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By now, it's quite clear that Bob Mueller will take down Trump and his family and their minions for crimes committed against The United States and others. Chances are, there will be Congressmen and Senators too. My question of the day is this. Is America prepared to deal with the aftermath?
I feel like I am sitting at the confluence of 4 or 5 rivers, all flowing towards the same objective. What happens when they come together all at once? You have the white nationalists (the ones with most of the guns and most of the hatred), you now have a well educated group of young people wanting to "Take their guns", You have the Women's March army, and don't forget the Evangelicals. And you have Bob Mueller's team working diligently to bring out the facts as truths, not the fiction of Trolls and Russian Bots. Are we prepared as a nation to deal with the chaos that will occur when Trump is taken down, which he will be? There will be chaos in the White House, in the streets, in the Congress, and world-wide disruption of diplomacy. So much to deal with in a very short period of time. We have to start looking beyond Trump. We have to prepare for the dismantling and rebuilding of a proper government, which at this point is practically non-functional, except for the course being taken to destroy it. We have to prepare for civil clashes between opposing factions. Remember how little it took to start some of the biggest race riots of the past? This is much larger and more dangerous, and there will be guns involved. These people are meaner and angrier than ever before. Start thinking about it, America, because it's on your doorstep and knocking! Today I ask you, not as a Republican, not as a Democrat, but as a fellow citizen of the United States of America, Are you satisfied with the hateful way we are dealing with one another?
Do you enjoy calling one another hateful names, just to stroke your feelings of being left out of our political process. Do you not feel anything when children are slaughtered in their classrooms by high powered, high velocity rifles for no good reason, just so the NRA can sell more guns out of fear? Do you enjoy the transfer of all the wealth in this country going to the top 1%, while you are left to live one paycheck away from financial disaster? Do you enjoy having your health be a bargaining chip so that a pharmaceutical company can make obscene profits off of people in the process? Where your 401k's lose 10% overnight while some broker who knows how to game the system takes that 10% home with HIM? Do you enjoy making .02% interest on your savings so that you can never afford to honestly retire in some comfort, while the bankers run a casino with your money, making obscene profits for themselves? Do you want your rivers and parks polluted while national monuments are dismantled so the miners and oil and gas drillers can profit while destroying our environment? If these questions don't bother you and make you think of the big picture, then I don't necessarily hate you, but I feel sorry for you, because you will never see the beauty of America, it's people, Native Americans, blacks, browns, asians, whites, hispanics, and all others too numerous to mention. If you do nothing else today, ask yourself these questions and think of the many more questions I could ask, and ask why do I think this way. It may be enlightening! #Resist2018 dennismoconnor.com Dennis M O'Connor for Congress Maine 2nd District As I sit here tonight reading all the hate-filled comments about the students standing up against overwhelming odds to change the environment that they have to live in, it saddens me to think that there are so many narrow-minded people in this world. These children, (and they are still children in the pure sense of the word) are afraid. And they have every right to be so! You morons out there that think they are puppets spouting words written for them by people with anti-gun sentiments are just that, MORONS!
How would you react if you were subjected to hearing gunshots closing in on the room you are hiding in, seeing bodies of your friends and classmates falling around you, blood and brain matter spraying on the walls, wondering if you are next? I'm willing to bet you would be soiling your underwear in a not so flattering way. These young adults are traumatized, probably for life, wondering why their best friend died and they didn't. Don't for one minute minimize what they experienced in those 6 minutes, because you damn cowards wouldn't have the bravery that these children have shown to stand up the same day and days afterward challenging the status-quo and the asinine politicians who care about nothing except doing their masters bidding. Tuck your damn conspiracy comments and shove them back where they belong, in the dark ages! A father, grandfather, and great grandfather! #Resist2018 dennismoconnor.com I know I spend an inordinate amount of time reading online posts and comments. I do it for a reason. It's hard to put into words why I do it, but I'll try.
I can't help but notice that with all the trolls and bots out there trying to stir up hatred and divisiveness, people buy into their crap. By that I mean that for every post for or against something, someone always has a mean or degrading comment to counteract the post. Suffice to say, all of this is getting us nowhere. The foul language, the nasty comebacks, all the degrading comments are doing nothing but feeding into people's perceived opinions of our situation. You're being baited, and biting like a fish to a worm. There is no civility left in our society, because people are afraid, and they have every right to be so! Our system of government has reached the breaking point. I usually do not give in to fear, however my greatest fear is that we are past the tipping point with this administration. They are thieves and liars, getting as much as they can while they can, thinking that they will be on top when the shit hits the fan, not realizing that they will be the targets. We now are back on the gun debate, after the slaughter of 17 more innocents. It will not change! The NRA and it's 5 million members (mostly white supremacists) is another proud owner of our politicians. They will not allow you to "take their guns". I go back to 9/11. The ease with which 19 men and a couple million dollars crippled our country and changed all for the worse is a prime example of where we are today. All they did was fly 3 airplanes into buildings and the Americans gave up most rights to their privacy, costing us trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Russians played upon our distrust of one another to overtake our government, with a few million dollars and the internet, without firing a single shot. They didn't need more weaponry, they changed peoples opinions of one another and took over an entire country. The money people are all behind this, financing both sides in a never ending war. And we are paying the price! It's called PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE! Not terrorism, not war, but psychological war, and you are falling for it! Stop buying into this crap! Use what brain you may have to stop the anger and hatred of one another. Stop the foul language towards your fellow Americans and stop listening to the trolls. They're eating you for breakfast! #Resist2018 dennismoconnor.com Heading home in 2 weeks to get this show on the road! Make some maple syrup, get signatures on petitions, and organize for my walk across Maine. Hope to see all of you in the very near future!
I guess with the indictments now coming out that the Russians did, in fact, interfere with the 2016 elections, we can see now that many people were manipulated into believing that everyone else was against them.
I've asked many times why people do this, but I've come to the conclusion that most do it because of modern technology and it's ability to anonymously feed into their inherent biases and ideology. Remember what it was like just 20 years ago. If you are an average Republican, ( and I say that because not all will fit into what I am about to say ) you believe the hype about Big Government, baby killing, lazy blacks, gay abomination, women belonging in the home, guns are fun and our right, etc. You name it, you believe it! You have tunnel vision, in that you see a certain set of ideals and cannot deviate from them, for fear of seeming out of step with like believers. You wish to go back to earlier times, when whites were the majority, and you didn't have to listen to brown skinned people because you WERE the majority. Demographics have changed, but you are unwilling to change with them. Democrats on the other hand like to think they are forward looking, taking care of others less fortunate. But they too give in to the money brokers, because that's the only way they can be reelected. Most of our Congresspeople spend a good part of their days hitting up donors for contributions for the next election cycle, selling out in the meantime! There will be millions of dollars spent in the upcoming elections to maintain power in the house and senate, with the Koch Brothers alone pledging to spend $400,000,000 on the mid-terms. This country has been bought and sold by the wealthy and the multi-national corporations that can afford to spend what they want where they want and how they want. This is wrong, and it has basically killed fair representation by the general population. When we can't find a way to remove an illegitimate president from office before he destroys our country, with his complete and utter ignorance and hatred towards women and minorities. we are in deep trouble! And it's not going to stop until we stop it. When President Obama said before the election last year that this was the most important election in your life, he was right. Now look what we have become because you couldn't be bothered to cast a vote. You know who you are. We must overwhelm the polls this year like never before, and we must vote for persons who want the right changes to be made. Listen to what your candidates are saying and how they are saying it. Vet what you read or repost on FB and Twitter before you pass on false information. If their ads are nothing but negativity against others, ignore them, they're not worth your time. We need positive solutions to advance our society, not negativity to destroy it further. If we can't find a way to get along with one another, we don't deserve to be called the Greatest Nation On Earth. And at this point in time, we are not the greatest! This will be an open letter to the Congress, President of the United States and whoever else is responsible for protecting Americans from gun violence.
#1 Your thoughts and prayers and condolences mean absolutely nothing to the families whose lives are being ripped apart, whose family members are being slaughtered in what is now almost a daily occurrence of gun violence. We rant and rave about terrorism overseas, spend billions protecting our shores from terrorists, yet do NOTHING about domestic terrorism. Yesterday, 14 CHILDREN and 3 teachers died from bullets from the barrel of an AR-15 rifle in the hands of a 19 year old boy. Many more are injured and traumatized for life. Families like the Sandy Hook families, The Las Vegas families, the Columbine families and all the rest of the families are all victims of your inability to care about anything other than your own careers. You say guns don't kill, people do. Semantics aside, guns in the hands of people KILL! Say it any way you want to, it still ends up that guns in the hands of people KILL! You pass Stand Your Ground laws, basically justifying the ability to commit legal murder. You listen to ALEC instead of the people who put you in office to pass common-sense legislation to protect them. Unfortunately, the people don't have the resources and the money you do, so on and on it goes. The NRA tells you that people have the right to own any weapon they want because of the 2nd Amendment. I say BULLSHIT! They are called Assault Weapons for a reason, they are designed for maximum killing in the shortest period of time. #2 The NRA owns you and the people know it. How you sleep at night, I don't know. But I do know that unless you, and you alone, do something about banning assault weapons again, the killings will not cease. More children will die, probably this week. More families will bury their dead and grieve for the remainder of their lives because of that loss. Is this what you call responsibility? You have a known terrorist among you and you do nothing except take his money for the furtherance of your careers. I refer, of course, to Wayne LaPierre and the NRA. They claim to be the protector of peoples rights to own weapons. They are a TERRORIST organization and you are in their pockets. As far as gun ownership is concerned, I am a gun owner. I have guns for hunting and protection, but they hardly ever see the light of day, because I don't live in daily fear and I don't need to project my MANLINESS in the form of how big my weapon is. Others do! Complete and uniform background checks harm no one except those that should not own weapons. Institute them NOW! Close the gun show loopholes. AND BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS NOW! Buy back every one of them and destroy them or give them to our military where they belong. Dennis M O'Connor for Congress Maine 2nd District dennismoconnor.com I'm going to allow myself to sound old for just a little bit, but I feel it's necessary to prove a point. I was raised in the 50's and 60's, a time of prosperity for all. It was a time when unions were strong, workers were faithful to the company and the company was faithful to the workers, when you could raise a family with one member working and the other caring for the children, when if your company offered a pension, and you got it.
Today, we live in a different time, where there is no loyalty towards either side. The workers are struggling just to make a minimum wage in a service job, (or 2 or sometimes 3), with both parents working, where children are raised in daycare by minimum wage workers, not learning the bonds that we used to have, nor the values we used to live by. Today it's all about pursuing the almighty dollar, whether it be out of necessity to live or the want of as much as they can accumulate. It's dog eat dog! No more corporate loyalty and no more loyalty from workers because they have to pursue the buck to survive. Where the Financial, Pharmaceutical, Big Oil, and Walmart own all the money, leaving the scraps for the lowly workers, who are basically slaves to them. Most decent manufacturing jobs have been shipped off-shore to countries with cheap labor because it's better for shareholders bottom lines to produce elsewhere and ship it back to the states. And no matter how much money you throw at the corporations to bring those jobs back, they will not return. We used to be the most advanced manufacturing country in the world, no one better. Now, we are almost a third world country, hoping that someone will send US jobs that pay decent wages. Corporate America has become so strong and greedy that they own our government and will dictate the rules they wish to operate by, the average American be damned. If this is how you wish to live the rest of your life, have at it. I choose not to. The average Congress person, if they're not millionaires when they enter Congress, they are by the time they leave. Graft is rampant, because they know you won't kick them to the curb, You continue to elect the same people because, even though Congress has about a 7% approval rating overall, it's not MY rep or senator that's crooked, it's someone else's fault. I believe that unless we, as a country, elect persons that have values other than greed, we are doomed to the same scenario I have just described. We will not turn it around! People say 70 is too old, that our ideas are outmoded, that we don't understand how life really is. Well, I beg to differ with you. I have lived that life and I can't be bought! I care about the children and the less fortunate. I care about the disabled and the sick, and I'm telling you, we must find a better path or we are doomed to this type of life. If that's what you want, have at it. But I don't and I won't. Dennis O'Connor #Resist2018 dennismoconnor.com In the past week, I have started preparing for my walk in Maine. I have walked 20 miles in the past week and my legs feel good. No stress and little pain. I have also been doing laps in the pool for my upper body. Today I did 12 minute miles, so with that I know that by the time I do my walk, I will be in good shape.
I am looking forward to the temps warming up so that I can get started. Now I have to go out and solicit 2,000 signatures to get on the ballot. Any help with that would be greatly appreciated. I haven't started a fundraiser yet, but will probably have to in the next month. I don't need much, maybe a couple thousand dollars, so if anyone feels compelled to help in that, it too will be greatly appreciated. I will be back home in about 5 weeks, which should give me plenty of time to do what I want to do. Thanks to all for your thoughts and help. Dennis O'Connor #Resist2018 dennismoconnor.com I know it's time to start concentrating on my Maine audience, so this is what I plan to do and I can use all the help I can get.
First, I plan on doing a walk of about 400 miles, basically from Oxford to Bangor, across to Greeneville and down to Bethel and then home to Oxford. I would like to meet people and talk to them in whatever venue I can find, whether that be person to person or town halls or standing on a street corner. This is not about me! This is about the people who are getting the short end of the stick. This is about my great grandson and his and all other young children's future who at this point have no input into what their world will be. This is about people who are struggling to make ends meet, putting food on the table, getting a decent chance at an education, not dying because they can't afford to see a doctor. This is about fairness, whether it be equality in pay, equality in taxation, human rights, fair elections, women's right to determine their own destiny, opioid addiction, fear of dying in a routine traffic stop. There is so much wrong I can't even begin to list it all. I just know we can and must do better. I am a problem solver, have been all my life. I know when I see injustice, unfairness, greed and avarice. I will never tell you that I have all the answers to all that infects our society, I'm not that foolish. But I do know that not seeing others problems or ignoring them when I do see them is a major part of the failing of our system. I was raised and lived my life having to do for myself, with very little resources until I was about 50. My wife of 39 years and I managed to raise a blended family of 4 to be productive human beings. I even remember using the blocks of cheese and canned meat when I first started out in my first marriage, because we had little. But I'm not ashamed, and no one should ever feel ashamed because they need help. Secondly, I would like to meet with the employers of Maine and work a day in their shoes, to see firsthand the problems they face. One can never understand why things are the way they are without seeing them. Again, I stood with the women at both last years and this years marches, in DC and Philadelphia, which gave me the inspiration to do this. I also went to DC for the Climate March last year. I care that we are destroying our home planet because of greed. I do not know whether I will be successful in this journey, but I do know if I don't at least try I will feel that I did not give it my best shot. I appreciate all who will stand with me to try to change our politics for the better, because change may be slow, but it will never happen if we don't try Thank you all, Dennis M. O'Connor #Resist2018 dennismoconnor.com my website So now the fool wants a grand military parade with tanks and such! This is not China, North Korea, or Russia, where they brag about who's got the most troops or biggest weapons (wink,wink). Just who in the hell does he think he is?
This has got to stop! They give huge boosts to military spending, which we cannot afford, a trillion dollar tax cut to the wealthy, which they don't need, and now he wants to have a grand military parade! Bullshit! How about feeding the poor, helping the homeless, add the remaining people who don't have healthcare, fix our roads and bridges, which are rapidly failing, get off of fossil fuels and invest in renewable energy. So much that absolutely needs to be done and that idiot wants a military parade to feed his ego! Are you good with this? He, the Congress and the Corporations are ripping this country to the core and we can't stop them? Bullshit! Am I angry? You're damn right! Do I feel I can do something about it? You're damn right! I may be only one person, but I still have a very intelligent brain, and I intend to use it. I will need help, but I would like to be that rare voice against the corruption in our government! Everyone in the past few days has been talking about the stock market. The stock market is a personal casino, with brokers and hedge fund managers making fortunes off of everyone else's losses. Making fortunes off of a huge tax scam, while everyone else scratches for the scraps. Are you, the 30% who voted for that idiot ever going to see what he's doing to you or do you just ignore the obvious because you don't want to see it and lose your belief in the fool? It's not enough that he gets to fly in his Yuuge Jetplane to Mar A Lago, costing millions each time, but now he will spend millions on a parade? Get real! This man is sick! #Resist2018 dennismoconnor.com I know I talk a lot about what I think is wrong and what needs to be done to correct it. Believe it or not, I do read a lot of posts and comments, including the hateful rhetoric spewed out by trolls and trumpers.
Tonight I want to ask several questions. #1 If given a choice, what would you do to make things any better for all, including yourself? #2 Why are you so hateful towards others that you have never met ( and never will, for that matter) just because they have darker skin than you or speak a different language than you? Just how does that threaten you? How does a gay or trans person threaten you? If you're black, brown, Asian, Mexican, Native American or any other so-called race, how does that personally threaten you? The Native Americans did not know the language of the early Europeans ( who also happened to have a different skin color than them ) but accepted them in many cases and helped them to survive long enough to be slaughtered and demonized by them! Why do Caucasians of European descent always feel they are superior to all others simply because they have pink skin? Where does this inbred hatred come from, other than being taught from birth how to hate and discriminate? The white race is no more superior to any other race than any other race is superior to us. Individuals may be superior because they have dedicated themselves to making themselves more knowledgeable, but we are all part of what's called "THE HUMAN RACE". We have had a wonderful thing going, called LIFE, which we are in the process of destroying, either through greed or ignorance, take your choice. Either way, we are headed the direction of the dinosaurs if we don't change our ways. If you do nothing else in life, look in a mirror and ask yourself "why am I so hateful?" It just may save you from yourself! Have a great day ! What is it with this obsession of accumulating billions of dollars, just to let it sit and accumulate more? Power! From the viewpoint of someone who raised 2 families and probably never earned more than $30,000 a year, I find it selfish, greedy, and just downright ridiculous. How much is enough? I saw where one person spent $40,000,000 on one custom made Bugatti car. Why?
We are now in the grips of a very few who's greed and lust for power is destabilizing the entire world order. We have people sitting on billions while others starve to death. And they are never satisfied. They go to fancy retreats together to plot more ways of making our lives miserable. Our Congress gives a tax cut to these people, saying it will "trickle down to the masses". It never has and never will! Then they immediately turn around and say we must cut spending, because we don't have the money to feed children, repair bridges and roads, help citizens in times of disaster. Why? What have we become as a people? We are better than this, we always have been. We used to care about our neighbors, now we are so divided we don't see each other as human, we are just numbers on a spread sheet. Why do we allow this to continue? This upcoming election is about the average citizen, how we as a group can make our lives more enjoyable and healthier. It has to be! We have an opioid crisis because Big Pharma won't stop the delivery of addicting drugs to pill mills. The government takes away the ability of law enforcement to stop them. Why? We have poverty because young people are not getting the education they need to survive in a world advancing so quickly we can't keep up. They have trillions in debt that probably will never be paid back, just to get an education that by the time they finish, is obsolete. You have PHD's flipping burgers to survive. Why? We have an incarceration rate higher than anywhere else in the world, tilted towards minorities. Why? We are falling behind the rest of the world in science and innovation because of trade and immigration policies. The brightest minds no longer want to come to America because of hatred towards minorities or religious intolerance. There is no more light at the end of the tunnel for a large percentage of our population. We will not survive if this continues. We must, as a people, do better. We must elect people who are not among the millionaire class! We can do it if people will believe again that we can. A movement started in DC last year, and this year it is still going strong. But we must make it stronger. I saw it and felt it, because I was there last year and again this year. I saw and felt the beauty of hundreds of thousands standing together in unity! If we are ever to take back the levers of government, we must stand together and be willing to fight this cancer, before it gets us all killed. #Resist2018 Thanks for reading. Dennis O'Connor |
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