August 25, 2016

Rio police charge Lochte with false report of robbery

Source: The Washington Post

By Mauricio Savarese?|?AP August 25 at 6:45 PM

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilian police charged American swimmer Ryan Lochte on Thursday with filing a false robbery report over an incident during the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

A police statement said Lochte would be informed in the United States so he could decide whether to introduce a defense in Brazil.

The indictment will also be sent to the International Olympic Committee’s ethics commission, the statement said.

Lochte initially said that he and fellow swimmers Jack Conger, Gunnar Bentz and Jimmy Feigen were robbed at gunpoint in a taxi by men with a police badge as they returned to the Olympic Village from a party Aug. 15. However, security video suggested the four actually faced security guards after vandalizing a gas station restroom.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/rio-police-charge-lochte-with-false-report-of-robbery/2016/08/25/7bbca052-6b0e-11e6-91cb-ecb5418830e9_story.html?wpisrc=al_alert-COMBO-sports%252Bnation

August 25, 2016

EpiPen maker lowers price after uproar

Source: The Hill

By Peter Sullivan - 08/25/16 08:49 AM EDT

The maker of EpiPens announced Thursday that it is reducing the price of the device following an uproar in Washington over the cost of the treatment for serious allergic reactions.

Mylan, the company that makes EpiPens, said it will provide a savings card worth up to $300 for people who had been paying the full out-of-pocket cost, effectively reducing the cost by 50 percent.
The company is also doubling the eligibility for its patient assistance program, which eliminates out-of-pocket costs for uninsured and underinsured people.

"We have been a long-term, committed partner to the allergy community and are taking immediate action to help ensure that everyone who needs an EpiPen® Auto-Injector gets one,” CEO Heather Bresch said in a statement.

The move comes one day after Hillary Clinton denounced the company for hiking the cost of EpiPens 400 percent in recent years. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill had also sounded the alarm, sending letters to the company and to the Food and Drug Administration pressing for answers.

-snip-

Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/293273-epipen-maker-lowers-price-in-response-to-uproar

August 25, 2016

Biden expects Gitmo will close before Obama leaves office

Source: The Hill

August 25, 2016, 08:54 am

Vice President Joe Biden says he expects the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay to close before President Obama leaves office in January. “That is my hope and expectation,” he said Thursday during a news conference in Sweden, according to Reuters.

Obama has repeatedly promised to close the controversial facility in Cuba, but opposition from Congress has repeatedly blocked his attempts, leaving the detainees' fate unclear. The Department of Defense (DOD) announced earlier this month it was transferring 15 detainees to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The transfer, the DOD’s largest so far, reduced the prisoner population at Guantanamo Bay to 61 detainees.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, said earlier this month that he would keep the facility open if he wins the presidential election. The GOP’s presidential nominee also recently said he would try Americans accused of terrorism at the U.S. military base in Cuba.

-snip-

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/293275-biden-hopes-gitmo-closes-before-obama-leaves

August 25, 2016

Dem senator: Clinton may command 'majority of the Republican caucus'

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) says he thinks a lot of Republicans in the Senate are supporting Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

“From a Senate perspective, in a secret ballot, Hillary gets a lot of votes out of the Republican caucus. Potentially she even commands a majority of the Republican caucus in a secret ballot because people really do respect her,” Whitehouse told Buzzfeed News. The Rhode Island senator recalled getting a briefing from the Democratic nominee on a highly classified matter in the basement of the Capitol, where "a bunch of Republican senators were sitting in front of me."

“Two of them, her very prominent antagonists in this election, and one looked over at the other and said ‘Boy, she’s good.’" Whitehouse said. "The other one leaned back and said, ‘Yeah, she’s really good.’ And that’s the Hillary that they know. Not the talking points Hillary...not the caricature, but the real person.”

Whitehouse said he expects that after the presidential election is over, Clinton will have "a very strong base of credibility, good will, confidence, and relationships to go to, particularly in the Senate."

-snip-

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/293269-dem-sen-clinton-may-command-majority-of-the-republican-caucus

August 25, 2016

Trump camp 'confounded' with Clinton's 'alt-right' attack

August 25, 2016, 08:14 am

By Rebecca Savransky

Donald Trump's campaign manager on Thursday slammed Hillary Clinton for a speech she will give linking Trump to the "alt-right" movement.

"I'm just confounded that this is what Secretary Clinton is actually going to tell the American people after she's so scarce," Kellyanne Conway said Thursday on CBS.
"No press conference in 263 days, very few interviews, one last night on a different network that didn't really go very well."

Conway questioned why Clinton wasn't instead focusing on her own vision for the country, saying Clinton should talk about her plans for immigration and healthcare. "Why isn't she out there saying, 'Here's how I'm going to rebuild the American economy. Here's my position on energy independence,' " Conway said.

"We simply don't know what somebody who has been in public life for decades would do on issues that Americans tell pollsters ... really animate them." Conway said she isn't "that familiar" with the alt-right movement, though she has read about it. She said the Trump campaign has never discussed the movement internally, noting the campaign is "not at all" a platform for it.

-snip-

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/293270-trump-campaign-manager-confounded-with-clintons-alt-right

August 25, 2016

Clinton buries Trump in negative ads

By Niall Stanage - 08/25/16 06:00 AM EDT

Hillary Clinton has buried Donald Trump with an avalanche of negative TV ads in an effort to kill off the Republican’s campaign before he starts to fire back.

Clinton’s campaign had spent about $60 million on television ads before Trump went on the air for the first time with a $4 million buy in four swing states: Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Many of Clinton’s ads have been attacks against Trump for being rash, lacking in basic decency, or for engaging in outsourcing as a businessman only to oppose it as a candidate.

When advertising from outside groups backing Clinton’s candidacy is factored in, the disparity in the TV “air war” is even more startling.

The money spent on all pro-Clinton advertising had reached $104 million by last week, according to data from NBC News and Advertising Analytics. All pro-Trump advertising reaches about one-ninth of that figure. It’s a statistic that causes consternation even among some Republican strategists, who say Trump risks being defined by his opponent.

-snip-

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/292563-clinton-buries-trump-in-negative-ads

August 25, 2016

Remember that time the Bush administration lost 5 million emails — and Republicans shrugged?

NEWSWEEK
25 AUG 2016 AT 07:15 ET

The frenzy and furor over Hillary Clinton’s email habits while at the State Department, now into their 16th month and still going strong, have predictably and effectively chipped away at her reputation, so a sizable majority of Americans (67 percent in a poll last month) find her “untrustworthy.”

That’s what a year of FBI investigation—leading to no recommended charges—a budding congressional investigation and a relentless right-wing watchdog’s lawsuit buy you in American politics. But take a moment away from pawing through the tens of thousands of her personal and professional emails now on public view and consider the long list of elected and appointed Republicans who have done exactly the same thing as Clinton—and worse.

Between 2003 and 2005, the George W. Bush White House “lost” around 5 million emails, including messages related to the firing of federal prosecutors who didn't adhere to Bush’s conservative agenda. A federal judge ruled that the White House didn’t have to look for them.

Those emails were among some 22 million messages that the Bush administration “lost” during its time in power, most from right around the period that it was crafting a scaffolding of lies to sell what turned out to be the greatest American foreign policy debacle in a generation: the Iraq War. The emails were eventually found in 2009, when Bush and Dick Cheney were safely back at their ranches, but long after thousands of young Americans were dead and maimed and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were dead, and as Islamists were mustering to eventually capture swathes of lawless, war-ravaged turf for their hideous “caliphate.”

-snip-

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/remember-that-time-the-bush-administration-lost-5-million-emails-and-republicans-shrugged/

August 25, 2016

Donald Trump’s black outreach isn’t for black voters. It’s for wavering white Republicans.

by Dara Lind @DLind [email protected] Aug 24, 2016, 9:20a

Don’t look at who Donald Trump says he’s speaking to. Look at who’s in the room when he says it.

Yes, Trump has taken to addressing some portion of his stump speech to black voters. "What have you got to lose?" he rhetorically asks a hypothetical black audience. And yes, in meetings with his "Hispanic advisory group" and Sunday morning talk show appearances, Trump and campaign surrogates have begun hinting flirtatiously that they could be persuaded to stop calling for the deportation of 11 million unauthorized immigrants from the US.

As attempts at black and Latino outreach, these are probably too little too late. Trump is doing so badly among African Americans that, in more than one poll, the percentage of black support for Trump is smaller than the margin of error. And for the last year, Latino voters have been hearing that Donald Trump thinks Mexican immigrants are rapists and murderers, unauthorized immigrants "have to go," and Latinos can’t be fully American.

It’s so obviously dead on arrival as a strategy, in fact, that it’s barely worth thinking about in the terms it was presented. So think instead about how it might succeed.

Donald Trump’s racism hasn’t just turned off nonwhite voters. It’s turned off many white moderates and Republicans who would probably vote for any other Republican presidential nominee over Hillary Clinton, but are worried that Trump is simply too offensive, too bullying, and too bitter to lead the free world.

-snip-

http://www.vox.com/2016/8/24/12587672/donald-trump-s-black-outreach-isn-t-for-black-voters-it-s-for-wavering-white-republicans

August 25, 2016

NC Gov. McCrory goes low: Misleading new campaign ad says trans people want to molest children

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) has released a fear-mongering campaign ad that paints transgender people as dangerous predators who are out to rape children.

LGBTQNation.com posted the 30-second campaign spot on Wednesday, which accuses Democratic NC Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Roy Cooper of willfully endangering the state’s children by not upholding the so-called “bathroom bill,” H.B. 2.

The ad begins with a woman named Gina Little of Greensboro, NC saying, “At 9, I was molested by a teenager.” She continues, “When I heard that Pres. Obama and and Roy Cooper want to force schoolchildren to share the same locker room, shower and restroom with someone who claims to be the opposite sex, I was horrified.”

“Gov. McCrory knows this is not about discrimination, money or politics,” Little claims. “He’s standing up under intense pressure and doing what’s right. Our governor is on our side.”

-snip-

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/nc-gov-mccrory-goes-low-misleading-new-campaign-ad-says-trans-people-want-to-molest-children/

August 25, 2016

McCrory Falls Behind By Nine Points In North Carolina Governor's Race

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) polled nine points behind Democratic challenger Roy Cooper in a Monmouth poll of the state's gubernatorial election.

Cooper leads McCrory 52-43, with Libertarian candidate Lon Cecil polling at 3 percent.

McCrory has gained national attention for signing HB2, which prevents cities and counties from passing their own anti-discrimination rules and barred individuals from the right to sue their workplace for any kind of discrimination.

Among those polled, 55 percent disapproved of HB2 and another 70 percent thought the legislation gave North Carolina a bad reputation nationally. Monmouth had not previously polled the North Carolina governor's election, but a NBC/WSJ/Marist poll from earlier this month showed Cooper ahead by seven percent, 51-44.

-snip-

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/polltracker/mccrory-falls-behind-north-carolina-governor-poll