Sen. Tommy Tuberville doubles down after blocking hundreds of military promotions: 'I don't care if they promote anybody'
businessinsider.com
Tuberville, who's singlehandedly blocked hundreds of military promotions in protest over the Pentagon's abortion policies, said he's not going to change his mind and doesn't care that people aren't being promoted.
After the US Supreme Court reversed decades of precedent in overturning its decision in the Roe v. Wade abortion access case in 2022, the Pentagon announced its plan to reimburse service members who need to travel out-of-state to receive abortion services.
Tuberville, a Republican senator out of Alabama, took exception to the decision and said he'd use his power to stymie any military nominations and promotions he could. Since February, he's blocked more than 300 promotions.
What a smug ass. A true representation of his constitutes.
Indeed. He's just as disingenuous, illogical, and pants-shittingly stupid as his voters. All they care about is the tantrum, and it's about fucking time the military learned that the GOP doesn't give a damn about anything except using them as props.
And worse, it's a tantrum about white supremacy, he's punishing the military for trying to push these terrorists out of their ranks.
I think you misspelled piece of shit.
Going from beloved coach to detested political trash. Way to destroy your legacy.
I cant help but to have noticed a lot of places on Lemmy where autocorrect has clearly gone wrong. We need a phone keyboard that produces options and a squiggly when it wants to correct something, maybe. I turned off my autocorrect for that reason, which raises its own set of problems lol.
no offense intended, of course <3
s/constitutes/constituents, likely.
The dems need to plaster this smug fucks face leering over a dead soldiers body with the caption "Because of Republican Inaction. I Wasn't Ready."
These ads write themselves.
Eh, the only reason Doug Jones won in Alabama was because he ran against an admitted pedophile, and that contest was close.
Tuberville knows he can get away with a lot of shit as long as he stays Republican.
It would still suit their national campaign
Eh, how does it connected with abortion policy or blocking military promotions?
There is absolute proof Republicans are anti-military.
God, my memory of them from when I was a kid is such that this would be a scandal in 2004. Do you think they were always like this? I don't.
Conservatives are known to be pro war, but no promilitary and have never been strong supporters of military veterans since Vietnam. In fact most Veterans end up in Govt service because Republican businessmen refuse to hire veterans.
Liberals view the military as a public service, to be used when all else fails. They would view military use for the protection of U.S. interests as necessary but are unlikely to commit a large force to accomplish the mission.
They have always been this way, they pander to the military because too many of us in the military and veterans eat that shit up with a smile, but when it comes time for raises, better housing, lawsuits, the massive rape and harassment problem, the gang problems, pollution, and so many other problems they turn a blind eye to, instead they want to kick out people for being gay.
Remember when Biden was speaking before Congress and mentioned cleaning up the toxic 'burn pits' that have harmed veterans, and MTG and Boebert stood up and started booing him?
I mean those shit monkeys were booing and being trash in general, it was just poor timing for their dumbasses that they started booing about something that actually helps veterans.
Republicans aren't anti-military, just anti-proletarian. Soldiers aren't wealthy people, so fuck'em
At least he's consistent with his party's stance on hating both the military and the US
But Republicans praise the army, don't they?
They praise bills they voted against during ribbon cutting ceremonies
Praise is different than support.
We're talking about hate / do not hate
They hate them too, don't forget how fast they turned on the police who arrested jan 6 insurgents
Is there a way for USA to have more than two political parties?
I think when you have two only it's become unreliable to base any generalised assumption about a party member.
Only with ranked choice voting, otherwise the math our system forces on us makes it impossible. A successful third party will just devour one of the other two within a few years.
GOP: How could Joe Biden do this to our troops?
You mean “why would Hunter’s laptop do this?”
He's an ass, but this isn't single-handed. He only has this power because his fellow Republicans (and Manchin, and probably Sinema) are allowing it. If a handful of Republicans wanted to fix this, they absolutely could.
From an NPR article:
Why don't the Senate leaders stop him?
The current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has made it clear he considers Tuberville's blockade an abuse and an outrage. The GOP's McConnell has also said he does not support the "blanket hold" on military nominations. Both have acknowledged the pleas coming from the Pentagon and from the ranks, and they have done what they could to encourage Tuberville to stand down.
But the leaders cannot simply bulldoze the senator from Alabama. Their power is restrained by Senate rules and traditions and by the sentiments of their respective caucuses.
If the issue here were an ordinary piece of legislation, the leaders would seek a unanimous consent agreement that would bring that matter to the floor. Individual senators may object to that with a notice that they seek "extended debate" on that legislation. This is an implicit threat to filibuster, and the majority leader routinely files a cloture petition and holds a vote.
If cloture fails, the legislation does not go to the floor. If three-fifths of the Senate supports cloture, the legislation can be brought to the floor with time limits on debate.
Presidential nominations have been largely exempt from this since 2013 when a Democratic Senate majority decided only nominations to the Supreme Court would be subject to filibusters. In 2017, a Republican majority decided to extend that exemption to include Supreme Court nominations.
Nonetheless, Tuberville's maneuver has the effect of freezing confirmations for the current backlog presidential nominations because they are submitted in batches for group consideration and approval. The batching procedure itself requires unanimous consent, allowing even one senator to stand in the way.
The Senate majority leader could bring the nominations to the floor one by one for consideration by regular procedure, but that would require two to three days for each. Had the Senate tried to individually process even the first 150 promotions Tuberville blocked back in February, it could have done little else in the months since – and it would still be far behind on confirmations. That is scarcely practical when the military alone submits hundreds a year and the larger executive branch far more.
Moreover, just as the Pentagon bristles at having a single senator dictate its personnel policy, so the Senate leaders are loath to have individual senators deciding when and if the Senate can proceed with normal business using its usual procedures – such as the batching of nominations.
Translation: there's nothing really stopping us from going around Tuberville, but we feel the senate's stupid arcane rules are more important than national security and having responsible people in charge if Trump tries to do a coup again.
Literally. Oh, it's too long to do it one by one? Maybe prioritize then? Confirm 2-3 of the biggest promotions in order to prevent the Senate from abdicating it's Constitutional responsibility and ceding control of the military entirely to the executive.
I really don't care about US military readiness but I do value checks and balances, and right now the Senate is refusing to serve as one.
You know what happens when I have a lot of work to do and not enough time in the workday? I stay late. I work weekends. I drink a lot of coffee and get that shit done.
"It takes too long"? Fuck you, keep the Senate in session and do nomination after nomination until these geriatric fucks pass out.
Seriously! If I worked the same way these idiots do, my entire organization would grind to a halt.
.......oooohhhhhhhhhh
Republicans are the biggest batch of corrupt pussies I've seen in my fucking life.
How the fuck does it take two or three days to promote one person? Holy shit the Senate is such a useless organization.
I can't believe they're tolerating this unacceptable shit in the name of decorum. The Senate needs to be eliminated as an institution.
I believe that there is an active conspiracy to destroy the USA from within and this is proof of that. Follow the money and you'll uncover who is behind it. My guess, China, Russia and maybe some Oligarchs around that.
Don't forget the Saudis
Now for this it would preachers. Find his donor list
And, not a mention of Mossad and Israel? C'mon man
Why would Isreal want to destroy their biggest international aid donor?
Yeah, Israeli intelligence services attempting to nerf the USA in any way makes about as much sense as New Zealand conspiring against Australia or the DRK dealing the PRC a bad hand. Aren't we the ones keeping Israel's tactical nuke program an unofficial one with like blocking UN votes or something? Israel has nukes, so do the Saudis, but like internationally it's like unrecognized because US foreign policy won't acknowledge it.
If the dems were smart they would use this to campaign to military people, along with the dozens of things Trump has done to piss them off.
But the dems are physically incapable of advertising themselves to the Republic core audience, while simultaneously harping on about compromise and reaching across the ilse.
I doubt most military people care. Those positions are being filled by acting commanders until people are promoted to fill them permanently, in most cases by the people nominated to fill them. They aren't just vacant.
Retired military here, and I just can't get too worked up over someone filling that position is getting 2-star pay instead of 3-star pay, or Colonel pay instead of 1-star pay.
It sucks if you are the one in line for a promotion though. To have all your hard work go to waste for some stupid political issue unrelated to you
Yeah that's the thing here. Congress promotes officers. The enlisted corp ain't gonna give a flying fuck. Promotion rates for enlisted have been shit for a couple years now
And forecast to remain shit for at least the next 4 years.
Every time I say something "extreme" I am bombarded by people who think taking the high road is the answer while the GOP would literally sell them into slavery or beat them to death with baseball bats for fun.
Perhaps we can create a new extreme sport of beating yourself with a baseball bat, and advertise it exclusively in areas where mind rot has bloomed in the population. Oh, wait...
That's what politicians and bootlickers deserve. Like you.
The Dems honestly feel like controlled opposition
Pretty poorly controlled seeing as they have control over 2/3rds of the government
Not really. They don't control the senate, nit least because of thr 2 DINOs
"Republicans did something fucking stupid that's bad for their constituents."
"Oh but but the dems..."
This is why there's those posts asking how many Russian bots have made it to Lemmy.
What?
I mean, why not just make YouTube ads for them? Should be easy enough to grab snippets, add audio voice over and put them on the Internet and target red leaning people
Ironically, this is one thing Biden excels at.
Why are other republicans quiet on this one? Why they don’t tell Tubertool to fuck himself and vote on those promotions?
Entire GOP is complicit in destroying the military preparedness. Republicans all are harming the armed forces, Tubertool is just a tool they are using.
Because someone is undermining the ability of the Biden administration to do things, and when it is reported most people will juat blame Biden instead of paying attention to the actual problem.
Not doing anything benefits the Republicans.
Well that would require telling their fellow Russian assets to stop harming the U.S. and we can't have that!
Because no republicans currently in office have any reason to attack him since they aren't running against him.
And because I'm sure this both saves the government a couple nickels and them a couple approvals.
This absolutely does not save the government/taxpayers any money, quite the opposite. When they lose qualified staff to attrition over bullshit like this, it's very expensive to replace them. And given enough time, it will start to impact military readiness across the board, if it hasn't already.
Oh of course, it's similar to continuously repaving roads every twenty years using materials that cost half as much as those that last a century. You "save money" on the budgets that you sign. Consequences be damned.
He's stalling until Trump is elected, then push through the white supremacists.
Hopefully he's kept waiting and then voted out himself.
In Alabama? We have as much chance as someone in the leftmost portion of Manchin's penumbra being elected in WV.
Alabamaian here. We're mostly all pissed at this clown. Alabama was a front runner to get the space Force command from Colorado. Recently the Biden administration elected to keep it in Colorado. The local scuttlebutt was this move was at least partially retaliation for Tuberville's nonsense.This angered a lot of big money interests in Alabama, especially in Huntsville, which is a city built off the back of the military industrial complex.
Tuberville fucked around and will likely find out on this one. My guess is big money interests will at least attempt to primary him with a more .... coachable.... republican candidate.
Yes, most likely. Hopefully all this hating on the armed forces comes back to bite them.
Lol. Alabama is the last place where anyone not an R has even a snowballs chance in hell. The democratic party basically doesn't even bother to try in AL since they know their money and effort is better spent elsewhere.
The one place that might be slightly more Republican is Mississippi, but that's about it
Republicans are just domestic terrorists
Maybe we should just draft this fucker and send him on a Middle East deployment as a private.
Wow, he looks as much like a smug cunt as he acts.
He’s leaning into that look so much, he looks like the bad guy from a children’s movie.
I wonder what his constituency thinks. I mean, the ones with more than 2 brain cells to rub together. Surely his phones should be ringing off the hook. I know he doesn't care but I hope there's some noise being made
He hates the people they hate. That’s more important to them than supporting the military, which they claim to do.
He's from Alabama if that answers your question. Congress is on summer recess, he's been back in Alabama at various events, and the reports I've seen is that he's had a hero's welcome.
In Alabama the only shot a Dem has of winning in a Senate seat is of the Republican is a literal pedophile, and even then just barely as we've seen. A Republican Senator's only real risk is a primary from the right. This kind of bullshit plays well with the Republican base. So here we are.
Dems need to force this issue, either hold a vote to change the rule allowing quick passage of promotions, or start having 20 hour a day sessions 7 days a week to vote on each promotion individually. All this complaining about Tubberville and the harm he's causing the military only plays into his hand of allowing him to cast himself as the lone warrior against the godless woke whatever the fuck.
They apparently don't even care that he doesn't even live in Alabama. It's also very telling when a man insists on being referred to as "coach" instead of "senator".
Coach as in, "Coach, I have a cramp in my leg right here. No, not there. A little higher." That kind of coach?
You might be thinking of Jim Jordan.
That's Gym Jordan to you, son.
That kind of coach
Tommy Tuberville sounds like some kind if ringmaster to a potato circus
Haha very accurate
Now that it's impacting military readiness the executive has made it possible for those awaiting promotion to act in the role that they will eventually have. So, effectively, what Tuberville is doing is removing Senate oversight from the process. It's a self-own and he's super proud of it.
If you don't hate this guy enough, go to his wikipedia page and look at the section about his charity
Fuck were you right , Tuberville is such a corrupt piece of trash, he's easily the George Santos of football coaches.
god i need some eyebleach after skimming through that wiki article...
We’re all aware that republicans don’t give a fuck about optics but this is a really bad look for them. Tommy Teletubbie is truly trying to destroy America for the sake of Trump and Russia and Republicans are letting him do it.
Remove this this stupid fuck from office.
Man pledges to continue destroying lives, 300 already claimed.
What a stupid and fucking disgusting hill to die on. This guy was just a fucking football coach and now this rosacea ridden mother fucker is holding our military back. Fuck him and fuck the gop.
Don't make fun of medical conditions. Plenty of people have rosacea and shouldn't be shamed for it. He's got plenty of actually bad qualities that we can focus on.
Fair point.
I absolutely hate Petey PotatoTown
I was enlisted in the Navy back in the 80's.
I knew from then, if an officer was not promoted on a regular basis they were, I think, asked to resign. This guy is not only slapping officers in the face, he is actually reducing the number of officers in the military.
Yes, my dad was career military, and he explained to me that the practice was informally called "up or out".
I saw a documentary about navy pilots and one guy had been flying as a captain for like 40 years.
Sounds like a real Maverick to me
Presumably they'd make an exception for this sort of bullshit?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who's singlehandedly blocked hundreds of military promotions in protest over the Pentagon's abortion policies, said he's not going to change his mind and doesn't care that people aren't being promoted.
After the US Supreme Court reversed decades of precedent in overturning its decision in the Roe v. Wade abortion access case in 2022, the Pentagon announced its plan to reimburse service members who need to travel out-of-state to receive abortion services.
Tuberville, a Republican senator out of Alabama, took exception to the decision and said he'd use his power to stymie any military nominations and promotions he could.
Appearing on the podcast "The Kimberly Guilfoyle Show" on Thursday, Tuberville doubled down on his promise because the White House and Pentagon have refused to change the policy.
Speaking with CNN's Kaitlan Collins in July, Tuberville said "there is nobody more military than me" and noted he wouldn't be blocking promotions if he thought it affected military readiness or recruitment.
As Tuberville downplays the situation, Pentagon officials have said that the hundreds of military vacancies has created "unnecessary and unprecedented" risks for the country.
The original article contains 233 words, the summary contains 185 words. Saved 21%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This wouldn't be that hard to fix - would only need 16 Republicans to join every Democrat in passing a temporary rules change to eliminate the ability for any one senator to block UC requests for military promotions; could automatically expire at the end of this Congress, so it wouldn't be permanent, and they could still block it them with 2 senators if there was any particular promotion they had a problem with.
So part of me suspects that the Democrats are just as happy to have this in their pockets, because if there's some sort of election-threatening military setback in 2024, now they can blame it on the GOP and Tuberville.
It’s not that the Democrats are happy with the situation, it’s that there aren’t even 16 sane Republicans left.
Sane, no, but sufficiently rah-rah troops / in the pocket of defense contractors to care about getting military promotions through in a timely fashion, yes, I think there are.
Republicans operate in lockstep, getting one to break ranks and side with Democrats on anything is next to impossible, even when keeping in step would actively harm the Republican Party. If even one member of the party takes a stand on something, no matter the reason, the rest of the party backs them completely.