Black Agenda Report drinks the Tulsi Gabbard Kool-Aid

BAR is usually better than this, and often MUCH better than this.

It's run a puff piece on Tulsi Gabbard's lawsuit against Google. I've taken the lawsuit as semi-frivolous from the start, and had planned to write nothing, but knowing that a number of left-liberal and leftist political friends follow BAR, decided to knock something out after all.

And hence, I'll answer BAR's bullet points.

* Google has monopolistic control of online searches and related advertising.

Not true. On the search side, Bing and DuckDuckGo both immediately popped into my head. So did Ixquick, which aggregates from Google, Bing and other search engines. I don’t know if Bing, for Microsoft, sells any advertising versus its search results. But the results are there.

* At a critical moment Google undercut the Tulsi Gabbard campaign.

Well, maybe it was critical … but is she winning? And, we don't know it was critical or not. Several of the backbencher candidates have gotten small bounces, then faded again.

* Google has failed to provide a credible explanation. 

Well, maybe so, maybe not. Its last explanation is as credible as the Treasury putting caps on cash bank deposits and withdrawals. You or I may not agree with that, but it is a thing. And (I don't know if it's true or not) Daily Stormer has claimed it juiced donations to her. That would certainly, if it is true, lead Google to act. (OTOH, Citizens United claims [wrongly] that political money equals speech, and this may be the ultimate fallout.)

There's two additional funny-sads from this.
1. Stormer appears to be dumb enough to be drinking the Tulsi Kool-Aid rather than recognizing she has one foot in the neocon world.
2. Gabbard denounces racism even as the traditional Hindu caste system is quasi-racist and definitely bigoted and discriminatory.

* Google has a corporate profit motive to oppose Tulsi Gabbard.

Tulsi is far and away from being the only Democratic candidate to question tech companies. Now we’re starting to get more into Kool-Aid land.

* Google's Actions have caused significant harm to the Gabbard campaign and violate the U.S. and California constitutions and California business law. 

I doubt it, on either of the constitutions, and certainly not the federal one. Some where in the TOU on the advertising side, Google’s lawyers have all the I’s dotted and T’s crossed. Might make for a nice Tulsi fundraiser to push the suit, but in reality?

* Google Secretly Manipulates Public Opinion

So does Facebook, and even more so. Has Tulsi stopped posting to Facebook? Stopped buying Facebook ads?

* Google is Censoring Alternative Media 

This is true, with the caveat that actual censorship is something only governments do.

The real issue is that, per the idea that Google has a corporate motive to oppose Tulsi AND ONLY Tulsi (implied), BAR seems to be drinking the Kool-Aid that Gabbard, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, supporter of Israel's Zionist  party line, defender of drone warfare and more, is a uniquely anti-establishment candidate.

==

Update, Sept. 1: Google shows me that, before he died, Bruce Dixon said Tulsi would be a Democratic sheepdogger. Unfortunately, this Danny Haiphong guy at BAR appears to be a serial and serious drinker of the Tulsi Kool-Aid. And he's not even black.

Update, Sept. 2: BAR doubles down on the Tulsi Kool-Aid, calling her the one Democratic anti-war candidate. Reality? She's an Islamophobic who is NOT pro-peace and NOT anti-war. Remember, as I reported six months ago, she is PRO drone war.