The Charlotte Observer reports: Over the last year, when companies announced plans to grow their footprints in North Carolina, state leaders have presented them with an unusual gift: An oak bowl carved from wood from the state capitol grounds. So when PayPal unceremoniously canceled its plans for an expansion in Charlotte over opposition to House Bill 2, state officials did …

UKIP led the Brexit campaign and is widely characterized as Britain’s version of the Tea Party. The Telegraph reports: A UKIP leadership candidate has apologised for claiming that a “homosexual donkey” tried to rape his horse in response to a question about whether some gay men prefer sex with animals. John Rees-Evans said the remark, which he made in 2014, …

The New York Times reports: No state that voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 has posed a bigger challenge for Donald J. Trump than North Carolina. He has trailed in every survey there since the first presidential debate, and he does not have a credible path to the presidency without its 15 electoral votes. A New York Times Upshot/Siena College …

The couple had been together for more than 50 years but never married. The New York Times reports: Bill Cornwell and Tom Doyle lived in a brownstone in the West Village for over five decades. They were artists, neighborhood fixtures and committed partners. Their enduring love never seemed to them to need codification — not to mention that for most …

Politico reports: Monday night, host Sean Hannity laid out an electoral college path to victory for Trump during his interview with Conway, stipulating that the real estate mogul must “run the table” in swing states in order to win. The path laid out by Hannity left out an electoral vote from Maine, prompting Conway to correct him and note that …

Last night Rachel Maddow delivered a report on Donald Trump’s repeated demands for his supporters to monitor polling stations, allegedly in order to prevent voter fraud. The piece is an excellent history lesson on how the Republican Party continues to be under a court-ordered 1981 “consent decree” to prevent them from once again intimidating voters as they did in New …

From a Tony Perkins press release titled U.S. Deals with Negative Side Infects of Obama: “Chances are, Americans don’t go through their day worrying about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). But considering the panic, maybe they should at least consider the growing risk to our nation. According to the most knowledgeable experts on the issue, the spread of STDs may be …

NBC News reports: Hillary Clinton’s 5-point lead over Donald Trump remains virtually unchanged since last week—but after prolonged in-fighting among GOP party leaders, a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters (57 percent) see a lasting fracture in the Republican Party, according to the latest NBC News|SurveyMonkey poll. In a four-way match-up, Clinton enjoys 46 percent support this week among likely …

Via Us Weekly: It’s a social media showdown! President Barack Obama appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Monday, October 24, and took the opportunity to troll Donald Trump during the famous ‘Mean Tweets’ sketch. POTUS was a good sport as he read out a long list of insults people had posted about him, from mocking his ugly dad jeans, to …

Wired reports: Tonight, the Trump campaign is kicking off a show that will air on the candidate’s Facebook page every night at 6:30 pm ET via Facebook Live from the campaign war room at Trump Tower. The show will be hosted by Boris Epshteyn, a senior adviser to the campaign, Tomi Lahren, a conservative commentator for Glen Beck’s TheBlaze, and …

Donald Trump is fond of claiming that the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has endorsed him even though the media has repeatedly pointed out that he was merely endorsed by a workers union of ICE employees. Today he pulled a similar trick, claiming to have been endorsed by the sheriff’s office for St. Johns County, Florida. The sheriff’s office …

Kyle Mantyla has the quote at Right Wing Watch: “If you’re a Christian, you just can’t spend your life worrying about the words of Donald Trump from 11 years ago,” Root said, “or what women he groped 30 years ago. I don’t believe any of it anyway. I believe Donald Trump is one of the handsomest billionaires that’s ever lived; …

This must be today’s talking point since Sean Spicer said basically the same thing early this morning. Via Mediaite: Mike Pence called into Rush Limbaugh‘s show this afternoon to talk about dealing with being the underdogs in the race right now. Pence diverted from talking about the polls to say, “It’s clear to me the national media is trying to …

The Raleigh News & Observer reports: North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory has closed a significant gap between himself and Democratic challenger Roy Cooper in a Monmouth University Poll released Monday. While the latest polling from Monmouth shows McCrory with a mere 1-point lead, two months ago the incumbent Republican governor was 9 points behind in that poll. In that time, …

The New York Times reports: The brief, unlikely political career of Kathleen G. Kane, Pennsylvania’s brightest rising star when she was elected state attorney general less than four years ago, came to a humiliating close on Monday, when a judge sentenced her to 10 to 23 months in prison for her conviction on charges of perjury and abuse of her …

Nutjob evangelist Jack Chick, creator of the vicious (and often laughable) Chick Tracts, has died at the age of 92 according to his company’s Facebook page. From his Wikipedia entry: Many of Chick’s views were controversial, as he accused Roman Catholics, Freemasons, Muslims, Jews, and many other groups of murder and conspiracies, while Chick maintained his views were simply politically …

The Hill reports: Elizabeth Warren has a message for Donald Trump: Nasty women vote — and they’re not voting for you. Warren on Monday turned the tables on the Republican presidential nominee calling Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman” during the final presidential debate last week, saying those women are going to vote against him come November. “Nasty women have really …

The Mirror reports: Pete Burns has died unexpectedly of a heart attack, his manager has confirmed. The star rose to fame in the 80s appeared in Celebrity Big Brother 4. In a statement on Twitter, Pete’s manager wrote: “It is with the greatest sadness that we have to break the tragic news that our beloved Pete Burns of (Dead Or …

Via Mediaite: During a heated and contentious interview with CNN’s John Berman and Kate Bolduan, RNC communications director Sean Spicer insisted that the race for the White House was a “dead heat” and said that Republican nominee Donald Trump was ahead in several key battleground states. Per Spicer, the whole thing is even and many polls show Trump is trending …

The Local reports: Police in the canton of St Gallen are under fire for allowing a music festival for right-wing extremists to take place on Saturday night. More than 5,000 people turned out to the festival in the usually tranquil commune of Unterwasser in eastern Switzerland for what is thought to be the largest ever gathering of the extreme right …