Tag: #HouseofRepresentatives

#BarrLied- Mueller Writes Letter Of Protest to AG Barr and Justice Department.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr is seated prior to testifying on the Justice Department’s budget proposal before a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., April 9, 2019.

The special counsel assigned to the investigation of Russia’s interference into our 2016 presidential election, Robert S. Mueller III, has written a letter of protest to the United States Department of Justice, due to the inappropriate handling of the summary of his report as handed to the American people by Attorney General William Barr.

He did it because Barr’s initial letter to Congress about the Russia investigation did not “fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” a Justice Department official said Tuesday. The objection was filed in a letter to Barr on March 27 and is indicative of dissonance between Barr’s prepared whitewashing and the truth. Mueller’s report was 448 pages long, and included handling of questions about potential obstruction of justice by Trump. Barr’s efforts seem like the latest, and most egregious, chapter. But it wasn’t unexpected. Barr’s son-in-law is working for Trump’s legal team directly! How’s that for a conflict of interest?

Barr is testifying tomorrow before the Senate Judiciary Committee and will be handled roughly by Democrats even though the agency is Republican-held. The hearing will revolve around his handling of Mueller’s report, as well as how exactly he reached the ridiculous conclusion that President Trump did not obstruct justice, refuted on every page of the document.

His April 18 news conference trying to paint Trump as a hero is sure to come up also.

The importance of this cannot be overstated. Mueller is not the kind of guy to stick his foot in the tornado that is this entire event without good reason. If he felt Barr had mischaracterized his findings severely enough to warrant such a letter, it is only common sense that we take this thing as seriously as he did.

Barr has blown any claim to credibility he ever had. He must immediately be pressured out of office, televised hearings must be held a la Hillary Clinton’s suggestion, and Mueller must be allowed to testify before the House of Representatives. Only then will the American people ever have the truth on this whole matter, and make no mistake. After all we have lived through, we have earned that. Trump is a crook, and we have always known it. We want the facts complete so that we can raise awareness about them. The path to regaining this country’s sanity lies only through this door.

Well said, Mr. Van Hollen.

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A Strategy Going Forward-Hillary Clinton and the #MuellerReport.

The long-awaited #MuellerReport has been released!

Last week short a day, the long-awaited #MuellerReport came out. Thanks to our crook of an Attorney General, William Barr, it was heavily redacted, almost to the point of being a blatant coverup; actually, we can scratch almost. The Republicans have gone for a very, very huge and gigantic coverup, in fact, if we’d like to borrow language from the man who made all this necessary to begin with-Donald Trump, the illegitimate and babyish forty-fifth president.

For one thing, Trump’s lawyers got to see the special counsel Office’s report before Congress did.

“Earlier this week, the president’s personal counsel requested and was given the opportunity to read a final version of the redacted report before it was publicly released,” Barr said.

Unfortunately, by now, this feels like standard operating procedure. There are dangers in becoming desensitized to the corruption emanating from our government’s current operators.

A note from the editor- Millennial Democrats has been all but on hiatus, as I’ve processed this report, which is all but cataclysmic for Trump. Of course, he is claiming it exonerates him; that’s what he does. But five obsessive devourings of the document later, I can now say with a thorough degree of confidence that that report is damning for Donald. Utterly damning. It reads like a recipe for impeachment. The only real question is, what comes next?

The first paragraph of the Report is a few words about rules and regulations. It really begins with the first sentence of the second paragraph, in which Mueller is seen wasting little time.

“The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.”

This we know. Any cyber-activist who was online even in 2015 could tell you there was something going on. By 2016 it was obvious and ugly. People rolled their eyes at us because they didn’t want to believe it.

Now those people are staring down the barrel of 448 pages of evidence, compiled by the best legal minds in all of America, where every form of excellence finds its home.

It later concludes that the Trump Campaign team “expected to benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts”. The Report is arranged into two volumes, the first outlining the actual Russian interference into the 2016 United States Presidential election and the Trump Campaign’s involvement with it, and the second addressing the case for obstruction of justice.

In the end, Mueller’s team seems to have concluded that as Trump is the president, it wasn’t their legal right to charge him as that would be going against Justice Department regulations. This was never going to end with the Oval Office raided and the country’s leader dragged out in handcuffs. No matter how much Trump as a person is repugnant, that would have been devastating for America.

Mueller’s strategy is different.

A very serious set of crimes has been committed here, and no mistake. Mueller is very clear on that point. “First, the Office determined that Russia’s two principal interference operations in the 2016 U.S. presidential election-the social media campaign and the hacking-and-dumping operations violated U.S. criminal law.”

Partisan considerations ought not to have a say in this at all. Russia is our worst enemy, they hate us more than anyone. Only the Republicans don’t want to act like they know it, because they want to pose it as necessary to resist the rising tide of socialism in order to beat us. They have nothing else to hold on to, which has made them desperate. Desperate people do reckless, stupid things. They will not act with honor as the Republican-led Congress of the Nixon era did.

I’m proud to say that the best solution yet has been proposed by our candidate of choice in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton.

“Our election was corrupted, our democracy assaulted, our sovereignty and security violated. This is the definitive conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report. It documents a serious crime against the American people,” Clinton explained in opening her letter. “The debate about how to respond to Russia’s “sweeping and systematic” attack — and how to hold President Trump accountable for obstructing the investigation and possibly breaking the law — has been reduced to a false choice: immediate impeachment or nothing. History suggests there’s a better way to think about the choices ahead.”

This is an excellent point and even more proof of what we’ve been saying all along- that Hillary’s loss in 2016 was really America’s.

As the Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said a while back, Trump isn’t worth it.

Pelosi’s reasoning is sound, and she is our Speaker of the House. We will follow the national leadership on it because we realize we’ve got to pull together in this time of total crisis. The point is getting rid of him a year early isn’t enough incentive to rip the country apart again as Nixon’s corruption did back during Watergate, and as the Republican-led right wing did when they attacked Bill Clinton for very little. But Speaker Pelosi’s words back then were spoken before the release of the special counsel’s conclusory findings. Things may well be different now, and although it is a big step, it has to be considered seriously.

That report is not only a disaster for Trump. It’s a disaster for America.

The Russians got away with it, and that is sickening. Trump continues to carry out their agenda by continuously slandering the special counsel and us Democrats. He has done nothing to protect us from the Russians, which of course is leaving us open to every other major power in the world as well.

China has been massing on the South China Sea; it is said they may be planning a pre-emptive strike on our bases out there. It was actually the experience of running this website that taught us just how much an enemy we have in the Chinese.

For every attempt to hack in here the Russians have made, the Chinese have made at least ten.

My (possibly) Chinese friend, saying hello to me again. Hi, buddy. Change your ways!
My (possibly) Chinese friend, saying hello to me again. Hi, buddy. Change your ways!
This is the IP address of a hacker, purportedly from Beijing, who is always doing his best to get in here. Have at it, pal.
This is the IP address of a hacker, purportedly from Beijing, who is always doing his best to get in here. Have at it, pal.

The Chinese have 1.43 billion people living in their country, and every one of them has got the time to try to hack Millennial Democrats, it seems some days. You would not believe the amount of emails I’ve got saved up from my Sucuri plugin, awesome creation that it is. WordPress is great, as are most of the companies they partner with.

The reverse IP trace feature used by the program lets me know where they are from, which is how I ended up doing the research needed to learn Trump has a huge following in China, whose people are contemptuous of anti-Trump resistance. They refer to us in racist fashion as the “white left“, even though the base of the Democratic Party is largely multicultural and far from exclusively white.

What a pain in the neck. The Chinese, no less. This isn’t even their fight, but they’re flooding into the country’s cybernetics all the same, in the absence of a funded cyber-defense force. If you look at it from their point of view, why wouldn’t they? America is on top, and the Chinese can hardly be blamed for wanting to take our place. They sure have more a chance at that then Russia does. Soon other powers will rush to join in too, and it’ll be nothing but chaos on every wired circuit in America. I’ll have pictures like those above from every single corner of the globe.

Every bit of this the fault of Donald Trump, who is still butthurt about his election as totally illegitimate. His juvenile contrarianism has him utterly resistant to facts; he is, after all, a Fox News devotee. He is therefore not in a rush to fix even a single one of his mistakes. So while we’re not advocating a rush to impeachment proceedings, we certainly don’t feel like ruling them out.

I personally would have liked to see a lot more about Bernie Sanders in this report. It was never really about Trump himself. It was about the Russian interference into our election that concerned me most, not just taking down Trump. The Sanders campaign was no less culpable, no less infested, and no less managed by a former employee of Vladimir Putin’s, Tad Devine, who worked for him by proxy under Paul Manafort in Ukraine. He was the first witness called at Paul Manafort’s trial. He should have had his own.

At the end of the day, before we start getting into details, it’s good to keep in mind our long term goal, which is ensuring the welfare of America. This was done for the American people. It was about ensuring the sanctity of our political system.  There was more going on here than taking down Trump, although of course, that would have been nice. The guy really is an incompetent crook, which was my original problem with him, but this has gone so far beyond that now that it’s almost beside the point.

In accordance with Hillary’s plan, we’re going to be pushing for the following.

First, we want to see our Congress hold public, televised hearings on the matter, hearings designed to raise public awareness about what happened in 2016 and to fill in the gaps of the Mueller report. During Watergate, just like now, there was an investigation into the matter that found evidence of corruption and cover-ups. The purpose of the hearings is given by the former First Lady below.

“The televised hearings added to the factual record and, crucially, helped the public understand the facts in a way that no dense legal report could. Similar hearings with Mueller, former White House counsel Donald McGahn and other key witnesses could do the same today.” -Hillary Clinton.

Second, we want to substantially increase pressure on Donald Trump and the other Republicans to get busy protecting this country from anything like this being able to happen again. Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump’s recently departed secretary of Homeland Security, tried to prioritize it and was told to not even mention it around Trump. Later she resigned in disgrace before she was fired. This cannot be allowed. We have to be able to expect better from our leaders.

Third, we want to start moving forward together!  In terms of the economy, health care, climate change, and every other issue of importance, we Democrats have always had the answers in terms of how to run the country. They’re all right there in the 2016 Democratic Party Presidential Platform. But we have got to get out there and make our case.

“For today’s Democrats, it’s not only possible to move forward on multiple fronts at the same time, it’s essential. The House has already passed sweeping reforms that would strengthen voting rights and crack down on corruption, and now is the time for Democrats to keep their foot on the gas and put pressure on the do-nothing Senate. It’s critical to remind the American people that Democrats are in the solutions business and can walk and chew gum at the same time.” -Hillary Clinton.

We have to get this right, as HRC said. The stakes are too high. Mueller’s report has left lingering questions behind in its wake, and the importance of answering them has not diminished. We have got to find a way to solve these problems, move past this whole disaster, get our country back, and take the proper steps to make sure that nothing like this can ever happen again. Going forward, we can help to do it all by raising awareness. In the upcoming series of articles, we’ll be analyzing thoroughly the Report’s contents. A firm understanding of it will help us find the right way to go on this. In the end, perhaps it will be best to keep it simple.

Just trust in Hillary.

NEVER BERNIE- Vet Him Til We Get Him!

Never Bernie.

Sometimes you run up against a situation that is very complicated, in this world of ours. There are many grey areas, many ambiguities, many matters that require clarification. By the time you get done explaining them all, you’ve practically written a book.

But there are also times when you run into something that is simple enough to explain with a single word, or perhaps two- like these words.

NEVER BERNIE.

That could be the end of the article. It genuinely could. I strongly considered publishing then and there, so that no one misses our meaning, but at least a few words of explanation might be helpful. So let’s try this one again.

NEVER BERNIE. Not ever. No matter what, it’s too obvious a setup to plug into. Did you see how Trump’s eyes twinkled the other day? I like Bernie, he said, smiling as big and genuinely as I’ve ever seen. He looked like a man who sees a foregone conclusion looming above him. He looked like Richard Nixon, facing George McGovern.

Yesterday the Bern raised six million dollars fundraising, screamed the enthusiastic Bernie Bots, like young lambs that haven’t seen the knife yet. Isn’t that great?
Great for who?
Of course, he did, was my reply. The Kochs invested nearly nine hundred million dollars into building a political machine so big it consumed the Republican Party. This is how it’s reaping dividends. This is why they needed all their dark money. Now they can fund the opposition themselves without anyone seeing it. “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves,” said the hero of all socialists, Vladimir Lenin of Russia.
Best of all, they can come on here and demoralize us by throwing around those numbers. 

Later Wednesday, Trump made his own fund-raising pitch. He sent around a text message to all of his supporters, telling them about the $6 million that “Socialist Bernie” had raised.

“Now I’m calling on you to CRUSH that number,” the message said. For the average political strategist, this may all be rather confusing, but to a pro wrestling fan like Donald Trump, it’s simple as can be. A simple game of Heel vs. Hero.

In professional wrestling, a heel is a wrestler who portrays a villain or a “bad guy” and acts as an antagonist to the heroes- the protagonists, or “good guy” characters. They get in each other’s faces, scream and point and gesticulate wildly, and make a big production out of being each other’s enemies. The adoring audience loves the show, even as their hearts tell them the truth.

It’s all fake.

Hero, heel, and audience. On television, those people look like they’re having fun. It is our opinion that Trump and Bernie supporters are loving this. It’s all about the attention they’re getting. This is all a big game, to them.

You know who it’s not a game to?

Vladimir Putin.

Him, and real Democrats.

While this whole zoo spins a tale that grows more ridiculous by the very hour, the professionals in the locker room of the center are stubbornly holding on to the idea of eventually restoring sanity to our country and stopping the wrestling match short of a full-on civil war, which like a World Championship, you can’t lose by way of disqualification.

You’ve got to get pinned.

My personal trouble with Bernie, from the very start, has been the sheer unrealisticness surrounding him. His supporters were a shrieking mob; they rioted in the streets when they lost. No way was the zombie apocalypse the Bernie Or Bust crew paid out in Philadelphia that night in July 2016 what the majority of America looks like. His socialist policies were a disaster; Medicare for All alone, as he conceived it, would have had the country $32 trillion dollars. Margaret Thatcher asked this question long ago about socialism- How do you pay for it?

He himself wore that blue clown suit around, like a shambling disaster, and was nearly eighty years old besides. Jesus God.

These were the things I noticed when it all first began. I had no feelings about the guy other than that in the beginning, he was just some random name, like Martin O’ Malley, the other also-ran from that year’s terrible primary. I had serious concerns about his ability to win in a general election, and I didn’t think he had a prayer against Hillary Clinton. But I had no reason to form a particular about him one way or the other until I saw how ugly his supporters were going to get in attacking our candidate, and how little he would do to put that in check.

What I have found out since then has been enough to disgust me one hundred percent. On every level. His record on women, his total fear of even mentioning racial issues, the absolute infestation of Russians in his campaign- his campaign manager, Tad Devine, was the first witness called at Paul Manafort’s trial- and the Macedonians in his digital activist groups, his refusal to vote to sanction Russia on numerous occasions, and so many others. So many others.

Conservatives were overjoyed when Bernie entered the race. He gave them just what they’ve been wanting all this time- a just cause to say Democrats are socialists and cast all this as our brand. It was just like how overjoyed they were at this Green New Deal, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to allow a vote on!

He told Jeff Flake last year that he wouldn’t allow a vote on legislation being passed to protect Robert Mueller’s investigation last year on the grounds that it was a waste of time, even though it probably would have actually passed, because it wouldn’t pass the House. He knew for a fact there’s not going to be a Green New Deal getting out of a Republican Senate- and yet, the same guy who was so concerned about minutes on the clock last year allows a vote on it!

Why? Because he wants to see who might actually be dumb enough to sign on.

Whoever does has no political future, especially if Bernie does get his chance to pull a Walter Mondale. He might win Vermont. His movement resembles a bowel. People will never forget the beating he takes.

We at Millennial Democrats would like to say to all of you: Fear not, you guys. The worst that can happen to us politically short of Dachau USA already has. It happened when HRC was robbed. The worst thing now would only be for the neoprogs to get their chance to play McGovern. They’ll get whipped, Russiagate will either spare us part of Donald’s second term or it won’t, and we will go on doing the most good we can for the most people we can until the day when better times finally come.

Besides which, that will never happen anyway. Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, even Elizabeth Warren. Someone will beat him in the primary, even though we don’t know who yet. Our chance will come along, the right leader will arise, and we will have a candidate able to beat Donald Trump. The Blue Wave 2018 was only the prelude for 2020, especially in the Congress.

The most important thing in a good philosophy is the strength it gives you to hold fast to your principles regardless of the temporal situation. It’s like how clouds can’t cover stars for long. I believe we will find a way. We just have to remain determined and United. When it all goes to the dogs for them, they’ll be able to come to us, and we’ll take them back in without a single word of recrimination, save these two alone.

The process by which we look through the past records of our candidates is called vetting, and when it comes to Bernie Sanders the mainstream media has not been doing it. Please give us a hand! Write in to the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and anyone else you can think of, and tell them you want to see Bernie Sanders vetted. They will know what you mean. Just earlier today it came out that he has picked Nina Turner to run his campaign. She went with Stein after him and urged her supporters to do either that or vote for Trump outright. Picking Turner is as clear a sign as you could ever want or ask for that he’s going to run the same old ugly race as he always has. NEVER BERNIE. No matter what.

One Big Happy Family! Why AOC and Bernie Are Donald Trump’s Best Friends.

One Big Happy Family!
Hello, world, from Millennial Democrats! We hope it finds you well.
Earlier today, a debate was held between a few of our members, which led to a consensus decision. Some asked if I would clarify the organization’s reasons for refusing to support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as there are certainly many people on the left who, to put it mildly, do not agree with that decision.
First off, it’s important to point out how critical it is that Democrats be able to agree to disagree. We are not socialists, this is not groupthink. Dissent is welcome, even encouraged. Our position is that AOC is part of a faction, a movement, and a base of people who have been a disaster for the Democratic Party, and we fully invite opposition dialogue on the subject. Come armed with facts and not slanders, and we will debate you any time at any place.
Just make sure you know how to be a good loser.
AOC is the latest chapter in an ongoing saga, where the right has done all it can to empower and incite the socialists because they know it will make things harder for us. They want Ocasio-Cortez to be the face of our Party more than anything. She and Bernie are helping them to make of us a Goldstein, in the 1984 scenario. In order to keep the White House next year, Trump has to present an enemy to the public even worse than him, and the spectre of socialism as exhibited by the Justice Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America gives him exactly that.
Ocasio-Cortez plays into this at every turn.
Take the Green New Deal, for example. She proudly tweeted that she and her friends threw it together over the course of a weekend, as though that were a good thing. It’s an unrealistic dreamer’s errand and a wish list, and the price tag on it has all the conservatives licking their chops.
There are those who accuse us of hostility to AOC based on her taking out of Joe Crowley, who undoubtedly was one of our best guys, and who genuinely will be missed. This is not the case, however; we are Democrats, and we support democracy. We bid our condolences and farewells to Joe and moved on. At this time, Millennial Democrats wrote Ocasio-Cortez an article of welcome and sincere congratulation, asking her to reconsider her stance on some things and drop the socialist aspect of her philosophy.
As for the environmental changes proposed as part of the Green New Deal, we fully support those aspects of the bill. Nancy Pelosi made that clear when amending the bill. Her version is the one that mainstream Democrats like Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar have gone on to indicate some support for, not AOC’s.
Former Vice-President Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change science. Our side has been fighting for this since long before AOC, or any other Millennial Democrat was even born. Our opposition to the bill has less than nothing to do with that, although most of us rightly are grateful to and venerate our elders in the baby boomer generation.
We’re not for doing things sloppy. There are very serious legislative flaws in that plan. It was not well crafted, and the crafters were completely ill-prepared. They got in trouble right away because of that FAQ that went around last week, talking about the people “unwilling to work”, et cetera.
At any rate, the problems are much more foundationally serious than an unvetted fact sheet. Expert Mike Pesca weighed in, pointing out very few environmental experts consider the targets laid out in the plan to be attainable in any way. Climate change experts have called for zeroing out emissions in the power sector by 2050, while the Green New Deal proposes doing so by 2030.
On what basis does it maintain the time frame can be accelerated by two-thirds? It does not say.
What Ocasio-Cortez and her friends have actually done is to confuse the issue further, make the true adherents of climate change look bad, and make it harder for the professionals responsible to get the actual progress made, which is the problem with her entire organization, modeled after Bernie Sanders from the start. AOC sadly didn’t just used to work for JD and DSA, she is very much a part of them now, and is in fact their greatest asset.
Because of that fact, she is also the greatest Republican asset, which is one more eerie way in which the interests of the far left and alt-right coincide. Their attacks on her are likely part of their usual cunning political strategy; they know booing her is an easy way to make the left embrace her, which in chess terminology is like eating a poisoned pawn, because of what an insanely atrocious idea signing on behind the original Green New Deal would be.
Why else would Mitch McConnell allow a vote on something he knows will never pass, like the Green New Deal, except to be able to tar and feather anyone who goes for it as a socialist wingnut who gets up at three in the afternoon?

In Ocasio-Cortez, in the few very loud members of our generation that have been hoodwinked into supporting this truly evil and invasive form of government, the Republicans now have a walking personification of all they have been fighting with their money to create: a just accusation that Democrats are socialists, and that to support us is to personally become the vector of socialism.  It’s George McGovern all over again.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan situation provides a vivid example of how big disaster socialism can be. At the end of the SOTU speech, Trump did what he’s going to be doing a lot- pointing to Bernie Sanders in silence, looking horrified, waiting for the people to become so disgusted they can’t take it and vote against their interests. Policy be damned, they will say. Look at that blue clown suit. I would rather burn than have that guy as my president.

The claim that we Democrats are going to turn America into a Venezuelan socialist hellscape looks like something new, but as every reader of this blog will be aware, they’ve been laying the groundwork for it for the last several years. Contrary to Trump’s new narrative, the Democratic Party has never embraced Bernie Sanders. We do share some policies, but he goes too far with them and makes them look ridiculous. Now he’s got AOC there with him, screaming for seventy percent income tax rates on the rich and protesting Nancy Pelosi over climate change.

Wonderful.

We had hoped to like AOC. We wrote good things about her in the beginning, even though she entered all our lives by doing something no Republican could have done in getting rid of Joe Crowley, a twenty-year veteran whose help was sorely needed. We sucked it up and congratulated her, and wished her the best in working with us to create a better future for America.
Since then, however, things have declined sorely and rapidly.
Why did she go protest Nancy Pelosi about climate change, when a bill was already on the table? Why not go protest the Republicans? Who knows, but it’s certainly convenient for them that she didn’t.
Then during the #TrumpShutdown, she also lied about her reasons for going so far as to vote with the Republicans for keeping our government closed, citing “funding for ICE” as the reason why she’d made a “tough, nuanced call” on the issue, even though ICE funding is covered by the Department of Homeland Security, and DHS funding wasn’t even discussed in the bill.
Her reasons for stabbing her own in the back remain totally obscure- and unfortunate.
The future strategy on the part of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Justice Democrats will be to use the popularity of AOC as a springboard of sorts, a mobile platform from which to position themselves to bump off even more good Democrats and spread their insurgency- and the unrealistic platform it brings along with it, so toxic in the extreme to the long term survival of the party.
In short, the whole radical left wing of the party is acting kind of like a handicap does on a racehorce right now by constantly ripping it up, dragging it down, and dampening its enthusiasm, to the ultimate benefit of Donald Trump. Millennial Democrats has been designed and built toward the purpose of countering that strategy and bringing love and life back to the center of our Party. To closely paraphrase what famed Irish poet William Butler Yeats once wrote in his riveting poem The Second Coming, things fall apart, if the center cannot hold.
In closing on the AOC topic, one of our contributors may have said it best of all earlier this evening- par for the course on that person’s batting record.
Believe me, Democrats, we’ve got the best people on the job!
“For me, it is the fact she has voted with the Republican Party against the Democratic Party, and I like Democratic legislators that vote with us and not against us.”
Why is this asking so much out of someone whom we supposedly share an agenda with?
Perhaps it makes the most sense from the standpoint of what Vladimir Lenin once said- “The best way to control the opposition, is to lead it ourselves.” Everything Ocasio-Cortez does makes perfect sense from the standpoint that she’s doing what revolutionary socialism calls for- cooperating with any group around, no matter how terrible their ideology, in order to topple a regime that both sides have found restrictive.
At any rate, this is our position, and I have given it my best. I hope I have argued for it well. Either way, it is not necessary that we all agree on everything; in a big-tent organization such as the Democratic Party, it’s pretty unlikely anyway. All we do ask is that when that is the case, we express our dissenter’s opinion with respect instead of vitriol and that we agree to disagree for the good of the country and the cause. If that’s good enough for you neo-progressives, it’s good enough for us Millennial Democrats. Have a good night, and thank you for taking the time to hear us out!
The falcon can still hear the falconer, at least for tonight.

#TrumpShutdown Ends, Roger Stone Arrested- One Great Day For America.

One Great Day for America.

Hello, world, from Millennial Democrats! We’d like to bear you all our most heartfelt good tidings on this great American day. It is our extreme pleasure to announce that Trump has caved, and signed a Democratic bill to reopen the government. The shutdown is over. And Roger Stone has been arrested.

Frankly, what more can you really ask out of a single day? Speaking on my own behalf, I can say for sure. I couldn’t be any happier if I had won the lottery. I have just been sick over where this country is headed. Eight hundred thousand federal workers, going for a month without pay. It’s been one indignity after another, since the day this began and long before.

Trump’s presidency is now two years and five days old, and every day of it has been an insult to common sense and decency. Remember the first travel ban? He hadn’t been in office for two weeks, and it was worldwide pandemonium in airports. Seven continents worth of airports, clogged and logjammed with people who were suddenly- and artificially- stranded. That was the first time Trump caused a disaster for America- disaster is his favorite word- but it sure wasn’t the last. He has used this word constantly all throughout his political career. But ever since the Democrats retook the House, he has been using actual disasters as a bargaining chip and a way to deflect attention. He is said to have been convinced Pelosi would cave, and he lamented deeply.

“Why are they [sic: us Democrats] always so loyal?”

You will never understand, Donald. Never.

Who knows what Trump was thinking. It’s unreal that he could have self-deluded to this extent. If he thought he was going to come in here and bluster and bully Nancy Pelosi into giving him a wall, that’s a joke. Our Speaker could probably beat that old clown in a fistfight, let alone the political arena. Remember the G7 Summit in 2017, when he had to ride a golf cart behind all the other world leaders, who were all in shape and walking? That was great for our world image, let me tell you. Old, winded, out-of-shape America. Just look at them. So much for the Art of the Deal.

Disasters they are, but the disasters are of his own creation. This is a gigantic humiliation for Trump. He capitulated completely, but not before nearly tanking the economy, causing thousands of federal workers to file for unemployment relief, and causing significant cracks in that base of his that used to forgive him anything. His poll numbers went into nuclear meltdown. He got not one dollar for a wall. He shut the government down for absolutely nothing, and he is now the laughingstock of every single person in the world. He’s on Twitter at this very moment, whining about how he wishes people would “listen to his words” about why this is not the most gigantically cowardly and buffoonish concession in the history of all mankind. You’ve got to be kidding. This is the penultimate cave. It’s the Mammoth of caves. It’s really more like a cavern.

Thirty-five days, the government stayed shut down over this. What a total and gigantic waste. Citizens were about to lose their food stamps, and that would have really killed people, especially the sick and the very old. Trump came very close to committing his administration’s second atrocity; we’ve known for a while that his administration’s ICE has literally lost nearly fifteen hundred little kids, so we can’t call it the first. This one would have been all his fault, though. No one else to blame; Trump starved old people to death to get Russiagate out of the news. Quite a legacy; perhaps that’s why he caved. If so, it would be the one worthy thing he has done during this whole affair, which of course is why the conservatives are reviling him, specifically as a “Wimp”.

Ann Coulter congratulated the departed George Herbert Walker Bush on no longer being the biggest wimp ever to hold the office. Undoubtedly, that is so. The whole thing was the ravings of an idiot in the first place, a foolish campaign promise, something for the slobs at his rallies to scream for alongside “Lock ‘er up!” Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) blames the far-right Freedom Caucus. “I hope he ignores them for the next three weeks,” King said. “It’s the charge of the Light Brigade. It’s the Valley of Death.”

These days it’s not Hillary Clinton who is facing prison time and getting locked up. It’s all of Trump’s friends, and that brings us to the second piece of the day’s big news. This morning, federal prosecutors kicked in the door of Roger Stone, self-described political dirty trickster, and hauled him off to jail. It cost him $250,000 to bail himself out, which he probably got from some Russian still hoping to hit an easy lick. We’d like to say that’s over with for Russia. Unfortunately, Bernie Sanders had to try and spoil the day by running for president again, so there will probably be plenty of fresh acrimonies for them to exploit, especially during the primaries. We’ll get to that soon. For tonight, we would like to say God bless America and express to him our deepest gratitude. Because very soon we will be saying goodbye to Donald Trump.

Roger Stone may have sworn his loyalty, but that won’t do Donald any good, because Roger is just a poser anyway. No serious person would tattoo Richard Nixon’s face on their back. He missed the boat on Watergate and has spent the rest of his life yearning for the halcyon days when domestic fascism was strong enough to create this kind of scandal without the help of Russian rubles. Sleep well, Roger Stone. You sold out your country to the Russians, the worst enemies of America. And while the others did it for greed, or because of misplaced convictions based on sexism, you did it strictly out of malice, because that is what you do. Enjoy going down in the history books next to Benedict Arnold and Vidkun Quisling.

How sweet it is. Remember that one documentary for Netflix he did, Get Me Roger Stone? “I revel in your hate!” he defiantly shot at Democrats. Hate isn’t the word, exactly; more like loathing and disgust. We might have thrown up our hands then, but now we’re smoothing back our hair with them. Go ahead and revel, then, Rog. Have a blast, right there in your prison cell, eating Ramen noodles with Paul Manafort. His We’ll all be reveling together, in that case. It’s been a great day for America. Today, we stayed the land of the free, and the home of the brave. We have not, as Mark Twain once said, exchanged our honor for a phrase. If a phrase is needed, then perhaps this Republican president of yesterday’s will suffice.

“Mr. President, tear down that wall.” -Ronald Reagan

Trump Lies On Border as #TrumpShutdown Weakens America For Third Week.

#TrumpShutdown begins its third week, and America is hurting.

On the cusp of the twentieth day of what has now become immortalized as the #TrumpShutdown, Trump himself headed to the border to disgracefully lie to America and did so. Other than that, there is not a whole lot going on. How could there be? Everything is closed down, and as one walks around as an observer, there is a very real sense of being in the eye of the tornado.

Even West Virginian senator Lindsey Graham, a guy who has become progressively worthless as the Trump circus atmosphere corrupts him, came up with a plan to try and end the shutdown. Trump shot holes in it. He told Senate Republicans that he believes he is winning the fight”, leaving Graham shaking his head in despair, saying he has “Never been more depressed“.

On that point, at least, we are agreed.

On Friday millions of people will not get paychecks; things like food stamp benefits are only guaranteed through February. One man was on CNN the other night sobbing because he was so afraid he’s going to lose his house. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) asked the illegitimate president frankly why he doesn’t stop hurting people. His answer was right out of the spoiled child brat Trump playbook.

“Because then you won’t give me what I want.”

There’s no need really to point out how disgusted a sane human is bound to be at the sound of that, it speaks for itself loud and clear. Trump is calling it a humanitarian crisis, which it is. But the only one causing it is he himself, and he will not stop. That is something in between blackmail and terrorism.

Moving on the subject of terrorism, the Pentagon- who, earlier in the week, was actually reduced to having to go to Fox News and beg for their help in getting the moron in the Oval Office to listen to them regarding Afghanistan- has warned that it is concerned about the risk of a terrorist attack striking home in these conditions.

However, our guess is that they’re not going to feel like they need to do much at all. The worst thing they could do to hurt America right now is to simply leave us alone.

Another 9/11 would unify us. The way things are going we may collapse under our own weight, which is not completely a jab at Trump’s obesity. The most effective punch is the one you don’t have to throw, at the end of the day, but to an extent, this is wishful, hopeful thinking. We are exposed, of course. We have not been opened up like this to an attack since 9/11 happened.

It’s unreal how quickly we forget. Not even twenty years ago, terrorists smuggled boxcutters through airport security and took down the Twin Towers. Osama bin Laden believed that would be the end. Not all at once, of course, not that day. His belief was that once we had been hit that hard, we would not be able to take it. Our policies and justice would become undemocratic, and the idea of America freedom we espoused and intended to bring to the rest of the planet would be soiled irrevocably, a discarded relic like Soviet socialism.

I think a lot of people are waking up to what a bad situation we are in. And when you end up in a bad enough situation, one that makes you scared enough to forget about your pride or wants or ideas, you start to look around at how you got there.
Putin’s developing hypersonic nuclear missiles now. He could wipe us right out with them and there’s nothing we can do. We don’t have them. China and Russia both are winning that arms race viz. the US. From what we can tell, the only reason he doesn’t up and do it is for the same reason as the terrorists- because the worst thing he can do to us is to sit back and eat popcorn and watch as we self-destruct.
At the end of the day, a day in which no one went to work and time to reflect has been forced upon us, one question keeps ringing in American minds- How did it come to this?
Why is that big orange disgrace stumbling around on our border, looking dumb and talking dumber? How did he get the power?
There are three simple words that say it all.
#BernieOrBust! We pray with all our hearts they have managed to learn from their mistakes, and we think there’s a good chance of it. They might have been watching the news.

From the eye of a tornado, you can see the sky, but you can’t see what’s going on around you. There’s no way of knowing how severe the devastation is, and the reality of the situation is that there’s not much use in worrying about it. You batten down the hatches, you keep yourself in the cellar, and you hope and pray for the best with all your heart.

Along with the neverending task of raising awareness, that is what we must do now.

The War on Cannabis: Who Loses, Who Benefits?

The War On Cannabis: Who Loses, Who Benefits?

From the day of its inception, the War on Cannabis has been a disaster for America. It has played a fundamental role in the architecture for the larger War on Drugs. Considered as a whole, this war can fairly be described as a generationally evolving series of wasteful and ineffective policies. In attempting to regulate the legislative needs and desires of mankind, the United States government has caused great harm to be done, in terms both of the law and of medical recourse to help for pain. It is a classic case of the old cliché, a treatment worse than its “disease”. Crimes have been committed in the name of fighting crime. Resources have been massively wasted. The futures of millions have been ruined in the eyes of the law. The question of why remains sobering in its implications. Anti-cannabis legislation was ostensibly created to safeguard the public and keep cannabis from menacing its health, but its effects have done more damage than the act their purpose was to prevent.

The question of whether the herb’s use constitutes a peril to public safety is a real concern. It is only logical for people to pay attention to alerts regarding something that might affect their health. As alerts on the matter have been so often raised, it is only natural for people to have health concerns about drugs, including cannabis. In a Health, Risk, and Safety article titled Cannabis, risk, and normalization: Evidence from a Canadian study of socially integrated, adult cannabis users, we are told that evidence pointing to the harmfulness of cannabis use has never been more abundant (213). Public concern is still highly prevalent, and many experts remain unconvinced that cannabis should be considered safe.

Whether that is true is not the issue here, however. We note only that widespread panic about cannabis was not scientifically based. The issue was never raised by the medical community of the United States. The Medical Science Monitor informs us that cannabis was routinely prescribed by American physicians. It enjoyed legal status in the United States until 1937. This is when U.S. legislature passed the first federal law against cannabis – the Marihuana Tax Act. Empirical approaches to solving the problem of cannabis addiction kept proving it was not a problem. The American Medical Association did not support the new law, and their advice was belittled and ignored. Science was not on the side of the anti-cannabis crusaders. Other rationales were needed and were manufactured where they could not be found.

The approach of the new Threat or Menace campaign was exemplified in Reefer Madness, the famous anti-cannabis public alert movie released in 1936. Self-described cannabis journalist Matthew Green paints a wild yet perfectly accurate picture of its contents in his article “Reefer Madness! The Twisted History of America’s Marijuana Laws.”. The movie exhibits an insane “reefer addict” portrayed in maniacal relief, smoking his way to murder as he enjoys the frenetic tunes of a piano-playing hostage. This law was based on artificially manufactured moral panic, as opposed to sound law or science. It was eventually discarded as being unconstitutional (Leary v. United States, 1969), but not before it set the foundation for the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which was far more comprehensive than the old law, although it continued to rely on selective or pseudoscience and public disinformation.

The tone of the new policy was set from the start by the prejudices of Anslinger, which was to prove disastrous for the cannabis community. Laura Smith, the managing editor at Timeline, paints an unforgiving picture of Anslinger in her piece “How A Racist Hatemonger Masterminded America’s War on Drugs”. He is shown there to be a xenophobic, culturally intolerant, and deeply racist man, one who used his power arbitrarily and in the worst ways. His power over his bureau, and over the anti-cannabis campaign, was completely unilateral. Historian John C. McWilliams stated in his book aboutAnslinger, The Protectors,“ Anslinger was the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (2).” His ideas about the existing social order laid the foundation for the policies he would set. He had a simple goal, but one that was far-reaching in its implications; a one-man crusade to protect American values as he saw them. His worldview held that change was coming too fast, and the anti-cannabis crusade provided him with a high-powered excuse to slow it down. The next step was to use this bitter project to hamstring progressive causes and people by making crimes out of acts that were not criminal. In this way, Anslinger laid the groundwork in place for an endemic legal injustice.

Racism was inherent in the new legislature. The approach was displayed by the confusion caused by a new word for cannabis, “Marihuana” (The more common spelling now is Marijuana) The Tax Act was named after this incorrect term, used as an associative trick based on racism and phonetics. It worked because the word sounded Mexican. Mexicans were unpopular and mistrusted, so tying public perceptions of the plant to Mexican immigrants was an easy way to scare white America. The FBN also targeted jazz musicians and lied about them without remorse. They created images of insane, weed-stinking black men on an unending quest for mayhem and white women; these also did nothing to set Caucasian minds at ease. Racial fear has always been a historically effective way to goad America’s ethnic majority off the path of common sense and decency. The War on Cannabis stands out as a noteworthy example of this tendency.

Shortly before the MTA was passed, a new governmental organization, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, was created to deal with the growing problem of drug addiction in America (Deitsch). Its first commissioner Harry J. Anslinger discarded science and medicine with glee. “Doctors,” he said, “cannot treat addicts, even if they want to.” He chose instead to call for “tough judges not afraid to take killer-pushers and throw away the key.” FBN techniques developed to disseminate the new way proved effective, allowing Anslinger’s perspective to set the tone for subsequent anti-cannabis legislation. Anslinger was a skillful administrator, and he had resources. His ideas caught on and manifested physically in the dehumanizing propaganda used by the FBN to scare anti-cannabis legislature past Congress. The aftershocks of FBN anti-cannabis disinformation are ubiquitous even today, living proof of the program’s success. Celebrating openly a pro-cannabis lifestyle is still enough to get you targeted. It’s easy to get busted, it’s hard to get a job. The way society perceives the users of cannabis today still comes largely from stereotypes based on exaggerated caricatures created during this era. These unfair and cartoonish notions have evolved and generalized over the years, becoming institutionalized as more people became invested in them. They have been used to degrade and delegitimize progressive causes and their advocates.

The propaganda employed by the FBN had been successful, so much so that it started a genuine public panic, and people were demanding that something be done. This gave Anslinger both the lawful right, and the means to pound his enemies into the ground. He was not long in finding his first sacrificial lamb. The first victim of the new policy was selected in 1937, just after the new law took effect. A draconian sentence of four years in prison for an ounce of weed was handed down to Samuel L. Caldwell of Boulder, Colorado. A precedent of insane harshness was set that endured in American courtrooms to this very day. It added greatly to the foundation of the original architecture of the greater War on Drugs, as conceived of and created by President Richard Nixon’s administration.

The Nixon era vigorously continued the judicial legacy of brutality applied to the cannabis community. Like Harry Anslinger had forty years prior, the administration targeted cannabis because its occupants knew liberals could be legally hamstrung as a consequence for using it. The concept was strategic, and its straightforward goal was the same as in the past-to keep conservatives in power at any cost. Neither fair play nor the health of democracy was considered, freedom was injured, and the resultant degradation of our system worked to the detriment of all Americans, whether they smoke pot or not. Chief Nixon White House adviser John Ehrlichman came to some of the same conclusions later in life. He spoke out frankly on the subject to Dan Baum of Harper’s Magazine years after the impeachment of Nixon. He laid out flatly their motives for taking aim at cannabis.

“Look, back in ’68, we had two enemies, you get me? The antiwar left, and the blacks. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be against the war, and we couldn’t make it illegal to be black. But by heavily penalizing the use of marijuana and heroin, we were able to disrupt
those communities. We were able to bust up their meetings, raid their offices, vilify them night after night on the evening news… Did we know we were lying about the drugs themselves? Of course we did.”.

Nixon’s work was built upon famously by the next Republican administration, that of Ronald Reagan. First Lady Nancy Reagan’s iconic “Just Say No” commercial typified the new approach, which was just like the old approach, but newly equipped with a spiffy slogan. In pursuing the anti-cannabis campaign, the Reagan administration was zealous in their willingness to apply suppression through the courts to the cannabis community. A TIME Magazine article from 1988 gives us a look at how it was. “The Reagan Administration calls its new drug policy ‘zero tolerance,’ meaning that planes, vehicles, and vessels may be confiscated for carrying even the tiniest amount of a controlled substance.” It goes on to tell the story of a captain whose boat was seized for a tenth of an ounce of cannabis. Things were so bad during that time for users of the herb that the case can hardly be overstated. Ardor for the arts of slander and libel grew in the government to an extent that left little room for conspiracy theories. Every possible medium was employed to spread Just Say No. Commercials, posters, the sides of buses. School programs like DARE, which stood for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, ensured that no young mind in America could miss the point. The net effects of all the anti-drug campaigning proved to be the same as in the past-untouched and rising rates of use, and black and poor people receiving disproportionately long sentences for small amounts of weed.

Subsequent presidents such as Bill Clinton were left with little choice but to compete with Reagan’s paternalistic style of law and order, and so the status quo remained intact. It was not until the election of Barack Obama that the prerequisite conditions for the monumental decision of 2012 legalizing recreational cannabis in the first two American states, Oregon and Washington, were met at long last. There is no doubt that it was a monumental decision. It represented the reversal of a hundred years worth of American legal policy and a tremendous amount of human struggling. The change, by that point, had been nearly a century in coming. Cannabis laws have been hamstringing the left for that entire time and they still are. Improvements have come, but they are highly incomplete. The threat of things reverting to their former miserable state overshadows all the progress that has been made in this area. Realization of the harm caused in the cannabis prohibition era has been highlighted in the nation’s modern consciousness. More and more people are coming to see how important it is to prevent the reassertion of the destructive and unfair status quo.

The history of the War on Cannabis is representative of a great many other social ills inside American life. The racist, reactionary, right-wing attitudes that created the original campaign are still alive and well in modern American jurisprudence. In the name of punishment and the spirit of human sacrifice, medical science has been stymied and suppressed, people have been ruined and jailed, and our prison system has been afflicted to the point where it has poisoned our political system. It is, simply stated, a historical and ongoing eyesore. Change has come but is far from secure, and a great deal of harm remains unaddressed.

Works Cited

ACLU ProCon.org, 2009. Leary v. United States 
	https://aclu.procon.org/view.background-resource.php?resourceID=003427
Bonnie, Richard J., Whitebread, Charles H., 1974. “The Marijuana Conviction: A History of Marijuana Prohibition in the United States.” 
	https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=185042  
Dagen, Chelsea, 2017. The Distortion of Drugs: War, Discrimination, and Profit.
	https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi 
Deitsch, Robert, 2003. “Hemp: American History Revisited- The Plant With A Divided History.”
Vdocuments.mx, vdocuments.mx/documents/hemp-american-history-revisited-the-plant-with-a-divided-history.html.
Dickinson, Tim, 2016. “Why America Can't Quit The Drug War.” 
	https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/why-america-cant-quit-the-	drug-war-	47203/
Downs, David, 2016. “The Science behind the DEA's Long War on Marijuana.”
	www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-behind-the-dea-s-long-war-on-	marijuana/.
Duff, Cameron, Erickson, Patricia G., 2014. “Cannabis, risk, and normalization: Evidence from a Canadian study of socially integrated, adult cannabis users.”		
Glick, Daniel, 2016. “80 Years Ago This Week, Marijuana Prohibition Began With These Arrests.” 
	https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/drug-war-prisoners-1-2-true-story-moses-	sam-two-	denver 
Green, Matthew, 2008. “Reefer Madness! The Twisted History of America’s Marijuana Laws.”
	https://www.kqed.org/lowdown/24153/reefer-madness-the-twisted-history-of-	americas-weed- laws-
King, Ryan, Mauer, Mark, 2006. "The war on marijuana: The transformation of the war on drugs in the 1990s."
Komp, Ellen, 2011. “Mark Twain's Hasheesh Experience in San Francisco.” 
	https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Mark-Twain-s-hasheesh-experience-in-S-	F-	2328992.php
Jennifer Robeson, 2002. “Who Smoked Pot? You May Be Surprised.”
	https://news.gallup.com/poll/6394/who-smoked-pot-may-surprised.aspx
Smith, Laura, 2018. “How A Racist Hatemonger Masterminded America’s War on Drugs.”

The 2018 Midterms- A Globally Critical Blue Wave.

The 2018 Midterms- A Globally Critical Blue Wave.

     The 2018 midterm elections were among the most anticipated races in history, and they did not fail to deliver dramatic results. Throughout the election cycle, word of a Democratic Blue Wave gained momentum, and a watershed voter turnout was the satisfying result. It was the highest for any election held in the United States since Watergate, which seemed suitable for such a high stakes contest. In many cases, the primary considerations of the voters seemed to counterbalance one another. These were the strong economy and the personal repugnance of Trump himself. The president has managed to snatch credit for the strength of the economy, but his low approval ratings pointed to Democratic gains (Washington Post). History has favored the minority party at the time of the president’s first midterm. This tendency, combined with American disgust for Trump himself as a man, to give Democrats control of the half of the Congress known as the House of Representatives by a wide margin.

     The achievement of the Democrats can hardly be overstated. Reporter Dan Balz of the Washington Post gave us a few statistics with which to illustrate this point. Democrats flipped about two-thirds of the competitive districts won by both Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Barack Obama in 2012 or by Clinton in 2016 and Mitt Romney in 2012. They also picked up one-third of districts won by Trump in 2016 and Obama in 2012. In districts where both Trump and Romney had won in the previous two elections, Democrats gained about a quarter of the competitive seats (Washington Post). Democrats even managed to break even in net seats in the Senate, though they had faced crushing electoral odds in that chamber. Twenty-five Democratic senators were up for reelection as opposed to only eight Republicans, and many were in states that went solidly red in 2016. Managing to hold the line places Democrats in a fantastic position to retake the Senate in 2020, when the shoe will be on the other foot. While immediate domestic concerns are likely to be given precedence, the effects of the Blue Wave in 2018 are sure to reverberate worldwide.

     This tremendous level of electoral enthusiasm was all the more remarkable in that midterm elections in general are not captivating to most voters. In a normal year, only the most ideologically driven and committed members of the electorate tend to turn out for them, and certainly overseas interest is not typically overwhelming. But in recent years, a radical polarization has gripped the global society’s political atmosphere. The specter of World War Two has risen and people are getting scared. A great acrimony and division has spread through America and the rest of the world. Some are calling it a civil cold war, and its battlefields can be found on many fronts. Trenches are being dug under national borders, in some cases, and along gerrymandered district lines in others. People in all corners of the globe had good reason to pay attention, as the struggles highlighted the dramatic and worldwide trouble the human race is having in getting along with itself.

     The quality of the candidates selected by the two parties speaks in volumes to the quality of those who did the selecting. Democrats elected eight new scientists. Republicans elected three felons and a dead pimp (Post-Tribune). Something has got to give here. Somebody is going to hold power in America, the world’s sole superpower. We have to look closely at whom. The moderate wing of the Republican Party used to have some allies in it. There were men like John McCain, who in spite of their party affiliation was sound and unselfish Americans. Some of them could be counted on for bipartisan dialogue concerning issues of paramount importance. McCain is now gone, however, and with him the moderate wing of the Republican Party. This type of candidate took serious damage in the midterm primaries. They were discarded in favor of candidates more in line with the views of Donald Trump. Many of these came from the ranks of the alt-right, though the elections also played an important role in illustrating a trend of worsening extremity taking root in the far left. Only center Democrats have reliably proven they can put themselves to the side enough to do what is best for the country.

     The 2018 election was in many ways a referendum on the 2016 election, and the events immediately surrounding it. The victory of Donald Trump combined with Brexit constituted significant blows to the American-led, liberal world order, and empowered the radical right. It also empowered Russian president Vladimir Putin, who had spent millions of dollars to defeat Hillary Clinton and get a guy in office he found more pliable. “Putin likes Trump because he supports this view of the world, that the big guys can carve it up,” explained former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in an interview for Gentlemen’s Quarterly. After Trump won, Kasparov, who is Putin’s former opponent in a Russian presidential election, wrote some predictions down in his new book on the future of the Western world order, Winter is Coming. He believed we had eighteen months in which to turn around the sequence of events that had been started, two years at the most. If we didn’t find a way by then, he felt, it would probably be too late. I thought of those words many times on the way to the voting booths this year. They perfectly summarized the reason it was so important for the Democrats to win the midterms in 2018. Only the full force of American conviction can activate its might enough to keep the world safe for democracy.

     Today’s world, like today’s Republican Party, is busy coping with an uptick in reactionary far-right movements, movements that in many cases and nations border on fascism. Alt-right candidates were present in greater number than ever before in the 2018 midterms, and this too is part of a worldwide trend. From Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to Norbert Hofer in Austria, adherents of racist nationalism have been growing increasingly violent and brazen. A man screams “Hail Trump!” in a movie theater; another during a performance of the Fiddler on the Roof. “Middle America is rallying to the flag of the alt-right,” said Kyle Bristow, a self-described member of the “alt-right” and the attorney of infamous white nationalist Richard Spencer. These candidates mostly lost, but their sheer proliferation is a terrible sign. It goes without saying that all of them were Republicans. The race was representative of the political atmosphere worldwide in that it was ideologically polarized. It saw its fair share of triumphs for liberals and progressives, but it also saw a rise of far-right, white nationalist candidates. Some of these were victorious. The low quality of the Republican candidates has negative consequences for every level of government.

     A Democratic retaking of the House of Representatives was a critical first step in containing and reversing this virulent problem. It is why the Resistance showed up in such numbers at the polls. For two years, liberals and progressives have been helpless to do anything but sit idle, as one travesty after another has rocked the global community. We have not had the power to protect our people, or even to get many others to listen or to understand our plight. But with the power to form committees of Congressional inquiry, we can finally start to put the bad guys under a microscope. The power of the House is, in this case, the power of defense.

     The elections were not completely without problems for the Democrats. It showed us that ideological faultline is still existent not only in the Republican Party but in the Democratic as well. The rift between the supporters of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton has healed to an extent, and there have been improvements made in this area. Our shared victory in the midterms demonstrated that the progressive wing of the party is beginning to learn from the tremendous mistakes they made in 2016, where undercurrents of far left hard feelings allowed the Russians an easy way to turn the 2016 Democratic primaries into a zoo. The radical left’s extreme love for the Bern reached the levels of a cult by the end of the primary. From the day the Bernie or Bust petition began circulating, it was obvious we were in for trouble. If they couldn’t have Bernie, they said, they would rather have Trump. This attitude was allowed to get highly pervasive, and it killed us in the end.

     This time around, Democrats did a far better job of managing conflicts between the two wings of the party. They simmered at a low boil all the way through the midterm primaries but managed to keep from becoming a fight instead of a contest and ruining the Blue Wave. This is a positive sign, suggesting the far left might have learned from 2016, which is good. Most mainstream Democrats have been pushed to the left as far as we will go, and are starting to get ready to push back. Centrist groups like Third Way have been pushing candidates to read up on history and polling. “The party is not going to go in the direction of Sanders-style socialism, because it’s not winning on the issues and it doesn’t win politically except in a very, very limited number of places,” Third Way president Jonathan Cowan tells TIME. “It’s going to go in the direction that won it two presidencies” (Elliott). The last two two-term Democratic Presidents were mainstream Democrats. [That’s] what’s going to get the House back.” It’s important to emphasize here that mainstream Democrats do not seek reorientation of the party. We’ve been doing an excellent job under the worst possible conditions.

     Progressive Democrats from the Sanders wing were not without a few reasons to cheer in November’s elections. The upset primary victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over twenty year veteran Joe Crowley for New York’s 14th District stood out on a number of levels. Ocasio-Cortez is the youngest Representative ever elected, and her zealot’s love for socialism has given the Sanders wing a new face and voice to cheer for. My thoughts are that this is not the worst thing in the world, because we need them, and it appears that some healing has taken place. Clinton supporters and Sanders supporters used to very nearly hate each other, and that no longer feels as acutely so. It appears that the left has achieved a degree of unity for now, but it remains to be seen whether this newly placid status quo can survive another presidential primary.

     The immediate battles to be faced come January in the House of Representatives are only one part of a much larger problem. Democracy is under attack worldwide. It is being replaced one plank at a time like the proverbial Ship of Theseus. At what point in all this replacing does it become a different ship? Only one thing is certain, at least in the gut level instinct of this writer. Since Trump got elected, this country does not feel the same at all. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, America has been rated as being less than a full democracy for the last two years. The EIU produces an annual review ranking countries on their adherence to 60 distinct democratic values, including electoral processes and press freedom (“America Has Been Classified as a Flawed Democracy”). According to their standards, we’re not a free country anymore. America is now more like Viktor Orban’s Hungary, or Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The rich want to get into power and stay there, and quote the ideals of freedom as the reason they ought to be able to use any means to do so. The only way we can hope to turn this all around is to get the Democrats back into power and keep them there.

     The biggest net effect of the midterms is the Democratic retaking of the House because it gives the sane center of the country back the power of defense. Democrats can now protect our country from anymore disastrous Trump ideas. This also sets back Putin’s plan of attaching more of his tendrils and creepers to the grand old castle walls that hold up our country. Proactive measures are more limited. Democrats can form investigative committees, and hold hearings for the purposes of questioning and gathering information. Resources are certain to focus on raising awareness about the Russiagate scandal and other serious challenges facing our democracy. The conduct of Trump and his allies can be highlighted and brought to the forefront of public consciousness everywhere. It should be understood that even with a legislative chamber in blue hands, Republicans still hold the White House and the Senate, and the cooperation of all three is needed to pass a law. Nothing in recent history suggests hope for bipartisan cooperation on any issue, regardless of the issue’s importance. People will see once again how obstructionist and unfair the opposition is, and afterward, it will be easier to help people understand the truth- everything we hold sacred is in danger. If things keep on as they are, the days of American supremacy will be numbered.

     A close look at the playing field this election has left us with will prove useful as we step into the future. Blue Wave 2018 hit home for the midterms, and it gave us a great start. But the world remains beneath the dark shadow of a large-scale hatefulness and mayhem. The potential for danger and disorder is so great that it seems almost redundant to say so. As someone who has lived through all this, and read not just eight articles about it but hundreds, I feel that this narrative is being neglected and understated. This is due to responsible journalists not wanting to sound alarmist, in some cases, and it’s comforting to tell ourselves we’re in less trouble than we are. But the country’s divisions have been highlighted and exacerbated by hostile foreign powers such as Russia, who also targeted the 2018 midterms. This has added urgency to the issue and made them even more difficult to ignore. Going forward, it will be incumbent on the Democratic leadership, under the new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, to use their regained power dexterously. To show the people of the country that there is a reasonable alternative to the bedlam created by the current administration, resources must be channeled wisely and well. Good thing we’ve got a professional headed for the Speaker’s Chair. We’re really going to need her.

     In studying the political history of America, the scholar will note along with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who wrote in his Age of Roosevelt that foreign radicalism has never taken deep root here. From the visceral horror felt by the Founding Fathers toward the bloodbath going on in France to the resolute pursuance of seeing an end to the Nazis, America has always managed to resist being taken in by extremism from left or right. The source of our strength as a nation’s people has always lain in our ability to value compromise and moderation, which are necessary if we wish in times of crisis to be able to pull together with the full force of American conviction behind us, like when we fought World War Two. When these values are abandoned, democratic nations start to fall. If we lose our ability to communicate, we clearly can’t coordinate strategy. Only the full force of America’s people can activate its might enough to keep the world safe for democracy.  Our ability to hold the center is why we have become and remained so strong. 

       After looking at all this, a simple question remains. Has America ever faced a midterm election like 2018? In considering its potential impact of it on the country and its global standing, many would argue that the answer lies in the negative. The Trump administration has been a disaster of colossal proportion. Every day that America is represented in its highest office by a man who many would argue is both corrupt and deeply incompetent is a day in which we are vulnerable in the eyes of the world. Resisting his demented policies has taken everything we have, but we managed it even though we held so little power. After two years of that, holding the House of Representatives feels like a tremendous luxury of strength. We can assure the Trump presidency will be a lame duck from this point on. We can’t start setting things to rights just yet, but we can stop the current Oval Office occupant when he tries to do further damage. We can block his cruel new policies, and removing his ability to hamstring our future with corrupt appointees like the Supreme Court’s Brett Kavanaugh. This is why it was so crucial for the Democratic “Blue Wave” to sweep America.

Works Cited

Agerholm, Harriet, 2018. “America falls short of being a full democracy for second year running, report finds.”

/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/america-democracy-rated-donald- trump-not-fully-democratic-us- president-report-the-economist- a8195121.html

Balz, Dan, and Scherer, Michael, 2018. Washington Post, Washington Post. “For Democrats, A Midterm Election That Keeps On Giving.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-democrats-a-midterm-election-that-keeps-on- giving/2018/11/09/b4075ef2-e456-11e8-ab2c-b31dcd53ca6b_story.html? utm_term=.754bc43973ad

Beauchamp, Zack, 2018. “The midterm elections revealed that America is in a cold civil war.”

https://www.vox.com/midterm-elections/2018/11/7/18068486/midterm-election- 2018-results-race-surburb Campbell, Alaistair, 2018. “Garry Kasparov on Putin, Trump, and their deal to carve up Europe.” https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/garry-kasparov-alastair-campbell-interview

Elliott, Philip. Time, Time, 2018. “The Middle Road.”

time.com/5428157/democrats-centrist-midterms/.

Frier, Nancy, 2018. Time, Time, 2018. Facebook Discovers an Ongoing Effort to Influence the 2018 Midterm Elections.

Grand Magazine, 2018. “Urgent: The United States Has Been Classed As A Flawed Democracy.”

www.grandmagazine.com/2018/09/urgent-the-united-states-has-been-classed-as-a-flawed-democracy/.






	


	



			
				


			

			
Cohen Sentenced, End In Sight For Trump Era. To You In The Alt-Right, Get Out In Time.
		
	
Cohen Sentenced! The Jig Is Up For Trump's Era.

	

		

Former fixer to the illegitimate 45th president of America Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison this morning. He has now joined the ranks of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, other major figures in the Trump 2016 campaign who turned out to be felons. Cohen, to his credit, took full public accountability during his sentencing, and will now go serve three years in prison. While he is there, he will have plenty of time to reflect on the errors of his ways. We wish him the best in regaining his soul and changing his life, and we thank him for thoroughly implicating Donald Trump.





But don’t feel too sorry for him! HA!





This tweet may have aged more poorly than any tweet in human history pic.twitter.com/dojbUoVWpz— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 12, 2018





According to Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, after the Robert Mueller investigation wraps up, Cohen wants “to state publicly all he knows about Mr. Trump. And that includes any appropriate congressional committee interested in the search for truth and the difference between facts and lies.”





That is a clear reference to the Blue Wave that led to the Democratic retaking of the House, and the investigative committees that have already been formed. We are about to take off on the lousy bum in the White House, is what that means, and Cohen threw us the lob ball. It’s just floating there now, up in the sky. The end is coming soon for the most crooked presidential administration in the history of the country.





Cohen’s sentencing is big, but far bigger was the effect of Mueller releasing his sentencing memo for Michael Flynn last week. This came to us heavily redacted, meaning they didn’t want the public to see a good chunk of it. But one key piece of data was conspicuously left hanging out all over the place. Trump’s transition team was in up to their necks in Flynn’s illegal Russia dealings. Cohen was right there in the mix, fixing for the Russian-financed Trump.





In the midst of it all, Trump still thinks he’s getting his wall. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer cashed him for his “petulant tantrum.” Everyone laughed, just like when Pence’s chief of staff publicly turned him down to replace the dearly departing John Kelly and dissed him by refusing the job via Twitter. He’s become an even bigger joke than he used to be, but I’d bet anything his bosses aren’t laughing anymore.





This is about to backfire horribly on Russia. Former spy and National Rifle Association enthusiast Maria Butina just signed a plea deal. She used to be their lady, until American justice caught her, broke her in the hole, and turned her into an American asset. The Russian people will soon realize two things: that Vladimir Putin can’t protect them, and that Putin can’t protect himself. He’s old. He’ll soon be gone. And so will Donald Trump. They had better find a way to get rid of him.





Next, we would like to address any of you out there who might chance across this article who used to go around wearing those stupid red MAGA hats, who put those signs of his up in your yard, wore his buttons and T-shirts around, et cetera. Change sides before it is too late. As Gandalf said to Saruman, “You have been deep in the counsels of the enemy. There is much good you could still do.” 





Learn from Michael Cohen and Maria Butina. Realize you’ve been played by a corrupt mobster dictator who hates the United States and wants to enrich Russia at our expense, to the global detriment of everyone. Understand in time that Trump was not who you hoped he was, and that he did not really share your conservative values. He is a debauched, corrupt old businessman from New York City. Since when has Middle America allowed itself to be taken in by the likes of that? Aren’t you sick of it yet? If you don’t want to find yourselves in a hole too deep to dig free of, you had better come back around and help us out while there’s still time.





This brings us to our next point- If you are a former member of the alt-right, or the alt-left for that matter, who has seen the error of your ways and want to come around and help the cause, write in to us! You may have been young two years ago, and youthful errors are not unique to you. But pretty soon you won’t be. You’ll just be old, alone, and in trouble. 
The alt-right is a shadow of its former self. Your leaders have taken your money and abandoned you, and were never real leaders to begin with. Take Richard Spencer, for example. According to our sources from within your organizations, that guy is a predator known for seducing the wives of all his comrades. He beats his own wife, according to her. You think he cares about you? That little psychopath James Fields had no one’s support except his mother’s when he got sentenced to life in prison recently for murdering Heather Heyer at Charlottesville last year. Your hero, “Baked Alaska”- His comments on the subject involved profanity, the word “murderer”, and “I’m out by the pool.”





Anything you’ve got that might be helpful, any information on what the alt-right leadership is doing or where they are doing it or who they are doing it to. Send it in to us, and we’ll publish it. Anything that has to be turned over to higher authorities will be, but you will be kept anonymous so long as you’re not confessing to any crimes. You have our word. 





All of us who were raised here in America know who the ultimate enemy was growing up. The Russians! Our fathers and our grandfathers who fought in World War Two, Vietnam, and Korea, would be horrified at what has happened here. Now that you have been forced to see, by Republican Robert Mueller, that Donald Trump really was a stooge for Putin, please come back to reason. You are being called upon to come back around and save your country. They’ve got malware in our power grids. This is not a game.





You guys should work together with us to make America greater, we at Millennial Democrats are with you! We don’t believe it ever stopped being great, and we sure aren’t with the socialists who say it is broken and ought to be discarded! We are in this together, and we ought to find some way to come to terms.





If you help us now, Fate will reward you, and Providence will receive you. Be good Americans at this moment of greatest need, and that is how you will be remembered when all this is over. Good people, who made a mistake, took accountability and learned from it on the way to doing what their country needed from them. Get out in time!





Don’t drag this out to the bitter end.

	


	



			
				


			

			
A Democratic Code- Protocols for Engagement.
		
	
#BlueWave2020!

	

		
Good evening to all from Millennial Democrats! Our name means a lot to us, because we spend a lot of time working out what it means to be a Democrat- and how to be of optimum use to the country and party alike. The two are completely inseparable at this point. Democrats retook the House. That means that things will be okay. We endured.


Still, although morale coming off of the Blue Wave is at an all-time high, we must capitalize. That means we must resist the urge to get complacent. We’re in a lull period, a sort of ceasefire, which means its time to shore up foxholes and stockpile and drill. We have to prepare ourselves for the real task- getting rid of Trump once and for all.


It is therefore just the time to tackle some questions as to what a Democratic Code might look like.


How do we reconcile the need for reasonable strictures with the hallowed principles of big-tent coalition?


How do we handle inter-organizational pressures?


How do we keep sane when we’re down in the trenches with each other for years at a time?


These questions have come up again and again, and have created a necessity for a flexible and logical framework of guidelines that everyone can live with and abide by.


This is not as hard as it may seem on the surface! We are Democrats. We come together from across all boundaries and we sometimes work with people who in many ways are quite different from ourselves.


It is absolutely paramount that we come to realize this as our single greatest asset.


Far from being a weakness, the heated and ideologically driven Democratic debates about policy and progress we have allow us the trials by fire we need to become very strong. We are like a lightsaber, dispelling the gloom and corrupt cobwebs that are the right wing’s lies. We have a core that is decent and sensible and growing. People will see our light and want to be part of it. We have only now to give them a good home and be prepared to accept their voices as equals. They’re part of the family already. In short, we can do this. We just have to lay down a foundation.


In keeping with that line of thought, we recommend the following proposals.


1.  There must be universal will to abide by the few basic ground rules laid out when representing an organization.


2. Of paramount importance is our ability to disagree. We must come to fully realize that debate and a fight aren’t the same. Respect your colleagues, and treat them gently. Many of us Resistors are having a very hard time in life, especially under the fool that is Donald Trump. We must fully understand this and show empathy. Divided we cannot stand up.


In example, the Wampanoag Native tribe which gave us Thanksgiving may very soon be pilfered yet again. We are all we’ve got. This should constantly be on our minds when interacting with others. Patience and compassion must be our guides.
















3. Respect the organization and the cause by keeping your tempers in check, especially in any sort of public capacity that could hurt the cause or get you targeted. Swearing and violent language should not be done as the page, if at all.










4. Respect the work of others, don’t take a fellow admin’s post down without thorough group discussion of the subject. Once in a while, people are going to post things outside the ring, but they put the time in on it, and deserve to know why it is being removed. Schedule a time to talk and explain to the person their mistake. This is how we improve both our knowledge and our people skills, and hence grow stronger together as a unit.






5. Respect leadership decisions. They will be made at the end of a long discussion leading to group consensus. When they are, we must subordinate our own feelings and trust in the Democratic process. We are Americans.






6. Respect the need to keep on track with political discussions. As we are all such diverse and brilliant people, clashes of ego and opinion are unavoidable. But they can be streamlined by avoiding controversial side topics that have no bearing on what we’re doing here. That is a major goal going forward.










All of us are aware of our significance; every voice is sorely needed. And I know that I don’t have to request you to be equal to the responsibility and trust I have extended you; you’ve already been doing it for a very long time. As Robert the Bruce said, “You are here! You know enough about honor.”




Demonstrate this in word and deed when speaking as a Resistor.




























Please keep in mind just how important you all are to this cause, and treat each other like the vital organs of your body that we are. Care for and protect each other, and never forget:
































An enemy and an opponent are not the same thing.