AOC the bully

 

AOC and Hiter 

AOC already wrote Joe Biden's environmental platform, but apparently that was just the beginning. She just sent an open letter to his campaign demanding that a future Biden administration reject any business executives! This is crazy! AOC is basically telling Biden how to fill his own cabinet. Help me end AOC's political career, and end her influence within the Democratic Party, with a quick $30 donation to our campaign. I thought that the Green New Deal being included in Joe Biden's platform would have been enough of a victory for a freshman Congresswoman. But AOC isn't stopping. She's pressing her influence and trying to ensure that a Biden administration would be filled with radical socialists instead of competent business executives. I can stop this from happening by defeating AOC this November. If she loses reelection, she'll lose all credibility in the Democratic Party! Fund our get out the vote efforts today with a $60 donation. I have built a coalition of Republicans, independents, moderate Democrats, and former liberals who are sick of being represented by a radical socialist. They want honest representation from someone who's actually from the district. Voters in the Bronx and Queens want a Congressperson who will back the blue and push to reopen our schools and businesses. I am that candidate, and our campaign can win this race! Help me get our voters to the polls today with a generous contribution of $85, $120, $160 or more right now. It's up to patriots like you to help me defeat socialist AOC. I can't do this alone! Stand with me today, and we will make AOC a one term Congresswoman together. 

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On an assuming street corner in the east Bronx, people slowly started crowding around a storefront turned political HQ, The Bronx Republican Party Headquarters. Over the sounds of old rock songs blasting through speakers, people talked like old friends — rarely using masks — and signed up for phone-banking and door-knocking at foldable card tables which had been set up right outside the doors of the building. Volunteers handed out “Cummings for Congress” window and yard signs and neon yellow shirts that read “Defund AOC” to an excited group of people with Trump 2020 memorabilia. This was the volunteer kick-off for the John Cummings campaign. In one of the safest Democratic seats in the nation, a Republican thinks he can defeat a progressive star. Cummings, a school teacher and a former cop, has a simple message for voters: bring representation back to the district and save America. His opponent, the national political celebrity Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, rose to prominence in 2018 after she beat 20-year incumbent Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary. Since then, she — along with other progressive members of Congress, sometimes disparagingly referred to as “The Squad” — has become a prime target for Republicans. Much like his opponent has done, Cummings has made sure to play up that he is not a politician but rather a school teacher. This makes Cummings and Ocasio-Cortez a part of a growing trend of non-politicians from both sides of the aisle choosing to run, and choosing to amplify their lack of “establishment” credentials while doing so. At the Cummings event, Ocasio-Cortez was a common topic of conversation, more even than Cummings himself. Laura Angelo, 56, is a retired school bus driver who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and Donald Trump in 2016. She told me that the priority of politicians should be ensuring a free America. She said she is scared for the future her grandchildren face because of the possible leftward shift the country is facing, which, to her, is represented by Ocasio-Cortez. “I’ve got to support John Cummings because he is going against AOC to take her out of office,” Angelo said. “We have got to get rid of her lies. We’ve got to get rid of AOC and the rest of the swamp.” Judy Lanci, the President of the Bronx American Legion Auxiliary, believes the district has not received any support from Ocasio-Cortez since she was elected to office. She was there that evening to give a certificate of appreciation to Cummings after he donated $2,000 to the legion so it could send care packages overseas and pledged to make his first bill in Congress a piece of legislation to make all postage to US military members serving in areas of conflict free. “I have not seen AOC ever, and I am very active in the community,” Lanci said. “John is very visible and he cares about the community. He lives here, he knows all about the community, and, like I said, he cares all about the community. He won’t be an absentee Congressman.” At the event, it became clear that the campaign would be relying on reliable, in-person campaigning tactics. Throughout the evening, there was frequently a line at the table to sign up for door-knocking, with supporters explaining it was their favourite part of election season. Despite the Facebook page asking people to wear a mask and socially distance, masks were used by a minority of attendees, with many pulling them off when speaking to one another, and supporters were packed together on the sidewalk throughout the evening. Speaking to Cummings, he mentioned that ground game is key to the campaign, indicating that the ongoing pandemic would not change the campaign’s playbook.

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Joe Biden Applauds Anti-Marijuana Speech At Opioid Forum

As former Vice President Joe Biden mulls a 2020 presidential run, marijuana reform advocates are following closely to see if the long-running drug warrior is going to change his tune. But at a forum on the opioid epidemic on Thursday, that didn’t seem to be the case.

When the mayor of Philadelphia asked the panel at the University of Pennsylvania event about whether cannabis can be used as an alternative to opioids, psychobiology professor Bertha Madras claimed that patients who consume marijuana experience the same levels of pain and don’t decrease their opioid use, and she also characterized legislative efforts to allow patients with opioid use disorder to access medical marijuana as “disrespectful”—a rant that Biden enthusiastically applauded.

“At this point there are two conclusions. Number one, the data does not show that cannabis is a substitute, because if you actually do longitudinal studies on an individual basis, you find that people are suffering as much pain if they’re taking marijuana, and their opioid use is not decreasing in most cases,” Madras, who served as the deputy director of demand reduction for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, argued. “In fact, they’re getting more and more in trouble, in terms of developing opioid use disorder and they’re misusing opioids.”

“Every single disease that is treated in this country—like diabetes, like infections, like cancer—is evidence-based and undergoes randomized controlled clinical trials,” she continued. “And to say that this is by legislative support or by fiat from a governor’s office, that this is how you can treat opioid use disorder without the clinical trials, without longitudinal studies, to me is purely disrespectful of patients.”

There are numerous studies that raise questions about the doctor’s broad dismissal of the notion that cannabis can substitute opioids, but Biden seemed satisfied. He applauded the doctor and later seemed to tell the guest next to him that “she’s right.”

The tacit endorsement of the panelist’s anti-cannabis speech appears to signal that Biden—who as a senator championed the enactment of harsh, punitive drug laws—remains opposed, or at least skeptical about, changing marijuana policies. That will put him at odds with every other major Democratic candidate currently in the race—all of whom have backed legalization for both medical and adult use.

Also at the forum, Biden commented on the addictiveness of opioid-based painkillers and said that “a little pain is not bad,” a remark that could be interpreted as insulting to pain patients, who have increasingly faced stigmatization and scrutiny as they’ve sought relief amidst the opioid crisis.


Matt Viser
✔
@mviser
Joe Biden, asked what one thing he wishes people knew, says people should recognize how addictive pain killers are. "A little pain is not bad," he says.

It’s unclear how seriously Biden is weighing a 2020 run at this stage, with many speaking out about his history of touching women in ways that made them feel uncomfortable. But if he does take the plunge, drug policy will undoubtedly be a sticking point for many voters.

The current field of Democratic candidates is already competing to go beyond simply supporting legalization and either musing broader decriminalization of other drugs or, in the case of Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), insisting that support for ending prohibition is contingent on the inclusion of social equity provisions to repair the damages of the war on drugs, which has been carried out in a racially disproportionate manner.

As far as Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) is concerned, the U.S. will never have another “anti-cannabis’ president. Asked specifically about Biden’s prospects, the congressman told Marijuana Moment in a recent interview that nobody “is going to survive the nominating process who doesn’t have a reasonable position on cannabis.”

“They will not be nominated. I say that unequivocally,” Blumenauer said.

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