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You are here: Home / Healthcare / Late Night Open Thread: And Nothing Of Value Was Lost

Late Night Open Thread: And Nothing Of Value Was Lost

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Morgan Murphy, swashbuckling bon vivant, discovers it might not be best practice to brag for a beat-sweetener that one’s boss is a dumb draft animal who needs to be pointed in the right direction to be of use. He may have assumed Coach Tommy didn’t read the Washington Post — but, predictably, a rival or an enemy read the story to Sen. Tuberville by the end of the long weekend. Ah, well, sounds like Murphy was bored and ready to move on anyways…

Per Politico, Tuberville’s top military adviser bows out :

Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) national security adviser told POLITICO that he has resigned over a Washington Post story suggesting he was instrumental in orchestrating the senator’s controversial blockade of hundreds of senior military nominations.

A profile by the Washington Post on Friday depicted Morgan Murphy as taking credit for Tuberville’s hold, which has roiled the Department of Defense. The blockade is a response to the Pentagon’s abortion travel policy, which Tuberville opposes.

Murphy said the Post article “overstated” his role in the senator’s blockade, and he resigned on Tuesday out of respect for his former boss. The profile “was factual in many respects, but simply overstated my role in decisionmaking,” he said…

Two people with knowledge of the discussions around Murphy’s resignation said the Post story’s presentation of Murphy’s role in the blockade irked Tuberville. They were granted anonymity to discuss sensitivities around a personnel move…

Tuberville has rankled his colleagues in both parties with his blockade of hundreds of military promotions, which typically are approved with little controversy, to force the Pentagon to abandon policies that reimburse travel costs and provide leave for troops who seek abortions.

Tuberville’s office said the senator intends to continue his hold on military nominations.

Normally top military nominations move swiftly through the Senate, but it only takes one person’s objection to slow down the process…

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has appealed to Tuberville to reverse course and Democrats have hammered him for politicizing the promotions process. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also publicly broke with Tuberville, saying he doesn’t support blocking military nominations, but the Alabama Republican continues to insist on a vote to overturn the policy.

All you really need to know about the original story is encompassed in this tweet:

Suave as Murphy believes himself to be, he may possibly have overstepped in his presentation. It’s one thing to work for an ignorant rube representing his mouthbreather constituents by making angry mouth noises for the media. Teaching that rube to effectively gum up the works, and then bragging about it in public, may not be the best bullet point on a would-be power lobbyist’s resume.

Of course, Coach Tommy has been on his own journey recently, so…

The brother of U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville is speaking out on social media, saying he is “compelled to distance” himself from some of the lawmaker’s recent statements.

“Due to recent statements by him promoting racial stereotypes, white nationalism and other various controversial topics, I feel compelled to distance myself from his ignorant, hateful rants,” Charles Tuberville stated in a Facebook post.

In an interview with WBHM in Birmingham, when asked if he believed white nationalists should be allowed to serve in the military, Tuberville said in referring to the Biden administration, “They call them that. I call them Americans.”

During a 90-minute interview last week with Donald Trump Jr. on his streaming show, “Triggered,” Tuberville said of teachers in inner city schools, “I don’t know whether they can read and write.”

Tuberville’s office later said he was referring specifically to schools in the Baltimore area, and that “as a Coach and a mentor unlocking opportunity for young people for 40 years, he watched a marked decline in our education system and found it deeply alarming.”…

According to his website, Charles Tuberville is a singer/songwriter/guitar player based in Tulsa, Okla. who has been part of its music scene since the 1970s.

Over his career, he’s played with Leon Russell, Freddie King, Bobby Keys, Johnny Winter, Delbert McClinton, Jimmy Vivino, Kenny Neal, B.B. King and others.

Reader Interactions

73Comments

  1. 1.

    waspuppet

    Tuberville: Dammit, I came up with this America-hating policy all on my own! Don’t steal my credit!

    Tuberville’s office later said he was referring specifically to schools in the Baltimore area, and that “as a Coach and a mentor unlocking opportunity for young people for 40 years, he watched a marked decline in our education system and found it deeply alarming.”

    First of all, he unlocked opportunity for young people like slaveowners unlocked job opportunities for Black people.

    Second of all, “coach” isn’t capitalized. Maybe if they knew how to read and write they wouldn’t have made that mistake.

  2. 2.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Hopefully the pentagon retaliates and closes all military bases/assets in Alabama

  3. 3.

    JWR

    Morgan Murphy, swashbuckling bon vivant, discovers it might not be best practice to brag for a beat-sweetener that one’s boss is a dumb draft animal who needs to be pointed in the right direction to be of use.

    Anne, you’re a national treasure! Or if not, you should be! ;)

    Moving right along, the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw bags an ally in Blake Treinen! You can read his entire statement at the link, but what a weird opening sentence:

    Blake Treinen
    @Blake_Treinen
    Statement from Blake Treinen

    There should be no ridicule or exposure to Christ as long as you live.

    It should not be to deprive the community of rights and promote hatred for Christians and people of faith.
    6:42 PM · May 30, 2023

  6. 6.

    eclare

    @JWR:

    I have no idea what he was attempting to say.  Weird.

    But as an atheist, ok, I’ll do without exposure to Christ.

    I wonder if “or” should have been “of”?  Dumbass obviously doesn’t read what he tweets.

  7. 7.

    Amir Khalid

    Soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen do have to eat. So I guess a food writer is as qualified as anyone to advise a Senator on military matters.

    In other, completely daft news from Malaysia, the opposition Chief Minister of Kedah has laid claim to Penang state in a move totally unsupported by anyone else. (The basis of his claim is presumably that the Straits Settlement of Penang was carved out of the Kedah Sultanate by the British East India Co. in the late 18th century.) He wants the national Constitution amended to give Penang back to Kedah. It’s not going to happen.

  8. 8.

    lgerard

    Do these nuts not understand that the Sisters are not ridiculing Nuns, they are paying homage to them by doing the same type of work, the acts of charity that Jesus commands his followers to do.

  9. 9.

    Michael Bersin

    @eclare:

    “…Strange how two brothers can take such different directions.  Or it is to me…”

    Similar stories about Andy Biggs (r) and Paul Gosar (r). It’s not just Arizona apparently. One of Michele Bachmann’s (r) brothers is a television weatherman – he has reportedly declined to comment about anything in politics.

    I have yet to encounter reports of a Democratic politician who have had family members denounce them for expressing the need to help feed the poor and house the homeless.  Interesting.

  11. 11.

    Chetan Murthy

    @eclare: One supposes that some LGBTQ legislators have family members who, y’know, “love the sinner, hate the sin.”  Because Baby Jesus told them to.

  19. 19.

    lowtechcyclist

    Moving right along, the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw bags an ally in Blake Treinen! You can read his entire statement at the link, but what a weird opening sentence:

    What gets me about people like this is that their faith is so fragile. This guy quotes Galatians: “God cannot be mocked.” So their god must be protected from mockery at all costs. I’m not sure why; you’d think that if God is real, then God is a big boy and can handle a bit of ridicule without getting all flustered. And that if this God is real to them, then they should be able to manage that as well. If they interpret the least ridicule as promoting hatred of their faith, they’d fall apart if they ever encountered genuine persecution. What pathetic excuses for Christians.

  20. 20.

    Shalimar

    @eclare: There is a Coast Guard station in Mobile, an Air Force Base in Montgomery, 2 Army Forts (in Anniston and Dale), and Redstone Arsenal near the NASA facilities in Huntsville.

  24. 24.

    JWR

    @raven:

    That would be North and South Georgia.

    No Northern or Southern? Is that official, or just the way all y’all’s talk down thar? ;)

  25. 25.

    Matt McIrvin

    @lowtechcyclist: These people’s concept of strength and masculinity is a volcano dad who will beat you to within an inch of your life if you keep talking back. Their God is the ultimate manifestation of that.

  28. 28.

    MisterDancer

    Morgan Murphy’s double-breasted suit screams “I miss the Greedy Eighties so much.”

  32. 32.

    Geminid

    @David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:

    This was done once, in 1964.

    Located on Mobile Bay, Brookley Air Force base was headquarters of the Air Force Logistics Command. Good flying weather and a deepwater port helped Brookley grow throughout the Second World War and into the Cold War. By 1962 it was home base for dozens of large transport planes as well as the Logistics Command headquarters, and employed 16,000 civilians.

    On November 19, 1964 Defense Secretary McNamera announced Brookley’s future closure. McNamera said this was an efficiency measure, but:

       …McNamara worked for [“F!”] Lyndon B. Johnson, who had a reputation for rewarding friends and punishing enemies. When McNamera began the base closure announcements, suspicion began that Johnson was picking bases to close as retribution for the recent 1964 Presidential Election.

    In an early example of the party realignment that was to sweep the South in ensuing decades, Alabama voted for Barry Goldwater that year.

        Brookley AFB represented the largest base closure in U.S. history.

    Wikipedia 

  33. 33.

    Tony Jay

    @MisterDancer:

    That picture just screams’

    “Join me for the next hour as I guide you across the unexplored boundaries connecting pleasure to pain, in another ground-breaking episode of ‘Morgan Murphy’s Exquisite Sex-Dungeon – Extreme’.“

  35. 35.

    Betty

    It would be a lot cheaper to change the absurd Senate rule than to move military bases. This is just another hostage taking by a Republican. No one Senator should have this much power. You might say it is undemocratic.

  36. 36.

    Geminid

    @eclare: My parents also brought me to Huntsville when I was young. That’s where I was born, while my father was working at the Redstone Arsenal.

    My parents did not like the South, and moved back home to Wisconsin soon after. My earliest memories are from living in Milwaukee when the Braves won the 1957 World Series- “Big Joe” Adcock, Warren Spahn, Eddie Mathews and “Hammering Henry” Aaron..

  38. 38.

    Tony Jay

    @eclare:

    Anybody got Murphy’s number? I bet I could pitch that show to BBC America as low-cost outreach to Cletusworld

    ETA – I’m imagining Lindsey Graham doing the voice-over. It seems to fit best.

  39. 39.

    eclare

    @Geminid:

    And I moved to Atlanta in 1991 after college, the year the Braves went from worst to first. And then in 1992, I remember like it was yesterday, Sid Bream sliding home,  and the call, “Braves win! Braves win! Braves win!”

  41. 41.

    Geminid

    @chrome agnomen: We moved a lot after 1957- Chicago, LA, Dayton, Ohio, and finally Northern Virginia. I remained a Braves fan after they moved to Atlanta and since.

  42. 42.

    eclare

    @Tony Jay:

    With the writers’ strike, all the networks are looking to reality shows to fill airtime.  Whatever channel shows Naked and Afraid, maybe it would be interested.

  43. 43.

    trnc

    @Betty:

    It would be a lot cheaper to change the absurd Senate rule than to move military bases. This is just another hostage taking by a Republican. No one Senator should have this much power. You might say it is undemocratic.

    Agreed. I’m OK with nominations blocks requiring less than a majority, but I would say it should take at least 10, the blocks should expire after no more than a few weeks and there should be a limit on how many nominees they can block. One senator holding up dozens of nominees forever is just a fucking farce.

  44. 44.

    trnc

    @Ksmiami: eh start closing every base in Alabama, move Huntsville operations… punish Tuberville Rt now…

    Yup. It’s not like Alabama is going to start voting for dems anyway. Which is not to say that a dem administration should go after red states just for that, but their senator is jeopardizing military operations.

  45. 45.

    Elizabelle

    @Betty:

    @trnc:   Yes.  That just leapt out.  Change the Senate rules, especially now that Tuberville has taught them to abuse this one.  Require numerous Senators to object to each nomination.  Set the bar as high as they need to avoid the crazy train caucus.

    A lot of the Senate rules are ridiculous.  Probably dreamed up by segregationists.

  46. 46.

    Tony Jay

    @eclare:

    Isn’t Naked and Afraid the title of McCarthy’s forthcoming book about his term as Speaker?

    From the same publisher as Josh Hawley’s ‘Man/in/a/Hood’ and Mitch McConnell’s heartbreaking saga of (everyone else’s) loss and sorrow ‘Mr Negative Equity – How One Man Broke The Senate And Paved The Way For Trumpism’.

  47. 47.

    Baud

    Another example of, if a Dem had done this, the national news would be screaming every day about it.

  48. 48.

    Geminid

    @Ksmiami: Huntsville has flourished on federal dollars. The TVA brought plentiful electricity to the region, and while it’s population was but 13,000 in 1940, the Second World War and the Cold War helped Huntsville grow into Alabama’s largest city, surpassing Mobile, Birmingham, and Montgomery in recent decades. The city is now home to an estimated 230,000 people.

    Birmingham has a famous statue of the Roman god of fire and forge, Vulcan. Created for the 1904 St. Louis World Fair, it honors the city’s steel industry.

    Huntsville needs it’s own statue. But instead of an apron-clad god holding a hammer and brandishing a freshly-forged spear, this one would be Senator Richard Shelby with a big coal scoop full of cash.

  52. 52.

    Shalimar

    @Geminid: I grew up in Mobile, though I wasn’t born yet when Brookley closed.  It was prime real estate downtown, and remained desolate into the 1980s, when businesses finally started renovating all the abandoned buildings there.  Closing it was a huge economic blow to the city.  Only closing the NASA facilities in Huntsville would come close to the same impact now.  The 5 military bases in the state are all smaller.

  53. 53.

    lowtechcyclist

    @trnc:

    Agreed. I’m OK with nominations blocks requiring less than a majority, but I would say it should take at least 10, the blocks should expire after no more than a few weeks and there should be a limit on how many nominees they can block. One senator holding up dozens of nominees forever is just a fucking farce.

    It’s crazy. There is way too much of the routine business of the Senate that requires unanimous consent to move smoothly.

    It would be possible to revamp the rules like this:

    1. A single Senator can deny unanimous consent for 48 hours.
    2. At the end of 48 hours, if the Senator can produce the signatures of nine colleagues who want to join the Senator in denying unanimous consent, then the action for which unanimous consent was sought is held up for sixty days, but after that it moves forward as if unanimous consent had been obtained.
    3. If the Senator cannot produce those signatures by the end of 48 hours, it moves forward immediately as if unanimous consent had been obtained.

    That way, one Senator can only hold things up for 48 hours.  Ten Senators can hold things up for 60 days, which gives them time to make their case to the Senate as a whole.  If, in that time, they can’t convince a majority of the Senate that the action they’re holding up needs to be voted down entirely, they’re SOL.  But they can’t just hold it in limbo forever.

    Of course, the Senate being what it is, it takes either an act of God or an act of a Republican majority to change the rules.

  54. 54.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Shalimar:

    I grew up in Mobile, though I wasn’t born yet when Brookley closed.  It was prime real estate downtown, and remained desolate into the 1980s, when businesses finally started renovating all the abandoned buildings there.

    Oh mama, can this really be the end…

  55. 55.

    Ksmiami

    @Geminid: then the state shouldn’t have elected a neo Confederate moron who’s jeopardizing our military. Shut them down.

  56. 56.

    Another Scott

    @lowtechcyclist: Sounds decent, except for 60 days is far too long IMHO. The Senate was scheduled to be in session 172 days in 2022. Yeah, calendar days vs days in session. But my concern is that they’re already meeting fewer days than one would suspect, and can’t get essential things like the budget done on time already. Floor time is precious, and punting things for delays only gums up the works more.

    Holds and filibusters and blue slips and all the rest should be abolished. If one doesn’t have the votes in committee or on the floor to get one’s way, then too bad.

    How one does so is left as an exercise for the reader. :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  57. 57.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @lowtechcyclist: If I’m faced with a god who presides over misery, insanity, injustice, and incomprehensibility, I’m going to quote from the Book of O’Neill, Volume Eight, Chapter Four:

    “Of course I dare mock you.”

  58. 58.

    Elizabelle

    The initial WaPost story about The Talented Mr. Murphy has one of the great transition paragraphs.  (Gift link: https://wapo.st/3oAKbFw). [Read the WaPost readers comments, sorted by “Most Liked.”  It is a commentariat of jackals, for sure.]

    Serving as national security adviser to a U.S. senator seems to appeal to a grandiose part of Murphy’s imagination. “I often think about what it would have been like to be a defense minister in 1939,” he once told me. “What advice would I have given Churchill?”

    Tuberville is not Churchill. Before taking office, the ex-football coach seemed a bit iffy on the basics of government, alluding to the three branches of government as “the House, the Senate and the executive.” And, of course, he objected on Jan. 6, 2021, to the certification of President Biden’s win, despite a lack of credible evidence to support Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.

     

  59. 59.

    James E Powell

    @Baud:

    Another example of, if a Dem had done this, the national news would be screaming every day about it.

    If a Dem held up promotions for one week over some issue, the Rs & the political press would still be screaming about it ten years later.

  61. 61.

    Paul in KY

    @JWR: If the tow truck driver was in the vehicle, he/she very lucky as if ramp was not like that, that car would have rearended it at speed.

  62. 62.

    Kathleen

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR: Funny you should say that. My last name is O’Neill and I wrote a workplace satire about Heaven called “The God Blog”. Big Guy (God) is burned out and angry at Earth so Heaven is losing market share to Alexa so Lucifer (CEO of Helliburton considered by NYT to be a marketing genius because of his rebranding of “Helliburton” as “keeping the world safe from sinners since The Fall”) becomes a consultant to rebrand Celestial Services and make it profitable.

  63. 63.

    Elizabelle

    Here are the paragraphs that likely got USN Reserve “Captain” Murphy fired (and good on WaPost reporter Ben Terris for spelling it out plainly enough for Tuberville):

    The senator has made missteps since Murphy came aboard, too, including on matters related to national security. Last year, in a speech to the Montgomery, Ala.-area chamber of commerce, Tuberville called current-day Russia a “communist country” (it is not) and said Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine because “he can’t feed his people” — due to the communism — “so they need more farmland,” according to a report in 1819 News. More recently, he seemed to defend white nationalists serving in the American military (Tuberville said his comments were misconstrued).

    When Murphy looks at his boss, he doesn’t see a guy struggling to adjust to the demands of his new position. He sees a guy who is good at making connections while being unafraid of going it alone on matters of principle. He also sees a guy who cares about the military, who is empowered to conduct oversight (Tuberville sits on the Armed Services Committee), and who takes Murphy’s advice seriously.

    “Getting to advise Coach is great,” Murphy told me. “He has never contradicted me. He trusts me to help make decisions and that’s gratifying.”

    Def check out the WaPost gift link, https://wapo.st/3oAKbFw.  Murphy sounds like a serial fabulist.

  68. 68.

    Citizen Scientist

    @eclare: it’s strange to me as well, having experienced the same situation with my (twin) brother.  We were raised the same, taught by example by our parents, etc. and then he (being a ’normie’ that often didn’t vote) moved to rural NY state and started loving Trump and all things “conservative”.  So, I guess environment can affect it at any time; my guess is that Tuberville started huffing his own farts too much.

    luckily I got to throw out all of brother’s Trump stuff when we moved his stuff out of his old house.

  70. 70.

    Parfigliano

    @eclare: Braves didnt go “worst to first” in 1991.  The Minnesota Twins beat them to win the world series.

  71. 71.

    misterpuff

    @lgerard:

    Do these nuts not understand that the Sisters are not ridiculing Nuns, they are paying homage to them by doing the same type of work, the acts of charity that Jesus commands his followers to do.

    And look fabulous while doing so!

  73. 73.

    Captain C

    @lowtechcyclist:

    What gets me about people like this is that their faith is so fragile. This guy quotes Galatians: “God cannot be mocked.” So their god must be protected from mockery at all costs. I’m not sure why; you’d think that if God is real, then God is a big boy and can handle a bit of ridicule without getting all flustered.

    I suspect that some of it is along the lines of “If you mock God, then you mock ME, and that cannot be tolerated!”, although I doubt many of this type of outward Christian would put it that way.

    Also, this leads right to the question, “So, you really think your god is that fragile, that he can’t withstand a little mockery?”  In the long run, that might be the brainworm that gets a few of them to a better place.

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