Regardless Of Political Party, Establishment Politicians Always Try To Kill Off Independent Thinks Who Challenge The Status Quo-- Meet Ilhan Omar (D-MN)

Conservatives are making a concerted effort into turning Ilhan and Rashida into "The Other"

The NY Post, like many right-wing propaganda outlets, was on the attack last week. Except they're introducing a new "villain" to their readers. THey're hardly giving up on their crusade to destroy AOC but now they can go back and forth between her and Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Ilhan had been serving in the Minnesota state legislature-- having beaten an entrenched establishment Democrat in the primary-- when Keith Ellison decided to run for state Attorney General, leaving his Minneapolis congressional seat open. She won the 6-person primary with 48.2%, her closest opponent 18 points behind her. In the general election she was elected with a landslide, 267,703 (78.0%) to 74,440 (21.7%). For those wondering, her district is mostly white and just 15.5% black. Rashida mentioned to the NY Times recently that "It is disappointing that some of my colleagues are feeding into the hate and division and mislabeling me to ignite fear." It might be worth remembering that, although all the districts have approximately the same population, on the same day 267,703 voters pulled the lever for her, this is how many voters pulled the lever for these much better-known members of Congress, all of whom have been extremely critical of Ilhan. Interesting that she attracted so many more voters than any of them-- and more than double the number of some of her worst and most vicious critics.

• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- 131,113
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- 213,796
• Jim Clyburn (D-SC)- 144,765
• Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)- 180,376
• Ben Ray Luján (D-NM)- 155,201
• Steve Scalise (R-LA)- 192,555
• Liz Cheney (R-WY)- 127,963
• Lee Zeldin (R-NY)- 139,027
• Eliot Engel (D-NY)- 182,044
• Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY)- 101,823
• Donna Shalala (D-FL)- 130,743
• Louie Gohmert (R-TX)- 168,165
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- 169,546
• Peter King (R-NY)- 128,078
• Seth Moulton (New Dem-MA)- 217,703
• John Garamendi (D-CA)- 134,875
• Devin Nunes (R-CA)- 117,243
• John Katko (R-NY)- 136,920
• Dean Phillips (New Dem-MN)- 202,404
• Elaine Luria (New Dem-VA)- 139,571
• Jerry Nadler (D-NY)- 173,095
• Ted Deutch (D-FL)- 184,634

Fellow freshman Max Rose was the first Democrat to attack her, although on the same day, Democraps Josh Gottheimer and Elaine Luria also weighed in with nasty, self-serving comments. I can't remember which Republican backbencher started circulating the letter to throw her off the House Foreign Affairs Committee-- although Louie Gohmert has since made it a personal jihad. I do recall that it was Long Island asshat Lee Zeldin who introduced a resolution (HR 72), which has 93 GOP cosponsors, the 3 of the original 5 co-spnsors being notorious Islamaphobes and bigots, Jody Hice (GA), Gym Jordan (OH) and Matt Gaetz (FL). The resolution calls out Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan by name, explicitly and dishonestly trying to connect them to antisemitic views that neither of them hold or condone.

When Ilhan was Trevor Noah's guest on The Last Show last week, she said that when she talks "about places like Saudi Arabia or Israel or even now with Venezuela, I'm not criticizing the people. I'm not criticizing their faith, I'm not criticizing their way of life. What I'm criticizing is what's happening at the moment, and I want for there to be accountability so that the government, that administration, that regime can do better."

Yesterday Trita Parsi and Stephen Wertheim warned in an OpEd that Democratic party elites silence Ilhan Omar at their peril, noting that Ilhan's "foreign policy views are far more in line with voters than the disconnected party establishment."

This week, Democrats plunged into two controversies that portend danger for the party as the 2020 election season begins. Both centered on freshman representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who, not coincidentally, came to America as a Somali refugee and is now one of the two first Muslim women in Congress. Absent an open debate about the party’s values on foreign policy, Democrats are hurtling toward an election more divisive than the one in 2016.

First, on Monday, Omar criticized the influence of pro-Israel lobbyists on Capitol Hill, tweeting that Congress’s stance was “all about the Benjamins”. She was swiftly rebuked by the party leadership in tandem with Republicans, prompting her to apologize. Then, less than 48 hours later, Omar grilled America’s new envoy to Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, over his well-documented material support for multiple Central American governments that committed mass killings and genocide in the 1980s. She also questioned his credibility, noting that Abrams had pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress as part of his participation in the Iran-Contra scandal.



How did Democratic elites respond? Several pounced again-- to defend the Trump administration’s backer of death squads against Omar’s pointed questioning. Kelly Magsamen, a senior official at the Center for American Progress, defended Abrams on Twitter as a “fierce advocate for human rights and democracy”. Likewise, Nicholas Burns, a 27-year diplomat who most recently advised former secretary of state John Kerry, praised Abrams as a “devoted public servant.” “It’s time to build bridges in America,” Burns wrote, “and not tear people down.”

If Democratic leaders were incredulous at Omar’s statements, rank-and-file Democrats were just as incredulous at their party leaders. Why, many asked, is it routine to criticize the influence of NRA money but almost forbidden to question the influence of Aipac money? On top of that, how could Trump’s neocon criminal be lauded as some sort of ally while Omar was treated as a pariah? A Twitter torrent caused Magsamen to delete her tweet and apologize.

Personalities aside, however, the episode is charged with significance for the Democratic party as a whole. Omar is not going away. She represents the party’s younger generation, a more diverse and progressive cohort that came of age in the war on terror. In the election of 2016, such voters balked at Hillary Clinton’s hawkish record and her courting of Never Trump neoconservatives. Now the divide is only wider and more entrenched. Democrats need to have a real conversation, immediately, about the party’s values and goals in foreign policy. Squelch it now and watch it resurge in 2020, with Trump the beneficiary.

“We share goals,” Magsamen wrote of Abrams. Do we? The outrage over her claim proved its falsity. What goals Democrats wish to promote in the world is now an open question, not settled dictum that thinktankers can impose from Washington. The Democratic base is no longer deferential, especially not when it is told that it has some obvious affinity with the man who covered up one of the bloodiest massacres in Latin American history, and went on to push the Iraq war inside the George W Bush administration.

Just what are the goals, and values, of those who have implemented decades of fruitless forever war and then close ranks when their worst members are asked accurate and relevant questions? The American people are wondering. The manifestations are everywhere, among young people in particular. Start with the sacred cow of American exceptionalism: millennials are the first age group to split evenly on whether the US is the world’s greatest country or no greater than others. They are increasingly ready to reckon with America’s past actions and confront hard choices going forward.



Young Democrats are not likely to agree that one violent misdeed after another is somehow acceptable as long as it is performed by the US or in the name of democracy or humanitarianism. Those were the rationales, now revived in defense of Abrams, that produced impunity for the Iraq war, a disastrous war of aggression. Ordinary citizens consistently display more skepticism of military intervention than do foreign policy elites. They are pushing their representatives to express the goal of peace. The election of Omar herself reflects this sentiment. And as a result of grassroots mobilization, the House this week, driven by progressives like Representative Ro Khanna, passed historic legislation to end US support for the Saudi war in Yemen.

The shift in the Democratic base is not limited to one episode. Democrats increasingly favor cutting the defense budget and imposing restraint on America’s military power. While elites assume that the US must maintain global military superiority as a matter of course, less than half of millennials deem it to be a very important goal. That is the lowest support on record, continuing a steady erosion since the second world war. Will political leaders engage the rising generation’s doubts, or will they insist that armed domination is a self-evident virtue for a country that is hurting at home and often spreads violence abroad?

On the Israel-Palestine conflict, it was Omar, more than her party elders, who represented the values of Democratic voters when she criticized the influence of money in politics and applied the point to America’s virtually unconditional support for Israel. The overwhelming majority of Democrats, about 82%, now say the US should lean toward neither Israel nor Palestinians. Even more dramatically, 56% of Democrats favor imposing sanctions or harsher measures against Israel if its settlements keep expanding. The mounting disaffection with Israel comes as the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, scorned Barack Obama and embraces Trump and other authoritarians. Yet Democratic leaders leapt to denounce Omar, giving her no benefit of the doubt for a poorly worded tweet. Critics must take care not to play into anti-Semitic tropes, but concern about lobbyist influence is legitimate and poised to intensify.

Democratic voters seek genuine alternatives, not the continuation of a one-party DC elite that assumes its right to rule and rules badly to boot. But the Democratic establishment is moving in the opposite direction. It has chosen to “build bridges,” all right-- with the neoconservatives most directly responsible for calamitous policies and most diametrically opposed to the base. This decision has now culminated in the defense of criminals like Abrams who embody both the worst of American foreign policy and the impunity of those who make it.

More important is the bridge that is not being built. Years after neocons have been exposed to lack a popular constituency, actual voters in the party are being shut out and talked down to, as exemplified in the badgering of Omar. What are the progressives who put Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and dozens of others into office to conclude about party leaders who would rather spurn them to make common cause with architects of the war on terror? Why are some in the party prioritizing bridge-building to washed-up neocons (in the Trump administration, no less) and not to new, mobilized voters?

Earlier, Nora Barrow-Friedman wrote for In These Times that "Republicans and Democrats alike are happy to throw Omar-- a Black, Muslim refugee woman who has garnered significant popularity for her unapologetic progressive politics-- under the bus. However, by slamming the freshman representative, Pelosi, Schumer and the entire Democratic party revealed precisely what Omar pointed out: AIPAC, like other enormous lobby groups, wields its power by pushing politicians to protect their interests and silencing those who refuse to cower." Trump was quick to throw the divisive fuel he's so famous for on the fire he found he could exploit by demanding she resign.

Oops... I almost forgot why I started writing this post... that stupid NY Post story by José Cárdenas, a neo-fascist former George W. Bush operative in Latin America and an Elliott Abrams defender. He called Ilhan's rough questioning of Abrams-- certainly a war criminal as well as an integral part of the American foreign policy establishment-- "a cheap attempt to discredit" him. It doesn't take much to discredit him. Wikipedia does it without batting an eye. In the intro to his page they noted that he's "considered a neoconservative" and "is is best known for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration, which led to his conviction in 1991 on two misdemeanor counts of unlawfully withholding information from Congress. He was later pardoned by George H.W. Bush. During George W. Bush's first term, he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs... [and] was a key architect behind the Iraq War." Wikipedia also makes the point that so many status quo pols were so upset to hear Ilhan say out loud in an official hearing: "In early 1982, when reports of the El Mozote massacre of hundreds of civilians by the military in El Salvador began appearing in U.S. media, Abrams told a Senate committee that the reports of hundreds of deaths at El Mozote "were not credible," and that "it appears to be an incident that is at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas." The massacre had come at a time when the Reagan administration was attempting to bolster the human rights image of the Salvadoran military. Abrams implied that reports of a massacre were simply FMLN propaganda and denounced U.S. investigative reports of the massacre as misleading. In March 1993, the Salvadoran Truth Commission reported that over 500 civilians were 'deliberately and systematically' executed in El Mozote in December 1981 by forces affiliated with the Salvadoran government." Read the whole page if you don't know who this character actually is. He should certainly be rotting in a prison cell, not be treated with deference by political leaders, especially not by Democrats.

Cárdenas' puke-worthy piece in The Post ends with this doozy about the war criminal who Ilhan dared to question in Congress: "Elliott Abrams’ record stands on its own. His only transgression is never having genuflected at the altar of the radical left, especially on Latin America. And the choicest irony of all is that the scorn they try to heap on him is not due to his failures, but his successes." In response, I'd like to end this post not with Cárdenas' deceitful and deranged words but with a request for DWT readers to consider tapping on the "Worthy Incumbents" ActBlue thermometer on the right and contributing to Ilhan Omar's reelection campaign. Expect that AIPAC and their allies will try to do to her exactly what they've done to other progressives who have dared to question Israel-Palestine policy-- from Republican Senator Chuck Percy (IL) to African American Democrats in the House, Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and Earl Hilliard (D-AL).

Ilhan Omar Did Not Make An Antisemitic Statement-- But That Isn't Stopping AIPAC And Their Rightwing Allies From Going Ape-Shit

You may not remember Victoria Wulsin but she was one of the very first candidates ever endorsed by Blue America. Back in 2006 she decided to take on right-wing crackpot Mean Jean Schmidt in a southern Ohio district that stretched over 7 counties from the outskirts of Cincinnati into the Appalachians. One of her staffers-- fresh out of college-- was Ady Barkan, now a renowned 36 year old attorney and much-admired activist at the Center for Popular Democracy. This week, Barkan wrote a piece for The Nation, What Ilhan Omar Said About AIPAC Was Right, detailing a nexus between Wulsin's campaign and the islamophobic jihad AIPAC and the political establishment are waging against Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar. "I’m ashamed to admit," he began, "that endorsing AIPAC positions was all about the Benjamins for me and my candidate."

Before we get into it, please recall a post from Monday, Breaking The Mold Isn't Just A Democrat vs Republican Thing that dealt with AIPAC and it's allies were able to destroy another congressmember of color, Earl Hilliard (D-AL), for not being obsequious enough to Israel and AIPAC. How dare he bring up the humanity of Palestinians! They drove him out of Congress-- and they did to Cynthia McKinney-- twice! Mostly AIPAC doesn't have to go to such lengths. Members of Congress are terrorized by their power and virtually never step out of line or cross them. "Over the weekend," wrote Barkan, "Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy said he would seek to formally sanction the first two Muslim congresswomen, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, because their criticism of Israel’s occupation of Palestine was even more reprehensible than Congressman Steve King’s defense of white supremacy. What motivated McCarthy’s false accusations of anti-Semitism? On Twitter, Omar suggested, 'It’s all about the Benjamins baby,' quoting Puff Daddy’s ’90s paean to cash money. Omar subsequently specified that she was talking about spending from the likes of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, better known as AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization."

By Monday morning, AIPAC had mobilized its allies to condemn Omar’s comment for playing into centuries-old anti-Semitic tropes that wealthy Jews control the world. Even the Democratic leadership put out a statement condemning her. All because she dared to point out that the emperor has no clothes.

As a Jew, an Israeli citizen, and a professional lobbyist (ahem, activist), I speak from personal experience when I say that AIPAC is tremendously effective, and the lubricant that makes its operation hum is dollar, dollar bills.

In 2006, fresh out of college, I landed a job as the first real staffer on a long-shot Democratic congressional race in deep-red Ohio. My boss, Victoria Wulsin, was a charming hippie doctor with a lefty perspective on international affairs. She was skeptical of military force and opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

About a month after winning the Democratic primary, we were struggling to gain attention or money. Nobody gave us a chance to win. One political-action organization, however, did reach out to us. It wasn’t Emily’s List, although Vic was fiercely pro-choice. It wasn’t a labor union or even a doctors’ association. It was AIPAC.

A local Democratic volunteer leader of the Cincinnati AIPAC chapter sat down in Vic’s living room and said that he would like to raise $5,000 for our campaign and would also like to see Vic take a public stance on two relatively obscure issues relating to Iranian sanctions, arms sales to Israel, or some other such topic that very few voters in the district cared about.

Vic and I both thought of ourselves as pro-peace, not pro-Israel. We both felt icky about doing it; it was too hawkish and too quid pro quo. But we were desperate. So I read the AIPAC position papers that the volunteer left with us, I wrote up a statement saying that Vic supported AIPAC’s stance on its two pet issues of the cycle, she approved it, I posted it online, and the checks promptly arrived in the mail thereafter. We didn’t win, but the money helped us get close.

It was, I am ashamed to say, definitely about the Benjamins. We never would have done it otherwise. AIPAC’s power is about more than money, certainly. It’s about great organizing (they built a local chapter, and sent a local Democratic volunteer emissary who then facilitated the contributions). It’s about diligence (they paid attention to Vic’s campaign long before anyone else, and were happy to donate to both us and the militaristic, pro-Likud Republican incumbent). Their lobbyists on the Hill are the best in the business, and their legislator junkets to the Holy Land are masterfully orchestrated. But money is central to the whole system.

Technically, AIPAC doesn’t make the political contributions. Instead, as it notes proudly on its website, individual members of its “Congressional Club,” like that Cincinnati resident, do the bundling and donating directly, both as individuals and through Political Action Committees that AIPAC and its members have set up.

Omar is right to point all this out. These dynamics are not unique to the Israel-Palestine issue, however, and there is no reason that Americans should be surprised or offended by what she and I are saying. The NRA and the broader gun lobby operate in the same way. Same with ExxonMobil and the fossil-fuel lobby. But since Omar and Tlaib are powerful new spokeswomen for the movement to end the Israeli occupation, delegitimizing them is a central aim of the Israel lobby.

AIPAC and its partners, which include Christian Zionists and military contractors, are a central pillar of the Israeli occupation. Without congressional support, the Likud/anti-Palestine/pro-occupation project would be radically undermined. The money that AIPAC and the rest of the lobby spend is indispensable to that work. That’s why they spend it. Pointing this out is not anti-Semitic.

We do, in fact, have a growing anti-Semitism problem in America. But Omar and Tlaib are not a part of it. They are allies of mine and of Jews across this country who are fighting for peace, racial justice, immigrants’ rights, and the defeat of fascism. The anti-Semites are the Nazis and white supremacists who marched and murdered in Charlottesville, whom Donald Trump called “very fine people,” and the MAGA supporter who massacred worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

The Israel lobby flexed its muscles in response to Omar’s tweet. Almost all of Capitol Hill, sadly including the Democratic leadership that I have supported, was up in arms. It flexed with equal potency last month in marshaling through the Senate a clearly unconstitutional law to ban speech promoting a boycott of Israel.

For 12 years, I have harbored minor private shame for advising Vic to endorse AIPAC’s position papers and more significant shame for not doing enough to stop the oppression of the Palestinian people.

I am speaking up now because it may be my last chance. Although I am only 35, I am dying. As I write these words, I am sitting with my wife in the waiting room of the Santa Barbara hospital emergency room, slowly bleeding from my stomach into a pile of gauze. I had a feeding tube inserted four days ago but it isn’t healing properly. I am losing the ability to swallow, because I have ALS, a poorly understood neurological disease with no treatment, which seized my body 28 months ago and has basically paralyzed me since. My hands do not work and almost nobody can understand my mumbling, so I am using amazing technology that tracks the location of my eyes and allows me to slowly type out these words with my pupil-tips.

This is my chance to redeem my Jewish guilt, to speak out against the oppression that is being perpetrated in my name, and I do not intend to let a minor obstacle like ALS stop me.

The establishment found a way to discredit the left

Young Jews across America increasingly agree with Omar and me, and that is making the Israel lobby very nervous. As it should: The occupation is too immoral, illegal, and inhumane to survive an open and honest conversation in the marketplace of ideas. That is why AIPAC and its associates work to silence criticism of Israel by accusing its detractors of anti-Semitism and claiming that nobody may ever talk about how the Israel lobby uses money to build power.

The ugly truth is that the Israel lobby, like other powerful lobbies led by Jew and gentile alike, wields its money strategically and effectively. Outrage should be directed not at those who point this out (most often Muslims and people of color) but at the suffering of the Palestinian people and the simultaneous dependence of the Republican Party on genuine anti-Semites.

I do not expect to live to see the liberation of the Palestinian people. But I maintain hope that my toddler son will. If he does, it will be because young American Jews like him do the honest self-reflection taught by our forebears, take pride in our tradition of justice, and join in solidarity and struggle with fellow Semites like Omar.

Let's not let AIPAC and their congressional allies-- whether Kevin McCarthy, Eliot Engel or Nancy Pelosi-- drive Ilhan out of Congress. You're probably aware that Señor Trumpanzee has now weighed in as well, telling her to resign, which is what most Americans wish he would do himself. In any case, please consider contributing to Ilhan's reelection campaign. With AIPAC out to get her she's going to need more help than you would expect a Democrat running in as blue a seat as hers-- Trump won just 18.5% of the votes in her district and she was elected last year with 78.2% of the vote against Republican Jennifer Zielinski-- 267,703 to 74,440. Clicking on the ActBlue thermometer on the right, will take you to the Blue America page of the (very few) incumbents who have done a spectacular enough job to have earned our support for their reelection efforts. Right now there are just Ilhan and 9 others. By the way, it was nice to see the Congressional Progressive Caucus refusing to be cowed by AIPAC and it's allies. Their two co-chairs, Pramila Jayapal (D-Seattle) and Mark Pocan (D-Madison) supported Ilhan in this tweet yesterday:

DSA issued this statement today, after the foreign policy establishment went all out in their attacks following how perfectly she handled war criminal Elliott Abrams yesterday at a congressional hearing:

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is under attack by both Donald Trump and neoliberal Democrats for a tweet highlighting the financial influence of AIPAC. In the wake of the Tree of Life massacre and the increasing influence of genuinely anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in the United States, DSA finds these attacks a cynical attempt to instill fear in Representative Omar and DSA member Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, two women of color in Congress breaking new ground by vocally supporting Palestinian liberation.

That Democrats who condemned Trump’s Travel Ban in prior years would lead this charge is the height of hypocrisy, demonstrates that they share Trump’s fear of a left wing, grassroots movement questioning the right of the few to rule the many, and illuminates their willingness to pit working people against each other in their quest to maintain their power. Further, it is complicit with the Republican strategy of dividing the Democratic voting bloc and deflecting attention from their anti-BDS bill, which would violate Americans’ civil rights.

And this is the Facebook entry from the local chapter in her congressional district:

Progressives Need to Think Through Implications of Flynn's Resignation

-by Sam Husseini

Many so-called progressives are stoked that Trump's National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, resigned as the result of charges surrounding his discussions with a Russian ambassador while Trump was president-elect.

Congressional Democrats want to use this to go after Trump. Rep. Nancy Pelosi: "After Flynn resignation, FBI must accelerate its investigation of the Trump Administration's Russian connection."

Even before Flynn's resignation, Rep. Maxine Waters did a segment on Democracy Now: "Trump Should Be Impeached If He Colluded with Russians Ahead of Election."

There's certainly reasons to want to see Flynn go-- he recently put Iran "on notice" while the White House tried to gin up the case against Iran.

And there are obvious reasons to try to impeach Trump that don't require congress people to qualify them with an "if"-- his violations of the "emoluments clauses.

"But it's perhaps easier, more "nationalistic" and ultimately horrifying for "progressives" and others with an alleged interest in peace to be harping on the Russian angle.

The Clinton campaign repeated that time and again during the campaign-- with disastrous results. Clinton talked about Russia and Trump talked about jobs in the rust belt. Guess who won the presidency?

Many so-called progressives are in effect making an alliance with the most war-mongering parts of the U.S. establishment. They are in effect buttressing incredibly dubious notions of U.S. victimology and demonizing official enemies that increase U.S. militarism and the likelihood for confrontation with the other nation on the planet that could destroy the planet a hundred times over.

Trump had just reportedly turned down Elliott Abrams' bid to be number two at the State Department. That was a good thing. Elliott Abrams was part of the Iran-Contra scandal and needed a Christmas Eve pardon from George H.W. Bush. He backed death squads in Central America. He then did a stint in the George W. Bush administration in charge of "democracy promotion" and was almost certainly behind still unaccountable horrors by Israel and in Iraq and elsewhere.

But he somehow gets depicted as "reasonable" by many. In fact, just as the major media were closing in on Flynn, Elliott Abrams appeared on CNN, saying he thought Steve Bannon was behind him not getting the job. Damn that crazy Bannon for apparently blocking a certifiable war criminal.

Trump won the presidency in large part because he was a Republican who could with minimal credibility talk about being against the "establishment." I didn't buy it, but lots of people did. He won an election that I doubt many in the vast Republican field could have. Trump talked about non-intervention, he talked about preserving Social Security and Medicare.

One upshot of the Flynn resignation is that Vice President Mike Pence, a white "Christian" nationalist, who is also is a darling of both Wall Street and the "neo con" interventionists comes out smelling like roses. Trump is a twisted narcissist who is a political opportunist. But Pence is likely what a lot of people claim Trump is.

Flynn was compelled to resign in large part because what is euphemistically called the "intelligence community" apparently had recording of his dealings with Russian representatives that he allegedly mischaracterized.

This implies that people will be held accountable for their falsehoods if-- and only if-- their stance upsets the CIA, NSA, et al.

It's worth keeping in mind that when Trump seemed to challenge this part of the permanent government in January, leading Democrat Chuck Schumer said Trump was "really dumb" for attacking the intelligence agencies. Said Schumer: "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you"

And what else did we just see happening as Flynn was resigning? Steven Mnuchin, from the good folks at Goldman Sachs was confirmed as Treasury Secretary. The case against Mnuchin is so massive and his Wall Street / Goldman Sachs / Soros / foreclosure king / Skull and Bones pedigree is so not "populist" that it's quite remarkable that he was able to get through.

Virtually all the Democrats in the Senate did vote against Mnuchin. But they all knew that that wouldn't stop him. Schumer got to put out some populist rhetoric, conveniently ignoring his own deep ties to Wall Street.

Four of Schumer's top funders through his political career are in insurance and finance: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Credit Suisse Group. Heck, he even took money from Mnuchin himself.

Wall Street and other corporate interests are quite firmly in control of the Democrats in Congress and Trump has put them in power in his cabinet. Part of the twisted dynamic is that the populist/nationalist wing of the Trump administration would disappear were he to disappear as Flynn has.

Trump is an obvious con artist and is not to be trusted. I'd bet his attempts at a detente with Russia have to do with profiteering-- or worse, with trying to go after China or such. But the crit to date bares more resemblance to the Republican obsession with Benghazi than with an attempt to meaningfully try to change U.S. agressions around the world.

But any meaningful critique of Trump can't possibly be one that demonizes the other major nuclear power, especially given the litany of U.S. illegal aggression around the world, including it's provocations against Russia-- such as violating promises and expanding NATO to Russia's boarder. Besides, Putin makes U.S. allies like israel and Saudi Arabia look like idyllic democratic wonderlands.

If only all these liberals scrutinized presidents when they want to go to war like they do Trump when he wants to make peace with Putin.



A version of this post was originally published by The Progressive.