Politics

Following the confiscation of millions of ballots in recent days, and the Spanish governments' pressure on local mayors to deter the October 1st independence referendum, AP reports that the grassroots groups driving Catalonia’s separatist movement defied Spanish authorities on Sunday by distributing one million ballots for the vote that  Madrid has called illegal and vowed to halt.

Jordi Cuixart, president of the separatist group Omnium Cultural, announced the ballots were being distributed during a rally in Barcelona.

Authored by Alex Thomas via The Daily Sheeple,

A former Republican Congressman from Colorado has warned that a foreign country could bribe or “incentivize” the FCC to regulate and “rein in” popular conservative news outlets, including The Drudge Report.

Former Rep. Tom Tancredo, in an opinion piece for The Hill, started out his shocking warning by downplaying the so-called Russian actors who may have spent a measly $100,000 with social media giant Facebook in exchange for ads that hurt Hillary Clinton.

In a sudden change of heart that kills senate Republicans’ effort to pass a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare before a rule allowing Republicans to circumvent a Democratic filibuster expires at the end of the month, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is now saying he won’t support the Graham-Cassidy Obamacare repeal bill.

The first sellside comments on today's German elections - which as a reminder was a disaster for the German establishment, following the worst showing for the CDU/CSU since 1949 and the worst result for the SPD since 1945 with support for both parties tumbling since the 2013 elections...

... have started to trickle, in and according to SEB, the result is ‘less market-friendly’ than expected.

The German polls have officially closed, and the first exit polls numbers come in, confirming the expected fourth victory for Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU, however getting a unexpectedly low 32.5% of the vote, which according to Europe Elects was the worst result for Merkel's CDU/CSU (EPP) since 1949. Merkel's main challenger, the SPD, got 20%, also its worst result since Nazi era 1945; furthermore, the SPD has said it plans to enter the opposition, collapsing the current CDU/CSU-SPD "grand coalition."