This is an opinion column.

Waaaaaaah!

That’s the sound I make when I believe someone is whining like a petulant child. When they make excuses for some deed they should own, not obfuscate by pouting and stomping with a toddler’s petulance.

Waaaaaaah!

That’s the sound I made earlier this week after Sen. Tommy Tuberville—a one-man military blockade stopping a few hundred promotions because he does not believe women serving their nation in the military should have access to the reproductive healthcare of their choice. Taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be used to pay for time off and travel expenses for soldiers to get reproductive services in other states. He weeted a three-year-old press release issued by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat (and decorated Iraqi war veteran), about her hold of more than 1,200 promotions in 2021.

Waaaaaaah!

Well, she did it!

My momma, probably like yours, would’ve responded: Just because so-and-so did it doesn’t mean you can.

Then given me a look that threatened to launch me time-traveling into next week.

Duckworth, from Illinois, took her stance as a demand that former Defense Secretary Mark Esper tell her in writing that he did not block the promotion to Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, then President Trump’s Ukraine expert, to colonel. Vindman had listened to Trump’s telephone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and expressed concern about it.

Concern because Trump tried to pimp Zelenskyy, asking him to announce an investigation into then-presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden and his son Hunter in exchange for military aid.

Zelenskyy didn’t play that. Nor did Vindman.

Trump was later impeached over the call by the House of Representatives.

Vindman was never promoted to colonel (he retired). Duckworth lifted her hold after two weeks, confident he wasn’t the victim of an administration lick back after reporting on the Ukraine phone call.

Now Tuberville wants to use her holdout over assuring a potential wrong was avoided to justify his bull-headed stance, which began in February.

Tuberville is pouting because he doesn’t agree with the military’s position of offering paid leave and travel expenses to servicewomen who may have to leave the state where they’re stationed because of the state’s restrictive abortion laws. Laws were invoked last year in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s dismantling of Roe V. Wade.

The military doesn’t believe a servicewoman should be penalized because they did not choose where to be stationed.

Tuberville disagrees and believes Congress should vote on the policy. But only if Democrats put forth a bill to vote on. Tuberville’s fellow Republicans have offered “multiple off-ramps,” Duckworth said during an appearance Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. “We’ve given him many options for a vote, and he’s turned them all down,” she added. [Republican U.S. senator] John Ernst has a bill that goes even further than where Senator Tuberville is, and he declined that vote.”

Waaaaaaah!

The Tuberville blockade has choked more than 260 senior officer nominations thus far, according to the Pentagon.

The Marine Corps doesn’t have a confirmed leader for the first time in a century. And at the end of September, Joint Chiefs chairman Army Gen. Mark Milley will step down, as mandated by law, and the current Army chief will leave in early August. Their nominated successors have not been voted upon.

Our Emperor (Senator) with no clothes has been spanked by members of both parties—including Duckworth). To no avail.

Tuberville wants Congress to stomp on the U.S. military’s right to create and implement its own policies to fully benefit all of those servicing their nation—something Tuberville never did.

And seems until that happens, he’ll pout: She did it!

Man, if I’d said that to my momma….

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