171 Comments
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I'm giving you folks money's avatar

These mother f---ers. They have GOT to be blacking out their mirrors, to avoid catching a glimpse of their soulless, heartless Kushneresque creep-scapes.

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WyOSINT's avatar

The Army paid for our whole family to fly home from Germany to see my dying grandfather in 1997 sooooooo Tom Cotton is a fucking idiot.

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Wondering Woman's avatar

Saying it again: you don't have a uterus, you don't get to dictate reproductive choices for those who do. And fuck Tom Cotton.

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P. Von Fildo's avatar

What’s this “abortion tourism” cotton speaks of? Still have a bit of vacation time built up. Sounds like a delightful experience, just like a pub crawl.

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Heller22's avatar

Cotton's closer was that he thinks all sane people can agree that parents "should have a say in what sex their children are."

As ever: their body, their choice; your body, their choice.

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Wookiee Monster's avatar

Abortion is great for military readiness. There should be vending machines dispensing the abortion pill on every base.

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rlcornelius's avatar

You can't always get leave whenever you want it, contrary to what Cotton apparently thinks. There's such a thing as "operational readiness." To use the Navy as an example: say your ship is getting ready to be deployed. There's a lot of work getting ready and then there's the deployment. No leave (except emergency leave) is approved during these times. Even if your ship is just getting underway for the weekend (so people can do underway training for qualifying for various positions) you're not getting leave. I'm sure the other services have similar situations where leave just isn't possible. Also, you can't be on a ship past 20 weeks pregnancy and so have to be transferred to shore duty before then. In actual practice they try to do that as soon as possible, usually in the first trimester. There's always grumbling when this happens as it leaves the sailor's work center short-handed. You're encouraged to plan your pregnancies so they don't coincide with sea duty or deployments (otherwise you get accused behind your back of getting pregnant on purpose so as to avoid a deployment). Yes, birth control is handed out for free to anyone who wants it, but that doesn't always work of course.

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I'm giving you folks money's avatar

So, "it's a whole thing," as the kids say. Out of the GOP's grasp

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Daniel O'Riordan's avatar

If a member of the armed services wanted some special consideration out of Republicans, all they have to do is come up with a cool billion dollars, and they'll have conservatives slobbering all over them.

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Lionel “8647” Hutz's avatar

There is no way you can get the proper abortion tourism experience on the government's dime. You need real money like a GQP donor to do it right.

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calliecallie, aka pollyanna's avatar

My dad quit high school the minute he was old enough to enlist in WWII. He trained as a paratrooper but was too late for most of the action, and got sent to occupied Japan, where honestly I think he spent most of his time on KP. Based on the stories he told.

I asked him once what his most vivid memory of the war was. It was when his father died while he was overseas and he was not allowed to go home for his funeral. He was still angry about it decades later.

Yeah, give those troops leave for that stuff, please.

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Bagels of Doom's avatar

everything old is new again. my husband remembers being spat upon coming home from 'Nam.

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Daniel O'Riordan's avatar

did your husband report this to the Department of Defense? Because the DOD states that it has no record whatsoever of any returning Vietnam service member being spat upon.

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Robert Eckert's avatar

They would say that

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Bagels of Doom's avatar

he worked for the VA just after coming back, and knowing his piss and vinegar attitude when it comes to these things, he probably did.

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Wythers's avatar

About 10 years ago I found myself on a barstool next to an older guy in a ferny California bar.

After a bit of chit-chat, he brought up the fact he was a VN-vet. I said 'welcome home.' He didn't say anything for a bit, then started silently weeping. He started talking again, in very broad terms, about some of his experiences in field and returning; I just listened. It seemed he was very alone, and hadn't talked about any of it for a long time, if ever.

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Bagels of Doom's avatar

ugh! too many veterans out there with nobody to talk to. makes me stabby af.

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Lefty Wright's avatar

I bet the military pays for out of state medical treatment for members who require special treatment not available at a nearby military hospital or local facility. Including transportation, lodging, and food. Regardless of what Republicans think, abortions are medical procedures, especially when it's too late for a medication abortion. But if Cotton is worried about the expense he should bitch to the states that ban abortion, preventing women from going to a local clinic or hospital a few miles away. And remember, some women in the military may need abortion services even for a planned pregnancy that went south because red states make their laws so vague doctors are afraid to do anything even when it is medically indicated. They may have to fly 800 miles to get life saving treatment they used to get miles down the road in an hour.

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carovee's avatar

It seems hard to believe that the military doesn't pay its members to go see a specialist out of state, but then this is the same military whose members sometimes qualify for food stamps.

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Trux Mint In Box's avatar

Abortion tourism - New York, come for the abortion, stay for the Pizza

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Wookiee Monster's avatar

The next thing republicans will be outlawing. States are already trying different ways to get around the Constitution’s freedom of movement guarantee.

Expect them to propose some kind of fugitive uterus act very soon.

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Renaissance Outlaw's avatar

Just watch out for those pizza pilfering rodents

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LarrytheRed's avatar

"Tourism" implies enjoyment and leisure. In the abortion context, that's insulting.

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Richard S's avatar

Suddenly I'm picturing a coupon: "Buy 8 slices, get a free abortion!"

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Trux Mint In Box's avatar

“Abortion tourism” - well I see Frank Luntz is still hard at work with his bs.

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Trux Mint In Box's avatar

three weeks of paid, uncharged leave and then also pay for travel and lodging and meals

Why do I feel like this is completely untrue or taken out of context? Why couldn’t they travel and then come back with a few days?

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Gregg's avatar

The obvious solution to this problem is to just move all the military bases away from states that have 15th century theocracies running them.

The decision of the military to begin with wasn't anything "woke" it was a cold financial decision, as should be the decision that having people defending freedoms from places that don't have it is bad for retention and recruiting.

If moving Fort Moore from Georgia to New Yok hurts the economy in Georgia, well, they asked for that. If moving CenCom and the other major military commands out of Florida leaves them with a trillion dollar hole in their economy, I'm sure they can make that up with growth at Disney..or maybe not not, I'm sure their Governor will figure out something, if he ever gets back, he said he was just leaving for a minute and he's been gone 3 months

Texas, where damn near half of the US Military is stationed won't suffer too much moving all that stuff to California will they? I mean, let's face it, the Army units there need to move for their own safety, too, the average Texan has more firepower than a mechanized Infantry Regiment.

So sure, you wanna quit funding all this woke, no problem, we just need to make a few adjustments first.

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Wondering Woman's avatar

The city I live in still hasn't recovered from the loss of their local military base. Most of that is due to poor planning, but I've heard that when the base was active, one in 10 people in the city were economically dependent on the base.

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carovee's avatar

Exactly. Take all those military dollars and spend them someplace else.

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Lefty Wright's avatar

Bases in the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and other Southern and Southwestern states are getting too hot in the summer for training safety for some troops.

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