Jim Beam warehouse filled with 45,000 barrels of bourbon catches fire

(CNN)A Jim Beam warehouse caught fire late Tuesday and firefighters are continuing to battle the massive blaze because of alcohol in the debris.

The warehouse, in Versailles, Kentucky, caught fire around 11:30 p.m. Police Lt. Michael Fortney said a security guard called to report the fire.

Forty firefighters from five counties helped battle the blaze. A second warehouse also caught fire, but that blaze was controlled.

The warehouse where the fire started has collapsed.

The warehouse contained 45,000 barrels of "relatively young whiskey," according to a statement from Beam Suntory, the parent company of Jim Beam.

"We are thankful that no one was injured in this incident, and we are grateful to the courageous firefighters from multiple jurisdictions who brought the fire under control and prevented it from spreading," spokeswoman Emily York told CNN in a statement. "Given the age of the lost whiskey, this fire will not impact the availability of Jim Beam for consumers."

Woodford County Emergency Management chief Drew Chandler said the warehouses are massive -- about the same area as a football field and six or seven stories high.



https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/03/us/jim-beam-warehouse-fire-kentucky-trnd/index.html?utm_term=link&utm_content=2019-07-04T09%3A54%3A44&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twCNN

Tweet of the Day

Virginia State Senator: "It's those who are naive and unprepared that end up raped"

CHESTERFIELD, VA – Amanda Pohl, the Democratic nominee in Virginia’s 11th State Senate District has issued a response to Senator Amanda Chase’s comments calling rape victims “naive and unprepared” and calls on her to apologize to constituents and survivors of sexual violence:

“Amanda Chase made an atrocious declaration, traumatizing for those who have been affected by sexual violence.” said Pohl. “Sexual assault survivors have long been told that they are to blame for rapists’ crimes and Senator Chase continues to perpetuate this narrative. I urge her to apologize for her statements and any implication that rape is caused by anything other than rapists. Survivors are not ‘naïve and unprepared’ because they were raped and these statements continue to demonstrate that Senator Chase’s extreme ideas are out of touch with the views of her constituents.

“As someone who works in advocacy, I know we can prevent sexual assault by funding primary prevention and ending rape culture. Victim-blaming and shaming contribute to rape culture and harm survivors. Virginians deserve better.”


https://bluevirginia.us/2019/07/right-wing-republican-virginia-state-senator-amanda-chase-its-those-who-are-naive-and-unprepared-that-end-up-raped-democratic-nominee-amanda-pohl-rebuffs-sen-amanda-chase-its-those-who-are-naive-and-u

CA: Democrats target Orange County's State Senate seats for 2020 elections

Two of the five State Senate seats that touch Orange County are up for election in 2020, and while both are held by Republican incumbents Democrats see both as potential flip districts, as the party hopes to make the county match its statewide super majority.

But Republicans are confident that a controversial challenger in one race, and a well-known incumbent in the other will help Sens. Ling Ling Chang, R-Diamond Bar, and John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, hang on to their seats.

“We feel very good about their chances to be sent back to Sacramento,” said Matt Fleming, spokesman for the California Republican Party.

Though some local state senate districts have switched party representation in recent years, Republicans have long held at least three of the county’s five seats.

State senators are elected to four-year terms, with half of the seats up during presidential elections and the other half up during midterms. Last year, incumbents held on to all three OC state senate seats that were contested. Those included the solidly Republican 36th District in south OC, represented by Pat Bates, R-Laguna Niguel; the solidly blue 32nd District, which covers part of south Los Angeles County plus a slice of north OC and is represented by Bob Archuleta, D-Pico Rivera; and central OC’s 34th District, a seat that has flipped between red and blue in recent years and now is represented Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana.


https://www.ocregister.com/2019/07/01/democrats-target-orange-countys-state-senate-seats-for-2020-elections/

Any chnce Mayor Pete could get elected Governor of Indiana?

I don't want to see him fade away if the presidential run doesn't work out.

CO-SEN: John Hickenlooper's senior aides urge him to run for Senate

(CNN)A group of senior aides to John Hickenlooper's presidential campaign urged the former Colorado governor to end his bid for the Democratic nomination and run for Senate last month, multiple sources familiar with the discussion tell CNN.

The meeting happened shortly after the Democratic National Committee announced in May that it was increasing the qualification thresholds for the September and October primary debates.
A key pressure point was the fact that Hickenlooper only has 13,000 unique donors, the sources said, making it nearly impossible for him to reach the 130,000-donor threshold needed to qualify for the third and fourth debates.

One source added that Hickenlooper's campaign raised just over $1 million in the second quarter of 2019 and could run out of money soon if no changes are made or if they governor's candidacy doesn't take off.
The meeting between senior aides and Hickenlooper was first reported by Politico.

Hickenlooper shook up his campaign on Monday, multiple sources told CNN, allowing his campaign manager, finance director and spokeswoman to leave as the former Colorado governor fails to gain traction in the expansive Democratic presidential primary field.

But a senior Democrat who spoke to the governor Monday night told CNN that Hickenlooper was not on the cusp of dropping out of the race.

"He's staying in," the senior Democrat said, adding that Hickenlooper will reassess after the second debate.


https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/02/politics/hickenlooper-campaign/index.html

Oregon Just Passed The Best Family Leave Law In The U.S.

Oregon just became the eighth state in the country to pass a paid family leave bill, giving 12 weeks of paid time off to new parents, victims of domestic violence and people who need to care of an ill family member or themselves.

The state Senate passed the law Sunday night, 21-6, with four Republican senators joining the Democratic majority. The state House passed the bill on June 20.

Gov. Kate Brown (D) signed the bill into law on Monday afternoon.

“In 1991, as an advocate for the Women’s Rights Coalition, I first began working on Paid Family Leave,” she said in a statement. ”Now, we can finally tell parents that they no longer will have to worry about losing their pay when they are having a baby or need to care for a loved one.”

The news comes just a month after Connecticut passed similar legislation that was considered quite generous, offering low-wage workers up to 95% of their paychecks during 12 weeks off, capped at $900 a week.

But Oregon’s law goes further: The state will be the first to pay low-income workers 100% of their wages when they’re off, with weekly benefits capped at around $1,215.

“It’s the first law that reflects if you’re paid low-wages and literally living paycheck to paycheck, anything less than 100% is going to cause financial hardship,” said Vicki Shabo, a senior fellow who specializes in paid leave at the think tank New America.



https://www.huffpost.com/entry/oregon-family-leave-law_n_5d1a372ae4b03d61163fd239

There's a massively important election in 2020. But it's not the one you're thinking of.

VA: November Elections Sees Surge in Democratic Candidates

Virginia’s legislative elections this fall are drawing a record number of competitive races, according to a new analysis from the Virginia Public Access Project.

In the 2015 elections, 62 out of 100 House of Delegates races were uncontentested, with voters stuck with a single candidate in all of those races.

This year, over two-thirds of House districts have at least two candidates, and 63 seats are in play among both major parties--the most since VPAP began tracking the data in 1997.

The surge is driven heavily by Democrats. They’re contesting 91 out of 100 House seats, up from just 56 seats in 2015. Democrats have a record number of candidates in the Senate, while Republicans have a record low since at least 1999.

Republicans were able to maintain control of the House of Delegates in 2017 by a single seat after election officials drew a GOP candidate’s name from a fish bowl to decide the outcome of a particularly close race.

Rachel Bitecofer, assistant director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, says that boost in candidates is “an early indicator that Democrats are still engaged.”

“One of those early warning signs for Republicans in 2018 were how many Democrats wanted to run for office,” Bitecofer said of last year’s midterm elections.

It remains to be seen whether Democrats can maintain that enthusiasm in what is traditionally a low turnout, off-year election, with no statewide races to push turnout.


https://ideastations.org/radio/news/november-elections-sees-surge-democratic-candidates

EMILY's List Announces $20 Million Investment on Flipping State Legislative Chambers

The Focus 2020 initiative will focus on more than 20 states where reproductive freedom is under attack and state legislatures control redistricting

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today EMILY’s List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, announced a $20 million investment in state and local elections for the Focus 2020 initiative. This historic investment will focus on building a pipeline of future women leaders and flipping state legislative chambers in 2020 with an eye toward redistricting in 2021, by electing pro-choice Democratic women who will pass policies that support women and families and fight back against Republican efforts to roll back women’s access to health care. The launch of this initiative comes following the Supreme Court’s dangerous decision to undermine the democratic process by allowing partisan gerrymandering to continue.

“Over the past 10 years, Democrats have continued to lose power at the state legislative level due to Republicans’ heavily gerrymandered state maps, and women and families are suffering the consequences,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List. “While Republicans have used their power to double down on their anti-woman agenda and pass a wave of disturbing legislation attacking women’s rights, 2020 is shaping up to be a historic year and Democratic women are poised to make huge gains. These state legislative battles are crucial in the fight to protect reproductive freedom and ensure that districts are truly representative of voters in each state. With the launch of our biggest-ever investment in state legislative work through the Focus 2020 initiative, we look forward to expanding on our efforts to build a pipeline of women ready to serve their communities, and to electing women who can end these attacks and draw fair state and federal maps in 2021. Fair districts are critical to reviving our democracy and decreasing the polarization in our nation. The time is now.”

Focus 2020 will expand EMILY’s List’s state and local campaigns team and our Run to Win program. Since its launch in 2017, 46,000 women have reached out to us about running for office. This initiative will allow EMILY’s List to flip more chambers this cycle and ensure that more pro-choice Democratic women candidates have the skills and support they need to run for office and win their elections. This expanded investment will include hiring additional staffers dedicated to state work on the campaigns, research, and communications teams; increased advanced level candidate training in person and online; more direct candidate contributions; and the expansion of EMILY’s List digital outreach through the Run to Win program and increased recruitment efforts in priority districts.

State legislatures are on the front line of issues that directly affect working families every day such as access to health and reproductive care, quality education, good-paying jobs and more. In recent years, Republican-controlled state legislatures have advanced harmful, anti-choice policies through their gerrymandered majorities in statehouses across the country. In 2019 alone, more than 350 bills attacking women’s reproductive health were introduced and nine states passed laws limiting women’s access to safe and legal abortion care.

Focus 2020 will target more than 500 state legislative races with a particular focus on flipping chambers where state legislatures have a direct impact on redistricting. Some of these states include Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Beyond its focus on restricting, this effort will also target states where there is great opportunity due to changing demographics, where a woman’s right to choose is under attack, and where there are rising women leaders pushing for change across the board.

In the 2018 cycle, the organization targeted more than 1,600 races in more than 20 states, increasing the number of women in statewide offices, state legislative seats, and municipal seats. We flipped seven chambers and laid the groundwork for future victories by gaining seats in more than 10 chambers that could potentially flip in 2020. Through this initiative, in the 2020 cycle EMILY’s list is working to hold state legislative chambers in 10 states and make gains in one chamber in at least eight states.

Last week EMILY’s List also announced a new partnership with Priorities USA focused on Virginia where state legislative seats are up for election this November. The partnership will include a $600,000 digital campaign focused on voter persuasion and mobilization in key districts throughout the state to ensure Democrats take back both chambers ahead of the 2020 Census and redistricting.

EMILY’s List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, has raised over $600 million to elect pro-choice Democratic women candidates. With a grassroots community of over five million members, EMILY’s List helps Democratic women win competitive campaigns – across the country and up and down the ballot – by recruiting and training candidates, supporting strong campaigns, researching the issues that impact women and families, and turning out women voters to the polls. Since our founding in 1985, we have helped elect 150 women to the House, 26 to the Senate, 16 governors, and nearly 1,100 women to state and local office. Nearly 40 percent of the candidates EMILY’s List has helped elect to Congress have been women of color. During the historic 2017-2018 cycle, EMILY’s List raised a record-breaking $110 million and launched a record independent expenditure campaign. We helped elect 34 new women to the House, including 24 red-to-blue victories; enough seats to have delivered the U.S. House majority alone. Since the 2016 election, more than 46,000 women have reached out to EMILY’s List about running for office laying the groundwork for the next decade of candidates for local, state and national offices.



https://bluevirginia.us/2019/07/emilys-list-announces-unprecedented-20-million-investment-focused-on-flipping-state-legislative-chambers-in-2020