Beto O’Rourke, first to reject invitation from right wing religious group
Pete Buttigieg has joined Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker on the growing list of Democratic presidential candidates who have turned down invitations from right wing religious group The Family Leader to speak at their September 2019 summit in Iowa. Booker released a statement explaining his rejection of the invitation:
The Family Leader describes its mission as:
Strengthen families, by inspiring Christ-like leadership in the home, the church, and the government.
More specifically, the group states that it attempts to:
Protect and defend family values by influencing public policy, campaigns, and elections.
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2020 Elections, abortion, Beto O'Rourke, Chabad of Poway, Christian, Cory Booker, Democrats, Donald Trump, Evangelical, Faithful America, Franklin Graham, gay marriage, marriage equality, Pete Buttigieg, Poway, religion, Republicans, synogogue shooting, The Family Leader, Twitter
Sign from July 2, 2017 Impeachment March
One of the biggest political events to take place last week was U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren‘s announcement that, after reading the Mueller Report, she believes that the U.S. House “should initiate impeachment proceedings” against Donald Trump. Here is Warren’s tweet containing this announcement, which Warren reiterated during subsequent tweets and television interviews:
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2020 Elections, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, CNN, Congress, Democrats, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren, Eric Swalwell, House, impeachment, Kamala Harris, Mueller Report, Nancy Pelosi, Republicans, Robert Mueller, Russia, Senate, Trump
Tax returns, now a presidential campaign issue
House Democrats yesterday formally requested Donald Trump‘s 2013 through 2018 personal tax returns, as well as the tax returns of eight Trump business entities, from the Internal Revenue Service. At the same time, an increasing number of Democratic presidential candidates have already released multiple prior years of tax returns, but U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders remains the outlier.
The reason for requesting presidential candidates’ tax returns comes down to one word: transparency. According to McClatchy DC, “[t]he returns provide voters a look into the personal finances and charitable contributions of candidates and gives insight into whether he or she has any potential conflicts of interest.” Paraphrasing Joseph Thorndike, author and Director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts, McClatchy indicates that, “[w]ithout the full returns, voters can’t see such items as sources of income, which tax breaks they claimed, what they might have deducted as business expenses or how much they gave to charity.” Accordingly, while releasing tax returns is not required by law, it has become a tradition for presidential candidates to do so since Richard Nixon in the early 1970s.
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2016 Elections, 2020 Elections, Bernie Sanders, Democrats, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, IRS, Republicans, Richard Nixon, Russia, tax returns, taxes
House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
Republicans are having some major difficulties with former Donald Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen‘s testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform yesterday. Cohen sat for over 7 hours, giving testimony about the workings of the Trump Organization that was riveting, and at times stunning. Notably, the committee Republicans rarely if ever attacked Cohen’s specific allegations about Trump wrongdoings and illegal acts. Instead, they, and Republicans in the media and elsewhere, simply painted Cohen as “a liar” based on his guilty plea in two previous cases, one of which involves scheming with Donald Trump to cover up hush money payments to porn star Stephanie Clifford a/k/a Stormy Daniels, as well as lying for Trump about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Apparently, these Republicans realize that they face the following problems regarding Michael Cohen:
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Leave a comment! Tags: Allen Weisselberg, Congress, Democrats, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Michael Cohen, Moscow, Mueller, Republicans, Russia, Stephanie Clifford, Stormy Daniels, Trump Tower
Twitter, source of trouble for some politicians
Democratic U.S. Congresswoman Ilan Omar of Minnesota got herself into hot water this week after she sent the following tweets regarding Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy‘s call for her and another Democratic Congresswoman to be admonished over their criticism of Israel:
https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1094747501578633216
https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1094761790595088384
Omar’s tersely expressed view that U.S. support of Israel is only a result of money, and her mention of lobbying group AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) in response to the query “who thinks is paying American politicians to be pro-Israel,” angered a number of Americans. Many of those who were upset (including members of Congress) accused Omar of raising age-old anti-Semitic tropes regarding Jewish money as an instrument of global domination. On Monday, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders called on Omar to apologize for her tweets. Within hours, Omar issued an apology which mentioned “colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes.”
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Leave a comment! Tags: AIPAC, Congress, Democrats, Donald Trump, Ilan Omar, Israel, Jewish, Kevin McCarthy, lobbying, Nancy Pelosi, narrative, Republicans, Twitter
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
For the past two months, Democratic U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has figured out the secret of dealing with Donald Trump: treat him like the toddler that he is. The results have been remarkable. First, on December 11 of last year, Pelosi cleaned Trump’s clock in a televised Oval Office meeting that also included Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and a silent Vice President Mike Pence. Pelosi called Trump’s threatened government shutdown the “Trump Shutdown,” and even dared Trump to ask for a vote in Congress on his desired border wall. The Trump Shutdown label stuck, and angry voters punished Trump and the Republicans for their failure to keep the federal government open despite controlling all of its branches.
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Leave a comment! Tags: abortion, border security, border wall, Chuck Schumer, climate change, Democrats, Donald Trump, environment, George Lakoff, Green New Deal, healthcare, illegal immigration, immigration, Medicare for all, Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, Politico, Republicans, State of the Union, Trump Shutdown, U.S. House, White House
Previous effort to boycott Starbucks over anti-labor practices
Howard Schultz, former CEO of Starbucks Coffee and still its largest individual shareholder, has been getting lots of free airtime this week as he mulls a presidential campaign. Schultz claims to be a “centrist Independent,” but in his free media appearances, he spends his time bashing the Democratic Party. For example, he criticizes “people [obviously Democrats] espousing free government-paid college, free government-paid health care and a free government job for everyone.” Likewise, in another free media appearance, Schultz criticized freshman Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez‘s proposal for a 70 percent marginal tax rate on income over $10 million. Additionally, Schultz, as CEO of Starbucks, thwarted labor efforts to unionize the company, again while trying to portray his goals as some centrist “third way” alternative. In reality, Schultz with his Drip-Down Economics sounds just like another billionaire Republican to us.
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2020 Elections, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrats, Donald Trump, healthcare, Howard Schultz, labor, Never Trump, Republicans, Starbucks, taxes, unions, William Kristol
Protests against the Trump Shutdown
As the Trump Shutdown of the federal government drags on, and the polls continue to blame Trump and the Republicans, the pressure will eventually become too great on the GOP. They will have to cave to the Democrats (who now have majority control in the House of Representatives), both on Trump’s desired border wall, and the untenable idea that Trump could shut down the federal government because he hasn’t gotten his way on the wall. So now the question is, how will Trump and the Republicans cave without appearing to capitulate to the Democrats, which would cause great anger among the Republican base? The answer is likely to turn on interpretations of the terms “wall,” “fence” and “border security.”
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Leave a comment! Tags: border wall, Chuck Schumer, Congress, Democrats, Donald Trump, government shutdown, House of Representatives, immigration, immigration reform, Nancy Pelosi, Republicans, Trump Shutdown, wall
Sign indicating Washington, D.C. national park land and monuments closed due to Trump Shutdown
When you have the facts on your side, and you communicate them in an effective and dynamic way, it’s good policy and good politics. That is the situation the Democrats are in regarding the current U.S. government shutdown. Democrats have correctly labeled it the “Trump Shutdown.”
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2016 election, border wall, Chuck Schumer, Congress, Democrats, Donald Trump, government shutdown, immigration, Mexico, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Republicans, Trump Shutdown
Trump/Russia, one area where Republicans are on the defensive
Republicans know the importance of going on offense. For years, we’ve heard Republicans, from Donald Trump to Fox News talking heads to your right wing Uncle Charlie at the dinner table, begin conversations by asking loaded political attack questions against the Democrats. The topics of these questions range from immigration (“what about that caravan that’s coming to invade us?”) to the Obamas (“a terrorist fist jab?”) to the Republicans’ favorite target, Hillary Clinton (“did she use a private email server to cover up Benghazi?”) and more. As the Republicans know, when you hit your opponent with these attack questions, you frame the issue and put them on the defensive to explain why they, their party or their politicians aren’t so bad. At that point, as Willard Mitt Romney and others have stated, “if you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
But now the tables have turned. Trump/Russia and other criminal investigations are closing around Donald Trump and his family, leading to lots of deflection, excuses and explanations by Trump and the Republicans. Donald Trump’s own Twitter feed is an excellent gauge of his worry level, and right now, Trump is doing lots of desperate explaining. This is a great time for Democrats to go on offense, and ask their Republican friends the questions that will put Republicans on defense for a change. Here are some questions that you can use as conversation starters with the Republicans in your life:
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Leave a comment! Tags: caravan, Democrats, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Fox News, Ivanka Trump, Melania Trump, Nancy Pelosi, NRA, Pizzagate, Republicans, Trump recession, Trump/Russia, Twitter
