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Open Letters by Mersault's avatar

AN OPEN LETTER TO TULSI GABBARD: THE DANGERS OF HAVING A DICTATOR’S ALLY IN CHARGE OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

“Your Complicity with Tyrants Makes You Unfit to Lead.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/patricemersault/p/an-open-letter-to-tulsi-gabbard-the?r=4d7sow&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

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vorpal's avatar

Would be fun to have her nominated and confirmed and then have her fed entirely false information and see how long it turns up in Russia...

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Sharon Buchbinder, PhD's avatar

Also, did you see this article by Christine Gralow https://www.spytalk.co/p/my-battle-with-tulsi-gabbards-cult

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Sharon Buchbinder, PhD's avatar

Ha! I read that second line too fast...thought it said, "I spy a Putin p*ssy." My mind is in the gutter.

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Dr. Steven Quest's avatar

Grab ‘em by the patsy.

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Linda1961 is woke and proud's avatar

Back during the Cold War, "useful Idiots" was used by people accusing others of being Soviet tools. It was usually used by cons for hippies and liberals, because cons have always been the super patriots. Real conservatives, maybe, except during the Revolution, as the cons then were Tories and wanted to stay subjects of George III. But in the 20th century, real cons, may have been patriotic, but what passes for conservatism these days is neither conservative nor patriotic. These assholes want to change things drastically, and for the worse. It's not even going back to the 1950s or the 1850s, or to any other time period. It's taking us to some dystopian future more like "The Handmaid's Tale" than anything else.

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Michael Baker's avatar

Marc Caputo of the Bulwark suggested in a column that Trump will move to defend Gabbard and RFK Jr, skipping his other insane picks. Basically, both are Russian assets and Trump owes financial allegiance and his election victory to Putin so Trump will try to pay him back. Trump is a Russian asset. It would be good for more people to recognize that.

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Eva Porter's avatar

Trump’s cabinet is Bizarro world. The worst person to lead something is put in charge of it

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llamaspit's avatar

I'm disappointed that coverage of Tulsi Gabbard often fails to include her involvement, along with her entire family, in a dangerous and homophobic pseudo-Hindu cult, led by a reclusive self-appointed guru who set up shop in Hawaii back in the 70's.

She only became a Democrat in the first place because in Hawaii, that was the only viable path to political power. She has since proven that she was never an honest Democrat, and never actually believed in Democratic principles. She is an opportunist and simply hungry for power.

I suppose that coverage of her weird religious history is suppressed in the press because of our foolish tendency to grant legitimacy to whatever variety of god-bothering that people decide to subscribe to. In her case, it's dangerous to grant her access to power. The voters rightly turned her out and she should be denied any promotion. Trump of course, believes in nothing except transactions with those who further his own ends. He would appoint Beelzebub himself if he was willing and able to wear a MAGA hat.

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Stephen Robinson's avatar

She was as much a Democrat as Manchin/Sinema, etc.

I think her bigoted views on queer people were unfortunately overlooked, but there were a lot of positions she held that were center-left, specifically on health care, climate, education, infrastructure, and criminal justice reform. Her isolationist foreign policy views were also unfortunately far-left *at the time.*

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llamaspit's avatar

Agreed. It was her center-left views which led me initially to look more closely at her origin story, and finding out those details led me to be much more skeptical of the positions that she was adopting. Ultimately, and has later events have borne out, I came to the conclusion that she was shrouding her true positions in order to gain a bigger political role in the Dem. party, which was her only avenue to rise in Hawaii.

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Brando's avatar

The problem is this is not a case of an otherwise loyal president nominating a potential Russian asset--the president himself has proved to be a national security risk. That this national security risk won the votes of most military members and veterans is appalling but it also means there's not only no risk to him in nominating her, but even if she dropped out he'd still be likely to share secret information with Putin and who knows who else.

The end result probably won't be immediately obvious, but our own allies and assets are going to be less likely to cooperate with us, even if we had another loyal president again, because there's the risk that any information shared can get easily disseminated to Putin. Our intel apparatus is becoming permanently damaged, and we are walking into several more 9/11s and Iraq Wars--military actions based on faulty intel--as a result.

The voters who wanted to "shake things up" are certainly going to get that.

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Linda1961 is woke and proud's avatar

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒗𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒘𝒉𝒐 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒐 "𝒔𝒉𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 𝒖𝒑" 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒄𝒆𝒓𝒕𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒍𝒚 𝒈𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝒈𝒆𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕.

The problem is that we all will get that, to our detriment. If the "I only wanted to shake things up" people would learn that they shook things up for the bad, and that they are the blame for voting for Putin's useful idiots, things might get better in time. However, they will blame libs, Dems, undocumented immigrants (called "illegals" by trump voters), trans folk, the Easter Bunny, and Martians - anyone but themselves.

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SethTriggs's avatar

I have to agree. And it was long known she was sketchy too. Sadly she got some support because she managed to say right-sounding words about a couple things, presumably...that's how she "made her bones" in the Democratic Party before she did her thing.

One thing's for certain...she's not on Team U.S.A. And is definitely President Klan Robe's most dangerous pick (so far. There is always an opportunity for a worse replacement to be brought in).

I think the #2 most dangerous pick is Patel, #3 is hard to say for now.

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Eva Porter's avatar

Hegseth for #3 due to his drunken incompetence and lack of any qualifications for this job.

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SethTriggs's avatar

Part of me wants to give the tie for #3 to Pam Bondi, but Hegseth definitely is a good 3. Another says Lowly Worm because of the damage he'll do in defanging our ability to fight preventable illness.

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Brando's avatar

The "anti-war" left got bamboozled by a lot of grifters. Remember the criticism of Obama's use of drone warfare, which quieted down oh around 2017, even though drone warfare was stepped up? Then Biden takes office, abandons drone warfare, and we don't hear a peep of praise?

The whole thing smelled of rat.

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SethTriggs's avatar

Oh boy I am picking up what you're putting down because I remember this a LOT. This was one of the ways Dennis Kucinich made his bones before he lost the plot. Same with Cindy Sheehan and Scott Ritter.

One of the primary reasons I don't give the 'anti-war' left any credibility is how they threw Joe Biden under the bus along with Republicans after the Afghanistan withdrawal (and President Klan Robe had bungled that, so Biden had to go forward with it, and we got out the best we could.)

That was a goddamn activist goal for TWENTY YEARS! I was IN those protests in the early oughts!

But no, Biden didn't get a *lick* of credit. The goalposts just moved. It kinda was the cherry on the cake that some of the people flogging that were not on the level.

It also hasn't escaped notice to me that the only two politicians who have paid for the Iraq War debacle are John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.

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Tee Ree's avatar

Glenn Grenwald is a Russian stooge along with Matt Taiebe, Nina Turner and everyone on the Alt-Left. They are more dangerous than maga stooges as they position themselves as allegedly being on the left but the only people that they disparage are Democrats.

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SethTriggs's avatar

That's because Murc's Law is Cruise Control for Cool (and Clout!). You honestly can get a lot of clicks by shitting on Democrats! And that works for so many of these "Resistance" grifters too.

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Brando's avatar

Exactly--if they really believed what they said during the Bush/Obama years, they'd have been thrilled that Biden throttled back drone warfare and got us out of Afghanistan--after 20 years!--in his first months in office. Instead, crickets. Just goes to show what these horseshoes are made of!

See also Glen Greenwald--another "I'm just standing up against imperialism, but only American imperialism, not Russian" stooge.

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SethTriggs's avatar

Now that I think about it, didn't that happen with Snowden too?

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Brando's avatar

And Assange!

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SethTriggs's avatar

And in the end it turned out that Assange was a Russian cutout.

This is probably a good place to warn folks that we're going to be in a new age of "Resistance" grifters. It'll be like Shaun King writ large.

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Jesse S.'s avatar

She was super popular with certain faction of leftist influencer because she said “no more war” and they asked no further questions

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Brando's avatar

Keep an eye on those histrionic lefty hippie types. They bring a fair share of fascism in dove's clothing with them.

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SethTriggs's avatar

This particular phenomenon isn't even the first time this has happened for Democrats! And it generally just keeps happening with Democrats, probably because a number of Democrats are all about "Oh this person makes great speeches! They speak truth to power!"

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Suzie Greenburg's avatar

Gabbard giving off strong Anakin episode 3 vibes

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Trux Mint In Box's avatar

“From my point of view it’s the liberals that are the enemy!”

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Trux Mint In Box's avatar

Well she is a bad actor

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Brando's avatar

You mean a story arc that seems forced and unearned, suggesting she was a fascist plant all along?

I bet she hates sand, too!

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Suzie Greenburg's avatar

Also I imagine taking the high ground won't defeat her in the long run.

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Brando's avatar

So crazy that Jedis who could fly would worry about the "high ground" but there was so much wrong with those prequels!

Yeah, when they go low, we stomp 'em.

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Heather.B's avatar

I am so disgusted with Republicans in Congress. Trump’s nominees are corrupt, unqualified; they are a disaster to our country and put our national security at risk; will do irrevocable harm to this country. Yet most will toe the line to suck up to Trump and please their MAGA constituents. Power rules.

Trump's nominees lack the competence, ethics, background, and character to be effective cabinet leaders. He is filling the government with loons, traitors, slackers, fools, blunderers and corrupt plutocrats.

Proud to be a liberal woman, now more than ever!

Proud to wear this totally unhinged radical liberal t-shirt in front of Republicans and bigots 👇

https://libtees-2.creator-spring.com/listing/radlib

Trump and co want to make the government NO longer functional!

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Suzie Greenburg's avatar

Whe are you selling T shirts on someone else's blog?

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