@Blickers,
It's his middle name, and it sounds southern enough to imply ehbeth thinks he's a racist...
@Baldimo,
That's one guess, one that is loosely related, in a jumbled way, to the one I was thinking, actually. Anybody is welcome to take a guess as well. And I'd like to hear from ehBeth herself, of course.
@Blickers,
Really, his middle name is Beauregard, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III
@Baldimo,
Yes, I know. But he doesn't go by his middle name like some do, and I'm guessing why ehBeth uses his middle name. Like I said, I have an idea but I want to see if I'm right. Others can guess along, of course.
@Baldimo,
Southern does not mean racist. The two terms are not equivalent.
@Blickers,
A former A2k poster (and good friend) was a caregiver for the Sessions family, so I can't be really mean but I can suggest the humour I find in him.
@Blickers,
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was named after his pappy, and he after III's grandpappy, in honor of Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States and Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard, Brevet Major of the US Army and General of the Confederate States who conducted the bombardment of Fort Sumter that commenced the American Civil War.
He was named in an act of
Lost Cause remembrance and all that it entails.
@InfraBlue,
Wonderful . . . Pierre Toutant, also known as Beauregard, was one of Lincoln's best friends in Confederate service. He lost his nerve at Bull Run, and only the presence of Joe Johnston prevented him from retreating. After Albert Sidney Johnston died at Shiloh, Beauregard managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Beauregard was an all-round incompetent whose value to the cause of the United States is immeasurable.
Trump Wants to Freeze Federal Pay Because of ‘Serious Economic Conditions’
By Adam K. Raymond
In a letter to Congress on Wednesday, Trump announced plans to cancel raises for the federal government’s civilian employees, including an across-the-board pay raise of 2.1 percent and a 25 percent bump in locality pay. They would both go into effect on January 1. Trump’s preference for the freeze has been known since he released his 2019 budget in February, but he formalized the move this week.
In his letter, Trump writes that he has the authority to scrap planned pay raises if “serious economic conditions” make them “inappropriate.”
“We must maintain efforts to put our nation on a fiscally sustainable course, and Federal agency budgets cannot sustain such increases,” the letter says.
Trump’s decision is not quite final. Congress could cancel the move if it sends him a spending bill that includes the raises and he signs it. It’s not yet clear if Trump is willing to veto the bill over the issue. If Congress doesn’t address the raises in its spending bill, then Trump will get his way.
The Senate has already rejected the White House’s calls to nix the raises once, voting this summer to give federal workers a 1.9 percent raise. But the House didn’t include an increase in its own spending bill, setting up a showdown with the Senate over the issue.
Trump’s letter mentions that the locality pay raise, which goes to workers in high-cost areas of the country, would cost the country $25 billion next year. It’s not clear how much the across-the-board raises would cost.
The idea that scraping the raises is necessary to keep the U.S. on good financial footing doesn’t make much sense considering the tax break Republicans pushed through last year. Cutting worker pay after passing a $1.5 trillion tax cut is “a slap in the face to the hardworking men and women who care for our veterans, protect our homeland, and respond to emergencies,” Democratic representative Elijah Cummings wrote on Twitter Thursday.
National Treasury Employees Union president Tony Reardon criticized the move, too, saying the pay freeze shows that the Trump administration “simply does not respect its own workforce.”
@neptuneblue,
Quote:In his letter, Trump writes that he has the authority to scrap planned pay raises if “serious economic conditions” make them “inappropriate.”
Huuuuuuuhhhhh, I thought the Trump worshipers and Trump himself has been proclaiming that they are blowing the doors off the Obama administration and the Trump economy is booming.
Lube up, Trump supporters and bend over. Your reward is coming.
@ehBeth,
Not equivalent, no but definitely leaning that way.
@ehBeth,
Not equivalent, no, but definitely leaning that way. Was that your intention?
@ehBeth,
Quote ehBeth:
My guess was wrong then about why you refer to Sessions as "Beauregard".
@InfraBlue,
Quote InfraBlue:
Quote:Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was named after his pappy, and he after III's grandpappy, in honor of Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States and Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard, Brevet Major of the US Army and General of the Confederate States who conducted the bombardment of Fort Sumter that commenced the American Civil War.
Yep, that was my guess. I didn't realize the Jefferson in Sessions' name was from Jefferson Davis, I thought he was named after Thomas Jefferson. But I just discovered,(or re-discovered since school days) that Gen. Beauregard was the one who ordered the first shots of the Civil War at Fort Sumter. And that therefore, all the South's Beauregards, (and presumably Boes as well), are named after him.
Considering Sessions' positions during his public life, I thought that was a little gibe ehBeth was sending his way. Apparently not, though.
Lots of talk on the web about the NSA being shut down, and the MSM having to use backup satellites.
And no, you won't hear diddly squat about this on the BBC.
Is Mattis Next Out the Door?
Trump’s latest tweetstorm doesn’t look promising for the secretary of defense.
By FRED KAPLAN
It looks like Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis may be next in line to get the boot for disloyalty to President Donald Trump.
For some time now, Mattis has made statements and pursued policies at odds with Trump’s predilections, especially when it comes to strengthening U.S. commitments to NATO and assuring allies in Asia. But his most recent challenges have been particularly upfront, and this time Trump hit back.
The latest flap began Tuesday, when Mattis was asked at a news conference about the future of U.S. joint military exercises with South Korea. At the June summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Trump had promised to suspend those exercises, saying they were provocative and expensive.
On Tuesday, Mattis—who hadn’t been consulted on this move at the time—made his opposition to Trump’s move clear. The suspension, he said, was taken “as a good-faith measure,” he said. Then he added, “We have no plans at this time to suspend any more exercises.”
In response, the next day, without mentioning Mattis by name, Trump issued a remarkable rebuke—an unusual four-part tweet, headed “STATEMENT FROM THE WHITE HOUSE,” which read, in part:
President Donald J. Trump feels strongly that North Korea is under tremendous pressure from China because of our major trade disputes with the Chinese Government. … Nonetheless, the President believes that his relationship with Kim Jong Un is a very good and warm one, and there is no reason at this time to be spending large amounts of money on joint U.S.-South Korea war games. Besides, the President can instantly start the joint exercises again with South Korea, and Japan, if he so chooses. If he does, they will be far bigger than ever before. As for the U.S.-China trade disputes, and other differences, they will be resolved in time by President Trump and China’s great President Xi Jinping. Their relationship and bond remain very strong.
In other words: Butt out, Mattis; Trump is the only one who decides whether to restart the exercises, and meanwhile he’s handling everything just fine.
The New York Times’ Mark Landler quoted Pentagon officials as saying that Mattis’ comments—and press reports citing them as contradictory to Trump’s—angered officials in the White House. It wouldn’t be farfetched to imagine that Trump may also have been annoyed by Mattis’ tribute, a few days earlier, to John McCain, lauding the late senator for living a life embodying the Naval Academy’s motto, “not for self, but for country”—which could be read as a dig at Trump, whose life has embodied the opposite.
Mattis has always seemed to be out of place in Trump’s entourage. Trump chose him to be defense secretary, in large part, because of his supposed nickname, “Mad Dog.” Once in office, he was clearly surprised that Mattis—a retired Marine four-star general and combat commander—opposed torture and resisted efforts to start new wars.
Still, Mattis was extremely popular on Capitol Hill and a source of assurance among U.S. allies. If Trump ever felt inclined to fire Mattis, he might have been deterred, for much of his time as president, by the storm of panic and protest that such a move could stir up.
Trump might not feel that way any longer. The Republicans in Congress have proved themselves unwilling or unable to speak out against any outrage that Trump might commit. The allies still admire Mattis, but they’ve learned that he doesn’t reflect the administration’s views—and, besides, Trump no longer cares much what the allies think.
In short, Mattis has lost his political immunity.
Some who know Mattis say that he would not leave at his own initiative, at least not before the midterm elections. His military ethos demands at least that degree of loyalty and an aversion to politicize his actions, regardless of what he may think of Trump personally. He has also managed, under the radar, to push through certain policies—for instance, new security initiatives in NATO—that rub against Trump’s inclinations. But those avenues may be closing—hence the White House pushback to his statement on military exercises with South Korea.
The clash goes beyond the question of merely resuming the exercises. It reflects a deeper clash over how to deal with North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program and the security of East Asia. Mattis doesn’t want war—in fact, before the Trump-Kim lovefest began, he resisted White House pressure to draw up new attack plans—but he does favor continued pressure on Kim to take steps toward disarmament. On this, he is in accord with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton. Trump is alone in believing that Kim is an honest friend with honorable intentions.
But Pompeo is more interested in kowtowing to Trump than in speaking up for U.S. interests or giving him diplomatic advice. Bolton, who has long expressed a desire to bomb North Korea (and Iran) into submission, seems to be sitting back, waiting for the moribund talks with Pyongyang to collapse.
If Mattis leaves, whether on his own or on Trump’s orders, the Cabinet will consist entirely of political lackeys or manipulators. Sen. Lindsey Graham is rumored to yearn for the job—which may explain his recent turnaround on Trump’s suitability for public office (a shift that bodes ill for what sort of secretary of defense he would be). Another aspirant is Sen. Tom Cotton, whose fervid opposition to the Iran nuclear deal would earn him points with Trump as a candidate.
Mattis hasn’t been the ideal defense secretary, but at least he’s been doing the job. He’s the last “grown-up in the room.” If Trump’s halls of power seem like a playpen run by the rowdiest kids, wait till the chaos spreads across the river to the Pentagon and across the oceans to our dealings with friends and foes.
