We fixed Don Jr.’s crazy ad. pic.twitter.com/TE929T1f2x

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) October 15, 2020

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has scheduled two votes on his versions of the coronavirus relief for next week, attempting to revive a dead horse that couldn’t pass the Senate during a September session, Politico reports.

One of the bills, slated for a vote on Tuesday, will extend the Paycheck Protection Program, which pays businesses to keep employees on payroll, at a time when first time unemployment claims are 500% higher than the same point last year.  There is still $134 billion unspent from the PPP Program passed in March.

Third first lady Melania Trump is using Justice Department lawyers to enforce a non-disclosure agreement against a former friend who wrote a tell-all book about the third Mrs. Trump, NBC News reports.

Winston Wolkoff, a friend of Mrs. Trump who worked on President Trump’s poorly-attended inauguration, has also released a series of recorded conversation in which Mrs. Trump disparaged Christmas and efforts to reunite migrant children with their parents.

In 2017, Wolkoff signed a “Gratuitous Services Agreement” which essentially was a personal contract with Mrs. Trump to handle official work for the Office of the First Lady, including writing speeches and promoting Mrs. Trump’s “Be Best” initiative.

Indiana, the home state of incumbent republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence, has hit a new high for daily confirmed coronavirus cases for the third consecutive day, with 2,521 cases reported by the state health department, according to the Associated Press.

The state also registered 31 fatalities due to COVID-19, the most in the state since the first week of June.

Thirty states, primarily in the Midwest, are hitting new highs in daily confirmed cases as well as seven-day running averages of cases.  Another 15 and the District of Columbia are experiencing minor spikes after previously hitting highs. 

“A Republican candidate for the state legislature in North Dakota who died of COVID-19 earlier this month will remain on the ballot. David Andahl, 55, a Bismark rancher and developer who was running in the 8th District, garnered endorsements from top Republicans, including Gov. Doug Burgum and U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer, before he died Oct. 5” Fox News reports.

“Andahl’s name will remain on the ballot following a decision by state Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem. Should he win on Nov. 3, the state Republican Party will appoint a replacement. ‘In the event the deceased candidate receives the majority of the votes, the candidate is elected. However, if the prevailing candidate has died, the candidate is no longer qualified, and a vacancy would exist,’ Stenehjem wrote, citing state law on filling a legislative vacancy.”

Statement from me:

"Ben said the same thing to Nebraskans that he has repeatedly said to the President directly in the Oval Office. Ben is focused on defending the Republican Senate majority, and he's not going to waste a single minute on tweets." – Sasse spokesman James Wegmann

— James Wegmann (@jameswegmann) October 17, 2020

Axios: “Laws restricting voting are less overt than in the days of segregation. But many impediments – some subtle, some blatant – remain for Americans of color. That’s changing at this very moment – slowly, and very unevenly. Demographic tides are changing what America looks like. The more people vote, the more our public life will reflect those changes.”

“Some barriers are being lowered — partly in an effort to make voting safer in the pandemic, and partly because of awareness brought about by this summer’s racial-justice demonstrations. In some red states, though, officials are actually trying to restrict voting further. Joe Biden has leaned into these trends — by naming the first woman of color as his running mate, by promising that his first choice for the Supreme Court will be the first African-American woman to be nominated, and by making plans for the most diverse cabinet in American history.”

CNN: “She’s cut an ad saying she’s ‘more conservative than Attila the Hun.’ She’s lashed out at the WNBA for its ties to Black Lives Matter. And she frequently promotes herself as having a ‘100 percent Trump voting record.’ And this week, Sen. Kelly Loeffler took her move to the right to a new level: Touting the endorsement of a controversial House candidate from Georgia who has promoted the QAnon conspiracy and had been denounced by other Republicans before winning the GOP nomination in her race for making bigoted and racist comments. ‘No one in Georgia cares about the QAnon business,’ Loeffler told reporters defiantly, after pulling up to the event in a Humvee and sporting a baseball cap, with congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene by her side. ‘This is something the fake news is gonna continue to bring up — and ignore Antifa.’ Loeffler, an appointed senator and one of the richest in Congress, has been in a race to the right with GOP Rep. Doug Collins, an intraparty battle that has prompted deep Republican concerns that it could splinter the vote and help Democrats sweep Georgia and take the Senate majority.”

John F Kennedy Jr., the son of the 35th president of the United States who was presumed dead in a 1999 plane crash off the coast of Massachusetts, but is secretly still alive and fighting the Clinton-led Satanic pedophile cabal that controls Hollywood, will reveal himself Saturday to a crowd at President Trump’s rally in Michigan – upon which Trump will announce Kennedy Jr. to be his replacement for Vice President Mike Pence on the 2020 ticket, sources say.

AP: “When President Donald Trump told the world that ‘bad things happen in Philadelphia,’ it was, in part, a blunt assessment of his party’s struggles in the nation’s sixth-most populous city. For decades, Philadelphia has been the cornerstone of Democratic victories in the battleground state — producing Democratic margins so massive that winning statewide has been a longshot for most Republican presidential candidates.”

“But it’s a longshot Trump pulled off in 2016 and is trying to repeat again. His debate stage disdain for the City of Brotherly Love — which quickly inspired memes and T-shirts — underscored his campaign’s months-long effort to fight the blue tide that starts in the city. That fight has involved court challenges and statehouse wrangling over mail-in voting and poll watching, efforts Democrats characterize as voter suppression. And it came as Trump openly declared, citing no evidence, that the only way he can lose Pennsylvania to former Vice President Joe Biden is through a massive fraud engineered by Democrats in the city of 1.6 million. But Trump can’t change the basic political math in the state: one in eight registered voters live in Philadelphia, a city that keeps delivering increasingly large Democratic margins, routinely provides one in five votes for Democratic presidential candidates and is spurring a leftward drift in the heavily populated suburbs around it.”

…Nomination to run for a second term. Then he went back to his rather stupid and obnoxious ways. Must feel he can’t lose to a Dem. Little Ben is a liability to the Republican Party, and an embarrassment to the Great State of Nebraska. Other than that, he’s just a wonderful guy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2020

“Pressed on why he thought it was appropriate to so aggressively push sordid details of the drug past of the former VP’s son, who has openly discussed his past struggles with addiction, Giuliani insisted it could constitute a ‘major national-security threat’ because it could have opened up Hunter, and therefore 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, to potential blackmailing efforts” – Excerpt from Asawin Suebsaeng and Erin Banco’s interview with Mayor Shitbrain.

“In the final 18 days before voters decide whether to keep President Donald Trump in the White House, the incumbent Republican is spending precious time in states that were never supposed to be this close but now threaten to upend his reelection campaign. Five months after his ex-campaign manager Brad Parscale said Florida was ‘becoming Trump country,’ suburban areas Trump once dominated are looking increasingly bleak. Meanwhile, polls in Iowa and North Carolina show dead-heat races between Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden.”

“The president’s campaign schedule in the final weeks is either a tacit acknowledgment that he’s on the brink of crushing losses in major battlegrounds and once-impenetrable red states, or an over cautious exercise in due-diligence — an effort to shore up support in GOP strongholds to prevent an electoral blowout, or a push to squeeze more from his base in a contest that may be won in the margins” – Politico.

AP: “Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was headed for a landslide win and a second term in office Saturday in New Zealand’s general election. With more than half the votes counted, Ardern’s liberal Labour Party had nearly double the support of its main challenger, the conservative National Party.”

“Labour was on the cusp of winning an outright majority in Parliament, something that hasn’t happened since New Zealand implemented a proportional voting system 24 years ago. Typically, parties must form alliances to govern, but this time Ardern and Labour may be able to go it alone. ‘It’s a landslide that looks like our vote is the best it has been since the 1940s,’ said Labour Minister David Parker. ‘It’s a tremendous accolade first and foremost to the prime minister, but also to the wider Labour team and the Labour movement.’ A record number of voters cast early ballots in the two weeks leading up to the election.”

A plan Donald Trump has proposed during the campaign to give $200 to seniors that they can use for prescription drugs could violate election laws, Politico reports.

The Trump plan is designed to help Trump attract senior voters–a demographic in which he performed strongly in 2016 but is lagging behind Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden this cycle–by sending nearly $8 billion in cards siphoned by the Medicare Trust Fund to Medicare recipients.

Included with the cards would be a letter from the Administration which would undoubtedly praise Trump’s love of the elderly and how he’s done more for old people than any president ever in history.

My favorite part is when they exit the 2009-ish Chrysler PT Cruiser to commence their attack…. because nobody expects the PT Cruiser!  It’s a speedy vehicle.  It goes 0 to 60… eventually.

BREAKING: Today @FOX17 obtained new FBI docs in an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan @GovWhitmer – the docs lay out tactical training, surveillance, and violent threats against lawmakers and police officers….. pic.twitter.com/kYNkf0F5pK

— Doug Reardon (@ReardonReports) October 16, 2020

A group co-founded by the granddaughter of preacher Billy Graham has released a scathing anti-Trump ad accusing Trump of only pretending to respect religion and saying, “He does not value faith.”

https://youtu.be/vv38Z3uzV04

“He could have lifted up what’s good and true about our faith,” the ad says fading to a photo of Trump holding a Bible in front of St. John’s church during BLM protests.  “Instead he has used Christianity for his own purposes.”