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turbinetree's JournalAmazon's $1.5 million political gambit backfires in Seattle City Council election
Politics
November 10, 2019 / 10:08 PM / Updated 28 minutes ago
Gregory Scruggs 4 Min Read
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Seattle voters, in a rebuke to heavy corporate campaign spending by Amazon.com, have kept progressives firmly in control of their city council, reviving chances for a tax on big businesses that the tech giant helped fend off last year.
Amazon poured a record $1.5 million into a Super PAC run by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce to back a slate of candidates in the Nov. 5 council elections viewed as pro-business, or at least more corporate friendly than the incumbent council majority.
Amazon, the world’s leading online retailer whose chief executive is billionaire entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, accounted for more than half of nearly $2.7 million raised by the Super PAC, a group allowed to accept unlimited sums from wealthy donors in support of their favorite candidates. Four years ago, Amazon donated $25,000.
By comparison, labor unions spent more than $1 million on the council race.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-seattle/amazons-1-5-million-political-gambit-backfires-in-seattle-city-council-election-idUSKBN1XL09B
'Pam, pam, pam': Hong Kong police open fire, wounding protester
Source: Reuters
World News
November 10, 2019 / 7:26 PM / Updated 13 minutes ago
Kate Lamb, Jessie Pang 4 Min Read
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong police opened fire and hit at least one protester on Monday, witnesses and media reports said, as chaos erupted across the city a day after officers fired tear gas to break up demonstrations that are entering their sixth month.
Police fired live rounds at protesters on the eastern side of Hong Kong island, Cable TV and other Hong Kong media reported. Cable TV said one protester was wounded when police opened fire.
Video footage showed a protester lying in a pool of blood with his eyes wide open. Police also pepper-sprayed and subdued a woman nearby as plastic crates were thrown at officers, the video shared on social media showed.
Reuters could not immediately authenticate the footage.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests/pam-pam-pam-hong-kong-police-open-fire-wounding-protester-idUSKBN1XL00W?il=0
And why exactly do corporations do business with China.....................
Trump is saying 'I am above the law' and 'nobody can control me': Harvard Law's Laurence Tribe
Published 1 min ago
on November 10, 2019
By Sarah K. Burris
Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe explained that it has become obvious that President Donald Trump is using the Office of the Presidency for his own purposes.
Speaking to MSNBC host Ari Melber on his impeachment special, Tribe explained that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) refused to authorize an impeachment inquiry until it became clear that Trump was using his office for political purposes.
“He was taking hundreds of millions of dollars voted by Congress and withholding them from the Ukraine in an act of sheer extortion and soliciting what amounted to a bribe because he wanted Ukraine’s help, help against Joe Biden for 2020 and help in clearing him of colluding with Russia in 2016,” Tribe said.
Ironically, Trump made that notorious July 25 call just as Robert Mueller had finished testifying before Congress about his investigation into the last time Trump asked a foreign power to help him during an election.
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/11/trump-is-saying-i-am-above-the-law-and-nobody-can-control-me-harvard-laws-laurence-tribe/
Trump Jr.: It's OK for me to out whistleblowers because I'm a private citizen
By
Oliver Willis -
November 7, 2019
Though he calls himself a 'private citizen,' Donald Trump Jr. is a Republican activist and has profited from the Trump presidency
Donald Trump Jr. defended his attempt to reveal the alleged identity of the whistleblower at the heart of the impeachment inquiry by asserting that he is merely a "private citizen."
On Wednesday, Trump Jr. tweeted a link to a story from Breitbart, a pro-Trump site, purporting to contain the name of the whistleblower. In his tweet, Trump Jr. repeated the name in question. His disclosure was criticized by the whistleblower's lawyer, who noted such disclosures could put his client at "risk of serious harm."
Trump Jr. made his comments defending his actions during a Thursday appearance on "The View" while he promoted his new book.
"The whole point of releasing a name is to intimidate someone, to threaten someone and to scare other people from coming out," noted co-host Abby Huntsman, adding, "that's something that dictators do."
https://shareblue.com/donald-trump-jr-ukraine-whistleblower-private-citizen-impeachment-the-view-breitbart/
Okay, zippy two things come to mind, if something should happen to the person if they are outed, then we can blame you...............and two most importantly your a traitor..........................you have never worn a uniform and have never served or lived in the military........................in fact your chicken hawk........................
Lt Colonel Alexandre Vindman is a Patriot......................
And now Lt. Col. Vindman is anti-American, say Trump's shock troops. Just like every other witness
Hunter
Daily Kos Staff
Thursday November 07, 2019 · 2:30 PM EST
The Republican world has gotten very simple. If you are a defender of Donald J. Trump, the Dear Leader figure whose word must not be questioned and whose petty whims can nullify whichever laws they are pointed at, much less the party's own deeply held beliefs of three minutes ago, you are Good.
If, on the other hand, you contradict Dear Leader's pronouncements with facts or data, or point out legal boundaries that might complicate Dear Leader's most recent declared whim, or God help you have witnessed wrongdoing by Dear Leader and feel obliged to say so, you are a liberal. Or a socialist. Or a member of the dark underbelly of law-knowers and crime-stoppers now known as the Deep State. If this sounds like fascism it is because it is, without a doubt, fascism, complete with its ethnic obsessions, cynical performative Christianity, and cartoonish rally hyper-masculinity.
You might think it uncanny that absolutely every government worker, administration member, member of the public, and sexual assault victim is quickly exposed by Dear Leader's cult and, in particular, his own idiot failson as being aNtI-AmERiCaN, secretly in league with Whatever. You're right, it is uncanny, because it is all made up. It is propaganda.
Dear Leader's brigades of greasy internet brownboxers can invent a reason why each and every one of Dear Leader's detractors is a secret America-hater without so much as knowing the person's name, and Donald Trump or his failson will somehow find it and launch it from its conspiracy-circle origins to Big Time Dear Leader Idiot Power Hour status within 48 hours. You would have to ask a historian whether all fascist movements are led and populated with people as brick-stupid as the current version, but after decades of purging book-learners and anyone with a sense of decency from the party it was all but assured that the Republican incarnation would smell of paste-eating and doorknob-licking.
https://www.dailykos.com/
And just right before "Armistice Day / Veterans Day"....................
Elizabeth Warren has risen far enough to face the same tired, sexist attacks women always face
Laura Clawson
Daily Kos Staff
Thursday November 07, 2019 · 10:05 AM EST
Here we go again. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has risen in the polls to the point where her rivals are using the tired old likability attacks, even knowing that much of the coverage about it will involve questions of sexism. Former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign is also recycling a Republican talking point straight out of former Sen. Scott Brown’s (losing) campaign against Warren in 2012: that she’s an elitist Harvard professor. Is it possible to yawn and rage at the same time? Because those are the conflicting impulses I’m feeling from these attacks.
The elitism attacks are particularly rich coming from the campaign of a man who was in the United States Senate for more than three decades before becoming vice president, and whose much-touted middle-class family did not struggle any more than Warren’s family. But congrats (or something) to the Biden team for getting Politico to run a story on the elitism angle that, while it makes clear that the charges come straight out of Brown’s campaign and have been endlessly pushed by Republicans, also quotes a former Trump campaign staffer in an average-Republican-on-the-street role.
And can we contemplate the likelihood that a woman who graduated 76th out of 85 in her law school class, as Biden did, would be elected to the Senate just four years later?
Beyond elitism, both Biden and Mayor Pete Buttigieg are working hard to brand Warren as angry—a potentially devastating charge for a woman, since women are not allowed to be angry without being punished for it. According to Buttigieg, who spent the last Democratic debate launching angry attacks on competitors and then concluding those attacks with calls for unity, Warren is “so absorbed in the fighting that it is as though fighting were the purpose.” According to Biden, who once suggested he’d like to physically fight Donald Trump but also believes that, post-Trump, congressional Republicans will have an “epiphany” and clamor to work with Democrats, Warren is part of “an angry unyielding viewpoint that has crept into our politics.”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/11/7/1897822/-Elizabeth-Warren-has-risen-far-enough-to-face-the-same-tired-sexist-attacks-women-always-face
Cash-strapped NRA is holding gun raffles in schools to raise funds
By
Emily Singer -
November 4, 2019
The National Rifle Association Foundation is raffling off guns in school gyms to raise money.
A charity arm of the National Rifle Association is holding gun raffles in schools across the country in an effort to raise cash, the Washington Post reported on Monday.
News of the fundraisers — during which a group called Friends of NRA raffles off everything from semiautomatic rifles to high-capacity magazines — come as a spate of mass shootings across the country has increased both opposition to the NRA and support for gun control measures.
The news also comes amid reports that the NRA is in dire financial straits amid mismanagement and grift by the NRA's leadership, which has been compounded by waning support of the organization in the wake of mass shootings.
According to the Washington Post, proceeds from Friends of NRA events, like the raffles taking place in schools, go toward the NRA Foundation, which gives out grants for "youth education, law enforcement training, hunter education, conservation, firearms and marksmanship training, and safety," according to the NRA Foundation's website. Events like the Friends of NRA raffles earned the NRA Foundation $33 million last year, according to the Washington Post.
https://shareblue.com/nra-gun-raffles-schools-national-rifle-association-gun-control-donald-trump/
GOP candidate with no military service smears governor's military background
By
Josh Israel -
November 4, 2019
Republican challenger Eddie Rispone has repeatedly attacked Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, saying he 'hurt the reputation of West Point.'
Ahead of Louisiana's Nov. 16 run-off election for governor, Republican challenger Eddie Rispone attacked Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-LA) on Friday, saying that Edwards, a West Point alum, had "hurt the reputation" of his alma mater by working as a civil attorney after completing eight years as an active duty airborne ranger in the U.S. Army.
When asked whether he regretted his remarks on Sunday, Rispone, a wealthy specialty contractor business executive, said he was just repeating what he'd heard.
In a radio interview last week, Rispone — who did not serve in the military — was asked about Edwards' service. He responded by alleging that Edwards was an embarrassment to the United States Military Academy, the prestigious service academy located in West Point, New York. "Yeah you know I'm disappointed in that, if I have to be candid. I think he's hurt the reputation of West Point. I don't think West Point wants to turn out a bunch of trial lawyers that will say or do anything to stay in power," he said.
Edwards responded by calling Rispone "desperate" and his attack "offensive."
https://shareblue.com/eddie-rispone-louisiana-gubernatorial-election-military-service-john-bel-edwards-us-army/
GOP dismisses transcripts from impeachment probe after demanding their release
By
Emily Singer -
November 4, 2019
House Republicans keep moving the goalposts in their attacks on the impeachment inquiry process.
The House Intelligence Committee on Monday began releasing transcripts from the closed-door depositions in the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, an important step as the probe nears its public phase.
But Republicans, who have been demanding that Democrats hold the inquiry in public, were not satisfied with the transcript releases, even after calling on the transcripts to be released last week, once again moving the goalposts of their process complaints with the impeachment probe.
"Democrats cherry pick which transcripts they release and when," Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), one of Trump's top defenders on Capitol Hill, tweeted. "Why not release Ambassador Volker's testimony? He was the very first witness to testify!"
Volker's testimony will be released on Tuesday, with more transcripts to come after that. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, set a five-day timeline for the rest of the transcripts to be released.
https://shareblue.com/republicans-transcripts-impeachment-inquiry-donald-trump-ukraine-jim-jordan-steve-scalise/
And as Lawrence O'Donnell said tonight, the republicans in the hearings are liars..................especially Jordon and Meadows
Richest families in US would get $3.8 billion tax cut if ACA is killed
By
Dan Desai Martin -
November 4, 2019
A Republican lawsuit to kill the Affordable Care Act would shower the wealthy with billions of dollars.
If a Republican lawsuit to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is successful, millions of people will lose their health insurance while America's richest families will reap a multi-billion dollar tax cut, according to an analysis released Monday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).
The wealthiest 1,400 households — those with incomes of more than $53 million a piece — will see tax cuts totaling $3.8 billion if the ACA is ruled unconstitutional.
At the same time, 20 million people would lose their health insurance and millions more would face higher costs for health care.
"Striking down the ACA would thus transfer billions of dollars each year from low- and middle-income people (who would lose subsidized health coverage) to high-income households and corporations (which would receive large tax cuts)," the CBPP report stated.
https://shareblue.com/obamacare-wealthy-families-tax-cut-gop-lawsuit-aca-affordable-care-act-texas-republicans/
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