Tulsi Gabbard Officially Kicks Off 2020 Campaign

[oberliner]

Source: Huffington Post

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-H.I.) officially kicked off her campaign for president on Saturday.

In a speech in Oahu, the congresswoman kicked off her 2020 campaign for the Democratic nomination with a message drawing upon lessons learned while serving in her state’s National Guard.

“When we raise our right hand and volunteer to serve, we set aside our own interests to serve our country, to fight for all Americans. We serve as one, indivisible, united, unbreakable ― united by this bond of love for each other and love for our country,” she said. “It is in this spirit that today I announce my candidacy for president of the United States of America.”

In her remarks, Gabbard took aim at U.S. interventionism, slamming officials who engage in armed conflicts at great costs while treating troops “as political pawns and mercenaries for hire in wars around the world.”



Read more: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tulsi-gabbard-campaign-launch_us_5c56a229e4b0871047542569

[watoos]

1. Keeping with my promise

not to bash Democratic candidates, Tulsi is one of the stronger, tougher candidates we have.

I want people to remember something before this thread evolves into a Tulsi bash fest, there was only one person in the House of Representatives who was right about Iraq, there was only one person who voted no on going into Iraq, and that was Barbara Lee, everyone else was wrong.

Tulsi is right about Syria. Assad, like Saddam, is a butcher, but he did not gas his own people, Saudi Arabia was involved in that. President Obama did nothing after the first gas killings because he knew that Assad was not behind it.

Our intervention into Syria was more about which of 2 proposed gas pipelines gets built. Google it.

[oberliner]

2. Good response

She definitely has some pros and cons. It does not seem like her candidacy is garnering much support as of yet. Looks like it would be an uphill climb with very long odds.

[watoos]

3. I agree,

the corporate right wing M$M smear machine has most likely doomed her. Americans are so prone to propaganda. I was fooled by several things that Russia did during the last election.

[pnwmom]

25. The Science of Identity Foundation is what has propped her up. n/t

[EndGOPPropaganda]

5. Another oberliner thread about Tulsi- nice

I’m glad oberliner keeps us up to date on ALL the lastest news about Gabbard.

[NurseJackie]

7. ...

[denbot]

23. This has taken far to long!

I miss the days of the granite cookie.

[Kurt V.]

28. what is this?

[Squinch]

30. Wow! Anyone know what the last of the 5 was about?

This is long, long, long overdue.

[dpibel]

42. Do people come back from "flagged for review"?

Or is it the functional kiss of death?

[obamanut2012]

52. both

[bearsfootball516]

74. At least he isn't around anymore to start them/defend her.

[CentralMass]

10. I don't believe the statement that Assad didn't gas his own people is accurate.

Last edited Sun Feb 3, 2019, 03:13 PM - Edit history (3)

Neither is the statement about President Obama knowing that Assad was not behind the attack.

This article provides some detail on the chronology of chemical weapons attacks by the Assad regime in Syria. It also references President Obama's statements during that time period.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/a-brief-history-of-chemical-weapons-in-syria

Here is a link to
Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on Syria from 2013 where he unequivocally assigns the blame for the chemical attack on August 21st of the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Ghouta on Assad. Thousands of victims are reported.

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/09/10/remarks-president-address-nation-syria

"Moreover, we know the Assad regime was responsible. In the days leading up to August 21st, we know that Assad’s chemical weapons personnel prepared for an attack near an area where they mix sarin gas. They distributed gasmasks to their troops. Then they fired rockets from a regime-controlled area into 11 neighborhoods that the regime has been trying to wipe clear of opposition forces. Shortly after those rockets landed, the gas spread, and hospitals filled with the dying and the wounded. We know senior figures in Assad’s military machine reviewed the results of the attack, and the regime increased their shelling of the same neighborhoods in the days that followed. We’ve also studied samples of blood and hair from people at the site that tested positive for sarin.

Another link
https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/index.cfm/articles/Assad-Regime-Chemical-Weapons/2018/05/18
Page down to the chemical Weapons Use section.

[pnwmom]

27. You are right. He DID use chemical weapons on his own people. n/t

Last edited Sun Feb 3, 2019, 07:54 PM - Edit history (1)

[Devil Child]

17. Thank you for this post!

[pnwmom]

26. Assad DID gas his own people, and more than once, including in April 2018.

https://abcnews.go.com/beta-story-container/International/proof-syria-chemical-weapons-french-president-emmanuel-macron/story?id=54415655

France has evidence that Syria used chemical weapons against its own citizens, French President Emmanuel Macron President said this afternoon, five days after a suspected chemical attack there.

“We have the proof that last week ... chemical weapons — at least chlorine gas — were used by [President Bashar] Assad's regime," Macron told a French today.

[mahina]

43. Hey, I thought Neil Abercrombie was against going to war in Iraq too. I know our Senators were oppos

Daniel Kahikina Akaka and Dan Inouye voted no.

Anyway.

[Bilegurken]

4. Based on what I have read.....

to call me "uninterested" in her candidacy is a massive understatement.

[NurseJackie]

6. I'm with you on that. As a party and as a nation, we can do better.

[Thekaspervote]

11. Agree with that one...all bashing aside

[Sucha NastyWoman]

8. Over before it started

[Adrahil]

9. Assad didn't gas his own people?

I do not agree. Gabbard has no chance and I hope she is primaried.

[pnwmom]

48. Gabbard says he didn't -- and she's wrong.

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

[The Liberal Lion]

12. Harumpf!

Is all I'll say

[Politicub]

13. I don't know that much about her

So I'm open to learning more. The only thing I had read until today is her record on LGBT rights, which concerns me.

She seems to have turned a corner when it comes to equality, at least she is saying that she is. I will be watching closely to see actions to go along with those words.

I think the rule about not bashing democrats is a good one. It causes me to pause and consider my post.

[pnwmom]

49. As recently as 2015 she said she had changed her political view against same-sex marriage BUT

that her personal beliefs hadn't changed. She claimed to have learned in the military that countries shouldn't impose religious beliefs on their citizens.

[irresistable]

55. do you personally have a fixed sexual orientation or are you personally open...

to marrying someone of either sex?

Joe Biden has the exact same position.

[pnwmom]

59. She still thinks marriage should be between a man and a woman,

but she doesn't think that view should be her political position.

Biden has NOT said that is his view. I am Catholic like Biden and that is not my view, either. Like most Catholics, I don't agree with every position of the Church.

And as recently as 2005, she talked about gay people who supported same sex marriage as "extremist homosexuals." I can't think of any other major Democrat who was using that term then -- certainly no one running for President now, except Tulsi.

[irresistable]

63. A personal view has to do with just yourself.

I am a man and I am personally of the belief that MY marriage should be between a man and a woman, not because of any religious belief, but because I am heterosexual in my desires.

Tulsi was home-schooled by her parents...she was sheltered. When she went to IRAQ, it opened up her eyes. Your quote from Tulsi was from April 2004, two months before she went to IRAQ.

I grew up in an a very conservative "Christian" church whose beliefs are anti-gay and anti-abortion and I did not break free of it until I was 24. I hold none of their beliefs today.

Why do you remain a member of the totally anti-gay anti-abortion cult of Catholicism? Their endless cover-ups of child molestations are just charming. Also, a celibate organization in its ENTIRETY which has Pope-ordered murders and the Spanish Inquisition in its history.

You grant yourself the license to pick and choose the beliefs from this unsavory smorgasbord but don't grant Tulsi the ability to reject her father's teachings.

[pnwmom]

67. She was stating those beliefs as an adult, and they are a deal breaker for me."Extremist homosexuals

is a phrase I never heard anyone in her generation, or anyone else for that matter, make in 2004."

But even if they weren't, there is her irrational determination to reject the conclusion that Assad used chemical weapons on his own people. Irrational unless she was taking direction from someone else.

As far as Catholicism is concerned, I agreed with Hirono and Harris on their close questioning of a judge with ties to the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic org. Good for them. I would not call that "religious bigotry," as Tulsi Gabbard did. I thought that line of questioning was prudent, in view of their ties.

[irresistable]

68. "taking direction from someone else"....oh please.

You haven't explained why you affiliate yourself with the Catholic Church considering that they are an anti-gay anti-abortion cult?

The questions that that Hirono asked could be summarized as asking if the judge believed in Catholic doctrine.

[pnwmom]

69. The Catholic Church doesn't have the degree of control over its members that the cult

of the Science of Identity Foundation has over hers. You can even be non-practicing and still consider yourself Catholic.

If the Science of Identity Foundation could be compared to anything Catholic, that would be Opus Dei, a secretive, Catholic associated cult. I ALSO wouldn't want a President who was a member of Opus Dei, or any similar cult. (It's the degree of secrecy about its beliefs, plus the degree of control of members lives, that makes a group like that a cult.)

[TomCADem]

14. NY Mag - What Is Tulsi Gabbard Fighting For?

There is a reason why Russia and Glenn Greenwald are on the Tulsi Gabbard bandwagon. Her isolationist, anti-refugee views are not too far out of step with Trump's. Russia does not care whether a politician is "left" or "right" domestically. So long as they are isolationist on trade and treaties, Russia and China are happy.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/tulsi-gabbards-foreign-policy-and-the-progressive-left.html

But a steady drumbeat of criticism from progressives claims that Gabbard also has sympathies with Steve Bannon–style nationalists on the hard right, whose foreign-policy view is also fundamentally anti-interventionist. Her detractors argue that her policy overlap with the hard right is consistent and substantive enough that it ought to undermine her credibility as someone who could represent consensus progressive values in the White House.

If “Gabbardism” is a foreign-policy school of thought, it is perhaps best captured by her own words. “In short, when it comes to the war against terrorists, I’m a hawk,” Gabbard told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald in 2016. “When it comes to counterproductive wars of regime change, I’m a dove.” It’s a sentiment that wouldn’t be out of place in Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign — or in Pat Buchanan’s in 1992.

In Gabbard’s own telling, her non-interventionist views are the result of her seeing the cost paid by American soldiers while deployed in Iraq — the cost paid by the Iraqis themselves goes unmentioned. And according to her critics, Islamophobia underlies her hawkishness. Gabbard’s idiosyncratic foreign policy is an uneasy fit next to her orthodox economic populism, and suggests a deeper question: what are progressives’ foreign-policy priorities in the first place? America is still fighting the borderless and interminable War on Terror, launching surgical strikes and drone attacks in countries around the world with impunity — in such an environment, is it enough to be just against wars of regime change?

* * *
But supporters attracted by Gabbard’s old-left anti-interventionism are likely to be less enamored with her stances on anti-terrorism measures. A 2015 vote on a bill that would subject Iraqi and Syrian refugees to the predecessor of Trump’s “extreme vetting” won Gabbard friends in Republican circles. The bill — which did not pass the Senate — required every refugee admitted to the country to receive individual vetting that, according to Representative John Conyers at the time, “would effectively deny refugee status for Syrians and Iraqis who are victims of terrorism in their own homelands.” “It’s important for anyone who really cares about keeping our refugee programs open to seriously consider the negative impact to such programs if a terrorist attack occurred and a refugee were involved,” said Gabbard in a statement after the vote. She said this as progressive groups were, for the most part, lobbying the Obama (and then Trump) administrations to accept larger numbers of Syrian refugees.

[GlennRuss]

15. Since when

Do we share smear job articles about democrats? You guys really need to step back and consider the fact that she's a grass roots candidate, and who might feel threatened by that. When you read these articles, take the time to research their accusations, you might be surprised.

[TomCADem]

16. Dem Rep. Gabbard: Use Term Radical Islamic Terrorism, "Important That You Identify Your Enemy"

If a candidate's own words and statements are considered a smear job, then what is left to discuss?

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/06/18/dem_rep_gabbard_use_term_radical_islamic_terrorism_important_that_you_identify_your_enemy.html

Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran, chides President Obama and Hillary Clinton for hesitancy to use the term 'radical Islamic terror' for fear of conflating jihadists with other Muslims. Gabbard said this is why it's important to make the distinction-- "we need to be able to identify in order to defeat this threat."

WOLF BLITZER, CNN: I know you have strong views on this but I want to hear them again in the aftermath of what the president said earlier in the week. What difference would it make if he used the phrase radical Islamic terrorism or extremism?

REP. TULSI GABBARD (D-Hawaii): Look, this is something that I have disagreed with the president on because I think it's important that you identify your enemy, you know who they are, you call them by their name, and you understand the ideology that's driving them.

You know, I understand and appreciate the president's concern which is he doesn't want all Muslims to be cast with the same targeting or the same look at this handful of radical jihadists, and I agree with that. No one wants that to happen, but that's why I think it is important that we make the distinction between the vast majority of Muslims who are practicing their spiritual path, who appreciate and support a pluralistic society and government that's free, versus the small handful of people who like ISIS and al-Qaeda, who believe that unless you abide by their caliphate and their theocracy, you should be killed. And obviously that's something we need to be able to identify in order to defeat this threat

.

[Cha]

24. NYmag is NOT a rw source.. Nor is it a "RW Smear job".

Gabbard's own mouth says it all..

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

NBC Analysis: Russian govt. media "now promoting the presidential aspirations" of Tulsi Gabbard

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211763023

[PupCamo]

31. I read the NBC article

I thought I knew pretty much everything about her but I was shocked by some of the stuff in that article. I do like the fact that the Russians are dumping Jill Stein for her.

[pnwmom]

32. That isn't a smear job. She's not a grass roots candidate, she's a Science of Identity

Foundation candidate.

[mahina]

44. Grass roots?

How so?

She has held one meeting in our area, with only one day’s notice and no publicity.

Nothing like Mazie or Brian much less how Dan Akaka or Patsy Mink or Sparky Matsunaga stayed in tnouch with the people of Hawai’i. Not remotely.

[pnwmom]

46. A "grass roots" person who has refused to have a single primary debate in any of her runs.

I wonder what she's afraid of?

[mahina]

47. +1

[obamanut2012]

51. It is called vetting, and she isn't a grass roots candidate

[Squinch]

56. I lulzed that this was the subject of your third post.

[msongs]

18. tulsi/northam 2020 - that covers two reliable democratic voting groups nt

[dlk]

19. Will the Russians Ramp Up their Election Hacking and Influence Campaign for the 2020 Election?

[Gothmog]

21. For this thread

Link to tweet

?s=20

[Cha]

41. But, Gabbard cites glenn greenwald in her defense.. LOL

Link to tweet

[JHan]

54. Glenn. Is such a fuckin troll

[Cha]

75. One of the worst..

[Gothmog]

64. I don't trust Greenwald

Last edited Mon Feb 4, 2019, 04:24 PM - Edit history (1)

[Cha]

77. With excellent reason..

[BlueMTexpat]

22. Frankly, I don't believe that

she has a chance. That is my opinion.

I say this even though I may personally agree with some of her comments about US interventionism.

I also believe that there are MANY other MUCH more qualified candidates. She is not among those I prefer.

[Cha]

40. I hope Not, BlueMT..

Link to tweet

[MBS]

61. I share your hopes, Cha.

Oy.

[BlueMTexpat]

71. Sheesh!

Tulsi and Greenwald have BOTH gone nuts!

[pnwmom]

33. She's the US Congresswoman who made this video in 2015.

Last edited Sun Feb 3, 2019, 10:26 PM - Edit history (2)

Her parents brought her up in the Science of Identity Foundation led by Chris Butler.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/russia-s-propaganda-machine-discovers-2020-democratic-candidate-tulsi-gabbard-n964261?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma

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."

[Cha]

35. Gabbard is also citing Glenn Greenwald in her defense..

Link to tweet

[pnwmom]

36. Not surprising that the libertarian who supported Ed Snowden, the spy sitting in Russia now,

is supporting Russia's choice for 2020.

[Cha]

39. Not at all.. and the Tool who vainly tries

to protect Russia from being investigated for interference in out 2016 "election".

And, who states shite like this..

[TexasBushwhacker]

34. I wonder if she's hoping for a cabinet position

When someone who is a long shot throws their hat in the ring to be POTUS, I always wonder if they're just trying to raise their profile enough that they can secure a position in the new administration. I don't really see her as POTUS, but she might be good at running the VA or some other position having to do with the military.

[pnwmom]

37. I hope whoever is elected doesn't think that's a good idea.

I don't want Chris Butler's follower getting any closer to the Presidency than she already is.

[hatrack]

38. Gosh, I wondered why I was feeling all tingly and warm!

.

[rpannier]

45. When I heard she was officially running

I was hoping off a cliff came next

[BlueMTexpat]

72. Love that, LOL!

[RandiFan1290]

50. Buh Bye!!!

[Squinch]

58. .

[jcgoldie]

70. Hey you need to watch the whole video...

[Squinch]

73. .

[fleur-de-lisa]

81. LOL!

[LanternWaste]

78. Well that was... not too unsurprising.

[HopeAgain]

57. I I will not bash her

but I will not support her.

[watoos]

60. Bonus points for Tulsi bashers,

who can identify the rebels posing with McCain in Syria. The rebels who wanted arms from the U.S. if they promised to oust Assad.

[obamanut2012]

66. What bashers?

[watoos]

62. This thread is getting buried,

but allow me to quote General Smedley Butler, "War is Hell." Wars are fought so that a handful of people can make money, Syria is no different.

It is alleged that the U.S., the Saudis and Qataris are using Al Qaeda and other groups to conquer a strip through Syria so that U.S. companies such as Halliburton will be able to place pipelines there, to convey Saudi oil and Qatari gas to be marketed in Europe by U.S. firms such as Exxon.

Believe what you will people.

[Cha]

76. And, you "believe what you will".

[Cha]

82. Gabbard on President Obama and Putin..

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[obamanut2012]

65. I'm ober these OPs

[RandiFan1290]

80. He disrupted poorly

Will have to wait for their reincarnation

[Blue_Tires]

79. I see she's already got the Intercept/RT endorsement...

not surprising...