Pelosi strides into Wednesday’s House Democratic Caucus elections with her head held high, and her high heels on [Seth] Moulton’s neck. She remains without a Democratic challenger. She has unleashed a wave of support from the Democratic faithful, from Barack Obama on down. She turned two of Moulton’s allies who had, just days before, stated their opposition to her. A third opponent suggested he’ll vote for Pelosi on the floor if no other Democratic option emerges. And she has kept several other Serve America PAC alumni from jumping aboard Moulton’s rickety bandwagon. While Pelosi isn’t completely in the clear for the final vote on January 3 on the House floor—with Moulton clinging to 14 fellow holdouts and eight other Democrats in the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus playing hard to get—she unquestionably holds the whip hand.
Dumping a historic figure like Pelosi, the first female speaker, after she weathered a Republican blitzkrieg to help her party win back the House, was always going to be a tall order. (And don’t say I didn’t warn them!) But Moulton’s operation has been, to borrow some military jargon, FUBAR. He’s poised to not only lose his battle with the party establishment, but to lose in such humiliating fashion that it could ruin his reputation and douse whatever presidential fires may be burning in his belly.
Just how did he botch this so badly? Let us count the ways…
Military recruits enter the chamber one by one and don protective masks. Tear gas swirls. Then, the order: Take off your mask and breathe. Eyes well and throats tighten, and men and women training for war uncontrollably gag.
Nearly every uniform is coated in snot. Some recruits vomit.
The exercise demonstrates to troops that their equipment works. It also shows, in a visceral way, what happens if an enemy targets U.S. forces with an agent such as tear gas, commonly known as CS gas — an aerosol compound considered a chemical weapon that has been outlawed on the battlefield by nearly every nation on Earth, including the United States.
But as a riot-control agent, 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile is legal to use by both police and federal authorities in the United States and many other countries.
On Sunday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents fired the chemical agent at mostly Honduran migrants attempting to cross into the United States from Tijuana, Mexico — an unusual escalation of lobbing weapons over an international border at unarmed civilians seeking refuge, drawing condemnation from Democrats.
“I felt that my face was burning, and my baby fainted. I ran for my life and that of my children,” Cindy Milla, a Honduran migrant with two children, told the Wall Street Journal…
Chemical weapons such as CS gas are indiscriminate and “uniquely terrorizing in their application,” which necessitated their ban in combat in 1993, said Kelsey Davenport, director of nonproliferation policy at the Washington-based Arms Control Association.
Once launched in a volley or thrown into an area, chemical weapons cannot be controlled and can drift toward people who are not targets, Davenport told The Washington Post on Monday.
Sebastion Cooper 