DNC raises eyebrows for snubbing Tulsi Gabbard from 2020 'unity' ad featuring other candidates

"Unity is what this moment in history demands of us right now because the stakes have never been higher. As Democrats, we know there is so much more that unites us than divides us. And next year, we have the opportunity to make sure that our shared values are represented."

However, many observers noticed other 2020 candidates were missing from the ad, primarily Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii.

Critics pointed out how the ad included Deval Patrick, who polled at 0 percent in the latest Fox News poll.

"So Deval Patrick gets included [but] @TulsiGabbard does not?" The Hill chief Washington correspondent Saagar Enjeti asked.

"Strange, a certain woman of color is missing from this video," journalist Michael Tracey reacted.

"Democrats come together in 'Unity' to exclude Tulsi," The Nation contributor Aaron Maté tweeted.

 

Biden says he won't comply with Senate subpoena in Trump's impeachment trial
By Louis Casiano | Fox News

Former Vice President Joe Biden said Friday that he would not comply with a subpoena to testify in the Senate impeachment trial against President Trump, should one be issued to him.

Any testimony from the 2020 Democratic contender for the White House before the Senate would draw attention away from Trump's alleged wrongdoing and would effectively let the president off the hook, Biden claimed in an interview with the editorial board of the De Moines Register in Iowa.

"What are you going to cover?” Biden said to Register Executive Editor Carol Hunter in response to a question about the possibility of his participation in the trial. “You guys are going to cover for three weeks anything that I said. And (Trump’s) going to get away."


Video
"You guys buy into it all the time. Not a joke …" he added. "Think what it’s about. It's all about what he does all the time, his entire career. Take the focus off. This guy violated the Constitution. He said it in the driveway of the White House. He acknowledged he asked for help.”

The Democrat-controlled House impeached Trump earlier this month for "abuse of power" and "obstruction of Congress" related to his dealings with Ukraine. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has yet to deliver the articles of impeachment to the Senate.



Democrats have accused Trump of planning to withhold military aid from Ukraine until he could secure the promise of a public announcement from the country that it would investigate the business dealings there of Biden and his son Hunter Biden. Trump has denied that his July phone conversation with Ukraine's president involved any such quid pro quo.

Trump and the Republicans, meanwhile, have asserted that Biden and his son have largely escaped scrutiny for their past involvement in Ukraine, and have accused the American media of downplaying the Bidens' story.



Biden rejected that argument during a public appearance last weekend.

"No one’s taken as much heat and as many lies thrown at them as I have," Biden said during a campaign stop in Ottumwa on Dec. 20, "but again, this is not about me. It’s not about my family. It’s about the nation. And we have to reach out and unify this country."

Biden said any attempts to subpoena him would be on “specious” grounds, adding that he expected it wouldn't happen.

 

Would that be the same as ''Contempt of Congress', the very unconstitutional charge that Trump is being impeached for?

 

Trump is president and not subservient to Congress. Biden on the other hand is a private citizen and doesn't have the same kind of immunity.

Biden is a fool in the Democrat criminal organization. No telling what will come out of his mouth should he ever be brought before the Senate to answer questions.

 

There is a criminal law that prohibits folks from ignoring a Congressional subpoena.

 

Methinks: @TulsiGabbard is making a politically (disingenuous) rhetorical point to distinguish herself from the current field of Dem-MeToo narrative of thinking. Humpty-Dumpty US-Society has been broken past its cohesive ideals since Reagan's 'Morning in America'
Quote Tweet

Raw Story
@RawStory
· 3h
Tulsi Gabbard: Impeaching Trump can cause ‘lasting damage’ to America https://rawstory.com/2019/12/tulsi-

 

Just to point out the obvious if Trump and his administration doesn't have to comply with any subpoenas why should Joe Biden have to?

Trump in danger of losing Midwestern state in 2020 election that he won overwhelmingly in 2016: report

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/12/tr...on-that-he-won-overwhelmingly-in-2016-report/

 

2020 Democratic Hopefuls shouldn't be taking their cues from the Corporate media that would support many of those Trumpian policies if they could find a neo-Lib-Dem voice willing to triangulate similar policies. From the corporate media's white-or-black exploitation dramas and comedies, if not the militaristic cop shows that pander to the fears of the more remote eventualities; to the Technology data pirates whose devices snitch the data of our living for sale out to all sorts of demographic manipulators: neither want their profits disturbed.

They use the free market entrepreneurial spirit myth, as falsely as their right-wing counterparts use morality and the flag, both to cover-n-conceal the hypocrisy of their operations that that undermine and break the rules and spirits, if not the laws of those mythical narratives. In reality, the Mom and Pop biz's they hail (OBTW, many of which are started by immigrants due to their own employment challenges and aspirations viz. low-wage, long-hour employers who offer nothing better than the immigrants could do for themselves) face the same IRS winnowing that the big boys can afford to get away w/their in-budget contingencies to account for such nuisances that cover their misdeeds of the present and those former prosecutors and regulators they can hire in the future, while the small biz's have only the late-night tax relief commercials as "help".

For those left (figuratively and literally) in the middle and working class whose productivity goes under-paid in scraps off the profit table of their employers, there is the much frustrated "HOPE" of equity and justice offered in platitudes by the corporate triangulators that is still desired to be fulfilled by a people's populist, than a corporate special interest populist. Those needs are found in the obits, police logs, foreclosure sales, money stores, and bankruptcies. There are more of them and growing, than the latter-day bougie crowd whose sense of equity is no greater than their dilettante concerns being mouthed solely for anything but sacrifice by them or those whose insular perspective on life has been rudely and indifferently disrupted to the point of no return by any path by their former ways of being..

Bernie is not so radical or Liz Warren-Julian Castro-Marianne Williamson not so quixotic from the fols who KNOW that their fate has been shown in the figurative canary mines abroad in India, China, economically, or Turkey or Brazil politically.. It's more than some academic argument, but the struggle of their ives and their kids' and future posterity's physical existence. There's more of us world-wide than those extolling the operators of amoral profiting.

 

Mayor Pete, a Rhodes Scholar-at that, in his explanation for the continuation of slavery by the Constitution framers (https://twitter.com/i/status/1211133817093840896) that wouldn't make the smell test of an AP American History course. Pandering to those in White America in denial of the legacy results

“Were not the disadvantages of slavery too obvious to stand in need of it, I might enumerate and describe the tedious train of calamities inseparable from it. I might show that it is fatal to religion and morality” - A. Hamilton, one of the “people who wrote the Constitution” https://twitter.com/RzstProgrammin

 

Protestor Yells at ‘Pervert’ Biden Not to Creepily Touch Kids
Posted at 3:46 pm on December 30, 2019 by Alex Parker



Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden pays for his order at a Krispy Kreme following a campaign town hall on Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2019, in Spartanburg, S.C. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)





On Sunday, former VP Joe Biden got called out from the crowd at a campaign rally with hardly the nicest of accusations.

The protestor yelled at Joe to stop touching kids. Furthermore, he called the Democratic contender a “pervert.”


You can’t see the guy in the video, but Joe’s response is in plain view.

Biden and the dude went back and forth for a bit.

The man seemed to yell something to the effect of, “I saw you touching 6- and 8-year-olds. It’s on video!”

“That’s okay. This is not a Trump rally,” Biden replied.

Then Joe spoke over his heckling a bit:

“Alright. Nice talking to you.”


Andy Ngo

✔@MrAndyNgo

“Don’t touch kids, you pervert!” shouted a heckler to Joe Biden at his NH campaign event.






The crowd member tossed out a few more indecipherable lines, one ending with “Never again!”

Then came the humdinger:

“Don’t touch kids, you pervert!”

The guy continued, as an off-camera lady countered, “Get out!”

“Well, ya know, this is a democracy,” Joe said.

No word on exactly what that meant.

I have no comment on the “pervert” part of it, but I’ll say this: The guy sure has a reeeeal strange affectionate way — and it’s even more odd, given that his job involves winninng favor with the public.

Seems like he coulda kept his tender ways out from in front of the cameras.

What’s the deal with all the PDA? I can’t help but wince when I see it:



As I covered here, the erstwhile senator apologized previously for his cozy lovin’ ways:


Joe Biden

✔@JoeBiden

Social norms are changing. I understand that, and I’ve heard what these women are saying. Politics to me has always been about making connections, but I will be more mindful about respecting personal space in the future. That’s my responsibility and I will meet it.




165K
12:57 PM - Apr 3, 2019
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54.8K people are talking about this





But then this happened:


Wojciech Pawelczyk @PolishPatriotTM

So he did it again#Biden2020




What the hot-lips heck?!

And there was this:


If Biden makes it to the White House, I imagine our relationship with North Korea — not to mention other nations led by less-than-amorous officials — taking an immediate — uh — nosedive. Despite Trump’s previous progress with a summit, I don’t see Kim Jong-un putting himself within a hundred yards of getting a smooch on the forehead, an eskimo kiss, a left-to-right nuzzle, and a soft sweep of the armpit from Sweet Caress Joe.

-ALEX

 

'Uncle Joe' represents the banal side of insidious behavior that undermines the liberty and expressions of others whom he "affectionately" gropes at his prerogative or the more expansively tangible effects by the policies and laws he took as his entitled status to do..
He's been indoctrinated and trained to a natural tendencies (LIKE OTHER SEPTUAGENARIANS), so I don't expect a Damascus Road conversion in his behavior politically or personally by his election.

 

So you admit Trump is a corrupt dictator. Glad you finally admitted you believe Trump is above the law.

Biden Backtracks On Refusal To Testify In Impeachment Trial, Says He’ll ‘Obey Any Subpoena’

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/...impeachment-trial-says-hell-obey-any-subpoena

 

Poll Shows Trump Defeating Democratic Frontrunners
Posted at 9:30 pm on December 30, 2019 by Jeff Charles


President Donald Trump points to supporters after speaking at his Black Voices for Trump rally Friday, Nov. 8, 2019, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)



A new survey presents some bad news for the Democrats in 2020. According to a Zogby Analytics poll released on Sunday, President Donald Trump’s chances for re-election are looking positive. The study shows that he is leading Democratic frontrunners in hypothetical matchups.

The poll was conducted during December 5 – 8 and analyzed 865 likely voters. Former Vice President Joe Biden did the best against Trump but still fell slightly short of victory. The poll showed that the president beat Biden 46% to 45%. Biden still has an advantage among women, minorities, and young voters. But Trump has an edge with millennials.


When it comes to independents, Trump has the narrowest of leads over the former vice president at 41% to 40%. Both candidates have vital leads with various demographics.



The poll also shows Trump beating Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in a general election contest 47% to 45%. The self-proclaimed democratic socialist beats Trump with younger voters at 53% to 37%. But Trump is ahead of Sanders with union voters at 48% to 42%.

The president also beats Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) 47% to 43%, with Warren leading among women at a smaller margin than the other Democratic frontrunners. Interestingly enough, both Biden and Sanders appeal to female voters against Trump than Warren. But she is doing favorably with Hispanics and black Americans.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who has gained traction recently, loses to Trump with a 45% to 41% split. Newcomer and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg loses 44% to 43%.

But what’s most interesting about this poll is the potential matchup between Trump and Biden. The former vice president seems to be the Democrats’ best chance for defeating Trump in 2020. Not only does this give us an indication as to who will secure the nomination — but it might also provide some insight into where Democratic voters stand.

The other two frontrunners, Warren and Sanders, have run on a decidedly far-left platform. Both candidates have championed the type of “free everything for everyone” policies that threaten to move the Democrats further to the left.

But it appears that most left-leaning voters are not quite aboard the socialism train. Otherwise, they would not be supporting a 77-year-old candidate who would finish his first term in his 80s if elected. After all, they could easily pick from a younger group of candidates like Warren, Buttigieg, or even Andrew Yang, couldn’t they?

Perhaps the majority of Democratic voters are not quite as ready to emulate the statism of Scandinavian countries as the hard left would like them to be. But this does not mean that the left isn’t still succeeding in their efforts to move the country closer to socialism. A poll taken in November shows that about a third of millennials approve of Communism. The far left is starting to win the war of ideas, meaning that those who favor freedom better start developing a strategy to push back against the spread of Marxism in America.

 

Honestly I do appreciate the way you make me laugh. When if comes to polls about 90% of the time you are screaming polls are worthless and cannot be believed. Unless yuo can find one that's good for Trump and then you rush to post that one like its the Gospel. And its not just your glaring hypocrisy that makes me laugh. This time you busted my gut posting a Zogby Analytics poll which is described as:
The Worst Pollster in the World
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/worst-pollster-in-world-strikes-again/

Now myself I never put much faith and any single poll because what they are really measuring is just public opinion. And pubic opinion is a very fickle thing that can change from day to day. So what I do is look for trends in the polling over time. Which is why I follow RealClearPolitics average of polls where Joe Biden is consistently beating Trump.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_biden-6247.html

But I can't spend all day just laughing at your stupid ignorant (two different things) ass. I've got too much work to do.

Trump dispatches Pence to Midwestern states to salvage support as president’s poll numbers plummet

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/12/tr...e-support-as-presidents-poll-numbers-plummet/

 

Did everyone see the Gallup poll that said Obama and Trump tied this year for some man of the year thingy?

Safe space on the left.

 

Oh My: New Polls Show Trump Leading All Democrats in Four Key States

Guy Benson
|
@guypbenson
|
Posted: Dec 10, 2019 10:25 AM
narrowly handed him an upset victory in 2016. Here is part of the resulting memo from Firehouse Strategies: "Trump continues to struggle in these three states. He trails Biden in all three states, and only leads Warren and Sanders in Michigan. His approval rating is also underwater by 4 points in Michigan, 9 points in Pennsylvania, and 12 points in Wisconsin." With impeachment in full swing, have the numbers turned even more sour? Just the opposite. This is quite a December rebound:


As the impeachment process heats up in Washington, Donald Trump is seeing a boost in support in crucial swing states. Across the board, President Trump is polling well against the Democratic field in each of these battleground states. Notably, Vice President Biden has seen a sharp decline in support in our surveys as he currently runs behind President Trump in each of the three states...As the race currently stands, President Trump is in the lead in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in hypothetical match-ups against former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Bernie Sanders, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Across the three states, Trump’s closest contest is against Joe Biden, although the president leads by an average of 6 percentage points against each Democrat.

 

Someone needs to tell Tulsi that the D-RAT electorate does not like/can not handle hearing the truth.... Her most recent comments about this Sham-peachment only serving to help POTUS get re-elected and the GOP taking back the House will not serve her well at the polls.

 

So are you now saying President Obama and Trump are equally good presidents?

 

EXCERPT FROM 'BAR' CONTRIBUTOR- Black Agenda Report are Sandernistas. Our job is political analysis, and our fight is for socialism and Black self-determination

Up to now, the Democrat-friendly corporate media have been content to ignore Bernie Sanders, as if the man who only two years ago was the most popular politician in the country, doesn't exist. But all hell will break loose among the ruling class and its servants if Sanders wins or places very well in the New Hampshire primary (February 11) and Iowa caucuses (February 3) especially if Joe Biden does poorly, as expected, and leaves defense of the oligarchy in the untested, Black-unfriendly hands of Pete Buttigieg. Biden's strength among Black voters -- his ace in the South Carolina hole -- will quickly dissipate if the Old Incarcerator loses his "electability" luster in the early contests. Most Black Biden supporters are not "centrists" in the white sense of the word, and favor Sanders or Warren as their second choice and Sanders and Warren are winning big among Black voters under 40. Blacks make up a quarter of Democratic voters, and virtually none want Buttigieg as the nominee.

That's why billionaire Michael Bloomberg has saturated the airwaves with his noxious face and voice, money-muscling into what has been shaping up as a four-person race (Sanders, Warren, Biden, Buttigieg) that could very well end with Sanders and Warren amassing enough combined delegates to put together a presidential ticket, thus frustrating a super-delegate dictation of the lineup. Bloomberg's money is unlikely to alter this dynamic, as should be evident from polling early in the new year. The data will plunge the ruling class, its media and the whole servile entourage into a panic not experienced in the United States since at least the Great Depression.

All "democratic" bets will be off, and the ensuing corporate cyclone of propaganda, mayhem and dirty tricks will make the preceding years of Russiagate look as wholesome and pristine as a grade school civics class. Bernie Sanders could wind up more vilified than Jeremy Corbyn. Or it could be much worse. A ruling class mental breakdown, an oligarchs' riot, in which real institutions and people get broken under threat of a Sanders/Warren nomination is a much more dangerous prospect than four more years of Trump, an outcome that is also much preferred by the Lords of Capital and their corporate Democrat servants.

It is impossible to predict what the ruling class will do to keep the Race to the Bottom on track, since austerity is their only strategy for capitalism in decline. But it is absolutely clear both here in the belly of the global superpower beast, and in the old empire on the Thames that every bourgeois liberty is "on the table" for elimination when the oligarchs feel existentially threatened. If you think they went crazy over the election of Trump, an impulsive and undependable member of their own class, imagine what they will countenance when an austerity buster threatens to take leadership of the other half of the electoral duopoly, and then contest for the presidency.

 

WITH A GRUDGING ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO A LINE OF THOUGHT INITIATED BY A TWEET
BY MAYOR PETE
[This OP's excerpts from that article at: https://www.opednews.com/articles/1...ul-Debt_Evangelical_Faith_God-191229-925.html]
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As reported in The Washington Post, his Christmas tweet read: "Today I join millions around the world celebrating the arrival of divinity on earth, who came into this world not in riches but in poverty, not as a citizen but as a refugee. No matter where or how we celebrate, merry Christmas."

In response, many mostly white evangelicals went apoplectic. "Jesus was not poor," they countered. "And he certainly was not one of those despicable refugees.
----
"What's the big deal? Why do those people care so much?"


I answered, "It's because if Jesus was poor and a refugee from state violence, the whole anti-poor, anti-refugee program of the Republican Party is nullified at least from the standpoint of faith." It means for instance that:

When they support Donald Trump's exclusion of immigrants and refugees at the U.S. border, Republicans are really excluding the modern-day equivalents of Jesus, his mother and father as depicted in today's Gospel selection.
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Republicans [and their sympathizers-OP ed.] are refusing to recognize Jesus' later specific identification with such emigrants, when in the clearest representation of final judgment (MT 25), he says, "Whatever you do to the least of the brethren (i.e. the hungry, thirsty, immigrants ("strangers"), the sick and imprisoned), you do to me." Those words absolutely identify Jesus with the categories of people just mentioned all of them impoverished.
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Even more, as economist Michael Hudson points out in his monumental And Forgive Them Their Debts, Jesus' programmatic reference to the "year of the Lord's favor" points to the Jewish Jubilee Year. "Jubilee" was the biblically mandated period when all debts were to be forgiven and land returned to its original (mostly poor) owners. Hudson points out that such debt forgiveness was practiced throughout the ancient mid-east. It was more general than a biblical mandate.

According to Hudson, when new leaders acceded to the throne, they created a clean slate. All debts were forgiven. The corresponding legislation in the Book of Deuteronomy had Israel following suit.

Jesus' "Good News" to the poor was that (following Deuteronomy) their debts needed forgiveness. Inevitably, that demand was understood by all concerned (especially by Rome's imperialists and their puppet clients in Jerusalem's temple) as a highly threatening call to social justice. (Can you see how that understanding of Jesus' Good News Gospel would be similarly threatening to Republicans while at the same time encouraging Democrats seeking relief for debt -crushed students?)
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....that's why it's important to evangelical Trumpists that Jesus not be a poor man himself, that he not be an advocate for the poor, or that he not be a refugee. The contrary calls everything Republicans stand for into question. It makes Donald Trump, his exclusion of refugees, and his baby jails eerily similar to King Herod as depicted in today's final reading.

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....the "infancy narratives" (found only in Luke and Matthew) constitute what biblical scholars for the last century and more have recognized as Midrash and Haggadah. That is, following rabbinic tradition, these accounts represent fictional stories based on re-readings of the Jewish Testament and intended to make a theological point.

And in the case of Herod's slaughter of the innocents and the Holy Family's seeking refugee status in Egypt, Matthew's theological point for his specifically Jewish audience (vs. Luke's gentile readers) is that Jesus is the New Israel. As such, he relives his people's early history. [And that entire history from its very beginning (and repeated in its occupation of Palestine in 1948) is that of a refugee people - refugees from Pharaoh's enslavement to Hitler's genocide and ubiquitous anti-Semitism.] We might even say that the Jewish Testament's very message (reiterated in the case of Jesus) is that REFUGEES ARE GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE.
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the story of the Holy Family's "Flight into Egypt" is far more than a rabbinic riff on Moses's escape from the slaughter of Hebrew children under the Egyptian pharaoh 1200 years earlier. It actually has Jesus:

• Begin is life, like the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in "The Promised Land"
• Go down into Egypt to escape disaster
• Leave Egypt
• Spend 40 days in the desert (recapitulating Israel's 40 years there)
• Like Moses, dispense a New Law (i.e. the Beatitudes)
• Precisely on a mountain (the analogue of Mt Zion) -- as opposed to Luke's location of the same teaching "on a plain."

-------
.....the point made in today's Gospel reading is not the relatively superficial one that Jesus was poor. By all accounts he was.

No, it's the much deeper theological point that the earliest Christian believers (like Matthew) identified Jesus with an entire people whose very essence was their refugee status. They were enslaved, had no possessions at all, had no liberty, were completely despised by their captors, and were victims of imperialism, infanticide and even genocide.
the point made in today's Gospel reading is not the relatively superficial one that Jesus was poor. By all accounts he was.

No, it's the much deeper theological point that the earliest Christian believers (like Matthew) identified Jesus with an entire people whose very essence was their refugee status. They were enslaved, had no possessions at all, had no liberty, were completely despised by their captors, and were victims of imperialism, infanticide and even genocide.
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[Article writer's conclusion]Could any message be more revolutionary or encouraging to the world's refugees, immigrants, poor, victims of slavery and genocide? It's that the future belongs to them; the world belongs to them. In God's eyes, borders are irrelevant. God is on their side. History is on their side. They have nothing to lose but their chains!