SEN. TUBERVILLE IS LITERALLY SETTING UP OUR FINEST SOLDIERS FOR PHYSICAL AND MENTAL BREAKDOWN — THIS HAS TO STOP! Please contact your Senators, bottom link.
As our top warrior-scholars strive hard to maintain our national readiness, they often cover for missing subordinates and work 2 or 3 jobs simultaneously — some of them full-time. This is OUTRAGEOUSLY UNNECESSARY and borders on Sedition on Tuberville’s part. Coach, this is a major foul with ejection E-6. You deserve a Censure vote at least.
Tuberville has been blocking Senate votes on 300+ urgent military promotions unless the Pentagon rescinds its funded family planning for all members, a matter of urgency and sometimes life and death for our lady soldiers. Required to deploy at a moments' notice, our fighting women should never have to forego any medically required procedure for the health of a mother. Yet this is precisely what Tuberville is telling them to do. Instead of discussing the funding with our civilian Cabinet and having fair floor votes on it per normal procedure, Tuberville is creating 300 critical vacancies in our chain of command, deliberately harming all men and women in uniform who have no say in national policy, since under our Constitution, the Civilian Department Heads control that. It's a procedural attempted coup crippling our Armed Forces.
This is a very dangerous period of global conflicts (no less than 11 going on right now; besides Ukraine and Israel there are nine civil wars* and yes, Wagner and Russia and Iran are inflaming them). We are in every global theatre but not every country at war; our overseas troops are stretched thin. Our troops in the Mideast are under assault. Whose side is Tuberville on, Putin's?
4-Star General Eric Smith, Commandant of the Marine Corps, suffered a heart attack last Sunday due to working two full-time positions simultaneously, along with his part-time position on the Joint Chiefs advising Biden: news.usni.org/.... He is recovering well, Aged 58 and in excellent shape; his illness was unquestionably due to months of working two full-time jobs and one part-time at once because of Senator Tuberville’s ideologically extreme and unnecessary holds, which betray our armed forces members’ faith in their country and go against Senate tradition. (Tuberville has several other options for supporting his politically pro-life position, as urged by his Republican colleagues, that would conform to Senate procedures and be less damaging to the military. His obstinacy verges on the irrational.) www.marinecorpstimes.com/...
General Smith was sworn in as Assistant Commandant of the USMC on 10/8/21 (header pic), and then earned another Star on sheer bipartisan merit. Combat veteran of many theatres, talented Staff Officer (bilingual Spanish). He became Acting Commandant on his predecessor Gen. Berger’s retirement 7/10/23. Since due to Tuberville’s holds no Assistant Commandant could be confirmed, General Smith’s gung-ho attitude was to do both jobs at once, as well as serving on the Joint Chiefs advising President Biden, and never missing a meeting. This led to a punishing schedule since July 10 this year, of double the hours plus weekend hours required during crisis meetings and briefings, like in the last few months. But a Marine veteran who served in both Iraq wars, and Afghanistan, never shirked his duty. In his own words:
“Nobody should feel bad for me,” Smith told reporters Sept. 6 at the Defense News Conference in Arlington, Virginia, in response to a Marine Corps Times question about his schedule. “I make plenty of money, and nobody usually yells at me, so that’s good. But it is not a sustainable thing when the last thing you do is flip your computer off at 11:30 at night and you’re getting up at 5 o’clock in the morning.” www.marinecorpstimes.com/…
In response to this casualty in our top ranks obviously inflicted by Tuberville, and with others probably pending, Senator Schumer just brought the USMC Assistant Commandant’s slot, along with the top Navy and Air Force Generals, up for a vote yesterday and they all passed nearly unanimously. General Mahoney, nominated as Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps, passed 86-0, a clear signal even Republican Senators are sick of this obstruction, and also shamed by Smith’s sacrifice: breakingdefense.com/… Congratulations also to Admiral Lisa Franchetti, first woman Chief of Naval Operations (diaried well by other Kossacks) and CSAF General David Allvin of the USAF. Finally!
Crafted by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed (a veteran) and fellow member Sen. Synema, Senate Resolution 444 proposes to bring up all 300 or so promotions as a Bloc Vote. Schumer signaled he was willing to do this awhile ago, so they’ve been working on it and talking to Republican colleagues as well. Now the emergency over the weekend has made it urgent and Schumer’s bringing it to the floor the minute it clears the Rules Committee. It’s not actually a change of the rules, but a temporary suspension lasting into next year to get this done. It needs 9 Republicans to cross the aisle and vote for sanity and for our country: www.cnn.com/...
Some more links: www.nbcnews.com/…
breakingdefense.com/…
Please CONTACT YOUR SENATORS and urge them to support SR 444, even if they’re Dems, numbers count! email, phone, and snail mail, they are required to answer snail mail. Don’t be shy if one of yours is R, they may be willing to vote for this. www.senate.gov/… scroll down to ‘contact’ to get your specific Senators — write to both! All Hands On Deck!!
*Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic (CAR), Mali, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Myanmar, Spanish Sahara