In the past 24 hours the US crossed the 8 million mark for the number of infections; 8,050,385 to be exact. Another 885 Americans died in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 218,602.

  Cases are up 29 percent over the past two weeks as colder weather moves in, driving people inside. In the past week, 21 states reached their highest seven-day average for new cases.

  “This is a very ominous sign. I think we’re in for a pretty bad fall and winter,” Dr. Peter Hotez, professor and dean of tropical medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine told CNN. “This is the time when we could be entering one of the worst periods of our epidemic and one of our worst periods in modern American public health. I’m very worried for the nation.”

Crazy Uncle: Never one to let truth or reality get in the way, President Trump retweeted a satirical post that said, “Twitter Shuts Down Entire Network To Slow Spread Of Negative Biden News.”

 Even though he appeared to believe the entire network was shut down, the President was able to gullibly comment, “Wow, this has never been done in history. This includes his really bad interview last night. Why is Twitter doing this. Bringing more attention to Sleepy Joe & Big T”

 During Thursday night’s town hall on NBC, Trump defended having reposted a conspiracy theory that Seal Team Six never killed Osama bin Laden. “That was an opinion of somebody, and that was a retweet,” Trump explained. “I’ll put it out there. People can decide for themselves.”

  NBC’s moderator Savannah Guthrie countered, “I don’t get that. You’re the president. You’re not like someone’s crazy uncle who can just retweet whatever.”

  On the issue of wearing masks to guard against the coronavirus, Trump told Guthrie, “You have a report coming out two days ago, that 85% of the people wearing masks catch it.”

 No such study exists.

Tabloid News: As Twitter continues to block the story, The NY Post has published more lurid details reported to be culled from an unclaimed laptop said to have belonged to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. The latest story contains details of the former vice president’s emails with Hunter while he was in rehab.

  President Trump’s lawyer and former NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been the conduit for releasing the material.

  The entire story has put more responsible news outlets into caution mode. NPR’s David Folkenflik says, “We don’t know whether those emails were somehow hacked and doctored, or completely fabricated.”  Real or not, the material released is a last-minute effort by Trump supporters to smear Joe Biden and chip away at his lead. Folkenflik says, “The New York Post story could someday be proven accurate, or largely right. Or perhaps what was published is a far cry from investigative journalism, but rather speculative partisan advocacy. A totem of our media moment.”

State of Corruption:  The US has arrested and charged former Mexican secretary of defense, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, with being a powerful figure in the Mexican drug trade. In his former  position, Cienfuegos was actually in charge of fighting the drug cartels and now he’s accused in a federal indictment of laundering money as well as trafficking heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines and marijuana from late 2015 through early 2017.

  Cienfuegos was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport while travelling with his family.

  Federal agents identified Cienfuegos through a wiretap when a cartel member said over the phone that a man known as El Padrino was on television at that moment. The man was Cienfuegos.

  This kind of corruption is common in Mexico. The general’s arrest comes only 10 months after the arrest of the man who once led the Mexican equivalent of the FBI.

Broadcast News: The broadcasting company that owns the Denver television station whose security guard shot and killed a right-wing demonstrator has allowed its reporters to investigate the company’s own use of unlicensed security guards.

  The guard in question, 30-year-old Matthew Dolloff, faces charges of 2nd degree murder for killing 49-year-old Lee Keltner. Dolloff was not licensed to be a security guard in Denver, or to carry a gun.

  The report from 9NEWS Denver, says, “This investigation finds Dolloff is not the only unlicensed or not properly credentialed security guard to accompany 9NEWS crews as they covered protests and riots during the past five months.”

The Obit Page: Bernard Cohen, who was a young lawyer when he successfully argued the Supreme Court case that struck down Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage, has died at age 86. Cohen at the time was just a few years out of law school.

  The landmark case was Loving v. Virginia. Mildred, who was Black and Native American, and Richard, who was white, had married in 1958 in Washington, DC, where interracial marriage was legal. When they returned home to Virginia, they were arrested, jailed and then barred from the state for 25 years for violating the state’s Racial Integrity Act.

  That law was struck down by the Supreme Court. Cohen later said of the couple, “They just were in love with one another and wanted the right to live together as husband and wife in Virginia, without any interference from officialdom.”

The Bulletin Board: Joe Biden beat the ratings obsessed President Trump during Thursday night’s competing town halls on different networks. Biden drew 15.1 million viewers on ABC against 13.5 million for Trump even though he appeared on NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC simultaneously. — The President reversed himself yesterday and approved wildfire relief money for California only hours after a FEMA spokesman said California hadn’t met the standard for aid.

Awwwww: The National Zoo’s giant panda cub has reached eight weeks. The cub, as yet unnamed, has opened his eyes and is crawling. He’s also showing signs that he’s beginning to hear noises, something that doesn’t happen at birth. 

  The cub weighs only 5.4 pounds, but he’ll get big, and be a big draw for the zoo.

-30-