The Tulsi Gabbard Show (Partisan Interests)

#Tulsi2020 | #WithTheRussians

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI02), along the way to seeking a 2020 Democratic presidential nod, weighed in on the slow-leaking debacle of Attorney General William Barr’s summary that is not a summary, noting Thursday:

Mueller reported Trump did not collude with Russia to influence our elections. Now we must put aside partisan interests, move forward, and work to unite our country to deal with the serious challenges we face.

Friday’s clarification letter regarding the Attorney General’s previous letter continues word games^α that ought to sober up some ebullient pro-Trump celebration among ostensible progressives and leftists. Meanwhile, testable statements such as the Distinguished Member from Hawai’i Two offers can eventually be checked. The thing is, if President Trump is hoping A.G. Barr can hold out long enough at a threshold of potential misprision, we might wonder at those who seek to either abet or else profit thereby.

The upside for Ms. Gabbard, of course, is if it somehow turns out President Trump is somehow innocent to the point of driven snow. “Mueller reported Trump did not collude with Russia to influence our elections”, the Congresswoman wrote. Not even the 24 March letter from the Attorney General actually says that; Tulsi Gabbard seems to very anxious to advance the Trump supporters’ pitch.

Toward which end, we should probably note that among the mysteries of the internet, there is this: The part where the video frame in Congreswoman Gabbard’s tweet seems to say, “Tulsi 2020 … with the Russians”, is entirely coincidental; that’s just how it came up on the screen.

Still, this is the sort of gaffe that can haunt.

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Image note: Tweet by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI02), 28 March 2019.

^α Previously, Mr. Barr fiddled the word “coordination”; the latest might leave the reader wondering at the definition of “summary”.

@TulsiGabbard. “Mueller reported Trump did not collude with Russia to influence our elections. Now we must put aside partisan interests, move forward, and work to unite our country to deal with the serious challenges we face”. Twitter. 28 March 2019.

Barr, William. Letter to House and Senate Judiciary Committees. Office of the Attorney General. 24 March 2019.

—————. Letter to Chairman Graham and Chairman Nadler. Office of the Attorney General. 29 March 2019.

Maddow, Rachel. “Barr improvises role on Mueller report despite clear regulations”. The Rachel Maddow Show. msnbc. 29 March 2019.

Steinberg, Ben. “This Footnote to Barr’s Mueller Report Letter Felt Very Random. Perhaps It Wasn’t”. Slate. 29 March 2019.

A Celebration

“I knew at that moment my child came back to me. She was on her way to who she had been from birth.”

―Rose Gladu

Welcome, Gabreille. It is our honor to wish you the best of adventures in the life that presents itself unto you.

Thank you, Mother Rose. It really is that important. Thank you.

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Mosbergen, Dominique. “Transgender Teen Left ‘Speechless’ After Mom’s Big Surprise”. The Huffington Post. 1 October 2015.

A Reminder: Funerals Are for the Living

“I am disgusted. A great and dear friend’s mom went to the funeral today. It was not closed casket. They cut her hair, suit on. How can they bury her as Geoff when she legally changed her name. So very sad. Jen you will be missed and people who know you know that you are at peace.”

―Stacy Dee Hudson

Sometimes it bears reminding that funerals are rituals performed for the sake of the living.

James Nichols reports:

In a depressing reminder of the times in which we live and how far we still have to go to reach equality for everyone in the LGBT community, a Twin Falls, Idaho, transgender woman was presented as male in an open-casket funeral service this week.

Jennifer Gable, 32, reportedly died suddenly of a brain aneurysm while working at Wells Fargo Bank on Oct. 9. At her funeral, Gable, who legally changed her name in 2007, was reportedly not referred to as Jennifer once.

Additionally, the late Gable’s family cut her hair short and presented her wearing a suit and her obituary reportedly skipped the decade of her life she spent transitioning to live authentically as Jennifer.

There is no question, even from afar, that the proposition of refusing one’s own child’s identity in order to present them after death as something and someone other than who they really were is cruel beyond measure. It is selfish and hateful and ultimately stupid.

But it is also, such as things are, what funerals are for.

Not hatred and stupid, selfish cruelty per se, but the dead are either with God and thus otherwise preoccupied, suffering eternal punishment and thus otherwise preoccupied, or simply dead in a fucking box in the ground, in which case how their families abuse them at the memorial service just flat doesn’t matter to them.

Funerals and memorials are for the living.

That Jennifer Gable’s family apparently chose to celebrate their own desperate hatred? That is what it is. Call it what you want. But it is what they chose to celebrate, and such rituals and ceremonies are not for the dead. They are for the living.

In which case the best advice is to simply remember your friends for who they were, so that at least someone in this world still loves them.

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Nichols, James. “Jennifer Gable, Transgender Woman, Presented As Man At Her Funeral”. The Huffington Post. 24 November 2014.