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Kirsten Gillibrand Tag

Abolishing ICE is codeword for open borders. And Open Borders is where Democrats have been moving for a generation. Now that slow creep is a full out sprint. While it's been percolating, New York Socialist Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated the No. 4 Democrat in the House in a primary earlier this week, set the movement afire.

Just breaking, Al Franken's office has announced that his previously announced resignation will be effective January 2, 2018. The snowball started rolling downhill for Franken when he was accused of groping and non-consensually tongue-kissing a woman on USO tour, as detailed in our post News Anchor accuses Al Franken of non-consensual kissing, groping in 2006. The photo of the grope went viral, and will be the lasting image of Franken.

New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is making a lot of enemies in the Democratic Party these days. Having clung to Bill and Hillary Clinton like a cheap suit her entire political career, Gillibrand turned on Bill when it became inconvenient in the current #MeToo climate to continue worshipping him, as I wrote in Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand disavows Bill Clinton now that he can’t help her anymore. Clintonworld was not amused with that backstabbing opportunism.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) tried to come to the defense of her colleague Sen. Kristin Gillibrand (D-NY) after President Donald Trump claimed that the latter used to beg him for campaign contributions "and would do anything for them." Warren fired back on Twitter and asked Trump if he is "really trying to bully, intimidate and slut-shame" Gillibrand. But this is another example of the media's weird obsession with Trump's Twitter account while ignoring other big stories go below the fold.

The speed with which Democrat Senators turned on Al Franken was startling. After the first few allegations of groping, including the infamous breast-squeezing photo, Democrats mostly shrugged their shoulders. It was uncomfortable for Democrats, but not fatal. There were few calls for Franken to resign from his fellow Democrat Senators. After all, it's hard to claim zero tolerance for sexual harassment and assault when Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton are the two modern icons of the Democratic Party.

*UPDATE* After a seventh woman has come forward today and accused Franken of sexual misconduct, Gillibrand has finally called for him to resign. New York Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand is likely to run for president in 2020 so she's making an effort to align herself with the #metoo movement. At the same time, she's having some difficulty deciding who deserves the benefit of the doubt and who should be out of a job.

Minnesota Democrat Senator Al Franken. Michigan Democrat Representative John Conyers. Who is next? It could be anyone! A Washington Post report from a few weeks ago showed that the "Office of Compliance has paid more than $17 million for 264 settlements and awards to federal employees for violations of various employment rules" since 1997. This includes sexual harassment. Congress returns to work after the Thanksgiving holiday to immense pressure not only to reveal the causes and people involved in these settlements, but to make the process more transparent.

Earlier this week, Professor Jacobson noted that Hillary Clinton still very much wants to be president and thinks she was robbed last November.  There is little doubt this is true.  However, between her ridiculous book What Happened and bizarre pretense that allegations against her husband for sexual indiscretion, including rape, never happened, she highlights, even doubles down on, some of the main problems of her failed presidential campaign.

In 2009, Kirsten Gillibrand was appointed to fill the Senate seat of Hillary Clinton, upon her confirmation as Secretary of State. Until yesterday, Gillibrand was happy to benefit from the massive Clinton fundraising and political machine. Despite the serious accusations of rape and sexual assault made by several women against Bill Clinton, and despite the affair Bill had with Monica Lewinsky, a young intern over whom Bill exercised supervisory power. And despite Hillary's role in attacking the women making the accusations.

California's primaries are currently held in June; however, legislation is expected to be signed by Governor Jerry Brown (D) next week that would move them to March. This move would place California's primaries right after Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.  Further, the move would tilt the donor and electoral tables heavily in Senator Kamala Harris' (D-CA) favor. Politico reports:
California is pushing forward with a plan to change the state’s primary date from June to March, a move that could scramble the 2020 presidential nominating contest and swing the early weight of the campaign to the west.

Democrats are still reeling from their historic electoral losses during the Obama era, particularly the loss of the White House in 2016.  They now appear to be increasingly coalescing behind single-payer as part of their "get back in power" strategy. Socialist senator and failed Democrat presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) peddled his inconceivably expensive "Medicare for all" throughout the 2016 presidential primaries.  Sanders himself refuses to address pesky questions about the cost or real-world viability of his socialist pipe-dream, but that hasn't stopped Democrats from seizing on the idea.

The mainstream media is at again: walking their well-worn propagandist path between fact and a fiction they hope seeps into public consciousness.  This time the target is Texas lawmakers who are requesting federal aid in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. The intent is to paint Republican lawmakers as "hypocrites" because they voted against the hideously pork-laden Hurricane Sandy relief package, yet are now requesting federal aid. As a quick reminder, the Sandy aid package included taxpayer money earmarked for Alaska fisheries, Amtrak "expenses," new vehicles for assorted federal agencies, and a range of other pork projects completely unrelated to the hurricane.