Pentagon officials have been frustrated for months over an Alabama senator’s blockade of more than 300 senior military nominations. But after the Marine Corps chief was hospitalized over the weekend, that frustration is turning into rage.
Gen. Eric Smith had been filling both the No. 1 and No. 2 Marine Corps posts from July until he was finally confirmed as commandant in September. He, along with more than 300 other senior officers, was swept up in the promotions blockade put in place by GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville in protest of the Pentagon’s abortion travel policy.
In an interview Wednesday, Tuberville brushed off the comments from the DOD officials.
“They’re looking for someone to blame it on, other than themselves,” he said. “We could have all these people confirmed if they’d have just gone by the Constitution.
“I don’t listen to these people,” he added. “They’re just looking for any possible way to get themselves out of a jam.”
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Yeah, they should do nothing more than approve these nominations as tubbyville wants instead of doing THEIR ACTUAL JOBS legislating.
Man, this take is dumb as a box of bricks.
What legislating? With the House in the other Party’s control the Senate isn’t going to be doing much other than voting against bullshit.
Everything about how the US government functions is based entirely on the idea that everyone acts in good faith. There is no real mechanism for dealing with those who abuse the system. Sadly, over 250 years, nobody has tried to fix this. Our system is broken but working just as designed.
There are actually plenty of ways the majority party of both houses of congress can deal with “bad faith” actors. For one, the majority party could just say that the minority party doesn’t get to vote on anything, or conduct any congressional business at all. Straight up denying the minority party any influence whatsoever. This would be 100% constitutional and since both houses of congress define their own rules for how they run themselves, any collection of people that have 50+1 votes is free to do this.
However you are correct that the system is working as designed. Capitalism doesn’t care if you vote red or blue, as long as they get to choose the candidates and that’s why things like this that have obvious legal answers somehow can’t ever get done. Yet billions for the defense industry, or the oil industry can be passed with hardly a debate.
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LOL you apparently haven’t paid attention to the last 30 years or so.
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I agree. Schumer as much as admitted that he refused to bring the promotions to the floor because the Dems was to apply political ressure to Tuberville. They want the Republicans to look bad, and get tagged as opposing our armed forced. They let the Tommy Tumor grow and fester and now it’s unmanageable. They could have been bypassing him for months.
It’s never a Republican’s fault. Always. Everyone else’s around them. There may be more democrats could do. But this falls squarely on Tubervils shoulder.
Let me tell you the story of the scorpion and the frog.
The scorpion wants to punish women for having sex because he believes that if he is cruel enough, he gets to hang out with his invisible friend, who happens to be the creator of the universe, after the scorpion dies.
The frog could stop the scorpion from making people suffer, but the frog needs votes and donations to stay in power, and nothing motivates donors and voters like hatred. The woodland creatures who support the frog hate the scorpion, so the frog ignores the scorpion while complaining that there’s nothiny he can do.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/11/01/politics/schumer-tuberville-military-nominations/index.html
I neve said it wasn’t Tuberville’s fault. I’m frustrated that the Senate Democrats didn’t just go around him because they wanted the political pressure to grow.
Storytelling is not your thing.
Perhaps not.
I actually thought it was an interesting take on an old parable. The frog might actually be another scorpion though. And the woodland creatures secretly support both scorpions to ensure that neither one stings them.
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The problem is they needed to fast track 100s because of the lack of effort from the last admin. What tuberville is doing is unprecedented. Now instead of taking the time to deal with bigger issues he’s made the one sure thing, politicians unified support of the military, into a weapon of the minority. Schumer was hoping the Senate leaders could contain him but there is no one can control the GOP anymore. Tubberville’s true purpose was to break the government and if Schumer breaks and does them individually then the tirade will have worked and say goodbye to anything getting done in reasonable times. Now you need a supermajority to even approve environmental issues that save lives! Schumer’s only fault was to not change the Senate rules immediately after tub’s protest but he is old guard and they worry more about new precedents then using the power they have.
Schumer can’t make those changes with Manchin and Sinema in the picture. They are just as actively holding things back as Tuberville.
Really cool that our blue party of capital always has some rotating villains they can point to. Also I’m sure if you lived in W Virginia or Arizona would be voting for both of those two and scolding those that didn’t.
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You mean drop all the rest of their senatorial duties because one self righteous shitbag from Alabama thinks the military is “woke”?
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I dunno you seemed awfully ready to blame democrats for not dropping all other Senate business. To hold hundreds of cloture votes to work through the backlog of better part of a decade. Which is a bit of a ridiculous ask. When it would make much more sense for A. the Republicans to a do their job or for B. Ranking Republicans to do their job and revoke his committee status. Replacing him with another Republican willing to do the job.
Because let’s be clear here. Someone who would seek to blame democrats for not doing something to resolve this. Would just as disingenuously blame democrats for dropping all the actual things they were supposed to be doing just to take care of all the things one senator has blocked. Because it’s not just one senator. It’s all Republicans. They could replace Tuberville on any committee if they wanted to. They don’t want to.
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There’s a thought experiment about babies in a river. Do you save each baby as it floats down the river, or do you go upriver to stop them from throwing babies in?
If you choose to stay, are you enabling the baby throwers?
If you go, are you consigning all the babies that are thrown to death while you search?
It’s not black and white. There’s no good solution when bad actors are doing bad things. A coordinated response would be great, but at the same time, this is a constant problem. It’s not like Democrats haven’t been trying to get “reasonable republicans” to handle their own shit for decades. It’s not like republicans won’t have another mole pop up after this one gets whacked back into his hole.
Ok, but what if you stand on the side of the river and call everyone over to watch them throw babies in the river because it makes you look better by comparison? If you honestly believe there are any “reasonable Republicans” you haven’t been paying attention.
I used quotes around that because I do not believe it.
But a bunch of idiots do, and politicians have to have some backing from those idiots, so even though everyone knows these people are shills and grifters, they have to pay lip service to the idea that they’ll do the reasonable thing, and hope that eventually cultists start dropping out and realizing they’ve been duped.
You can lead a horse to water and all that.
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The GOP could kick Tuberville out. But they won’t so they are part of the problem
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The dems could also just confirm these hundreds of people unilaterally in a single batch, but they won’t so they are the actual problem.
This is a troll post from someone trying to push disinformation.
I’m a troll? Fuck off.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/11/01/politics/schumer-tuberville-military-nominations/index.html
The Senate Democrats have been allowing the backlog to grow for months, for the stated reason of adding political pressure on Tuberville.
Here’s an article from September where they admit they can bypass Tuberville.
Here’s an article from July where they admit they don’t want to bypass Tuberville because it wouldn’t be expedient.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said that holding up the promotion of military leaders, most of whom have dedicated their lives to protecting the country, “is one of the most abominable and outrageous things I have ever seen in this chamber, witnessed by the fact that no one has ever had the temerity, the gall to do this before.”
And yet he’s done fuck all about it, because it would take “months” to do with floor votes. He said that 4 months ago.
Tuberville is the villain here, there’s no doubt. He’s a loathesome piece of shit that demeans the office he holds.
Chuck Schumer is the Senate Majority Leader. Where is the leadership? Where is the majority? They don’t need the House at all, they can confirm Biden’s nominees and promotions all say long. It’s not like they’ve been busy, what with the catastrophe that is the House of Representatives. This is the one thing they could be doing, and they haven’t because not doing it makes Republicans look worse than they do. It’s craven politics, and it’s a waste of my vote. They’re going to lose the Senate in the next election, and it won’t matter that Biden keeps the White House. He’ll be the first president in history to spend 8 years as a lame duck.
Fucking neoliberal bullshit.
LOL I didn’t and won’t read your reply (not worth the time). It’s pretty clear that I hit close to home.
You’re right. You got me riled up. You didn’t present an argument, attacked me personally, and then refused to engage or defend your accusations.
But I’m the troll.
You’re right! I didn’t present an argument to you. I wasn’t talking to you. I was warning others to ignore you.
Fuck off, troll.
Okay, so, first off, I want to remind everyone that Tuberville is a Christian Nationalist who believes that God sent Trump to save America. He objected to Biden’s win in January 6th, and still says that Trump won.
With that in mind, no matter what happens with the military promotions, Tuberville will always be happy. Right now (and even if he eventually loses), he can claim that he’s owning the libs. He likes that, and he’ll ride that forever - in his mind, this is a good outcome and he’s not going to stop. This is now his signature, defining issue.
Until the next Senate gets sworn in, there are three ways this can go. First off, the Senate caves and Tuberville gets to start pushing his religious ideology onto the US military - huge win for him!
But the other ways it can go (either everything remains blocked, or only a limited number make it past him) also have a less obvious win: he’s holding up promotions. Which seems obvious, but keep in mind that this is the exact same bullshit McConnell did to Obama on federal judges - and that as soon as Trump took office, they took off the brakes and rammed the judges through as fast as they could.
That’s exactly what’s going to happen the next time the Republicans get control of the Senate - they’re going to speed-promote every right-wing officer they see, and slow-walk anyone they’re not sure of.
When the next insurrection comes - and you can be sure that it will - the military is going to have a proto-fascist core.
There is one other thing that could be done…but won’t be.
Qui tacet consentire videtur ubi loqui debuit ac potuit. “He who is silent, when he ought to have spoken and was able to, is taken to agree.”
If they simply decided to adopt a silence gives consent rule for the Senate’s role of advice and consent for all appointments, they would no longer be able to obstruct by simply holding off on things. The senate could still deny consent by voting against a candidate and explicitly not confirming them, but doing nothing would automatically become consent and pass unopposed.
This is what Obama should have done with Merrick Garland, not to mention all those other federal judge appointments. Simply go ‘okay, you’re not voting on it, which means you’re silent, which means you consent. All appointments approved!’
Edit: Although truthfully the idea that the Senate needs to confirm every military promotion is so insanely stupid that I can’t understand how it’s ever become the standard. The only reason Tuberville can do this is because these promotions are usually passed behind the scenes with unanimous consent - he can’t actually block them…he can just make them be voted on. And yet, the volume of promotions means that simply voting on them would take up all of the Senate’s time. The Senate really should only need to confirm the highest levels, not every single promotion in the entire military.
Jfc let me off this ride
They love the troops until they don’t.
They love that saying they love the troops gets them support.
They don’t care about the troops either way
Hint: they never do, they just use them in their campaign ads.
“They’re looking for someone to blame it on, other than themselves,” he said.
The pot calling the kettle black.
Any single senator could do this kind of hold up for anything that goes by unanimous consent.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_hold
The original intent of these sections was to protect a senator’s right to be consulted on legislation that affected the senator’s state or in which a senator had a great interest. The ability to place a hold would allow that senator an opportunity to study the legislation and to reflect on its implications before moving forward with further debate and voting.
Holds, like filibusters, can be defeated through a successful cloture motion. However, the time required to bring around a cloture vote often allows fewer than 40 senators to block unimportant legislation when the majority is not willing to force the vote.
So yes, Senator Tuberville is filibustering, but the real story is that the majority of the senate doesn’t care enough about the military nominations to cloture it.
How is he filibustering? I honestly don’t know how he is able to do this and am trying to learn.
These aren’t even being brought up, right? So, there’s nothing to filibuster.
I just learned about it today. From the wiki, a Senate hold basically means you do not provide your consent to bring the matter before the Senate. Senate has bylaws, saying that all matters brought before the Senate must be unanimously agreed upon to be brought forward. To provide all senators time to be acquainted with the matter, do research, timeliness etc.
So this senator is withholding their consent for this matter to come before the Senate, effectively infinitely delaying it.
The Senate can, with a majority vote, bring the matter to the Senate anyway through the second method, but that requires more coordination and agreement…
So net net, it’s a kind of filibuster, and you can bust it but you need a majority
I believe you need 60, not just a majority.
You only need simple majority to change the rules so that a simple majority can push these nominations through. In fact the republican party did exactly that in 2013 and 2017 and got their judges pushed through.
This was a rule that Republicans put through. You no longer have to actually filibuster. You only need to say that you are filibustering and the Senate just assumes that you did and moves on.
At what point do they admit it’s a national security issue and do something about it?
That’s fascism bro. The reasons for Tuberville’s blocking are shit, but the fact that he can do that is working as intended. If the dems wanted to do something about it, they could act like a real political party for once and remove Tuberville from the armed forces chair, or equivalent that is allowing him to block the nominations.
If you just want “the military” to do “something” about the problematic senator then you are a piece of shit.
- Republicans do a bad thing.
- Democrats don’t stop the Republicans.
- It is the Democrats fault the bad thing is happening.
Fucking top tier logic right there.
Do you not think the dems have the ability to stop the republicans? Because they absolutely do. But rather then use the power they have, they’d rather “play politics.”
Yeah let’s play politics with a party that cheats, try to make a coup, doesn’t respect democracy, force push extremists inside their own party, say extremists are good people.
We should also engage in mediations with Kim Jong Un to tell him he’s not very nice and send a cookie of peace to Putin to melt his heart.
I have no idea why Schumer does that, but apparently if you ask why the democrats don’t use power they have and suggest that they do use the power they have instead, that breaks brains.
You can’t just magically waive a wand and “stop the Republicans.” And Democrats are working to solve this problem but this doesn’t happen overnight. How exactly are the Dems “playing politics?”
But none of that really matters to the point of your bad faith argument, because this problem would immediately go away if Tuberville stopped being an asshat. Pointing at the Democrats for not fixing Republican caused problems is asinine political style victim blaming.
The Senate, like the house, are allowed to set their own rules and even change the rules they have based on a simple majority vote. If Schumer and party wanted to, they could immediately not allow Tuberville to block the confirmations. They could also immediately confirm all pending confirmations and kick all members of the minority party off of all committees. All of this is legal, all of this is within the Democrats power right now just as it was “several months ago.”
As far as how the democrats are playing politics, from the article you linked:
Democrats had previously resisted moving ahead on the nominations to apply political pressure on the Alabama Republican but in the face of the Israel-Hamas war, the war in Ukraine and the hospitalization of a top military commander, they reversed course.
If you are “applying political pressue” you are playing politics, when instead you could literally just do it since they control the senate.
The Democrats, by themselves, can’t bypass the block. Any senator, regardless of which committees they’re on, can put a hold on legislation. It’s called a senatorial hold and it’s difficult to bypass, because while the majority leader can call the vote anyway, the holding senator can just filibuster, which requires a 2/3 majority to break, and then nothing will get done.
The good news is that even other Republican senators are getting tired of his shit:
When we rant and rave about things we don’t understand, we accomplish nothing but to appear foolish.
The filibuster can be ended by a simple majority to change the rules of the filibuster. This 2/3rd bullshit is an excuse people use to cope with why the democrats are a useless party. The filibuster exists because of Senate rules and they absolutely create bills all the time that can’t be filibustered, this could easily be the same. Or maybe they could even use it to pass good legislation like codifying roe v wade, or universal healthcare or something crazy like that.
Have you read this article? Particularly this sentence?
Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the United States Senate allows the Senate to vote to limit debate by invoking cloture on the pending question.
So that rule, rule 22, can be amended by a simple majority of the senate. Additionally any bill/law/resolution/etc can have a “no fillibusters” provision applied to it. As the democrats are the majority party, they have the ability to do those things.
When we rant and rave about things we don’t understand, we accomplish nothing but to appear foolish.
Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the United States Senate allows the Senate to vote to limit debate by invoking cloture on the pending question. In most cases, however, this requires a majority of three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn (60 votes if there is no more than one vacancy),[3]: 15–17 so a minority of senators can block a measure, even if it has the support of a simple majority. In practice, most bills cannot pass the Senate without the support of at least 60 senators.
…but clearly I didn’t know who I was talking with. You obviously know more about politics than anyone here, and since I can never hope to reach your level, I bow down to your experience.
Yes the rules AS CURRENTLY WRITTEN require that. Those rules can also be RE-Written which is exactly what I said to begin with! If you keep reading under the constitutional basis you will see:
Through negative textual implication, the Constitution also gives a simple majority the power to set procedural rules.
Procedural rules such as the above rule, can be rewritten with a simple majority.
In fact not only am I telling you it works that way, it HAS actually worked that way!
Notably, in 2013 and 2017, the Senate used the nuclear option to set a series of precedents that reduced the threshold for cloture on nominations to a simple majority.[5]: 3
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Sorry “liberal” I must have scratched you.
That’s fascism bro.
No.
Actually yes. If the military decides to overturn the senate because of “national security” that is fascism.
That is called a military coup.
Oh I guess if the military does something to collapse the government it can’t be Fascism. Good job.
Military overthrowing the government isn’t part of the definition of fascism. It is the definition of a coup d’état.
Fascism is a political ideology not an action.
Sure, a takeover could lead to a fascist government. But it could also lead to a socialist, communist, conservative or monarchy or even liberal government.
other forms of government, such as a dictatorship, democracy, junta-led
authoritarian political
Yea I agree there, fair point. If a military overthrows a government it doesn’t HAVE to lead to fascism. But in this case, where the US military itself is ignoring the US congress, the US could only be described as an overtly fascist government since the veil would be lifted at that point.
The paths of power have many blocks. If I were from Tuberville’s state, I would be looking at how retaliation against Tuberville affects my state. Remember when Christie blocked a highway to a neighboring state, with a pretend maintenance? Oopsie, it was his underlings that did it.
/$
I, for one, support Tommy Tubman in his efforts to destroy the US military. Why the fuck do y’all want any of these nominations to pass?
Tommy even put a marine in the hospital! Based.
I support it too, but I dont’ like cowardly democrats supporting it via inaction. They should be active and vocal in their opposition of the US Military.
