FINALLY! Tuberville Stops Blocking Military Promotions

This is a breaking story and while it’s great news it’s not over. Not yet. Still we’ve learned that after so many months of disrupting not just military officer’s (and their family’s) lives AND damaging our National Security Senator Tub-O-Lard, aka Tommy Tuberville has largely relented. He has agreed to allow hundreds of key, top-level military promotions to move forward. You can read a few more details in this report from NBC News.  It seems that all but eleven of the blocked promotions can now be approved by the Senate. Hopefully Schumer will be able to get them all approved en masse this week. That remains to be seen but signs are hopeful at least.

However this whole mess should NEVER have happened in the first place. Much less be allowed to fester as long as it did. It’s a disgrace. It was a massive abuse of “Senatorial Prerogative” and a quite real threat to National Security despite what self-professed “military expert because my dad served in WWII” Tuberville claimed.

Senator Tommy, the former college football coach who since one of his stops was Auburn University in Alabama parlayed that state’s outsized love of college football into a seat in the United States Senate. Drunk with the power he suddenly held he decided to pick an issue that he figured would so endear him to Alabama voters that he could keep his seat for as long as he wanted. That issue was abortion. Now, I’ve said before that during his decades as a college football coach Tuberville both as an assistant and as a head coach had multiple instances of a player saying “Uh… Coach? I’ve got a problem. Can you help out?” and that problem was the player had gotten some gal pregnant and needed help quietly arranging and/or paying for an abortion.

If Tuberville claims he never facilitated any players getting their girlfriends (or one-night stands) abortions I’ll call him a goddamned liar to his smug face! He did, and even when he wasn’t the main mover and shaker especially as a head coach he was aware of and countenanced it. But down there in “Alabamy” the folks like to pretend they are super moral “Christians” even though things like divorce, teen pregnancy and all sorts of out-of-wedlock pregnancies happen all the time. Funny how in bible belt states the rates of such things are usually higher than in blue states but I digress.

Tuberville figured voters would hail him for seizing on a way to exploit the SCOTUS ruling overturning Roe v Wade. Red states had been eagerly awaiting the ruling and were frothing at the mouth to clamp down. Including making it impossible for women to obtain abortion services in their states but even to travel elsewhere to get one. As it happens Alabama is home to some military installations. Members of our armed forces stationed there are assigned there. Some are happy to go, but many might have preferred a different duty station. The thing is, while someone can make their preferences known in the end the decision isn’t theirs. You report for duty where your orders say to report and that’s that.

If you happen to be a woman, or even a man who’s married to or has a female partner in life and an unwanted pregnancy occurs CHOICE still exists in some places. Not Alabama but in some places. So the DOD implemented a policy that service members in a state like Alabama could travel where they needed to in order to obtain abortion services and the govt. would provide leave and travel expenses. Tuberville decided to turn this policy into his personal hobby-horse. It was bad enough when he first started holding up high level promotions but the number kept growing. And growing. Literally into hundreds of high level officers being unable to report to new duty stations they’d been promoted to.

This in turn held up a whole slew of OTHER promotions and changes in duty assignments/stations as people slated to move into the positions vacated by the newly promoted top officers couldn’t move into their slots. And those below them couldn’t move in theirs and down the line. The ripple effects on our military are far ranging. Much more so than the over four hundred officers caught up directly in Senator Tub-O-Lards crusade.

Let’s not forget the direct and quite personal impact on those who because they were stationed in Alabama faced extra difficult and expense to obtain an abortion suffered. Even for junior officers travel expenses can take quite a bite out of their bank accounts. For enlisteds? It might have been the difference between being able to access abortion services or being forced to carry a pregnancy to term. And even a perfectly healthy baby affects careers and families in ways that aren’t always positive.

But for now, call your Senators. Especially if like me you are stuck with one or more Republican ones. (I live in NC and am stuck with two!) and tell them to get these promotions approved NOW. And, if they or anyone else is thinking of “backing up” Tuberville by raising an objection to any one of them rain holy hell down on them.

We still have the problem of Four Star officer’s promotions remaining on hold. Hell, it took a special effort to get a new Commandant for my Marine Corps approved, and he wound up having a heart attack. And there’s no Assistant Commandant to fill in because of Tuberville. Oh, Tuberville had the f**king nerve to mock the Commandant for having a heart attack, equating the extra long days he put in as a football coach (still a CHOICE on his part) to the life and death duties of the head of a branch of our Armed Forces who with our country involved in so much had to do TWO jobs instead of just one!

Still, the number of promotions still on “hold” might within a few days be reduced to eleven. A manageable number. I’m sure GOPer will find ways to raise objections to at least a few of them for “reasons” by which I mean just to be dickish. However, if I’m not mistaken Schumer can use Senate rules to go ahead and force debate on each one and even if only one or two can be approved each day it can get done. It NEEDS to get done.

Without the U.S. two major U.S. allies involved in very hot wars will be hampered in their ability to prevail. It’s already impacted things. I suspect part of what got Tuberville to back down was voters back home who as “Christians” support Israel started giving him grief. Whatever. The important thing is that after ten months Tuberville has finally backed down.

One final note. I have MSNBC on and Katy Tur is talking to a Congressional correspondent who says Schumer is hoping he can hold a vote to approve the promotions as early as this afternoon. So if you haven’t called your Senators then get on the phone right now!