One week after starting its fall football season, delayed two months because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Big Ten has announced that it must cancel its first game due to COVID outbreak at one of the colleges, CBS Sports reports.

Ninth-ranked Wisconsin Badgers has stopped all football-related activities due to a coronavirus outbreak among the team and the staff.  Twelve members of the team–six athletes and six staffers, including head coach Paul Chryst–have tested positive in the past five days.

The team’s game against the Nebraska Cornhuskers, slated for Saturday in Lincoln, Nebraska, has been canceled. 

America will never be a socialist country.

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) October 28, 2020

“‘A state that ranked 50th in terms of ease of voting because of voter suppression is now first in turnout,’ [Beto O’Rourke] said. “This is without the Biden campaign or the national party having spent much at all. This is being done against the most racist, unconstitutional suppression tactics in the country… O’Rourke seems to die a little inside every time he sees Biden return to Pennsylvania or Ohio or Iowa. ‘It’s tough when we see so much being spent on voters in the upper Midwest, who may or may not come back to us,’ he said, ‘when we have the most diverse electorate swinging towards us and they just want to see the respect of the candidate showing up.’ He added, ‘So when you hear the note of frustration from Democrats in the state of Texas, that’s why’” – Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke quoted in Politico story on Texas Democrats.

President Trump quietly issued a directive Wednesday that will allow logging and road construction throughout the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, one of the world’s largest temperate rain forests in the world, the Washington Post reports.  The change will take effect Thursday.

Tongass is called by environmental scientists “the lungs of North America” due to the amount of carbon it traps and the quantity of oxygen it produces.

Trump’s order removes protections for all 16.7 million acres of the national forest, allowing clear cutting the old-growth stands of red and yellow cedar, Sitka spruce and Western hemlock–some of which have grown for a millenium.

The move comes at the request of Alaska’s Congressional delegation, who claim that allowing for logging and road development will boost the state’s flagging economy.  Cruise ships in the region have dropped precipitously, and fisheries have been impacted by climate change.

New York Times: “With opposition figures harassed and arrested, news coverage severely restricted and social media mysteriously slowing down, many have come to two predictions about Tanzania’s election on Wednesday: The president will win. And the country will lose. ‘This is the election where any resemblance Tanzania bears to democracy probably ends,’ said Dan Paget, a politics lecturer at the University of Aberdeen in Britain who has written extensively about the Tanzanian president, John Magufuli.”

“The election is widely seen as a referendum on Mr. Magufuli, who is seeking a second five-year term, and on the governing Party of the Revolution, which has dominated Tanzanian politics under one name or another since independence in 1961. Elected on an anti-corruption platform, Mr. Magufuli, popularly known as ‘the Bulldozer,’ has been lauded for his efforts to strengthen the economy, cut wasteful public spending and revive infrastructure projects. But his administration has also been accused of stepping up repression. The government has cracked down on dissent, muzzled media and right groups and passed legislation reinforcing the party’s hold on power.”

“Wall Street fell again on Wednesday, as Europe considered additional lockdowns and U.S. cities such as Chicago and Newark, New Jersey, announced a new round of restrictive measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by over 700 points to fall below 27,000 in Wednesday’s morning session. The S&P 500 sank by 2.6 percent and the Nasdaq composite index tumbled by more than 2.9 percent. Covid-19 infections are spreading across the United States at the fastest rate since the start of the pandemic, according to the latest NBC News figures. The 71,000 new cases per day that the U.S. averaged over the past week was the most in any seven-day stretch since the crisis started” – NBC News.

The next time you miss a credit card payment, call them and tell them that it doesn’t make you a deadbeat.  It makes you smart.  See how that works out.

As a developer long ago, and continuing to this day, the politicians ran Chicago into the ground. I was able to make an appropriately great deal with the numerous lenders on a large and very beautiful tower. Doesn’t that make me a smart guy rather than a bad guy?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 28, 2020

Amy Walter: “Texas is a state that Biden doesn’t need to win, but it is clear that it’s more competitive than ever. Texas’ shift from Lean Republican to Toss Up shouldn’t come as a surprise. Recent polling in the state — both public and private – shows a 2-4 point race. That’s pretty much in line with the hotly contested 2018 Senate race in the state where Sen. Ted Cruz narrowly defeated Rep. Beto O’Rourke 51 percent to 48 percent. A huge surge in early vote (as of October 26th, almost half of Texas’ registered voters had already cast a ballot) suggests that we could see record turnout in a state that has added many new residents since 2016. That also adds a level of uncertainty to the equation.”

Four years ago today, October 28, 2016, James Comey upended the 2016 presidential campaign, just 11 days before the election.

Today is the anniversary of the statement by FBI Director James Comey that the Bureau was looking into emails found on a laptop shared by Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her now ex-husband Anthony Weiner, who was in the midst of a federal investigation for sexual entanglements with a minor.

Seven days later, Comey would make another statement that nothing new was found on the laptop and that the emails in question had already been reviewed and cleared by the FBI, but the damage had already been done:  A week-long news cycle had already undermined the Clinton presidential campaign and ultimately gave us President Donald Trump.

Thankfully, even though republicans are trying the October laptop surprise again this year, voters are more skeptical of the election machinations Trump is trying to manufacture.

Video by @AjayRochester on Twitter.

Jonathan Bernstein: “President Donald Trump’s chances of winning a second term continue to slip away. With under a week to go, he’s still down about 9 percentage points nationally, and there’s little sign of any real movement in either direction. Early last week, I speculated that there was still enough time for significant changes to the race. That’s much less true now. With the debates over, it’s hard to imagine anything that would spark a shift of more than a percentage point or two. And not only is Trump being badly outspent in the final days by former Vice President Joe Biden, the current spike in the coronavirus, an issue that plays very badly for the incumbent, is unlikely to help him as the few remaining undecided voters make up their minds.”

“Right now, Trump’s best bet appears to be holding every state he won last time except for Michigan and Wisconsin. To do so, he’d need to take Pennsylvania, where he currently trails by a bit more than 5 percentage points. That’s not impossible; I’d bet that the results will reveal a polling error of at least six points in more than one state. But that’s less likely to happen in heavily polled Pennsylvania. And if it’s just a one-state problem, then Trump is still sunk, because he’s currently losing (according to the New York Times averages) in Arizona, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina and perhaps Georgia. So what Trump needs is for the national polls to be off (in his favor), and for Pennsylvania to be even more off (in his favor) without those other states being off in Biden’s favor. We could go through that same exercise, carefully counting where the electoral votes fall, with Wisconsin or Michigan. Or perhaps with Nevada or Minnesota, both of which Hillary Clinton won in 2016. But Biden’s polling lead is even larger in those states, and while it’s certainly possible that errors could still turn them for Trump, it’s increasingly unlikely.”

Covid, Covid, Covid is the unified chant of the Fake News Lamestream Media. They will talk about nothing else until November 4th., when the Election will be (hopefully!) over. Then the talk will be how low the death rate is, plenty of hospital rooms, & many tests of young people.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 28, 2020

Wall Street Journal: “A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News study has found no evidence, so far, of the kind of late surge toward President Trump among undecided voters that helped produce his unexpected wins in 2016. When pollsters asked themselves how so many missed signs that Mr. Trump would win the 2016 election, one factor they identified was a late swing toward him in the last days of the campaign. About 13% of voters in Wisconsin, Florida and Pennsylvania settled on their candidate choice in the week before the last election, a report by a professional association of opinion researchers found. Those voters broke for Mr. Trump by 30 percentage points in Wisconsin and by 17 points in Florida and Pennsylvania, helping to deliver narrow victories, the study said.”

“This month, the Journal/NBC News poll went looking for signs of a similar, late shift—and found a different picture than in 2016. Undecided voters seem to be moving equally toward both candidates. The study wasn’t a formal poll but rather a set of questions put to 184 voters who had answered WSJ/NBC surveys from June through September. In those initial interviews, they had suggested that they were undecided or only tentatively supporting a candidate.”

A release distributed Tuesday from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy declared “ending the COVID-19 pandemic” as the top accomplishment of the Trump Administration.

The press release was distributed as the seven-day moving averages of cases increased for the 35th consecutive day and the number of COVID-related fatalities topped 226,000.

Asked by Alisyn Camerota on CNN’s “New Day” Wednesday morning about the listing of the “ending the COVID-19 pandemic” as one of the accomplishments of the Trump Administration, Trump Campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley brushed off the statement.

“I don’t know how they’re using the word ‘ending’,” Gidley said.  “I’m not going to quibble about semantics.”

“Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego has been provided extra protection after allegedly being threatened by a member of the city’s police department, her office said Tuesday. ‘The mayor’s office is aware of a credible threat made by a member of the Phoenix Police Department to harm the mayor. We are also aware an investigation is underway. Additional police protection has been provided to the mayor,’ a statement from Gallego’s office said.”

“‘The Phoenix Police Department takes claims of misconduct by its officers seriously. A criminal investigation is being conducted by the Tempe Police Department while the Phoenix Police Department’s Professional Standards Bureau conducts the internal investigation,’ a statement from Phoenix police said. ‘There are no additional details available at this time. The mayor’s office is aware of the investigation and steps have been taken to ensure Mayor Gallego’s safety. While the investigation is ongoing, the involved officer has been assigned to home'” – AP.

Mediaite: “Rudy Giuliani exploded in a heated interview with Fox Business host Kennedy Tuesday night when she threw out a comparison between his actions and those of the author of the infamous Trump dossier. Kennedy opened her show by saying Biden ‘should explain himself to the American people’ on his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings because ‘we do have a right to know what he and his son were doing and how much they made doing it.'”

“As Kennedy questioned Giuliani about the circumstances of him obtaining and sharing this information, and Giuliani claimed there’s photos of underage girls on the computer, Kennedy said, ‘We will have the people in our news departments verify all of this, because it sounds like there may be something here that is fishy that is causing Americans — giving them pause, and now there’s stuff that might’ve been completely adulterated over the 18 months, and some could say that you were acting like Christopher Steele, that you were abstracting information because…’. The comparison to Steele, author of the infamous Trump dossier, really set Giuliani off. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. I was acting like Christopher Steele?!’ he said. ‘That’s what it sounds like,’ Kennedy said. ‘You better apologize for that,’ Giuliani fired back.”

Washington Post: “By the time President Trump finished speaking to thousands of supporters at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield on Tuesday night and jetted away on Air Force One, the temperature had plunged to nearly freezing. But as long lines of MAGA-clad attendees queued up for buses to take them to distant parking lots, it quickly became clear that something was wrong.”

“The buses, the huge crowd soon learned, couldn’t navigate the jammed airport roads. For hours, attendees — including many elderly Trump supporters — stood in the withering cold, as police scrambled to help those most at-risk get to warmth. At least seven people were taken to hospitals, according to Omaha Scanner, which monitors official radio traffic. Police and fire authorities didn’t immediately return messages from The Washington Post early Wednesday and declined to provide reporters on the scene with precise numbers of how many needed treatment.”

“Weeks ago, when Rudy Giuluani first threw the contents of Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop online, he promised a trove of even more damning information 10 days before the election. Yet with less than a week to go, Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, is still moving down the conservative media food chain, looking for takers. The Wall Street Journal and Fox News have both reported finding no evidence that former Vice President Joe Biden benefited from the Hunter Biden business dealings that have drawn scrutiny. More explicitly pro-Trump media outlets — OAN, Breitbart, Newsmax — have mostly shied away from publishing fresher, more salacious allegations.”

“It’s not the way Trumpworld would have wanted it. As much disdain as the president’s supporters have for the media, their ultimate goal was to place a story in a well-known, conservative-leaning outlet that conclusively showed Biden profiting off his son’s business deals. Doing so would simultaneously establish the conservative media’s journalistic prowess and bolster MAGA claims of mainstream media bias. But no A-list conservative outlet has published anything living up to those claims. Instead, these outlets have turned their firepower toward other reliable topics: social media bias; deep state plots; and the media’s failure to cover a story they themselves have backed away from, leaving Giuliani and Bobulinski to sell the story to the fringe” – Politico.

Washington Post: “Former vice president Joe Biden continues to outpace President Trump in two crucial Midwest battlegrounds, currently holding a slight lead over the president in Michigan while showing a much more substantial advantage in Wisconsin, according to a pair of Washington Post-ABC News polls. The surveys show Biden narrowly ahead of Trump among likely voters in Michigan by 51 percent to 44 percent, with Libertarian Party nominee Jo Jorgensen at 3 percent. In Wisconsin, likely voters favor Biden by 57 percent to 40 percent, with Jorgensen at 2 percent.”