Tag: U.S. Senate

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GOP U.S. Senate Viral Video WTF?!

WATCH: Near ‘Literal Brawl’ Starts When GOP Senator Threatens Union Leader Testifying Before Committee

In what was once known as “the greatest deliberative body on earth,” today, a Republican senator threatened to fight a union leader who was testifying before a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien was the witness, according to Mediaite, when Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) referenced several barbs the two men have traded in recent months.

For example, O’Brien posted this in June:

That led Mullin to tell O’Brien:

“Sir, I wish you was [sic] in the truck with me when I was building my plumbing company myself and my wife was running the office because I should remember working pretty hard and long hours. ‘Pretends like he’s self-made. What a clown, fraud always has been, always will be. Quit the tough guy act in these Senate hearings. You know where to find me. Any place, any time, cowboy.”

Mullin then added: “Sir, this is a time, this is a place. You want to run your mouth. We can be two consenting adults. We can finish it here.”

O’Brien: “Okay, that’s fine. Perfect.”

Mullin: “You want to do it now?”

O’Brien, accepting the challenge: “I’d love to do it right now.”

Mullin: “Well, stand your butt up, then.”

O’Brien: “You stand your butt up.”

As Mullin stood and started to take a ring off his finger, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) intervened:

“Hold it. Stop it. Stop it. No, no. Sit down. Sit down! You’re a United States senator!”

When O’Brien asked if he could respond to what Mullin had said, Sanders insisted he couldn’t, telling him, “No, you can’t. This is a hearing.”

Here’s the video:

The greatest deliberative body on earth? Sure, until a redneck like Markwayne Mullin tries to turn it into a boxing match.

 

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GOP U.S. Senate

Tommy Tuberville May Be Illegally Serving In The Senate – Has Residency In Florida, Not Alabama

When he decided to run the United States Senate from the state of Alabama in 2000, former football coach Tommy Tuberville asserted that he owned a home in the city of Auburn, Alabama, meaning he met the residency requirements for the office he was seeking.

However, it now appears that Tuberville lied and is actually a resident of Florida, which would technically make him the Sunshine State’s third senator. That would be historic (and illegal) because the U.S. Constitution only allows for two senators for each the 50 states, according to a fascinating investigative piece from Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post.

The Alabama house in question is actually owned by Tuberville’s wife and son, neither of whom were on the 2020 ballot.

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.

A Florida beach house? That’s right, and his address suggests Tuberville has been lying to voters in Alabama all along, because in his official paperwork for office, he claimed the Auburn home as where he lived.

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.

The fact that Tuberville lives in Florida but is registered to vote in Alabama also suggests the senator may have committed voter fraud on at least one occasion since we can assume he voted for himself in the 2020 election.

Oh, and then there’s the tab Tuberville is running up as he travels to his Florida beach house when he leaves Washington to return “home,” whatever that particular word means to the senator.

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.

Tuberville has attempted to dismiss any criticism of having been away from Alabama for many years by claiming to be a “carpetbagger of this country.” But while that may be a cute one-liner to feed the press and public, it doesn’t address the larger issue of the senator’s blatant disregard for both state and federal election law.

At a time when Republicans continue to try and make voting more difficult — especially for people of color — in the U.S., maybe Sen. Tuberville needs to sit down and explain his own blatant hypocrisy. That, or resign immediately and run against one of Florida’s actual senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott.

 

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GOP U.S. Senate WTF?!

WATCH: Mitch McConnell Freezes In Mid-Sentence – Has To Be Escorted Away By Colleagues

Something appears to be very wrong with the health of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and it was on full view for the world during a daily Senate GOP press conference today.

During his opening remarks Wednesday, McConnell uttered a couple of words and was then unable to continue any further, clearly losing the ability to talk.

The Kentucky Republican was quickly escorted away from the podium by Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) as Sen. John Thune (R-SD) took McConnell’s place at the microphone.

McConnell returned to the presser several minutes later, according to CNN’s Manu Raju and later appeared “sharp” when it was time for questions from the media.

CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta said in his opinion McConnell “needs an exam…Time is critically important.”

McConnell is 81 and was hospitalized for a concussion and broken ribs after he fell earlier this year. Friends and colleagues say he has been moving with more caution (and more slowly) since the fall that caused the earlier injuries.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for Republicans to say that McConnell needs to step down from his Senate seat even though they repeatedly say President Joe Biden, 80, is unfit for office. The GOP, we’ve all seen, is little more than a collection of hypocrites collecting government salaries.

 

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education GOP Racism U.S. Senate WTF?!

Tuberville Gets Ripped A New One For Saying ‘Inner City’ Teachers May Not Be Able To ‘Read And Write’

Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville has long been known as a bigoted and idiotic piece of human waste, but comments he made during an appearance on Donald Trump Jr’s “Triggered” podcast are drawing almost universal criticism across the political spectrum.

During a discussion of education, Tuberville remarked, “The Covid really brought it out how bad our schools are and how bad our teachers are, in the inner city. Most of them in the inner city, I don’t know how they got degrees.”

He then added:

“I don’t know whether they can read and write. And they want a raise. They want less time to work, less time in school. It’s just, we’ve ruined work ethic in this country. We don’t work at it anymore. We push an easy life.”

Tuberville also let loose with this morsel of profound personal ignorance:

“If you can’t read and if you can’t write, you can’t live in a country like this and not have somebody help you make it through life, which is what a lot of this government wants.”

Keep in mind that before the state of Alabama elected him to the Senate, Tuberville was a college football coach. It’s safe to say he probably had some players who couldn’t read or write and needed help, too, but that’s OK because they had the athletic ability he needed to exploit in order to justify his salary, which was in the millions.

Oh, and it’s also instructive to know the following about the state of Alabama: It’s ranked 46th among the 50 states when it comes to its educational system. Kind of makes you wonder if more than a few of Tuberville’s constituents are also deficient when it comes to reading and writing skills.

One good thing did come from Tuberville’s bigoted remarks: The social media whupping he took.

 

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Abortion GOP U.S. Senate

WATCH: Woman Slams Ted Cruz For Lying About Abortion During Senate Hearing

A Senate hearing on abortion turned into a verbal dressing down of Texas Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, neither of whom showed up for the hearing, probably because they knew they’d be confronted and humiliated for their refusal to even consider that a woman has a right to an abortion.

Amanda Zurawski was the witness testifying, and she explained that she almost died after she had a medical emergency while pregnant and had to wait until she was on the verge of death before she was allowed to obtain an abortion in the Lone Star State.

“We’ve heard a lot today about the mental trauma and the negative, harmful effects on a person’s psychological well-being after they have an abortion, supposedly,” Zurawski said. “And I am curious why that is not relevant for me as well. Because I wasn’t permitted to have an abortion, and the trauma, and the PTSD, and the depression that I have dealt with in the eight months since this happened to me is paralyzing. On top of that, I am still struggling to have children.”

That horrific situation, Zurawski explained, was forced on her by those who try to make it more difficult for women to get an abortion.

“And I wanted to address my Sens. [Ted] Cruz and [John] Cornyn, neither of whom regrettably are not in the room right now. I would like for them to know that what happened to me, I think most people would agree, was horrific. But it is a direct result of the policies that they support. I nearly died on their watch. And furthermore, as a result of what happened to me, I may have been robbed of the opportunity to have children in the future. And it is because of the policies that they support.”

She concluded her testimony by saying there are other women just like her.

“What happened to me was horrible, but I am one of many. And quite frankly, I am lucky. I am lucky that I have a husband who could take me to the hospital, I don’t have other children that I had to worry about finding childcare for. I have a job that was understanding that allowed me to grieve for three days as I waited to almost die. What about all of the women that don’t have the same opportunities, that don’t have access to health care? They don’t have health insurance; they don’t have a partner? What about them?”