Can someone explain the hate on Tulsi? I mean a lot of people here say she's basically a republican but what's the rationale? She seems like the most run of the mill, generic, has accomplished very little politician you can find these days. None of her stances are really out there (or conservative), she supports universal healthcare, gay rights, less military spending, etc. and has had a few outspoken moments in her career against career democrats, mostly regarding how the DNC handled Bernie in 2016.
That's literally it. Her bills passed are largely focused on veteran affairs. She had some controversy with Syria. And she's not bad on the eyes.
why the fuck do we care about her again?
lol, talk about white washing shit.
Now, 99% of the time Jacobin is a joke, but this is actually a decent article regarding Tulsi
1) She fucking met with Assad while he was gassing his own people. She keeps parroting Russian/Syrian talking points.
2) Supports gay rights? She's been constantly supporting and openly been anti-LGBT
for years. And this isn't "I support Civil Union but not Marriage" 90's "anti-LGBT" that people love to throw around, this is straight up bigotry. She keeps saying she's changed (but has been on record of not actually having changed personal views, see below), but there is nothing indicating she has actually changed her mind outside of the fact that being an open bigot in the Democratic party, which she is only a member of because Hawaii's GOP party is DOA, is politically suicide.
Early in her career, Gabbard took after her father. She opposed abortion and supported a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. After Honolulu Magazine emailed her father to ask about his former ties to a conservative Hare Krishna splinter group for a 2004 profile, it was Gabbard who replied angrily, accusing the magazine of "acting as a conduit for The Honolulu Weekly and other homosexual extremist supporters of Ed Case [her father's opponent]."
The same year, she used her platform as a state representative to testify against civil unions, calling the claim that they were different from same-sex marriage "dishonest, cowardly, and extremely disrespectful to the people of Hawaii," who had voted in favor of Constitutional Amendment 2 in 1998, empowering the legislature to withhold marriage from same-sex couples.
"As Democrats, we should be representing the views of the people, not a small number of homosexual extremists," she said at the time.
3) She's only well known because she backed Sanders, and in 2016 Sanders didn't have many allies in the Democratic party because, shockingly, when you spend your entire campaign calling the party your running for corrupt who are trying to sabotage your campaign you don't get that many friends. So when you don't have many friends, you take the ones you can get.
4) The alt-right fucking
loves her for obvious reasons from the examples I stated above with her very right wing social conservatism and Islamophobia. She has advertisements on fucking Breitbart, goes on Fox News all the time to talk to her friend, Tucker white supremacist Carlson
Yet the starry-eyed anointment of Gabbard has obscured the more unsavory aspects of her politics — so unsavory, in fact, that White House adviser Steve Bannon has reportedly spoken well of her. From her vigorous opposition to the Iran nuclear deal to her obsession with "radical Islam" to her love for the far-right Indian leader Narendra Modi, Gabbard is far from the progressive hero many assume her to be.
And if you think her views have "changed" and she has done some type of "progressive" progress?
She admitted in an interview that her personal views have not changed.
Fittingly for her narrative, though, the explanation for her changed ideology feints us back onto familiar territory — the military. It was, she says, the days in the Middle East that taught her the dangers of a theocratic government "imposing its will" on the people. (She tells me that, no, her personal views haven't changed, but she doesn't figure it's her job to do as the Iraqis did and force her own beliefs on others.)
5) She's not actually anti-interventionist. Her concern for "expansion" of the US armed forces into places like Syria/Iraq are out of concern for US soldiers, her compassion stops there. She's on record for being against the Iran deal (hmmmm I wonder why)
Another reason Gabbard started receiving applause from the Right was her very public skepticism of the Iran deal.
The Obama administration may have continued much of the Bush approach to the "war on terror," but it at least recognized the value of diplomacy. Not Gabbard, however, who told Fox News she was "cynical" toward the pact, and agreed with host Greta van Susteren that it was akin to Neville Chamberlain's infamous Munich agreement with Hitler in 1938.
...
But Gabbard is less discerning when autocrats aren't motivated by "radical Islam." In November 2015, she traveled to Egypt as part of a congressional delegation and met Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, part of an effort to strengthen US-Egypt relations. Sisi may be a blood-soaked tyrant who's killed hundreds of Egyptians and imprisoned many thousands more, but as Gabbard made clear at the time, he's tough where it counts.
"President el-Sisi has shown great courage and leadership in taking on this extreme Islamist ideology, while also fighting against ISIS militarily to keep them from gaining a foothold in Egypt," Gabbard said, urging US political leaders to "recognize President el-Sisi and his leadership" and "stand with him in this fight against . . . Islamic extremists." Some of the Sisi government's fantastic accomplishments in this fight include killing a group of Mexican tourists and quite possibly torturing and murdering an Italian PhD student.
Huh, strange that she keeps meeting with fucking dictators who are murdering their own people when it's about "Islamist Extremism"
Not to mention her love of Modi
But most appalling was his role in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in the western state of Gujarat, which left one thousand people dead, nearly eight hundred of whom were Muslims. Modi was the state's chief minister at the time and has long been accused of allowing the riots to happen, with a former senior police officer testifying in 2011 that Modi said the night before the riots that Muslims needed to be taught a lesson.
Despite all of this, Gabbard has been one of Modi's most prominent boosters in the US. "He is a leader whose example and dedication to the people he serves should be an inspiration to elected officials everywhere," she said of Modi in 2014.
When a congressional panel was held in April 2014 on "the plight of religious minorities in India," with witnesses testifying about the mistreatment of Muslims, Gabbard said she didn't "believe the time of this hearing is a coincidence" and that it aimed to "influence the outcome of India's national elections." Gabbard voted against House Resolution 417, which criticized India's record on religious violence and called for specific measures to guarantee religious freedom in the country, explaining that its passage wouldn't help US-India relations. Yet two years later, Gabbard introduced a similar resolution that covered neighboring Muslim-majority Bangladesh, saying she was "particularly concerned over issues of religious freedom, and specifically, attacks against minority Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, and others" in the country.