More than 30 million Americans have cast their ballots already in the 2020 elections, amounting to 2/3rds of the early voting done in the 2016 election, with two weeks to go before Election Day, the Washington Post reports.

Democrats have a wide lead in early voting, having cast 14.1 million ballots to 10 million from republicans.  The data come from 45 states that release the party affiliation of voters who vote early, either by mail or in person.

In battleground states, early voting is either keeping pace or exceeding with 2016 numbers.  In Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania, more people have already voted early than during the last presidential election.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has calculated that the number of excess deaths in 2020, caused by the coronavirus epidemic, are closer to 285,000 to date, 30% more than the reported number of confirmed cases, the Washington Post reports.

“The number of people dying from this pandemic is higher than we think,” said Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, who has conducted independent analyses of excess mortality. “This study shows it. Others have as well.”

NBC News: “Melania Trump will no longer travel to Erie, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday with the president due to a ‘lingering cough’ from her bout with coronavirus,’ the first lady’s spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said. ‘Mrs. Trump continues to feel better every day following her recovery from COVID-19, but with a lingering cough, and out of an abundance of caution, she will not be traveling today,’ Grisham told NBC News in a statement.”

Biden 45 – Trump 45
Ossoff 43 – Perdue 43
Warnock 45 – Loeffler/Collins 41 (same result in two head to head polls)
Read more at the New York Times.

The employee @AlexBeckom has already raised $7,161 from donors for her college expenses on her GoFundMe page. It’s unclear whether the Karen has demanded a share of that take since it wouldn’t have happened without her being a racist sack of shit.

AP: “Flying squirrels were being trapped in Florida, driven to Chicago and shipped to South Korea, Florida wildlife officials said Monday while announcing charges against seven people they say ran an illegal wildlife trafficking operation. Poachers set as many as 10,000 squirrel traps in central Florida and captured as many as 3,600 flying squirrels over a three-year period.”

“They sold the squirrels to a licensed wildlife dealer who claimed they were bred in captivity and not wild, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said in a press release. Flying squirrels are a protected species. ‘Buyers from South Korea would travel to the United States and purchase the flying squirrels from the wildlife dealer in Bushnell. The animals were then driven in rental cars to Chicago, where the source of the animals was further concealed, and the animals were exported to Asia by an unwitting international wildlife exporter,’ the agency said.”

While the Trump campaign touts his campaign to reduce drug abuse deaths, the United States is on pace to surpass the previous annual high, set last year, for overdoses, the Associated Press reports.

During the republican National Convention and throughout the campaign season, Trump and his surrogates have claimed success in the White House effort to combat drug abuse–originally in the portfolio of Jared Kushner and then handed to Kellyanne Conway.

But after a one-year dip in 2018, overdose deaths reached a new high in 2019 with 71,999 confirmed cases.  The American Medical Association recently released a list of state references outlining the widespread increase in overdose deaths during the coronavirus pandemic, particularly from opioids.

“The President indicated to me that his statements on Twitter were not self-executing declassification orders and do not require the declassification or release of any particular documents, including the FD-302 reports of witness interviews prepared by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in connection with the investigation conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, III. Instead, the President’s statements related to the authorization he had provided the Attorney General to declassify documents as part of his ongoing review of intelligence activities relating to the 2016 Presidential election and certain related matters. The President’s statements do not require altering any redactions on any record at issue in these or any other cases, including, but not limited to, any redactions taken pursuant to any discretionary FOIA exemptions” – Chief of Staff Mark Meadows statement to the court in the declassification tweet case.

“Whether President Donald Trump wins or loses, some version of QAnon is going to survive the election. On the day of the vice-presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris, the individual or group known as ‘Q’ sent out a flurry of posts. ‘ONLY THE ILLUSION OF DEMOCRACY,’ began one. ‘Joe 30330—Arbitrary?—What is 2020 [current year] divided by 30330? Symbolism will be their downfall,’ read another, darkly hinting at satanic numerology in Joe Biden’s campaign text-messaging code. Vague, foreboding messages that could mean anything or nothing—these are the hallmarks of QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory, built around Q’s postings on internet message boards, in which Trump is heroically battling a global cabal of devil-worshipping pedophiles. But something noteworthy lurked in Q’s final post of the night: ‘SHADOW PRESIDENT. SHADOW GOVERNMENT. INFORMATION WARFARE. IRREGULAR WARFARE. COLOR REVOLUTION.'”

“The machine that moves information through the far-right ecosystem is preparing its audience for the very real chance that Trump will lose. Its goal is simple—to preemptively delegitimize any outcome but a clear victory by the incumbent. Second, QAnon, whose adherents have deep ties to countless other large communities, has become a linchpin in that ecosystem, and the absurdity of its claims in no way reduces its political influence” – The Atlantic.

Tiffany Trump, the younger, less-favored daughter of Donald Trump and the only child of Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples, made a fabulously awkward appearance at an LGBTQ for Trump event in Tampa, Florida that attracted a score of people.

https://youtu.be/sjKmOmrXvZM

Bouncing onto the stage, Tiffany tried to make the case that both she and her father support the “LGBQIA+ community” (somehow missing the “T”), even pulling out the “some of my best friends are gay” line.

If SNL doesn’t cast Miley Cyrus to play her in the upcoming episode, they’re missing out.

NBC News: “Two weeks before Election Day, early votes have come in from almost every state and Democrats have a clear edge in ballots already cast, according to NBC News’ Early Voting tracker. More than 29 million people from 45 states have voted as of Tuesday morning, either by mail or in-person. Nearly half of those votes — almost 14.2 million ballots — have come from Democrat-affiliated voters. Republican-affiliated voters have returned almost 10.1 million ballots. And while not every Democrat will vote for former Vice President Joe Biden and not every Republican will vote for President Donald Trump, Democrats currently have a 14-point edge in returned ballots.”

“The early voting data is provided by the political data firm TargetSmart. Nationwide numbers on party affiliation are based on a combination of state-provided registration data, when available, and TargetSmart’s model of party affiliation. Nine states have each already seen more than 1 million ballots cast. That list includes several of the 2020 battleground states, like Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan and Ohio.”

Jarðskjálfti á Alþingi pic.twitter.com/cnWPtZXHkL

— Andri Steinn Hilmarsson (@AndriHilmarsson) October 20, 2020

McClatchy: “Americans are as dug into their partisan corners, distrustful of their leaders and pessimistic about the direction of the country as ever before. And yet, entering the final weeks of a brutal election, Joe Biden is only getting more popular. More voters than not now view the Democratic presidential nominee favorably, according to a battery of recent polls, after a swift rise since the summer in the 2020 race that occurred even amid an onslaught of criticism from President Donald Trump, who is still viewed unfavorably by a majority of voters.”

“The development has surprised operatives in both parties and marks a stark turnaround from the 2016 presidential election, during which a hyper-polarized electorate was deeply skeptical of both major party candidates. Biden’s rise in popularity has also elicited no shortage of argument over whether it’s a product of the former vice president’s unusually positive campaign or an incumbent president unwilling to relinquish the spotlight throughout a tumultuous campaign.”

“As President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani attempts to alter the course of the election through the leaking of materials allegedly from the computer of Hunter Biden, fellow Republicans—including some in the president’s orbit—are holding their breath. Some of Trump’s staunchest allies conceded recently that they are reluctant to attack former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter over the more salacious content purportedly found on the now infamous laptop. Raising concerns about Hunter Biden’s overseas business ethics may be kosher, they argue. But going after his personal demons by attacking his drug use, suggesting the existence of lurid photos, and using it all as a means to question Joe Biden’s judgment as a politician and parent—all of which Giuliani has done—are most decidedly not” reports The Daily Beast.

“‘Leave the crack and sex stuff to Rudy,’ said one senior Trump campaign official. Another top Trump 2020 adviser, as well as another source close to the president, agreed that it was politically wise to leave the personal attacks out of official messaging on the Hunter Biden allegations. The problem, they said, is that Giuliani not only doesn’t see the benefits of this strategy, but also has what is essentially carte blanche from the president himself to operate as he deems fit. ‘Rudy is going to do his thing and there’s nothing we can do about it,’ the person close to Trump characterized it.”

Axios: “New data from media intelligence company Conviva finds that Joe Biden has begun to draw more engagement per post on Twitter than President Trump. There’s been a steady increase by Biden in the monthly averages of engagements per post, average engagements per video, and follower adds since the beginning of the year. This past month, Biden passed Trump in all three metrics. (The Conviva data only includes retweets and likes, not quote tweets.) Biden is also closing the gap on social media engagement on news stories about the candidates, according to data from NewsWhip. While Trump stories generated 28 million more interactions last week, that gap is the smallest of the campaign.”

AP: “President Donald Trump’s sprawling political operation has raised well over $1 billion since he took the White House in 2017 — and set a lot of it on fire. Trump bought a $10 million Super Bowl ad when he didn’t yet have a challenger. He tapped his political organization to cover exorbitant legal fees related to his impeachment. Aides made flashy displays of their newfound wealth — including a fleet of luxury vehicles purchased by Brad Parscale, his former campaign manager.”

“Meanwhile, a web of limited liability companies hid more than $310 million in spending from disclosure, records show. Now, just two weeks out from the election, some campaign aides privately acknowledge they are facing difficult spending decisions at a time when Democratic nominee Joe Biden has flooded the airwaves with advertising. That has put Trump in the position of needing to do more of his signature rallies as a substitute during the coronavirus pandemic while relying on an unproven theory that he can turn out supporters who are infrequent voters at historic levels. ‘They spent their money on unnecessary overhead, lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous activity by the campaign staff and vanity ads way too early,’ said Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican consultant who advised John McCain and Jeb Bush and is an outspoken Trump critic. ‘You could literally have 10 monkeys with flamethrowers go after the money, and they wouldn’t have burned through it as stupidly.'”

“Republicans are running short of time, money and options to stop Democrats from winning a majority of seats in the U.S. Senate, and with them full control of Congress, in an election that is now only two weeks away. President Donald Trump’s slide in opinion polls is weighing on Senate Republicans in 10 competitive races, while Democrats are playing defense over two seats, increasing the odds of Trump’s Republicans losing their 53-47 majority on Nov. 3.”

That gives Democrats a good chance of adding a Senate majority to their control of the House of Representatives, which could either stymie Trump in a second term or usher in a new era of Democratic dominance in Washington if Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden wins the White House. ‘The Republican Party probably has to start thinking about what it can salvage between now and Nov. 3,’ said Republican strategist Rory Cooper, a one-time aide to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor” – Reuters.

Wall Street Journal: “Foxconn Technology Group founder Terry Gou said the company’s commitment to a multibillion-dollar factory investment in Wisconsin hinges on whether government officials deliver promised support for the project. In statement Monday U.S. time, Mr. Gou also acknowledged that the timing and scope of the project had changed since the project was unveiled to great fanfare three years ago.”

“Together, the comments were Mr. Gou’s most explicit yet that the project could be scaled back and might not be completed if state officials don’t come through with promised aid. They come a week after Wisconsin officials denied Foxconn’s request for the first payments in what had been envisioned as $3 billion in state subsidies for the technology complex.”