United States Senate 2

[GreyhoundFan]

I hope there are actual consequences:

 

[47of74]

On 4/18/2023 at 7:57 AM, GreyhoundFan said:

I wish Feinstein would resign. I appreciate all she’s done over the years, but she is now making things worse. 

 

Yeah she's not helping by staying in and not leaving now.  Especially if she's suffering memory lapses.

Quote

On Tuesday, Feinstein spoke with two reporters —including one from The Times — alongside Prowda and appeared to not recall she’d been absent from Congress for months due to her illness.

“You’ve been working from home is what you’re saying?” the reporter asked.

“No, I’ve been here. I’ve been voting. Please, either know or don’t know,” Feinstein replied.

The interaction came on the heels of several reports, including one last year in the San Francisco Chronicle, that described the deterioration of her memory. Feinstein at the time dismissed the stories, saying she was still fit to serve. The powerful senator is famous for being a very hands-on boss, but the case of shingles appears to have taken a toll.

Fuck I'm sick of this.  Someone who isn't a fucking coward with the Ds needs to have a come to Jesus moment with her and explain how much she's hurting the country.

[fraurosena]

Whoops, the truth accidentally slipped out this obnoxious asshat's mouth.

 

[thoughtful]

4 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Whoops, the truth accidentally slipped out this obnoxious asshat's mouth.

 

He also screwed up which song he's asking about in his stupid question. Jesus Loves Me says nothing about all races being precious in his sight - that's Jesus Loves the Little Children.

Idiot.

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Tuberville is a waste of human flesh. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I wonder if he truly believes this crap. 

 

[fraurosena]

12 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I wonder if he truly believes this crap. 

 

I don't think he knows what the word magnanimous means...

It's certainly not a word I would ever associate with Trump. Petty, vindictive and spiteful, on the other hand...

[GreyhoundFan]

Tuberville is a nasty idiot. "Sen. Tommy Tuberville refuses to agree white nationalists are racist"

Quote

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said that the definition of a “white nationalist” is a matter of “opinion” during a television interview Monday night in which he was given the opportunity to clarify remarks from this spring when he appeared to be advocating for white nationalists to serve in the U.S. military.

During the CNN interview, Tuberville repeatedly said he rejects racism but pushed back against host Kaitlan Collins when she told him that by definition white nationalists are racist because they believe their race is superior to others. Tuberville at one point in the back-and-forth characterized white nationalists as people who hold “a few probably different beliefs.”

Tuberville’s remarks drew a sharp rebuke Tuesday from Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who urged Tuberville to apologize.

“The senator from Alabama is wrong, wrong, wrong,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “The definition of white nationalism is not a matter of opinion. White nationalism, the ideology that one race is inherently superior to others, that people of color should be segregated, subjected to second-class citizenship, is racist down to its rotten core. For the senator from Alabama to obscure the racist nature of white nationalism is indeed very, very dangerous.”

Tuberville’s CNN interview resurrected another controversy for the first-term senator, who has been in the news mostly for stalling scores of senior military nominations in an attempt to stop a Defense Department policy that helps ensure access to abortions for service members and their families.

In a brief interaction with reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Tuberville said little to clarify his views.

“Listen, I’m totally against racism," he said. "And if the Democrats want to say white nationalists are racist, I’m totally against that too. ... My definition is, racism bad.”

In a May interview with a local public radio station in Alabama, Tuberville, a former football coach, criticized Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for his efforts “to get out the white extremists, the white nationalists” from the military. Tuberville said it was part of an effort to politicize the armed services and accused Pentagon leaders of “ruining our military” and driving away supporters of former president Donald Trump.

Tuberville subsequently told reporters that he looks “at a white nationalist as a Trump Republican,” adding: “That’s what we’re called all the time.”

On Monday night, Collins pressed Tuberville on whether white nationalists should be allowed to serve in the military, offering a definition of a white nationalist as someone who “believes that the white race is superior to other races.”

“Well that’s some people’s opinion,” Tuberville said.

Asked for his opinion, Tuberville said: “My opinion of a white nationalist, if someone wants to call them white nationalist, to me, is an American. It’s an American. Now if that white nationalist is a racist, I’m totally against anything that they want to do because I am 110 percent against racism.”

Tuberville then accused Democrats of using the term to push “identity politics,” which he said is “ruining this country.”

Collins continued to press Tuberville on whether white nationalists should be able to serve in the military, saying they are people who believe “horrific things.”

“Well that’s just a name that has been given,” Tuberville said of white nationalism.

Collins told him, “it’s a real definition.”

“If you’re going to do away with most White people in this country out the military, we’ve got huge problems,” Tuberville responded.

“It’s not people who are White. It’s white nationalists,” Collins said.

“That have a few probably different beliefs, they have different beliefs,” Tuberville said. “Now if racism is one of those beliefs, I’m totally against it. I’m totally against racism.”

Earlier in the interview, Tuberville cited his coaching experience at Auburn University and elsewhere.

“I was a football coach for 40 years and had the opportunity to be around more minorities than anybody up on this Hill,” Tuberville said.

“A white nationalist is racist, senator,” Collins said.

“Well that’s your opinion, that’s your opinion,” Tuberville said.

He added: “I’m totally against any type of racism.”

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “[w]hite nationalist groups espouse white supremacist or white separatist ideologies, often focusing on the alleged inferiority of nonwhite persons.”

“Their primary goal is to create a white ethnostate,” the group says on its website. “Groups listed in a variety of other categories, including Ku Klux Klan, neo-Confederate, neo-Nazi, racist skinhead and Christian Identity, could also be fairly described as white nationalist.”

Military leaders have long worried about extremist views in their ranks.

A study by the Center for Strategic International Studies found that 6.4 percent of all domestic terror incidents in 2020 involved active-duty or reserve personnel, more than quadrupling the tally from the previous year. Hate groups actively target troops to become recruits while encouraging their own extremists to join the military ranks.

The presence of many military veterans at the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol further alarmed senior Pentagon officials and prompted Austin to create a counter-extremism working group in April 2021.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Cotton is such an asshole:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

No big surprise: "Tommy Tuberville pledged to ‘donate every dime’ to veterans. He hasn’t."

Quote

“I stand with our veterans and I’m going to donate every dime I make when I’m in Washington, D.C., to the veterans of the state of Alabama. Folks, they deserve it. They deserve it a lot more than most of us.”

— Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), in a Facebook campaign video, March 9, 2020

As senator, Tuberville has made veterans one of his key issues. The former football coach serves on both the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and the Armed Services Committee. He is now in a high-profile battle with the Biden administration over abortion policy affecting veterans. He has stalled the confirmation of more than 250 senior military officers over his objection to a Defense Department policy allowing military personnel and their families to recoup travel expenses incurred while seeking an abortion if they are stationed in a state that bans or restricts the procedure.

Yet there is no evidence that Tuberville has kept a key pledge he made when he ran for Senate three years ago — that he would “donate every dime” he made in Washington to Alabama veterans.

The Facts

A U.S. senator earns $174,000 a year. We’re assuming that Tuberville was proposing to donate only his salary, not the substantial earnings he makes from his investments. (He has an estimated net worth of $20 million.) With Tuberville now having served 2½ years as senator, that would amount to a total of $437,000 in potential donations.

In the past decade, Tuberville has made contributions to veterans via a charitable organization, the Tommy Tuberville Foundation, that he established in 2014 after he was hired as football coach at the University of Cincinnati. His employment contract, which paid him a minimum of $1.6 million a year, stipulated that he donate at least $5,000 a month as a gift to the athletics department. For instance, in 2016 he paid for 150 season tickets for veterans in a section of the stadium dubbed Tubby’s Troops. The transaction was billed to the Tommy Tuberville Foundation, whose primary mission is “assisting our military and veterans.”

The Internal Revenue Service certified the Tommy Tuberville Foundation as a public charity in 2015, making donations to the organization tax-deductible. But a review of IRS filings made by the foundation show that very little has been spent on charitable causes — especially since he became a senator. Tuberville moved the charity to Alabama in 2018 after he left the coaching position in Cincinnati in 2016.

In 2021, the foundation reported it had $74,101 in revenue and spent just 12 percent of that, or $9,000, while $32,000 went to administrative costs (including nearly $12,400 to pay off a truck the charity purchased in 2018 for $27,369). In 2022, the foundation apparently had gross receipts of less than $50,000 and was required to file only a 990-N, known as a postcard, providing even less detail. (The test for filing a postcard considers the average of the past three years.)

The charity also filed a postcard in 2020, and in its 2021 filing it suggested it received no money at all in 2020. The charity generally provides little detail on how money is raised, but its 2018 filing cited fundraising through a golf tournament and speaking engagements. Most of the donations it reported were relatively small — $8,763 in 2015 and $13,245 in 2016 for “veterans home renovations” and $4,536 in 2018 for Flags for Vets. (The foundation filed the wrong form in 2017, so few details are provided, while 2019 and 2020 were also postcard filings.)

Laurie Styron, executive director of Charity Watch, an American Institute of Philanthropy charity watchdog, reviewed the Tommy Tuberville Foundation filings for The Fact Checker. She said that because of the postcard filings there was an “accountability black hole” about the charity that made it difficult “to understand if promises were fulfilled, or monitor a charity's grants relative to its overhead spending.” The main reason the IRS permits small charities to file such limited data is so they can report they are still operating, she said.

“With respect to the $174k per year specifically, the 2021 990 Schedule A reflects that the charity didn’t report receiving contributions even close to this amount in any of the past 5 years,” Styron said in an email. “In fact, the charity reports receiving only $218k in contributions for the past 5 years combined. If he promised to donate his salary to vets, he certainly isn’t fulfilling this promise by donating to this particular charity.”

The 2021 filing lists Rodney Williams as the foundation chairman. Williams is an Alabama pharmacist who contributed to Tuberville’s campaign. He did not respond to a request for comment. Anna Harris, listed as the registered agent in the charity’s filing with the Alabama secretary of state’s office, said she had not worked for the charity for “a couple of years” and could not answer any questions.

The foundation’s Facebook page features articles on some veterans’ initiatives sponsored by the senator since he took office but does not feature any fundraising activity since a 2019 golf tournament.

The Fact Checker contacted nine veterans’ organizations represented on the Alabama State Board of Veterans Affairs. Three state affiliates — Vietnam Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans and Veterans of Foreign Wars — responded and said they have received no donations from either Tuberville or the Tommy Tuberville Foundation.

We also contacted other veterans’ organizations that the Tommy Tuberville Foundation Facebook page has indicated it has supported in the past. For instance, Still Serving Veterans is a Huntsville charity that helps veterans transition to civilian employment. “Still Serving Veterans received a small donation from the Tommy Tuberville Foundation in 2019 as the nonprofit beneficiary of a golf tournament he hosted, but we have not received any contributions since then,” said Debbie Joyner, chief development officer of the organization. Jamie Popwell, president of Flags for Vets, said the organization has received $500 in 2018, $1,000 in 2019 and $2,500 in 2020, but has not received any donation since then.

Tuberville’s staff indicated that thus far the senator had not lived up to his pledge.

“You are correct that Coach uses the Foundation as the primary vehicle for donating to veterans’ organizations, but it is by no means the only one,” Tuberville communications director Steven Stafford said in an email. “You may have learned by now that there were serious problems with the Foundation for a number of years, and that the Foundation came under audit. My understanding is that during the audit, the Foundation paused most of its activities.”

Noting that he was not speaking for the foundation, Stafford added: “The audit was recently completed successfully, and the Foundation is resolving its longstanding problems, resuming its activities, and Coach is resuming his work with the Foundation to help veterans in need.”

Asked whether Tuberville has failed to donate more than $400,000 to veterans, as promised, and whether he is still committed to do so, Stafford responded: “Coach is in the process of reforming the Foundation. He has already completely replaced the Board of Directors; he is resuming activities with the Foundation, and he will keep his promise to the veterans of Alabama.”

Six years of a senatorial salary would mean Tuberville would be on the hook for more than $1 million in donations.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

No, Lindsey, we don’t need the senate to be as crazy as the GQP run house.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Lindsey is terrified.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

While I respect all she has accomplished over the years, she needs to retire. 

 

[SPHASH]

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

While I respect all she has accomplished over the years, she needs to retire. 

 

I like Dianne but yeah she needs to hang it up.  John McCain, Ted Kennedy should have too.

[GreyhoundFan]

Hmmmm. Rs scream about election fraud. What would you call this? "Tommy Tuberville: Florida’s third senator?"

Quote

“Tuberville lives in Auburn, Alabama, with his wife Suzanne.”

— website of Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.)

In late June, Tommy Tuberville traveled to the Wiregrass region of Alabama, which borders Florida. “The Wiregrass is one of the best-kept secrets in Alabama,” Tuberville told a gathering of local leaders in Dothan. “Everyone is seeing the growth in Florida, but that will only last so long because you can only take so many people in the Florida area.”

Tuberville — who coached Alabama’s Auburn University football team from 1999 to 2008 and was elected senator from Alabama in 2020 — isn’t heeding his own pitch.

Three weeks after his Wiregrass appearance, Tuberville sold, for nearly $1.1 million, the last properties that he owned in Alabama, according to real estate records. The properties, known as Tiger Farms LLC, are in Macon and Tallapoosa counties, on the outskirts of Auburn. That same month, he also sold one Florida condo for $850,000 and bought another for $825,000.

Tuberville’s office says his primary residence is an Auburn house that records show is owned by his wife and son. But campaign finance reports and his signature on property documents indicate that his home is actually a $3 million, 4,000-square-foot beach house he has lived in for nearly two decades in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., located in the Florida Panhandle about 90 miles south of Dothan.

The Alabama sale in July was notarized by a person who lives in Santa Rosa Beach, indicating Tuberville was there on July 14. His wife, Suzanne Tuberville, a licensed real estate agent in Florida, has worked at a Santa Rosa Beach real estate firm since the start of this year; she does not have an Alabama real estate license.

The senator also signed in person a deed, notarized in Florida’s Walton County, where Santa Rosa Beach is located, on June 30 — during a two-week period starting June 26 that was designated in the Senate as a “State Work Period,” when lawmakers often return to their states to meet with constituents. Tuberville’s office issued a news release saying the senator met with local officials on three days of that period, June 26-28, including in Dothan, but was silent on the rest of it.

Under the U.S. Constitution, senators are required to be “an inhabitant” of the state when elected, so residency requirements can be minimal. Two Democrats, Robert F. Kennedy and Hillary Clinton, were elected senators from New York shortly after moving there. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who represents a district in the Panhandle, in 2019 considered running for Alabama’s senate seat. But voters increasingly are sensitive to the perception that a lawmaker is not connected to a state. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) in 2012 lost his Senate seat after it emerged that, contrary to Senate rules, he had billed taxpayers for hotel stays in the state. Lugar had sold his home in Indianapolis after he was elected in 1976 and bought one in McLean, leaving him with no residence in the state.

‘Carpetbagger’ accusations

The question about whether Tuberville is truly a resident of Alabama has affected his political ambitions. In 2017 he announced his decision not to run for governor the next year, citing potential controversy over residency issues. Alabama law requires a person be a state resident for seven years to run for governor — but only for one day to run for Senate.

At the time of his decision on the governor’s race — about 10 years after his Auburn coaching job ended — Tuberville owned a lakeside home in Alabama, which he sold 16 months later for $1.4 million.

In 2018, he voted in Florida in the midterm elections, according to the Birmingham News, but he registered to vote in Alabama on March 28, 2019, a week before announcing his Senate bid. For his voter registration address, he listed as his residence a property, appraised at about $300,000, located in Auburn.

Local media accounts in 2020 said that Tuberville owns this home with his wife. But property records show it is owned by Tuberville’s son, who has the same first name but a different middle name, along with the senator’s wife. The home was purchased in 2017, when the son, generally known as Tucker, was in the process of obtaining an Alabama real estate license. The son now works in New York, according to his LinkedIn page. Neither Tucker nor Suzanne Tuberville responded to requests for comment.

The senator also owns a condominium in Washington that he and his wife purchased for $750,000 in 2021, with a $674,250 mortgage, according to real estate documents.

During his Senate campaign in Alabama, Tuberville didn’t deny he was a newcomer to the state, even though he had once coached football there. “Yes, I am not an everyday resident of Alabama,” he acknowledged to a group of voters in a video posted by the campaign of his main challenger for the GOP nomination, former senator Jeff Sessions. “… I’m a carpetbagger of this country.”

Tuberville’s frequent visits as senator to his home in Santa Rosa Beach can be gleaned through expenditure reports filed with the Federal Election Commission by Tuberville’s various campaign organizations and PACs. They show that since Tuberville became a senator, there have been almost monthly expenditures for travel and food in either Santa Rosa Beach or another Florida town, Panama City Beach, which is 50 miles away.

While airline expenditures in the Tuberville filings do not reveal the destination of the tickets, American Airlines at the start of this year suspended service to the airport nearest to Auburn. But the airline provides nonstop service from Washington to Panama City Beach. The campaign finance reports list seven expenditures made to American Airlines in 2023. (Tuberville could also pay for flights out of his own pocket, which would not be reflected in these expenditures.)

Tuberville’s response

Steven Stafford, Tuberville’s communications director, did not deny that the senator no longer owns property in Alabama. But he suggested that the Santa Rosa Beach property was a vacation home.

“Coach has purchased and invested in real estate for decades,” Stafford said in an email. “Coach has owned the property in Santa Rosa Beach for two decades — he bought it while he was coaching at Auburn. He goes there upon occasion if he has a free weekend. It is within driving distance of Auburn. I’m sure many Senators have vacation homes.”

It’s nearly a four-hour drive from the house in Auburn to the home in Santa Rosa Beach, according to Google maps.

Stafford added that Tuberville “purchased his current Auburn residence for his son when his son was a student at Auburn. After his son graduated, he moved out. After Coach retired from coaching, Coach moved into the Auburn house. The Auburn property is his primary residence — although his job requires him to be in Washington four days a week when the Senate is in session.”

Stafford’s statement does not match up with documentary record. Tommy Tuberville never owned the house. Tucker Tuberville graduated in May 2016, according to his LinkedIn page, meaning the house in question was purchased — by Tucker Tuberville and his mother — nine months after Tucker graduated from college. Tucker then worked for his father as an assistant football coach at the University of Cincinnati from May to December that year. Tuberville’s other son, Troy, did not start at Auburn until 2018 and graduated in 2021; he registered to vote using the same address as his father — this Auburn property. He did not respond to a request for comment.

In a later email, Stafford acknowledged the house was purchased after Tucker graduated from Auburn. “His son lived at the Auburn house briefly and then Coach moved there afterward,” he said.

In a 2017 promotional video for ESPN, Tuberville says he retired to Florida, not Alabama.

“Six months ago, after 40 years of coaching football, I hung up my whistle and moved to Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, with the white sands and blue waters. What a great place to live,” he said, displaying a view over the ocean from the house.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Lindsey is looking rough:

 

[fraurosena]

14 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Lindsey is looking rough:

 

It's suspicious that he wasn't indicted along with the others. Wasn't he also one of those who made calls to Georgia officials? Could Miss Lindsey secretly be one of the 30 unindicted co-conspirators and he's now deathly afraid Trump will find out and retaliate by outing whatever Trump is blackmailing him with, and the stress of it all is getting to him.

Edited August 17, 2023 by fraurosena

[Xan]

I wouldn't be surprised if Lindsey is attempting to play both sides.  He's always been about self-preservation.   I'm just surprised that he keeps getting re-elected.  

[GreyhoundFan]

Tuberville is a moron.

 

[Audrey2]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Tuberville is a moron.

 

So I'm guessing that these Democrats come up to you with tears in their eyes and tell you this?

I am not attempting to make light of any situation but I think Tuberville must have been hit in the head too much during his football playing days at Southern State.

[SPHASH]

Senator Klobuchar is having fun at the Minnesota State Fair

[GreyhoundFan]

Tuberville is such a tool:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

More from Tuberville the tool:

 

[Xan]

Tuberville is just too dumb to be a senator and, considering some of the people who we've had as senators, that's saying a lot.