:Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result. Likely, they weren’t thinking about many of the Act’s consequences that have become apparent over the years, including its prohibition against discrimination on the basis of motherhood or its ban on the sexual harassment of male employees. But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands. When the express terms of a statute give us one answer and extratextual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit.
Both Alito’s (joined by Thomas) and Kavanaugh’s dissents center on the Civil Rights Act’s use of the word sex in its prohibitory statement in Title VII:
quote:Title VII makes it unlawful . . . for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual . . . because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
The court’s opinion acknowledges that sex as the Act is written must include sexual orientation, not just the physical sex of the individual, because the two are inextricably linked and cannot be separated. Discrimination against one’s orientation is in fact discrimination against one’s sex. Firing lesbians because they are attracted to women is discrimination if men are not also fired for this same attraction toward women. The orientation is the same in each case thus the discrimination is based solely on the sex of the individual which Title VII prohibits.
Alito argues the two concepts are separate and the court is legislating from the bench by expanding the definition of sex beyond the meaning understood at the time of the Act. Kavanaugh argues the concepts may be linked in a literal sense but not in the ordinary sense so the intent of the congress was not specifically stated and despite the worthy goals of the court’s majority opinion for inclusion and equality the decision should be one for the Congress to decide.
IMHO both dissents are bullshit.
Still, for me, the court’s opinion that
When the express terms of a statute give us one answer and extratextual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest. Only the written word is the law, and all persons are entitled to its benefit.
is a wrinkle that will have far reaching ramifications.
I will add that Gorsuch’s majority opinion is quite plainly written without the legalese verbosity Scalia used to enjoy.
Finally:
quote:Critics sometimes say that the Congress does not hide elephants in mouse holes, Justice Gorsuch wrote on Monday, meaning that lawmakers do not take enormous steps with vague terms or in asides.
We can’t deny that today’s holding that employers are prohibited from firing employees on the basis of homosexuality or transgender status is an elephant, he wrote. But where’s the mouse hole? Title VII’s prohibition of sex discrimination in employment is a major piece of federal civil rights legislation. It is written in starkly broad terms. It has repeatedly produced unexpected applications, at least in the view of those on the receiving end of them.
This elephant, he wrote, has never hidden in a mouse hole; it has been standing before us all along.
Reporters noted there were few protesters outside the arena. Several attempts to block entrances were quickly broken up by police.
Fake news.
attendance was due to "Some very bad people outside. They were doing bad things.
Gospel truth.
There were 10s upon 10s of jackbooted antifa goons blocking the entrances keeping hundreds of thousands of loyal patriotic Americans out of the arena. Local police and fed security could not counter the goons because of the menacing evil looks and the unsociable language the antifa mobs were employing.
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