The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    The Strange Firing of Maj. Gen. Errol R. Schwartz

    By librewolf on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 1:55am |

    Let me share the strange tale of the firing of Maj. Gen. Errol R. Schwartz who is in charge of the joint forces gathered for the inauguration on Friday.

    Mjr. General SchwartzHe "has spent months" helping with the planning of protection of the President-Elect/President, along with everyone else. In other words, this requires a high degree of coordination. The Washington Post broke the story and gives explicit detail.  Here are the specifics...

    The Mjr. General is in charge  of not only the DC National Guard, but also "5,000 unarmed troops dispatched from across the country to help. He also will oversee military air support protecting Washington during the inauguration."

    The position held by Schwartz is a Presidential appointment, and Schwartz was originally appointed by President George W. Bush. President Obama has continued to appoint him. Where Governors generally appoint the head of the Guard, in DC there is no Governor, so it falls to the President.

    Also, it is customary for all Presidential appointees to submit their resignations for 12:01 on the day of inauguration. In this case, the Trump transition team decided to accept the resignation - as is. In other words, Mjr. General Schwartz will be relieved of duty at 12:01, just at Trump is sworn into office.

    In the interview with the Washington Post Schwartz stated:

    “The timing is extremely unusual,” “My troops will be on the street,” said Schwartz, who turned 65 in October. “I’ll see them off, but I won’t be able to welcome them back to the armory.” He said he would “never plan to leave a mission in the middle of a battle.”

    So all this is weird enough, but Trump also fired the inaugural parade announcer Charlie Brotman who has announced every inauguration since Eisenhower, and replaced him with a high contributing Trump supporter. (This is a sad story with a good ending, but it is not part of this weird tale.)

    Now comes the really weird part. I mean the above raises eyebrows and certainly increases the security risk - IMO.

    So, if you go looking for info on what went down with Mjr. General Schwartz a couple of interesting things pop up near the top of the search results:

    From "Freedom Outpost, Obama Just Fired the Top Commander of the DC National Guard. Huh?

    And from the official "organ" of the Trump administration, Breitbart,  Fake News: Wash Post Changes Story on Trump ‘Firing’ D.C. Nat’l Guard General. Breitbart claims the news is "fake" because: ? Well, they give several possible scenarios for why it is fake, just in case one doesn't work. Schwartz resigned and the team accepted it (no mention on whether this was due to lack of knowledge on the part of the team or not). Then we have the assumed vindictiveness of Schwartz: "The general then ran straight to the media to “argue his case in the press,” as a recent Fox News report noted." Then they claim that the Washington Post edited the story - though there seemed to be the addition of specifics and not a retraction.

    Ok, Obama did not fire Schwartz, as far as we can tell, and the story at the Washington Post was not "fake news." In fact, the story was confirmed in Stars and Stripes.

    As another side note, Schwartz was involved with an organization that also has the backing of President Obama - the Youth Challenge Academy - run by the DC Guard with federal dollars.

    So while the timing of removing Schwartz is very strange, why in the world write all these weird lies about it?

    Comments

    Reactionaries blame everything on "Libtards". Trump and company cannot accept that they made a mistake. They then use their media outlets to create a false story. Trump supporters will believe the fake news. The intended audience for the fake news is his base of supporters. MSM is blind to the lies being told by fake news outlets. One counter MSM could use is to add a snippet of the nonsense being stated by fake news outlets. This gives citizenry a tool to combat the fake news. 


    by rmrd0000 on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 8:03am

    Indeed, it would help if the stuff being thown around as "real" news were shown to be what it is - lies and disinfornation


    by librewolf on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 5:13pm

    I do not know if this factoid fits in here; but there is some 'order' from the PE that after Noon tomorrow, no cops are to wear cameras. hahahahah

    I just have this uneasy feeling that protesters are on their own.

    However, I assume that all the protesters shall have their own cameras available.

    This Beast memo just got to me.

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/19/police-body-cams-shut-down-for-inauguration-and-women-s-march.html


    by Richard Day on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 11:21am

    Well, looks like you are right. This from the ACLU:

    Why Are DC Police Keeping Their Body Cameras Off During Inauguration and the Women’s March?

    So here we go again. This from Breitbart:

    ACLU Warns Police to Turn Body Cams Off During Inauguration Protests but Encourages Activists to Video Cops

    What in the world?????


    by librewolf on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 5:19pm

    He was serving "at the pleasure of President Obama." That would have been on the order so he could remain after he had reached mandatory retirement age.  When I was in the National Guard. mandatory retirement was age 62.  The President kept him on to the end of his term. So the President's term ended at 1200 hours and the Maj. Gen. was "ordered to be removed" at 1201 hours. The order probably was signed by someone from the National Guard Troop Command at the Pentagon because he is now being retired and the incoming President will select a new commander. The person who is second in comand takes over until a commander is selected. Just SOP by the numbers. I was full time NCO E-6 at Battalion level and typed lots of orders. I have seen state AG's retire at the end of a Governor's term. 

    You know there is a big difference between retiring and being fired.  He has served honorably and will enjoy his retirement that he has looked forward to.

    "Fired" is pure BS.   


    by trkingmomoe on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 1:21pm

    Thank you for sharing your interpretation and experience. As I read the various statements of Mjr. General Schwartz, he was not expecting to be removed from command in the middle of the inauguration. He then decided to retire, kind of implying that he would have stayed in the Guard even if he had not been retained as head of the DC Guard.

    No replacement has been announced, but for the inauguration, command will pass to his second in command.


    by librewolf on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 7:44pm

    librewolf, thanks a lot for posting at dagblog. We are enjoying your posts. As a moderator, I also appreciate that your work is well-edited. There's an issue with the photos you've been posting though. The image links point to non-existent locations. I fixed them in the post and the previous one, but I'd like to solve the issue to avoid the problem in future posts. What is your process for adding photos?


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 5:24pm

    I am glad to be here and that people are reading and commenting. 

    A sincere taken you for all of you!

    Thanks for raising the issue of the graphics as I am struggling with them. I have tried linking from my own site in different ways - from a sub-directory, and from the url within my WordPress install. I have also tried linking to graphics within my dropbox account. I have tried copying and pasting the graphic. All ultimately fail. Problematically, the mechanism asks for a url for the graphic rather than allowing you to upload and link the graphic.

    If you would share the appropriate way to include graphics I would sincerely appreciate it.

     


    by librewolf on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 7:53pm

    I just link to the image address for  publicly available images, using the image icon in the editing tool.

    Dropbox's shares don't support remote image linking, I believe. From your own site it should be fine - if you can post a URL to a page with the images on them, we can suggest what the link should look like. For example, the image in your Firing post is 

    http://i1.wp.com/freethoughtblogs.com/cobsweb/wp-content/blogs.dir/103/f... - nothing out of the ordinary, and Wordpress to boot.

    (I believe the ?w=280 is what dagblog software adds to resize the image - with 1 coordinate, the image is scaled the same in both directions; if it adds both w & h dimensions, it can scale differently horizontally & vertically)


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 8:09pm

    Well, at least now I know why I can't figure out how to post any pictures or graphics here.  


    by CVille Dem on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 9:13pm

    Huh? should be simple - rightclick image out on the internet, choose "Copy image address",

    then in the comment editor pick the image pic (sun over the mountains) and past the URL.

    You then may want to adjust the image width to max 520 (if you're going to take up full posting width - otherwise choose smaller like 320). The height should adjust automatically.

    And then save, of course.

    ETA: kinda like Michael already posted just below.(yeah, I read top to bottom)


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 01/20/2017 - 10:54am

    Thanks.   I guess it just works on an actual computer.  I don't get a "copy image address" option on my tablet I think I can do it, but too busy at the moment avoiding watching any commentary on the "events of the day."  Cleaning out my basement seems like a better option if you get my drift.  

    I went our this morning and left my television tuned to an old movie so my cat could watch it and if there is anyone out there checking on who is watching what, I am guiltless.


    by CVille Dem on Fri, 01/20/2017 - 1:41pm

    I'm sorry that you've had trouble with the images. Pasting a url is the easiest way to do it. To fix your images, I just found the version at freethoughtblogs, right-clicked, and selected copy image address. Then I pasted that url into the dialog box that you get when you hit the little mountain-scenery icon above.

    You can upload photos, but it's a little more complicated. When you create/edit a blog post, there's a place to upload files under the edit box. After you upload, copy the url of the uploaded file into the image dialog box, as you would an external url.


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 9:33pm

    Thank you Michael! I'll give that a try. Please do le me know if there are continuing issues. I don't want to increase anyone's workload.


    by librewolf on Thu, 01/19/2017 - 11:58pm