KDKA: “Special agents from the United States Postal Service raided the home of an Allegheny County mail carrier over the weekend. At a time when public confidence in mail delivery is low, a mail carrier is suspected of putting out his deliveries with the morning trash. Special agents from the United States Postal Service raided the carrier’s home in Baldwin on Sunday night, confiscating eight large garbage bags of suspected undelivered mail, according to neighbors.”

“From inside his house on Meadowcrest Road, mail carrier Sean Troesch had nothing to say Monday after agents rolled up in front of his house in an unmarked van and collected bags of suspected undelivered mail. In a statement, the United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General said its agents acted on a tip and promised to conduct a thorough inventory of those bags, ensuring each item will reach its intended recipient.”

Great Florida Rally tonight. Big crowd, lot of enthusiasm (you win races with enthusiasm). Just got back. Tomorrow night it’s off to Pennsylvania and another BIG crowd. We are winning. Economy is starting to boom. Good timing!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2020

AP: “Five men accused in a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will appear in federal court Tuesday for a hearing on whether they should be detained before trial. U.S. Magistrate Judge Sally Berens will oversee the bail and detention proceeding in Grand Rapids for Adam Fox, Ty Garbin, Kaleb Franks, Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta — all Michigan residents. A sixth man, Barry Croft, was being held in Delaware. The FBI made arrests last week after using confidential sources, undercover agents and clandestine recordings to foil the alleged kidnapping conspiracy. Some defendants had conducted coordinated surveillance of the Democratic governor’s vacation home in northern Michigan in August and September, according to a criminal complaint.”

Democratic Senate nominee Amy McGrath told Kentucky voters incumbent republican Mitch McConnell has failed them and failed the country through his lack of leadership in putting together a coronavirus relief bill at their televised debate Monday night, the Associated Press reports.

Characterizing McConnell as if he is an old tortoise slowly moving through the Senate halls and not accomplishing much, McGrath held McConnell to task for his and republican failure to lead on the coronavirus response, McConnell’s hypocrisy on the current Supreme Court opening, and McConnell’s long but unremarkable career in Congress.

Ewic Trump, the middle son of Donald Trump and the president’s first wife’s youngest child, canceled a campaign event at a Michigan gun shop where one of the men charged in a terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor once worked, ClickOnDetroit reports.

Huron Valley Guns announced on Facebook that the arrested individual, whom it did not name, made the other workers at the gun range uncomfortable and he was fired after three weeks.

“With much regret I must announce that the Trump Campaign changed venues within the last hour. In February 2020 we had a young man that worked on the range who would show up for work in a LOT of tactical gear. We found that a little odd,” its Facebook post read.  “We weren’t comfortable with him for a few other reasons and fired him after 3 weeks. He ended up being one of the fringe characters arrested for the Governor Whitmer kidnapping.”

Johnson & Johnson has announced that it has paused the clinical trial of a Covid-19 vaccine because one of the test subjects has developed an unexplained illness presumably related to the test medication, StatNews, a project of Boston Globe Media, reports.

J&J sent an official letter invoking a “pausing rule” to the clinicians working with 60,000 volunteers on the clinical trial of the vaccine.  The company has stopped enrolling new test subjects, and it will convene an independent monitoring board to review study findings to date.

In a new ad by Republican Voters Against Trump, former coronavirus task force member and liaison for Vice President Mike Pence, Olivia Troye, calls the Trump campaign ad featuring an edited statement from Dr. Anthony Fauci “gross and upsetting.”

Fauci has criticized the use of his words and image in the ad, saying he’s never backed a political candidate, but he has not overtly demanded the ad be removed.  When told by Jake Tapper on CNN that another ad featuring him was planned by the Trump campaign, Fauci said he hoped not “because it might come back to bite them.”

NEW AD: @OliviaTroye Knows the Truth@realDonaldTrump sidelined and trashed Dr. Fauci privately and publicly.

Airing digitally and nationally on Fox and Friends. pic.twitter.com/evEYaHjG47

— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) October 13, 2020

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who was in close quarters with a number of people who tested positive for the coronavirus within the last ten days, had a meltdown and refused to talk to reporters who asked him to keep his mask on when answering questions.

On the way to the Senate hearing room for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, Meadows stopped to talk to the press.  He picked up a microphone stand and moved it farther away from the press gaggle, and he started to take off his mask. 

https://youtu.be/Zr18ehJdhrM

Tennessee NBC affiliate WSMV reporter Caresse Jackman filmed this brave attack by a real American on her cameraman. The Fake News people fled in terror after this devastating preemptive strike by the Silent Majority. See it from the scum of the Earth cameraman’s angle here.

Mike Pence provided more evidence that he’s an advanced automaton without emotion or feeling today when he said he didn’t feel a fly land and walk on his head for more than two minutes during last Wednesday’s vice presidential debate versus Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

“I didn’t know he was there,” Pence said on Fox “News” Monday, claiming that the first he was aware of it was when his children told him about it after the debate.

“They all told me, ‘Dad, you did OK,’” he said, acknowledging that his kids thought he had an undistinguished performance in the debate as most Americans felt. “But they did tell me about the fly. And it was a good laugh for all of us.”

Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar pulled no punches in her statement during Monday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

“Yes, Judge, I think this hearing is a sham. I think it shows real messed-up priorities from the Republican Party,” Klobuchar said, reported Salon.

The majority of voters want the winner of the November 3rd election to choose the next Supreme Court justice, and the vast majority of Americans want Congress to take up a coronavirus relief package before hearings for Barrett. 

Forbes: “A star in the act of being devoured by a supermassive black hole. It’s the latest incredible cosmic phenomenon tracked and traced by astronomers using giant telescopes. This iconic ‘tidal disruption event’—named ‘AT2019qiz’—occurred 215 million light-years away, which makes it the closest observed so far.”

“‘The idea of a black hole sucking in a nearby star sounds like science fiction, but this is exactly what happens in a tidal disruption event,’ said Dr Matt Nicholl, a lecturer and Royal Astronomical Society research fellow at the University of Birmingham in the UK, and lead author of the paper published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. ‘We were able to investigate in detail what happens when a star is eaten by such a monster,’ he added.”

Utah republican Senator Mike Lee attended the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Monday on the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett after stating that he was symptom-free after a 10-day quarantine.

However, a letter Lee himself released from the Capitol physician said that he continued to exhibit one key symptom of Covid-19:  fatigue.

The physician’s letter said that Lee didn’t report any worsening symptoms over the 12 days since his initial test, though it did not say when Lee’s positive test results came back.  Lee was first tested on September 30th, after Lee attended a superspreader event at the White House September 26th.

Lee apparently has not gotten follow up testing, nor did he see the physician who signed the letter.  The CDC recommends three negative tests, given 24 hours apart, before a patient returns to work.

“Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden pulled further ahead of President Donald Trump in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, building momentum in two states that could decide the winner of November’s election, Reuters/Ipsos opinion polls showed on Monday. The polls showed the former vice president leading Trump by 7 percentage points in both states. A week earlier, Biden was up by 6 points in Wisconsin and by 5 in Pennsylvania” – Reuters.

Georgia Public Broadcasting: “As of Monday morning, 1.6 million voters have requested an absentee ballot and a quarter of those have been returned. By 6 p.m. Monday, state officials said that more than 110,000 had voted in person. At State Farm Arena in downtown Atlanta, more than 60 check-in stations and 300 ballot-marking device voting machines were spread throughout the Atlanta Hawks facility, as queues wound past closed concession areas and early voting messages filled the giant scoreboard above the arena floor.”

Biden losing big in Florida. Only Fake Polls show otherwise! Bad for Healthcare. Thinks he’s running for the Senate. Forgot Mitt Romney’s name, and where he was!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2020

The survey found that “large majorities of the public think Congress has its priorities backward. Not only do more than three-quarters (77 percent) of registered voters want legislators to approve another major pandemic relief package; 66 percent want the Senate to vote on it before voting on Barrett’s nomination. A full third of Republicans (33 percent) agree.”

Biden also leads Trump 51 to 43. Read more here.

Sean Conley, the personal physician to the president, claims President Trump tested negative twice on consecutive days using the Abbott BinaxNOW coronavirus test, a release from the White House states.

NIH guidelines specify three consecutive negative tests, taken 24 hours apart, before a person returns to work.  Trump returned to the Oval Office less than 48 hours after being discharged from Walter Reed Military Medical Center.

Released with Trump’s permission, the statement notes that the information on Trump’s status was determined by the results of the Abbott test and other factors, including Trump’s viral load, which was not released.  Conley did not release when the tests were given.