December 7, 2020

Biden Set to Name Non-Democrat Non-Civilian as Secretary of Defense

General Lloyd Austin in 2016, shortly before his retirement from the Army.Tampa Bay Times via ZUMA

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Oh man, I hate this so much:

I have literally never heard of Lloyd Austin before now, so obviously I have nothing personal against him. But there are two problems here. First, civilians should ultimately control the Pentagon. Trump broke this tradition with James Mattis and Biden should have firmly reestablished it. Second, a Democratic president should appoint Democrats to lead the Defense Department. Not Bill Cohen. Not Robert Gates. Not Chuck Hagel. And not Lloyd Austin. Democrats need to stop feeding the longtime Republican insinuation that people can’t trust the Mommy Party to run our wars.

This is not the biggest thing in the world. It’s just a longtime pet peeve of mine. If Democrats won’t stand up for civilian Democrats to run the Pentagon, who will?

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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