As Tulsi Gabbard criticizes former Congressional colleagues for ignoring the ongoing US dirty war and sanctions on Syria, a look at the comments of Joe Biden and top aides show that they have admitted to the same underlying, horrific facts. Gabbard only stands apart — and is even vilified — for being willing to call it out.

While Joe Biden has faced some mild Congressional pushback for bombing the Iraq-Syria border, Tulsi Gabbard says her former colleagues are ignoring the larger issue: the ongoing US dirty war on Syria. After a decade of proxy warfare that empowered Al Qaeda and ISIS, the US is now occupying one-third of Syria and imposing crippling sanctions that are crushing Syria’s economy and preventing reconstruction.

While Gabbard has been vilified for her stance on Syria, many top White House officials — including Joe Biden himself — have already acknowledged the same facts that she has called out. Aaron Maté plays clips of Biden and some of his most senior aides admitting to the horrific realities of the US dirty war on Syria, and argues that Gabbard only stands apart in being wiling to criticize it.

Featuring clips from: Tulsi Gabbard, former Democratic Congressmember; President Joe Biden; Brett McGurk, National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa; Martin Dempsey, former Joint Chiefs chairman; Rob Malley, Special Envoy for Iran; John Kerry, Special Envoy for Climate & former Secretary of State; former President Donald Trump; Alena Douhan, UN Special Rapporteur on Sanctions; Dana Stroul, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East; Vice President Kamala Harris.

thegrayzone.com

‘Bad publicity is better than no publicity,’ as any marketer worth his salt understands. Yet Tulsi Gabbard, the anti-war, anti-interventionist Democratic presidential candidate, who should be the darling of every progressive, has virtually disappeared not only from the debate stage, but from the news cycle as well.

During Super Tuesday, the Iraq War veteran managed to pick up two delegates, which, under previous terms would have qualified her to participate, alongside Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, in future Democratic debates on the road to the November elections. As predicted, however, the DNC changed the rules mid-game.

The DNC has banned the only woman left from the next Democrat debate. I don’t hear any complaints from the same women — Warren, Harris, Pelosi, et al — accusing “the country” of sexism.https://t.co/0DMVbMeLYp

— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) March 7, 2020

Xochitl Hinojosa, head of communications for the Democratic Party, apparently in a preemptive strike against the hope that Gabbard would be given a podium at the upcoming debates, tweeted on Super Tuesday: “We have two more debates – of course the threshold will go up. By the time we have the March debate, almost 2,000 delegates will be allocated. The threshold will reflect where we are in the race, as it always has.”

Since then, the DNC has ruled that candidates must get at least 20 percent of the delegates as of March 15. Gabbard’s two delegates don’t meet this requirement.

Had Hinojosa and the Democratic Party elite reflected a bit longer about “where we are in the race,” however, they may have come around to a different conclusion. Like, for example, is it really the best optics to have two geriatric white male contenders steal the show from an upstart female who, having witnessed the atrocities of war firsthand, has acquired a soft spot for peace in the Middle East.

It’s just not the DNC elite, however, that is preventing Gabbard from participation. Even before Super Tuesday, CNN had seriously hampered any chance Gabbard may have had in getting her message out by refusing her an invitation to the (CNN sponsored) town halls.

I’m in Manchester, New Hampshire, where @TulsiGabbard is holding a demonstration against @CNN for excluding her from a series of town halls despite polling higher in NH than other candidates in the race. pic.twitter.com/A5udL4jQDZ

— Andres Del Aguila (@Andres_DAguila) February 5, 2020

That move on the part of America’s first 24-hour news channel, founded forty years ago this year by Ted Turner, was unconscionable considering that Gabbard had been polling at the top among New Hampshire voters. According to Real Clear Politics, Gabbard had been polling ahead in New Hampshire of Andrew Yang, Tom Steyer and Deval Patrick, all three of whom were invited to the debates. Where exactly is the democracy when a media corporation is empowered to determine who among the presidential candidates is allowed to participate?

Funny too how the rule changes never seem to hurt establishment powerhouses, like the mega-wealthy Michael Bloomberg, who was given the green light to debate after donating $300,000 to the DNC. Following that unprecedented act of ‘philanthropy’ by Bloomberg, the DNC quickly declared that candidates no longer need to have a minimum number of donations to appear on the debate stage.

.@JoeBiden @BernieSanders I’m sure you would agree that our Democratic nominee should be a person who will stand up for what is right. So I ask that you have the courage to do that now in the face of the DNC’s effort to keep me from participating in the debates. #LetTulsiDebate

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) March 7, 2020

Once again, the social justice warriors inside of the Liberal rage machine were silent. Not a peep from them as a rich white male, the epitome of the patriarchy, paid his way into the process ahead of a much more deserving female contender.

In his 1957 book ‘America as a Civilization,’ journalist Max Lerner described a liberal as someone who has “a passion for battle – against the ‘octopus’ of the big corporations… for wage-and-hour legislation, for women’s rights, for social security.”

Those individuals who call themselves ‘Liberals’ are fighting for a raft of radically different issues, few of which could be confused with what Lerner was speaking about.

Today, the masses are receiving an education courtesy of the ‘woke’ industry on things they never realized they needed educated about, like the nuances of acceptable pronoun usage, for example, or the importance of open toilets (regardless of biological sex) and open borders for everyone (regardless of legal status). The brave days of true progressive politics are over. In its place is an emotion-fueled Inquisition where issues truly worthy of liberal consideration never make it on the radar.

For the up and coming females in the Democratic ranks who really deserve support, the ugly new face of liberalism, usurped by Cultural Marxism, is doing them a huge disservice, while preventing the Democrats from becoming a real party of the people, for the people and by the people.

On a CNN panel on Monday, host John King spoke with Politico reporter Alex Thompson about the possibility of Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard qualifying on Super Tuesday for the party’s primary debate in Phoenix later this month.

“I will note this, she’s from Hawaii,” King said of Gabbard. “She’s a congresswoman from Hawaii; American Samoa votes on Super Tuesday. The rules as they now stand, if you get a delegate, you’re back in the debates. As of now. Correct?”

“Yeah, they haven’t, I mean, that’s been the rule for every single debate,” Thompson replied. “And the DNC has not released their official guidance for the March 15 debate in Phoenix, but it would be very obvious that they are trying to cancel Tulsi, who they’re scared of a third party run, if they then change the rules to prevent her to rejoin the debate stage.”

And indeed, as the smoke clears from the Super Tuesday frenzy, this is precisely what appears to have transpired.

Watch it til the end.https://t.co/SMU5NhCDUo

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 4, 2020

“The Gabbard campaign said it was informed that it would net two delegates from the caucuses in American Samoa, which will allocate a total of six pledged delegates,” The Hill reports today. “However, a report from CNN said that the candidate will receive only one delegate from the territory on Tuesday evening.”

“Tulsi Gabbard may have just qualified for the next Democratic debate thanks to American Samoa,” reads a fresh Business Insider headline. “Under the most recent rules, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii may have qualified for the next televised debate by snagging a delegate in American Samoa’s primary.”

“If Tulsi Gabbard gets a delegate out of American Samoa, as it appears she has done, she will likely qualify for the next Democratic debate,” tweeted Washington Post’s Dave Weigel. “We don’t have new debate rules yet, but party has been inviting any candidate who gets a delegate.”

Rank-and-file supporters of the Hawaii congresswoman enjoyed a brief celebration on social media, before having their hopes dashed minutes later by an announcement from the DNC’s Communications Director Xochitl Hinojosa that “the threshold will go up”.

“We have two more debates — of course the threshold will go up,” tweeted Hinojosa literally minutes after Gabbard was awarded the delegate. “By the time we have the March debate, almost 2,000 delegates will be allocated. The threshold will reflect where we are in the race, as it always has.”

“DNC wastes no time in announcing they will rig the next debates to exclude Tulsi,” journalist Michael Tracey tweeted in response.

We have two more debates– of course the threshold will go up. By the time we have the March debate, almost 2,000 delegates will be allocated. The threshold will reflect where we are in the race, as it always has.

— Xochitl Hinojosa (@XochitlHinojosa) March 4, 2020

This outcome surprised nobody, least of all Gabbard supporters. The blackout on the Tulsi 2020 campaign has reached such extreme heights this year that you now routinely see pundits saying things like there are no more people of color in the race, or that Elizabeth Warren is the only woman remaining in the primary. They’re not just ignoring her, they’re actually erasing her. They’re weaving a whole alternative reality out of narrative in which she is literally, officially, no longer in the race.

After Gabbard announced her presidential candidacy in January of last year I wrote an article explaining that I was excited about her campaign because she would severely disrupt establishment narratives, and, for the remainder of 2019, that’s exactly what she did. She spoke unauthorized truths about Syria, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, she drew attention to the plight of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and said she’d drop all charges against both men if elected, she destroyed the hawkish, jingoistic positions of fellow candidates on the debate stage and arguably single-handedly destroyed Kamala Harris’ run.

The narrative managers had their hands full with her. The Russia smears were relentless, the fact that she met with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was brought up at every possible opportunity in every debate and interview, and she was scoffed at and derided at every turn.

Now, in 2020, none of that is happening. There’s a near-total media blackout on the Gabbard campaign, such that I now routinely encounter rank-and-file liberals on social media who tell me they honestly had no idea she’s still running. She’s been completely redacted out of the narrative matrix.

All candidates of color are out. An openly gay married candidate is out. 2 women left. The rest? 70+ old white men fighting for the future of America in 2020. Because of course.

— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) March 1, 2020

So it’s unsurprising that the DNC felt comfortable striding forward and openly announcing a change in the debate threshold literally the very moment Gabbard crossed it. These people understand narrative control, and they know full well that they have secured enough of it on the Tulsi Problem that they’ll be able to brazenly rig her right off the stage without suffering any meaningful consequences.

The establishment narrative warfare against Gabbard’s campaign dwarfs anything we’ve seen against Sanders, and the loathing and dismissal they’ve been able to generate have severely hamstrung her run. It turns out that a presidential candidate can get away with talking about economic justice and plutocracy when it comes to domestic policy, and some light dissent on matters of foreign policy will be tolerated, but aggressively attacking the heart of the actual bipartisan foreign policy consensus will get you shut down, smeared and shunned like nothing else. This is partly because US presidents have a lot more authority over foreign affairs than domestic, and it’s also because endless war is the glue which holds the empire together.

And now they’re working to install a corrupt, right-wing warmongering dementia patient as the party’s nominee. And from the looks of the numbers I’ve seen from Super Tuesday so far, it looks entirely likely that those manipulations will prove successful.

All this means is that the machine is exposing its mechanics to the view of the mainstream public. Both the Gabbard campaign and the Sanders campaign have been useful primarily in this way; not because the establishment would ever let them actually become president, but because they force the unelected manipulators who really run things in the most powerful government on earth to show the public their box of dirty tricks.

medium.com

Recent events have me more convinced than ever that she will be returning, like some zombie whose head we forgot to cut off, to haunt voters one more time this fall.

After the beginning of an obvious (and planned) PR campaign last week with the release of a big campaign ad documentary on Netflix and a big splash in the Hollywood Reporter Hillary finally stopped being coy. And she announced this week that she now ‘has the urge’ to run again against Donald Trump.

Save us, please, from Hillary’s urges…. Shudder.

And she did so making sure that everyone knew what she thought of the real front-runner for the nomination, Bernie Sanders.

As various anointed ones have dropped out of the race – Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Robert O’Rourke – others have faltered despite huge ad spends while the media and pollsters do their level best to convince us all that Joe Biden’s a serious candidate to take on Donald Trump this fall.

In fact, the only reason Biden is still in the race is to make the impeachment theater going on right now seem relevant and cogent. But, like Biden himself, it is neither.

Then again neither is Hillary, but never underestimate this woman’s narcissistic solipsism.

If you look back on the race to date it’s clear that most of the people running are there to try and distract voters away from the two candidates that resonate most with voters, Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard.

Yes, Gabbard is polling low but if you look at poll numbers versus money spent and/or raised to this point, she’s clearly got cache and the ability to build a real following. And as the field shrinks those distractions become irrelevant. Her poll numbers are rising the more the field winnows.

Neither of them is acceptable in any way to the DNC. They are outsiders within their party. I’m no fan of Bernie Sanders. In fact, I think he’s a terrible candidate — because, you know, commie! — but that’s not the point of this article.

Bernie is surging in the early states and panic is setting in with the DNC. And they must have a plan to stop him from running away with the nomination otherwise we could have two outsiders headlining this fall’s reality show.

And that plan starts with the impeachment and potential removal of Donald Trump.

The impeachment is a distraction for Trump but it is a real problem for the Senators running for the Democratic nomination. They have to spend all day listening to Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler lie while they could be out campaigning and raising money.

This hurts Bernie the most because Bernie is the one who will get zero help from the DNC’s big donors. None of them are behind him and with good reason. He’s hostile to most of them (and most of us as well, but that’s a different article).

Of the people running for President as Democrats the only person less acceptable to Wall St. than Elizabeth Warren is Bernie Sanders. Warren’s entire campaign has been designed to push Bernie farther left by out-lefting him at every turn. Bernie says 70% top marginal tax rate, Warren says 77%. Bernie wants debt restructuring? Warren says forgive all student loan debt.

Her job is to make Bernie as unacceptable to mainstream U.S. voters as possible. Unfortunately, that makes Bernie more and more acceptable to a lot of people voting in the Democratic primaries. And this Catch-22 is beginning to show up in the polls for Iowa and New Hampshire.

Then there’s the serious money behind Pete Buttigieg trying to create slightly gayer version of Barack Obama. Again, he’s just another distraction to suck support away from Sanders and keep the field relatively close and the odds of an uncommitted primary season high.

Because the goal is to get to a brokered convention this summer. So, the impeachment was slowed down to hurt Sanders, Warren and Amy Klobuchar and help give Biden the bump he needs to get some momentum coming into Iowa.

It’s not working.

But I also don’t think it’s going to matter. If you keep watching the headlines the attack dogs are out in full to discredit and hurt Sanders. They know he’s a real force to be reckoned with. And worse, his attack dog, Gabbard, has been muzzled by keeping her off the debate stage so she can’t take anyone else out, like she roasted that pig Kamala Harris last summer.

But I truly feel the DNC is looking to steal the nomination again from Sanders. And the impeachment of Trump continues to somehow, against all odds, get worse for him, even though his party is supposed to be in charge of the proceedings.

I told everyone back in September when Nancy Pelosi announced she was going through with the impeachment process that this was all about getting rid of Trump. But it was in October when Hillary went after Tulsi Gabbard that  Gabbard’s response was beyond epic and I wrote about it then.

Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a …

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) October 18, 2019

… concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and …

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) October 18, 2019

… powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose.

It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) October 18, 2019

Gabbard throws down the gauntlet here outing Hillary as the mastermind behind the DNC strategy of allowing the current crop of future losers to fall all over themselves to alienate as many centrist voters as possible.

This paves the way for Hillary to swoop in on her broom, pointed hat in hand, and declare herself the savior of the Democratic Party’s chances to defeat Donald Trump next November.

So, Hillary’s running, the DNC is trying to stop Bernie and Tulsi Gabbard is still an also-ran in New Hampshire and Iowa, polling between 5% and 7%. So what?

Well, I feel at this point it’s been game-planned by Gabbard and Sanders that they know what’s coming. I felt the endorsement from Joe Rogan of Sanders was timed to distract from Hillary’s attack on Bernie in that Hollywood Reporter piece.

Rogan is far more influential than the dead tree media Hillary’s publicist works with. And her attack dogs were out in full to attack Rogan and smear Sanders with their typical guilt-by-association nonsense.

I don’t tweet much folks, but this one gets to the truth of what’s going on in the murk and slime of Democratic Party politics.

If you ever wanted proof that hyper-sensitive identity politics was nothing more than a cheap political tool of the worst kind. I give you Joe Rogan is a Nazi.

Wake up, get unwoke … profithttps://t.co/la7bgSKS7f

— Tom Luongo (@TFL1728) January 24, 2020

Sanders and Gabbard know the DNC is out to destroy him. And the question then becomes what’s next?

What do they do to combat this? Gabbard is not running for re-election in Hawaii. She says she’s committed to running for President. I don’t think she’s getting the nomination and, frankly, I don’t think she is either.

She just filed a defamation of character lawsuit against Hillary for the smears Hillary threw around I linked to above. She puts financial pressure on Hillary knowing that the Clintons couldn’t drum up support and dollars last year during their expensive speaking tour no one went to.

Gabbard denies any kind of third party run, getting the Ron Paul treatment from the media. But, she’s a very acceptable person to a lot of disaffected Trump voters like myself. She speaks to them and can help carry Bernie as his running mate if he somehow makes it through the convention to be the Democratic nominee.

So, yes, Gabbard isn’t running for re-election because she’s running as Sanders’ Vice-Presidential candidate.

And it may not be for the Democratic party in the end. That’s the part you have to factor in here.

Game-planning this out, these two are running a real insurgency within the DNC to either get the nomination or split off and run as Independents. This is Bernie’s last kick at the can. He’s already gotten the gold watch from the DNC in 2016, living the high life only a high member of the Politburo can.

Gabbard has burned all the bridges within the DNC she can, almost gleefully. That makes her a person of integrity, of authenticity, in a U.S. political wasteland of charlatans, reality show hucksters and outright thieves.

The quicker she climbs out of the basement in Pelosi’s House, the better off she’ll be.

I don’t put it past either of these people to think that preventing Hillary from regaining control of the Democrats and spoiling her return is the best outcome for America, even if it re-elects Donald Trump.

But, if Trump is removed to make way for Hillary, then the Race to 270 electoral votes becomes a non-binary affair.

Gabbard has filed a $50 million defamation suit against Clinton for labeling her a “Russian asset.” Independent journalist Michael Tracey joins Pushback to discuss.

Guest: Michael Tracey, independent journalist.

thegrayzone.com

The same goes for her statement that impeachment is “a partisan process fueled by tribal animosities.” What’s causing the great American meltdown is not partisanship so much as a 232-year-old Constitution that everyone claims to adore – especially during impeachment time – but which grows more rigid, dysfunctional, and undemocratic with every passing year. The more farcical the cult of the Constitution grows, the more ridiculous are the politics that flow out of it.

Finally, her plea to Americans “to make a stand for the center” in order to “bridge our differences” is too little too late. Centrism is dead because “moderate” politicians like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Tony Blair killed it by unleashing havoc on the Middle East and generating a refugee crisis whose reverberations are still being felt. It’s dead and gone, and there’s no point trying to revive it.

So it wasn’t Tulsi’s finest moment. But what a relief from the crazed warmongering of Adam Schiff, the Hollywood neocon in charge of impeachment who has been working nonstop with the intelligence agencies to throw Trump out of office – for all the wrong reasons, one might add.

His thirteen-minute harangue during the impeachment debate was typical. It began with the obligatory nod to Hamilton before moving on to a parade of half-truths and distortions.

“Over the course of the last three months,” he said, “we have found incontrovertible evidence that President Trump abused his power by pressuring the newly elected president of Ukraine to announce an investigation into President Trump’s political rival Joe Biden with the hopes of defeating Mr. Biden in the 2020 presidential election and enhancing his own prospects for re-election.”

This was nonsense. Sure, Trump wants to enhance his re-election prospects – what first-term president doesn’t? But even though he has a political interest in taking down Biden, the American public has an equal interest in investigating a man who allowed his son to rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars from a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch at a time when he was supposedly rooting out Ukrainian corruption. Biden was part of the problem he was supposed to solve, yet Schiff seems to think he deserves a free pass merely because he’s running for president.

Schiff then assailed Trump for undermining “a nation at war with our adversary Vladimir Putin’s Russia” by withholding $391 million in military aid. In fact, withholding aid from the neo-Nazis of the Ukraine’s Azov Battalion was one of the few good things Trump has done since taking office. Rather than undermining national security, he was doing the opposite by keeping the US out of another pointless conflict.

Besides, how do we know Russia is “our adversary” – because Schiff says so? Has Congress taken a formal vote on the topic? Did it declare war and then forget to inform the rest of us?

Finally, there was the Russiagate baloney that is the specialité de la maison:

“As a candidate in 2016,” Schiff said, “Donald Trump invited Russian interference in his presidential campaign, saying at a campaign rally, ‘Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,’ a clear invitation to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails. Just five hours later, Russian government hackers tried to do exactly that. What followed was an immense Russian hacking and dumping operation and a social media disinformation campaign designed to help elect Donald Trump. But not only did candidate Trump welcome that effort, he made full use of it, building it into his campaign plan [and] his messaging strategy…. This Russian effort to interfere in our elections didn’t deter Donald Trump. It empowered him.”

It’s as if Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller had never issued his verdict of no collusion. Trump’s statement about finding Clinton’s mails – delivered at a July 27, 2016, press conference, by the way, not a campaign rally – was clearly a joke. It had nothing to do with Russia’s hack of the Democratic National Committee, which in turn had nothing to do with WikiLeaks’s massive email dump. (“We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton,” Julian Assange announced six weeks earlier, three days before hearing from alleged Russian conduit Guccifer 2.0. So how could Russian intelligence supply WikiLeaks with emails that it already had?) With just $45,000 worth of Facebook ads prior to Election Day, the social media operation mounted by a private Russian firm known as the Internet Research Associates was also the opposite of what Schiff says it was – puny rather than massive. Moreover, Mueller made no effort in his February 2018 indictment of the IRA to connect its efforts with the Russian government, no doubt because he knew he could never prove any such connection in a court of law.

So there’s no evidence that Russia supplied WikiLeaks, that the IRA social media campaign was anything more than minor background noise, that the Kremlin did anything to spur its efforts on, or that Trump colluded, directly or indirectly. Schiff made it all up. But truth means nothing to such people. All he knows is that his campaign war chest has more than tripled from $2.1 to $6.8 million since he emerged as point man on Russiagate and that he’ll never have to worry about re-election again as long as he continues playing the Russia card. If “all that matters to this president is what affects him personally,” as Schiff said of Trump, then what is there to say about the congressman from Northrop Grumman – that all he cares about advancing his own political interests as well?

So congratulations to Gabbard for refusing to take part in an impeachment sham that is nothing more than an imperialist war drive in disguise. It’s a shame that her follow-up statement was so weak since she missed a golden opportunity to slam the warmongers who have caused one disaster after another for the last twenty years and are seemingly intent on causing more. But least she took a stand, which is more than one can say about hundreds of other Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Just ask the New York Times. In a major front-page takeout, it noted that Harris’s troubles began when she failed to “respond sharply to an attack on her prosecutorial record from Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, even after Ms. Harris had been prepped for the topic.

“On a conference call after the debate,” the article went on, “several of Ms. Harris’s donors were alarmed and urged the campaign to strike back at Ms. Gabbard more aggressively, two people on the call said. Ms. Harris also knew her response had been insufficient, a view quickly reinforced by her advisers. In interviews, many of them point to that debate moment as accelerating Ms. Harris’s decline….”

Quite right. The July 30 confrontation began when Joe Biden, in his usual stumbling fashion, mumbled something about Harris’s failure to tackle school segregation while serving as California’s attorney general. While everyone tried to figure out what “Sleepy Joe” was getting at, Harris seized the opportunity to go on about “the important work” she did reforming California’s broken criminal justice system.

But then it was Gabbard’s turn, and the results were almost frightening. “Now Senator Harris says she’s proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she’ll be a prosecutor president,” she began in that steely calm way of hers.

“But I’m deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite, but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana. She blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California. And she fought to keep [a] bail system in place that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way.”

The audience roared. All Harris could muster in response was more guff about how hard she worked at “significantly reforming the criminal justice system” instead of serving “in a legislative body and giv[ing] speeches on the floor” – which was strange coming from someone who is currently a member of a legislative body known as the US Senate, where her job presumably includes giving speeches on the floor.

It was all Harris could come up with because everything Gabbard said was true. Harris indeed prosecuted hundreds of marijuana cases and then cackled about smoking pot herself on a morning radio show. “I have,” she laughed, “and I did inhale.” (Quote starts at 36:35.) She blocked DNA tests sought by a death-row inmate named Kevin Cooper as the New York Times reported last year and, amazingly enough, argued in response to a 2014 lawsuit that California needed to keep nonviolent offenders in overcrowded state prisons because it needed them as a source of cheap labor. And, yes, she increased cash bail according an article in Business Insider.

Indeed, Gabbard could have gone about other things Harris did, such as supporting California’s barbaric three-strikes law, which puts people away for life for offenses like shoplifting and minor burglaries, or threatening to send poor people to jail because their kids are skipping school. But enough was enough. Gabbard’s sally sent Harris’s poll numbers on a downhill slide from which they never recovered.

So Harris’s withdrawal is a major victory for someone the experts told voters to ignore and a serious embarrassment for those who most deserve it. It also demonstrates at least two important political truths.

One is that polls are not the last word. After predicting a big win for Hillary Clinton in 2016, Nate Silver’s poll-heavy FiveThirtyEight website committed a similar blunder last January by declaring that Harris would “be among the strongest contenders in the 2020 Democratic field” because “no other candidate … better embodies how the modern Democratic Party has changed over the last few decades in identity and ideology.” That may have been what the polls seemed to indicate. But what Silver & Co. forgot is that polls tell only half the story and that the other half is no less important because it concerns tactics and ideology. Because this is Gabbard’s forte as she rails against “regime-change wars” that accomplish nothing other than death and destruction, she didn’t show up on FiveThirtyEight’s radar screen while a corrupt centrist like Harris did.

The other truth it demonstrates is that voters are sick of lies and hypocrisy. Harris epitomizes Democratic politicians who think it’s clever to spout liberal platitudes while governing increasingly from the right. All it took, therefore, was for Gabbard to point out the obvious contradiction in her rhetoric for her campaign to fizzle like a pricked balloon

Honesty is Gabbard’s other forte. Check out the 90-second campaign ad she made for Bernie Sanders in 2016 – it shows the kind of power and sincerity that will be increasingly critical in the coming election. Or take a look at her response when Hillary Clinton labeled her a Russian agent: “This is a dangerous message that’s being sent to the American people that if anyone, any veteran, any service member … speaks out for ending these regime change wars … this is how they will be treated.” It was angry and passionate and sure to resonate with growing portions of the electorate.

Finally, check out her recent two-minute video calling for the release of all documents pertaining to the World Trade Center. “It has been nearly twenty years since al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11,” she says, “and the American people still don’t have access to the truth about Saudi Arabia and who helped al-Qaeda carry out these deadly attacks.” She’s right, the great Saudi coverup is the scandal of the century, and Americans – especially working-class Americans who have suffered most from such policies – know it. This counts more than countless op-eds about her alleged lack of “electability” or snide attacks by timid liberals over at Saturday Night Live.

It’s why, once the dust settles, Gabbard and Sanders will be the only two Democrats left in the ring. Both have their own baggage. But for now, they’re the only ones honest enough to tell voters not what they want to hear, but what they need to know. Voters will reward them for doing so.

Doug BANDOW

The Democratic establishment is increasingly irritated. Representative Tulsi Gabbard, long-shot candidate for president, is attacking her own party for promoting the “deeply destructive” policy of “regime change wars.” Gabbard has even called Hillary Clinton “the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party.”

Senator Chris Murphy complained: “It’s a little hard to figure out what itch she’s trying to scratch in the Democratic Party right now.” Some conservatives seem equally confused. The Washington Examiner’s Eddie Scarry asked: “where is Tulsi distinguishing herself when it really matters?”

The answer is that foreign policy “really matters.” Gabbard recognizes that George W. Bush is not the only simpleton warmonger who’s plunged the nation into conflict, causing enormous harm. In the last Democratic presidential debate, she explained that the issue was “personal to me” since she’d “served in a medical unit where every single day, I saw the terribly high, human costs of war.” Compare her perspective to that of the ivory tower warriors of Right and Left, ever ready to send others off to fight not so grand crusades.

The best estimate of the costs of the post-9/11 wars comes from the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. The Institute says that $6.4 trillion will be spent through 2020. They estimate that our wars have killed 801,000 directly and resulted in a multiple of that number dead indirectly. More than 335,000 civilians have died—and that’s an extremely conservative guess. Some 21 million people have been forced from their homes. Yet the terrorism risk has only grown, with the U.S. military involved in counter-terrorism in 80 nations.

Obviously, without American involvement there would still be conflicts. Some counter-terrorism activities would be necessary even if the U.S. was not constantly swatting geopolitical wasps’ nests. Nevertheless, it was Washington that started or joined these unnecessary wars (e.g., Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen) and expanded necessary wars well beyond their legitimate purposes (Afghanistan). As a result, American policymakers bear responsibility for much of the carnage.

The Department of Defense is responsible for close to half of the estimated expenditures. About $1.4 trillion goes to care for veterans. Homeland security and interest on security expenditures take roughly $1 trillion each. And $131 million goes to the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which have overspent on projects that have delivered little.

More than 7,000 American military personnel and nearly 8,000 American contractors have died. About 1,500 Western allied troops and 11,000 Syrians fighting ISIS have been killed. The Watson Institute figures that as many as 336,000 civilians have died, but that uses the very conservative numbers provided by the Iraq Body Count. The IBC counts 207,000 documented civilian deaths but admits that doubling the estimate would probably yield a more accurate figure. Two other respected surveys put the number of deaths in Iraq alone at nearly 700,000 and more than a million, though those figures have been contested.

More than a thousand aid workers and journalists have died, as well as up to 260,000 opposition fighters. Iraq is the costliest conflict overall, with as many as 308,000 dead (or 515,000 from doubling the IBC count). Syria cost 180,000 lives, Afghanistan 157,000, Yemen 90,000, and Pakistan 66,000.

Roughly 32,000 American military personnel have been wounded; some 300,000 suffer from PTSD or significant depression and even more have endured traumatic brain injuries. There are other human costs—4.5 million Iraqi refugees and millions more in other nations, as well as the destruction of Iraq’s indigenous Christian community and persecution of other religious minorities. There has been widespread rape and other sexual violence. Civilians, including children, suffer from PTSD.

Even stopping the wars won’t end the costs. Explained Nita Crawford of Boston University and co-director of Brown’s Cost of War Project: “the total budgetary burden of the post-9/11 wars will continue to rise as the U.S. pays the on-going costs of veterans’ care and for interest no borrowing to pay for the wars.”

People would continue to die. Unexploded shells and bombs still turn up in Europe from World Wars I and II. In Afghanistan, virtually the entire country is a battlefield, filled with landmines, shells, bombs, and improvised explosive devices. Between 2001 and 2018, 5,442 Afghans were killed and 14,693 were wounded from unexploded ordnance. Some of these explosives predate American involvement, but the U.S. has contributed plenty over the last 18 years.

Moreover, the number of indirect deaths often exceeds battle-related casualties. Journalist and activist David Swanson noted an “estimate that to 480,000 direct deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, one must add at least one million deaths in those countries indirectly caused by the recent and ongoing wars. This is because the wars have caused illnesses, injuries, malnutrition, homelessness, poverty, lack of social support, lack of healthcare, trauma, depression, suicide, refugee crises, disease epidemics, the poisoning of the environment, and the spread of small-scale violence.” Consider Yemen, ravaged by famine and cholera. Most civilian casualties have resulted not from Saudi and Emirati bombing, but from the consequences of the bombing.

Only a naif would imagine that these wars will disappear absent a dramatic change in national leadership. Wrote Crawford: “The mission of the post-9/11 wars, as originally defined, was to defend the United States against future terrorist threats from al-Qaeda and affiliated organizations. Since 2001, the wars have expanded from the fighting in Afghanistan, to wars and smaller operations elsewhere, in more than 80 countries—becoming a truly ‘global war on terror’.”

Yet every expansion of conflict makes the American homeland more, not less, vulnerable. Contrary to the nonsensical claim that if we don’t occupy Afghanistan forever and overthrow Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, al-Qaeda and ISIS will turn Chicago and Omaha into terrorist abattoirs, intervening in more conflicts and killing more foreigners creates additional terrorists at home and abroad. In this regard, drone campaigns are little better than invasions and occupations.

For instance, when questioned by the presiding judge in his trial, the failed 2010 Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, a U.S. citizen, cited the drone campaign in Pakistan. His colloquy with the judge was striking: “I’m going to plead guilty 100 times forward because until the hour the U.S. pulls its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and stops the drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan and stops the occupation of Muslim lands and stops Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan, and stops the occupation of Muslim lands, and stops killing the Muslims.”

Ajani Marwat, with the New York City Police Department’s intelligence division, outlined Shahzad’s perspective to The Guardian: “’It’s American policies in his country.’ …’We don’t have to do anything to attract them,’ a terrorist organizer in Lahore told me. ‘The Americans and the Pakistani government do our work for us. With the drone attacks targeting the innocents who live in Waziristan and the media broadcasting this news all the time, the sympathies of most of the nation are always with us. Then it’s simply a case of converting these sentiments into action’.”

Washington does make an effort to avoid civilian casualties, but war will never be pristine. Combatting insurgencies inevitably harms innocents. Air and drone strikes rely on often unreliable informants. The U.S. employs “signature” strikes based on supposedly suspicious behavior. And America’s allies, most notably the Saudis and Emiratis—supplied, armed, guided, and until recently refueled by Washington—make little if any effort to avoid killing noncombatants and destroying civilian infrastructure.

Thus will the cycle of terrorism and war continue. Yet which leading Democrats have expressed concern? Most complain that President Donald Trump is negotiating with North Korea, leaving Syria, and reducing force levels in Afghanistan. Congressional Democrats care about Yemen only because it has become Trump’s war; there were few complaints under President Barack Obama.

What has Washington achieved after years of combat? Even the capitals of its client states are unsafe. The State Department warns travelers to Iraq that kidnapping is a risk and urges businessmen to hire private security. In Kabul, embassy officials now travel to the airport via helicopter rather than car.

Tulsi Gabbard is talking about what really matters. The bipartisan War Party has done its best to wreck America and plenty of other nations too. Gabbard is courageously challenging the Democrats in this coalition, who have become complicit in Washington’s criminal wars.

theamericanconservative.com

Here will be presented the first full transcript of the complete passage in which Hillary Clinton accused both the Democratic Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard (who has been a Representative in the US House of Representatives for 6 years) and the Green Party leader (who hasn’t ever held any elective governmental office) as being “Russian assets”; and, regarding Gabbard, alleged also that Russia is “grooming her to be the third-party candidate.” Hillary meant there that Russia, and those two “Russian assets,” are planning to do this so as to reduce the votes for whomever will be the Democratic Party’s Presidential nominee, and thus to throw the 2020 election to Donald Trump, like Ralph Nader threw the 2000 Presidential election to George W. Bush, by taking more votes away from Gore than away from Bush in both New Hampshire and Florida and thus actually enabling the Republican US Supreme Court to step in and choose Bush to be the US President. But Hillary never alleged that Nader had been “a Russian asset.” Maybe there isn’t a Russian under every rock, just like there isn’t a Jew under every rock. However, bigots can be found almost everywhere, and evil politicians of every political party can play them like a Paderewsky upon the keys. And Obama’s former campaign manager played right along with her.

Regarding this podcast, I warn anyone who clicks onto either of the two URLs to that podcast: it blasts one’s ears out and has no volume-control on it (at least on my system); so, I advise that, in order to save your ears, it might be safer just to read the transcript that I present of it, below:

——

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hillary-clinton/id1479487160?i=1000453830324

Apple Podcasts: Campaign HQ with David Plouffe

Th. 17 October 2019 David Plouffe interviews Hillary Clinton

https://podcasts.google.com/

Google Podcasts: Campaign HQ with David Plouffe

17 October 2017

+++

35:30-36:25: Hillary Clinton (referring to Russians): “They’re also going to do third party again. And, I’m not making any predictions but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who’s currently in the Democratic primary, and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians, they have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far, and that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up which she might not because she’s also a Russian asset. She’s a Russian asset, I mean, totally, and so they know they can’t win without a third party candidate. And so I don’t know who it’s going to be but I guarantee they’ll have a vigorous third-party challenge — in the key states that they most need it.” [Commercial break]

——

That’s all there is of it. The rest of the hour was mainly her regular accusations against Russia, which she has stated many times before, plus a bit of her thoughts about how Republicans deceive stupid voters (whom she once called a “the basket of deplorables” — as if she had none, or else a smaller “basket,” but surely a different “basket,” of them — whomever they might be) to vote for Republican nominees. So, Hillary promotes hatred of Russians for being evil and dangerous people, and contempt for Republicans, as their being Russians’ dupes. Maybe she hopes this way to win enough dupes of her own, in order to win something, other than the Senate seat from New York, which she did win, as the departing First Lady.

Since Jill Stein has no actual public-policy record, because she’s never been a public official, there is nothing to indicate to an intelligent voter what her polices and policy-priorities — as opposed to mere campaign-promises — are; but Tulsi Gabbard does have an actual policy-record, and it is approximately as hostile against Russia as that of most members of Congress. Here are some of her key votes, and statements explaining them, so that one can reasonably judge whether Gabbard is hostile, or friendly, toward Russia (since Hillary seems to think that Gabbard is deficiently hostile toward Russia):

——

GABBARD AGAINST RUSSIA:

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2014/roll114.xml    6 March 2014

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2014/roll117.xml   11 March 2014

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2014/roll148.xml   27 March 2014

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2014/roll149.xml     1 April 2014

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2017/roll413.xml   25 July 2017

https://www.congress.gov/  12 Feb. 2015

https://www.congress.gov/  6 Jan. 2017

——

Here is Gabbard’s press release in March 2014, specifically about her position regarding the overthrow in February 2014 of the democratically elected Ukrainian President who was very popular both in Crimea and in far eastern Ukraine and who refused to accept that Ukraine pay the full projected $160 billion cost which would be entailed if Ukraine were to join the European Union (which the US demanded that he accept):

——

https://gabbard.house.gov/

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: Russia Must Face Consequences for Continued Aggression in Ukraine

March 17, 2014 Press Release

Calls for US to offer weapons, military training assistance

Washington, DC – Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02) today released the following statement after the President’s announcement of expanded sanctions against Russian officials:

“Russia has violated the sovereignty and independence of the Ukrainian people, in direct contravention of its own treaty obligations and international law,” said Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, an Army combat veteran and member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “I support the sanctions announced today, and I strongly urge the President to go further and consider a broader range of consequences. If Russia is allowed to continue its aggressive push for control in Ukraine, there will be long-term, serious, and costly security risks for the United States and Europe. Russia must face serious consequences for their actions; the US must consider options that truly isolate Russia economically and diplomatically — not just sanction a handful of oligarchs — and send a message of unity and strength from the international community.

“We cannot stand by while Russia unilaterally degrades Ukraine’s territorial integrity. We must offer direct military assistance — defensive weapons, military supplies and training — to ensure Ukraine has adequate resources to respond to Russia’s aggressions and defend themselves. We cannot view Ukraine as an isolated incident. If we do not take seriously the threat of thinly veiled Russian aggression, and commit to aiding the people of Ukraine immediately, we will find ourselves in a more dangerous, expensive and disastrous situation in the future.”

In a House Foreign Affairs Committee mark-up of H.Res. 499 recently, the congresswoman gained unanimous approval on including amendments on anti-corruption, and protection of civil and political rights throughout Ukraine. She also supported the House passage of H.R. 4152, which authorized loan guarantees for Ukraine.

——

So: she was just as determined as the rest of Congress to force the residents in Crimea and in far eastern Ukraine to accept the illegally imposed post-coup leaders that Victoria Nuland, President Obama’s point-person controlling the overthrow, chose to lead Ukraine. Nuland did it in this phone call, when she instructed the US Ambassador to Ukraine to have Arseniy Yatsenyuk, “Yats,” chosen to lead the country, and for the Ambassador not to allow the EU’s preferred person, “Klitch” or Vitaly Klitchko, to be appointed. She angrily said there, “Fuck the EU,” because “Klitch,” actually, wasn’t nearly as anti-Russian as “Yats.” And having “Klitch” even so much as work under “Yats, “It’s just not going to work,” she said. The EU’s choice — the person who didn’t seethe with hate for Russians — needed to be excluded, entirely, from serving in the new, US-imposed, government.

Here’s that phone-call:

A transcript of its main parts can be seen here:

http://archive.is/

The head of the ‘private CIA’ firm, Stratfor, called it “the most blatant coup in history.”

Tulsi Gabbard was just as supportive of this as were virtually all other members of Congress. So: when did Gabbard become a “Russian asset?”

If one clicks onto the votes that she had made in 2014, 2015, and 2017, when the big anti-Russian bills were being voted on in Congress, she was just as hostile toward Russia as the others were, wasn’t she?

So: when did it happen?

Frankly, if Gabbard remains in that Party, and doesn’t try to form a less war-mongering party to replace today’s rabidly neoconservative (like the Republicans are) Democratic Party, and to present an authentically progressive alternative to the fascism of both of America’s two existing, billionaire-backed, Parties, then would she really be a supporter of ending America’s “regime-change wars” — the string of US invasions and coups to overthrow governments that are allied with, or even merely friendly toward, Russia — as she claims to be? How can she stay in either of the existing Parties, if she doesn’t support regime-change wars? These wars are intended to isolate and ultimately destroy Russia: these wars are waged only against Russia-friendly or -allied countries, which never invaded, nor even threatened to invade, the United States. Who is she, if she doesn’t separate herself from both neoconservative Parties, which Hillary now dares her to do? Does Tulsi Gabbard really oppose “regime-change wars”?

Hillary Clinton condemns Tulsi Gabbard actually for opposing regime-change wars, but Gabbard’s voting record in Congress is almost as supportive of those wars as the rest of Congress is. So: what is Clinton’s complaint?

Gabbard claims to despise Hillary Clinton, but Gabbard has voted mostly for the initiatives in Congress that Ms. Clinton had helped to lead. (Victoria Nuland is a close friend of Hillary’s.) If Gabbard actually will split from the Democratic Party, then I, for one, would vote for her against both the Democratic and the Republican Parties, because I am anti-fascist, and both of today’s Parties are fascist. But she would need to explain why she condemns both Parties though supporting their regime-change wars and coups.

The choice between two fascist Parties isn’t any democracy — none at all. But I’m not sure where Tulsi Gabbard really stands, on the necessity to give Americans a real choice, real democracy. That’s not clear. It’s not clear where she actually stands.

George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. Barack Obama invaded Libya in 2011, and Syria in 2012-. What’s to choose between such fascists? It that democracy? It’s empire, and empire was sought by the Axis powers in World War II — three imperialistic fascist countries: Germany, Italy, and Japan. America is now imperialistic fascist. Does Tulsi Gabbard really support that? If not, then why has she voted in Congress for it (just like virtually all other members of Congress — none of whom condemn “regime-change wars,” as she does)?

Where does she really stand? That’s the actual question about her, not “When did Tulsi Gabbard become a Russian asset?” Hillary simply lies about that (even if Gabbard does end up running as a third-party candidate).

Fittingly, the Arch Witch of the West’s latest Lust for Power grab was signaled by her husband, former President Bill Clinton the day before Halloween.

On October 30, Clinton attended an event at Georgetown University Law School with Hillary and their always loyal ally Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginzburg.

Commenting on his wife’s stupendous and undying ambition, the former president and longtime associate and repeated guest of murdered pedophile Joseph Epstein said, “She may or may not run for anything but I’m never running for president again.”

Neither Bill nor Hillary appeared to realize the serendipitous timing of his comment right before Halloween: For with the passing years, Hillary has come to eerily resemble her close friend passionate admirer, actress Bette Midler.

Especially as Midler played Salem witch Winfred Sanderson in the 1993 comedy horror movie “Hocus Pocus.”

But Hillary herself has made her goal and her strategy to achieve it crystal clear already. She always slowly and supposedly meticulously prepares the path to her goals with all the obvious slow, ponderous and painfully predictable progress of a lumbering mammoth.

Veteran US foreign correspondent Bill Thomas, formerly of the Los Angeles Times and one of the funniest and shrewdest political commentators in the business diagnoses Hillary’s familiar trope of ponderous preparations for her next power grab in an important article on the “American Greatness” web site that appeared on October 7.

“Until the field narrows and more funds are available Hillary’s working her blue-state base in community centers, churches, and lesbian bookstores while her publisher picks up the tab,” Thomas wrote. “It has to feel a little like old times to the aging grafter [con artist]. In 2000, she listened her way through every county in the state of New York to win a seat in the Senate. In 2008, she tried the same thing in her first run for the White House.”

Second, Thomas noted that Hillary and her 39-year-old daughter Chelsea “wrote a book together (or at least saw the page proofs before they went to the printer). It’s called The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience. The book is said to contain uplifting profiles of women and girls from civil rights pioneer Harriet Tubman to Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate alarmist from Village of the Damned.”

Thomas continues: “All the key words in the title are qualities Hillary pretends to have, especially ‘courage.’ When, in reality, if she had been either courageous or gutsy, Hillary, the country’s most cheated on woman, would have divorced her philandering husband years ago.”

Earlier in October, Clinton with her usual stunningly bad timing and lack of self-awareness picked a vicious fight with Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard.

Gabbard is everything Clinton is not – and never was: She is a proven American patriot; she is happily married; she is athletic, relatively young, beautiful and gutsy; she served with success and honor in the US armed forces and she is even a member of not one but several minorities – Samoan American by race and Hindu by religion.

Unfortunately, Gabbard is also politically principled, courageous, personally honorable and decent.

It is therefore inevitable that Hillary hates her.

Hillary lashed out at Gabbard accusing her with no evidence whatsoever – an inevitable Clinton specialty – of being a puppet of Russia and its president.

Joe McCarthy at his abusive alcoholic worst 65 years ago was never as repulsive or absurd.

Yet Hillary’s attack was entirely unnecessary: Though Gabbard has won the respect of a handful of thoughtful Americans on both left and right for her courage, independent thinking and responsible desire to rein in the US permanent warfare Deep State, these forces had already effectively muzzled and marginalized her.

She has polling at 2 percent to 3 percent in the opinion polls and tracking data the Democratic Party establishment uses – and manipulates – to control access to its nationally televised debates.

All Hillary therefore succeeded in doing was reviving Gabbard’s campaign and helping her to politically survive until the real voting starts in the US state of New Hampshire primary elections on February 11, 2020.

It is striking that even Hillary’s old colleagues the Democratic members of the Senate whom she served alongside for eight years are now heartedly sick and tired of her.

At least six of them – Senators Tammy Duckworth, Jon Tester, Joe Manchin, Martin Heinrich, Dick Durbin and Doug Jones – have already publicly called for her to publicly fade back into the woodwork and murky shadows from whence she came and trouble them politically no longer, “Politico” newspaper reported on October 24.

In February 2016, I wrote a column in an obscure US media platform in which I compared Hillary’s long, joyless trudge to the Democratic presidential nomination in Philadelphia to Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky’s 20,000 mile trek around the world in 1905 so that his entire fleet could be sunk or captured by a Japanese force with only half as many battleships at the Battle of Tsushima.

I was particularly struck by the comparison of Hillary to a Loser Navy that used up 500,000 tons of coal (precious fossil fuels) and then sank on sight when the moment of battle finally came.

True Believers still hopefully waiting for Hillary’s Hocus Pocus Halloween Horror 3 should know what to expect.