October 28, 2016

Trump fans flood the web with bogus voter fraud stories as officials scramble to debunk them

Source: RawStory

If you see your Facebook feed flooded with hyped-up stories of alleged anti-Trump “voter fraud,” you should take them all with a massive grain of salt.

The reason for this is simple: The alleged voter fraud scare stories are bunk. Throughout this week, we’ve seen examples of Trump fans on the web trying to prove a massive voter fraud conspiracy with a series of anecdotes that completely fall apart upon closer inspection.

The most infamous example of this came from Donald Trump himself tweeting about a woman in Tarrant County, Texas who claimed that her voting machine flipped her vote from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton.

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However, Tarrant County Elections Administrator Frank Phillips told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram earlier this week that he investigated the woman’s complaint and found that it was her own mistake that made her vote flip from Trump to Clinton. “Our investigations have indicated that the voter did not follow the directions for straight-party voting when they inadvertently click the ‘enter’ button or turn the wheel, causing the change in votes,” he said. “Further, in each incident where we could actually speak to a voter, they tell us that they discovered the changed vote on the summary screen display.”

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Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2016/10/trump-fans-flood-the-web-with-bogus-voter-fraud-stories-as-officials-scramble-to-debunk-them/

October 28, 2016

Man pleads guilty to spying on gay roommate who then killed himself

Source: Associated Press

Friday, October 28, 2016

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (AP) — A former Rutgers University student whose roommate killed himself after being secretly recorded on a web camera kissing another man pleaded guilty Thursday to attempted invasion of privacy.

Dharun Ravi‘s plea comes after a New Jersey appeals court last month threw out a 15-count conviction against him and ordered a new trial on other counts.

The case stemmed from the 2010 death of 18-year-old Tyler Clementi, a freshman in his first weeks at Rutgers when he jumped off the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River.

Clementi’s death and the criminal case against Ravi started a national conversation about cyberbullying and homophobia. Clementi’s parents formed a foundation to address bullying and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.

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Read more: http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2016/10/man-pleads-guilty-spying-gay-roommate-killed/

October 28, 2016

Political Pros See No Logic In Trump's All-Over-The-Map Campaign Schedule

Source: Talking Points Memo

With less than two weeks left until Election Day, Donald Trump’s aggressive campaign schedule for those final days is leaving veteran GOP strategists mystified.

Rather than focusing their efforts on must-win battleground states, Trump and his running mate Mike Pence have crisscrossed the country in a frantic last-minute dash that this week include a rally in Colorado, where Hillary Clinton has a sizable lead, and a stop for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Republican nominee’s Washington, D.C. hotel.

“With limited time and limited resources, you can’t try to do everything,” GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak told TPM. “You have to make difficult strategic decisions and I just don’t see them doing that. I see them deploying time and resources based on his instincts, not based on data.”

Mackowiak sees the Trump campaign's haphazard approach, which he said may bean effort to “preserve a couple of different paths to 270,” as woefully misguided. The Potomac Strategy Group founder said the Republican nominee should be spending every day until Nov. 8 in must-win states like Ohio, Florida and North Carolina.

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Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/campaign-strategists-say-trump-packed-schedule-makes-no-sense

October 28, 2016

President Obama to veto defense bill if it includes anti-LGBTQ provision

President Obama has said he will veto the 2017 defense authorization bill when it reaches his desk if Republicans insist on including an anti-LGBTQ “religious freedom” provision.

The White House has not officially announced the intent to veto the $600 million spending bill publicly, however senior administration officials at a White House meeting Monday told groups opposed to the provision that they have delivered that message privately to key lawmakers “in unequivocal terms,” reports Roll Call. White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough is said to have reached out to members personally to make the administration’s stance clear.

The Russell Amendment, named after its sponsor Oklahoma Republican Steve Russell, has already passed the House. It would allow federal contractors to discriminate against the LGBTQ community provided they claim they are doing so out of a strongly held religious belief. This would goes against an executive order Obama signed prohibiting discrimination against workers by government contractors.

The Senate did not add the provision to its version of the bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), meaning there could be a standoff when congress meets after the presidential election in a lame-duck session where they will be under pressure to resolve differences between the chambers and get the bill to the president’s desk. The disagreement could result in a filibuster in the Senate.

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http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2016/10/president-obama-veto-defense-bill-includes-anti-lgbtq-provision/

October 28, 2016

Despite Repeated Claims, Trump Now Won't Commit To Spending $100M

Source: Talking Points Memo

For the past month, Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he will personally contribute more than $100 million to his own campaign by Election Day, but now Trump will not commit to reaching that goal.

"We'll see what's needed," Trump told Fox News' Bret Baier when discussing whether he's meet his pledge to spend $100 million of his own money in an interview set to air Friday evening.

Trump had been boasting that he would donate $100 million by the end of the election cycle. But according to FEC reports filed Thursday night, Trump only donated about $31,000 to his campaign in the first half of October, bringing his total contributions to a little over $56 million.

The most recent FEC filing covers through Oct. 19. So in the three weeks between then and the election, Trump will have to cough up somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 percent of the total he's given for the whole campaign to reach his $100 million vow. Again, roughly $44 million in about three weeks.

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Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/donald-trump-100-million-pledge

October 28, 2016

NY Times Editor Swings At Fox News, CNN: They're 'Bad For Democracy'

New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet condemned cable news coverage of the 2016 presidential election for mixing "entertainment and news" in an interview published Friday.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Baquet described CNN and Fox News' approaches to election coverage as "bad for democracy and those institutions."

Their "mix of entertainment and news, and news masquerading as entertainment" would be "kind of funny," Baquet said, if not for Donald Trump's candidacy, which he described as a product of the combination.

Baquet was unsparing in his criticism of both networks, calling CNN's decision to hire ousted Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as a paid commentator "outrageous" and slamming Lewandowski as "a political shill."

He was equally critical of Fox News, which he said "is not a journalistic institution." While Baquet praised Fox News hosts Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace as "great" journalists, he didn't miss the chance to take a jab at former Fox boss Roger Ailes, who resigned amid mounting allegations of sexual harassment.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/dean-baquet-fox-cnn-bad-for-democracy

October 28, 2016

Will Donald Trump’s uprising go global — even if he loses?

Amid the ruins of Trump 2016 a worldwide strategy emerges, linked to Breitbart, UKIP and the European right

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

After the final debate last week I wrote a rather dark and ominous piece predicting that Donald Trump’s abandonment of the democratic norm that the loser of the election accepts the results portended serious trouble. I quoted Republican strategist Steve Schmidt who said this on MSNBC in the wee hours of the morning:

I think he plans on being martyred. I think in his martyrdom he’s going to wave the bloody shirt and he’s going to go out and say through a party of grievance and resentment that “we were cheated and this was stolen,” and he’ll have a critical mass for a UKIP-style third party that splits off from the Republican Party. Who knows where the funding for Trump TV will come from, but it will be a media designed to undermine the democratic foundations of the United States and the credibility of our elections processes. Vladimir Putin couldn’t hope for anything better than that.

It sounded over the top, but not any more over the top than anything else Trump has done in this election. After all, Nigel Farage, leader of Britain’s right-wing UKIP party, has appeared at rallies with Trump and was seen in the spin room at the debates. Trump’s campaign CEO, and by all accounts, his chief strategist in the closing days of the race, is Breitbart chief Steve Bannon, a major figurehead of the American alt-right, who is closely aligned philosophically with European white nationalist groups like UKIP. So Schmidt’s prediction may have some truth to it.

On Thursday, Joshua Green published an inside look at the GOP candidate’s campaign operation in Bloomberg Businessweek and it reveals that Trump and company have some big plans after the election, whether they win or lose. Those plans and may very well involve something along the lines that Schmidt outlined.

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http://www.salon.com/2016/10/28/will-donald-trumps-uprising-go-global-even-if-he-loses/

October 28, 2016

CNN’s Chris Cuomo refuses to let Joe Walsh off the hook for ‘musket’ talk: ‘Words matter’

TRAVIS GETTYS
28 OCT 2016 AT 08:27 ET

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The former Illinois congressman-turned-talk radio host said he urged conservatives take up arms, figuratively or literally, in self-defense if Hillary Clinton wins the election.

“If she wins fair and square, then the anger that a lot of Americans have toward our political system — and she’s part of that — we’ve got to double down and triple down and do whatever we can to defend our freedom,” he said. “That phrase, ‘grab your musket,’ is a phrase I’ve used probably a hundred times in the last two or three years.”

CNN’s Chris Cuomo refused to let him off the hook, and accused Walsh of repeatedly inflaming political controversies with provocative statements. “Words matter, context matters,” Cuomo said. “You say, ‘This is now war, watch out Obama, watch out Black Lives Matter punks, real America’s coming after you.’ You only take this one way — you take it provocatively. Trump is the master of this, and you have to now argue whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. You tell me why it’s good.”

Walsh, not surprisingly, believed that Trump’s provocations were good for politics. “The American people are waking up,” Walsh said. “These are serious times. You nailed it. This is an ugly, nasty election. But you know what? It should be, because things in America right now are ugly and nasty, and we’re pissed off, Chris, at Republicans and Democrats.”

Despite his protests to the contrary just moments earlier, Walsh seemed to call for some type of revolution — violent or otherwise — if Trump lost to the Democratic candidate.

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http://www.rawstory.com/2016/10/cnns-chris-cuomo-refuses-to-let-joe-walsh-off-the-hook-for-musket-talk-words-matter/

October 28, 2016

Morning Joe downplays violent talk: ‘Stop insulting Trump supporters — there’s rage on both sides’

TRAVIS GETTYS
28 OCT 2016 AT 07:43 ET

Moments after complaining that anti-government militants had been acquitted on all charges in Oregon for their armed takeover of a federal facility, Joe Scarborough pooh-poohed the notion that angry Donald Trump supporters would consider taking up arms if he lost.

“It’s just absolutely staggering to me that the jury acquitted all of those defendants in the case who just basically spit at the rule of law,” Scarborough said, turning to Huffington Post reporter Sam Stein. “Anyway, sam, back to your point, there’s going to be no blood in the streets. It’s deeply offensive that the national media is pushing this narrative.”

The host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” compared anecdotal reports of Trump supporters calling for post-election violence to some of the “bad apples” at Sarah Palin rallies in 2008 who questioned Barack Obama’s loyalty to America — as if those were two unrelated phenomena. “They had to go through the crowds and find something that called (him) a socialist, claimed it was the end of American democracy — just stop,” Scarborough said. “Stop insulting Trump supporters.”

Panelist Donny Deutsch pointed out that 64 percent of Trump supporters believe the candidate’s claims that the election will be rigged, and while he doesn’t believe that translates to “muskets being taken off shelves” — he can imagine some isolated instances of election-related violence.

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http://www.rawstory.com/2016/10/morning-joe-downplays-violent-talk-stop-insulting-trump-supporters-theres-rage-on-both-sides/

October 28, 2016

Brazil prosecutor says Trump franchise may have benefited from corruption

Source: Reuters

28 OCT 2016 AT 09:12 ET

A Brazilian prosecutor investigating potentially corrupt investments made by state pension funds said the real estate company run by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump appears to have benefited “suspiciously” from a massive redevelopment of Rio de Janeiro’s port ahead of the Olympics.

The development, known as Porto Maravilha, or Marvelous Port in Portuguese, cost 8 billion reais ($2.5 billion) and developed run-down docklands into a plaza, museums, corporate and residential real estate. As part of the project, five 38-story buildings were meant to be erected under the Trump brand.

Public prosecutor Alselmo Lopes said in a court filing made public on Thursday that he is investigating the Porto Maravilha deal, in which the national employee severance fund FGTS, managed by state-bank Caixa Economica Federal [CEF.UL], paid up-front for building rights which it then sold on.

The structuring of the Porto Maravilha deal “favoured, in a suspicious way, the Trump Organization economic group”, among others, Lopes said. The prosecutor gave no further details and was not immediately reachable for comment.

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Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2016/10/brazil-prosecutor-says-trump-franchise-may-have-benefited-from-corruption/