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DCCC releases 2019 Thanksgiving dinner talking points

Thanksgiving dinner table, before the political food fight

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has released a humorous, menu-style set of talking points for Democrats to respond to that Republican blowhard who seems to spout off at everyone’s Thanksgiving dinner. The talking points, which can be found in this .pdf, are entitled “Know Your Stuffing.” Each subject has a cute Thanksgiving dinner theme, complete with food graphics, and is designed as a response to a Republican rant, since they always seem to be the ones who bring up these political subjects at the holiday table. For example, there is “Aunt Mary’s ‘There Was No Quid-Pie-Quo,'” described as “a crust so flaky, it falls apart the moment you present it with evidence.” Responses to this talking point are listed under “What to Bring,” and include:

  1. Multiple members of the Trump administration have testified before Congress there was a quid pro quo agreement with Ukraine.
  2. Trump himself—in a memo he released—admitted he withheld aid from Ukraine until they dug up dirt on his political opponents.

Both of these responses even include footnotes to reputable sources for this information.

Devin Nunes melts down at Trump impeachment inquiry hearing

Republicans defending Trump: melted butter, toast, or both?

Yesterday morning, the House Intelligence Committee held another Donald Trump impeachment inquiry hearing, this time with Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. To say the hearing did not go well for Trump and the Republicans is an understatement. For example, Sondland admitted that  “everyone was in the loop” regarding Donald Trump’s demand that Ukraine‘s president provide “deliverables,” meaning helping Trump personally by investigating phony conspiracies about Joe Biden, Biden’s son Hunter, and the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential election efforts, in exchange for a meeting with Trump and crucial military aid for Ukraine that Congress had already approved.

The devastation that Republicans on the Committee must have been feeling was perfectly captured in this bit of video that is part of the tweet below, showing Republican Ranking Member Devin Nunes painfully turning to his side’s counsel after one segment of Sondland’s testimony:

Mind you, Sondland is not some Democratic Party hack. On the contrary, he is a real estate businessman who in recent years has been a Republican Party donor and bundler of contributions to Republican candidates such as Willard Mitt Romney. Sondland, through his companies, donated $1 million to Donald Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee, and then received his ambassadorship in return.

Watching Devin Nunes’ reaction to Sondland’s testimony, we can’t help but be reminded of a similar meltdown by a well-known TV character in similar circumstances:

Photo by Sterling College, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/xvdQhy

No surprise as mainstream media fall short in Trump impeachment coverage

Protesters share their opinion on Donald Trump impeachment

While many mainstream media outlets have aired the Donald Trump impeachment hearings that began in the U.S. House on Wednesday, the commentary by some of the media afterward was cringeworthy. Special mention goes to NBC News and Reuters, who faulted the hearings for not being scintillating enough. According to NBC News:

Reuters followed up with “Consequential, but dull: Trump impeachment hearings begin without a bang.” Sadly, this is the kind of circus coverage that we have come to expect from our news media.

After election defeats, will Republicans finally abandon Trump?

Virginia Beach voting sticker

Yesterday, Republicans suffered stunning election losses in Kentucky and Virginia. In Kentucky, Democratic state Attorney General Andy Beshear defeated incumbent Republican Governor Matt Bevin to become the new Governor-elect (Bevin thus far has refused to concede the election). Bevin’s defeat is a major embarrassment for Donald Trump, who, on Monday night, held a rally in Kentucky’s second-largest city, Lexington, and pleaded with the audience to prevent a Democratic win in the state, saying, “You can’t let that happen to me!”

In Virginia, Democrats won the majority in the State House of Delegates and the State Senate, to go along with their Democratic Governor. This marks the first time in 26 years that Virginia has had a unified Democratic state government, which may well be a continuation of the “Blue Wave” that swept Democrats into the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections. One of the issues for Virginia voters yesterday was gun violence, after 12 people were killed in a mass shooting in Virginia Beach last May. Republican lawmakers in Virginia, as well as nationally, have dragged their feet on or even blocked taking common-sense steps proposed by Democrats to reduce gun violence. The voters may have signaled that they have had enough.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg testifies before House of Representatives

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before the U.S. House Financial Services Committee yesterday. The title of the hearing was: An Examination of Facebook and its Impact on the Financial Services and Housing Sectors. As we recently indicated, Messaging Matters has pulled the plug and stopped using Facebook, due to a combination of Facebook’s data mining business model, its history of user data breaches, and its pro-Republican bent. The rest of America is not likely to take much comfort after what was heard yesterday.

Unplugging from Republican-leaning Facebook

Turning off Facebook

In the very first Messaging Matters post, nearly nine years ago, we wrote: “Republicans have placed a ‘matrix’ over this country” with the help of “news media [that] are largely controlled by giant corporations,” as well as an organized Republican “messaging machine.” Based on recent revelations, it turns out that Facebook is part of this Republican machine too. As a result, we’re unplugging from the Facebook matrix.

House impeachment hearing galvanizes media and public attention

U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff

The U.S. House of Representatives has wasted no time after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump on Tuesday. Yesterday, the House Intelligence Committee held a public hearing featuring Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. The subject of the hearing, which was carried on virtually all of the cable TV news channels plus C-SPAN, was the just-released Whistleblower complaint against Trump, his attorney Rudolph Giuliani, U.S. Attorney General William Barr, and possibly others.

The Whistleblower complaint alleges that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zolensky to investigate activities of Joe Biden and his son Hunter, in return for U.S. military aid to Ukraine, and then sought to hide the record of Trump’s phone call, as well as Trump’s calls with other foreign leaders, on a separate, secret electronic server. The complaint contains other related allegations as well, and, for some members of Congress, was apparently the last straw that influenced them to support the House formal impeachment inquiry. Just this week, the slowly building stream of House members supporting the impeachment inquiry became a waterfall, jumping by some 75 to reach 218, the majority number needed to vote to impeach Trump or other federal officials.

Top Democratic presidential candidates debate each other for first time

Aspen Times article on Democratic presidential debate

Last night, the top 10 candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination debated each other for the first time at Texas Southern University, a historically black university in Houston, TX. The debate was hosted jointly by ABC and Univision television networks, and featured Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Andrew Yang, Beto O’Rourke, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and Julian Castro. In their two previous debates, up to 20 Democratic candidates were included, but that was over two separate nights for each debate, so that the top candidates according to the polls (especially Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren) had not faced each other directly. The debate also had a couple of very notable moments, not coincidentally from candidates who are quite far down in the polls:

Democrats go on offense at CNN “Climate Crisis” town hall

Earth on fire

CNN aired a seven-hour marathon town hall on the “Climate Crisis” yesterday evening. The event featured the top 10 presidential candidates for the Democratic Party nomination, chosen using the Democratic Party’s criteria for its presidential debates.

The first CNN host of the evening, Wolf Blitzer, mentioned Hurricane Dorian in the first sixty seconds of the town hall, and he and the subsequent hosts returned to current reports about the hurricane during the program. Most questions came from the audience, both those in the room and others via satellite from various locations. Many of the questioners were environmental activists, students, or academics, and most such questions were very specific and pointed.

Here are some of the highlights of what each candidate, in order of appearance, had to say:

When it comes to gaffes, Donald Trump lowers the bar to the ground

Cartoon of Donald Trump clashing with Megyn Kelly at August 2015 debate

Republicans, as expected, are attacking the leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. Given that Joe Biden has been the Democratic front-runner essentially since the day he announced his candidacy, and indeed, beats Donald Trump in head-to-head match-up polls, Biden naturally is a target for many of these Republican assaults. The current line of GOP attack against Biden is that he makes “gaffes,” i.e. honest statements that politicians don’t always make, or misstatements using a wrong word, phrase or information. However, there are two big problems with this Republican attack on Biden: first, Biden has had the reputation of making gaffes for many years, and to a lot of voters, it adds to his likeability and authenticity. Second, and even more problematic for Republicans, Donald Trump has so lowered the bar with his own horrible history of misstatements, shocking statements, and outright lies, that he has negated any “gaffe” issue for Biden.