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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Entertaining Read: ‘Don’t Worry, Tommy Tuberville Can Explain This Whole Russia Thing To You’

Entertaining Read: ‘Don’t Worry, Tommy Tuberville Can Explain This Whole Russia Thing To You’

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At least you’re not living in Alabama. (If you *are* living there, my deepest sympathies!)

… In this bleary dead-in-the-water moment in which the nation is both wholly post-politics and completely subsumed by them, in a state where the Republican nominee more or less cannot help but win statewide elections, in the context of a federal government that currently functions primarily as a grim satire of itself, Coach Tuberville is just doing his job. He shows up to meetings sometimes, and sometimes asks a strange question or two. He talks to rich people from back home on the phone and says “that’s such a good point” whenever they pause for him to do so. He makes the same sounds that his movement’s resident slavering cable news freaks make on TV back to his supporters, and those supporters applaud when he does because they understand that to be their role. He absolutely does not know what he’s talking about on more or less any topic, and lacks the curiosity or motivation to do anything about that, but none of that really impacts his job. Tuberville, like his core constituency, cares mostly about not being inconvenienced, and about making money, and he can communicate that…

He’s an unremarkable man, in short, but Tuberville is as utterly at home among the podgy-smug backslapping golf foofs who are his new peers in the United States Senate as he was in the sunburned fraternity of college football coaches before that. And again, this is more or less all that he needs to do; certainly, no one is expecting him to do much more than look the part and not work too hard. As long as he doesn’t actually vote in a surprising way and shows up every now and then in Alabama to break off the local Chamber of Commerce with some banter and a little of that Fox News karaoke, Tuberville will be doing what his voters sent him to Washington to do.

Earlier this week, at the Montgomery, Ala. Chamber of Commerce, Tuberville did that. There, he regaled the region’s pinkest selection of men with tales of how disgusting Washington, D.C. is—”the circus, I call it, because every day there is something different. And it’s not three rings. It’s about four or five rings of a circus”—and put some coachly folksiness on his party’s talking points. Where those talking points exist, for instance regarding the unbelievable weakness and perfidy of President Sleepy Joe Brandon or the importance of ending COVID-19 without actually doing anything to that end, Tuberville was comfortable. Where his party and the cable news sociopaths that lead it around have not quite figured out their lines yet, Tuberville was in deeper water.

Take, for instance, the new military conflict in Ukraine. It’s complicated, because Ukraine is linked to President Brandon—there was some thing with his kid’s computer, and they were also of course very unfair to President Trump—and because of the unreasoning and instinctive natural bias towards the aggressor on the part of the Republican Party. Eventually, America’s reigning reactionary types will figure out a way to make this about the things that they make everything about—punishing the most-punished, assuming a bold stance next to whichever party seems most powerful, figuring out some way to monetize all of that—and Tuberville will learn his lines. For now, though:

Tuberville discussed the escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine. He claims that a large part of Vladimir Putin’s desire for further annexation of Ukrainian land is due to the amount of farmland in Ukraine.

“He can’t feed his people,” Tuberville said. “It’s a communist country, so he can’t feed his people, so they need more farmland.” 1819 News

… To be fair, coaches are beings of singular focus. Legendarily hard-driving leaders like Tuberville and Weis—men who were famously at the facility before 11:00 a.m. nearly every day of the week and often there until after dark except on days when they had other commitments that precluded that—do not busy themselves with “the news” when there is grinding to be done. Make whatever jokes you like about a man who famously lost to Navy weighing in on military matters, or about a famously checked-out Belk Bowl-losing coach being this thunderously unprepared to address the biggest international news story of the moment. Those men will not hear you, because they are busy working. Or, failing that, they are watching TV. For Tuberville, who finally has a job that does not just fit but celebrate his signature combination of principle-free personal mediocrity and voracious cable news appetite, the two are one and the same.

Reader Interactions

123Comments

  3. 3.

    bbleh

    Really, there is no more powerful a defender of Freedom™ than a man who has neither knowledge nor opinions of his own and merely follows orders and repeats his lines.

    God Bless the voters of the sovereign State of Alabama!

  6. 6.

    eclare

    Bless his heart, for one day, my state of TN did not have the stupidest senator in Marsha, Marsha, Marsha.

  9. 9.

    Ken

    men who were famously at the facility before 11:00 a.m. nearly every day of the week and often there until after dark except on days when they had other commitments that precluded that

    At work before 11 AM?  And often there until 7 PM except when they weren’t?  How do they survive this grueling schedule?

  10. 10.

    Peale

    @nonrev321: Russia itself is still a net grain exporter.  The issue with everything rolling around Ukraine is that who knows weather the grain can be harvested this fall. Ukraine exports about 75% of its crop. We may need to figure out how to replace that. It was mentioned that they sell a lot of it to Africa.

  11. 11.

    Brachiator

    I don’t watch Fox News or even much read comments about the channel. But the other day I ran across a YouTube clip where Maria Barti-whatever was interviewing some Republican Congressional nut, days before Putin attacked Ukraine.

    This idiot claimed that the whole thing was fake, and designed to redirect attention from Hillary Clinton’s crimes and to reinforce the attempts to link Trump to Russia.

    Total bullshit.

    I don’t what these fools will do next now that an actual attack has taken place.

    But it is just plain nuts that the people in charge of Fox News are not just agents of propaganda, they are stuck in their hatred for the Democrats and their hatred of America. No matter what happens in the world, they are stuck on whatever their sick agenda is, and they cannot get out of it. They don’t want to get out of it.

    “He can’t feed his people,” Tuberville said. “It’s a communist country, so he can’t feed his people, so they need more farmland.”

    Is this some weird attempt to justify the invasion?

    I don’t know where this nuttiness is headed, but it can’t be good.

  13. 13.

    White & Gold Purgatorian

    I hate seeing Tuberville’s mug on the front page. He is my senator, but I try to forget. Yes, we had a good man in Doug Jones, but we knew it wouldn’t last. Voters here have lost their minds the last 10 or 15 years.

  14. 14.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    “He can’t feed his people,” Tuberville said. “It’s a communist country, so he can’t feed his people, so they need more farmland.”

    ….Did this guy miss the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991? He was a grown man when it happened so he should know.

    Then again, the other day I had to explain what NATO was to one of my coworkers (who thought NATO had something to do with the UN) and why the US is not directly fighting Russia in Ukraine.

    So, I guess a lot of people are just incredibly ignorant and live in their own little worlds. Still, not as bad as Tubby Tuber though

  15. 15.

    oldgold

    At CPAC tonight Trump trumps Tubby:

    “If Democrats want to fight for democracy [abroad], they should start with…Canada. […] The tyranny we have witnessed in Canada in recent weeks should shock and dismay the world.”

  16. 16.

    Redshift

    @nonrev321:

    Actually he has a point about feeding Russia.  Ukraine was known as the Breadbasket of the USSR. 

    That by itself doesn’t mean it’s a reason for the invasion. Russia imports food, but there’s no evidence Putin wants Ukraine to “feed his people.”

    It does indicate that Tuberville is too lazy to have learned anything new about Russia since he was a child, and doesn’t care who knows it.

  18. 18.

    Joe Falco

    “Yep, Alabama really knows how to pick ’em,” I chuckle nervously while looking at the Georgia Senate race between Sen. Warnock and the likely Repuke nominee, a college football star from 40 years ago.

  23. 23.

    Redshift

    @Brachiator:

    No matter what happens in the world, they are stuck on whatever their sick agenda is, and they cannot get out of it. They don’t want to get out of it. 

    Their business is stoking outrage in conservatives. Their paychecks depend on figuring out how to blame Democrats for everything, and making up things to blame them for if reality does not provide enough.

  24. 24.

    JPL

    Gov. Youngkin called Putin the Soviet Dictator, and he certainly knows better.   He’s just assuming his voters don’t.   Pompeo tried to tell a reporter that he was well versed in communist behavior, and he certainly knows better.

    Republicans are rewriting history and we should not be surprised.

  30. 30.

    Jeffro

    Tulsi just cut a video imploring Putin to stop now, since Russians and Ukrainians love each other.  He has “made his point”

    ?????

    As many are noting on Twitter, the video was made about 30 seconds after reports of the SWIFT disconnection came in…she’s just worried she won’t be able to cash her VladChecks anymore

  32. 32.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @JPL: Republicans are rewriting history and we should not be surprised.

    I would be surprised by next fall no Republican can recall a President Trump, and to them it was President Hilary who was sucking up to Putin.

  33. 33.

    Jeffro

    @JPL: his lecturing of President Biden to be ‘more decisive’ is fooling no one and, like everything else, will blow up in his amateur face

  36. 36.

    Martin

    @nonrev321: Well, he had a point maybe in the late 80s. Russia is a net exporter of wheat now. Russia has no problem feeding their people. They don’t have the sort of diversity of choice that the US has, but they have enough food.

  37. 37.

    Gravenstone

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Don’t hear much about Bobby these days. Wonder if he even calls himself a Republican these days? Not that he’d ever go Democrat, but the loser stench around the Republican brand is just starting to properly ripen. His craven ilk probably try to put as much space between themselves and the actual brand as possible. All while plotting their inevitable comeback.

  38. 38.

    Ken

    @HumboldtBlue: My google skills are drawing a blank, but wasn’t there a WWII German general who characterized the Russian tactics as “putting out a fire by throwing bodies on it”?  It almost sounds like they haven’t learned much.

  39. 39.

    Martin

    @Mallard Filmore: No. The ISS maintains a Soyuz and a Dragon to serve as life rafts. They can evacuate the station on a moments notice.

    The bigger potential problem is station-keeping. The ISS is in a pretty low orbit so it needs to both be boosted and do de-spin of it’s gyroscopes.

    Boosting is done by the Russian Progress craft, so they might still be doing that. It can also be done by the US Cygnus. The SpaceX Dragon might be able to do de-spin, but can’t boost, though it might not be terribly difficult to upgrade the vehicle to do that. The ISS needs to be boosted every few months. Without it, it takes about 18 months to degrade to a point where it’s unrecoverable. Possibly less.

  41. 41.

    Redshift

    @Gravenstone: According to Wikipedia, his job since 2017 has been as an “operating advisor” to an investment company. Since Jindal has no background in that area, I’d guess it’s basically wingnut welfare.

  43. 43.

    Nutmeg again

    @nonrev321: Well, yeah… but that’s really what a certain A. Hitler was after in his search for Lebensraum.

    Specifically, Lebensraum didn’t actually mean “more space for living”; it meant more land to put under cultivation (by enslaved Slavs) to feed the German master-race.

  44. 44.

    lgerard

    Tommy Tuberville sounds like the name of  a Saturday morning cartoon character that no kid would get ever out of bed to watch

  45. 45.

    counterfactual

    @Mallard Filmore: Good snark. The big impact is on the ESA’s Galileo GPS system, that they were launching on Soyuz rockets bought from Russia and transported to the ESA launch site in French Guiana. If this holds, they’ll probably have to buy launches from SpaceX to finish the constellation, since all the Ariane flights are booked, as are everybody but SpaceX

  46. 46.

    Redshift

    @Martin: There are two Progress docked now. In the past, neither side has let deteriorating relations affect station operations. No telling now, of course, but I’ll remain hopeful that will be the case again.

  48. 48.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @lgerard: A Bobby Sherman wannabe whose song about his dead girlfriend peaked at number 34 on Casey Kasem’s show in 1973

    Wasn’t there an incident on 1/6 where Rudi drunk-dialed a reporter thinking he had called Tuberville?

  49. 49.

    counterfactual

    @Martin: The problem is that Cygnus rides on an Antares rocket, and the first stage is built in Ukraine. There were rumors that the two Ukrainian rocket companies were bombed, but I”ve never seen confirmation. Northrup Grumman does have some Antares in stock, but only a few. Cygnus could fly on a Falcon 9 theoretically.

  52. 52.

    Martin

    @Redshift: The head of Roscosmos warned that if the west sanctioned their ability to get semiconductors, they’d lose their ability to launch. Not sure how true that is in the short term, but in the longer term its almost certainly true.

  53. 53.

    Mallard Filmore

    @debbie:

    I went to that tweet, and down below in “More Tweets”

    Tadeusz Giczan ??@TadeuszGiczan·7hWow, that’s a hell of a piece by @bbcrussian. They got audio messages between Kadyrov and deputy head of Chechen Rosgvardiya. Both knew about invasion well in advance, Rosgvardiya commanders from other regions found out a week ago and were utterly shocked.

     

    Good Lord.  I get the feeling that the Russian government is totally compromised.  The biggest Russian General hero coming out of this will be the one that can get his troops back across the border with the most men.

  54. 54.

    HinTN

    @eclare: Her dumbshit comrade in the Senate from this (formerly) great state is such a cipher that his name eludes the awareness of the general populace.

  55. 55.

    dmsilev

    @Mallard Filmore: We’ll, Musk and SpaceX will ‘rescue’ NASA astronauts in that the years-old Crew Dragon program has been flying those missions for a while already. The Russian announcement today is about an ESA Galileo satellite (European version of GPS) that was scheduled to launch from French Guyana on a Soyuz booster. That’s now a no-go, so the satellite will have to go up on an Ariane booster or a SpaceX Falcon or whatever.

  62. 62.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    If Biden wants to be decisive he’d send over Bob Hope and Joey Heatherton to finish off the ᴙusskies

  67. 67.

    Alison Rose

    @Spanky: At first glance, I thought that said “critical pants” and I was like, pretty sure these badass Ukrainians would keep fighting in nothing but their knickers if they had to.

  68. 68.

    Wapiti

    The Alabama Department of Education (ed – do they have one?) could make this work. Every week they could get quotes from Tuberville and then use those quotes to teach the children how whatever Tuberville said was just plain wrong.

  70. 70.

    Gin & Tonic

    @debbie: China has a lot of people and not enough arable land. Ukraine has excellent agricultural land and can easily feed its people. With modernized agricultural methods it can produce much more. This is largely just business, like China buying Smithfield Pork.

  75. 75.

    debbie

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Okay. I worry about all the countries signing up for the Belt and Road Initiative not realizing all the strings that are attached to China’s investment.

  76. 76.

    Redshift

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I have always contended that Bush wasn’t dumb; he was simply incurious. 

    Yeah, Molly Ivins’ description always seemed spot-on to me, “not stupid, but willfully ignorant and proud of it.”

  78. 78.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Honus: No, they love the Apocalypse. Of which the state of Israel is a harbinger. Individual Jews can go to hell, literally.

  80. 80.

    Jinchi

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Bobby Jindal also gave an absurd speech denouncing “something called volcano monitoring” ( which is pretty important if you live near one).

    So he wasn’t above being stupid, himself.

  81. 81.

    Honus

    @Martin: hard to believe an Alabama football coach has an historical perspective from the 1980s.  Good to know he’s one of 100 senators influencing national security policy now. Thank you Alabama.

  82. 82.

    Ken

    @Jinchi: As I recall, a volcano in Alaska promptly blew up.  This was when I began seriously entertaining Colbert’s claim that reality has a liberal bias.

  83. 83.

    trollhattan

    OMG, the kid is in the arena for the big Gonzaga-St Mary’s rivalry game, and her crew has a “Putin is a Zag” sign.

    ESPN @ 7:00 PT.

  85. 85.

    debbie

    ABC reports that a Russian soldier was heard on radio saying ‘we do not know who to shoot, they all look like us’.
    — JΞSŦΞR ✪ ΔCŦUΔL³³°¹ (@th3j35t3r) February 26, 2022

  87. 87.

    Paul T

    Old NFL joke about “how hard head coaches work”.

    “My fave version of this was years ago, Gruden told SI that he started working at 3AM. And it became a thing to ask every NFL coach what time they got up and eventually they asked Brian Billick who said “I get up a half hour before  whenever Gruden lied about getting up”

  88. 88.

    debbie

    Zelensky’s kids are cuties.

    During his inaugural address in 2019, Zelensky told lawmakers: “I do not want my picture in your offices: the President is not an icon, an idol or a portrait. Hang your kids' photos instead, and look at them each time you are making a decision.” pic.twitter.com/fjsHudv7FV— Benjamin Ramm (@BenjaminRamm) February 26, 2022

  93. 93.

    different-church-lady

    @Alison Rose:

    Man, remember when we though Dubya was as dumb as they could get.

    I never thought that. I always thought he was the GOP gateway drug.

  100. 100.

    Nelle

    @Peale: In the late 1700’s, my ancestors were invited by Catherine the Great into southern Russia (now Ukraine) to agriculturize the steppes.  They grew Turkey Red winter wheat, planted in late autumn and harvested in early summer.  In the 1870’s, my mother’s side was among those who came to the prairie states.  I grew up on stories about how the children sorted wheat seeds to bring.  Then they agriculturized the prairies in great wheat growing areas.  They did a fine job of farming but have a lot to answer for in terms of prairie habitat destruction.  In both cases, the indigenous people had mostly been cleared out and, of course, they thought that God had given them the land.

    When I was growing up, my dad (who came to North America in the mid 1920’s) would tell me that his area (just north of Melitopol, on the east side of the Dneiper River, looked a lot like Kansas, where I grew up.  When I finally got to Ukraine, I could see how right he was.

  101. 101.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Ken:

    Eyjafjallajökul— in Iceland. I was in Europe at the time and it was fucking up air travel. John Cleese was in IIRC Norway, and he took a cab back to London. Which seemed a very John Cleese way of dealing with it.

  104. 104.

    J R in WV

    @Joe Falco: ​
     

    “Yep, Alabama really knows how to pick ’em,” I chuckle nervously while looking at the Georgia Senate race between Sen. Warnock and the likely Repuke nominee, a college football star from 40 years ago.

    Mr Walker, who is publicly known to have multiple psychiatric disorders, is indeed running for Senate. Embarrassing for him, isn’t it?

  105. 105.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @HumboldtBlue: 

    Kim Zetter @KimZetter 50m

    Interesting piece that supports what captured Russian soldiers have said. New conscripts were forced to sign contracts saying they agreed to go into combat and were first told they were going to do exercises only to then be sent into Ukraine. Their phones were taken away.

  109. 109.

    Gin & Tonic

    Last one for now. This is an interesting but long Twitter thread about Russian military preparedness. A lot of it is over my head, but at least some of the parts I could understand line up with what Omnes said. You keep your troops in “ready and waiting” and you use up supplies. Wait a week before saying “go” and they’ve got a problem.

    1/I am going to try to explain the irrational Russian Armed Forces behavior towards strategy, common thought, or even the chances repatriated SSO that are now POW try to murder a bunch of men with stars.
    — Stanimir Dobrev (@delfoo) February 26, 2022

  110. 110.

    O. Felix Culpa

    Just up from WaPo:

    U.S., Canada and European leaders vow to freeze Russian assets, target banks

    The United States, Canada and European allies are preparing to target Russian financial institutions, including the nation’s central bank, with major restrictions in what would be a significant escalation of their efforts to punish the Kremlin for its invasion of Ukraine, the allies said in a joint statement Saturday evening.

    The allies said they would block the Russian central bank from accessing hundreds of billions of dollars in reserves in the West, a move that could lead to financial panic in that country as it tries to pay for its new war.

    They also vowed to cut off Russian banks from the SWIFT messaging system, a network that connects banks around the world and is considered the backbone of international finance, The Post has reported.

    There would be little precedent for such a move, particularly against a country that has nuclear weapons, and some experts say the step could carry risks if Moscow felt like its money was being held ransom.

  111. 111.

    Nelle

    I just received word from a trusted source that my father’s home village is under Russian occupation with Russian tanks rolling down the streets where I walked three and a half years ago.  They came up from Melitopol, from the south.

    I have no relatives there anymore.  Those who didn’t flee to North America in the 1920’s mostly ended up shot (my second cousin, Peter, was shot in the 30’s) or sent to Siberia.

  113. 113.

    Lyrebird

    @Nelle: Quite a family you have.

    Thought of your sister (did I recall right?) and her kids as I read a story about a Texas couple getting supposedly the last visa out of UA to bring their newly adopted and medically fragile son to his new home.

  114. 114.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Spanky: I mis-remembered. He only took the cab to the Brussels train station.

    He’s more famous for a sketch about a Norwegian blue parrot than a Norwegian taxi, but John Cleese may have to change his routine. The actor and comedian reportedly took a cab from Oslo to Brussels on Friday costing 30,000 kroner (£3,300) after he was stranded, along with thousands of others, in the Norwegian capital by the volcanic ash plume from Iceland.

  117. 117.

    James E Powell

    @Redshift:

    Yeah, Molly Ivins’ description always seemed spot-on to me, “not stupid, but willfully ignorant and proud of it.”

    That’s pretty much every Republican.

  119. 119.

    VOR

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): My guess is the typical Republican voter doesn’t know the difference between the USSR and Russia. And doesn’t know Russia hasn’t been a communist country for a long time. OTOH, Fox News is probably telling them the Ukrainians are simultaneously Nazis, Socialists, and Communists. Unlike that nice Mr. Putin who stands for God, the flag, baseball, and apple pie. Well, against LGBTQ people anyways.

  121. 121.

    mardam

    There are too many men and women like Tommy Tuberville in Congress, in state legislatures, and now even in school boards from coast to coast. I would premise that almost all (if not all) are Republicans.

  122. 122.

    brantl

    @Omnes Omnibus: I have always contended that Bush wasn’t dumb; he was simply incurious.

    Bush was so “incurious” that if you could convince him that breathing was optional, he would have suffocated in 2 minutes.

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