Record 'Dark Money' Donations Help GOP Retake House Seats

I hope we equalize the supreme court and once and for all rid our country of cancer known as Citizens United and that would only be a start.


A Republican-linked nonprofit was a top donor to House Republicans’ super PAC, which spent big in a number of swing races that saw the GOP retake seats lost to Democrats in 2018.

BY DAVID MOORE NOVEMBER 6, 2020

House Democrats will start the next Congress with their number diminished, losing at least eight and perhaps 10 seats in the 2020 election. A net loss of eight seats would represent over 3% of current Democratic House members, far from Democrats’ hopes of expanding their headcount by around 12-15 seats.

As of Wednesday afternoon, House Democrats had claimed none of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s (DCCC) 38 “red-to-blue” district targets to flip from Republicans—for example, striking out on all of the seven pickup targets in Texas, two of which were thought to be leaning Democratic by The Cook Political Report. While Democrats will keep control of the U.S. House and gained two seats in North Carolina through favorable redistricting, it looks like 2020’s losses will reduce their share of the lower chamber to about 51.5% of the total 435 representatives.

Of this cycle’s 42 “frontline” House districts held by vulnerable incumbents according to the DCCC, six losses so far came in districts picked up by Democrats in the 2018 midterms: Reps. Xochitl Torres Small (N.M.), Kendra Horn (Okla.), Joe Cunningham (S.C.), Abby Finkenauer (Iowa), Max Rose (N.Y.), and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (Fla.). Freshman Democratic Rep. TJ Cox of California narrowly trails David Valadao, who is running to take back his former seat, as votes continue to be counted. In Iowa’s Second Congressional District, composed of the area around Davenport and Iowa City, the race to succeed retiring seven-term Rep. Dave Loebsack, a Democrat, is neck-and-neck.

excerpt: Outspent by McCarthy’s Super PAC
The defeated House Democrats didn’t lack for campaign money, largely bringing in millions of dollars for their reelections and outraising their opponents. Rep. Torres Small raised over $7.5 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, compared to $2.5 million raised by her successful Republican challenger Yvette Herrell, and spent nearly 2.7 times as much on the race.

But a super PAC aligned with Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the House GOP, the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), announced its largest-ever fundraising quarter shortly before the election, bringing in $77.4 million, double its 2018 haul. CLF’s historic third quarter went towards its over $106.7 million in total spending this cycle, as tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics as of Nov. 4.

https://prospect.org/power/record-dark-money-donations-help-gop-retake-house-seats/

NationalPopularVote:state-based plan to guarantee the Presidency to the candidate winning most votes

Good morning! If you only look at one map today, make it this one

Unions discussing general strike if Trump refuses to accept Biden victory

( Smart, peaceful, and ultimately, patriotic. )


Union federations in Rochester, Seattle and Massachusetts approved resolutions should Trump seek to subvert outcome


Steven Greenhouse

Fri 30 Oct 2020 03.00 EDT
Last modified on Fri 30 Oct 2020 10.59 EDT

US unions have begun discussing the idea of a general strike if Donald Trump refuses to accept an election results showing a Joe Biden victory.

Such a move would be unprecedented in the modern era. There has not been a general strike in the United States since 1946 – and that was restricted to Oakland, California.

The local labor federation in Rochester, New York, was the first union group to officially support the idea. Union federations in Seattle and in western Massachusetts have followed suit, approving resolutions saying a general strike should be considered if Trump seeks to subvert the election outcome.

Dan Maloney, president of the Rochester-Genesee Valley Area Labor Federation, said his 100,000-member group adopted the resolution to get people discussing the idea – from local unions to the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main labor federation which represents more than 12.5 million people.

On 8 October, the Rochester federation voted to support preparing for and holding “a general strike of all working people, if necessary, to ensure a constitutionally mandated peaceful transition of power as a result of the 2020 presidential elections.”. The union leaders voted to stand “firmly in opposition to any effort to subvert, distort, misrepresent or disregard the final outcome” of the election.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/30/us-unions-general-strike-election-trump-biden-victory?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Is this guy great or what?: #ChefsForThePolls

We've got to make this history ourselves By Cori Bush

18 hrs ago


In a few short days, this election will be over. In a few short days, the hard work of two long years will draw to a close, and the United States will decide what we want the next two, or four, or 10 years to be like. It’s been said countless times before, but that’s because it’s true: this is one of the most consequential elections of our lifetimes.

But it’s not just these past four years that will be accounted for on November 3. For many of us, this struggle has been decades in the making. Nearly every day for the past four years, we’ve watched as the current father of racism, Donald Trump, and his administration stoop to new lows. Many of us are rightly shocked at the cruelty, bigotry, and hatred that our president and his white supremacist movement sow.

excerpt:

Across our region, Black organizers have taken the lead in making sure the voices of St. Louisans are heard. Action St. Louis has led the charge to make sure our communities are fully counted in the census. Young Black organizers have been leading massive canvassing operations to increase voter turnout. We’ve built a framework for what it takes to win in St. Louis. We proved it worked in my primary victory in August by building a coalition that brought thousands of new voters to the ballot boxes. We did it by reaching out to the community and inviting voters back into the system, by letting them know that they had something important to bring to this movement.

Because St. Louis voted, I am slated to become Missouri’s first Black congresswoman. I am slated to become Missouri’s first nurse congresswoman. I am slated to become the first woman to represent Missouri’s 1st Congressional District. And I am slated to become our nation’s first Black Lives Matter activist in Congress. But we still have more to accomplish.

We have a lot to be proud of—from my two close friends, former state Representative Bruce Franks Jr. and current state Representative Rasheen Aldridge, to my siSTARS Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner and St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura O. Jones—we have every reason to be full of hope for the future. Because we know what starts in St. Louis can effect change all across Missouri.

We have the chance to flip the whole state Blue and start a new chapter in our history. We can defeat Trump, Governor Mike Parson, and the entire movement of white supremacy that they rode to power on. So, let’s recognize our individual power. Let’s recognize that we all have something great to bring to the table. And let’s push that forward. Because this movement is strong, but collectively, we can make it even stronger.

When we vote, we win. So, I’m asking you to vote. And I’m asking you to volunteer. Make phone calls. Send text messages. Knock doors, and help drop literature. Then do just a little bit more. Talk to your friends, talk to your neighbors, and talk to your colleagues.

We don’t want to wake up on November 4 asking ourselves the same question we asked four years ago: Could I have done more? We have the opportunity to set our state and our nation on a new path. This is a history-making moment, but no one is going to make it for us. We’ve got to make this history ourselves—and we can. Let’s win this thing together, St. Louis.


http://www.stlamerican.com/news/columnists/guest_columnists/we-ve-got-to-make-this-history-ourselves/article_7067e958-1872-11eb-b0ef-db9658c50709.html

QANON AND A RAPE JOKE SPELL TROUBLE FOR REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN IN FLORIDA

Just think about that, how American politics has incorporated QAnon type wackos. Granted we have had low life racists and sexual predators as lawmakers, but this is a new low for modern times. May they all be politically crushed asap.




Rep. Brian Mast has apologized for his jokes, but they could cause him to lose votes to a QAnon-associated independent candidate.


THE REPUBLICAN PARTY has engaged in a delicate dance with the sprawling movement known as QAnon, exploiting the energy behind it where possible, while working to keep a safe public distance elsewhere. As Election Day draws nearer, however, Republicans are dropping some of their reticence. In Georgia, the official arm of House Republicans is backing QAnon believer Marjorie Taylor Greene, a congressional candidate whose endorsement was coveted by the leading Republican Senate candidates in the state.

In one race in Florida, however, the conspiracy-minded movement could blow up an incumbent Republican’s reelection campaign and in the process tilt control of the state congressional delegation to Democrats.

Because the Q movement is thoroughly disconnected from reality, it’s impossible to say with any seriousness what its fundamental philosophical or politics tenets are, as adherents to the cause range from people vaguely concerned about child sex trafficking to those convinced that Democrats and their “deep state” allies have built a secret elite society that engages in pedophilia and cannibalism. The connective tissue is the defense of children being preyed upon by the powerful, and that’s how Republican Rep. Brian Mast stepped into the movement’s crosshairs.

In August, the South Florida Sun Sentinel resurfaced old Facebook posts of Mast’s in which the veteran bantered with Florida man Rocco LeDonni, a friend-turned-campaign manager, about sex with 15-year-olds.

https://theintercept.com/2020/10/28/qanon-florida-republican-mast/

Study "finds increase in number of BLM protests within a state is associated with a decrease

Waiting for the Help That Was Promised in Eastern Kentucky

The stimulus checks are gone, and unemployment claims remain unprocessed. The Jaynes family is holding on to half a tank of gas and a dollar-fifty in change.

By Oliver Whang

October 27, 2020


Robin Jaynes, who’s forty-five, was born and raised in Magoffin County, in eastern Kentucky. Not quite a decade ago, her third husband, Tim, was forced to retire, and Robin, who spent much of her twenties and thirties raising six children, began looking for a job. Tim grew up at the head of a holler in neighboring Johnson County, near the West Virginia border, and served for fifteen years in the Army, until he was honorably discharged, in 1993, after developing a tremor, and he went to work at Family Dollar. He started seeing Robin ten years later, and they had a son, Timmy, in 2006. After eighteen years of twelve- and thirteen-hour workdays, Tim had a minor heart attack on the job, in 2011, the culmination of medical problems—high blood pressure, high cholesterol—that had dogged him for years. A doctor recommended that he apply for disability and supplemental security income (S.S.I.), which he did, reluctantly. “I liked working,” he told me. “I worked there until literally they had to call an ambulance and take me out. That’s when I had to give it up, and then she started,” he said, referring to his wife.

Robin worked at fast-food places for a while, Burger King and K.F.C. and Wendy’s. The customers were often rude, she said, but those jobs paid the rent for the family’s subsidized three-bedroom apartment. By 2016, her three oldest children had moved out, and Robin decided that she and Tim and the three younger kids should move to a two-bedroom place owned by the Highland Church of Christ in Paintsville, which would save them eighty dollars a month. Robin became a member of the church, though she worked too much to get to services often. The apartment, she told me, was a little small for two parents and three kids, “but we got them a bunk bed set, and the oldest one had a twin-sized bed, so it worked out.” She took a job as a cashier at Dollar General, which paid her seven dollars and twenty-five cents an hour. She worked her way up to assistant manager, organizing the shelves and handling customers and making sure the two cash registers didn’t break down the way they used to. Her hourly pay went up to ten dollars and ten cents. Tim’s total fixed income usually amounted to eight hundred dollars a month.


Last year, the Jayneses moved to Indiana to be closer to Robin’s mother’s side of the family, but they returned shortly after having a fight with her brother. The church rented their apartment back to them, at the same rate, but all the moving had used up the family savings, and they fell behind on rent. Robin returned to Dollar General and started paying off the debt, which had grown to a couple thousand dollars, little by little. Standing all day can be difficult for Robin, who has asthma and the beginnings of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. She usually worked between forty and fifty hours a week.


https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/waiting-for-the-help-that-was-promised-in-eastern-kentucky?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker&utm_social-type=earned



McConnell should be losing in the polls, he is as evil as Trump.

U.S. joins global anti-abortion pact as Polish women march to protest clampdown

Signatories of the Geneva Consensus Declaration pledge to work together to "reaffirm that there is no international right to abortion."



Oct. 23, 2020, 8:16 AM EDT / Updated Oct. 23, 2020, 10:22 AM EDT

By Adela Suliman

The United States on Thursday signed an anti-abortion declaration along with more than 30 countries representing over 1.6 billion people.

Overnight, women in Poland took to the streets to protest a clampdown on abortion rights in that country.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar took part in a virtual signing ceremony of the Geneva Consensus Declaration. Egypt, Uganda, Brazil, Hungary and Indonesia co-sponsored the pact along with the U.S. Thirty-two nations signed it.

The nonbinding declaration says it seeks to improve women's health, preserve human life and strengthen the family unit.

"We, the representatives of our sovereign nations do hereby declare in mutual friendship and respect, our commitment to work together to: Reaffirm that there is no international right to abortion," the declaration read.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-joins-global-anti-abortion-pact-polish-women-march-n1244487




Outrageous how backward this is. grrrrrr