Month: October 2016

Getting crazy

by digby

Just ….

It depicts the Democratic presidential candidate with her hands in the air and her suit jacket flung open, a suited man that is apparently supposed to be a Wall Street banker reaching around her bare chest, and a pair of hoofed feet stomping on Libya.

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Trump says Clinton is too tough —but only with Russia

by digby

This is just weird:

Donald J. Trump suggested on Monday that Hillary Clinton was too “tough” in her language about Russia, and said that if he won the election, he might meet with President Vladimir V. Putin before being sworn in.

Mr. Trump made the remarks in an interview with the conservative radio host Michael Savage, who repeatedly affirmed Mr. Trump’s recent claims that the mainstream media was attempting to thwart him.

Mr. Trump told Mr. Savage that the United States’ current leadership, as well as Mrs. Clinton, was too aggressive against Mr. Putin.

“They insult him constantly — I mean, no wonder he can’t stand Obama and Hillary Clinton,” Mr. Trump said, calling the tensions a “very serious problem.”

“It is the worst situation that we’ve had with Russia since the end of the Cold War, by far,” he said.

Mr. Trump added that “she shouldn’t be talking so tough” about Russia, and he suggested, as he has repeatedly in recent months, that Russia could be an ally in fighting the Islamic State.

“We have Putin, who has no respect for Obama at all — doesn’t like him, and doesn’t respect him,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Savage, calling the difficulties “a really catastrophic situation here, I’ll be honest with you.”

He added, “If I win on Nov. 8, I could see myself meeting with Putin and meeting with Russia prior to the start of the administration.”

Democrats have often assailed Mr. Trump for his comments about Mr. Putin, whom he has characterized as a stronger leader than President Obama.

Mr. Trump, who has declined to make his tax returns public, has denied that he has business interests in Russia.

But he has also refused to acknowledge that the United States intelligence officials have attributed the hacking of the Democratic National Committee to Russian hackers who they said must have had the approval of the Kremlin’s top leaders.

But beyond the potential meeting with Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump did not offer a strategy for dealing with Moscow.

This has to be one of the strangest aspects of this election and it’s something I hope someone gets to the bottom of eventually. Those comments could sound reasonable coming from a peace candidate like Dennis Kucinich or maybe even Bernie Sanders. It’s completely incongruant coming from Donald Trump. Indeed, it makes no sense whatsoever in terms of this other statements about world affairs. Even within his own comments he goes on about how the Russian president doesn’t “respect” the president and Hillary Clinton at the same time as he says they are too tough with him — which is not how Trump ever characterizes “respect.”

Here’s an example of how Trump talks about other rivals:

Today [Sunday morning] on the top of Drudge [Report]. Matt Drudge is a phenomenal person and a good guy — it is a big deal, top of Drudge. China is upset with Donald Trump.

How dare them? So they go — They’re upset. This is the story — biggest story, top of Drudge. Big story. China is upset because of the way Donald Trump is talking about trade with China. They’re ripping us off, folks.

It is time. I’m so happy they’re upset. They haven’t been upset with us in thirty years.

Japan:

“You know we have a treaty with Japan, where if Japan is attacked, we have to use the full force and might of the United States,” he said.

“If we’re attacked, Japan doesn’t have to do anything. They can sit home and watch Sony television, OK?”

Germany:

I think for Merkel to have allowed millions of people into Germany… and Germany is totally destabilised now… I don’t believe it’ll ever be the same, maybe in 200 years but it’ll never be the same and Germany of all countries, I cannot believe they allowed this to happen.”

I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite They picked person who is ruining Germany

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2015

I don’t think I need to lay out his many insults against Mexico or the Middle East.

This, about “respect”:

Donald Trump thinks that tactical nuclear weapons may be worth using in the war against the Islamic State.

In an interview with Mark Halperin and John Heilemann of Bloomberg, the Republican presidential frontrunner refused to rule out using tactical nuclear weapons in the war against ISIS.

“I’m never going to rule anything out—I wouldn’t want to say. Even if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t want to tell you that because at a minimum, I want them to think maybe we would use them,” he said.

Trump also said he’s open to tactics like waterboarding and monitoring American mosques in the fight. He also talked about respect, which he sees as one of the biggest problems facing the US right now.

A request for comment from the Trump campaign was not immediately returned.

“They have to respect us,” Trump said in the interview. “They do not respect us at all and frankly they don’t respect a lot of things that are happening—not only our country, but they don’t respect other things.”

“The first thing you have to do is get them to respect the West and respect us. And if they’re not going to respect us it’s never going to work. This has been going on for a long time,” he said. “I don’t think you can do anything and I don’t think you’re going to be successful unless they respect you. They have no respect for our president and they have no respect for our country right now.”

That is not a peace candidate who just wants friendly relations with foreign countries. It’s a fucking psychopath.

The only exception to his violent, dominating adversarial posture is Russia. Which is weird. There’s a story here but I have no idea what it is.

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Republicans are the riggers


by digby

I wrote about it for Salon this morning:

This presidential election has featured the Republican nominee talking about the size of his manly member on national TV and talking about grabbing women by the crotch on video. He has also endorsed torture, mass deportations, a 2,000-mile border wall, war crimes, nuclear proliferation, a ban on Muslims and jailing his opponent, all cheered on wildly by his rapturous supporters. All of that is a terrible comment on the state of American democracy. But as hard as it is to believe, something even more disturbing is happening. Yesterday morning Politico reported that 41 percent of registered voters believe that the election could be “stolen” from Donald Trump because of voter fraud. That number rises to 71 percent among Republicans.

Donald Trump himself has been pushing this theme ever since his poll numbers started slipping. His TV surrogates and campaign advisers started out spinning his charges as more or less metaphorical, saying that he meant the media was on Clinton’s side and therefore “rigging” the election. Former house speaker Newt Gingrich said, “The complaint isn’t at the polling level, it’s at the news media level.” Trump’s running mate Mike Pence explained, “The American people are tired of the biased media, that’s where the sense of a rigged election goes.” Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani claimed Trump had “never talked about cheating at the polling place.”

That didn’t last long. Trump himself has recently made it clear that he thinks the election is literally going to be stolen from him at the ballot box. On Monday night in Green Bay, Wisconsin, he said:

They even want to try to rig the election at the polling booths. Believe me, there’s a lot going on. Do you ever hear these people, they say there’s nothing going on? People that have died 10 years ago are still voting. Illegal immigrants are voting. Where are the street smarts of some of these politicians?

“Street smarts” or delusion? Studies show this is utter nonsense. There have only been 31 credible instances of voter impersonation out of more than 1 billion ballots cast between 2000 and 2014.

A couple of weeks ago in Michigan, he gave some explicit instructions to his followers.

For obvious reasons, Trump has a particular habit of saying these things to his white audiences in proximity to urban areas with large numbers of people of color.

Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsburg was on MSNBC Monday, explaining that since there are 8,000 to 9,000 different jurisdictions across the United States that count ballots in different ways it’s important that people take advantage of state law “to be able to see exactly what’s going on in a polling place.” He cited Giuliani’s method of sending in lawyers to every precinct to challenge the votes and advised Donald Trump to do that also. On the same show, former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele agreed that Democrats “largely control polling places in major metropolitan areas” naming the predominantly African-American Prince George’s County, Maryland, as the prime example and exhorting Republicans to “get off their behinds to get out there to do election judging, etc., etc.”

The Boston Globe recently quoted a Trump voter declaring how he planned to help out:

Trump said to watch your precincts. I’m going to go, for sure. I’ll look for … well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American. I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous.

Actually, making people “a little bit nervous” at polling places is illegal. It’s called voter intimidation.

Some Republican leaders have tried to reassure voters that the election will not be stolen, but it’s too little, too late. After all, Republicans have been trying to manipulate elections for decades going all the way back to Operation Eagle Eye during the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign when future Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist was a young lawyer intimidating black and Latino voters in Arizona. Then, as now, this was done in the name of preventing unauthorized people from voting.

In the 1980s, there were consent decrees in place all over the country as various local arms of the GOP got caught violating federal election laws by trying to suppress minority votes. In the wake of Jesse Jackson’s highly successful voter registration drives, Republicans instigated a campaign to purge voter rolls in African-American communities throughout the South and urban areas. They professionalized and nationalized their operation by recruiting lawyers and training them in the election laws of different jurisdictions so they could more efficiently challenge Democratic votes.

By the 2000 election they had hundreds of trained election lawyers at the ready and they all swooped in on Florida when Al Gore asked for a recount. (The state party under Jeb Bush had already taken care of the purge of African-Americans from the voter rolls, which helped make it so close.) Ironically, the chief justice of the Supreme Court was William Rehnquist and naturally he cast the deciding vote to stop the recount and hand the election to George W. Bush.

Immediately upon taking office, Republicans began to work on their next big vote suppression project. As Ari Berman reported in the Nation:

The incoming Bush administration prioritized prosecutions of voter fraud over investigations into voter disenfranchisement — longtime civil-rights lawyers were forced out of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, U.S. Attorneys were fired for refusing to pursue bogus fraud cases, and the first strict voter-ID laws were passed by Republican legislatures. The Bush Justice Department launched a five-year investigation into alleged voter-fraud abuses.

This will be the first presidential election in 50 years without the protections of the Voting Rights Act, which theconservative majority of the Supreme Court (including three members who voted to give the election to George W. Bush in 2000, and two more who worked on the recount on the behalf of the GOP) told America that there was no more need for such protections since we were past those ugly days of voter suppression. Seventeen states have new voting restrictions in place.

This is what’s known as “rigging elections.” Donald Trump just got a little bit confused about who’s doing the rigging. The Republicans have been at it for a very long time.

Three ways the President alone can rein in prescription drug prices

by Gaius Publius

Along with many others, we recently wrote about Mylan’s predatory price increases on the life-saving prescription drug product EpiPen. Then came the news that the interestingly named Valeant had increased the price of a prescription drug it had purchased, not developed, more than 2700%, apparently anticipating a growing lead poisoning crisis like the one in Flint, Michigan. (“Did your kids get sick from eating lead paint? We’ll fix them right up … for $27,000.”)

At the end of the Valeant piece, I added a section that argued for an industry-wide — and Executive Branch-only — fix. Don’t play Whack-a-Mole with individual companies, I argued. Whack drug prices industry-wide, or we’ll always be chasing a shadow and fixing problems only when they’re reported as scandals.

It turns out that Rep. Mark Pocan and a number of his colleagues have the same idea. From a letter Pocan wrote, and dozens of his colleagues signed, here are three specific suggestions that the next president can unilaterally enact, whoever she or he may be.

First, use existing statutory power to make sure that drugs developed in whole or in part by taxpayer funds are not monopoly-priced:

We believe your Administration should issue fair and transparent guidelines to ensure the public has access to lifesaving drugs developed using federally funded research. Specifically, you should instruct the Director of the National Institutes of Health to ensure that drugs researched and developed with taxpayer funds are kept accessible to the public by authorizing new competition for unaffordable, monopoly-priced medications—an existing statutory power granted by the Bayh-Dole Act (Pub. L. 96-517). This is an important step in deterring corporations from holding federally funded patented drugs from setting unreasonable prices.

This applies to a large number of drugs, by the way.

Second, there’s existing authority to authorize prescription drug importation under some qualifications. Pocan, and frankly, the vast majority of the public, believes this authority should be used, and now.

Moreover, we also encourage your administration to explore implementing drug importation rules that are already part of U.S. law. Under authority from the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003, the Secretary of Health and Human Services can certify the importation of prescription drugs from other countries under specific qualifications. This regulatory action would pose no risk to public health and safety and could result in a significant reduction in the cost of prescription drugs to American families.

This authority, if used, should not be “triangulated” as a bargaining chip to negotiate just certain drug prices down. It should be applied as quickly, as broadly, and as aggressively as possible.

Put simply: The government is not in the business of making sure businesses make money — that’s their job. The government has a Constitutional mandate to “promote the general welfare,” the welfare, in other words, of the natural humans whose “consent of the governed” keeps that government in business.

Third, use authority that exists, but since Reagan, is almost never used, to curb monopolies (what used to be called violations of the “restraint of trade” prohibition):

We believe your administration also has the authority to address issues within the Federal Trade Commission [FTC] to more effectively combat monopolies held by pharmaceutical companies and the use of patent settlements to block all other generic drug competition for a growing number of branded drugs, also known as “pay-for-delay.” We are deeply concerned that pharmaceutical companies will continue this unethical and unlawful practice until necessary reforms are developed and implemented.

In the old days, the FTC was quite aggressive
in blocking mergers and other monopolistic practices. Reagan simply stopped antitrust enforcement.

Capitalism without competition always leads to monopolies and oligarchies, and thanks to Reagan’s refusal to maintain competition in our markets by enforcing the Sherman [Antitrust] Act, these formed in every major industry in America, from telecom to food and even the media.

Today, the Sherman Act is never used against the big boys. Big banks have grown out of control. Megastores like Walmart have wreaked havoc on local businesses, while telecom and cable companies like Comcast and AT&T have all of us in economic chains. Even our media has been consolidated.

Look at some of the companies that dominate the marketplace today. Google has 90% market share of internet search engines. Facebook has a 64% market share of social media sites. And Sirius/XM Radio has an astonishing 100% market share of satellite radio in this country.

The next
president (and in fact, the current one, if he were so inclined) can fix
that almost instantly. Of course, that president would need to understand her or his duty as being to the people (natural persons) and not to the profiteers.

But I have been told that this, by Hillary Clinton, is a reason for hope. So let’s consider what Clinton proposes regarding prescription drug prices.

The Clinton Proposal

It’s good that Hillary Clinton has a thoughtful proposal at her website (see link above) to address the problem of high prescription drug prices. The problem with the price aspect of the Clinton proposal (there are other aspects) is that it’s mainly focused on “outlier” pricing, with this single exception:

Prohibit “pay for delay” arrangements that keep generic competition off the market. Hillary Clinton would prohibit “pay for delay” agreements that allow drug manufacturers to keep generic competition off of the market – lowering prices for Americans, and saving the government up to $10 billion.

Aside from that general action, none of the rest of what Rep. Pocan and his colleagues propose is included. For example, Clinton believes that Medicare should use its size to negotiate drug pricing down, but doesn’t mention that this has been forbidden by Congress.

About prescription drug importation, the only mention is “emergency importation.” Is the importation authority in the Pocan letter broader than just “emergency importation”? Perhaps; his letter doesn’t address that point. But even so, each of the references to emergency importation in the Clinton proposal would be triggered by “outlier” pricing. The Pocan proposal would make importation the norm in the broadest sense allowed by law.

Lastly, the first Pocan proposal, using the Bayh-Dole Act, is not mentioned by Clinton at all.

It’s imperative that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump be put on the record now regarding these three specific proposals — now, before either enters the White House. Remember our Rule 47, which reminds us that we’ll never have more leverage with candidates in a close race than before the vote is taken. That means we have not many days to press them both on this life-and-death issue.

(A version of this piece appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.)

GP
 

You don’t get points for that
by Tom Sullivan

Google “mass hysteria wiki” and you’ll get a long list of mass hysterias, some of which are surprisingly contemporary. The list does not include other popular delusions such as the tulip mania of 1637 or moral panics such as the ritual satanic abuse panic of the 1980s. Belief in widespread, undetected voter fraud should be among them. Unlike the others, this one did not develop organically. It had help.

This month that help is coming from the GOP’s candidate for president and his campaign. Spreading wild rumors of stolen elections via dog whistles at county party Republican dinners or at T-party rallies and websites (or even Washington salons) is one thing. The Republican standard bearer broadcasting conspiracy theories from a national platform is making even conservative pundits nervous:

Such incendiary talk is an affront to elementary democratic decency and a breach of the boundaries of American political discourse. In democracies, the electoral process is a subtle and elaborate substitute for combat, the age-old way of settling struggles for power. But that sublimation works only if there is mutual agreement to accept both the legitimacy of the result (which Trump keeps undermining with charges that the very process is “rigged”) and the boundaries of the contest.

For Donald Trump, this conspiracy theory is not new. But the size of his audience is.

Glad people are circulating this. I hadn't seen it. It's Trump's reaction to election night 2012. Note how unhinged it is! He's totally nuts pic.twitter.com/yb1TZkLEhs— Elliott Lusztig (@ezlusztig) October 16, 2016

The New York Times Editorial Board weighs in:

It may be too late for the Republican Party to save itself from the rolling disaster of Donald Trump, but the party’s top leaders still have the duty to speak out and help save the country from his reckless rhetoric. The most frightening example is Mr. Trump’s frenzied claim that the presidential election is being “rigged” against him — a claim he has ramped up as his chances of winning the presidency have gone down.

Instead of disavowing this absurdity outright, Republican leaders sit by in spineless silence. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, and Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, are the two most powerful Republicans in the country and should be willing to put the national interest above their own. Both know full well that there is no “rigging,” and yet between them they have managed one tepid response to Mr. Trump’s outrageous accusations: “Our democracy relies on confidence in election results,” Mr. Ryan’s spokeswoman said, “and the speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity.”

This is like standing back while an arsonist pours gasoline all over your house, then expressing confidence that the fire department will get there in time.

The Times also calls out Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani for feeding the fires.

Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern details the recent sordid history of the fraud myth that dates back decades. Stern spoke with The Nation’s Ari Berman:

“Trump just poured gasoline on a fire that was already burning,” Berman told me. “For nearly two decades, Republicans have been insisting—without any evidence—that Democrats are stealing elections. The idea has always been to gain an electoral advantage by preventing the fastest growing Democratic demographics from voting.”

Would Berman give any credit for the conflagration to Republicans like Husted, who are now arguing against Trump’s stolen election conspiracy theories?

“These Republicans are criticizing Trump for the ‘rigged election’ talk, sure,” he said, “but they aren’t backing off their own party’s efforts to make it harder to vote. Denouncing Trump’s rhetoric without taking responsibility for your own party’s voter suppression is total BS.”

Republicans have been stoking voter fraud hysteria among their base for decades — studiously keeping the coals hot — to build support for the kinds of “election integrity” laws federal courts across the country are lately overthrowing as discriminatory and unconstitutional. Now that the Republican standard bearer and his acolytes are fanning the coals into a roaring fire, loudly and publicly broadcasting the conspiracy, a few Republicans are shocked, shocked.

Yet another Frankenstein monster of their own creation (to mix metaphors) has broken loose of its chains and a few Republicans are belatedly pushing back. But as President Obama said of Republicans who revoked their support for Trump in the wake of the “Access Hollywood” tapes, “You don’t get points for that.”

A story that is only interesting in bizarroworld, apparently

by digby

The news media is once again obsessing on the Real Americans out there that are voting for Donald Trump as if they’re the big story in this election. They’re white. They’re male. They’re angry. Let’s spend the next few years figuring out what’s going on with them and work are very hardest to make sure we soothe all their ruffled feelings because they are the most important creatures on earth. The New York Times:

Of course they’ll “adjust their coverage” to cover these people more. They always do.

Meanwhile this couldn’t be more boring:

We could be looking at the largest gender gap in a presidential election since at least 1952: Men are favoring the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, in typical numbers, but a historically overwhelming share of women say they will vote for the Democrat, Hillary Clinton.

As my colleague Nate Silver has pointed out, women are winning this election for Clinton. Between the historic nature of Clinton’s candidacy, Trump’s record of misogynistic comments and now the Trump tape and allegations of sexual assault against Trump, American men and women are incredibly split on the 2016 election. But that split isn’t symmetrical. In an average of the most recent live-interview polls from each pollster to test the race in October, Clinton holds a 20-percentage-point advantage among women, and Trump is winning more narrowly among men.

The only Democrat ever to win women by more than 20 points was Lyndon Johnson in 1964 — also in a blowout. Four years ago, President Obama carried women by only about 12 points. Even when he first won the White House, in 2008, by about double his 2012 margin, his margin among women was only 14 points.

And yet, Trump is still carrying men. If the live-interview polls are on the mark, the difference between how men and women vote — the gender gap — in 2016 would be historic. Dating back to 1952, there has never been a 26-percentage-point gender gap.

To put this year’s gender split into a little more context: Trump’s 7-percentage-point lead among men is about how well George W. Bush did with men in 2000. If we had an average gender gap this year, we’d expect Clinton to carry women by between 5 and 10 points (given how men say they are going to vote). That kind of gap would result in a close race overall, which is exactly what the state of the economy suggests should be occurring.

Instead, Clinton is leading by about 6 or 7 percentage points nationally in the FiveThirtyEight polls-only forecast. Basically, the vote among men looks “normal”; the split among women does not. That is, the historically large gender gap this election is because women are disproportionately favoring one candidate (Clinton) — to an extent we wouldn’t expect them to in a normal election given the “fundamentals.”

It’s possible the gender gap on Election Day will turn out smaller than indicated by current live-interview polls. Nonlive polls, for instance, such as those conducted online or via automated voice technology, have found a smaller gender gap. That could be because online polls and robo-polls tend to require heavier weighting — the raw samples reached by these polls often aren’t as representative. Live-interview polls tend to be more accurate, on average, which is why they are studied here, but the nonlive polls could be closer to the mark this year.

He wonders whether the woman’s vote is more pro-Clinton or anti-Trump. That’s very hard to sort out. But it’s striking that nobody thinks it’s even possible that women might be genuinely approve of Clinton and think it’s important that a woman becomes president knowing very well that the social forces that have held women back from leadership are the same ones that produced a misogynist cretin to oppose her.

Maybe if she wins, the media might find that story as interesting as the one about the angry white men they’ve been chasing for 40 years.

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Keith Olbermann explains why Trump is obsessed with Bill Clinton

by digby

Has Donald Trump actually been played by the GOP’s die-hard anti-Hillary wing? https://t.co/VkJFt1zjXG

— GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) October 17, 2016

Any other candidate would have kept these people at arms length. They would have been laboring in the fever swamps, doing their thing as usual but it wouldn’t have been central to the campaign.  But Trump is a tabloid creature attracted to tabloid politics. So it stands to reason they’d all find one another.

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I wrote about Paul Ryan for Salon today:

With 22 days and counting until Election Day, on Sunday night the Associated Press’ lede on its latest story about the election began like this:

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — A beleaguered Donald Trump sought to undermine the legitimacy of the U.S. presidential election on Saturday, pressing unsubstantiated claims the contest is rigged against him, vowing anew to jail Hillary Clinton if he is elected and throwing in a baseless insinuation his rival was on drugs in the last debate.

It’s not surprising that Trump is melting down even more dramatically than usual. You know how he loves to look at poll numbers and they just aren’t looking very good for him at the moment. But things aren’t looking any better for the GOP in general. It’s foolish to predict anything about this election but if it follows past elections, it’s possible that in addition to losing the presidential race the Republicans will also lose the Senate. They gerrymandered their House majority so efficiently that it’s almost impossible for them to lose their majority (speaking of rigged elections) but the way they’re going, it’s likely they will lose more seats than they had anticipated.

So one of the big questions is what happens to the House if the GOP hangs on to a slim majority that’s even more conservative than it was in 2016. After all, those are the safest seats. And this raises the question: Will Paul Ryan remain speaker?

If you ask any member of the Beltway establishment, including most representatives of the media, Paul Ryan is the leader of the Republican Party of their dreams. He’s young, telegenic and conservative in that familiar sense that he wants to cut government to the bone but “for our own good.” They look at him as the savior of the political system — the man who can bring everyone together like former president Ronald Reagan so we’ll all go back to pretending that normal people are all Republicans.

Unfortunately, that Paul Ryan doesn’t exist. The man whom Esquire’s Charlie Pierce has described as the “zombie-eyed granny starver” and The New York Times’ Paul Krugman has called a “con-man” isn’t actually a very good policy wonk, which is what supposedly set him apart from all the yahoos. As Ian Millhiser of Think Progress memorably put it in this masterful dissection of Ryan’s many flaws:

Paul Ryan’s ambition . . . is matched only by his innumeracy. He builds cathedrals to dyscalculia, and fills them with a worshipful press corps. But his is a false faith, resting upon ideas that do not withstand scrutiny.

Until recently most of us who have been following him thought that while he was wildly overrated as a thinker, he was a pretty good politician. How else could he have persuaded so many people that his adolescent Ayn Randism was serious and then switch to “social justice Catholic” without missing a beat?

It has never been in the cards that most Democrats would fall for his flimflam, but at least Ryan seemed to be a figure who could bridge the growing divide in the GOP — as literally the only House Republican acceptable to all factions as speaker.

That was wrong, too. Just look at how terribly Ryan has dealt with the “Trump problem,” trying to have it both ways and ending up looking like a weasel who doesn’t know his own mind. Caught between trying to defend Trump as the nominee in order to keep the base from chasing him with pitchforks and being bashed by Trump whenever Ryan displeases him, the speaker has become a convenient punching bag.

In the process, Ryan exacerbated the existing problems he had with the conservative movement stalwarts, which is something the Beltway establishment refuses to see. This petition has been up for months at Richard Viguerie’s Conservative HQ:

The contentious vote for Speaker of the House reflected the frustration of voters nationwide, who did not have confidence that the House Republican Leadership would have the courage to carry out the voters’ mandate. A poll conducted by Pat Caddell confirmed a growing rift between voters and Republican leaders in the House and Senate. And out of that frustration and rift the Trump for President movement came into being. We the grassroots constitutional conservative base of the Republican Party demand that you do the job we voted you into office to do.

These conservatives hold Ryan’s alleged weakness responsible for the Trump phenomenon. Now that Trump is faltering, some of his supporters are holding Ryan responsible for that as well. (Jerry Falwell Jr. has even suggested that Ryan planted the “Access Hollywood” tape.) It’s looking more and more like Ryan will be a fall guy if Trump loses.

So where does that leave the speakership? Congressional expert Stan Collander has written that Ryan may very well be out:

The reduced majority will make the House Freedom Caucus — which for some time has been threatening to challenge Ryan — a larger slice of what will now be a smaller GOP caucus pie. To get reelected, Ryan might need virtually the entire HFC to vote for him and the steep price of its support is likely to be more than he is willing to pay.

If Ryan’s out, in an even more conservative House majority the person who may succeed him is Freedom Caucus leader Jim Jordan of Ohio, a firebrand who makes Ted Cruz look like a bipartisan squish. As Politico reported:

Jordan and his followers haven’t given Ryan much breathing room. Among other things, they blocked him from passing a budget, the speaker’s top priority this year, because it didn’t cut spending enough; and tanked leadership’s response to the Orlando massacre because it wasn’t hawkish enough on terrorism.

Jordan has been leading the charge to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and loves to use congressional power to investigate his political enemies. He even angrily released his own Benghazi report when he thought the committee led by Rep. Trey Gowdy had gone too easy on Hillary Clinton.

Unless a miracle happens and the Democrats take the House, with or without Paul Ryan it’s very likely that we will see more of the same congressional obstruction and destruction of the last eight years, with the added thrill of ongoing investigations of the new administration. One of the top 2020 presidential hopefuls, Sen. Tom Cotton, is already onboard.

Where we are

by digby

The @FBI visited my house when I said there would be protests at the convention. If I said this, I’d be in jail. pic.twitter.com/zuCTFXEGPI

— deray mckesson (@deray) October 17, 2016

Washington Post bias so total they have “after trump”as cover of opinion section.why wait for American people when you plan to rig election

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) October 16, 2016

What is the correct response to these threats? Today, I offer you a few.

As someone who has spent a career in the business of words, it’s unusual to find myself speechless.

Yet, there I was, a little more than two weeks ago.

What is the correct response, really, to this?

YOU’RE DEAD. WATCH YOUR BACK.

WE WILL BURN YOU DOWN.

YOU SHOULD BE PUT IN FRONT OF A FIRING SQUAD AS A TRAITOR.

How did I come to be hearing these threats?

The endorsement question we faced

More than a year ago, The Republic’s editorial board began taking a stand against the actions and positioning of Donald Trump. In piece after piece, we made it clear that his principles weren’t conservative. They were bad for the party, bad for Arizona, dangerous for America.

But in its more than 125 years, The Republic had never endorsed a Democrat for president. So, over the many months of the campaign, we found ourselves with this question: Endorse no one, or endorse a Democrat for the first time in our history?

We made our choice soberly. We knew it would be unpopular with many people. We knew that, although we had clearly stated our objections to Trump, it would be a big deal for a conservative editorial board in a conservative state to break ranks from the party.

ENDORSEMENT: Hillary Clinton the only choice to lead America ahead

We chose patriotism over party. We endorsed the Democrat.

And then the reaction started pouring in. Threats against our business. Threats against our people.

So, what is the response?

What is the correct response to any of the vile threats against me? What is the correct response to the more disturbing actions and words directed against so many others?

I’ve thought about those responses a lot. Today, I offer you a few.
First, to those who called

To the anonymous caller who invoked the name of Don Bolles — he’s the Republic reporter who was assassinated by a car bomb 40 years ago — and threatened that more of our reporters would be blown up because of the endorsement, I give you Kimberly. She is the young woman who answered the phone when you called. She sat in my office and calmly told three Phoenix police detectives what you had said. She told them that later, she walked to church and prayed for you. Prayed for patience, for forgiveness. Kimberly knows free speech requires compassion.

Investigators examine the car of Don Bolles, investigative reporter for The Arizona Republic, who died on June 13, 1976. (Photo: The Republic)

To those who said we should be shut down, burned down, who said they hoped we would cease to exist under a new presidential administration, I give you Nicole. She is our editor who directs the news staff, independent of our endorsements. After your threats, Nicole put on her press badge and walked with her reporters and photographers into the latest Donald Trump rally in Prescott Valley, Ariz. She stood as Trump encouraged his followers to heckle and boo and bully journalists. Then she came back to the newsroom to ensure our coverage was fair. Nicole knows free speech requires an open debate.

A page from The Republic’s coverage of treatment at the VA. (Photo: The Republic)

To those of you who have said that someone who disagrees with you deserves to be punished, I give you Phil. Our editorial page editor is a lifelong Republican, a conservative and a patriot. He was an early voice of reason, arguing calmly that Donald Trump didn’t represent the values of the party he loves. Phil understands that free speech sometimes requires bravery.

To those of you who have spit on, threatened with violence, screamed at and bullied the young people going door-to-door selling subscriptions, I give you those dozens of young men and women themselves. Many sell subscriptions to work their way through school. Most were too frightened to share even their first names here. But they are still on the job. They know that free speech is part of a society that values hard work and equal opportunity.

Don Bolles of The Arizona Republic. (Photo: The Republic)

To those of you who have called us hacks and losers with no purpose, and that we are un-American, I give you Dennis. He is the investigative reporter who first revealed the despicable mistreatment of our veterans at the VA hospital. His work triggered comprehensive debate and, one hopes, lasting change. He and others on his team have been hailed as heroes by veterans’ families across the country. Dennis knows that free speech is sometimes the only way to hold the powerful accountable.

To those of you who have invoked the name of longtime publisher Gene Pulliam, saying he is spinning in his grave, I give you his wife, Nina. After reporter Don Bolles was targeted by a bomber for doing his job, Nina Pulliam wept at his hospital bed. He died there slowly over 12 days. The Pulliams understood that free speech, and a free press, come at a cost.

Then, of course, there are the threats against the publisher today.
Next, a personal word


Mi-Ai Parrish’s grandfather, mother and aunts. (Photo: Family photo)

To those of you who have said Jesus will judge me, that you hope I burn in hell, that non-Christians should be kept out of our country, I give you my pastor grandfather. He was imprisoned and tortured for being a Christian, and suffered the murder of his best friend for also refusing to deny Christ. He taught all that freedom of religion is a fragile and precious thing.

Much as my grandfather taught, I also know there are a lot of things worth standing up for.

Jobe Couch with Mi-Ai Parrish’s aunt. (Photo: Family photo)

To those of you who said we should go live with the immigrants we love so much, and who threatened violence against people who look or speak a different way, I give you Jobe Couch.

He was the Army cultural attache and Alabama professor who sponsored my aunts and my mother when they arrived in America from Korea after World War II. There are dozens of descendants of his kindness. Citizens with college degrees, a dentist, lawyers, engineers, pastors, teachers, business owners, a Marine, a publisher and more. Uncle Jobe stood for the power of America as a melting pot. He taught me that one kind man can make a difference.
An open exchange of ideas

To all the other people who we heard from, who thanked us for our courage and our bravery, or who were bold enough to disagree with us on principle — the people who didn’t threaten to bomb our homes or harm our families — I have something for you, too. To you, I give my gratitude. I’m grateful that you stood up to say that we live in a better world when we exchange ideas freely, fairly, without fear.

MORE: Why does The Republic endorse, anyway?

RELATED: Who’s on the editorial board?

To all of you who asked why we endorsed — or what right we had to do so — I give you my mother. She grew up under an occupying dictatorship, with no right to an education, no free press, no freedom of religion, no freedom to assemble peaceably, no right to vote. No right to free speech. She raised a journalist who understood not to take these rights for granted.

Don Bolles and Nina Pulliam are gone now, and Uncle Jobe is, too.

But the journalists I introduced you to here walk into the newsroom every day to do their jobs.

When they do, they pass by an inscription that fills an entire wall, floor to ceiling. It is 45 words long. It is an idea that is in my thoughts a lot these days.

It is the First Amendment.

Mi-Ai Parrish is president of The Arizona Republic and Republic Media.

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Politics and Reality Radio: Russia, and the Syrian Disaster; The Truth About Pitbulls

with Joshua Holland

This week, our show is 100% election-free! Or it is after the intro, anyway.

First, we’re joined by Mark Goldberg, editor of UN Dispatch and host of the Global Dispatches podcast, to talk about the new UN General Secretary, Antonio Guterrez, Syria and the growing diplomatic mess between the US and Russia.

Then we’ll switch gears and talk about pit bulls, and the mythology that’s developed around these dogs — one that makes them the most frequently abused and abandoned breeds — with Bronwen Dickey, author of Pit Bull: The Battle Over an American Icon.

Playlist:
Paul McCartney and Wings: “Live and Let Die”
The Monkees: “Gonna Buy Me a Dog”
Otis Redding: “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)”