Kinda sums up where we are at right now Um, listen guys, can we just not? Because we really can’t stomach any more stories like this.  As Andrew Beaujon points out, “it’s been quite a week for poor decisions,” and most of us heard about this particular one thanks to Catherine Shoard’s story at The Guardian, Rudy Giuliani faces questions after compromising scene in new Borat film. And “Every paragraph of this gets weirder and weirder,” tweets Sophia Benoit.
“That this happened kinda sums up where we are at right now,” Paul Harris points out, while Noah Michelson thinks “The takeaway from the Giuliani / Borat 2 scandal isn’t how gross he is (we knew that) or how corrupt he is (we knew that too) but how easily duped these people are, how little ‘pay’ it takes for them to ‘play,’ and how much danger that puts all of us in.” Yadda yadda yadda, SCANDAL On that note, it looks like there could be some more Rudy shenanigans going on here: In an exclusive for Time magazine, Simon Shuster reports that Alleged Hunter Biden Emails Circulated in Ukraine as Rudy Giuliani Dug for Dirt There Last Year. Alex Altman summarizes the “Scoop: explicit emails & photos purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden were being shopped in Kiev last year for $5 mil, per source approached. Sellers ‘had a buyer in mind for it: they said they wanted to sell it to GOP allies of President Trump.’” What a coincidence!  In an interview with Time, one person who declined an offer to buy the photos and emails said, “I walked away from it, because it smelled awful.” Nevertheless, “Guy walks into a Delaware computer repair shop, drops off his laptop, the owner catches a plane to Kiev, yadda yadda yadda, SCANDAL,” tweets Joshua Benton.
Jake Gibson and Brooke Singman of Fox News are reporting that the FBI’s subpoena of the laptop and hard drive purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden came in connection with a money laundering investigation in late 2019, but “it is unclear, at this point, whether the investigation is ongoing or if it was directly related to Hunter Biden.” “Even based on this reach of a story, didn’t Rudy Giuliani give the laptop to the FBI this week? Where is he in this? None of it makes sense,” tweets David Poland. Déjà vu Meanwhile, Devlin Barrett and Josh Dawsey of The Washington Post reported last night that Trump is weighing firing the FBI director after the election as his frustration with Wray, Barr grows. Put another way, “Trump wants to fire the FBI director for not falsely accusing his political rival of a crime, the same thing he was impeached for trying to do with Ukraine,” tweets Adam Serwer. Philip Bump highlights, “‘People familiar with the discussions say that Trump wants official action similar to the announcement made 11 days before the last presidential election by then-FBI Director James B. Comey.’ Yeah, I bet.” Voting stories Election Day is less than two weeks away, but the election is already underway. Edward Felsenthal explains why Time Replaced Its Logo on the Cover For the First Time in Its Nearly 100-Year History with an imperative to exercise the right to vote.  And people are exercising it. As Lisa Rein says, “Need a tonic during these turbulent political times? Spend some time with the stories of Americans who have been lining up around the country to vote and make sure their voices are heard.” The Washington Post takes us across the U.S. where voters are waiting in long lines to cast their ballots.
For that feature, the Post sent teams of reporters and photographers to Houston, Albuquerque, Chattanooga, Sarasota, Atlanta and Columbus (this sounds like a song, doesn’t it?) to talk to voters and capture how they feel as they stand in the long lines waiting for their chance to be heard. The line is a barrier, an inspiration and a promise, the piece notes. Grace Panetta says, “this feature from @washingtonpost is incredible, absolutely worth taking the time to read.” “Very happy to contribute some vignettes from #Florida to this great @washingtonpost project on early voting from around the nation. Check it out,” tweets Craig Pittman. A new investigation by Cameron Joseph of Vice sheds some light on why some of the lines are so long. His analysis shows that the US Eliminated Nearly 21,000 Election Day Polling Locations for 2020. That amounts to a 20% cut in election locations nationwide, and much deeper cuts in California, Maryland, Kentucky, New Jersey, Nevada and North Dakota. Meanwhile, Julie Marcus, Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections, told WFLA 8 that armed guards who set up a tent at an early voting site in St. Petersburg, FL, said they were hired by the Trump campaign. But a Trump campaign spokesperson says they were not hired by the campaign. Damn! The Atlantic has only endorsed three presidential candidates in its 163-year history: Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon B. Johnson and Hillary Clinton. And now it adds Joe Biden to that list as it lays out its Case Against Donald Trump.  The gist: “Two men are running for president. One is a terrible man; the other is a decent man. Vote for the decent man.” For more details, Oliver Darcy highlights “What a paragraph here.” And Philip Mwaniki says, “Damn Atlantic!!! Compelling evidence suggests that Donald Trump’s ‘countless sins and defects are rooted in mental instability, pathological narcissism, and profound moral impairment.’”
Wow As you may have heard, “Conservatives have been screaming for years about being shut down by facebook,” notes Adam Serwer, but…“In reality, Facebook was throttling traffic to liberal websites while Zuckerberg was consciously boosting his dinner buddy Ben Shapiro.” Serwer links to the scoop from Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery of Mother Jones, who did some digging and talked to insiders and discovered that Facebook manipulated the news you see to appease Republicans. Bauerlein shares, “@ClaraJeffery and I dug into what exactly is behind reports that Facebook tweaked its algorithm to improve results for conservative publishers and make them worse for Mother Jones. And... wow.” And there’s a powerpoint. Also wow, the timing: “A few weeks after @mmfa named Mark Zuckerberg Misinformer of the Year for 2017, he unleashed algorithmic changes specifically designed to favor conservative sites over progressive ones,” notes Matthew Gertz. Stop talking herd immunity, wear the damn mask New from Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis and Chris Mooney at The Washington Post, “The very thing we worried about”: After a college town’s coronavirus outbreak, deaths at nursing homes mount. This story looks at what happened after La Crosse, Wis., students partied in September: Infections and deaths among the elderly began to rise. “The spike offers a vivid illustration of the perils of pushing a herd-immunity strategy,” they write, “as infections among younger people can fuel broader community outbreaks that ultimately kill some of the most vulnerable residents.” They also report that a conservative activist has just sued to block Wisconsin’s statewide mask mandate.  In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Chris Christie admits, I Should Have Worn a Mask, acknowledging that “It’s not a partisan or cultural symbol, not a sign of weakness or virtue.” “Good to finally stop denying science, but not one mention of the Maskhole in Chief sinks this for me,” says Kara Swisher.
New CDC guidance is also reinforcing the importance of mask-wearing. As Lena Sun of the Post reports, the CDC has expanded its definition of who is a ‘close contact’ of an individual with covid-19. It now defines a close contact as someone who was within six feet of an infected individual for a total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period, which means it’s likely to have its biggest impact in schools, workplaces and other group settings where people are in contact with others for long periods of time. Your must-read Dmitry Shishkin alerts us to “a damning letter by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie @ChimamandaReal, one of my favourite authors, to her beloved country.” In an op-ed for The New York Times, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes that Nigeria Is Murdering Its Citizens, and under President Muhammadu Buhari, there is a sense that the country could burn to the ground. Morgan Jerkins calls it “Your must-read for this morning.” “I was waiting for this Opinion piece by @ChimamandaReal and she hasn't let me down, adds Ottavia Spaggiari. More big stories  As Nicole Winfield reports at AP News, Pope Francis has become the first pope to endorse same-sex civil unions. That endorsement came midway through the feature-length documentary “Francesco,” which premiered at the Rome Film Festival. “What exactly happened with ‘Francesco.’ Very good explainer by @nwinfield,” tweets Robert Mickens.
Chico Harlan has more on the story at The New York Times, Pope Francis calls for civil union laws for same-sex couples. “An astonishing development from the Catholic Church, even as two conservative US SCOTUS justices recently all but called for the end of marriage equality,” Gregory Holman points out. At any rate, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court with solely Republican support, as Democrats boycotted the vote in protest of what they viewed as an illegitimate confirmation process. Donna Cassata and Seung Min Kim have the latest at The Washington Post, noting that Democrats are sure to accuse Graham of breaking committee rules to hold the vote, since the panel generally requires two members of the minority to be present to conduct committee business. AP’s Michael Balsamo and Geoff Mulvihill broke the news yesterday that OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma will plead guilty to 3 criminal charges as part of a settlement of more than $8 billion. Quick bites, sure, but we weren’t expecting it to be this quick. As Ben Mullin reports at The Wall Street Journal, Quibi Is Shutting Down Barely Six Months After Going Live. An amazing lost-and-found story Switching gears, well, “This is fairly spectacular,” as Lauren Collins says. Hilarie M. Sheets reports at The New York Times that a Jacob Lawrence Painting, Missing for Decades, Has Been Found by a Met Visitor, and this really is “An amazing lost-and-found story,” tweets Jeff Dorsch. Or as Dodai Stewart puts it, “!!!” “She suspected that one of five panels missing from the artist’s original series of 30 re-examining the nation’s early history had been hanging in her neighbors’ Upper West Side apartment for decades.” Plus, “This article is a great early US history lesson - especially if you click on the links - and the Jacob Lawrence paintings are vibrant and deeply moving. Shays Rebellion in Massachusetts impacted the constitutional convention. #vote,” tweets Peggy Hernández. Snigdha Koirala’s assessment: “Good news, and a good read, of the day.” Amazing in every way Last up for you today is Margalit Fox’s New York Times obituary for James Randi, the Magician Who Debunked Paranormal Claims. Randi, known professionally as the Amazing Randi, died at 92, and Connor Ennis highlights “From the lede: ‘bamboozlement, bunco, chicanery, flimflam, flummery, humbuggery, mountebankery, pettifoggery and out-and-out quacksalvery.’ You have to keep reading after that!” As Sean Mallen says, “We should all hope for a lede on our obit like the epic one @margalitfox wrote for the Amazing Randi.” Rosie Schaap admits, “I feel a little guilty getting so much readerly pleasure from an obit, but when it's @margalitfox on The Amazing Randi, I can't help it.” Adds Jack Nicas, “Both Amazing Randi and his obituary were brilliant. I miss this guy already, and I didn’t know him until now.” A fitting tribute to “A great, scorching, principled man,” tweets Jason Hazeley. | 
On the Muck Rack Blog today, 
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