Cultist Finds Her Home, for Now

Pete Hegseth. Kristi Noem. Karoline Leavitt. Donald Trump, himself.  This Administration brings to mind the title of one of Al Franken's books, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them."

One of the finest liars in the Trump Administration, however, is the Director of National Intelligence, now in Georgia scouring, probably illegally, for those 11,780 votes from 2020

OMG 🚨

Tulsi Gabbard says Biden was never calling the shots.... and neither was Kamala

She says Hillary, Obama, Blinkin Jake Sullivan and the Deep State

They needed a figurehead they can control

They used the Autopen to run a shadow Govt... and the media wasn't interested pic.twitter.com/jBhWiZDRva

— @Chicago1Ray 🇺🇸 (@Chicago1Ray) January 29, 2026

 

President Biden used an autopen just as have most recent presidents, including Donald Trump himself. This myth began ten months ago by the Liar-in-Chief when he contended about pardons issued by Biden "in other words, Joe Biden did not sign hem but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!"

In a written opinion of July, 2005, the Office of Legal Counsel, argued

The President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves and decides to sign in order for the bill to become law. Rather, the President may sign a bill within gthe meaning of Article 1, Section 7 by directing a subordinate to affix the President's signature to such a bill, for example by autopen.

This may have been an unsound opinion, not unlike that of the same office when it decided that sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted. (Mr. anti-deep state has not specifically criticized either opinion.

If there were any evidence that President Biden didn't know whom he was pardoning- let alone that there was some sort of "Deep State"- there would have been at least a hint of evidence. None ever has been produced, notwithstanding the Republican Party's enthusiasm for condemning Biden and Democrats' avoidance of defending him- because there is no reason to believe J. Sullivan, A. Blinken, B. Obama, or Hr Clinto had any control whatsoever over the 46th President.

However, my favorite Tulsiism is the following because it is not only preposterous but indicative of deep-seated hypocrisy on the part of the DNI.

One of the main reasons I left the Democrat Party was because of their hostility towards God and those who have faith in or are trying to cultivate their love for God. Those so-called 'protestors' who tried to intimidate and terrorize innocent women, children, and men in the…

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) January 20, 2026

Fourteen months ago, a Hawaiian news organ explained that in 2015 during her second term in the US House of Representatives 

Longtime political activists here were raising alarms about her connections to the Science of Identity Foundation, an offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement launched in the 1970s by a Kailua surfer, Chris Butler. Gabbard’s family, including her father, Sen. Mike Gabbard, were adherents of Butler’s and Tulsi Gabbard grew up going to schools run by the group.

Over the years, Gabbard has stopped short of denying her membership in the foundation, which many consider a cult. She married a man whose family also was part of the organization. Questions were raised when she hired friends she’d grown up with in the organization to help advise her on policy and run her congressional office. Later, she paid others affiliated with the Science of Identity Foundation to work on her campaign.

Longtime political activists here were raising alarms about her connections to the Science of Identity Foundation, an offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement launched in the 1970s by a Kailua surfer, Chris Butler. Gabbard’s family, including her father, Sen. Mike Gabbard, were adherents of Butler’s and Tulsi Gabbard grew up going to schools run by the group.

Over the years, Gabbard has stopped short of denying her membership in the foundation, which many consider a cult. She married a man whose family also was part of the organization. Questions were raised when she hired friends she’d grown up with in the organization to help advise her on policy and run her congressional office. Later, she paid others affiliated with the Science of Identity Foundation to work on her campaign.

When Gabbard decries Democrats' alleged "hostility towards God," it is not clear what she means by "God."  There was this from six years ago: "Imagine there's no heaven; easy if you try. No sky above us; no religion, too."

 

Gabbard has re-invented herself as a cultural right-winger to a left-winger, now to a right-winger in the Trump orbit (and Administration). She may have found the God of the Old and New testaments, but it's not probable. In either case, it's rich that someone who belonged to a Hindu cult and promoted John Lennon's atheism should now accuse Donald Trump's critics of "hostility towards God."

It may have been sheer ambition that Tulsi Gabbard, after being squashed in her bid to become the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, decided to swithc jerseys. Her afffinity for Vladimir Putin's Russia may have been a factor. And that may not be all. 

At the 50th anniversary gala in 2016 of ISKCON, the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, Gabbard remarked

Real spiritual understanding, or real religion, transcends sectarianism. Each and every one of us, whether we call ourselfves a Muslim, a Christian, a Hindu or any other designation, we each have this intrinsic opportunity to cultivate our own personal loving relationship with God.

Muslim, Christian, Hindu.  It's not surprising that the same individual who  absurdly slams President Biden would omit the party of Jake Sullivan, Chuck Schumer, and J.B. Pritzker. Or maybe Tulsi Gabbard is just generally clueless. 

  

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When Hypocrisy and Possible Voter Fraud Mingle

This is Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence.

Tulsi Gabbard full on pandering to the Big Lie: "We have evidence of how these electronic voting systems have been vulnerable to hackers for a very long time and vulnerable to exploitation to manipulate the results of the votes being cast." pic.twitter.com/UkrXfSBX4L

— Blue Georgia (@BlueATLGeorgia) April 10, 2025

From CNN via Hawai'i Free Press:

 …  In March 2024, Gabbard and her husband, Abraham Williams, bought a home in the Austin suburb of Leander, Texas, according to property records.

Several months later, in June, Gabbard and Williams declared under oath before a notary public that “we are resident(s) of the State of Texas,” and their Leander home was “designated as the family homestead,” according to a public document filed in Travis County, Texas, the following month….

On the (2024) campaign trail, she echoed some of Trump’s rhetoric about election security, calling voting integrity “a serious concern and a serious issue” at one Trump campaign event in Las Vegas last fall….

But a few months later, Gabbard voted in the 2024 general election back in Hawaii….

…Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University who studies election law, said Gabbard’s vote raised “a bunch of questions.”

“If she voted in Hawaii without actually living up to Hawaii’s eligibility standard, then that’s a problem,” said Levitt, who served as a voting policy adviser in the Biden administration. “Alternatively, if she always meant to keep Hawaii as home, that could well be a problem for that Texas tax exemption.”

Hawaii law says that individuals can only have a single residence for election purposes, and defines a voter’s residence as the “place in which the person’s habitation is fixed, and to which, whenever the person is absent, the person has the intention to return.”

If a voter has more than one dwelling, there is a “presumption” that a voter’s residence is the dwelling that is “subject to the homeowner’s property tax exemption,” state voting regulations say. There is also a presumption that if a voter takes up a new dwelling in another state, that new dwelling is their residence. The regulations allow voters to present evidence that they should still be allowed to vote in Hawaii.

Lance Collins, a Hawaii lawyer who has worked on multiple cases in the state in which voters challenged an elected official’s residency, said he thought Gabbard could face a challenge to her registration or an investigation into her vote in the 2024 election.

Under Hawaii law, voters keep their residency “until you take some affirmative action to abandon it,” Collins said. “Requesting a homestead exemption in another state is strong evidence of an intention to abandon.” …

In May of 2024, Gabbard was interviewed by the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody about the former congresswoman's recently published "For the Love of Country: Leave the Democratic Party Behind." Asked about gender, she contended that Democrats "themselves are removing these guardrails in our society that the truth then becomes whatever they deem it to be, putting themselves in that position of trying to be God."  In the book itself, she had written

I cannot associate myself with today’s Democratic Party, the leaders of which stand in direct opposition to this freedom, intent on using all levers of their power to target people of faith, especially Christians, and undermine our religious freedom.” She spoke of her own experiences when her father was persecuted for his religious beliefs and how over her lifetime God has been removed from the Democratic Party. In 2002 God was mentioned seven times in their official platform but in 2020 only once. Gabbard also scrutinizes how during the pandemic, churches were shut down–-even drive-in ones—yet liberal political protests were allowed to continue.

Bit in December of 2019 when Gabbard was seeking nomination as the Democratic nominee for President, she had commemorated the 39th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon, who with his wife had written the 1971pop hit "Imagine." She posted to Twitter a three-minute video showing her singing the song while she was in the back of her campaign bus and accompanied by her husband playing a ukelele. "Imagine," the politician sang

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace.

One day she's singing "Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try... And no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace." Less than three years later, in her letter announcing her departure from the Democratic Party, she wrote in October of 2022 that the Democrats "actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are hostile to people of faith and  spirituality...."

For Gabbard then, peace comes only through the elimination of religion and with it, God. Then there was Gabbard leaving the Democratic Party in part because it was doing everything in "their power to target people of faith, especially Christians."

To be generous, Gabbard belongs to the Science of Identity Foundation, an offshoot Krishna Consciousness, itself an offshoot of Hinduism. There is, ahem, history between Hinduism and Islam, and Gabbard may have been aghast as the tolerance of the Democratic Party toward Islam and Muslims.

Or perhaps Tulsi Gabbard is merely a fake, a phony, and fraud. Adopting the Republican playbook, she turns her back on God while claiming to be a person of "faith," allegedly unlike her opponents. And she has conveniently adopted one of the central tenets of the Donald Trump strategy: never admit error or play defense and always attack. So now the response of the woman who appears to have voted illegally in 2024 herself attacks what she claims is electronic voting fraud to manipulate election results.

That ' is paired with someone who celebrates atheism, then condemns her political opponents for targeting "people of faith."  If that ever is combined with blatant corruption, we'll have the perfect Cabinet secretary for the Trump Administration.

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Tulsi Gabbard's Identity

Besides possibly being a Russian assset, Tulsi Gabbard has at least one interesting acquaintance. "

Back in 2017 DNI pick Tulsi Gabbard visited Syria and met with brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad. Throughout the war she repeatedly voiced support for Assad's regime crushing the Syrian Revolution.

Now that he's fallen she can't even bring herself to say his name. pic.twitter.com/EVRw6mmpR0

— Thomas van Linge (@ThomasVLinge) December 10, 2024

Last month, Nikki Haley noted Gabbard had gone "to Syria in 2017 for a photo-op with Bashar al-Assad while he was massacring his own people. She said she was skeptical that he was behind the chemical weapons attack. Now, this to me is disgusting."

Haley's political star has plummeted and Assad has fled Syria for Russia but Gabbard may be on her way to being Director of National Intelligence. But aside from the major issues- Syria and Russia swirling around her, Gabbard is a flaming hypocrite.

Tulsi Gabbard was born in American Samoa and raised in Hawaii. She is a Hindu who married a Hindu, Abraham Williams, in Oahu in 2015 in what she dexribed as a "Hawaiian-style Hindu wedding" with Vedic customs. However, the Democrat turned Independent turned Republican in May stated

Many of those who are in great positions of poer in the Democratic Party, whether they admit it or not, or realize it or not, they see themselves as God. They appoint themselves as the authority. They view themselves as the ones who get to decide how we live our lives, what we're allowed to say, who we're allowed to hear from (and) how we get our information.

When Gabbard says "God," it is not clear to what or whom she is referring because

The majority of Hindus believe in one supreme God ((The Brahman). Everything is a part of and a manifestation of Brahman, the ultimate reality; however, Brahman's qualities and powers may be represented by a great diversity of gods/deities, all of which emanate from The Brahman. The concept of Brahman and the relationship of the Supreme Being with nature, indvidual souls, and TheBrahman's various manifestations are the subject of many different Hindu schools of philosophy/belief. 

The unvierse, Earth, and all creatures were created by Brahma, one of the many gds that emanated from The Brahman.

Thus, there is a monotheistic aspect of Hinduism.  Nonetheless, it is not considered among the three major monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and for good reason.

Tulsi Gabbard is is no position legitimately to lecture Democrats, the overwhelming majority of whom identify as Christians, Jews, or Muslims. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are monotheistic. Yet, Gabbard, who belongs- and identifies with- a religion which seemingly recognizes a few gods, claims Democrats see themselves as "God."

Nor does Gabbard herself appear to believe in God. Below is a video in which she and her husband are singing along to John Lennon's Imagine. The lyrics begin

Imagine there's no heaven. It's eay if you try. No hell below us. Above us, only sky....

Imagine there's no countries. It isn'thard to do. Nothing to kill or die for. And no religion, too.

"Imagine there's no heaven (and) no hell below us, "and no religion, too."  Fortunately, there is no religious test for public office in the USA. and there are more important reasons to reject Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. But it may be one more indication that the nominee, who has ducked questiosns about her relationship with Bashar Assad and is Russia-friendly, is not exactly whom she appears to be.

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If Only We Could Imagine There is No Tulsi

Former Democrat, now an independent (sort of) partial to Republicans, Tulsi Gabbard is expected to be nominated by Donald Trump by Donald Trump to be the Director of National Intelligence. On an unrelated matter, she is particularly exorcised by the acceptance of most Democrats of gender transition treatment for children. In May, we learned

Tulsi Gabbard, the former Hawaii congresswoman known for criticizing the Democratic Party, says Democratic elites have put themselves in the place of God and seek to erase the deity from American public life.

A former Democrat, Ms. Gabbard slammed the Biden-Harris administration for “using the tools of government [to target] different people, particularly Christians.”

“This is the fundamental precept of our country, this freedom of religion,” Ms. Gabbard said in a telephone interview before a multi-state book tour. “It’s important for voters to know and to understand what’s going on here and the dangerous mindset that’s driving it.”

She is promoting her new book, “For Love of Country: Leave the Democrat Party Behind.”

“Many of those who are in great positions of power in the Democratic Party, whether they admit it or not, or realize it or not, they see themselves as God. They appoint themselves as the authority,” she said. “They view themselves as the ones who get to decide how we live our lives, what we’re allowed to say, who we’re allowed to hear from [and] how we get our information.”

“They’re most recently [decided] that things that are objectively true are not, such as the biological differences between men and women,” said Ms. Gabbard, the first Hindu and first Samoan-American to become a member of Congress in 2013.

It's quite a trick to see yourselves as something but not realize it. It may even be impossible- if one does not realize something, one does not see himself as that.

Either Tulsi Gabbard is confused about this or it is a feint. We're expected to believe that someone who slams Democratic officeholders for "see(ing) themselves as God" is herself a woman of deep religious faith. And indeed, the former congresswoman may be a woman of faith- in Bashar al-Assad or Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. However, she is not someone with faith in God. This is her below:

 

And these are some of the lyrics to that awful- "godawful" obviously would not apply- song written by John Lennon and performed by the Beatles: 

Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us, only sky

Imagine all the people

Livin' for today

Ah

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion, too

Imagine there's no heaven.... and no religion, too. Enjoy the song- the lyrics, the melody, the lyrics and the melody- if you wish. Difference of opinion is what makes horse races. Feel free to worship your God, enjoy the song, and sing it in your home. But allowing yourself to appear in a YouTube video singing a song promoting atheism and the erasure of religion, then denouncing a political party for real or imagined affrontery to God, is hypocrisy with a capital H (Hypocrisy, then).

Hypocrisy is not the worst thing about Tulsi Gabbard. Her fondness if for the strongmen who run Syria and Russia is far more serious. Still, it reveals a side of Gabbard's character that is stunningly loathsome.

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The Word (Words) That Must Not Be Uttered

Tulsi Gabbard is, if nothing else, ideologically consistent about international affairs. Here she is talking to the Wolfman in January 2016, blaming President for "refusing to recognize who our enemy is," whom she identified as "radical Islam."

      

Her message earlier this week was almost exactly the same:

The United States must stand with Israel in the face of this terror attack by the Islamist terrorist group Hamas. This is just the latest example of the greater war being waged by both Sunni and Shia Islamist jihadists throughout the world. This should be a wakeup call to leaders…

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) October 9, 2023

There are few if any places in American media today which acknowledge the impact of radical Islam on the global scene. For the hundreds- perhaps thousands- of cable news segments about the invasion of Israel by Hamas militants/terrorists, including acknowledgment upon the impact upon the Jewish community of Israel, there is a brazen avoidance of mentioning "Islam" or "Muslim" or even "Islamic extremists."  

That's not surprising on CNN and especially not on MSNBC, home to Ali Velshi, Ayman Mohyeldin, and Mehdi Hasan, at least the latter two who have blamed Israel in part for the calculated, murderous rampage of the radically Islamist Hamas. But even Fox News, perhaps stung by being criticized over the years as being "Islamophobic," appears unable to consider the impact of the Middle East's religious fanatics.

Fox News may have the best motive for avoiding talking about religious extremism because it might elicit comparison with our own nation's religious extremists, usually Republican and invariably conservative.  The unwillingness to engage on that issue is unfortunate, not only because we have not fully addressed our domestic problem, but also because of the contrast between the fanaticism in the USA and that exhibited through the Muslim world, now fully on display in the Middle East.

As a current member of the Science of Identity Foundation, Gabbard has her own motive to criticize radical Islam because SIF is an offshoot of Hinduism, whose adherents presently are at odds with Muslims in several nations. She thus is an imperfect messenger, also because....

🚨New: Tulsi Gabbard responds to Sean Hannity's question if she would be Trump's Vice President in 2024. @TulsiGabbard said, “I look forward to having that conversation. That would be a very serious conversation. I want to be in a position to help protect our country's freedom.” pic.twitter.com/idmKQsOWm4

— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) October 10, 2023

Still, Gabbard had a point in 2016, and she does now. Moreover, it would be clarifying if both (or either, let's not be greedy) legacy media and social media at least would identify Hamas properly. Now that the terrorist organization and political entity has made good on its goal of slaughtering hordes of Jews and appears ready to murder hostages, we shouldn't ignore the obvious.

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Religious Fraud- Or a Cultist

In Acts 7:32 (ESV) of the New Testament, Stephen explains that at the burning bush, God notified Moses "I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob.’ And Moses trembled and did not dare to look."

Sad (not surprising) to say, Tulsi Gabbard's followers on Twitter/X seem unaware this probably is not who the former US Representative from Hawaii, now a political Independent, is referring to:

When we feel the pressure to conform to the insanity of a God-less culture driven by a totalitarian power elite, we must ask ourselves: who are we trying to please? Whoever we are trying to please, that is who we serve. God gives us free will to choose - will we serve Him, or… pic.twitter.com/1ypnyOuuo7

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) September 30, 2023

 

The first Samoan and Hindu member of the United States Congress was raised in an offshoot, headed by a Chris Butler, of the Hare Krishna movement.  The Science in Identity Foundation appears to hold Hindu beliefs with a dose of extreme anti-gay, anti-Muslim sentiment. Raised by a Catholic father and Hindu mother

Gabbard has described her experience growing up in the group as one that was seemingly positive, some other ex-members have described themselves as survivors of a cult.

"I was raised to believe Chris Butler was God's voice on earth, and if you questioned him or offended him in any way, you were effectively offending God," someone who identifies as a former member of the SIF wrote in a 2017 Medium post. "Questioning the leader was spiritual suicide, which was seen as worse than death."

Another former member told New York Magazine that Butler was vulgar and vindictive, excoriating people for small slip-ups like driving poorly or failing to clean water cups properly.

The congresswoman has cited  "my gratitude to (Butler), for the gift of this wonderful spiritual practice that he has given to me and to so many people." However

Gabbard has often downplayed the influence of Butler, telling the New Yorker that she has "had many different spiritual teachers, and continue[s] to." But she acknowledged that he had shaped her Hindu identity, referring to him as her "guru dev," or spiritual guide. Gabbard also told the New York Times in 2019 that Butler and his work still guide her.

The guru dev brooks no criticism and is described by former members as controlling the members of a cult but

Butler has denied these claims, and Gabbard told the New Yorker that these experiences didn't chalk up to her own: "I've never heard him say anything hateful, or say anything mean about anybody," Gabbard said. "I can speak to my own personal experience and, frankly, my gratitude to him, for the gift of this wonderful spiritual practice that he has given to me, and to so many people."

A year ago, Tulsi's aunt, a retired University of Hawaii English professor, told The Independent 

Once again I find my niece’s apparent penchant for parroting extremist toadies such as Tucker Carlson and vile ‘strongmen’ such as Vladimir Putin, to be problematic and deeply troubling.... It gives me no pleasure to ​note that Tulsi’s single governing principle seems to be expedience, which is in effect no principle at all.

The snide smile sported by Gabbard at the 1:00 mark of the tweeted video supports Caroline Sinavaiana Gabbard's opinion that her niece is guided by expedience rather than faith. Or perhaps Gabbard, as a Hindu, believes in the religion's many deities, a theological belief contrasting sharply with the monotheism of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. 

We may never know, though.  All a public figure needs to do to get a free pass is to say "God" (or perhaps "god") as the media shrinks from its responsibility to ask for clarification. But Tulsi Gabbard, who once substituted for Tucker Carlson on Fox News and is a critic of the Democratic Party she once belonged to, is still a player, slightly diminished. When an individual cites God in promoting a political agenda, especially one legitimately considered hateful, her remarks should not be taken at face value.

 

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Childish in Vermont

If it is always wise to take what politicians say with a grain of salt, it is wise to take whatever Tulsi Gabbard says, especially on Fox News, with a pitcher of the stuff.

A public elementary school just announced it will stop using “boy” & “girl” and instead use "person who produces sperm" & "person who produces eggs.” This seems like a prank, but it’s real. By rejecting the existence of objective truth, they’re conditioning us to accept the truth… pic.twitter.com/5DleRhSZvI

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) May 6, 2023

Alas, it turns out that Gabbard was not making it up because

On the heels of national backlash, some parents in the Essex-Westford School District let their school board know how they feel about the new sex education policy in one of their schools. And now the governor is weighing in, too.

Tuesday night was the first board meeting since the district announced it is changing how it teaches puberty and reproductive health at Founders Memorial School.

Last month, parents of fifth graders received a letter explaining that educators will now use the phrases “person who produces sperm” or “person who produces eggs” in place of male or female.

The district insists the policy creates a safe and inclusive environment for LGBTQ+ students.

More than a dozen parents spoke at Tuesday’s meeting. The majority agreed with the new policy.

“I am so disappointed in the anger that has erupted in our community over what amounts to space for gender nonconforming students to feel safe and free and express their identity,” said Mary Brodsky, an Essex-Westford parent.

“I am so grateful my boys that go to school here. They are so much more wiser, knowledgeable than I was at their age. I am so grateful of the education they’re getting to understand the breadth and depth of humanity,” said Alexis Dubie, another parent.

Only two speakers raised concerns about the new policy. One said this concept could be confusing for students so young, while another said it discounts biological facts.

It’s not clear if students at other schools in the district-- at A.D. Lawton and the Westford School-- will be using person-first language in their sex ed classes.

Only be advised that the binder which will be available in the main office for review will not be, as Mitt Romney would have put it, "whole binders full of women" but instead "whole binders full of persons who produce eggs." And if a "person who can get pregnant" is asked what the sex of her person before infancy is, she can say "person who produces sperm" or "person who produces eggs." Alternatively, she can use clear language without making a political statement.

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Mum Should Be the Word

Tulsi Gabbard, continuing her tour explaining why she no longer belongs to the Party which she wanted to represent as the presidential nominee way back in 2020, has told Chris Cuomo

We should- our President needs to step up and bring the stakeholders around the table and have a negotiated end to this war that has been escalating ever since Putin invaded Ukraine back in February. That's what a leader would do. That's what President JFK would do. That's what Ronald Reagan....

After Cuomo followed up, Gabbard added

If you look at what the reports were when representatives from Russia and Ukraine were actually negotiating all the way back in March, it was the united States that was coming in and saying "Hey, no, don't make a deal here. Don't make a deal. Hold out."

The host responds, and the guest continues

There was a time, there was a time, early on, where both Russia and Ukraine were saying "Hey, we need to have a conversation. It was the President of the United States and maybe others in NATO who were telling them "leave the negotiating table." Every single American should be pissed off about that because who has suffered the most? The people of Ukraine have suffered the most and people here in the United States are continuing to struggle and wonder the hell are we doing here.

If untrue, this is dangerous revisionist history because it pertains to the USA's approach to a negotiated peace. Gabbard cited no evidence in defense of her (alleged) recollection. Journalist Julia Mendel, once a press secretary for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote in September of her

visit to Zelensky’s headquarters in Kyiv a few weeks ago. There, not far from the spot where I once worked as Zelensky’s press secretary, I met with senior presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak. (These days Podolyak is often described as one of the most powerful people in Ukraine, not far behind the president himself.)

As Podolyak pointed out to me, it’s a myth — often asserted by the Russians, by the way — that Ukraine isn’t ready for talks. In fact, Podolyak already has experience of sitting at a table opposite a delegation from Moscow. In February, he was part of the Ukrainian negotiation team that met with Russian representatives at the border with Belarus just as the war was getting underway.

The Russian negotiators, fully believing their own propaganda, issued ultimatums to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine.

“They kept calling us ‘Nazis,’ ” he told me. “It shows you how degraded Russian diplomacy and consequently the political process is.” He told me that even some of the members of the Russian delegation he has known for years referred to him with this label.

The Ukrainian delegation came with a mandate to do everything it could to start a dialogue. At the time, Russia was killing countless Ukrainian citizens and destroying Ukrainian cities; Ukraine had prevented the Russian troops from taking the capital but had not yet fully driven them out of the area to the north of Kyiv. The Kremlin demanded that Ukrainians lay down their arms and surrender. “They were completely unprepared,” Podolyak recalls. “The Russians knew nothing about the state of our army. They described some of our bases, which are exclusively under Ukrainian jurisdiction, as NATO bases. … The only thing they had to offer was war and blackmail.”

The last round of talks, held in Turkey at the end of March, ended with the Ukrainians handing over a communique with a proposal to end the war.

The Ukrainian delegation presented a proposal for a new system of security guarantees that would define Ukraine’s status as a neutral nonaligned nonnuclear state. Ukraine offered to negotiate the status of Crimea separately within 15 years, without the use of military means. Separately, the presidents of Ukraine and Russia would discuss the status of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The Russians responded by saying that they would give Ukraine a gift “that would please them very much.” That meant, Podolyak said, “that they would withdraw their troops from Kyiv region.” (By then, of course, Ukrainian fighters had already defeated the Russian forces marching on Kyiv.)

But what the Ukrainians discovered after the withdrawal filled them with horror. In Bucha, investigators discovered the bodies of more than 400 civilians — their hands often tied behind their backs — who were shot by the Russian invaders. There is evidence of torture and rape. Hundreds remain missing. What the Ukrainians saw was shocking in its brutality, this “not only canceled out the Istanbul communique but also our understanding of what Russia is.”

I asked what he meant by this: “We saw that the Russian army wasn’t just fighting, it was destroying,” Podolyak told me. “And they were doing it on the principle of genocide — not on the basis of ethnicity but of affiliation with the Ukrainian state. As if it didn’t matter who you were ethnically, what language you spoke, they would kill because you were a citizen of Ukraine.”

Even after visiting the site of the massacres on April 4, Zelensky still confirmed his readiness to negotiate: “We strive for peace, we deserve it. And these people showed it, and the Armed Forces showed it. Peace is impossible without victory.” And yet, he added: “We do not want to lose millions of people. That is why there should be dialogue.

Maybe Biden (or the State Department) did throw a monkey wrench into negotiations- but it appears otherwise. If Tulsi Gabbard doesn't have hard evidence to back up her serious allegation, she needs to remember that silence is golden.

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Three-Fifths Of An Asset

In the 1980s, Partnership for a Drug-Free America ran a commercial featuring a fried egg and the tagline "This is your brain on drugs." If this were run today, it could replace the egg with Tulsi Gabbard.

The Durham investigation makes clear that Hillary Clinton and the power elite spied on the Trump campaign and White House, undermining our democracy, launching us into a new Cold War, endangering America and the world. Clinton and her warmongers must be held accountable. pic.twitter.com/uDaeo6ak5a

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) February 15, 2022

For one, Gabbard seems to believe that Hillary Clinton is now President, and a very bad one, at that. In the chat with Fox's Jessie Watters, she cites "people who are integral in making this happen, people like Jake Sullivan, now holding very influential positions of power....." because of, evidently, the Wicked Witch of Chautauqua, New York. From that venue, she is pulling strings "undermining our democracy." (Imagine if she actually held a political office!)

The Durham investigation makes clear that Hillary Clinton and the power elite spied on the Trump campaign and White House.  But no such thing was found by the investigator hired by Attorney General Bill Barr to undermine the apparent legitimacy of the investigation into the connection between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia. Instead, as The New York Times' Charlie Savage explains

filing never said the White House data that came under scrutiny was from the Trump era. According to lawyers for David Dagon, a Georgia Institute of Technology data scientist who helped develop the Yota analysis, the data — so-called DNS logs, which are records of when computers or smartphones have prepared to communicate with servers over the internet — came from Barack Obama’s presidency.

Michael Sussman, the cybersecurity lawyer with connections to the Democratic Party, has been charged by Durham of lying to the FBI about information that he had received from a client, a technology executive named Rodney Joffe, whose spokesman, according to Savage, maintains

After Russians hacked networks for the White House and Democrats in 2015 and 2016, it went on, the cybersecurity researchers were “deeply concerned” to find data suggesting Russian-made YotaPhones were in proximity to the Trump campaign and the White House, so “prepared a report of their findings, which was subsequently shared with the C.I.A.”

The alleged connection, let alone any actual connection, to Hillary Clinton is tenuous. But so is it to the "warmongering" Gabbard charges when she claims

And what they're doing is telling the American people, they're telling us that, hey, you've got to be ready to go to war with Russia or other countries to "spread democracy," to "protect democracy...."

While severe economic sanctions have been threatened by President Biden, the Administration has not suggested sending American troops, or even bombing Russian or Ukrainian territory, or urging citizens "to be ready to go to war with Russia." It was unavoidable that, with anyone but Donald Trump as President, that the Russian

threat is being taken seriously because Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and seized its territory....

An estimated 100,000 Russian troops have been deployed close to Ukraine's borders and a reported 30,000 more are engaged in exercises in Belarus, close to its 1,084km (674 miles) border with Ukraine. The Belarus exercises are scheduled to end on 20 February.

There is significantly less evidence that Tulsi Gabbard is an asset (of the Kremlin) than there is of Donald Trump.. Merely taking away the "et" from "asset" is a better fit.

 

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Just The Facts, Ma'am

Speaking at the USA Capitol on January 6 about an insurrection mounted to overthrow results of the election in which he was elected President, Joe Biden stated

While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it, trying to uphold the principle of that party, too many others are transforming that party into something else. They seem no longer to want to be the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, the Bushes.

Well, whatever my other disagreements are with Republicans who support the rule of law, and not the rule of a single man, I will always seek to work together with them to find shared solutions where possible. Because when we have a shared belief in democracy, then anything is possible – anything.

They no longer want to be the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, the Bushes represents extreme generosity toward the party of Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Steve Bannon. A few days later, emphasizing the right to vote currently anathema to the Republican Party, Biden applauded "the courageous officials — Democrats, Republicans — who did their duty and upheld the law by certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election." This was the response of former U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii:

Hillary’s calling tens of millions of Americans deplorables was divisive & disgusting. But Biden has gone further, calling those who disagree with his actions & policies domestic enemies, traitors, and racists. Biden promised to unite us, but he is doing all he can do divide us. pic.twitter.com/1XKS9rfZQT

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) January 13, 2022

 

In Gabbard's defense, the President did note "last year alone, 19 states not proposed but enacted 34 laws attacking voting rights.  There were nearly 400 additional bills Republican members of state legislatures tried to pass" He did point out out "the Vice President and I have supported voting rights bills since day one of this administration.  But each and every time, Senate Republicans have blocked the way.  Republicans oppose even debating the issue." And he did recall  "what the defeated former president said to the highest-ranking election official — a Republican — in this state?  He said, quote, “I just want to find 11,780 votes.”

 This is the unfettered truth, spoken while he tried to ferret out their better angels. recalling

In 2006, the Voting Rights Act passed 390 to 33 in the House of Representatives and 98 to 0 in the Senate with votes from 16 current sitting Republicans in this United States Senate.  Sixteen of them voted to extend it....

And I make it with an appeal to my Republican colleagues, to those Republicans who believe in the rule of law: Restore the bipartisan tradition of voting rights.

The people who restored it, who abided by it in the past were Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush.  They all supported the Voting Rights Act.

Don’t let the Republican Party morph into something else.  Restore the institution of the Senate the way it was designed to be.

The people who restored it, who abided by it in the past were Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush.  They all supported the Voting Rights Act. That's hardly the stuff of hyper-partisanship, and Joe Biden didn't call these- or any Republicans- "traitors" or "racists."  He did call them enemies of democracy, but only because they are. 

If there is anything the President said which was inaccurate, Tulsi Gabbard should inform us. She won't, because she can't.

 

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Popular Strategy

I’m somewhat confused by the DC press corps suddenly being outraged that US drone strikes might be counterproductive and actually kill innocent civilians based on bad intel. Have you paid any attention to the last 12 years of US targeting debacles?

— Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg) September 20, 2021

No, the media has not, and the American public has not. Had the media paid attention, the American people nonetheless would have not.

Speaking Monday to Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard, U.S Representative from Hawaii and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, laid out the threat she perceives from "Islamist ideology," which she distinguished from "Islam." She stated

Militarily, we have two choices in how we do that. Number one, continue to invade and occupy and nation-build in countries around the world, just as we did in Afghanistan- at great cost. number two, we an take a targeted approach using air strikes, using our special forces to go in and go after these terror cells.

The reality is that the cost, the cost to the American people, the cost to our troops, the cost to civilians will be far less if we take this targeted approach to go after these Jihadist terrorists, that if we continue to make the very same mistakes that we saw in Afghanistan and other parts of the world of invasion, occupation, and nation-building...

Gabbard argues "the cost to the American people, the cost to our troops, the cost to civilians will be far less if we take this targeted approach." 

"Two out of three ain't bad," Jim Steinman wrote for Meat Loaf over 40 years ago, and Gabbard might have gotten two right. Obviously, the cost to American soldiers will be far less and, unless there is an increase of terrorism on American soil, the cost to the American people will drop. But the cost to civilians will not.

Drone strikes in North Africa/Middle East are likely to rise. They will do so in part because the military will not roll over and play dead.  The weapons of war must be used for something and they probably will be called upon to do more now that there will be fewer American soldiers in the region to respond to terroristic threats.

Journalist Garrett Graff is rightfully annoyed that there was little attention paid by the media to USA "targeting debacles" of the past twelve years.  Avoidance of the topic helped prevent public outrage over civilian deaths.

But this door swings both ways. One reason media generally ignored the air strikes was that there is scant interest among the public in deaths of foreign civilians. They are not Americans.  The deaths we care about are those of American men and women, the same individuals to whom we say "thank you for your service" when we are sincere and when we are not.

That's why Tulsi Gabbard can claim "the cost to civilians will be far less if we take this targeted approach,"  though she knows otherwise. She may know, too, that while numerous surveys in recent months have asked voters whether they support withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, far fewer explore sentiment about air strikes.

Those questions would raise awareness of this approach, to which the federal government has been pivoting in fits and spurts over the past three Administrations. Investigation of the role of the intelligence establishment in assisting the strategy is critical. Still, not many Americans would care- and even fewer would disapprove, especially if Gabbard and others continue to whitewash it as "targeted."

 

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"Regime Change"

This is a great question, and it's not rhetorical:

Someone on that stage can destroy Tulsi's entire candidacy right now by bringing up her association with Assad. Why they don't...I don't know. #DemocraticDebate

— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) October 16, 2019

It could be because Representative Tulsi Gabbard is not considered a serious threat to attain the nomination, an explanation suggested by the fire aimed at Senator Warren, who has steadily been gaining momentum and is considered by betting markets to be the most likely nominee. Or there could be an additional, or different, reason. 

Nevertheless, while unfortunately no candidate in Tuesday's Democratic debate dared bring up Gabbard's association with Assad, Anderson Cooper's failure to ask an obvious question of the Hawaiian was, in a different way, at least as egregious. Cooper asked

Congresswoman Gabbard, last week you said that American troops should get out of Syria now. You don't agree with how the president handled the withdrawal. What would you have done differently? How would you have pulled out troops without the bloodshed we're seeing now?

Gabbard responded

Well, first of all, we've got to understand the reality of the situation there, which is that the slaughter of the Kurds being done by Turkey is yet another negative consequence of the regime change war that we've been waging in Syria.

Donald Trump has the blood of the Kurds on his hand, but so do many of the politicians in our country from both parties who have supported this ongoing regime change war in Syria that started in 2011, along with many in the mainstream media, who have been championing and cheerleading this regime change war.

Not only that, but the New York Times and CNN have also smeared veterans like myself for calling for an end to this regime change war. Just two days ago, the New York Times put out an article saying that I'm a Russian asset and an Assad apologist and all these different smears. This morning, a CNN commentator said on national television that I'm an asset of Russia. Completely despicable.

As president, I will end these regime change wars by doing two things -- ending the draconian sanctions that are really a modern-day siege the likes of which we are seeing Saudi Arabia wage against Yemen, that have caused tens of thousands of Syrian civilians to die and to starve, and I would make sure that we stop supporting terrorists like Al Qaida in Syria who have been the ground force in this ongoing regime change war.

After Elizabeth Warren took a shot at the question, Pete Buttigieg (figuratively and literally) confronted Gabbard, and it was on, with

Well, respectfully, Congresswoman, I think that is dead wrong. The slaughter going on in Syria is not a consequence of American presence. It's a consequence of a withdrawal and a betrayal by this president of American allies and American values.

Look, I didn't think we should have gone to Iraq in the first place. I think we need to get out of Afghanistan. But it's also the case that a small number of specialized, special operations forces and intelligence capabilities were the only thing that stood between that part of Syria and what we're seeing now, which is the beginning of a genocide and the resurgence of ISIS.

Meanwhile, soldiers in the field are reporting that for the first time they feel ashamed -- ashamed -- of what their country has done. We saw the spectacle, the horrifying sight of a woman with the lifeless body of her child in her arms asking, what the hell happened to American leadership?

And when I was deployed, I knew one of the things keeping me safe was the fact that the flag on my shoulder represented a country known to keep its word. And our allies knew it and our enemies knew it....You take that away, you are taking away what makes America America. It makes our troops and the world a much more dangerous place.

Responding, Gabbard contended

Yeah, absolutely. So, really, what you're saying, Mayor Pete, is that you would continue to support having U.S. troops in Syria for an indefinite period of time to continue this regime change war that has caused so many refugees to flee Syria, that you would continue to have our country involved in a war that has undermined our national security, you would continue this policy of the U.S. actually providing arms in support to terrorist groups in Syria, like Al Qaida, HTS, al-Nusra and others, because they are the ones who have been the ground force in this regime change war? That's really what you're saying?

It continued with

COOPER: Mayor Pete -- Mayor Buttigieg?

BUTTIGIEG: No, you can embrace -- or you can put an end to endless war without embracing Donald Trump's policy, as you're doing.

GABBARD: Will you end the regime change war, is the question.

BUTTIGIEG: What we are doing...

GABBARD: What is an endless war if it's not a regime change war?

COOPER: Allow him to respond. Please allow him to respond.

BUTTIGIEG: What we are doing -- or what we were doing in Syria was keeping our word. Part of what makes it possible for the United States to get people to put their lives on the line to back us up is the idea that we will back them up, too.

When I was deployed, not just the Afghan National Army forces, but the janitors put their lives on the line just by working with U.S. forces. I would have a hard time today looking an Afghan civilian or soldier in the eye after what just happened over there. And it is undermining the honor of our soldiers. You take away the honor of our soldiers, you might as well go after their body armor next.

This president has betrayed American values. Our credibility has been tattered.

Nonetheless, Buttigieg acquitted himself well in the manner of optics. Understanding that an empty attempt to appeal to patriotism can be the last refuge of scoundrels, he claimed Gabbard chose to "take away the honor of our soldiers, you might as well go after their body armor next." No one ever lost a vote by wrapping himself in the flag of "the troops."

Substantively, on seven (7) occasions, Tulsi Gabbard mentioned "regime change war" and once "regime change wars." Once she charged "Donald Trump has the blood of the Kurds on his hand, but so do many of the politicians in our country from both parties," The mayor might have criticized her for the moral equivalence of equating American politicians with Bashir al-Assad, but with bothsiderism a crucial part of the centrist creed, that was not tempting for Buttigieg.

Yet, Cooper was not quite up to the challenge, failing to ask Gabbard what she meant by "regime change" or "regime change wars."  Fact-checker Daniel Daleassessed the accuracy of the congresswoman's claim here, summarized as

The story of American involvement in the Syrian civil war is complicated and difficult to assess. The US military intervention in Syria has been debated since it began -- but Gabbard's claim that American forces were engaged in a "regime-change war" cuts against what US officials have said about American policy in Syria. Some US-backed militias have fought the Syrian government, but US troops were there to help defeat ISIS.

A candidate for President whom some people have attacked as being cozy with Assad maintains that the USA has conducted a war which "has caused so many refugees to flee Syria" while a fact-checker writes "there is no evidence to suggest that American forces were engaged in an effort to overthrow Assad." There should have been a further examination of Gabbard's view, which contrasts radically with that of the American military and political establishment and would prompt a dramatic restructuring of Mideast policy.

Admittedly, that would have taken a few minutes away from the discussion, closing the debate, of how everyone should be given a hug, maybe hold hands, and be nice to each other:

Oh, sweet Jesus. Having destroyed this debate, Anderson Cooper is now setting the debris on fire. ELLEN DEGENERES????????????????????
Kill me now.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) October 16, 2019

 Next up: how Warren and Sanders are failing.

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