Are you smarter than an Alabama football coach? Here’s one who just got elected to the senate. Let’s see if you can spot the errors here.
I wonder if my European readers will see what’s wrong with this story.
Senator Elect Tommy Tuberville from Alabama believes that WW2 was fought to free Europe from socialism. pic.twitter.com/pUaYhfXCxy
— Jason Stanley (@jasonintrator) November 13, 2020
Then he accidentally erased the Supreme Court and the entire judiciary, which may not be such a bad thing.
Tommy Tuberville, who is about the be sworn in as a U.S. Senator, thinks the three branches of government are “the House, the Senate and executive.” https://t.co/021Fo4R9GO pic.twitter.com/pT2cpbTTXd
— Ian Sams (@IanSams) November 13, 2020
Maybe we need some kind of qualifying exam before you can run for office.
Does he have a tendancy to wipe his elbow after a trip to the loo?
How many bottoms does the Republican barrel have?
I don’t know about you, but if half the people are voting for something our country wasn’t founded on, that seems to be not nearly enough. I won’t settle for less than 100% of people voting for something our country wasn’t founded. I would like everyone to vote at least these 3 things that our opposed to our founding principles and practices:
No slavery
No murdering people for land
No adult citizens who are minimally competent to care for themselves being excluded from the right to vote.
If you can’t embrace those 3 maxims which directly contradict founding principles & practices, then you, frankly, suck as a human being.
Almost as bad as confirming a supreme court justice who knows less about the US constitution then me, a foreigner. That was truly cringe worthy.
I still wonder whether the Founding Fathers knew exactly what they were doing, or it’s all emergent fuckery.
I’m certain this dumb jock thinks that that we fought socialism in WWII because the Nazi’s called themselves “National Socialists.”
Which side was his father fighting for?
Another bottom of the Republican barrel is Senator John Coryn, R-TX, who recently proclaimed that the presidential election couldn’t be called yet because not all the votes from Puerto Rico had been counted.
He’s probably planning a presidentail bid next time, and hope that they all vote for him.
Ron Johnson finally has competition.
re @6:
certainly. I keep seeing that confusion all over, usually in response to Sanders declaring himself a Democratic Socialist.
People keep confusing philosophy with what they call themselves. IE many who call themselves Socialist are usually fascists. The Europe we freed, was fighting an authoritarian who was following the fascist philosophy, and called his party National Socialism. Not, repeat NOT, socialism was the NAZI party, it was Socialist in name only, not action.
I totally agree, national office does require some kind of qualifying exam for us to examine before electing them to office. oh well
10
You know that. I know that. However, clods like Tuberville are getting their… ahem… “history” from the likes of Dinesh D’Souza and Dennis Prager who parrot the “Nazi’s were socialist/Leftist” line.
Akira MacKenzie@6 Agreed. It’s a common trope on the right to claim Nazis are really communists because of their name. I’m not even sure where to begin this argument. Tuberville’s dad (assuming he’s not making up complete bullshit) was fighting in alliance with the Soviet Union. What does he think about that part?
I sort of liked Doug Jones. Alabama voted out a decent man who would have done a lot for their state in a Biden administration with a senate majority. You can’t fix stupid.
PaulBC @12: Have you noticed how much American media tends to downplay or ignore any events in World War 2 that the US wasn’t directly involved in? There’s a definite longstanding tendency to portray World War 2 as being pretty much all an American effort.
We’ve had exams to qualify to vote before. Look how those turned out.
Please, no exams to run for office.
microraptor@14 Yeah, but there are a lot of WWII aficionados out there. A lot of them are very conservative, and the History channel has been around way longer than the war itself lasted. It’s hard to believe that anyone could be confused. I think some people are willfully ignorant.
Test of the t’Ubervilles.
@ 17
OK, now that’s pretty good.
One could probably make his head explode by carefully explaining that we were allied with the Soviet Union during WW2.
(As for the “US did it all” trope… I’ve long felt that the–really quite excellent–TV documentary series “Victory at Sea”, should be subtitled “How the US Navy won WW2, with a little help from its friends.”)
PaulBC
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blockquote>Tuberville’s dad… was fighting in alliance with the Soviet Union. What does he think about that part?
As microraptor pointed out in 14, he doesn’t. As far as Tuberville is likely concerned, “Murica was the only combatant in WWII worth mentioning. All the other Allied nations were wimps, losers, or “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” who were too weak to fight without the aid of big, strong, freedom-loving Uncle Sam.
lumipuma, very good.
xdrta – Thanks.
Unlike Proud Boys etc., who just engage in social nationalism.
@11 Akira Mackenzie
Socialists believe that every person is equal.
Fascists believe that one group of people is superior to every other because of race or nationality.
There doesn’t seem to be much room for confusion there.
The Nazi’s put Socialist in their name to attract working class supporters. As soon as they came to power they banned trade unions and put all the social democrats and communists in concentration camps.
@7 Chigau
I expect he has his dad’s black uniform with lighting flashes in a closet somewhere.
“And then 10 minutes, 15, 20 minutes later, they say, remember the first question, not the first, but the 10th question? Give us that again. Can you do that again? And you go, ‘Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV,” he said. […] “I got a perfect mark. And the doctors were — they said: Very few people can do that. Very few people get that. You understand?”
Surely that’s enough for you, PZ? Bloody hell. Next you’ll be asking for a stable genius…
@Matt G 2
They keep finding badly disguised false bottoms.
Odd that this guy chose to join Lincoln’s party. Not only did he go against America’s true founding principles by abolishing slavery, he was also good friends with the devil incarnate, Karl Marx. As Lincoln said:
“Labor is prior to and independent of capital, capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
As far as “fighting socialism on American soil” goes, I suppose the US civil war qualifies, if you were a Southern slave owner or their henchperson.
“I hate Commie Nazis ”
Rainer Wolfcastle .
Over here in good old GB we have just finished Poppy season .
“What is Poppy season?” I hear you amuricans say ,well I will tell you .
We Brits are supposed to wear Poppies ,paper/plastic ones ,leading up to the 11/11. the money raised goes towards helping ex servicemen and women .
Among the various things that gets the RWNJ’s teeth a gnashing is the rise of white poppies ,that are meant to represent peace .Another one is that we should not wear Poppies because it offends Muslims .
All bollox of course.
Then you have the fact that you see people wearing Poppies who are also covered in Swastika tattoos .
All every strange .
A test wouldn’t do any good. Republicans would just pay someone to take it for them.
@davidc1
The poppy obsession in Britain is really bizarre. I view it as a sort of loyalty test to the british military and the right wing press rabidly enforce all celebrities (including non british ones) wearing them.
In Ireland the poppy is extremely controversial. Supporting the british military would mean supporting the black and tans, the reaction to the Easter Rising, the bloody sunday massacre etc. I think some muslims have similar issues relating to the crusades.
“Now, my beauties, something with poison in it. … Poppies will put them to sleep.” That and the fact that it’s the California state flower (the small orange kind that grow everywhere around here, including out of the cracks in my driveway).
I guess it’s a relief to be enough generations from Ireland not to get caught in this controversy.
@30 Yeah ,if a TV news reader /presenter would to appear on TV without a Poppy ,the whatsit would hit you know what .
Questions in the house and all that stuff .
There is a test for elected officials.
It’s called an election.
Blame the people who decided this was the guy they wanted representing their interests.
Hmmm. Seems to me that Tuberville should ask somebody who was actually there, during WW2. I offer my cousin, Jacqueline, who turned 95 in August, a resident of Nancy, France. She and her late husband were both members of the French Resistance during the war and occupation. She speaks fluent English (was a translator for the Americans after liberation), and takes no sh!t from anyone, so I’m sure she’d be more than willing to set Tuberville straight. I’m also sure she’d call Tuberville a “collaborator”, the most horrible epithet in her vocabulary, and tell him what the Resistance did to collaborators during the occupation and after the war was over. Jacqueline is kindness personified, you see.
Tuberville may also be surprised to learn
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/communism-1
“Senator Elect Tommy Tuberville from Alabama believes that WW2 was fought to free Europe from socialism.”
Aha, that’s why in the first elections after WW-2 the CPN – Communist Party Netherlands –
As regards poppies in Britain… One might reflect that it is the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy, the Royal Marines, but the British Army. (The monarchy has a long memory.)
whheydt@37 Oh, that’s interesting. I looked up why and my guess is right, but I won’t spoil the fun (or maybe it’s obvious anyway).
It has occurred to me that there is a test that could be suitably applied for candidates for elected office, and it’s one that everyone should be willing to accept as neutral and impartial…
Insist that the candidates be able to pass the test used for applying for US citizenship. Can’t pass it? Not suitable for elective office.
(And, yes, I am fully aware of the long and horrible history of “literacy tests” for voters.)
My wife and I discussed Tuberville’s follies with our 12 year old grandson. Said grandson has a better grasp of history–especially WW2–than the incipient Senator does. Sad…
People who don’t understand that socialist is something completely different than nazi (national socialist) deserve to have their chair replaced with electric chair
Why is he so proud that his dad was a fascist? Was he with the German or Italian army?
@Gorzki #41:
I wouldn’t trust them to have the brains to wire it up correctly.