Gabbard met the "raffish" Abraham Williams, a ripper from Aukland, when he was shooting campaign film back in 2012.

The rise of Hawaii’s Tulsi Gabbard, post-election, has been stunning, even for hardened and grumpy political watchers. The former Democratic congresswoman had flipped independent some years back before flipping Trump directly before balloting was set to commence, in these United States, and heading out on the campaign trail. Along the way, those secretly right of center, like Kelly Slater, joined up and drank organic smoothies with her all dreaming happy thoughts in which America was made great again.

Who could have guessed, though, that within days after Trump’s victory, he would tab Gabbard to sit above the country’s spy agencies as Director of National Intelligence?

Whoa!

The selection has re-focused the spotlight on the 43-year-old. As you know, she grew up a surfer on Oahu but also as part of the anti-gay marriage Hare Krishna spin-off Science Identity Foundation, or SIF. Her marriage to a New Zealander surfer hunk also getting new life.

Gabbard met her “raffish” man Abraham Williams, a part-Maori, part-Samoan filmmaker and ripper from Aukland, when he was shooting campaign film back in 2012. The pair, it is reported, fell in love over their surfing passion and Williams proposed out in the lineup, duct-taping the diamond bauble onto a flotation device and dragging it behind. They were married in a Hindu wedding ceremony on Oahu in 2015.

The couple is said to be “low-key” and still enjoys Science Identity even though its founder, Chris Butler, is described by some as a “cult leader.”

He also surfs.

But all back to Kelly Slater, what role, if any, do you think he will have play in the United States’ new intelligence community?

Commandant of ____________?

We’d all be remiss in forgetting that Slater is smarter than most doctors. I’d imagine the holds true even more amongst the cloak and dagger set.

So?

What’s his title?

But wait! Could free market capitalism save the day?

A nightmare scenario is developing in California’s other surf city. A terror so grave it is almost impossible to imagine. Santa Cruz, and its iconic waves, could be entirely undone by climate change leaving Pete Mel, Ken Collins and Jason Collins all bereft.

Santa Cruz has a surf history as rich as any hamlet on earth, of course. Three Hawaiian princes are said to have brought their favorite pastime to those pristine shores in the late 1800s and it has flourished ever since. Steamer Lane, Pleasure Point, The Hook etc. all now very famous.

But, again, climate change and its deniers might just snuff them out.

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the Save the Waves Coalition and Black Surf Santa Cruz embarking upon the most in-depth economic value of surfing in Santa Cruz in an effort to inspire care and conservation!

Save the Waves Senior Manager Trent Hodges told Lookout Santa Cruz, “We’ve never done a holistic picture of what surfing brings in terms of economic impact, from the surfers visiting here to coastal property values and travel costs. All that information is really important when we think about how to prioritize protecting our surf breaks.”

The study will be conducted alongside California State University Channel Islands and funded by a $199,999 grant. Professional surfer Shaun Burns, the World Surfing Reserve coordinator for Save the Waves, shared that he hopes the various surveys will pinpoint exactly how much money surfing pumps into the local economy. “Everyone always starts out with millions of dollars,” he said. “But the funny thing is, no one has that exact number.”

Surfider Foundation CEO Chad Nelsen, who coined the idea of “Surfonomics” wherein the monetary value of waves causes businesses etc. to become more ecological based upon greed, declared, “There’s no lift-ticket price for swimming and surfing in the ocean. But there’s a value to the waves at Steamer Lane even though it’s free to access them.”

Economist Jason “Ratboy” Scorse was the first to ever examine how surf impact housing prices, in 2013, and discovered that people were willing to pay $100,000 more dollars to live near good waves. This new study will be much fuller, though, and the team hopes to be finished by March 2025.

If you had to guess, what Shawn Dollar amount would you put on surfing’s value to Santa Cruz?

Please don’t start out with a million.