https://archive.li/uexvJ

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.

  • gmtom@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • ineedaunion @lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • PickTheStick@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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…

    • ZombieTheZombieCat@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      “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.

    • books@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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

  • HomebrewHedonist@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    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.

        • TrueStoryBob@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

      • Dicska@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There’s obvious Russian interest in disrupting US society and politics, but they are only able to achieve anything if there is demand for it. And oh boy, there is, unfortunately. The Russians/Chinese can dump all their money into influencing US politics if voters are intelligent and well informed enough to know better. Sadly, this is not the case.

  • TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Going from beloved coach to detested political trash. Way to destroy your legacy.

    • Ferris@discuss.online
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      1 year ago

      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.

          • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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            1 year ago

            They hate them too, don’t forget how fast they turned on the police who arrested jan 6 insurgents

            • Llewellyn@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • rambaroo@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                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.

  • knotthatone@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • teft@startrek.website
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • jonne@infosec.pub
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • GivingEuropeASpook@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • evatronic@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            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.

      • rambaroo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

  • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Ertebolle@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • FlippyOne@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It’s not that the Democrats are happy with the situation, it’s that there aren’t even 16 sane Republicans left.

      • Ertebolle@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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.