Polls are just about closed in western IN and KY; eastern parts of those states closed at 6pm.
(image attribution: NYT)
Music videos are encouraged, along with tweets, news, jibber-jabber.
Budtenders are available as well!
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Tonight is the last tug of war speeches debate between the two nominees of their respective parties. One of them should have never been there but managed to wreck our country further, and the other one still wants an Obama-Biden revival.
He shouldn’t be there either.
But we got outnumbered. We know Bernie would have ripped Trump up and down on the pandemic alone and finished him there.
Lots of new #Debates2020 rules tonight. Mics will be muted during the two-minute opening remarks by the candidates at the start of each 15-minute segment of the debate. Can Donald Trump avoid interrupting Joe Biden for two minutes? If you know Trump, you know that’s a tall order.
— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) October 23, 2020
So the debate moderator at the debate site of Belmont University, Nashville, is Kristen Welker of NBC News. There will be 6 topics, and they are as follows:
Hmmm, let’s see. Except for maybe topic number 2, in which both candidates have family members who have benefitted from political ties to them, Trump will either take the Amy Barrett approach, and change the subject, or we will see “the best ever” answers. Biden will be able to speak to Fighting COVID and National Security at least. The rest– whatever their consultants may prep them for.
The moderator will not have control of the microphone, so it’s not exactly clear who will be muting it.
The debate will be 9-10:30 PM EDT on ABC · CBS · NBC · PBS
Stream: C-SPAN on YouTube · CBSN · CNNgo · Fox News Go · USA Today BBC News on YouTube TV
Apps: CBS News App · Fox News App · NBC News
Guess it’s time for popcorn and plenty of water to chase those cocktails/beers. Benny’s Bar is open, place an order.
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You can treat this as an open thread. Fun tweets, snarks, news, and jibber-jabber. Floor is yours.
US school shootings: Florida survivors take NRA and politicians to task
Faced with a furious crowd of Florida students demanding a renewed ban on assault weapons, Republican senator Marco Rubio offered one concession after another.
He said he supported legislation to raise the legal age to purchase a rifle to 21 from 18. He said he supported a law to create gun violence restraining orders, which would give family members and law enforcement a way to petition a court to take away a dangerous person’s guns. He said he opposed Donald Trump’s proposal to prevent school shootings by arming teachers or putting more armed security in classrooms.
Finally, Rubio said he was “reconsidering” supporting a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines, what experts call the most substantive part of the assault weapon ban. Rubio said that yet-to-be-announced details from the investigation on the attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school would show that limits on ammunition magazines might have saved several lives in the shooting.
None of this was enough for the passionate crowd of more than 7,000 people at CNN’s town hall discussion in Florida on Wednesday night. They applauded, cheered and gave standing ovations in support of a full ban on the kind of military-style rifle and ammunition used in the Parkland shooting. A loophole-ridden federal assault weapon ban had passed in 1994, in the wake of a school shooting in California, and expired a decade later, in 2004.
Rubio, the only national Republican politician who agreed to answer questions from the Florida shooting survivors, seemed to watch the political ground of the gun debate shift under his feet. At one point, he argued that it did not make sense to ban only a subset of semiautomatic rifles based on certain cosmetic military features.
“You would literally have to ban every semi-automatic rifle that’s sold in America …” he began, before being cut off by huge whoops and cheers from the crowd.
“Fair enough, fair enough,” Rubio said. “That is a valid position to hold.”
More news/video/tweets/etc. in the comments, uncluding:
*Over 70 Progressive Leaders Rally Behind Ambitious Economic Policy Pledge
*Sen. Bernie Sanders On Gun Control, Russian Meddling And Congressional Dysfunction
*Victims of Big Oil Pollution Speak Out Against Pruitt’s Luxury Flights
*Jail medical services firm charged after inmate’s Milwaukee death
*Pipeline news, Water Protector Updates & More
This is a diary about the big picture. About things we should not forget as we fend off the daily outrages of the Trump administration. First, let’s hear from a very large sample of voters who were interviewed on election day 2016, by Reuters/Ipsos: The poll of more than 10,000 people who have already cast their ballots in the presidential election showed a majority of voters are worried about their ability to get ahead and have little confidence in political parties or the media to improve their situation. A majority also feel that the economy is rigged to mostly help … Continue reading →
Bernie Sanders Denounces Trumpcare as ‘The Most Anti-Working Class Legislation Ever’
Bernie Sanders spoke in Des Moines, Iowa on Saturday where he issued a rallying cry for “a vibrant American democracy,” and took aim at the Republicans’ healthcare bill, which he called “the most anti-working class legislation” in modern history.
The Vermont senator made the remarks at the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI) Action Fund’s annual convention called “Revolution Iowa: From Protest to Power,” where he delivered the keynote address.
Sanders said that “we’re in a pivotal moment of American history.”
he trend toward having a handful of billionaire families with unlimited resources controlling our political process will only get worse. The trend toward a handful of conglomerates owning and controlling our economy will only get worse.”
“And what our job is,” he continued, “is to create a vibrant democracy where one person, one vote is what dominates the political system, not billionaires buying the election.”
“Democracy is facing an enormous challenge,” Sanders said.
Threats to a “vibrant democracy,” he said, come not only from the “disastrous” Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, but also “Republican governors, cowardly governors, who don’t have the guts to run for office based on their ideas but who are attempting to suppress the vote to keep low-income people or people of color or working people or older people from participating in the political process.”
More news/video/etc. in the comments.
Bernie Sanders supporters are still feeling the sting of their candidate’s loss in the race for the Democratic nomination for president and Hillary Clinton’s subsequent loss of the election to Donald Trump. Sanders’s fans, political observers and the media have been asking him for months whether he’ll consider running again in 2020.
The Vermont senator’s usual answer is that it’s way too early to talk about the next election. He reiterated as much in an interview that will air Thursday morning on Sirius XM’s “Make It Plain With Mark Thompson.” But when Thompson asked Sanders whether he’s leaving 2020 on the table or taking it off, the senator answered, more directly than he normally does, that he isn’t not considering it.
“No, I am not taking it off the table. I just have not made any decisions,” Sanders said. “And I think it’s much too early,” he continued, directing the conversation to what he believes the public should be focusing on at this time.
More news/video/etc. in the comments!
This week, Hannity and Hume rushed to tell us that colluding with Putin to subvert the results of an American election is entirely legal. The National Review thinks evidence of collusion would be “an enormous calamity” for Trump and lead to impeachment if Democrats win Congress. But, they don’t think there’s anything wrong about collusion, they just think it’s a “dead-end” argument to talk about legality. Let’s set aside, for a moment, all the state, federal or campaign finance laws that might have been broken. Or even the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Let’s set aside the fact that Trump asked for help from “Russia, if … Continue reading →
