90 Comments
Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

We can, however take Ole Miss out of the senate, as GQP MAGA ‘listless vessels’ like Tuberville have already broken their oath to We The People 🌊 Vote like it’s 1973!

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That would be nice, yes. He's not up for election for two more years, alas.

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Plus, he apparently lives in Florida.

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

‘No Person shall be a Senator…who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.’ ✍🏻

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

I wonder who enforces this rule? The State who elected him or the Senate?

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True, apparently! MAGA has become the effective machine that republicans have been after for decades. A fool and loser through his life, tRump is a maniacal narcissist who has unleashed the upside down, destructive code that is undoing an imperfect democracy in place since its beginnings. With a new vocabulary to boot. A criminal is an understatement! He’s unleashed a mutation with a new viral code. And this guy, “Tube” is in the bull’s-eye. Diabolical. This installment is discomfiting, yet important. We should all share it. And a concise, pointed, comment. Thanks!

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I can't tell is Tubs is dumb enough to be a true believer, or if he's just really cynical. Although it doesn't really matter. He betrayed America just like he betrayed Ole Miss.

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Haha! Personally I like the dumbest option. However I’m a cynic and what he’s doing is serious, anti-American, as you say. The name is good, except he’s not tubby. We all trust your instincts. 😉

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Apparently in Alabama, you're allowed to serve in the Senate with a very minimal amount of time living in the state. If Alabamans want that, that's on them.

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Go on...

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It’s been clear to me for months that he is doing to the military what McConnell did to the Supreme Court in 2016. It has been argued that one reason the J6 failed is because key military personnel remained loyal to their country, not the treasonous Commander-in-Chief. I don’t understand why the media is not making more of this.

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

Because the media is more Repub than Dem.

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In Trumps case I believe you’re correct HulitC, assuming Operation Mockingbird is still ongoing another... although the Council on Foreign Relations still exists!

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

There is a rumor that Fox’s influence is waning. But I say, that Fox’s biggest influence now is on the profit margin that MSM is gung ho to cash in on.

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They like the shiny object, and Trump remains the shiny object.

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

Good point. And so scary! I am most disgusted that ONE Senator has this kind of power.

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Arcane rules. Stupid. Awful.

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I fear you're right. The antiabortion thing is a ruse, an excuse. This is dangerous, and he's part of it.

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It is deadly dangerous and I don’t understand why senators aren’t being grilled about this potential by reporters. I don’t understand why the Senate majority hasn’t taken steps to stop it.

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

I don’t understand how one person can have so much power in the senate to prevent military promotions in a senate with a Democrat majority. Seems Tuberville has more power than your president? I am a Canadian, so not well versed in American politics, though getting better at it since 2016!

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

This American has no clue either

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NPR has a great explainer, but I have to admit that I'm only slightly clearer on what's going on than I was before reading it. To me, Tuberville is posturing because he can per Senate rules.

https://www.npr.org/2023/07/15/1187530846/tuberville-senate-rules-abortion-military

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Arcane rules of the Senate. Which can't be changed without total Dem support, which they don't have, because Manchin and Sinema exist. It's a shitshow. And it's baked into our founding documents, because of slavery. Ticking time bomb.

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

And he doesn't even live or own property in Alabama...

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That's on Alabama for electing him.

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I think he owns an Auburn condo but primary home is in Santa Rosa, FL?

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I think I read that he camps out at his son’s place when he needs to be in Alabama. His son has the same name Tommy Tuberville so everyone thinks it’s his place.

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

The military and veterans are an important voting bloc. DemLabs is trying to make the data behind Tuberville's stunt easier to see. Check the military bases being hurt by Tuberville's blockade on promotions here: https://thedemlabs.org/2023/03/30/republicans-take-healthcare-for-servicewomen-hostage-military-installations-affected-map/

Who are some of the military generals being hurt?

https://thedemlabs.org/2023/05/28/military-promotions-held-hostage-by-maga-republican-tuberville-culture-war/

Follow the political donations from defense contractors like Amazon and Leidos to the GOP and Tuberville while he holds up promotions.

https://thedemlabs.org/2023/07/13/selling-out-our-soldiers-defense-contractors-tuberville-anti-military-campaign/

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Thanks for this work, Deepak.

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Thanks, Greg.

Love your newseleter! I started DemLabs (a nonprofit) in 2017 after the Trump election. I now (pro bono) apply my skills from Silicon Valley to social justice and voting rights causes. I use readily available and mostly free apps to make complex issues easier to understand with maps, infographics, AI, audio books and videos. There are now over 1,200 stories on our website at https://thedemlabs.org/blog/ and a new one being added every day.

I think the bad guys intentionally make things confusing and hope that busy people do not have time to connect the dots and see how they are being exploited. I like your newsletter (also Heather Richardson, Thom Hartmann and others). I'll take a current issue and try to express it visually. Make it interactive and in some cases convert it into audio form, in different languages. The goal being to take important info and make it available to more people in a form that they can consume on the go and explore as they want.

My favorite is 'Follow The Money' stories which show how dark money is corrupting our democracy. Like today's blog about billionaire-corrupted abortion decisions.

https://thedemlabs.org/2023/08/22/trump-judges-anti-abortion-ruling-unmasking-corruption-of-abortion-ban-decisions/

Glad to help (pro bono) on important issues. Your readers can also email suggestions on a topics worth covering visually in this way at info@thedemlabs.org

Thank you!

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

It's not just the Tuber, it's his GQP colleagues as well. They could put a stop to this embargo at any time. They are choosing not to. Why? For my money most of them expect Dump to be returned to power in 2024 and they are keeping the slots open for his lackeys. Watch as he returns Flynn to active duty, gives him 5 stars and makes him Chair of the Joint Chiefs. Sound crazy? Prove me wrong.

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

Exactly, just like Vlad, waiting with bated breath

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

Getting Dump back in the WH to sell Ukraine down the river is the only hope Vlad has to avoid falling out of a sixth floor window.

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

Exactly. Goes all the way back to Helsinki, in my view

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Yes, Helsinki. The MSM has been distracted by the Trump Shiny Object and has never tracked down exactly what happened in that meeting with Putin. I am inclined to always think the worst of Trump, up to and including, negotiating away US power for his own gain.

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Thinking the worst of him is a safe bet

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No, it does not sound crazy. And in the meantime, it weakens Biden and helps Putin. Traitors, all of them.

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

He was also at tRump Hotel on January 5th; so he's basically harming the military/National Security on purpose! https://www.alreporter.com/2021/01/27/photos-posts-put-tuberville-in-trumps-hotel-on-jan-5-despite-him-denying-meeting/

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Ooo, good catch. Yeah, the ball coach backed the wrong team.

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I wonder if he's on Jack Smith's radar. He should be.

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

But wait, there’s more! Tuberville lied about his father’s service in WWII. See WaPo fact check, which prompted my 98 year old dad to look up his own military service record, easily accessible online.

What kind of idiot does one have to be to lie about someone else’s experiences?

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He says whatever he thinks will work to get his way. That's who he is and what he does.

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Tommy is a tool and a fool. Our laws have us shooting ourselves in the foot with the debacle TT created. There must be a loophole somewhere that could remove his ass from this position. Why, why are the Dems always on the losing end of the stick when they’re in charge? This is the question they need to pose to themselves. We need someone as clever (not evil) like McConnell to bust through the doors that bind them.

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My point as well Marlene! I remember applauding the defeat of Jeff Sessions, but had more than a few questions about the Ole Miss peerless in vacuous idiocy ex- football coach...its difficult to imagine his position can’t be handled by a Senate majority???

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

It's interesting and sad - I thought Jeff Sessions was the worst of the worst - but now he's down and out and along comes someone even worse to take his place. Where's the bottom?

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

Repubs always have worse. Seems that some Dems have been digging and came up with RFKJr and Lieberman. Last thing we need

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Peering into the darkened abyss that is the GOP, it’s extremely difficult to find the bottom, perhaps one doesn’t exist Gail.

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Yes, I agree. But I am always encouraged when any Republican "sees the light".

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

Best question ever, and has been so for before Mitch. Delay and Hastert were great at evil machinations

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I think it's because we're not really in charge, b/c of Machin and Sinema. But the Dems lack creativity in this regard. They are not playing for keeps, and they must.

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True Greg, you’re doing your part to address the issue, as are many here, thanks for that! However, education, insight and willful ignorance certainly exist…

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Dems need to creatively find some dirt on Manchin and Sinema and use it to creatively help them mend their ways. I'm not suggesting blackmail. Much.

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Totally agree with you! Manchenema need to go. Both are turncoats.

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Another important and well-researched article that reveals the GOP that we are still trying to overcome has failed to learn the lessons of good and evil from the Civil War and why their party is so anathema to the goals of life vs. terror, liberty vs. oppression, and the pursuit of happiness vs. profit above all else that moral and truly patriotic Americans will always strive for and work to protect!

Just as Ukraine banned the pro-Russian Party for its harm and treason, I believe it’s time that the treasonous, anti-public and destructive Republican Party itself should be banned here in the U.S. whose platforms and non-platforms also speak volumes about their threat to our nation and its people everywhere. There are plenty of other parties that can have their candidates try to run for election in various offices. And if other parties become as destructive, let the whack-a-mole game begin. We must NOT appease authoritarian, violent and selfish political representatives and officials. If this seems rash, how much better would our current and last century have been for people here and worldwide if authoritarian parties had been stopped more often through wise bans on such parties by those who rationally refused to tolerate and accept as legitimate and legal the parties who encourage hate; violence; and selfish and lethal greed that only continues to cause mass suffering, more destitution and a vicious cycle of violence, and unhealthy ecosystems and an unlivable planet as their stage? #RESIST and refuse to tolerate human evil that harms any, some and often us all.

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Since Lincoln was in the Republican Party, I could more clearly say the current Republican Party (which we are still trying to overcome in the last several decades) has failed to “remember” the lessons of good and evil from the Civil War while the formerly racist Southern Democrats of the mid 20th Century and before have been overcome within the now much more egalitarian Democratic Party as a whole -- despite much more work, conviction and defense to finally be achieved by the party to protect all Americans and those who reside here (or seek to) in pursuit of America’s written and lauded principles that unfortunately remain weakened and attacked year after year by opportunists and sociopaths.

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The "Lincoln was GOP" and "Wilson, a Dem, was KKK" arguments are stupid but effective.

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Whenever I feel weary of the nightmare we are in, I look to the Preamble of our U.S. Constitution which is also shown at uscourts.gov as follows:

Establish Justice is the first of five objectives outlined in the 52-word paragraph that the Framers drafted in six weeks during the hot Philadelphia summer of 1787. They found a way to agree on the following basic principles:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

It is up to us to make our preamble as strong a reality as possible in adherence to our principles which the Framers themselves often only adhered to for their closest subset of people. And, so, we must continue evolving and self-correcting generation after generation when we fall back from the inherent rights and respect we all deserve since we first began cooperating and raising each other in our human families, nomadic tribes and settlements over millennia with many successes and failures over time. What will we create for the near future of not just the U.S., but world civilization, too?

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Amen!

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It needs to be called out as fascist and voted out and down by the people.

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

Good ole coach Tommy Tuberville holding up military promotions while the senate minority leader stares into the abyss! They just don’t give a 💩💩 Embarrassing. Great writing Greg.

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He wasn't even that good of a coach.

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Excellent piece on yet another, of our racist members of the GOP...The fuckery that exists in this country, baise!!

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No bottom.

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

What a loathsome human being, and I have serious questions about the "human being" part. May I live long enough to see this POS get what he so richly deserves. Also, the Egg Bowl? How prestigious.

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So called b/c the trophy looked like the kind of football used in the early 1900s, which is shaped like an egg.

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Interesting!

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I can’t help but think that Tuberville is waiting for a trump win so that he (trump) can name loyalists to military posts he could depend on to preserve his power grabs. I know it sounds far-fetched and there’s a long time span between now and then (should it, god forbid) actually come to pass. But I don’t put anything past these creeps who are planning for a future with no serious opposition.

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It is certainly one possibility and cannot be dismissed.

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Most likely, he's holding up the promotions in hopes that Trump can fill them in 2025.

All these unreconstructed Confederate traitors need to go! It's obvious we didn't kill enough of their traitor ancestors when we had the opportunity, and now Confederate Treason is in their DNA.

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Aug 22, 2023Liked by Greg Olear

Some of the Confederate progeny escaped that particular DNA. My great-great grandfather was killed at the battle of the Wilderness in May 1864. My genealogy research told me that many did indeed inherit that DNA, but not all. At least two of his relatives were murdered by vigilantes because they refused to sign up with rebs. Maybe some mutations survived…I know one did

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Yes, the one-third of white Southerners who spent the war in Union Blue, or staying home and shooting Confederates when they ventured into the hills. :-)

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Well said. Well said!

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