LibertyVoter.Org

By Guardian Staff, The Guardian

Multiple people have been shot after an attack at a community college in south-western Oregon, emergency officials say.

The fire district said on Twitter that “multiple casualties” had been transported from the scene. CNN reported that a local hospital is expecting an “unknown number” of patients.

Appearing on MSNBC, Ray Shouffler of the Douglas County fire department said a suspected shooter had been “neutralized”.

The Douglas County sheriff’s office said in a Facebook statement that the first 911 calls were received at 10:38am PT and that police from multiple jurisdictions had responded.

The fire department on Twitter advised people to stay away from Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, which is about 180 miles south of Portland. Students and faculty members were being bussed to the being bused to the Douglas County Fairgrounds.

The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is on the scene. An agency spokesperson said ATF agents came in from Portland and Eugene, Oregon. The ATF’s K9 unit and an assistant special agent from Seattle have also been dispatched to the scene.

Ron Wyden, a senator from Oregon, said on Twitter that “Oregonians everywhere want Roseburg to know we’re praying for them”.

Umpqua Community College has about 3,000 students. Its website was down Thursday, and a phone message left at the school by the Associated Press wasn’t immediately returned.

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• Trumpocrisy: The Ultimate .00001% Candidate Casts Himself as the Everyman

…read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Sophia Tesfaye, Salon

Arizona Republican Congressman Paul Gosar, the self-described “proud Catholic” who boasted about boycotting Pope Francis’s historic address to Congress last week, is now fundraising off his political stunt.

The Washington Post got a copy of Gosar’s email appeal for campaign cash to “help me fend off the liberal sharks who are out for my blood,” sent to supporters on Wednesday ahead of the third quarter fundraising deadline. Citing the backlash to his decision to be the lone member of Congress to boycott the historic papal visit, the Arizona Republican somehow contorted his fundraising pitch into an attack on the “Obama political machine”:

If I can show that I raised $25,000 more by the end of September… I will show the liberals, the left-wing media and the Obama political machine that I am a force to be reckoned with and will continue to take principled stands.

However, should I fail to do so… the liberal sharks will smell blood in the water and try to use my principled boycott against me. Please do not allow that to happen.

Gosar blamed the “liberal media” for “reinforcing an almost rockstar-like status never before seen for the leader of the Catholic Church,” during Francis’s tour of the East Coast last week and chastised the Pope for ignoring abortion in favor of “left-wing pseudo-science of ‘global warming.'”

I believe when a Pope chooses to act and talk like a leftist politician, then he can expect to be treated like one. I need conservatives like you in my corner as I come under unprecedented attacks for taking this principled stand

Gosar also got a little conspiratorial during his appeal, questioning Francis’s popularity amongst Democrats. “This from the left, who generally ridicule religion,” he wrote. “So it begs the question as to why they have never before embraced a Pope in this fashion.”

A recent Gallup poll shows the pontiff enjoys high favorability ratings from both moderate and liberal Americans, with only conservatives exhibiting a sharp drop off in their support — from …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Nomi Prins, TomDispatch

To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com  here.

The 2016 election campaign is certainly a billionaire’s playground when it comes to “establishment candidates” like Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush who cater to mega-donors and use their money to try to rally party bases. The only genuine exception to the rule this time around has been Bernie Sanders, who has built a solid grassroots following and funding machine, while shunning what he calls “the billionaire class” that fuels the super PACs.

Donald Trump, like Ross Perot back in the 1992 and 1996 elections, has played quite a different trick on the money-saturated American political system.  He has removed the billionaire as middleman between citizen plebeians and political elites, and created a true .00001% candidate, because he’s… well, a financial elite unto himself, however conveniently posed as the country’s straight-talking “everyman.”

Despite his I-can-buy-but-can’t-be-bought swagger, Trump’s persona has been carefully constructed to deflect even the most obvious questions of conflict of interest that his wealth and deal-making history should bring up. He claims that he would govern (or dictate) as he is, no apologies or bullshit. But would he?

The billionaire-as-president is a new prospect for America. The only faintly comparable situation in our history came before the Crash of 1929, when President Calvin Coolidge, who famously declared that “the business of America is business,” reappointed mogul Andrew Mellon as his treasury secretary, just as President Warren Harding had done before him. A walking conflict of interest, Mellon left Washington during Herbert Hoover’s administration to avoid Congressional scrutiny of his personal business endeavors. He was later investigated by the Department of Justice for falsifying tax information in his own business empire.

Trump is, by his own admission, a dealmaker who has, since the 1970s, utilized self-promotion and his own growing celebrity to make money.  Nonetheless, he denies the importance of money itself. His quasi-autobiography, The Art of the Deal, opens with this now-familiar tall tale: “I don’t …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Democracy Now

By Scott Eric Kaufman, Salon

The controversial House Majority Leader in Indiana — he cosponsored the state’s “religious freedom” law — resigned suddenly on Tuesday after a sexually compromising video was sent to all of the people on his “Contacts” list, the Advocate’s Bil Browning reports.

After news of the mass-texting began to circulate, Representative Jud McMillin (R) claimed that his “phone was stolen in Canada and out of my control for about 24 hours. I have just been able to reactivate it under my control. Please disregard any messages you received recently. I am truly sorry for anything offensive you may have received.”

But his “Canadian girlfriend stole my phone” defense apparently didn’t convince many of his “Contacts” — or at least, not the ones who mattered — and so Tuesday night he released a statement in which he said that the “time is right for me to pass the torch and spend more time with my family.”

During his five years in the legislature, McMillin has crusaded to “protect the integrity of the institution of marriage,” but the Advocate reported that the woman on the video he texted was not, in fact, his wife. According to his campaign website, he claimed that “the family has always been the foundation of our strength of community” and that “[i]n these times of turmoil the rest of the country could learn something from our example.”

It’s unclear what the rest of the country could learn from his example at this time, other than — perhaps — opposing LGBTQ rights across the board could have karmic implications for conservative Republicans with a proclivity for taking videos of themselves cheating on their wives.

…read more

Source: ALTERNET