Abbott's fake war deaths

[Nice Guy Eddie 13414]

This week, a 6th Texas National Guard soldier died in the PR stunt that is Abbott's war on the Mexican border.  

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/crime/article/Texas-Guardsman-accidentally-shot-killed-while-16908557.php

6th deaths sound like the border is very deadly. Not exactly. This week's death and another one were accidental shootings, and the other 4 were suicides. The soldiers have started to openly complain that they know their presence there is only to get Abbott pictures for his campaign.

[Captainant 27464]

32 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

This week, a 6th Texas National Guard soldier died in the PR stunt that is Abbott's war on the Mexican border.  

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/crime/article/Texas-Guardsman-accidentally-shot-killed-while-16908557.php

6th deaths sound like the border is very deadly. Not exactly. This week's death and another one were accidental shootings, and the other 4 were suicides. The soldiers have started to openly complain that they know their presence there is only to get Abbott pictures for his campaign.

Texas national guard is a clown show. My BIL had his captain->major promotion delayed by a year and a half because they couldn't get their act together and stamp his paperwork. Once he got new orders that put him closer to a 2star in DC that "took a look at it" all the problems magically resolved themselves

[High Plains Drifter 10977]

35 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

This week, a 6th Texas National Guard soldier died in the PR stunt that is Abbott's war on the Mexican border.  

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/crime/article/Texas-Guardsman-accidentally-shot-killed-while-16908557.php

6th deaths sound like the border is very deadly. Not exactly. This week's death and another one were accidental shootings, and the other 4 were suicides. The soldiers have started to openly complain that they know their presence there is only to get Abbott pictures for his campaign.

 

I feel for them. I really do. They are getting fucked for bullshit politics.

BUT, how many will vote for Abbott (or worse Huffines) in the next election because MUH GUNS! ?

[Scheiss Meister 8399]

Reading the article it seems very apparent that the Texas Army National Guard has shitty weapon safety training.  Poor kid died of his own and Abbott's stupidity.

[RDCanecutter 26281]

11 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Texas national guard is a clown show. My BIL had his captain->major promotion delayed by a year and a half because they couldn't get their act together and stamp his paperwork. Once he got new orders that put him closer to a 2star in DC that "took a look at it" all the problems magically resolved themselves

Probably every state's NG has weirdness. My unit in N.Carolina lost all records of my ever attending basic training. I guess they considered me home-schooled since I kept climbing up through the ranks with no problem.

Then when I moved back to Alabama I swung by the armory to see if I could keep playing army there. I saw the chain of command on the wall and there was a LTC McFakeName there. I said "Wow, I was in school with Bratty McFakeName, that's amazing that he made it all the way to LTC by now." "Oh no, that's his dad. Your school friend is MAJOR McFakeName."

And sure enough, my eyes dropped down the chart, and there was my old buddy Bratty, right under his Daddy, and when I joined, I'd be way down there underneath them both.

I mean, if it'd been Cav Scouts or something James Bondsy, I woulda still signed up, but it was a bunch of Supply Pukes so my ass went straight to Inactive Ready Reserve.

[dingleberryswitzer 2724]

1 hour ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

The soldiers have started to openly complain that they know their presence there is only to get Abbott pictures for his campaign.

They and their families can vote abbots ass out then.  

[atomheartbevo 89449]

5 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

The soldiers have started to openly complain that they know their presence there is only to get Abbott pictures for his campaign.

5 hours ago, High Plains Drifter said:

I feel for them. I really do. They are getting fucked for bullshit politics.

BUT, how many will vote for Abbott (or worse Huffines) in the next election because MUH GUNS! ?

We know several that have been sucked into this, both people I have known for years, and also some from the neighborhood (we are near Camp Mabry and some of the NG officers live in the area/have kids at school with our kids).  We also know a couple who were college students (kids of neighbors/friends).

I don't anticipate many, if any, of them voting for Abbott.  They are fucking pissed and they've been privately complaining from the beginning - this wasn't a deployment overseas where they had plenty of time to get their affairs/job situation/family situation/school/etc. in order.

 People don't understand how different of a deployment this is than a temporary situation with a natural disaster (say a hurricane) or deployment overseas that is planned a long time in advance.

And while recruiters make sure and tell NG soldiers that they have a right to return to work, if you are self-employed/free-lancing/contract/own your own business/etc. your whole job situation can be completely fucked - no vendor or client has to hold up work you were going to do for them if you all of the sudden find yourself headed towards the border.  And because there are massive employment changes across the US thanks to the pandemic over the past two years, employer circumstances can change enough that returning NG members may not be reemployed.  And it's not just a matter of your job being outsourced overseas/done away with/etc. - in some of those circumstances your employer has to retrain you for other work.  No, if your job transfers to another state for instance, Texas can refuse to let you move/change NG units.

And at least one person we know has been told that if it seems like they are trying to take a job in another state/transfer to that state's NG in order to avoid border patrol stuff in the future, it will be refused, and they will have to remain here, or at the very least return for their normal training and whatever deployments Abbott wants to commit them to.  They felt it sounded pretty vindictive, and they are considering legal options.

This could very well drive a lot of older NCOs and officers out of the Texas National Guard, and that lost of institutional knowledge will be very, very bad.

 

 

 

[Fudge Nuggets 19151]

We spend over $700 bln per year on defense. If semi-pro GI Joe wants to drop out, I think we’ll survive.

[Scheiss Meister 8399]

7 hours ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

We spend over $700 bln per year on defense. If semi-pro GI Joe wants to drop out, I think we’ll survive.

Yeah, until a hurricane hits the Texas coast or a town gets wiped out by a tornado and the responding NG units are undermanned.

I have never been able to wrap my head around people being so dismissive of people that they will need to rely on one day.

[gmr548 16516]

17 hours ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

We spend over $700 bln per year on defense. If semi-pro GI Joe wants to drop out, I think we’ll survive.

 

9 hours ago, Scheiss Meister said:

Yeah, until a hurricane hits the Texas coast or a town gets wiped out by a tornado and the responding NG units are undermanned.

I have never been able to wrap my head around people being so dismissive of people that they will need to rely on one day.

Not only this, but every experienced leader that departs opens up a position into which to elevate a hard right white nationalist. And that's exactly where this will go - political appointments that align with the GOP's long game.

[Captainant 27464]

54 minutes ago, gmr548 said:

Not only this, but every experienced leader that departs opens up a position into which to elevate a hard right white nationalist. And that's exactly where this will go - political appointments that align with the GOP's long game.

Historically speaking, that's how fascist governments come into power. Italy, Spain, Germany, they all had a nascent and bubbling minority political group that bitched and victimized over their lack of representation in government until they started getting more appointments into positions of power. And then the ratfucking and restructuring of government soon followed.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13414]

The infuriating thing about supporters, of a party with near monopolistic power, is that they will shrug theIr shoulders at abuse of power or wasteful spending.

If you spoke one on one with a Texas GOP voter and explained what was happening with the waste of having our national guard “protecting” the border, I bet 75% would agree there is a problem. However they would follow that up that they would never vote for Abbott’s Dem competition so therefore they’re indifferent about it.

[troph 24563]

3 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

The infuriating thing about supporters, of a party with near monopolistic power, is that they will shrug theIr shoulders at abuse of power or wasteful spending.

If you spoke one on one with a Texas GOP voter and explained what was happening with the waste of having our national guard “protecting” the border, I bet 75% would agree there is a problem. However they would follow that up that they would never vote for Abbott’s Dem competition so therefore they’re indifferent about it.

They wouldn’t agree at a 75% clip because 40% of them are inoculated against logic and truth. 

[Red Five 40665]

8 minutes ago, troph said:

They wouldn’t agree at a 75% clip because 40% of them are inoculated against logic and truth. 

[gmr548 16516]

8 minutes ago, troph said:

They wouldn’t agree at a 75% clip because 40% of them are inoculated against logic and truth. 

And a nontrivial portion of those who agree there's a problem would blame Democrats, and demand Abbott double down.

[troph 24563]

In this case there is a 100% chance my statistics are at least 80% right. Either way FAFO.  Anecdotally, my pops is retired LTC and did his time in the TXNG, he’s proud of Abbott’s war.

[WhatTheBuck 28713]

Oh, fake war, not fake deaths. The subject was confusing. It should probably be something like, “Deaths of service members in Abbott’s fake war,” or something to that effect.

That’s pretty painful to hear about. I wonder to what extent it was inspired by Trump sending the military to the border to defend against the imaginary threat of an imminent invasion by a caravan of migrants back in 2018 just prior to the midterm elections. (Okay, I’m not really wondering. It was probably totally inspired by that.)

They were basically just used as political props. Imagine that, U.S. troops deployed on U.S. soil for purely political purposes. At least none of them died as far as I know. I’d have to go dig it up, it was either in Betrayal by Jonathan Karl or A Very Stable Genius by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig where there was an account of Trump wanting to get pictures on tv before troops had time to be deployed. He asked for a staged simulation just to release to the media.

Trump was producing a reality tv show. He didn’t really care about reality. He cared about tv and ratings. And he wasn’t above manipulating the powers of governance to deceive the public in order to further his own political ends. That approach is being adopted by other members of the Republican Party and it’s costing lives. 

[Guest Lobo]

Once again, it's not 40%.  35% of U.S. adults voted for Trump.  Of those, I think a 1/3rd were just blindly voting straight ticket no matter what.  1/3rd can eventually be saved from their comatose of stupidity.  1/3rd will have to be evacuated to camps.

Edited February 13, 2022 by Lobo

[troph 24563]

7 hours ago, Lobo said:

Once again, it's not 40%.  35% of U.S. adults voted for Trump.  Of those, I think a 1/3rd were just blindly voting straight ticket no matter what.  1/3rd can eventually be saved from their comatose of stupidity.  1/3rd will have to be evacuated to camps.

Im not counting kids or those who don’t vote. The 100% is those who can and do participate. So your numbers are optimistically too low. It’s closer to 35% or more that are totally lost. 

[bolverk 29401]

Good gawd. The Texas National Guard had to unionize due to mistreatment.

https://www.tpr.org/border-immigration/2022-02-21/texas-national-guardmembers-hold-their-first-union-meeting

[DDD Dad 14252]

On 2/13/2022 at 10:16 AM, troph said:

In this case there is a 100% chance my statistics are at least 80% right. Either way FAFO.  Anecdotally, my pops is retired LTC and did his time in the TXNG, he’s proud of Abbott’s war.