Neil Armstrong memorabilia fetches $7.5 million at auction

DALLAS—Memorabilia that belonged to the first man to set foot on the moon, Neil Armstrong, has fetched more than $7.4 million at auction.

Dallas-based Heritage Auctions says the item that sold for the highest price, $468,500, at Saturday's auction was Armstrong's spacecraft ID plate from Apollo 11's lunar module Eagle. Also sold were a fragment from the propeller and a section of the wing from the Wright brothers' Flyer, the first heavier-than-air self-powered aircraft, which each sold for $275,000.

The flight suit Armstrong wore aboard Gemini 8, the 1966 mission that performed the first docking of two spacecraft in flight, brought the astronaut's family $109,375.

Meanwhile, in a separate auction, a gold-colored Navy aviator's helmet once owned by John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, sold for $46,250.

Read more: http://www.texarkanagazette.com/news/texas/story/2018/nov/05/neil-armstrong-memorabilia-fetches-75-million-auction/750930/

Jimmy Kimmel Live: Lie Witness News - Fake Candidate Edition

Gianforte's fortunes tied to Trump in Montana House race

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte is pinning his third campaign in two years on Montana residents being better off economically since President Donald Trump took office and that the voters will give him some of the credit.

Gianforte has tied his political fortunes to Trump as he seeks his first full term in Montana's only House seat. He won a special election last year to serve the remainder of Ryan Zinke's term after Zinke resigned to become Interior Department secretary.

Gianforte has had to fend off renewed criticism over his assault on Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs the day before that special election. His Democratic opponent, Kathleen Williams, has made it a campaign issue, and Trump praised him for it during a recent rally.

The entrepreneur-turned-politician initially gave a tepid endorsement of the president during a failed campaign for governor in the same 2016 Montana election that Trump won in a landslide, then found himself on the winning side in the 2017 special election when he became a full-throated Trump supporter.

Read more: https://www.wacotrib.com/news/ap_nation/headlines/gianforte-s-fortunes-tied-to-trump-in-montana-house-race/article_9ae46c43-8eae-564d-9bae-66a170e6cac5.html

Texas governor candidate Lupe Valdez makes stop in Coastal Bend before Election Day

Lupe Valdez made her last stop in the Coastal Bend as the race for Texas Governor comes to a close.

The Democratic challenger walked door to door meeting with residents in Robstown Saturday, encouraging them to vote on Election Day.

Other candidates who joined Valdez were Democrat Eric Holguin, who is running against Republican U.S. Rep. Michael Cloud for Congress, Craig Henderson, who is a Democrat running for District Judge in the 105th Judicial District and Gina Benavides, who is running for re-election as Justice for 13th Court of Appeals.

Valdez, 70, cast herself as an antidote to years of social conservatism that have dominated Texas politics, which hasn't elected a Democrat to a statewide office in more than 20 years.

Read more: https://www.caller.com/story/news/local/2018/11/03/lupe-valdez-makes-stop-coastal-bend-before-election-day/1863467002/

Amid talk of a potential blue wave, Democrats already have begun to turn the tide in GOP suburbs

In 1995, the suburbs were the center of Illinois’ Republican universe, the bucolic backyards the home of the leaders of the state legislature as they strove to drive an agenda as a political force to be reckoned with for future generations.

Now, nearly a quarter-century later, it is the Democrats who have advanced in collar counties that were once the Republican firewall to Chicago’s massive Democratic vote — a confluence of changing demographics, uncertain GOP messaging and a partisan mapmaking process.

While Democrats talk of a “blue wave” sweeping nationally as Election Day approaches on Tuesday, it’s clear that they’ve already begun to turn the tide by encroaching into the traditional GOP-leaning suburbs. The votes cast there will be key in determining Illinois’ immediate future, with potential long-term political consequences for both political parties as ballots are cast for governor, the state’s congressional delegation and deciding the makeup of the General Assembly.

And among those suburban areas, there is no place more central to Illinois’ fate than DuPage County, where there has been an evolution politically, ideologically and demographically.

Read more: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-met-illinois-midterm-elections-suburbs-20181101-story.html

Obama in Gary: 'We need leaders who will actually stand up for what is right'

Former President Barack Obama Sunday said voters cannot fall for scare tactics ahead of Tuesday’s mid-term elections.

Obama told a crowd of more than 6,000 at Gary’s Genesis Center that the scare tactics often work, and that voters can sometimes be compared to Charlie Brown when Lucy holds the football for him, only to pull it away as he tries to kick it.

“He always fell for it,” Obama said. “Don’t be Charlie Brown with the football.

“While they’re trying to distract you with all of this stuff, they’re robbing you blind,” Obama said.

Read more: https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-gary-obama-donnelly-rally-st-1105-story.html

Obama tells rally in Chicago: 'The character of our nation is on the ballot'

Ten years to the day of being elected president, former President Barack Obama came home Sunday to turn out voters for the Illinois Democratic ticket, mixing the message of hope that propelled him to the White House with an urgent call to repel President Donald Trump’s divisiveness, though Obama did not use his name.

Sunday marked the last of a series of rallies Obama was headlining for Democrats, with the former president pumping up Indiana Democrats in Gary before hitting the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion, 525 S. Racine Ave.

A very hoarse Obama said, “Hope is still out there. We just have to stand up and speak for it. And in two days, Illinois, in two days, you get to vote in what might be the most important election of my lifetime, maybe more important than 2008.”

“…America is at a crossroads right now. There is a contest of ideas that is going on, about who we are and what kind of country we are going to be.

Read more: https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/barack-obama-common-j-b-pritzker-uic-illinois-democrats-republican-bruce-rauner-midterm-election/

Rauner blasts unfavorable polls as 'baloney' on road for GOP candidates

With just two days to go, embattled Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner told his supporters not to count him out of the race, vowing that polls that show him down by double digits are “baloney.”

And miles away from the Chicago machine — in Grundy, DuPage, Kane and Macon counties — the governor continued to rail against his political nemesis, Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan.

The governor and first lady Diana Rauner spent the rainy Sunday on a campaign bus, traveling to cafes and bars in Decatur, Gibson City, Morris and St. Charles. Rauner, too, led a rally for Republicans in one Cook County stop in Orland Park.

At Honest Abe’s Tap & Grill in Morris, the governor spoke of an uphill battle back to a second term, while warning a victory by Democrat J.B. Pritzker will turn the state into a “nightmare.”

Read more: https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/bruce-rauner-blasts-unfavorable-polls-baloney-road-gop-candidates-election/

Will Democrats Casten, Underwood beat Republicans Roskam, Hultgren?

Democratic political rookies Sean Casten and Lauren Underwood may beat their opponents, GOP Reps. Peter Roskam and Randy Hultgren on Tuesday, but only if that blue wave, spawned by President Donald Trump’s election and sustained by his scorched rhetoric, materializes in the Chicago suburbs.

Roskam first won the 6th Congressional District in 2006; voters in the 14th district sent Hultgren to Congress in 2010. The districts take in west and northwest suburban and exurban turf, from city-like blocks to bucolic rural pockets.

If Underwood is elected, she will be the first woman and first African American to represent the 14th, the majority-white district where she grew up.

The elections in the 6th and 14th are “both up in the air,” McHenry County Board Chairman Jack Franks, a Democrat, said in an interview in Woodstock. McHenry includes parts of both districts.

Read more: https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/casten-underwood-roskam-hultgren-republicans-democrats-2018-midterm-election-blue-wave-congress/

Illinois' big-money politics has some worried

Just a handful of millionaires and billionaires -- including the candidates themselves -- have overwhelmingly financed Illinois’ record-setting campaign for governor this year, and that has some worried about the long-term implications for the state.

“We are very worried about what kind of democracy we are developing here,” said Alisa Kaplan, policy director of Reform for Illinois (formerly Illinois Campaign for Political Reform), a nonpartisan research organization. “We’re worried that if only wealthy candidates can win, or if it’s perceived that only wealthy candidates can win, we’re going to be missing out on a lot of talented, experienced candidates who might have done a better job.”

Spending on Illinois’ governor races has skyrocketed over the last three election cycles.

Kent Redfield, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois Springfield and a close follower of campaign finance trends in the state, noted that in Gov. Bruce Rauner’s Illinois record-setting race for governor in 2014, just under $110 million was spent. That included more than $66 million for Rauner, $32 million for then-incumbent Pat Quinn, and more than $11 million in independent expenditures opposing Rauner.

Read more: http://www.sj-r.com/news/20181103/illinois-big-money-politics-has-some-worried