Let's Tell-all about Tulsi

[Eric the Green]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-el...9VaDoysD0A

An NBC News analysis of the main English-language news sites employed by Russia in its 2016 election meddling shows Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who is set to make her formal announcement Saturday, has become a favorite of the sites Moscow used when it interfered in 2016.

Several experts who track websites and social media linked to the Kremlin have also seen what they believe may be the first stirrings of an upcoming Russian campaign of support for Gabbard.


Since Gabbard announced her intention to run on Jan. 11, there have been at least 20 Gabbard stories on three major Moscow-based English-language websites affiliated with or supportive of the Russian government: RT, the Russian-owned TV outlet; Sputnik News, a radio outlet; and Russia Insider, a blog that experts say closely follows the Kremlin line. The CIA has called RT and Sputnik part of "Russia's state-run propaganda machine."..

All three sites celebrated Gabbard's announcement, defended her positions on Russia and her 2017 meeting with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, and attacked those who have suggested she is a pawn for Moscow. The coverage devoted to Gabbard, both in news and commentary, exceeds that afforded to any of the declared or rumored Democratic candidates despite Gabbard's lack of voter recognition....


"Her promulgation of positions compatible with Russian geo strategic interests can help them mainstream such discussion in the [Democratic] party," said Alex Stamos, former chief security officer at Facebook and now an NBC News analyst. Gabbard, said Stamos, helps them with all their "lines of attack."...

While some of her stances appeal to the left, she has also angered the party's liberal base with her past positions on same sex marriage, abortion and guns. Just weeks after Donald Trump's upset victory over Hillary Clinton, she met with the president-elect at Trump Tower.

But Gabbard's most controversial position and the one where she's most in line with Russian interests is on Syria. She's accused the U.S. of pushing a policy of "regime change" wars and in January 2017,she met with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in Syria on what she called a "fact-finding mission."...

"The significant thing about her being in the race is because one of her main issues is peace and specifically on Syria, where she is telling the truth on Syria," said Stranahan, who joined Sputnik after stints at Breitbart News, the right-wing news site. ...

Experts in Russian on-line propaganda say Gabbard appeals to pro-Russian sites because her positions —and her appeal as an outsider in her own party — can be used to create division among Democrats.....

Note: The Russians might look upon her as a Democratic Trump figure who can disrupt American politics and weaken our democracy like Trump has.

[Eric the Green]

Tulsi Gabbard Is Not Your Friend
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/tulsi...atic-party

Much of the praise Gabbard receives is for her anti-interventionism. During her 2012 House campaign, she ran ads complaining about “endless war.” She has called for pulling out of Afghanistan, the longest war in US history, suggesting that the government invest the money instead into “rebuilding our own nation through long-term infrastructure projects.” She’s opposed US intervention in Syria since 2013, air strikes in Iraq, and arms sales to Saudi Arabia. She backed Sanders in the Democratic primary because of Clinton’s record of supporting “interventionist regime change wars.”

All of this has created the impression that Gabbard, unlike much of the Democratic Party, is antiwar.

She’s not.

Gabbard’s objections to US wars spring not from a concern for those parts of the world the US military bombs and invades, but exclusively from a concern about the Americans who fight them. As she told Truthout in 2012, her own military service in Iraq and Kuwait “changed my life completely” and revealed the “tremendous cost of war,” recounting the daily casualties and injuries to US troop she saw when she was deployed in a medical unit.

“The cost of war impacts all of us — both in the human cost and the cost that’s being felt frankly in places like Flint, Michigan, where families and children are devastated and destroyed by completely failed infrastructure because of lack of investment,” she told Glamour magazine in March last year.

This also formed the thrust of her speech at 2012’s (particularly militaristic) DNC, where she told the crowd, “As a combat veteran, I know the costs of war. The sacrifices made by our troops and our military families are immeasurable.”

There’s nothing wrong, of course, with expressing empathy for the soldiers who are sent to fight, lose limbs, and die in wars of choice launched by their political leaders. The suffering they and their families endure is heartbreaking, especially considering that many join the military because they lack any other economic opportunities. And the money spent on wars abroad would surely be better used on infrastructure at home.

But Gabbard’s almost singular focus on the damage these wars inflict domestically, and her comparative lack of focus on the carnage they wreak in the countries under attack, is troubling. It is nationalism in antiwar garb, reinforcing instead of undercutting the toxic rhetoric that treats foreigners as less deserving of dignity than Americans. (Gabbard’s brand of anti-interventionism has even received praise from former KKK grand wizard David Duke, who called for her to be named secretary of state.)

And it still produces its fair share of bloodshed. Like campaign-era Trump, Gabbard may be against miring the United States in blunderous, short-sighted conflicts that backfire, but she’s more than willing to use America’s military might to go after suspected terrorists around the world (and inevitably kill and maim civilians in the process). In the same Truthout interview, responding to a question about drones, Gabbard said that “there is a place for the use of this technology, as well as smaller, quick-strike special force teams versus tens, if not hundreds of thousands of soldiers occupying space within a country.”

It’s a point she’s repeated again and again. Responding to questions from Honolulu Civil Beat in 2012, Gabbard said that “the best way to defeat the terrorists is through strategically placed, small quick-strike special forces and drones — the strategy that took out Osama Bin Laden.” She told Fox in 2014 that she would direct “the great military that we have” to conduct “unconventional strategic precise operations to take out these terrorists wherever they are.” The same year, she told Civil Beat that military strategy must “put the safety of Americans above all else” and “utilize our highly skilled special operations forces, work with and support trusted foreign partners to seek and destroy this threat.”

“In short, when it comes to the war against terrorists, I’m a hawk,” she told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald last year. “When it comes to counterproductive wars of regime change, I’m a dove.”

In other words, Gabbard would continue the Obama administration’s foreign policy, which itself was a continuation (and in some ways ramping up) of George W. Bush’s foreign policy. She would keep up the drone bombing of seven Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa — perhaps even expand it — while also relying more on special operations forces, which are already raiding, assassinating, and gathering intelligence in 70 percent of the world’s countries.

Drones killed hundreds of civilians over Obama’s eight years, while special operations forces like SEAL Team 6 — which Gabbard specifically name-checked in her positive allusion to the bin Laden raid — are known for their fair share of brutality. It was “quick-strike special forces” conducting a “strategic precise operation,” to use Gabbard’s term, that a little less than four months ago killed thirty civilians in a botched raid in Yemen.

Not surprisingly, Gabbard has received plaudits from conservatives for her foreign policy stances. The National Review published a glowing profile of the congresswoman in April 2015, complete with a quote from American Enterprise Institute (AEI) president Arthur Brooks saying that he “like[s] her thinking a lot.”

Gabbard was subsequently one of three Democrats — the others being New Jersey senator Cory Booker and Maryland congressman John Delaney — who secured an invitation to AEI’s annual closed-to-the-press retreat, where she hobnobbed with the likes of Dick Cheney, Bill Kristol, Mike Pence, Rupert Murdoch, the DeVoses, and a host of other major conservative figures. At the AEI’s urging, she had earlier spoken at the Halifax International Security Forum, an annual gathering of national security wonks sponsored by Lockheed Martin, Canada’s Department of National Defence, and others.

Another reason Gabbard started receiving applause from the Right was her very public skepticism of the Iran deal.

The Obama administration may have continued much of the Bush approach to the “war on terror,” but it at least recognized the value of diplomacy. Not Gabbard, however, who told Fox News she was “cynical” toward the pact, and agreed with host Greta van Susteren that it was akin to Neville Chamberlain’s infamous Munich agreement with Hitler in 1938.

Breitbart gleefully quoted her in headlines expressing “many” and “great” concerns over the deal as it was being negotiated. On the day the agreement was finalized, she issued a statement saying, “We cannot afford to make the same mistake with Iran that was made with North Korea,” citing North Korea’s abrogation of the Agreed Framework agreement it had signed in 1994. When Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered his unprecedented speech to Congress in March 2015 in an attempt to torpedo the deal, Gabbard didn’t join the significant number of Democrats who boycotted the speech. She attended it.

In light of this, the fact that Gabbard received a “Champion of Freedom” award at the Jewish Values Gala — an awards ceremony held by the World Values Network, which was founded by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, an enthusiastic Trump supporter — in between campaigning for Sanders is less puzzling.

On Rabbi Shmuley’s Facebook page, Gabbard’s award win is recounted in the same post that celebrates making then–Secretary of State John Kerry renounce his statements that Israeli policies contribute to terrorism against Israel. A photo from the event shows Gabbard posing with Rabbi Shmuley and Miriam Adelson, the wife of Sheldon Adelson (Adelson himself is a major Trump supporter, and happens to believe Palestinians are “a made-up people”). As her Democratic primary opponent pointed out, Gabbard has introduced Adelson-backed legislation to Congress before.

Clearly liberals and leftists who admire Gabbard’s foreign policy are mistaking her anti-interventionism for dovishness. But Gabbard’s foreign policy, while an improvement on Trump’s — and what isn’t? — would continue to foment anti-American resentment and anger around the world, with its casualties, destruction, and casual violations of national sovereignty, fueling the very “endless war” she despises.

“Unfortunate and Disturbing”

Which brings us to Gabbard’s other major red flag. Given her support for drones and special ops strikes, it’s not surprising to find that Gabbard never mentions US foreign policy as a catalyst for anti-American sentiment in regions like the Middle East, despite copious evidence to the contrary.

So what is the cause of terrorism, according to Gabbard? Islam, of course.

Before she became a progressive darling for endorsing Sanders, Gabbard became a conservative darling for relentlessly hawking the idea — later popularized by Trump — that Obama’s foreign policy was failing because he refused to use the term “Islamic extremism,” or some variation of it.

From 2014 onward, Gabbard appeared regularly on Fox News to lambast the Obama administration for avoiding the phrase. In one interview, she told the host that “the vast majority of terrorist attacks conducted around the world for over the last decade have been conducted by groups who are fueled by this radical Islamic ideology,” a statement that may be technically true due to the violence and instability plaguing Middle Eastern countries, but is wildly misleading considering that non-Muslims make up the vast, vast majority of terrorist perpetrators in both Europe and the United States.


In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in January 2015, Gabbard complained on Fox News that by “not using this term ‘Islamic extremism’ and clearly identifying our enemies,” the administration couldn’t “come up with a very effective strategy to defeat that enemy.” She told Neil Cavuto that “this isn’t about one specific group,” but about “this radical Islamic ideology that is fueling this,” and that it needed to be defeated “militarily and ideologically.” She characterized Obama’s refusal to “recognize” the enemy as “mind-boggling” and “troubling.”

And it wasn’t just on Fox. Gabbard took her message to any network or outlet that would have her. On CNN, she called Kerry’s refusal to use the term “unfortunate and disturbing.” In an interview with the Hill, she stressed that radical Islam was at the heart of the problem, necessitating “a simultaneous ideological strategy” to defeat terrorists.

The Right was smitten. Breitbart ran article after article trumpeting her criticisms, and former US representative Allen West praised Gabbard for “dar[ing] to challenge Obama.”

In February 2015, Gabbard had the chance to question Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Vincent Stewart. She asked him (while clearly fishing for a particular answer) about the debate over “how this ideology, how this motivation, must be identified” and what “common elements” existed among different Islamic terrorist groups, including ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Boko Haram. She then went on Fox and reported that Stewart had “identified very clearly that it is this radical Islamic ideology that is fueling” these groups.

But Gabbard had heavily distorted what Stewart actually said. While he did call ISIS “a radical ideology that must be countered with a moderate ideology,” he also pointed out that the common elements that had produced such groups were “ungoverned states, weak government institution, economic instability, poverty.”

This was par for the course for Gabbard, who regularly used her TV appearances to brush off, even mock, alternative explanations for terrorism. After Kerry gave a speech at Davos stressing the importance of acknowledging the various drivers of extremism — noting that some extremist fighters “are lured by basic, material considerations” like “the promise of regular meals, a paycheck,” while others are motivated by the chance “to escape boredom” and “be lured by a false sense of success” — Gabbard tore into him on CNN.

“This is completely missing the point,” she said, calling it a “huge mistake” to think “that somehow, okay, well, look if we give them $10,000 and give them a nice place to live, that somehow they’re not going to be engaged in this fighting.” She cited Osama bin Laden as an example, a “multi-millionaire who left his mansions, went and lived in the desert because of this radical ideology.” She reappeared on CNN a month later, denying that “if we just go in and alleviate poverty, if we go in and create jobs and increase opportunity,” it would help solve the problem.

Naturally, it wasn’t long before she appeared on Bill Maher’s program, where the two bonded over their mutual distrust of “Islamic extremism” and their disagreement with Kerry’s comments. After agreeing with Maher that it was “crazy” Obama didn’t want to use the two magic words, Gabbard reiterated her point: “Give them a big house, give them a skateboard, send them on their way. You think that’s going to solve the problem? It’s not.”

Gabbard’s insistence that economic factors play no role in fostering extremism, and in fueling ISIS specifically, is belied by the facts. The group pays its recruiters thousands of dollars, and Hamas officers have explicitly outlined how the promise of money has drawn Gazans to ISIS. “Those in Syria often send pictures back home showing large banknotes to lure others out,” one officer told journalist Sarah Helm.

Gabbard’s worldview also leaves out the role that European and US governments, particularly the Reagan administration, have played in bringing hardline fundamentalists to power and prominence. Bin Laden may have been a millionaire, but he was also a CIA recruit.

Gabbard’s suspicion of Islam goes beyond rhetoric. Last year, she supported legislation that would have barred those on the no-fly list — a list that makes a mockery of due process — from buying guns. Before that, in 2014, Gabbard introduced a bill that would have halted the visa waiver program for countries whose citizens had gone to fight with extremists, claiming that the program “puts the American people in danger.” Had it passed, people from the UK, France, Germany, and many other European countries would have been forced to apply for visas before visiting the United States.

In reality, foreign-born terrorists carrying out acts of violence in the United States, particularly from visa waiver countries, is virtually nonexistent. Yet Gabbard hyped the threat. “If we do nothing to close this loophole, and allow a terrorist to carry out an attack on our homeland, the impacts will be devastating,” she warned.

Gabbard’s hardline stance carried over to the subject of refugees. She was one of forty-seven Democrats to join the House GOP in passing the SAFE Act in 2015, which would have added extra requirements to the already onerous refugee vetting process and effectively ground to a halt the admission of Syrian and Iraqi refugees into the country. In a statement, Gabbard claimed she was voting for the bill to save the refugee program.

Two months before that, however, she had introduced a resolution calling for the United States to prioritize religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East — namely, Christians and Yezidis — when granting refugee status. “These persecuted religious minority groups must be our first priority,” she said. In essence, her position — throwing more roadblocks in front of Syrian refugees, while making an exception for Christians — is the same as that of the Trump administration, whose original refugee ban exempted “religious minorities.”

So it was little surprise that shortly after the election, Trump held talks with Gabbard — a meeting set up by Steve Bannon, a longtime admirer of the Hawaii congresswoman. Sources told the Hill at the time that Bannon “loves her” and “wants to work with her on everything,” and that “she would fit perfectly” in the administration because “she gets the foreign policy stuff, the Islamic terrorism stuff.” (Gabbard’s name was conspicuously missing from the letter 169 House Democrats signed last November calling for Trump to rescind Bannon’s appointment.)

Gabbard didn’t end up getting a job with the Trump administration, which might explain why she seems to have somewhat softened her stances recently. She came out against Trump’s refugee and travel bans, for example. And around the same time, Gabbard spoke at an event held by the group Muslims for Peace, in which she uncharacteristically spoke of “so-called religious terrorism” and affirmed that “the perpetrators of these horrific actions have no connection with the spiritual love that lies at the heart of all religions.”

Coincidentally, Gabbard used the speech to finally explain her long-running refrain that the US must defeat extremism “ideologically.” The answer, according to Gabbard, is confronting such ideologies with “a consciousness of love.” While promoting peace, love, and respect is undeniably admirable, it’s hard to see why Gabbard views the vague concept of “confronting” extremism with “love” as less wishy washy than the idea of preventing terrorism by fighting poverty and political oppression in war-torn countries.

Friends Like These

As her flirtation with Trump and Bannon shows, Gabbard’s hardline stance on terrorism and Islam tends to leave her with questionable friends.

To her credit, Gabbard has supported legislation to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia, citing both the carnage the Saudis were raining down on innocent civilians in Yemen and the Saudis’ spread of Wahhabism, a reactionary form of Islam.

But Gabbard is less discerning when autocrats aren’t motivated by “radical Islam.” In November 2015, she traveled to Egypt as part of a congressional delegation and met Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, part of an effort to strengthen US-Egypt relations. Sisi may be a blood-soaked tyrant who’s killed hundreds of Egyptians and imprisoned many thousands more, but as Gabbard made clear at the time, he’s tough where it counts.


“President el-Sisi has shown great courage and leadership in taking on this extreme Islamist ideology, while also fighting against ISIS militarily to keep them from gaining a foothold in Egypt,” Gabbard said, urging US political leaders to “recognize President el-Sisi and his leadership” and “stand with him in this fight against . . . Islamic extremists.” Some of the Sisi government’s fantastic accomplishments in this fight include killing a group of Mexican tourists and quite possibly torturing and murdering an Italian PhD student.

But perhaps Gabbard’s closest friend on the world stage is India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister Narendra Modi. It’s an ideal match in many respects — not because the two happen to share a faith (Gabbard is the first Hindu American in Congress), but because they both harbor noxious attitudes toward Muslims.

Modi began his career as an activist in Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing, nationalist organization that stokes anti-Muslim sentiment in the country and has been banned four separate times (one of its members assassinated Gandhi over accusations he was appeasing Muslims). While Modi eventually left the RSS for his current party, the BJP, the two are heavily connected: the RSS mobilized to get Modi elected, and several BJP officials used to be members of the RSS.

Shortly after September 11, Modi claimed on TV that Islam had tried “to put its flag in the whole world” since the fourteenth century and that “the situation today is the result of that.” As he campaigned for election in 2014, he threatened to deport undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh (who are mostly Muslim), calling them “infiltrators.”

But most appalling was his role in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in the western state of Gujarat, which left one thousand people dead, nearly eight hundred of whom were Muslims. Modi was the state’s chief minister at the time and has long been accused of allowing the riots to happen, with a former senior police officer testifying in 2011 that Modi said the night before the riots that Muslims needed to be taught a lesson.

Despite all of this, Gabbard has been one of Modi’s most prominent boosters in the US. “He is a leader whose example and dedication to the people he serves should be an inspiration to elected officials everywhere,” she said of Modi in 2014.

For about a decade, the United States refused to give Modi a visa to travel to the US in light of his involvement in the Gujarat riots. For Gabbard, this was a “great blunder,” and she later told the press that “there was a lot of misinformation that surrounded the event in 2002.” She personally congratulated Modi on his 2014 election, and was later involved in organizing his first trip to the US. She also met two BJP leaders who had visited the United States beforehand, and spoke alongside them at an event in Atlanta.

When a congressional panel was held in April 2014 on “the plight of religious minorities in India,” with witnesses testifying about the mistreatment of Muslims, Gabbard said she didn’t “believe the time of this hearing is a coincidence” and that it aimed to “influence the outcome of India’s national elections.” Gabbard voted against House Resolution 417, which criticized India’s record on religious violence and called for specific measures to guarantee religious freedom in the country, explaining that its passage wouldn’t help US-India relations. Yet two years later, Gabbard introduced a similar resolution that covered neighboring Muslim-majority Bangladesh, saying she was “particularly concerned over issues of religious freedom, and specifically, attacks against minority Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, and others” in the country.

There are likely any number of motivations for Gabbard’s steadfast defense of Modi and conditions in India, but similar to her cozying up with Sisi, she specifically cited India’s role as a partner in the war against Islamic terrorists. “For many reasons — not the least of which is the war against terrorists — the relationship between India and America is very important,” she told Quartz last March. A year earlier, while visiting India and meeting with Modi, she told the press that “in order to defeat [terrorism], we (India and the US) will have to work together.”

Beyond the PR

Tulsi Gabbard isn’t all bad. In several areas, she’s further to the left than a number of mainstream Democrats. But her bucking of the Democratic Party establishment, her support from Sanders, and her consistent opposition to regime change has distracted many from the more disquieting parts of her record.

If the glowing profiles of Gabbard are right, she stands poised to become one of the leaders of the Democratic Party. If so, progressives will have to drop any starry-eyed admiration, and take a good, hard, honest look at who Tulsi Gabbard really is.

Her rhetoric about Islam wouldn’t be out of place on a Republican debate stage. Her anti-interventionism is shot through with a pernicious nationalism. Her support for Modi legitimizes a leader with a record of enabling anti-Muslim brutality.

Sanders’s seal of approval shouldn’t be taken as the final word on Tulsi Gabbard. After all, should we really champion a presidential candidate who could easily have been slotted into a Trump cabinet?

[Eric the Green]

Tea With Assad, Hugs With Adelson: Tulsi Gabbard's Unique Views on Israel and the Middle East
An Iraq veteran who endorsed Bernie Sanders, Gabbard is hoping to win over progressive Democrats with rare views that even some right-wing evangelicals like

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.pre...-1.6831029

Gabbard has developed some surprising relationships with right-wing supporters of Israel who are affiliated with the Republican Party. Her contacts with such groups took place mostly during President Barack Obama’s time in the White House.

In 2015, she spoke at a conference of Christians United for Israel – an organization whose leader and founder, Pastor John Hagee, is a strong supporter of West Bank settlements. A spokesman for CUFI told Haaretz that while Hagee himself has 'expressed skepticism' towards the two-state solution, that does not represent the organization's official position, which is to 'never oppose Israeli efforts to advance peace.' CUFI had a leading role in fighting Obama’s policies in the Middle East; Hagee, for example, is an outspoken supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump; Hagee was invited by the Trump administration to speak at last year's ceremony marking the transfer of the US. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

In 2016, Gabbard received an award from Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a New Jersey-based rabbi with close ties to casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson (the largest donor to the Republican Party). A year before Gabbard attended Boteach’s gala dinner and received his “Champion of Freedom” Award, Boteach published full-page ads in leading U.S. newspapers in which he accused Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, of being responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. (Leading Jewish groups denounced the ads, and Boteach later apologized.)

A picture from the 2016 gala dinner, which Boteach uploaded to his Twitter account, shows him and Gabbard together with Miriam Adelson, the Israeli-born wife of Sheldon Adelson and a partner to his political donations to many GOP politicians.


The most unique – and controversial – step Gabbard has taken when it comes to the Middle East was her January 2017 trip to Syria, during which she met with President Bashar Assad, who has emerged victorious from the country’s devastating civil war. Gabbard didn’t inform her party’s congressional leadership about the meeting with Assad, which she claimed was part of an attempt to “bring peace” to Syria. She was harshly criticized by politicians from both parties for taking the meeting.

Even before her trip to Syria, Gabbard expressed non-mainstream views on Syria. In November 2015, she introduced a bipartisan bill to "end the illegal war" against Syria. “The U.S. is waging two wars in Syria. The first is the war against ISIS and other Islamic extremists, which Congress authorized after the terrorist attacks on 9/11,” she stated. The second war, she said, "is the illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad.

"The war to overthrow Assad is counter-productive because it actually helps ISIS and other Islamic extremists achieve their goal of overthrowing the Syrian government of Assad and taking control of all of Syria – which will simply increase human suffering in the region, exacerbate the refugee crisis, and pose a greater threat to the world," she continued. "Also, the war to overthrow Assad is illegal because Congress never authorized it.”

In 2016, Gabbard said, “There is no doubt that Assad is a brutal dictator, but common sense tells us that if we want to defeat ISIS and other Islamist extremist groups, we need to immediately end the illegal and counterproductive war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad.”

Note: this is the key delusion Tulsi propagates, that the USA is waging a war against Syria. The war to overthrow Assad in Syria was waged by the Syrian people. Anyone who doesn't recognize this fact, and who doesn't stand behind the Syrian people who have been so brutally attacked, is not only deluded, but stands against any ideal or value of freedom and democracy, and supports human massacre and terror instead. The Syrian people had no alternative but to fight to defend themselves. This self defense is not "illegal;" it is Assad who is illegal. To recognize the Syrian Arab Spring Revolution of 2011 is not to support an American war against Syria. There is no such war.-- Eric the Green

[Ragnarök_62]

(02-08-2019, 12:40 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Tulsi Gabbard Is Not Your Friend
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/tulsi...atic-party

Much of the praise Gabbard receives is for her anti-interventionism. During her 2012 House campaign, she ran ads complaining about “endless war.” She has called for pulling out of Afghanistan, the longest war in US history, suggesting that the government invest the money instead into “rebuilding our own nation through long-term infrastructure projects.” She’s opposed US intervention in Syria since 2013, air strikes in Iraq, and arms sales to Saudi Arabia. She backed Sanders in the Democratic primary because of Clinton’s record of supporting “interventionist regime change wars.”

All of this has created the impression that Gabbard, unlike much of the Democratic Party, is antiwar.

She’s not.

Gabbard’s objections to US wars spring not from a concern for those parts of the world the US military bombs and invades, but exclusively from a concern about the Americans who fight them. As she told Truthout in 2012, her own military service in Iraq and Kuwait “changed my life completely” and revealed the “tremendous cost of war,” recounting the daily casualties and injuries to US troop she saw when she was deployed in a medical unit.

“The cost of war impacts all of us — both in the human cost and the cost that’s being felt frankly in places like Flint, Michigan, where families and children are devastated and destroyed by completely failed infrastructure because of lack of investment,” she told Glamour magazine in March last year.

This also formed the thrust of her speech at 2012’s (particularly militaristic) DNC, where she told the crowd, “As a combat veteran, I know the costs of war. The sacrifices made by our troops and our military families are immeasurable.”

There’s nothing wrong, of course, with expressing empathy for the soldiers who are sent to fight, lose limbs, and die in wars of choice launched by their political leaders. The suffering they and their families endure is heartbreaking, especially considering that many join the military because they lack any other economic opportunities. And the money spent on wars abroad would surely be better used on infrastructure at home.

But Gabbard’s almost singular focus on the damage these wars inflict domestically, and her comparative lack of focus on the carnage they wreak in the countries under attack, is troubling. It is nationalism in antiwar garb, reinforcing instead of undercutting the toxic rhetoric that treats foreigners as less deserving of dignity than Americans. (Gabbard’s brand of anti-interventionism has even received praise from former KKK grand wizard David Duke, who called for her to be named secretary of state.)

And it still produces its fair share of bloodshed. Like campaign-era Trump, Gabbard may be against miring the United States in blunderous, short-sighted conflicts that backfire, but she’s more than willing to use America’s military might to go after suspected terrorists around the world (and inevitably kill and maim civilians in the process). In the same Truthout interview, responding to a question about drones, Gabbard said that “there is a place for the use of this technology, as well as smaller, quick-strike special force teams versus tens, if not hundreds of thousands of soldiers occupying space within a country.”

It’s a point she’s repeated again and again. Responding to questions from Honolulu Civil Beat in 2012, Gabbard said that “the best way to defeat the terrorists is through strategically placed, small quick-strike special forces and drones — the strategy that took out Osama Bin Laden.” She told Fox in 2014 that she would direct “the great military that we have” to conduct “unconventional strategic precise operations to take out these terrorists wherever they are.” The same year, she told Civil Beat that military strategy must “put the safety of Americans above all else” and “utilize our highly skilled special operations forces, work with and support trusted foreign partners to seek and destroy this threat.”

“In short, when it comes to the war against terrorists, I’m a hawk,” she told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald last year. “When it comes to counterproductive wars of regime change, I’m a dove.”

In other words, Gabbard would continue the Obama administration’s foreign policy, which itself was a continuation (and in some ways ramping up) of George W. Bush’s foreign policy. She would keep up the drone bombing of seven Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa — perhaps even expand it — while also relying more on special operations forces, which are already raiding, assassinating, and gathering intelligence in 70 percent of the world’s countries.

Drones killed hundreds of civilians over Obama’s eight years, while special operations forces like SEAL Team 6 — which Gabbard specifically name-checked in her positive allusion to the bin Laden raid — are known for their fair share of brutality. It was “quick-strike special forces” conducting a “strategic precise operation,” to use Gabbard’s term, that a little less than four months ago killed thirty civilians in a botched raid in Yemen.

Not surprisingly, Gabbard has received plaudits from conservatives for her foreign policy stances. The National Review published a glowing profile of the congresswoman in April 2015, complete with a quote from American Enterprise Institute (AEI) president Arthur Brooks saying that he “like[s] her thinking a lot.”

Gabbard was subsequently one of three Democrats — the others being New Jersey senator Cory Booker and Maryland congressman John Delaney — who secured an invitation to AEI’s annual closed-to-the-press retreat, where she hobnobbed with the likes of Dick Cheney, Bill Kristol, Mike Pence, Rupert Murdoch, the DeVoses, and a host of other major conservative figures. At the AEI’s urging, she had earlier spoken at the Halifax International Security Forum, an annual gathering of national security wonks sponsored by Lockheed Martin, Canada’s Department of National Defence, and others.

Another reason Gabbard started receiving applause from the Right was her very public skepticism of the Iran deal.

The Obama administration may have continued much of the Bush approach to the “war on terror,” but it at least recognized the value of diplomacy. Not Gabbard, however, who told Fox News she was “cynical” toward the pact, and agreed with host Greta van Susteren that it was akin to Neville Chamberlain’s infamous Munich agreement with Hitler in 1938.

Breitbart gleefully quoted her in headlines expressing “many” and “great” concerns over the deal as it was being negotiated. On the day the agreement was finalized, she issued a statement saying, “We cannot afford to make the same mistake with Iran that was made with North Korea,” citing North Korea’s abrogation of the Agreed Framework agreement it had signed in 1994. When Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered his unprecedented speech to Congress in March 2015 in an attempt to torpedo the deal, Gabbard didn’t join the significant number of Democrats who boycotted the speech. She attended it.

In light of this, the fact that Gabbard received a “Champion of Freedom” award at the Jewish Values Gala — an awards ceremony held by the World Values Network, which was founded by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, an enthusiastic Trump supporter — in between campaigning for Sanders is less puzzling.

On Rabbi Shmuley’s Facebook page, Gabbard’s award win is recounted in the same post that celebrates making then–Secretary of State John Kerry renounce his statements that Israeli policies contribute to terrorism against Israel. A photo from the event shows Gabbard posing with Rabbi Shmuley and Miriam Adelson, the wife of Sheldon Adelson (Adelson himself is a major Trump supporter, and happens to believe Palestinians are “a made-up people”). As her Democratic primary opponent pointed out, Gabbard has introduced Adelson-backed legislation to Congress before.

Clearly liberals and leftists who admire Gabbard’s foreign policy are mistaking her anti-interventionism for dovishness. But Gabbard’s foreign policy, while an improvement on Trump’s — and what isn’t? — would continue to foment anti-American resentment and anger around the world, with its casualties, destruction, and casual violations of national sovereignty, fueling the very “endless war” she despises.

“Unfortunate and Disturbing”

Which brings us to Gabbard’s other major red flag. Given her support for drones and special ops strikes, it’s not surprising to find that Gabbard never mentions US foreign policy as a catalyst for anti-American sentiment in regions like the Middle East, despite copious evidence to the contrary.

So what is the cause of terrorism, according to Gabbard? Islam, of course.

Before she became a progressive darling for endorsing Sanders, Gabbard became a conservative darling for relentlessly hawking the idea — later popularized by Trump — that Obama’s foreign policy was failing because he refused to use the term “Islamic extremism,” or some variation of it.

From 2014 onward, Gabbard appeared regularly on Fox News to lambast the Obama administration for avoiding the phrase. In one interview, she told the host that “the vast majority of terrorist attacks conducted around the world for over the last decade have been conducted by groups who are fueled by this radical Islamic ideology,” a statement that may be technically true due to the violence and instability plaguing Middle Eastern countries, but is wildly misleading considering that non-Muslims make up the vast, vast majority of terrorist perpetrators in both Europe and the United States.


In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in January 2015, Gabbard complained on Fox News that by “not using this term ‘Islamic extremism’ and clearly identifying our enemies,” the administration couldn’t “come up with a very effective strategy to defeat that enemy.” She told Neil Cavuto that “this isn’t about one specific group,” but about “this radical Islamic ideology that is fueling this,” and that it needed to be defeated “militarily and ideologically.” She characterized Obama’s refusal to “recognize” the enemy as “mind-boggling” and “troubling.”

And it wasn’t just on Fox. Gabbard took her message to any network or outlet that would have her. On CNN, she called Kerry’s refusal to use the term “unfortunate and disturbing.” In an interview with the Hill, she stressed that radical Islam was at the heart of the problem, necessitating “a simultaneous ideological strategy” to defeat terrorists.

The Right was smitten. Breitbart ran article after article trumpeting her criticisms, and former US representative Allen West praised Gabbard for “dar[ing] to challenge Obama.”

In February 2015, Gabbard had the chance to question Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Vincent Stewart. She asked him (while clearly fishing for a particular answer) about the debate over “how this ideology, how this motivation, must be identified” and what “common elements” existed among different Islamic terrorist groups, including ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Boko Haram. She then went on Fox and reported that Stewart had “identified very clearly that it is this radical Islamic ideology that is fueling” these groups.

But Gabbard had heavily distorted what Stewart actually said. While he did call ISIS “a radical ideology that must be countered with a moderate ideology,” he also pointed out that the common elements that had produced such groups were “ungoverned states, weak government institution, economic instability, poverty.”

This was par for the course for Gabbard, who regularly used her TV appearances to brush off, even mock, alternative explanations for terrorism. After Kerry gave a speech at Davos stressing the importance of acknowledging the various drivers of extremism — noting that some extremist fighters “are lured by basic, material considerations” like “the promise of regular meals, a paycheck,” while others are motivated by the chance “to escape boredom” and “be lured by a false sense of success” — Gabbard tore into him on CNN.

“This is completely missing the point,” she said, calling it a “huge mistake” to think “that somehow, okay, well, look if we give them $10,000 and give them a nice place to live, that somehow they’re not going to be engaged in this fighting.” She cited Osama bin Laden as an example, a “multi-millionaire who left his mansions, went and lived in the desert because of this radical ideology.” She reappeared on CNN a month later, denying that “if we just go in and alleviate poverty, if we go in and create jobs and increase opportunity,” it would help solve the problem.

Naturally, it wasn’t long before she appeared on Bill Maher’s program, where the two bonded over their mutual distrust of “Islamic extremism” and their disagreement with Kerry’s comments. After agreeing with Maher that it was “crazy” Obama didn’t want to use the two magic words, Gabbard reiterated her point: “Give them a big house, give them a skateboard, send them on their way. You think that’s going to solve the problem? It’s not.”

Gabbard’s insistence that economic factors play no role in fostering extremism, and in fueling ISIS specifically, is belied by the facts. The group pays its recruiters thousands of dollars, and Hamas officers have explicitly outlined how the promise of money has drawn Gazans to ISIS. “Those in Syria often send pictures back home showing large banknotes to lure others out,” one officer told journalist Sarah Helm.

Gabbard’s worldview also leaves out the role that European and US governments, particularly the Reagan administration, have played in bringing hardline fundamentalists to power and prominence. Bin Laden may have been a millionaire, but he was also a CIA recruit.

Gabbard’s suspicion of Islam goes beyond rhetoric. Last year, she supported legislation that would have barred those on the no-fly list — a list that makes a mockery of due process — from buying guns. Before that, in 2014, Gabbard introduced a bill that would have halted the visa waiver program for countries whose citizens had gone to fight with extremists, claiming that the program “puts the American people in danger.” Had it passed, people from the UK, France, Germany, and many other European countries would have been forced to apply for visas before visiting the United States.

In reality, foreign-born terrorists carrying out acts of violence in the United States, particularly from visa waiver countries, is virtually nonexistent. Yet Gabbard hyped the threat. “If we do nothing to close this loophole, and allow a terrorist to carry out an attack on our homeland, the impacts will be devastating,” she warned.

Gabbard’s hardline stance carried over to the subject of refugees. She was one of forty-seven Democrats to join the House GOP in passing the SAFE Act in 2015, which would have added extra requirements to the already onerous refugee vetting process and effectively ground to a halt the admission of Syrian and Iraqi refugees into the country. In a statement, Gabbard claimed she was voting for the bill to save the refugee program.

Two months before that, however, she had introduced a resolution calling for the United States to prioritize religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East — namely, Christians and Yezidis — when granting refugee status. “These persecuted religious minority groups must be our first priority,” she said. In essence, her position — throwing more roadblocks in front of Syrian refugees, while making an exception for Christians — is the same as that of the Trump administration, whose original refugee ban exempted “religious minorities.”

So it was little surprise that shortly after the election, Trump held talks with Gabbard — a meeting set up by Steve Bannon, a longtime admirer of the Hawaii congresswoman. Sources told the Hill at the time that Bannon “loves her” and “wants to work with her on everything,” and that “she would fit perfectly” in the administration because “she gets the foreign policy stuff, the Islamic terrorism stuff.” (Gabbard’s name was conspicuously missing from the letter 169 House Democrats signed last November calling for Trump to rescind Bannon’s appointment.)

Gabbard didn’t end up getting a job with the Trump administration, which might explain why she seems to have somewhat softened her stances recently. She came out against Trump’s refugee and travel bans, for example. And around the same time, Gabbard spoke at an event held by the group Muslims for Peace, in which she uncharacteristically spoke of “so-called religious terrorism” and affirmed that “the perpetrators of these horrific actions have no connection with the spiritual love that lies at the heart of all religions.”

Coincidentally, Gabbard used the speech to finally explain her long-running refrain that the US must defeat extremism “ideologically.” The answer, according to Gabbard, is confronting such ideologies with “a consciousness of love.” While promoting peace, love, and respect is undeniably admirable, it’s hard to see why Gabbard views the vague concept of “confronting” extremism with “love” as less wishy washy than the idea of preventing terrorism by fighting poverty and political oppression in war-torn countries.

Friends Like These

As her flirtation with Trump and Bannon shows, Gabbard’s hardline stance on terrorism and Islam tends to leave her with questionable friends.

To her credit, Gabbard has supported legislation to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia, citing both the carnage the Saudis were raining down on innocent civilians in Yemen and the Saudis’ spread of Wahhabism, a reactionary form of Islam.

But Gabbard is less discerning when autocrats aren’t motivated by “radical Islam.” In November 2015, she traveled to Egypt as part of a congressional delegation and met Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, part of an effort to strengthen US-Egypt relations. Sisi may be a blood-soaked tyrant who’s killed hundreds of Egyptians and imprisoned many thousands more, but as Gabbard made clear at the time, he’s tough where it counts.


“President el-Sisi has shown great courage and leadership in taking on this extreme Islamist ideology, while also fighting against ISIS militarily to keep them from gaining a foothold in Egypt,” Gabbard said, urging US political leaders to “recognize President el-Sisi and his leadership” and “stand with him in this fight against . . . Islamic extremists.” Some of the Sisi government’s fantastic accomplishments in this fight include killing a group of Mexican tourists and quite possibly torturing and murdering an Italian PhD student.

But perhaps Gabbard’s closest friend on the world stage is India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister Narendra Modi. It’s an ideal match in many respects — not because the two happen to share a faith (Gabbard is the first Hindu American in Congress), but because they both harbor noxious attitudes toward Muslims.

Modi began his career as an activist in Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing, nationalist organization that stokes anti-Muslim sentiment in the country and has been banned four separate times (one of its members assassinated Gandhi over accusations he was appeasing Muslims). While Modi eventually left the RSS for his current party, the BJP, the two are heavily connected: the RSS mobilized to get Modi elected, and several BJP officials used to be members of the RSS.

Shortly after September 11, Modi claimed on TV that Islam had tried “to put its flag in the whole world” since the fourteenth century and that “the situation today is the result of that.” As he campaigned for election in 2014, he threatened to deport undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh (who are mostly Muslim), calling them “infiltrators.”

But most appalling was his role in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in the western state of Gujarat, which left one thousand people dead, nearly eight hundred of whom were Muslims. Modi was the state’s chief minister at the time and has long been accused of allowing the riots to happen, with a former senior police officer testifying in 2011 that Modi said the night before the riots that Muslims needed to be taught a lesson.

Despite all of this, Gabbard has been one of Modi’s most prominent boosters in the US. “He is a leader whose example and dedication to the people he serves should be an inspiration to elected officials everywhere,” she said of Modi in 2014.

For about a decade, the United States refused to give Modi a visa to travel to the US in light of his involvement in the Gujarat riots. For Gabbard, this was a “great blunder,” and she later told the press that “there was a lot of misinformation that surrounded the event in 2002.” She personally congratulated Modi on his 2014 election, and was later involved in organizing his first trip to the US. She also met two BJP leaders who had visited the United States beforehand, and spoke alongside them at an event in Atlanta.

When a congressional panel was held in April 2014 on “the plight of religious minorities in India,” with witnesses testifying about the mistreatment of Muslims, Gabbard said she didn’t “believe the time of this hearing is a coincidence” and that it aimed to “influence the outcome of India’s national elections.” Gabbard voted against House Resolution 417, which criticized India’s record on religious violence and called for specific measures to guarantee religious freedom in the country, explaining that its passage wouldn’t help US-India relations. Yet two years later, Gabbard introduced a similar resolution that covered neighboring Muslim-majority Bangladesh, saying she was “particularly concerned over issues of religious freedom, and specifically, attacks against minority Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, and others” in the country.

There are likely any number of motivations for Gabbard’s steadfast defense of Modi and conditions in India, but similar to her cozying up with Sisi, she specifically cited India’s role as a partner in the war against Islamic terrorists. “For many reasons — not the least of which is the war against terrorists — the relationship between India and America is very important,” she told Quartz last March. A year earlier, while visiting India and meeting with Modi, she told the press that “in order to defeat [terrorism], we (India and the US) will have to work together.”

Beyond the PR

Tulsi Gabbard isn’t all bad. In several areas, she’s further to the left than a number of mainstream Democrats. But her bucking of the Democratic Party establishment, her support from Sanders, and her consistent opposition to regime change has distracted many from the more disquieting parts of her record.

If the glowing profiles of Gabbard are right, she stands poised to become one of the leaders of the Democratic Party. If so, progressives will have to drop any starry-eyed admiration, and take a good, hard, honest look at who Tulsi Gabbard really is.

Her rhetoric about Islam wouldn’t be out of place on a Republican debate stage. Her anti-interventionism is shot through with a pernicious nationalism. Her support for Modi legitimizes a leader with a record of enabling anti-Muslim brutality.

Sanders’s seal of approval shouldn’t be taken as the final word on Tulsi Gabbard. After all, should we really champion a presidential candidate who could easily have been slotted into a Trump cabinet?

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tul...93e00a0009

I looked at your stuff and did a bit of searching and found the above.   I'm perfectly fine with a "realistic" foreign policy which deletes all of stupid idealistic stuff about promoting anything.  Just say no to meddling into the internal affairs of any nation with the exception that said nation is a true threat to the US. Like I said before I am a nationalist and damn proud of it. If she has hangups over this or that refugees, guess what? I can live with that as well.








https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Headless_Children

There's lot of famous folks in that album cover. Guess what? The album cover needs to be a lot bigger cause I'd add all of the famous Neoconservatives and Davos crowd folks to it.  Yeah, it's messy, but let's keep it real.

With that said, I'll followup on the Israel/drone stuff. If that pans out, I suppose I'll have to add her to the album cover and look elsewhere. Bernie is good enough.

[Bill the Piper]

Looks like another Hillary.

[David Horn]

(02-08-2019, 11:26 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Looks like another Hillary.

H-m-m-m, not really.  To me, she seems more Trump-like, in most respects.  As a member of Congress, her odd opinions merely add to the discussion.  As President, they BECOME the discussion.  For all her faults, and there are many, Hillary is data driven, if less than sympathetic to the 99%.  Gabbard, on the other hand, is simply toxic.

[Ragnarök_62]

(02-09-2019, 08:25 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-08-2019, 11:26 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Looks like another Hillary.

H-m-m-m, not really.  To me, she seems more Trump-like, in most respects.  As a member of Congress, her odd opinions merely add to the discussion.  As President, they BECOME the discussion.  For all her faults, and there are many, Hillary is data driven, if less than sympathetic to the 99%.  Gabbard, on the other hand, is simply toxic.

Now that may be what's really the truth.  However, if team blue of team red have her running against some shill, she'll be my "little red button".   So team blue, choose well. No more Neocon-Neoliberals.  Here's a interesting perspective from home and abroad.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/02/07/...hit-crazy/
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/...nt-page-2/
https://www.rt.com/usa/448632-tulsi-gabb...reactions/

After all, she has checked all the right boxers of folks who are pissed off!

[Hintergrund]

Can anyone give me the cliffs?

[Marypoza]

(02-09-2019, 05:08 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(02-09-2019, 08:25 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-08-2019, 11:26 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Looks like another Hillary.

H-m-m-m, not really.  To me, she seems more Trump-like, in most respects.  As a member of Congress, her odd opinions merely add to the discussion.  As President, they BECOME the discussion.  For all her faults, and there are many, Hillary is data driven, if less than sympathetic to the 99%.  Gabbard, on the other hand, is simply toxic.

Now that may be what's really the truth.  However, if team blue of team red have her running against some shill, she'll be my "little red button". :D  So team blue, choose well. No more Neocon-Neoliberals.  Here's a interesting perspective from home and abroad.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/02/07/...hit-crazy/
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/...nt-page-2/
https://www.rt.com/usa/448632-tulsi-gabb...reactions/

After all, she has checked all the right boxers of folks who are pissed off!

-- l watched Tulsi on CNN & thought she did good overall. Her answers were consistent, she avoided the trap questions, & stated her case well

Rags l see you like Caity too

[Marypoza]

(02-08-2019, 11:26 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Looks like another Hillary.

--- nah, the Other Hillary is Eric's skanky senator

[Hintergrund]

Still believing in the "Russian collusion" thing? The Democrats mostly lost because they didn't get that many Americans hate Hillary and the elites in general - and with good reasons.

[Eric the Green]

(03-23-2019, 08:31 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: Still believing in the "Russian collusion" thing? The Democrats mostly lost because they didn't get that many Americans hate Hillary and the elites in general - and with good reasons.

Hillary was going to be a much greater challenge to the elites than Trump, who supports them more than any president ever. That's why Trump won, and Hillary was not allowed to be president. Vote suppression, unlimited money ruling over politics, the electoral college, as well as the Russians and Comey, plus Hillary's own inadequacies as a candidate, in ideas, strategy and personality, allowed Trump to squeak through and establish his cruel, fake regime.

[Ragnarök_62]

(03-23-2019, 08:31 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: Still believing in the "Russian collusion" thing? The Democrats mostly lost because they didn't get that many Americans hate Hillary and the elites in general - and with good reasons.

Well, now. Russiagate has been as is now exposed as nothing more than a gas lighting nothingburger by the elites here. I just love it since the MSM just trashed its legitimacy even more!

https://www.rt.com/usa/454554-maddow-cry...ndictment/

I mean, really, one has to look oveseas to get what's really going down, since the MSM and social media like twatter is compromised.


And, look how "free" the US is with all of our corporate bannings!

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-2...ler-report

However, I don't care for Trump and I'm gonna use my little red button, Tulsi 2020!

Hahahahahahahah

USSA! USSA, Uber Alles < Der Trumpenfurfur's merry deplorable Neocons.

[Eric the Green]

Pressing the Tulsi button really is like pressing the nuke button! Nuke Truth! Vote for Tulsi Gasp-turd!

[Ragnarök_62]

(03-27-2019, 12:18 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Pressing the Tulsi button really is like pressing the nuke button! Nuke Truth! Vote for Tulsi Gasp-turd!

Nuke truth, eh?

Lookie, lookie mommy, liars, liars, pants on fire.




Wow, lots of fine choices here. I'll pick some neocons/MIC toadies for my vote.  Max Boot, John Brennen,Bengamin Wittes, Molly Mckew, and Bill Kristol have my vote on this one.   Mueller madness, just like futbahl (Okie accent here) , just a lot funner. As for the "tell us why".  That's like shooting fish in a barrel. All neocons and MIC toadies advocate, over and over for failed policies that create refugees, waste money, and kill innocents.

[Eric the Green]

Trump is the biggest liar who has ever existed. It does not matter if Mueller couldn't charge him with collusion. There was collusion anyway, and much more illegal activity by Trump and his minions besides, and more investigations by others will continue. Your mad ones are the sane ones, to the extent that knocking Trump is sane (which it is).

Release the whole report. Barr is Trump's man, and cannot be trusted.

Anyway, I predicted Trump would run for president again, so his being "exonerated" was not a surprise. It just would have been better, because Pence is easier to beat. Oh well, the same fact remains. Trump will win unless the Democrats pick a candidate who can beat him. There are only two still out there as possible candidates that can beat him for sure; ONLY two, and neither has announced, and neither is at the top of polls. What does that tell you? Don't be optimistic that Trump can be defeated in 2020. That's what I've been saying all along.

[Ragnarök_62]

(03-27-2019, 01:04 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Trump is the biggest liar who has ever existed. It does not matter if Mueller couldn't charge him with collusion. There was collusion anyway, and much more illegal activity by Trump and his minions besides, and more investigations by others will continue. Your mad ones are the sane ones, to the extent that knocking Trump is sane (which it is).

Yes he is.  So why is the every MSM mouthpiece prattling about stuff that doesn't really matter then?

Where is coverage on the following.

Medicare for all:  Where is the on the carpet dragging wrt Trump on that?

Workers' rights:  Nothing there either. Where is the coverage on Trump trashing Obamacare, overtime law changes for salaried workers, badgering Trump to shut down Amazon's sweatshops, and for a cherry on top, why no increase in the minimum wage?

Trump hiring illegal aliens.  That should be a hoot. Talk about hypocrisy! Why hasn't Trump been fined up the ass for that one. Also, why hasn't Trump supported fining the shit out of other employers who break immigration laws? Enforcing that immigration law would get rid more illegal aliens than that stupid wall. Here is what I want. I want a nice big splintery phone pole law that can be used to shove into the asses of employers who hire illegal aliens.  Employers  who break that law shall pay $1,000,000 per violation and the owners go to a real jail for 20 years. Yes, that's what I want.  Rag's little tweaks will fix the illegal alien problem far better than the wall and it would actually be a profit center to boot. The MSM needs to support Rag's law and how Trump violated it. See there, Eric, that's a big reason I despise Trump right there. Hopefully, this clarifies that issue for you.

Trump and workplace rules. Where is the talk about Trump trashing those. Worker safety is very important and if the MSM went after that, Trump would look like shit, even in red states. They just need to find some injured workers and get 'em on the set.  See how easy that is.

Quote:Release the whole report. Barr is Trump's man, and cannot be trusted.

I agree. I also want it out non redacted as well. I also want to know about Podesta and MI6's role. I want to know more about collusion between the US deep state and MI6 to blame Russia for stuff it didn't do. As for what Russia did do.  I mean really, they paid a few $100,000 for ads on social media.  Damn those Ruskies can get a big bang for the buck there. Russia medding?  Sure, they do what the deep state here does.  Karma's a bitch, after all.  Cf. Venezuela.

Quote:Anyway, I predicted Trump would run for president again, so his being "exonerated" was not a surprise. It just would have been better, because Pence is easier to beat. Oh well, the same fact remains. Trump will win unless the Democrats pick a candidate who can beat him. There are only two still out there as possible candidates that can beat him for sure; ONLY two, and neither has announced, and neither is at the top of polls. What does that tell you? Don't be optimistic that Trump can be defeated in 2020. That's what I've been saying all along.

Well, if they ran on bread and butter workers' isses instead of stupid SJW issues , that would help also. I'd also add getting out of all of these stupid wars as well. Polls show Americans want out of these stupid wars.  The MSM is derelict.  They need to do the exact same thing as they did in 'Nam.  Show what those wars are really like, 24/7.  I'm sure all of those dead people and destruction would do exactly shown in living color would do what they did in Nam.  So, let's have something old, that can be new again.  I want to go, again to some antiwar events. The first go round was just school stuff like ROTC sux!

And... As far as Trump 2020. Yup he'll be reelected if the Dems stay as Dinos and the MSM just covers irrelevant shit like Trumps twatter feeds.

You have to admit, the MSM is gonna eat a bunch of *crow.


* eating crow award for MSM

[Marypoza]

(03-27-2019, 10:58 AM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(03-27-2019, 01:04 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Trump is the biggest liar who has ever existed. It does not matter if Mueller couldn't charge him with collusion. There was collusion anyway, and much more illegal activity by Trump and his minions besides, and more investigations by others will continue. Your mad ones are the sane ones, to the extent that knocking Trump is sane (which it is).

Yes he is.  So why is the every MSM mouthpiece prattling about stuff that doesn't really matter then?

Where is coverage on the following.

Medicare for all:  Where is the on the carpet dragging wrt Trump on that?

Workers' rights:  Nothing there either. Where is the coverage on Trump trashing Obamacare, overtime law changes for salaried workers, badgering Trump to shut down Amazon's sweatshops, and for a cherry on top, why no increase in the minimum wage?

Trump hiring illegal aliens.  That should be a hoot. Talk about hypocrisy! Why hasn't Trump been fined up the ass for that one. Also, why hasn't Trump supported fining the shit out of other employers who break immigration laws? Enforcing that immigration law would get rid more illegal aliens than that stupid wall. Here is what I want. I want a nice big splintery phone pole law that can be used to shove into the asses of employers who hire illegal aliens.  Employers  who break that law shall pay $1,000,000 per violation and the owners go to a real jail for 20 years. Yes, that's what I want.  Rag's little tweaks will fix the illegal alien problem far better than the wall and it would actually be a profit center to boot. The MSM needs to support Rag's law and how Trump violated it. See there, Eric, that's a big reason I despise Trump right there. Hopefully, this clarifies that issue for you.

Trump and workplace rules. Where is the talk about Trump trashing those. Worker safety is very important and if the MSM went after that, Trump would look like shit, even in red states. They just need to find some injured workers and get 'em on the set.  See how easy that is.

Quote:Release the whole report. Barr is Trump's man, and cannot be trusted.

I agree. I also want it out non redacted as well. I also want to know about Podesta and MI6's role. I want to know more about collusion between the US deep state and MI6 to blame Russia for stuff it didn't do. As for what Russia did do.  I mean really, they paid a few $100,000 for ads on social media.  Damn those Ruskies can get a big bang for the buck there. Russia medding?  Sure, they do what the deep state here does.  Karma's a bitch, after all.  Cf. Venezuela.

Quote:Anyway, I predicted Trump would run for president again, so his being "exonerated" was not a surprise. It just would have been better, because Pence is easier to beat. Oh well, the same fact remains. Trump will win unless the Democrats pick a candidate who can beat him. There are only two still out there as possible candidates that can beat him for sure; ONLY two, and neither has announced, and neither is at the top of polls. What does that tell you? Don't be optimistic that Trump can be defeated in 2020. That's what I've been saying all along.

Well, if they ran on bread and butter workers' isses instead of stupid SJW issues , that would help also. I'd also add getting out of all of these stupid wars as well. Polls show Americans want out of these stupid wars.  The MSM is derelict.  They need to do the exact same thing as they did in 'Nam.  Show what those wars are really like, 24/7.  I'm sure all of those dead people and destruction would do exactly shown in living color would do what they did in Nam.  So, let's have something old, that can be new again.  I want to go, again to some antiwar events. The first go round was just school stuff like ROTC sux!

And... As far as Trump 2020. Yup he'll be reelected if the Dems stay as Dinos and the MSM just covers irrelevant shit like Trumps twatter feeds.

You have to admit, the MSM is gonna eat a bunch of *crow.


* eating crow award for MSM

-- 4get Bernie 4get Tulsi. RAGS 4 PREZ

[Eric the Green]

Trump used the illegal immigrant issue to stoke fears and get elected. He never intended to do anything about the issue that solves any problems.

Bernie is doing the right thing by adopting Hillary's SJW issues as well as continuing to emphasize that the economy is stymied by our rule-by-the-rich 1% system. He does have leadership qualities and might win. Remember no USA presidential election is decided on issues, or who is dino and who is rino and who is true blue or red. It is decided by which candidate Americans think is a real leader. One scholar on Panetta's periodic show on PBS pointed out that a candidate who wins tells a story. Trump had one to tell and Hillary did not.

My horoscope scores indicate who can win; you should all know who they are by now. There's not very many of them, and only one (Bernie, a crap shoot at best) has announced. We may be in deep doo doo.

[Ragnarök_62]

(03-27-2019, 01:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Trump used the illegal immigrant issue to stoke fears and get elected. He never intended to do anything about the issue that solves any problems.

Did you read what I wrote in another post?  Let's look at why I don't want illegal aliens in the US.  Illegal aliens suppress wages which affects workers' wages. Next, companies that hire illegal aliens have an unfair cost advantage. That means employers who follow the rules pay the price. That is exactly why I say, go after unscrupulous employers.  Here is another thing I'd do.  I'd force employers to validate the citizenship or legal status with Realid. They'd have to justify each and every salary tax deduction against Realid. I'd then subject them to ruthless audits. If there is non compliance, that's where my fine of $1,000,000 per offense comes into effect along with that 20 year jail term.  I'm sure a  few smackdowns would get employers in shape in no time. I'd also verify citizenship/legal status for social benefits.  That way, there's no privacy invasion on anyone. The cops wouldn't have to do traffic stops and check legality that way. Oh, and trump wants to make it worse by again, screwing around in Latin America (Venezuela). So, again, Eric, why hasn't the MSM called him out on policies that make for even more refugees, huh?
Also, why haven't I heard anything from them about the US turning Honduras into a shithole under Obama?  That and it's of course Shillery doing her usual dirty work.


http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/20...olicy.html

See! Again, I have to rely on foreign news sources because the MSM is just fucking worthless. I done gave up them.  Pravda got nothing on these waste of biomass.

Quote:Bernie is doing the right thing by adopting Hillary's SJW issues as well as continuing to emphasize that the economy is stymied by our rule-by-the-rich 1% system.

Really? I haven't heard him mess around with non *gender binary, white males cause all problems, and stupid new pronouns.  If someone doesn't want to use the ready handy pronouns fine.  Here is my pronoun for certain SJW stuckups. If you want a personal pronoun, fine, and here it is (S)he (H)e (IT) = SHIT.

Quote:He does have leadership qualities and might win. Remember no USA presidential election is decided on issues, or who is dino and who is rino and who is true blue or red. It is decided by which candidate Americans think is a real leader. One scholar on Panetta's periodic show on PBS pointed out that a candidate who wins tells a story. Trump had one to tell and Hillary did not.

Dunno. I like my story and I believe it has legs.  I'm sure it doesn't have anything to do with my horoscope. I rather think it has to do with a distaste for hypocrisy, fuzzy presentation of issues, and just outright distracting narratives.

Quote:My horoscope scores indicate who can win; you should all know who they are by now. There's not very many of them, and only one (Bernie, a crap shoot at best) has announced. We may be in deep doo doo.

R U shure? At least, you'd need to get a much larger sample size. Most medical studies have a few thousand samples. The proof is in the math, man. And, maybe if the math works, we can just draft the person with the best score. I think it would be hard to do any worse than what we got now.