Politico: “Down in the polls and short on cash, President Donald Trump and his team are ramping up their attacks on debate organizers, journalists and social media platforms in a bid to cast the final days of the 2020 race as ‘rigged’ and ‘biased’ against them. It’s a combative strategy of attacking pundits and political arbiters drawn from the 2016 campaign, when Trump first presented himself as an outsider eager to disrupt national politics and the mores of Washington.”

“In 2020, Trump’s working-the-refs strategy is being deployed just as forcefully to target specific issues or people instead of the establishment at large. It’s an effort to reframe poor polls and an onslaught of critical advertising, while simultaneously keeping attention away from top-of-mind issues like the coronavirus and a still-struggling economy. ‘You always work the referees. That is politics,’ said Bryan Lanza, who served as the deputy communications director on Trump’s 2016 campaign. ‘It also helps that the refs have given the president and his team significant ammunition to question their credibility.'”

Adapting a technique used to identify everything from drug use in an area to the prevalence of a carcinogen in a community, scientists have gone back to an old source of information on the spread of the coronavirus:  sewage.

According to a story in the Washington Post, scientists are collecting samples of sewage to track the spread of the coronavirus, sometimes being able to identify hot spots before testing results designate such an area.

Scientists from around the world are monitoring human waste in hopes to stopping the spread of the coronavirus in its tracks.  Testing wastewater is significantly cheaper than other mass monitoring programs.  It provides quick, reliable information on the prevalence in a community and can even break it down by block.

The San Francisco City Board of Supervisors Tuesday night unanimously passed the Caution Against Racially and Exploitative Non-Emergencies (CAREN) Act, giving legal justification for targets of such 9-1-1 calls to bring civil lawsuits against the callers, KGO ABC-7 News reports.

The action by the board stems from a number of incidents in San Francisco and around the country where women, typically white women, have called 9-1-1 on Black people who they falsely claim are threatening or undertaking crimes.

Former celebrity Scott Baio voiced his anger and bitterness that his former castmates from the classic 1970s show “Happy Days” did not invite him to participate in a table read to benefit the Biden-Harris campaign.

Judging from his tone, he wasn’t invited because of his politics, but more likely because he’s a bitter, pompous arse.

Original stars of the show Henry Winkler (“Fonzie”), Ron Howard (“Richie Cunningham”), Anson Williams (“Potsie Weber”) and Marion Ross (“Marion Cunningham”) will all participate, while it’s rumored that “Full House” star John Stamos may fill-in as Chachi, the role Baio had.

“President Trump’s campaign intends to monitor the technician in charge of the mute button at Thursday night’s final presidential debate. The Commission on Presidential Debates announced this week that it will exercise its ability to mute Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, if either candidate talks outside their allotted two-minute time slot. The new debate format follows the first presidential debate, which was marred by Trump and Biden speaking over and interrupting each other, with Trump insulting Biden’s intelligence and Biden telling Trump to ‘shut up’ and calling him a ‘clown.'”

“In a statement Monday, the commission said it ‘had determined that it is appropriate to adopt measures intended to promote adherence to agreed-upon rules and inappropriate to make changes to those rules.’ While both campaigns have the option to have a representative monitor the technician operating the mute button, only Trump’s campaign confirmed with Fox News that it plans to do so. A spokesperson for Biden’s team confirmed that they have not committed to having someone monitor the technician” – Fox News.

Bloomberg: “An influential Trump administration official secretly met with a representative of Nicolas Maduro’s regime in Mexico City in September to try to negotiate the Venezuelan leader’s peaceful exit from power. Richard Grenell, the former Acting U.S. director of National Intelligence and ambassador to Germany, and Jorge Rodriguez, a Venezuelan politician who is close to Maduro, met in the Mexican capital, according to four people familiar with the matter. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and the rest of the State Department weren’t told about the trip beforehand, according to two of the people.”

“Grenell sought to discuss Maduro’s departure, two of the people said, but it isn’t clear if Rodriguez and Maduro were open to the possibility. In any event, the talks weren’t successful, the people said. President Donald Trump has tried to achieve a number of foreign policy accomplishments before the Nov. 3 election, including Middle East peace agreements, troop withdrawals from several countries and the release of U.S. hostages believed to be held in Syria.”

With virtually every poll that has come out in the last three months showing that Donald Trump is losing the votes of suburban women, whom he calls “housewives” though most are wage earners, about a week ago, he pathetically begged a crowd at one of his rallies in Pennsylvania, “Suburban women, will you please like me?  Please!  Please!”

With six weeks before the election, Trump decided to put into the field his most cherished asset to gain back the votes of “suburban housewives”:  his only daughter from his first wife and his second oldest child, Ivanka, according to Politico.

“The Trump administration is considering declaring that several prominent international NGOs — including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam — are anti-Semitic and that governments should not support them, two people familiar with the issue said. The proposed declaration could come from the State Department as soon as this week. If the declaration happens, it is likely to cause an uproar among civil society groups and might spur litigation. Critics of the possible move also worry it could lead other governments to further crack down on such groups. The groups named, meanwhile, deny any allegations that they are anti-Semitic” – Politico.

Washington Post: “President Trump and his advisers have repeatedly discussed whether to fire FBI Director Christopher A. Wray after Election Day — a scenario that also could imperil the tenure of Attorney General William P. Barr as the president grows increasingly frustrated that federal law enforcement has not delivered his campaign the kind of last-minute boost that the FBI provided in 2016, according to people familiar with the matter. The conversations among the president and senior aides stem in part from their disappointment that Wray in particular but Barr as well have not done what Trump had hoped — indicate that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden, or other Biden associates are under investigation, these people say. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal discussions.”

“In the campaign’s closing weeks, the president has intensified public calls for jailing his challenger, much as he did for Hillary Clinton, his opponent in 2016. Trump has called Biden a ‘criminal’ without articulating what laws he believes the former vice president has broken. People familiar with the discussions say that Trump wants official action similar to the announcement made 11 days before the last presidential election by then-FBI Director James B. Comey, who informed Congress he had reopened an investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state after potential new evidence had been discovered.”

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said that Iran and Russia are working to actively undermine the public perception of the integrity of the elections, contradicting a claim Ratcliffe made earlier this week that he had no evidence that Russia was not active in election interference.

During a Wednesday evening press briefing, Ratcliffe said that Iran has distributed emails containing threatening and intimidating information.  Ratcliffe did not mention that the email in question was sent spoofing the name of The Proud Boys, a far-right group favoring President Trump.  Iran reportedly got the email address by hacking voter registration information.

This tweet has not been 100% verified by a reliable source. It could very well be someone just screwing around with the inspector in their browser and passing it off as authentic. Or Trump could have actually tweeted it. Just as likely. Trump was indeed active on Twitter at the time, his last one prior was at 6:41 PM EDT Wednesday.

UPDATE 8:43 AM EDT 10/22/20: The tweet is confirmed to be fake by Media Matters editor Parker Malloy. National Zero did hedge in the article content, but not the headline. We apologize for the lack of circumspection.

Michigan: Biden 52 – Trump 40
Ohio: Trump 48 – Biden 45
Pennsylvania: Biden 50 – Trump 45
Wisconsin: Biden 49 – Trump 44
Read more at Fox News.

“The Borat video is a complete fabrication. I was tucking in my shirt after taking off the recording equipment. At no time before, during, or after the interview was I ever inappropriate. If Sacha Baron Cohen implies otherwise he is a stone-cold liar. In fact, the NY Post today reports ‘it looks to me like an exaggeration through editing.’ As soon as I realized it was a set up I called the police, which has been noted in THR article on July 8th. This is an effort to blunt my relentless exposure of the criminality and depravity of Joe Biden and his entire family. Deadline Hollywood reports CAA had a distribution screening in September where there was no mention of the scene holding any importance. We are preparing much bigger dumps off of the hard drive from hell, of which Joe Biden will be unable to defend or hide from. I have the receipts” – Rudy Giuliani via Twitter.

On Wednesday Twitter, in a “why the hell didn’t they think of this before but I guess it’s better late than never” type move, added what they termed internally as “friction” to the act of retweeting any post containing a link as part of the company’s election preparations.
https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1319006269785755648
If your first thought was “well this is going to seriously piss off Trump’s minions before they actually bother to read the prompt” then your thinking is 100% correct.

Bloomberg: “Quibi, the short-video upstart founded by movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, won’t have a Hollywood ending. The company has decided to shut down after failing to attract enough viewers, according to Dow Jones. Katzenberg called investors on Wednesday to tell them the news, Dow Jones reported. Representatives for Quibi didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. The swift demise would mark one of the entertainment industry’s most dramatic flops. Quibi’s app, which launched in April, was meant to showcase engaging short-form videos with big stars. It also used technology that made it easy for viewers to see shows on their phones vertically or horizontally. Quibi was backed by $1.8 billion raised from some of the media industry’s biggest companies, including Walt Disney Co. and AT&T Inc.’s WarnerMedia”

“Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden denied that his son Hunter Biden profited because of his ties to the former vice president and said Sen. Ron Johnson should be ‘ashamed of himself’ for saying Hunter Biden used his last name ‘to make millions of dollars’ in shady overseas deals.”

“‘This is the same garbage [from] Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s henchman,’ Biden told local Wisconsin outlet WISN. ‘It’s the last-ditch effort in this desperate campaign to smear me and my family. Even the man who served with him on that committee, the former nominee for the Republican Party, said there’s no basis to this… The vast majority of the intelligence people have come out and said there’s no basis at all,’ Biden continued. ‘Ron should be ashamed of himself'” – Fox News.

CNN: “Former Vice President Joe Biden holds a lead in Pennsylvania and neither he nor President Donald Trump leads in the critical state of Florida, according to new CNN polls conducted by SSRS. In Florida, which has 29 electoral votes and is a critical battleground in the presidential race, 50% of likely voters say they back Biden, 46% Trump. The difference between the two is right at the poll’s margin of sampling error. The Pennsylvania results show Biden well ahead in the state, which holds 20 electoral votes, with 53% of likely voters behind him and 43% backing Trump.”

House Republicans on the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials sent a sternly worded letter to Amtrak CEO William Flynn on Tuesday to make it sound like something improper happened when the Biden campaign chartered a train for a whistle stop tour of Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio in late September into early October.

The letter makes the devastating assertion that “The Biden campaign distributed plastic identification cards to riders designed like actual Amtrak tickets” and even tries to imply that Biden’s train held up freight shipments of PPE crucial to fighting the Coronavirus as if the GOP gives a shit about it otherwise. The subcommittees Republicans seek to “ensure that the campaign paid a full, non-discounted rate” and want those answers “no later than November 2, 2020”, naturally.

Amtrak trains can be chartered by anyone, with prices starting at $30,000 according to Amtrak’s website. Biden’s campaign reported spending $265,000 on the charter, which is probably a good thing for Amtrak “during a time of record losses” as described in the letter.

“Conservatives on Wall Street and in the broader finance community apparently no longer consider President Donald Trump a worthy investment. People in the securities and investment industry pumped $20 million into his 2016 run for president, with most going toward super PACs backing his candidacy, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. That total doesn’t also include the millions of Wall Street contributions that went toward the president’s inauguration after he defeated Hillary Clinton” CNBC reports.

“This time, though, donors in the same industry have given just over $13 million to back Trump. It doesn’t look like he’ll make up the difference in the campaign’s final stretch, either, according to GOP strategists. Meanwhile, many of the people who donated to his inaugural committee have disappeared from the fundraising scene. ‘Wall Street craves policy, predictability and strong government institutions. Trump has delivered the opposite. The Covid crisis gave Wall Streeters the excuse they needed to move,’ said a GOP advisor who works for a former Trump donor in the finance world, who pointed to Biden as the alternative many in the finance world were looking for.”