“Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration will likely be filled with people who will benefit financially from more fracking, more industrial agriculture and factory farms, and expanded deregulation masquerading as trade policy. The people he has indicated will be in his cabinet are the same people who have advocated policies that are destroying our climate and creating a society marked by stratification and racial prejudice. We expect to see more deregulation of industry that will damage our communities, our environment, and our democracy.”

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“Clinton, not Trump, took the two bottom groups with respect to income: Under $30,000 and under $50,000. Trump won all of the rest, sometimes narrowly, but he won them. And white women college graduates only slightly favored Clinton, while trade and state-of-personal-finances badly hurt Clinton. Views of the parties are polarized, but more people have a better view of the Democrats than the Republicans.

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“Some new voices on the right advocating a more restrained foreign policy are needed — to be more aligned with Trump’s campaign promise to the American people to get involved in fewer foreign wars and reassess, and perhaps scale back, the U.S. role in globe-spanning alliances.”

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In our current system, the way we choose our leaders is failing. As a nonpartisan group, FairVote advocates for proven solutions to make elections better. Voters should have the freedom to vote for the candidate they like the best without fear that their vote will help the candidate they like the least. Studies show that campaigns are less negative in cities that use ranked choice voting. Rewarding candidates who seek to earn every voter’s support is a win for the people of Maine and American democracy as a whole.

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“Some of the best evidence of the success of the Christian Right is that no matter who wins the presidency, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is still a sitting member of the U.S. Senate from a major state and one of the best known pols in the country. And Mike Pence is either the Vice President; or if his ticket loses, is a party leader and joins Cruz as a contender for the GOP nomination for president in 2020.”

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And in suggesting that the pipeline could just be rerouted, Obama misses the key element of resistance to Dakota Access: all new fossil fuel infrastructure must be halted immediately, because our planet is on the brink of climate crisis and there is no excuse for building another 40 years of fossil fuel infrastructure. And no communities should be forced to host a dangerous and destructive fossil fuel pipeline.

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“With days to go before the election, the FBI has served up its own October Surprise, saying it was examining a new batch of emails in an investigation most thought had generally ended. But at the heart of the broader controversy, Hillary Clinton has no one to blame except herself.

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“But there is a vital difference. In one siege, the government soldiers are described as liberators by Western reporters embedded with them, who enthusiastically report their battles and air strikes. There are front page pictures of these heroic soldiers giving a V-sign for victory. There is scant mention of civilian casualties. In the second city — in another country nearby — almost exactly the same is happening. Government forces are laying siege to a city controlled by the same breed of fanatics.

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“Comey is neither saint nor villain but someone who has been around the block. As an acting Attorney General, he’s actually been in his nominal boss’s Loretta Lynch’s exact position and knows how the political pressures as well as media disclosures (i.e. leaking to the public) work. Although he wasn’t really challenging mass surveillance of American citizens or the CIA’s use of torture back March 2004 in Ashcroft’s hospital room, he did stand up to John Yoo’s (presidentially ordained) pettifoggery establishing a form of martial law after 9-11, based on (fascistic) ‘imperial presidency’ war powers.

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“The United States, which led the opposition, had hoped to limit the ‘Yes’ vote to less than one hundred, but failed badly. The final vote was 123 For, 38 Against and 16 Abstentions. The ‘No’ votes came from the nuclear weapons states, and U.S. allies in NATO, plus Japan, South Korea and Australia, which have treaty ties to the U.S., and consider themselves to be under the protection of the ‘U.S. nuclear umbrella.’

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