Alright, I made a terrible Halloween pun. I know, its terrible. What can I say. But I’m feeling lucky. Things seem to be going well with the Blue Wave. A lot of people are expecting them to overperform, that the polls are underestimating us, I hope they are right.
The Trump administration has quietly backed away from Donald Trump’s accusation that Barack Obama wiretapped him, admitting in a court filing that there is no evidence to support that claim.
Trump drew considerable criticism for claiming that Obama had wiretapped him prior to the 2016 election. The president appeared to be responding to a report that former campaign official Carter Page was under a FISA warrant, but there was no evidence that Obama had ordered surveillance on Trump, and Trump never offered any.
“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory,” Trump wrote in a tweet in March, 2017. “Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”
Now, a new court filing released late Friday night from the Department of Justice admitted that it found no evidence to back Trump’s claim. As the legal blog Law and Crime noted, the admission came in response to a request from a journalist about what evidence there might be to back Donald Trump’s accusation against Barack Obama.
Probably a drop in the pan, but its very amusing when Trump has to admit he was wrong or lying about something. I guess its safe to use the White House Microwaves again.
The use of anti-Muslim bigotry in political campaigns is a tactic Muslims and Muslim candidates have seen over and over in recent years. Just last week, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) launched a series of Islamophobic and racist attack ads against his Democratic opponent, Ammar Campa-Najjar.
But a new report shows that candidates who have run on these very tactics in the last two years have faced backlash and eventually lost their elections.
In its “Running on Hate” report released Monday, Muslim Advocates, a national legal advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., documented candidates who ran ― or are running ― in the 2017 and 2018 elections and produced Islamophobic campaigns as part of their political strategy.
Political mudslinging and malicious campaigns are nothing new in the history of American elections. But in the last few years, especially after the election of Donald Trump as president, racist and xenophobic campaigns have increased alongside the alarming number of white supremacists running for office and the subsequent rise in hate crimes nationwide.
Half of the 2017-18 candidates Muslim Advocates identified in its report were running for Congress, with the remaining 40 running for local positions, including 15 candidates for county office, 15 for governor and 10 for state legislature. Of the 73 races where a candidate’s party affiliation could be positively identified, all but two were Republicans, further confirming the GOP’s hostility toward Muslims.
While 34 of these campaigns are still active, the results for the other 46 went heavily against those candidates: 27 anti-Muslim candidates lost their races, eight dropped out, and one was recalled. Only two of them ultimately won, both in 2017.
Meanwhile, the report predicts that many of the still-active candidates will lose, with “only one or two newly elected anti-Muslim candidates” ― meaning most of the winners would likely be incumbents.
Hey, so it turns out people really don’t like bigoted assholes who hate on Muslims. Who could have guessed (Everyone except the GOP guessed this.)
he Department of Health and Human Services is leading the effort to establish a legal definition of sex, according to the New York Times, which broke the story. The department is backing adoption of a uniform definition of gender as determined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable,” and limit it to simply “male” or “female.” Any disputes would be settled by genetic testing
The reactions so far raged from outrage to vows to fight the proposed classifications.
Ah yes, this pile of horsecrap. Earlier today Trump decided to remind everyone what a piece of shit he is and declare “Hey, we’re gonna mess with Trans people again.” Just two weeks before the election even. But as its just been demonstrated, a lot of people are already vowing to fight this. Still, the timing for this couldn’t be worse for the GOP, they basically just October surprised themselves.
Jewish Democrats are on the cusp of making major gains in the upcoming midterm elections with a Forward analysis now predicting at least 4 Jews will flip seats in the House of Representatives.
With an anti-Trump #BlueWave building in suburbs from coast to coast, Jews are likely to win at least 27 seats when America votes on November 6 — a whopping 18% boost over the 23 they hold now.
A Forward model simulating continued movement towards Democrats shows Jews could win up to 8 or 9 additional seats, a shift of historic proportions. Even if polls swing back towards the GOP, Jews stand to pick up one or two seats.
Read more: https://forward.com/news/412212/jewish-democrats-eye-historic-gains-in-congress-as-bluewave-builds/
You know, there are times when this job isn’t easy. Searching through Bing, and now Google News, can be rough because I have to sift through countless “The Blue Wave is fizzling” stories. But its nice to see that some people still see a blue future ahead of us.
California just passed the toughest state-level net neutrality law in the nation, and within hours, the Department of Justice sued the state to block the law from going into effect. It’s the start of a new chapter in the fight for net neutrality, as the federal government works hand in hand with the telecom industry to stop a wave of state-level net neutrality protections.
But legal experts told The Verge that the effort to remove states from the consumer protection equation rests on shaky legal ground and may only buy the telecom sector time rather than rolling back the law completely.
California’s SB822 was signed into law on Sunday by California Gov. Jerry Brown. SB822 largely mirrors the FCC’s discarded 2015 net neutrality rules by preventing ISPs from blocking or throttling users’ access to websites and services that compete with an ISP’s own offerings.
“An agency that has no power to regulate has no power to preempt the states.”
But the new bill goes even further by policing things like anti-competitive abuse of usage caps (aka “zero-rating”) and the kind of interconnection interference that resulted in Netflix users seeing streaming slowdowns back in 2014. California is also exploring its own state-level privacy laws in the wake of the parallel industry attack on the FCC’s privacy rules last year.
FCC boss Ajit Pai quickly issued a statement calling the California bill “illegal” and “anti-consumer,” despite the bill having the support of consumer groups. Pai has defended “state rights” when states pass protectionist laws hamstringing broadband competition, but those concerns evaporated when some states attempted to actually protect consumers.
The Department of Justice filed suit against California just hours after Brown signed the bill, claiming it was “an extreme and illegal state law attempting to frustrate federal policy” that could cause “irreparable harm” to the United States. The DOJ is demanding a preliminary injunction to stop California’s law from taking effect on January 1st.
“We are confident that we will prevail in this case—because the facts are on our side,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
But critics of the administration’s frontal assault on consumer protections say that’s wishful thinking, and the entire industry effort hinges on a shaky FCC legal gambit that isn’t likely to succeed.
Yeah, decided to end with a bit of Net Neutrality news tonight. The California Net Neutrality bill is gonna take the Trump Administration on head to head and they’re gonna win.
Once again, its time for me to promote the Good News Roundup Spotify playlist. Over five hours of musice to surf the Blue Wave by. And now featuring the works of Allies Willie Nelson and Taylor Swift.
Anyways, everyone have a good Monday, make sure you are registered to vote and ready to vote in two weeks, Lets make the BOO Wave happen together.