The subject of today will be Tulsi Gabbard, of Hawaii.  But first, a couple of other Trump developments. That MAGA vs Elon Musk civil war on immigration .  Was never a real issue anyway, for the new Trump administration will target  undocumented  immigrants.  Elon Musk and his techie friends only want to continue to have access to  documented immigrants , those science and engineering products from other countries, something Trump supports.  The heel in most of this is that odious Laura Loomer. You win some, you lose some.  Trump learned today that the  federal appeals court rejected his 2023 appeal regarding the sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll .  In a  77-page ruling , the 3-judge panel said Carroll should get the $5 million previously granted.  And oh, by the way, there is that  other New York jury judgement this year  ordering Trump to pay Carroll $83 million for continuing to insult her.  So does ...

We left the Independent State of Samoa, once known as Western Samoa until 1997, yesterday, crossed the international dateline at 10PM last night, and are now in American Samoa.  At one time they were like Hawaii.  Then came the Germans, British and USA.  Around the same time that the U.S. annexed Hawaii in 1898, wars broke out in the greater Samoa islands, and in 1900 those three countries split up the islands.  The result was the U.S. gaining the eastern islands and Germany the western ones, with the UK getting the rights to Tonga and some other sites from Germany. In World War I New Zealand seized control of Upolu from Germany, at the request of Great Britain.  Came the Spanish flu in 1918, killing 20% of the total population, including 30% of all adult men. What remained were 38,000 Samoans and 1500 Europeans. Samoa has two main islands, Upolu and Savaii.  They make up 99% of the 201,000 population,  I made a short visit to the capital city of Apia ...