"Unpopular opinion but I don’t care about this unless they actually arrest and prosecute the culprits, including Obama."

"You cannot allege a 'treasonous conspiracy' and then do nothing about it. The typical pattern by Republicans since forever is to make these kinds of claims (which I don’t doubt by the way), but to make them on Twitter and Fox News, and never actually bring it to a court of law so that the parties responsible can be held accountable for their crimes. I’m tired of it. Go arrest these people and bring them to justice. Then I’ll care. If you won’t do that then what does any of this matter?"

Writes Matt Walsh, responding to that thread Tulsi Gabbard posted.

Yeah, I'm tired of it too. Of that and a few other things.

"After being pressed by senators from both parties to call Edward Snowden a traitor, Tulsi Gabbard repeatedly refused during her confirmation hearing on Thursday morning...."

"'This is a big deal to everybody here, because its a big deal to everybody you'll also oversee,' said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who has publicly said he supports her nomination. 'So, was Edward Snowden a traitor?'Gabbard would not give a yes or no answer, saying only that she is 'committed if confirmed as Director of National Intelligence to join you in making sure that there is no future Snowden-type leak.' Lankford asked a second time if Snowden was a traitor, to which Gabbard responded,'I am focused on the future and how we can prevent something like this from happening again.'... Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) pounced on the moment, pressing her in a heated back and forth immediately after to say that Snowden is a traitor.... When she began answering without a yes or no, he interrupted, 'This is when the rubber hits the road. This is not a moment for social media.'..."

From "Tulsi Gabbard refuses to call Edward Snowden a 'traitor'" (Axios).

. @SenatorBennet starts yelling at Tulsi Gabbard after she refuses to dance the jig he requested.

You’re right Mike, that isn’t a difficult question to answer; Ed Snowden is not only NOT a traitor, Ed Snowden is an American hero.

Something you Senate swine know nothing about. pic.twitter.com/KYpusWdeC4

— Mel (@Villgecrazylady) January 30, 2025

"[A]s a team of ideological rivals contesting for influence and favor, the Trump cabinet seems to be set up for a lot of internal conflict..."

"... Gabbard against the rest of the foreign policy team on whether to expose more national security secrets, the pro-choice and regulation-friendly Kennedy against abortion opponents and free-marketeers, the pro-union Chavez-Deremer against other economic appointees, Hegseth against the more cautious JD Vance, perhaps, on how far to go on behalf of Israel and against Iran.... But another way to look at these picks is that they’re designed to stoke conflict within the different agencies rather than within the cabinet... less the representation of different factions and more just disruption of all kinds.... [A] third interpretation of the Trump cabinet: That he’s assembling a 'team of podcasters'... a cabinet of 'communicators, not administrators,' who are picked for their celebrity and their experience as faces and voices — on cable news, on podcasts, on daytime television in the case of Mehmet Oz... or just in the general glare of celebrity that attends any scion of the Kennedy clan."

Writes Ross Douthat, in "Three Theories of the Trump Cabinet" (NYT).

So there are 3 ways — at least 3 — that Trump's choices might work quite well... or quite badly. 

"She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay?"

"Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face. They’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building, saying, 'Oh gee, let’s send 10,000 troops right in the mouth of the enemy.'"

Said Donald Trump, quoted in "Trump suggests 'war hawk' Liz Cheney should have guns 'trained on her face'/The GOP nominee has long vilified the former congresswoman over her criticism of his role in fomenting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol" (WaPo).

Liz Cheney is, of course, campaigning with Kamala Harris. The Democrats turned into the Republicans and the Republicans turned into the Democrats. Ask Tulsi Gabbard.

AND: Ask Bobby...

 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by RFK Jr. (@robertfkennedyjr)

"'[Musk] believes that if Trump wins Pennsylvania, he wins the election. He’s told us that repeatedly. He’s treating this almost like it’s a business deal'..."

"... said one Trump adviser. 'He knows if he loses this election, he’s screwed. The regulations, the attitude of a new Democratic administration, the animosity they’ll have for all the money he’s spent to help Trump — it’s a big business bet for him.' Musk has argued that a victory by Harris 'would destroy the Mars program and doom humanity.' Trump, in turn, has publicly endorsed Musk’s goal of accelerating a human mission to Mars.... 'Get ready, Elon, get ready,' Trump said at an Oct. 19 campaign rally. 'We gotta land it. We gotta do it quickly.' But Musk also casts his new involvement in politics as a moral crusade — to fight back against liberal social policies, protect the U.S. Constitution and oppose the 'big government machine.' 'If the Kamala machine wins, then we’ll see, I think, severe censorship,' he said at one recent rally. 'That’s why I think this is the last election.'"

From "Elon Musk is the October surprise of the 2024 election/The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO, and owner of X, has interjected himself into a presidential race like no other titan before him" (WaPo)(free-access link, my last of the month, so use it well).

I wouldn't just follow Elon Musk, but Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, and RFK Jr. are all on the same side. They are such different individuals, and they are all strongly for Trump. 

RFK Jr. and Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard each take a quick turn touting Trump.

RFK Jr: "Don't you want a President who's going to get the chemicals out of our food and don't you want a president who's going to get the corruption out of Washington and don't we deserve a president of the United States that's going to make America healthy again?"

Tucker Carlson: "The single biggest lie that Donald Trump has exposed is that this is a functional democracy when in fact it's a country oppressed by a small group of its unhappiest citizens for their own benefit, and the promise of this campaign is that Donald Trump will return this country to its owners...."

Tulsi Gabbard:  "We have seen from the very beginning how much President Trump has been attacked, smeared, censored — the government weaponized against a candidate for President and a former President in ways that have never been seen in our country before. The reason why this has happened is because he is the sole person who has had the courage to stand up against the uni-party War Machine in Washington and has the audacity to call for peace and an end to war. While he has challenged the swamp creatures in Washington, all of you have resoundingly nominated him for President 3 times in the last 3 presidential elections. We know whose side he stands on. He stands on the side of the people. He stands on the side of peace and prosperity and freedom for all Americans...."

"Tulsi Gabbard Is on Terror Watchlist?"

Asks Snopes, with "Research In Progress."

Here's what Tulsi said that set off the Snopes investigation: "Kamala says she believes in freedom, but I was put on a secret terror watch list after I publicly criticized her. No one will be safe from political retaliation under a Harris administration. I put my life on the line for this country. Now the government calls me a terror threat."

Kamala says she believes in freedom, but I was put on a secret terror watch list after I publicly criticized her. No one will be safe from political retaliation under a Harris administration. I put my life on the line for this country. Now the government calls me a terror threat. pic.twitter.com/3xjgjmrLhD

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) September 4, 2024

"And I figured I was going to come here and we were going to make a speech. I had a speech all set for you — I was ready — and they said, sir, you're actually doing a town hall."

"I said, oh, nobody told me that. I said Who's doing it? They said Tulsi. I said, well, that's at least good news. I've been a fan of hers for a long time, I have to tell you. So. So I didn't even know. I'm I'm in the plane, and I'm looking over some material, and we're going to give you a hell of a speech tonight. We were set to give you one hell of a speech. They said, no, sir, it's a town hall. I said why doesn't somebody tell me this stuff, and I don't even have any idea who we're doing it for. I don't know. Is it for a network or what? I see a lot of television all over the place, so maybe it's on all of them, but I did get to see uh the strangest thing today I looked at the news conference of Kamala — I call her Comrade Comrade Kamala Comrade Kamala — she's a uh you know that she's uh a Marxist. Her father was a Marxist before her, so she was brought up in the family tradition, and she really is, and this country is not ready for a Marxist. We don't want a Marxist as a President, and she destroyed San Francisco, she destroyed California, and we're not going to let it destroy our country, I'll tell you, it's not going to happen so — but just to finish — so for some reason she won't talk to anybody so...."

Said Donald Trump, quite chaotically, at the town hall in La Crosse, Wisconsin last night. Maybe "Comrade Kamala" won't talk to anybody, but Trump will talk and talk, riffing from subject to subject, revealing the awful confusion behind the scenes, acknowledging the town hall and the presence of Tulsi Gabbard, but frantically filibustering as if desperate to prevent the audience and Tulsi from sharing the spotlight. Oh, that speech he would have given! It was one hell of a speech! But you're not going to get it... and you're not going to get that town hall either, not if he can string enough topics together into a crazy patchwork that can't end, won't end....

Where is the news in the NYT that Tulsi Gabbard just endorsed Trump?

I had to do a search of the website to find it 7 paragraphs into "How Democrats View Kennedy and Trump: ‘A Weirdo Campaign Just Got Weirder’/Democrats once seriously worried that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be a spoiler. Now, after his endorsement of Donald Trump, they see a political opportunity":

And on Monday, after Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who has rebranded herself as a celebrity in the MAGA movement, endorsed Mr. Trump, the D.N.C. issued a news release with the headline: “Trump’s Circle of Weirdos Gets Even More Extreme.”

The NYT expresses some disapproval of the weirdness theme, calling it "a playground-style strategy" and giving us this juvenile quote:

“A weirdo campaign just got weirder,” said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, a Democratic think tank that has led efforts to stop independent and third-party candidates from siphoning votes from Democrats. “This campaign of freaks is not going to do Republicans any favors.”

Tulsi Gabbard's name appears in another NYT article this morning, "Trump Hits Harris Over ‘Humiliation’ in Military’s Afghan Exit/Courting military votes, Donald Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery to observe the anniversary of a deadly Kabul bombing and then spoke at a National Guard group’s conference."

"She's talking about J.D. Vance, someone who enlisted in the Marine Corps after... 9/11... putting his own life on the line in service to our country...."

Kamala Harris claims “JD Vance will be loyal only to Trump, not to our country.” @JDVance1 enlisted in the Marine Corps after 9/11 and deployed to Iraq in 2005, the same year I was there during the height of the war. He put his life on the line in service to our country.

Was… pic.twitter.com/v9uSS7ASQe

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) July 18, 2024

Tulsi Gabbard was responding to this short video put out by Kamala Harris: "Donald Trump has picked his new running mate: J.D. Vance. Trump looked for someone he knew would be a rubber stamp for his extreme agenda. Make no mistake: J.D. Vance will be loyal only to Trump, not to our country."

Tulsi Gabbard on the new episode of Joe Rogan.

And you can watch the whole thing free now. No need for a Spotify subscription.

Things I talked about with Meade this morning.

1. How Tucker Carlson told Joe Rogan that Bari Weiss is a fraud and not honest at all. She called Tulsi Gabbard a "toady" and she didn't know what "toady" meant.

2. The similarities and differences between the Bob Dylan song "You Got to Serve Somebody" and the Band song "Unfaithful Servant."

3. The use of the tuba in popular music recorded in the last 60 years and why it matters if they had an actual tuba player in the studio as opposed to a digitalized tuba sound.

4. "Tuba players now rehearse around the flagpole."

5. Whether flags of foreign countries should be waved by members of Congress and how the use of the flag may mean different things to different people.

6. It was Richard Nixon who originated the wearing of a flag lapel pin and how everyone followed along and now they can't stop.

7. The way some people these days are calling their loved one "my person." I heard it in Salman Rushdie's new book "Knife" and I opened The New Yorker at random and saw it in a Roz Chast cartoon.

8. Some people call a dog's owner the dog's "person," and that seems related to the old joke "Are you walking him or is he walking you"?

9. Bill Maher asked why people want drag queens reading to children and said it would be better to have disabled people reading, but drag queens are entertainers and disabled people are not. 

10. How little children shouldn't be exposed to overly exciting entertainment and even peekaboo can be too intense for young minds.

11. How it's already too late to go south for warmer weather and we are better off here in the north, where there was frost on the grass this morning.

12. How fluent and funny Tucker Carlson was describing his boss at the New York Post who had a hairy back that he would rub against the door jamb while he talked to Tucker and the 5 or 6 ways that Tucker could have known that the man had a hairy back.

13. What a big part of life hairiness is — for the lower animals and for us, the humans. 

14. Was the hairy-backed man John Podhoretz? Carlson mutters the name.

15. The annoyingness of Carlson's laugh and how hard you have to commit to do a good enough imitation of it.

16. The energy Joe and Tucker had. Doesn't Tucker wear a hairpiece and Joe just shaved off all his hair.

17. Meeting for coffee and not an entire meal so you're free to leave whenever you want and how some people have trouble getting out of small-talk conversations and this one simple trick that's all you need.

18. The perception that a conversation can't end until both participants want it to end and the way some people keep adding new topics as if keeping a conversation going is a game.

19. The very low level of tennis playing that has you just trying to keep the ball in play as long as possible.

20. How all this talk is taking the place of writing on the blog, but I could just make a blog post out of all the topics that didn't make it onto the blog because I was talking about everything with Meade.

Tulsi Gabbard explains the military industrial complex to Joe Rogan.

Tulsi Gabbard explains why she's leaving the Democratic Party.

I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are… pic.twitter.com/oAuTnxZldf

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) October 11, 2022

Tulsi weighs in.

Biden chose Harris as his VP because of the color of her skin and sex—not qualification. She's been a disaster. Now he promises to choose Supreme Court nominee on the same criteria. Identity politics is destroying our country.

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) January 31, 2022

This is such a weight to load onto Harris and Justice X, but Biden created this very obvious and easy opportunity, and since it is so predictable, he's fully responsible for it. He did what he did in pursuit of his own power, and he — a white male — is President of the United States because of it. That, too, is white privilege.

Tulsi goes big.

 

"The jury got it right—finding Rittenhouse not guilty on all charges. The fact that charges were brought before any serious investigation is evidence that the government was motivated by politics, which itself should be considered criminal."

ADDED: Gabbard has quite a different view of the Ahmaud Arbery case:

"Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) introduced legislation in the House on Thursday that would bar schools from receiving federal funding if they allow transgender girls and women and non-binary people..."

"... to compete on sports teams consistent with their gender identities. The bill — co-sponsored by Republican Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma — was met with immediate outrage from transgender activists and allies who labeled the legislation 'blatantly transphobic.' The 'Protect Women’s Sports Act' seeks to clarify that Title IX protections for female athletes are 'based on biological sex,' Gabbard and Mullin said in a statement.... Explaining her support for the bill, Gabbard ― who’d previously claimed she supported LGBTQ rights ― said she wants to protect 'Title IX’s original intent which was based on the general biological distinction between men and women athletes based on sex. Title IX was a historic provision… to provide equal opportunity for women and girls in high school and college sports. It led to a generational shift that impacted countless women, creating life-changing opportunities for girls and women that never existed before... Title IX is being weakened by some states who are misinterpreting Title IX, creating uncertainty, undue hardship and lost opportunities for female athletes. It is critical that the legacy of Title IX continues to ensure women and girls in sports have the opportunity to compete and excel on a level playing field.'" 

HuffPo reports.

"But there’s more to the story of Harris’s endorsement. Yes, she genuinely likes Biden."

"The endorsement was real. 'I really do believe in Joe,' Harris told me. But coming days after the California primary, the timing of Harris’s announcement struck me as curious. ... I asked her about it. 'I had two women colleagues in the race, and I did not feel right putting my thumb on the scale [that] in any way would harm their candidacy,' Harris said, referring to Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Both ended their campaigns last week. 'So, when Elizabeth announced that she was getting out of the race, I let Joe know that I would endorse him.... Elizabeth and I have a very special relationship'...."

Writes Jonathan Capeheart in the Washington Post.

IN THE COMMENTS: rehajm said: "Does she know Tulsi Gabbard is still in the race? Not a friend?"

To be fair, we are all forgetting about Tulsi. And Tulsi isn't a Senator. I think Kamala meant women of my rank when she said "I had two women colleagues in the race." Senators are not "colleagues" of the folk in the lower house. The OED gives the etymology:

< French collègue, < Latin collēga , one chosen along with another, a partner in office, etc.; < col- together + legĕre to choose, etc.

The OED points me to "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, and I wanted to give you the full passage, because it's about separation of powers in government:

The modest boldness of voting "present" — Tulsi Gabbard made a TINY spectacle of herself.

It was an interesting move, but what did she hope to achieve... and will it work?

I'm reading The Daily Beast's report on Gabbard's conspicuous abstention. The reporter (Scott Bixby) characterizes the nonvote as an expression of the belief that the question of whether Trump should be impeached was "not worth answering." But Gabbard had something to say:

In a statement released after she voted “present” on both articles, Gabbard said that because she “could not in good conscience vote either yes or no... I am standing in the center and have decided to vote ‘Present.’”

Gabbard blamed both sides of the House for turning the impeachment inquiry into a “partisan endeavor,” blasting Trump’s defenders as having “abdicated their responsibility to exercise legitimate oversight,” and the president’s critics of using “extreme rhetoric.”

“My vote today is a vote for much needed reconciliation and hope that together we can heal our country,” Gabbard concluded.

That strikes me as perfectly articulate and fully engaged. It's not that Trump didn't abuse his power but that the House Democrats have abused their power. That's her answer. She stands apart from all of them. She's better than everybody else. "Present" may sound lame, but to say both sides are wrong has meaning. Everything is so wrong that the woman of conscience abstains. That's the expression.

Tulsi Gabbard weaponizes her Joe Rogan interview in this new tweet.

✅ Veteran
✅ Woman
✅ Minority
✅ Lifelong Dem
✅ Crossover appeal to Independents, Libertarians, Republicans
The Dem Establishment shld be excited about my candidacy. But they'd rather lose to Trump than win with me, cuz they can’t control me & that scares the hell out of them pic.twitter.com/wTWBGlwumo

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) December 1, 2019