“Wait till the Epstein Logs and info gets released. Roberts days are numbered.”

– The top reply to the current top comment (referring to United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts) on the Breitbart article “Roberts Sides with Liberals in Pennsylvania Vote-by-Mail Battle” posted Monday evening. It has 636 upvotes as of this writing.

Politico: “Donald Trump’s campaign wants Omarosa Manigault Newman to pay up for penning an incriminating tell-all book about the president in 2018. But it’s the Trump campaign that hasn’t paid its bills. The delinquent $52,000 payment — revealed in a previously unreported letter dated Oct. 14 and obtained by POLITICO — is just one example of how the Trump campaign is handling the flurry of legal actions it has taken to both protect the president and attack his enemies in the final weeks of the campaign.”

“In some instances, the campaign is pressing ahead. In others, it has let the cases go dormant. The through line, however, is that the campaign has started a lot of fights in court, yet is not close to resolving them with just two weeks left until Election Day. In the action against Manigault Newman, the campaign may simply let the case dissolve. In 2018, the Trump campaign filed an arbitration case against the former West Wing aide over her book, which rocked the White House with stories of Trump using lewd, sexist and racist language. At one point, Trump’s attorneys suggested Newman pay for a nearly $1 million ad campaign ‘to counteract the long-term adverse effects’ of her remarks. Yet the campaign has thus far stiffed the arbitrator assigned to mediate the case, according to a letter sent to the parties in the case. If Trump’s attorneys don’t pay the outstanding bill by next week, the case could be tossed out.”

“Biden has 49% support among likely voters in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll in the state, with 48% for Trump. The U.S. Senate race, potentially critical for control of the chamber, is similar, with 49% support for Democrat Cal Cunningham, despite revelations of an extramarital relationship, and 47% for incumbent Republican Thom Tillis” – ABC News.

UVA Center for Politics: “In Iowa, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) is looking increasingly like an underdog against her Democratic challenger, Theresa Greenfield. At the presidential level, Iowa is looking like a true toss-up, and Greenfield seems to be running at least even with — and often better than — Joe Biden in the state. For political junkies, perhaps one of the most anti-climactic features of the 2016 election was that, across the 34 states that saw contests, the senatorial results lined up perfectly with the presidential picture. That year, no Donald Trump-won states sent a Democrat to the Senate, or vice versa. But Iowans may be in a more split-ticket mood now — or, they may even deliver the Democrats a sweep in the topline races.”

“Joseph R. Biden Jr. holds a nine-point lead over President Trump amid widespread public alarm about the trajectory of the coronavirus pandemic and demand among voters for large-scale government action to right the economy, according to a national poll of likely voters conducted by The New York Times and Siena College.”

“With just two weeks left in the campaign, Mr. Trump does not hold an edge on any of the most pressing issues at stake in the election, leaving him with little room for a political recovery absent a calamitous misstep by Mr. Biden, the Democratic nominee, in the coming days. The president has even lost his longstanding advantage on economic matters: Voters are now evenly split on whether they have more trust in him or Mr. Biden to manage the economy” – New York Times.

Tim Alberta: “Generations of pollsters and journalists have fixated on the question of which candidate voters would rather have a beer with—a window into how personality translates into political success. Here’s the thing: Americans have been having a beer with Trump for the past four years—every morning, every afternoon, every evening. He has made himself more accessible than any president in history, using the White House as a performance stage and Twitter as a real-time diary for all to read. Like the drunk at the bar, he won’t shut up.”

“Whatever appeal his unfiltered thoughts once held has now worn off. Americans are tired of having beers with Trump. His own supporters are tired of having beers with Trump. In hundreds of interviews this year with MAGA loyalists, I have noted only a handful in which the person did not, unsolicited, point to the president’s behavior as exhausting and inappropriate. Strip away all the policy fights, all the administrative action (or inaction), all the culture war politics, and the decision for many people comes down to a basic conclusion: They just do not approve of the president as a human being.”

According to Politico, more than 50 former senior intelligence officials has stated that the Rudy Giuliani kerfuffle relating to Hunter Biden’s laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

The story, which has been pushed through Trump-friendly media after its publication in the Trump-friendly New York Post, alleges that Hunter Biden dropped his laptop computer off at a Wilmington, Delaware repair shop and left it there for months.

The blind owner of the repair shop then made a copy of the hard drive and found compromising emails, in the form of PDFs, on the hard drive, which link Hunter, his father, and a top corrupt official at Burisma.  Of course, there’s also reportedly photographs and possibly recordings of Hunter in compromising sexual positions.

Archeologists working in the region of Peru famous for the Nazca Lines etchings in the hillsides uncovered a previously unknown 2,000 year old, 40-yard long drawing of a cat, the New York Times reported.

Called geoglyphs, the etchings mainly consist of straight lines across barren areas, but there are more than 70 drawings of animals and plants in hillsides.  The geoglyphs were formed by humans plowing a line into the ground, revealing lighter layers of soil underneath.

Many victims of terrorism have decried a proposed deal from the Trump Administration that would remove the African nation of Sudan from the list of state sponsors of terrorism if they pay $335 million to US victims of terrorism, the Associated Press reports.

The action is seen as an overt attempt to get Sudan to recognize the nation of Israel before the US election. It would also allow the struggling Sudanese economy to obtain loans from US financial institution, aid from the US government and trade with US companies.  It will also help the nascent democracy attract foreign investment.

🎶 OH HAPPY DAY! 🎶

We're hosting a #HappyDaysReunion with @RealRonHoward, @HWinkler4Real, Marion Ross, Don Most, & Anson Williams on Sunday, Oct. 25!

Sign up to attend: https://t.co/4C1NcYo78t

— Wisconsin Democrats (@WisDems) October 19, 2020

IGN: “Some scientists believe that there’s a 50-50 chance we really are living in a simulation, and now we have to wonder if The Matrix is looking more like a documentary than science fiction. In a report from Popular Mechanics (via Scientific American), some scientists believe that the odds that life as we know it is a simulation could be as simple as a coin toss. This 50-50 coin toss approximation comes from the Scientific American-cited odds of 50.22222 to 49.77778 when determining whether or not life is a simulation. Scientific American, and subsequently Popular Mechanics, cite philosopher Nick Bostrom’s 2003 paper, ‘Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?’ to explain where odds like the ones above come from.”

The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which organizes the presidential debates and establishes the rules for the events, has announced that it will alter the rules for the upcoming debate on Thursday, cutting the opponent’s microphone when a candidate is making his two minute statement at the opening of each of the six segments, the Associated Press reports.

The rule was put in place because the first debate, on September 29th, devolved into a display of dysfunction, with republican incumbent Donald Trump repeatedly shouting over both Democratic nominee Joe Biden and Chris Wallace, the guy sitting at the moderator’s desk.

In newly issued guidelines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention strongly recommends to workers and passengers on public transportation vehicles like buses, trains and airplanes to wear masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the Washington Post reports.

Transportation industry companies and unions had hoped that the CDC would make mask wearing mandatory to help protect their workers and customers.

CNN: “Jeffery Epstein’s former girlfriend and alleged accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, has lost a court battle to keep a 2016 deposition sealed. The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Monday denied the effort of Maxwell’s attorneys to reverse the decision of a lower court that ordered the transcript to be made public. ‘(T)he District Court correctly held that the deposition materials are judicial documents to which the presumption of public access attaches and did not abuse its discretion in rejecting Maxwell’s meritless arguments that her interests superseded the presumption of access,’ the appellate court panel wrote. Maxwell, 58, was charged by federal prosecutors in early July for allegedly helping recruit, groom and ultimately sexually abuse minors as young as 14 as part of a years-long criminal enterprise with Jeffrey Epstein. She pleaded not guilty and was ordered jailed pending trial. She also is charged with two counts of perjury.”

Incumbent republican presidential nominee Donald Trump held a rally in Tucson, Arizona Monday night as he enters the final fortnight of his failing presidential campaign.  I did not watch it.

But allow me to summarize his key talking points:  Nothing is his fault.  Everyone would be millionaires if it wasn’t for the China virus.  Hunter Biden will never be president.  If we had listened to medical professionals, the US would have had 6 gagillion dead.  Ivanka is his favorite.  He doesn’t know QAnon, but they’re very fine people.  She should be locked up; it is unclear if this means Gretchen Whitmer, Hillary Clinton or Greta Thunberg.  The election will be rigged.

Trump won three Noble Prizes, more than Obama.  His health care plan will be great, if he ever releases it.  Joe Biden likes to sleep.  Despite all evidence, he’s a great businessman.  Those cameras back there are run by the Crooked Media.  Ivanka is his favorite.  Dr. Fauci is an idiot.  He’s worth a LOT of money.  He personally defeated the China or Wuhan or whaddeveh you call it virus. If you don’t count the last year, the economy is doing great!

And now, to soothe your ears, a video of goats screaming.

“By a pair of 4-4 votes, the Supreme Court rejects two Republican requests to stay Pennsylvania state court rulings that allow counting of absentee ballots arriving shortly after Election Day with no (or illegible) postmark. Chief Justice Roberts joins the progressives to deny relief. Because an application for a stay requires five votes, a 4-4 tie is a denial of relief. And we know how everyone voted here because four Justices publicly noted their disagreements. It’s possible that Republicans can renew their application if and when Judge Barrett is confirmed, in the hopes that she’d side with them. That said, that close to the election, it’s hard to imagine that all four of tonight’s dissenters would want to upset the status quo” – CNN analyst and University of Texas law professor Steve Vladek via Twitter.

California will not allow the distribution of any coronavirus vaccine in the state without prior review from the state’s panel of experts, regardless of federal approval, the Associated Press reports.

Following a similar declaration by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom said that the move will be done no matter who wins the presidential election next month. 

We are aware of the President’s statement regarding a hypothetical call with our CEO…and just so we’re all clear, it never happened.

— ExxonMobil (@exxonmobil) October 19, 2020

“As of mid-September, The Washington Post has identified about $1.1 million of government funds directly paid to Trump enterprises over the course of 274 presidential visits to Trump properties. This estimate is certainly low. The State Department, for example, has declined to make its records of spending at Trump properties available until after the election. And the estimate is dwarfed by the sums Trump has collected from Republican candidates and Republican Party funds, as well as from domestic and foreign favor-seekers. But the flow from taxpayers is the money most directly under his control—and the easiest for him to accelerate, should his presidency near its end. There are about 11 weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day. Trump could spend every single day of them at Mar-a-Lago, enriching himself at taxpayer expense to the end”

– David Frum writing in The Atlantic, outlining several possibilities for what kind of bullshit Trump will pull during his lame duck period if defeated in November.

NBC News: “Texas social workers can now turn away LGBTQ clients and those with a disability. The state Board of Social Work Examiners voted unanimously to change a section of its code of conduct last week following a recommendation from Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, to remove protections for sexual orientation, gender identity and disability. Abbott’s office said the change was suggested because the board’s nondiscrimination clause went beyond the state’s policy on social work. ‘It’s not surprising that a board would align its rules with statutes passed by the Legislature,’ Renae Eze, a spokeswoman for Abbott’s office, said. Officials and the state Board of Social Work Examiners is now facing backlash for the decision, with some advocacy and professional organizations saying it could put already vulnerable disabled and LGBTQ people at a greater risk.”