“Burgess Owens, a former professional football player running as a Republican in one of the country’s tightest House races, accepted more than $130,000 in contributions that were over the legal limit, raising questions in the final stretch of the election about his compliance with campaign finance laws. Mr. Owens, a frequent commentator on Fox News who is challenging Representative Ben McAdams, Democrat of Utah, reported bringing in a staggering $2.5 million during the third quarter fund-raising period, one of the biggest hauls for a Republican congressional candidate.”

“But a review of his campaign’s financial disclosures showed that at least $135,500 — about 40 percent of the cash his campaign currently has on hand in the final stretch — was ineligible because the donors had contributed more than the legal limit. Individuals may donate up to $2,800 to a federal candidate per election, according to limits published by the Federal Election Commission” – New York Times.

Thought I should screengrab these comments from this Hill thread “Pennsylvania county asks Barrett to recuse herself from mail-ballot extension case“. Not because this is a bullshit situation. Not because these chicken tendies-loving basement fanboys are jerking off to this “lib-owning” that does nothing to improve their shitty lives and lack of romantic prospects. Not because it’s ironic that the avatar of said lib owning is a highly educated working mom who adopted two kids from a “shithole” country to compliment her own already large family (respect her for that if nothing else) and religious crusader is being cheered by amoral adult virgins who masturbate more often than they shower.

All of those things are true, but it’s nothing new on The Hill. What’s striking here is that in the likely event that Joe Biden wins these same assholes who get hard watching a major but unlikely to be ultimately decisive (Pennsylvania early vote turnout is up to 27.8% of the total 2016 turnout with a week to go) deck-stacking attempt occur now are going to be the ones screaming into a pillow that Trump was cheated because Democrats successfully stacked the deck against him.

“After already having been indicted in Michigan for a robocall scheme to intimidate urban-area voters with misinformation, the fabulously inept duo of Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman have now been indicted in Cuyahoga County for the same scheme. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s office referred the case to local prosecutors. Congresswoman Marcia Fudge was among those who noted after the Michigan case was unveiled that similar calls had been reported in Cleveland.”

Wohl and Burkman face eight counts of telecommunications fraud and seven counts of bribery and a possible 18 years in prison. (Bribery in this context refers to 3599.01(A)(2) in the Ohio Revised Code: ‘Attempt by intimidation, coercion, or other unlawful means to induce such delegate or elector to register or refrain from registering or to vote or refrain from voting at a primary, convention, or election for a particular person, question, or issue.’) The calls said ‘If you vote by mail, your personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants and be used for credit card companies to collect outstanding debts. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) is even pushing to… track people for mandatory vaccines'” – Clevescene.com

New York Times: “Joseph R. Biden Jr. has a steady lead over President Trump in Nevada, a state that has been shading blue in recent elections but that Mr. Trump is hoping to flip, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released on Tuesday. Mr. Biden, the Democratic nominee, leads Mr. Trump 49 percent to 43 percent among likely voters in Nevada, with 4 percent undecided or declining to state a preference. The poll was taken after the presidential debate last week, one of Mr. Trump’s last opportunities to change the trajectory of the race.”

Rev Raphael Warnock leads in the special Senate election with 48% to 23% and 22% for Senator Kelly Loeffler and Rep Doug Collins, respectively. Read more here at Daily Kos.

BuzzFeed: “As the United States hurtles toward the presidential election, the country seems ready to forget that its own homegrown fascism predated President Donald Trump — and to ignore that it will last after he leaves office. Yet for its part, Patriot Front couldn’t care less about the results of the upcoming election. ‘It does not matter what people personally believe about it,’ wrote the organization’s leader, Thomas Rousseau, who did not respond to a request for comment, in one of the chats. ‘Casting a ballot is a submissive gesture to legitimize tyranny. It is fundamentally amoral. It is done as an insult to the nation’s cause and the organization.'”

“To them, Trump is an old man holding up crumbling institutions, enacting policies that incrementally forward the cause without remaking the institutions themselves. When he’s gone, the rubble will remain, and to many he’ll be nothing but a tool they used to build the white power movement up. The members of Patriot Front think that time is on their side. And with a leader still in his early twenties, they take a long view. ‘There is no ‘endgame,’’ Rousseau wrote. ‘The nation doesn’t ‘end.’ We’re not conventionally political to the point where there’s a defined ‘end’ of service. It’s not an office, a seat in congress, a law, or a percentage of representation.’”

Unrest and tension gripped the city of Philadelphia starting Monday night after police officers shot and killed a 27-year-old mentally-ill Black man brandishing a knife, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

A police car arrived at the house Walter Wallace, Jr. shared with his parents Monday evening to find Wallace standing on front porch holding a knife.  The officers immediately drew their weapons, and Wallace’s mother stepped in front of him to restrain him.

Wallace walked past his mother and onto the sidewalk as police back into the street.  After Wallace walked between cars, he crossed the street and circled a car on the other side of the street with his mother behind him.

Wallace walked back out into the street and held the knife at shoulder height, about ten feet away from the officers, who then fired at least 13 shots, hitting Wallace ten times from at least ten feet away. Wallace made no sudden moves toward the officers.

Obama is drawing VERY small (tiny) numbers of people. Biden is drawing almost no one. We are drawing tens of thousands of people. You’ll see that again today. The Great Red Wave is coming!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2020

A British study shows that many people who were infected with the coronavirus have shown a sharp decrease in antibodies after three months, leading to questions about potential long-term immunity for COVID survivors, Politico reports.

The number of infected people who tested positive for antibodies dropped by 26% after three months, according to the REACT2 study published Tuesday, with asymptomatic people having the sharpest reduction.

“We don’t yet know what level of antibody is needed in a person’s blood to prevent reinfection,” said Wendy Barclay, head of infectious disease department at Imperial College London.  Barclay noted that seasonal colds, another form of coronavirus, can reinfect people every six months.

“A federal judge on Tuesday denied the Justice Department’s effort to intervene in a defamation lawsuit brought against President Donald Trump by a longtime magazine columnist who has alleged he raped her, paving the way for the case to proceed. The department had sought to substitute itself as defendant in the lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll, a move that likely would have ended the proceedings, since the federal government can’t be sued for defamation” – CNN.

Wall Street Journal: “Four years ago, then-candidate Donald Trump rode to the Republican nomination and then the White House on a platform centered around curbing illegal immigration and building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. But in 2020, Mr. Trump has placed less emphasis on the issue that dominated both his rise in politics and much of his first term as president.”

“A Wall Street Journal review found that immigration was the fourth most mentioned issue in Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign TV ads but has barely cracked the top 10 this cycle, according to data from political ad tracker Kantar/CMAG. The Trump campaign has instead focused on violence that has erupted at some protests around the country, jobs, government spending and China. Notably, terrorism—the third most mentioned issue in Mr. Trump’s 2016 ads and one he often connected to immigration four years ago—isn’t among the top 10 most mentioned issues in 2020.”

“Michael R. Bloomberg is funding a last-minute spending blitz to bolster former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Texas and Ohio, directing millions toward television advertising in two red states that have shifted away from President Trump in the general election. A political adviser to Mr. Bloomberg said the billionaire former mayor of New York City would use his super PAC, Independence USA, to air intensive ad campaigns in all television markets in both states. The cost of the two-state campaign is expected to total around $15 million” the New York Times reports.

Said NYT polling expert Nate Cohn on Twitter: “With more than 80% of 2016 voters already in, you might think it’s too late for this. I don’t really think so. Trump’s strength in our poll is among Latino voters who haven’t yet voted, probably aren’t too engaged, and probably have conflicting views that ads can exploit… There are also a handful of undecided and minor party voters who you might hope to lure over. In our poll, they disapproved of the president. So there’s some upside there too. And that’s leaving aside the unusual and huge uncertainty about what the turnout looks like. In our poll, Biden’s up 7 among early voters. If you need to try and overcome that kind of a deficit on Election Day, in on the assumption that you can match the turnout we see in early voting, I don’t think you want a bunch of negative ads at the last second. I’d guess they can’t play serious defense–and Bloomberg could always re-raise anyway – which makes it all the more dangerous.”

Ron Brownstein: “Some local analysts believe that with turnout cresting, and a recoil from Trump swelling Democratic support, Joe Biden could win the counties centered on those five big cities by more than a million votes combined — roughly double Hillary Clinton’s margin in them in 2016 and possibly 10 times Barack Obama’s advantage across the same places in 2012.”

“Whether or not Biden wins the state, or even precisely meets that prediction, a shift of anything approaching that magnitude would provide Democrats a formidable foundation from which to challenge the Republican hegemony over Texas — a foundation that will only grow stronger through the 2020s as these urban and inner suburban counties across what’s known as the ‘Texas triangle’ drive the vast majority of the state’s population and economic expansion. ‘If the explosive growth in the urban centers and suburbs continues [for Democrats] that will be the whole ballgame,’ says Richard Murray, a longtime political scientist at the University of Houston who has forecast the 1 million vote metro advantage for Biden. While Trump and other Republicans are consolidating crushing advantages in small-town and rural communities, Murray says, the stagnant or shrinking population in those places means Republicans ‘just can’t keep pace with this big [metro] vote.'”

“When I put my hand on the Bible at my inauguration, it did not occur to me that less than two years later, I would have to tell my daughters about a plot against me. But earlier this month, I learned that a multistate terrorist group was planning to kidnap and possibly kill me. Law-enforcement announced charges against 14 people as part of the plot. As jarring as that was, just over a week later, President Donald Trump traveled to Michigan, and when a crowd chanted ‘Lock her up’ after he mentioned me, he said, ‘Lock them all up'” writes Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in The Atlantic.

“I am not surprised. I have watched the president wedge a deeper divide in our country; refuse to denounce white supremacists on a national debate stage; and launch cruel, adolescent attacks on women like Senator Kamala Harris and public-health leaders like Anthony Fauci. And while I won’t let anything distract me from doing my job as governor, I will not stand back and let the president, or anyone else, put my colleagues and fellow Americans in danger without holding him accountable. Every time the president ramps up this violent rhetoric, every time he fires up Twitter to launch another broadside against me, my family and I see a surge of vicious attacks sent our way. This is no coincidence, and the president knows it. He is sowing division and putting leaders, especially women leaders, at risk. And all because he thinks it will help his reelection.”

7 DAYS!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2020

Axios: “Republican Sen. Ted Cruz told ‘Axios on HBO’ he doesn’t think the Trump campaign’s focus on the Biden family’s business dealings are having any sway with voters. After watching the Trump-Biden debate with “Axios on HBO” on Thursday night, Cruz said he thought Trump had done very well. But when asked whether he thought voters were moved by the release of the Hunter Biden emails, Cruz replied, ‘I don’t think it moves a single voter.'”

“Cruz also said that ‘one of Biden’s best points was when he said, ‘All of these attacks back and forth about my family and his family, they don’t matter. What matters is your family.”
Why it matters: Cruz is not alone in this view. One of Trump’s top advisers told me he had urged Trump to stop talking about anything to do with Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton’s emails or ‘Russiagate’ and to instead focus solely on the economy. ‘I think we should be unifying, we should be explaining, we should be lifting people up,’ Cruz said. ‘I think it’s a turnout election. But my assessment of turnout is the left is showing up no matter what. That those who hate Trump will crawl over broken glass to vote against him.'”

“Many Texas Democrats had eyed 2024 as the year when what has been elusive for so long might just happen: their state’s growing, diversifying electorate would make them truly competitive statewide. But that timeline seems to have sped up, spurred not just by demographic changes that have been underway for years but also by the repelling power of President Trump and the burst of liberal activism he has inspired.”

“In the four years since the last presidential election, at least 2 million people have moved to Texas, many of them Democrats from places like California, Florida, New York and Illinois. An estimated 800,000 young Latino Americans have turned 18, and a wave of immigrants became naturalized citizens. More than 3 million Texans have registered to vote. Trump’s polarizing presidency has motivated many Democrats into action and pushed some independents and Republicans — especially those living in urban and suburban areas — to protest the president’s divisive rhetoric and actions, including his treatment of migrants, lack of concern about police brutality and handling of the pandemic that has killed more than 17,500 Texans” – Washington Post.

Politico: “President Donald Trump loves to say that if Joe Biden wins the White House, stocks will crash, retirement accounts will vanish and an economic depression ‘the likes of which you’ve never seen’ will engulf the nation. But much of Wall Street is already betting on a Biden win — with a much different take on what the results will mean.”

“Traders in recent weeks have been piling into bets that a ‘blue wave’ election, in which Democrats also seize the Senate, will produce an economy-juicing blast of fresh fiscal stimulus of $3 trillion or more that carries the U.S. past the coronavirus crisis and into a more normal environment for markets. Far from panicking at the prospect of a Biden win, Wall Street CEOs, traders and investment managers now mostly say they would be fine with a change in the White House that reduces the Trump noise, lowers the threat of further trade wars and ensures a continuation of the government spending they’ve seen in recent years.”

Strongly Trending (Google) since immediately after the second debate is CAN I CHANGE MY VOTE? This refers changing it to me. The answer in most states is YES. Go do it. Most important Election of your life!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2020