Month: October 2017

Nattering narcissist of nativism
by Tom Sullivan

Our sitting president really, really doesn’t like being laughed at. Humor, especially directed at him, is not a human pleasure he indulges. He sat stone-faced at the 2011 the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner when comedian Seth Meyers took shots at him. Among Meyers’ biting quips at his expense: “Donald Trump has been saying that he’ll run for president as a Republican, which is surprising, since I just assumed he was running as a joke.”

President Obama joined in too, offering a string of zingers. The real estate magnate didn’t move a muscle.

Meyers later offered his sincerest apologies to the country if his jokes contributed to afflicting the country with the reality star’s entry into the 2016 presidential race. Which, sadly, he won (with a little help from Russia).

Given his administration’s unrelenting hostility towards all policies “Obama,” the Kenyan Usurper’s barbs might have stung a smidge more than Meyers’.

“They’re laughing at us” has been almost a verbal tick with now-president for decades. One doesn’t need a degree in psychology to perceive that “us” is pluralis majestatis, the royal We. Winning the White House was his chance, finally, to declare to impertinent peasants, “We will show you all!”

But if anything, the volume of ridicule has increased since the political neophyte and peddler of steaks and wine and phony universities took office. No less than his secretary of state has now famously called him a moron, and famously refused to deny saying it. MSNBC coverage last night focused on whether Tillerson used “moron” or, as is rumored, “f*cking moron.”

So, rather than silencing the laughter, if anything, the volume is increasing. His tone-deaf responses to recent tragedies, including his visits this week to San Juan and Las Vegas pushed the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank to the breaking point.

Milbank has gone full-on Popeye. He’s had all he can stands. He can’t stands no more. At least, judging by his turning his Washington Post columns into bits from the National Lampoon. Today’s piece is an excerpt from the fictional “The Me-Driven Life: A Narcissist’s Guide to Helping Others Understand It Is All About You,” by John Barron. “Barron” writes:

Natural disasters and their man-made counterparts (mass shootings, terrorist attacks) pose an obvious challenge for those living the Me-Driven Life. These events are frustrating, and inconvenient, because they tend to cause those people to think about their own problems: their injuries, the loss of loved ones, their hunger, thirst, discomfort, life-threatening cholera, what have you.

President Trump said on Oct. 4 that Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas shooter, was “a sick, demented man.” (The Washington Post)
This is a common character flaw, and it is harmful because it distracts them from their more pressing obligation to think about you.

It is likely that this loss of perspective is temporary, but even a temporary loss of focus on you is dangerous. It must be arrested and reversed as quickly as possible. You can help these people by getting them to stop thinking about their own concerns and to redirect such destructive thoughts.

“Barron” offers some helpful suggestions that will sound vaguely familiar to those who have paid attention to news coverage this week:

First, show them what extraordinary things you are doing for them. Use adjectives such as “great,” “amazing” and “incredible” frequently when referring to the work you have done. Some examples: “I think it’s now acknowledged what a great job we’ve done.” “We get an A-plus.” “We have done an incredible job.” Don’t be afraid to tell them the work you and those who work for you have done “is really nothing short of a miracle.”

There’s much more, but you get the point.

New Yorker‘s Andy Borowitz “reports” that “Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters on Wednesday that he remains ‘fully committed to this moron’s agenda.’” He continues:

Tillerson also took pains to deny that he was ever close to resigning from his Cabinet post. “When I promise a cretin that I am going to do a job, I stay until the job is finished,” he said.

New York magazine’s Eric Levitz posts a “Tillerson” op-ed denying he ever asked “How many President Trumps does it take to screw in a light bulb?” He praises the sitting president as a world-class genius who plays sudoku “on the hard setting.” What’s more, he admits:

I secretly don’t know how to read because my parents were Dust Bowl dirt people who gave me very bad genes — like a dog.

President Trump invented string theory. He ghost-wrote Infinite Jest, and secretly helped solve Fermat’s Last Theorem. He was the real-life inspiration for the Academy Award–winning film A Beautiful Mind, except he isn’t crazy, and they only made him crazy in the movie for the sake of the plot.

Meaning Tillerson’s boss could be selling Mexican beer on TV. Except, you know, Mexico.

For a man who scowls a lot, cannot laugh at himself, and grinds his teeth at the thought that they are laughing at us,
and may have undertaken his quest for the presidency to stop the laughter he hears in his head, he seems to he generating a lot of it. Only history will tell how much was gallows humor.

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by digby

Oh Brownie …

New polling, stating the obvious.

But 62 percent of Republicans back his handling of Puerto Rico. Jesus.

Americans are more likely to disapprove than approve of President Donald Trump’s handling of the Puerto Rico hurricane relief effort.

According to a poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, just 32 percent approve of how Trump is handling disaster relief in the U.S. territory, while 49 percent disapprove.

The poll shows partisan divisions on Trump’s handling of disaster relief, but Republicans and Democrats alike are more likely to approve of Trump’s handling of the situation in Texas and Florida than in Puerto Rico. 

Among Republicans, 76 percent approve of Trump’s disaster response stateside while 62 percent approve of how he’s handling the situation in Puerto Rico. Among Democrats, 30 percent approve of how Trump is handling the situations in Florida and Texas while just 11 percent approve of how he’s handling the situation in Puerto Rico.
Two in 10 whites, 4 in 10 Hispanics and nearly 6 in 10 African-Americans disapprove of the president’s response in U.S. states. But 4 in 10 whites, 6 in 10 Hispanics and nearly 8 in 10 blacks disapprove of the response in Puerto Rico. 

Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats and 7 in 10 Republicans say the U.S. government has a major responsibility to help disaster victims in U.S. territories. 

According to the survey, more than 4 in 10 Americans say they or their friends or family were seriously impacted by this year’s hurricanes, including 8 percent who say they were personally impacted and another 34 percent who say that friends or family members were seriously impacted.

Accidentally on purpose saying what they really mean

by digby

Gosh, what’s Bob Corker trying to say here?

.@SenBobCorker: “I think Sec. Tillerson, Sec. Mattis and Chief of Staff Kelly are those people that help separate our country from chaos.” pic.twitter.com/NjuRX59s6A

— CSPAN (@cspan) October 4, 2017

In a conversation with reporters, Corker responded to an NBC News report that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had to be talked out of resigning after disagreements with President Trump. Corker, who as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has worked extensively with Tillerson, said he wouldn’t disclose sensitive conversations that the two might have had.

But then he launched into a pretty stunning bit of commentary on the Trump administration. He basically suggested that there would be “chaos” if not for the likes of Tillerson and the two generals serving as top officials.

Here’s the full context of Corker’s remarks (emphasis added):

CORKER: I don’t talk about private conversations with anyone. Inappropriately I don’t, anyway. I think Secretary Tillerson, [Defense] Secretary [Jim] Mattis and [White House] Chief of Staff [John] Kelly are those people that help separate our country from chaos, and I support them very much. And I don’t know what he may have said after the briefing. I watch from — I mean, look, I see what’s happening here. I deal with people throughout the administration, and [it] from my perspective is an incredibly frustrating place where, as I watch, okay — and I can watch very closely on many occasions — I mean, you know, he ends up not being supported in the way that I would hope a secretary of state would be supported. And that’s just from my vantage point. But I’ve never — you know, I have no knowledge of the comments or anything else. I think he’s in a very trying situation, trying to solve many of the world’s problems a lot of times without the kind of support and help that I’d like to see him have.

Q: Did he ever think about resigning at any point?

CORKER: I can’t get into that.

Q: When you say that Tillerson, Mattis and Kelly are separating this country from chaos, do you mean from the president’s chaos?

CORKER: Well, it’s just they act in a very — they work very well together to make sure that the policies we put forth around the world are sound and coherent. There are other people within the administration, in my belief, that don’t. Okay? I’m sorry. You know, I hope they stay because they’re valuable to the national security of our nation, they’re valuable to us putting forth good policies, they’re very valuable as it relates to our citizens feeling safe and secure, and I hope he’s here for a very long time.

He’s checking out so he can say out loud what everyone else is whispering.

Tillerson got caught saying about Trump what we all say about him: “he is a fucking moron.” He came out today for a press conference and explained what he really meant:

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If Trump had known about this he definitely would have backed Roy Moore in the primary

by digby

CNN reports:

The Facebook page belonging to Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for US Senate in Alabama, in February included a shared image of a group of black men standing on a destroyed police car during the 2015 Baltimore riots.

Overlaying the image was text that read, “Want to stop riots? Play the National Anthem. They’ll all sit down.”

The post — originally shared by Moore’s wife with the caption “I doubt it with these people-but worth a try?” — is one of many inflammatory posts shared on the Republican nominee’s Facebook, which is now used to promote his Senate campaign. Moore is facing Democrat Doug Jones in a special election set for December 12.

The page has been active since Moore’s failed run for governor of Alabama in 2010 and was used for his exploratory committee for president and campaign for Alabama chief justice. From 2014 until his current Senate race, the page was used to promote Moore’s speaking and media appearances.

In September of 2016, Moore’s page shared another post aimed at NFL players who kneeled during the National Anthem to protest police brutality against the black community. The post featured an image of military coffins draped in the American flag. Underneath the image read, “would the suppressed millionaire, NFL quarterback who would not stand for the National Anthem please point out which out these guys are black so we can remove the offensive flag.”

Here are some of the other lovely things he shared. There;s not much there that Trump would disagree with.

He’s going to make such a fine addition to the US Senate.

On the other hand, maybe not. Look what just happened in Birmingham Alabama:

Birmingham will soon have a new mayor after the often acrimonious race between incumbent Birmingham Mayor William Bell and his opponent Randall Woodfin ended with a resounding win for the former school board president now set to become the Magic City’s youngest mayor in more than a century.

Woodfin, a relative political newcomer, led a field of 12 candidates in the Aug. 22 municipal election forcing a runoff with Bell. Bell, 68, has been involved in Birmingham politics for 40 years. He has served as mayor since 2010.

At 36, Woodfin will be the youngest Birmingham mayor since David Fox took office in 1893. He is expected to take office on Nov. 28.

He’s a young progressive who nobody thought had a chance. So maybe there’s hope …

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Trump: Buhleemee

by digby

You just can’t make this stuff up:

.@POTUS handed out flashlights to Puerto Ricans, joking “you don’t need them anymore.”
94% of the island is without power. pic.twitter.com/7wb0UmmgtQ

— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) October 3, 2017

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Russia’s no biggie, we can all move along

by digby

At least that’s what the Republican majority on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s chairman seems to be saying. It’s all good. Chairman Burr says the White House has been “unbelievably” cooperative and consistent. They are all patriots. Let’s move along.

Greg Sargent reports what’s really happening:

According to a senior aide to a Democratic senator on the committee, the reason this presser is happening is that Burr had initially moved to issue an interim report on the progress made by the probe.

But Democrats on the committee balked at this, the aide tells me. They worried that releasing a report would be premature and that Burr’s desire to do so might be rooted in political pressure he is feeling to wrap up the probe faster.

So after Democrats objected, a compromise was reached to hold this presser instead.

The reason this is worrisome is that Republicans are turning up the volume on their efforts to scuttle the probes. In a good piece this morning, Politico reports that pro-Trump Republicans are angry with the GOP leadership for allegedly allowing these probes to get out of hand. Some Trump allies are even claiming that this is happening because the GOP leadership allegedly opposes Trump. As one put it: “Of course, the Republican leadership is behind these probes. The Republicans cannot get over the fact that Trump won and is our president.”

Remarkably, these Trump-allied Republicans are explicitly asserting that GOP leaders are betraying Trump by failing to squelch ongoing efforts to get to the bottom of a hostile foreign power’s apparent sabotage of our democracy, in addition to the possibility of Trump campaign collusion with it. These probes are also designed to establish whether there was Russian interference, and if so, how it happened.

Yet with Trump himself regularly dismissing the entire Russia story as a hoax, his allies are now openly demanding that GOP leaders work harder to derail the probes and casting any failure to do so as part of a secret GOP plot to destroy Trump’s presidency. For instance, former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon recently suggested that Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan “have allowed” these committees to continue “going after President Trump every day,” as if the proper response of GOP leaders is to close down the probes.

The notion that the GOP establishment is out to get Trump — and the companion claim that there is a meaningful ideological schism between them — is a fiction that has been concocted to explain away whatever goes wrong during the Trump presidency. It has been used to explain the failure of Trump to sign major legislation (never mind that Trump went all in with McConnell and Ryan on every failed Obamacare repeal bill and now is largely in sync with their push for huge tax cuts for the rich).

Now that fiction is being employed to explain why the Russia story keeps producing new revelations that continue to weaken the president. It appears that this may be creating new pressure on GOP leaders and Republicans on the relevant committees to wrap up their probes faster.

Indeed, Politico reports that in Burr’s home state of North Carolina, Republicans say a large segment of the grass roots sees these probes as a threat to Trump and don’t want them to be allowed to run their course. This might help explain why Burr wanted (as the Democrat aide told me above) to issue an interim report, though, to be fair, Burr appears to have taken a serious approach to his probe.

Today we will gain a clearer sense of where the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation is heading next. The committee’s ranking Democrat, Mark Warner (Va.), has said he expects the probe to continue into next year. CNN reports that today’s news conference will shed light on what the investigation has uncovered so far confirming Russian meddling, will “sound the alarm” about Trump’s continued dismissal of that meddling as a hoax and will discuss how we can protect future elections from sabotage.

And so, this probe and the others are pivotal to gaining the truth about what happened in 2016 and to future efforts to protect our democracy. But you can expect Trump allies to amplify their claims that the investigations are nothing but a witch hunt against our poor, unfairly persecuted president and to escalate their calls for GOP leaders to shut them down.

Keep in mind that Benghazi had almost a dozen investigations that went on for years. They stopped at nothing, turned over every rock and spent many millions of dollars on that pseudo-scandal. I won’t even mention the Whitewater probe.

This is a GOP cover-up, the party coming together to protect this imbecile they elected in order to deliver for their rabid racist base and their wealthy donors. It was always to be expected. They are without conscience or integrity and have been for quite some time.

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King Trump visits with the peasants

by digby

For some reason, watching President Trump’s visit to Puerto Rico on Tuesday brought to mind the scene in Charles Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities” in which the Marquis St. Evrémonde runs over a child with his carriage and without remorse or compassion declares, “It is extraordinary to me that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children!” He throws a coin at the grieving father and another into the crowd, and as he moves on, one of the peasants on the street throws a coin back in the carriage, at which point the Marquis turns in anger and threatens to “exterminate” them all. The peasants hang their heads and say not a word, knowing what power the man has to destroy them.

Donald Trump didn’t throw coins into the crowd in Puerto Rico, but he did throw Bounty paper towels. And he didn’t scold the island’s people to their faces for failing to take care of their children, but he didn’t need to. He’d made it clear in his tweets that he thought Puerto Ricans had refused to help themselves because “they want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort.”

Officials on the ground wisely behaved much as Dickens’ peasants did. They kept their eyes down and parroted the president as he complimented his own leadership over and over again. This was more like an audience with the king, not a visit from a democratically elected leader who had come to forge a personal connection to what had happened.

Trump first insisted that the hurricane had hit exactly a week earlier, which wasn’t even close. It made landfall two weeks ago today. Maybe he’d lost track of time, but it’s more likely that this was a conscious lie to cover up the fact that his administration’s response has been so slow and so inadequate.

It only got worse from there. Trump unctuously lauded his administration, starting with himself, of course. Then he went down the list, starting with FEMA director Brock Long, whom he gave an A-plus. He thanked Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke and DHS adviser Tom Bossert and praised his “fantastic general,” Jeffrey Buchanan, saying, “No doubt about it. You are a general. No games.”

He thanked Jenniffer González-Colón, Puerto Rico’s nonvoting congressional representative, for “saying such nice things” about him. (She is also the state chair of Puerto Rico’s Republican Party.) He lavished praise on Puerto Rico’s governor, Ricardo Rosselló, because he “did not play politics” when “he was giving us the highest grades.”

He thanked all the branches of the military in florid terms, although when he got to the Coast Guard there was this weird moment:

Trump: What a job the Coast Guard has done throughout this whole — [inaudible] They would go right into the middle of it. I want to thank the Coast Guard. 

They are special people. A lot of people got to see the real Coast Guard in this trouble. In Texas was incredible for what they did. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. We would like to say something on behalf of your men and women. 

Unidentified: I’m representing the Air Force.

Trump: I know that.

I’m going to guess that that Air Force representative received a tongue-lashing for that impudent remark.

Trump also celebrated the fact that, according to him, the Category 5 Hurricane Maria that hit Puerto Rico wasn’t a “real disaster” like Hurricane Katrina. He asked the governor, “What’s your death count?” When Rosselló told him 16 people have been confirmed dead so far, the president smugly replied, “Sixteen people versus in the thousands. You can be . . . very proud of what’s taken place.”

We know Trump is very proud of the whole effort. He tells anyone who will listen what a great job he’s done and was happy to listen to local officials as they told him the same thing. And they did. One after the other expressed their deepest gratitude for his tremendous efforts.

He didn’t ask the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, to say anything, needless to say. She doesn’t understand that the peasants must flatter and fawn if they wish to have bread and water. (He did shake Cruz’s hand earlier in the visit and she told him “It’s not about politics,” at which point he reared up and haughtily turned away.)

The president is clearly annoyed that this relief effort is going to cost money. In fact, he can’t stop talking about that. He has mentioned the island’s debt and the cost every time he’s addressed the disaster, and he didn’t forget to do it on this occasion, saying, “I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack. We’ve spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico.” He generously added that it was “fine” because they were saving lives, which is mighty big of him.

I don’t recall Trump complaining about the money it cost for hurricane relief in Texas and Florida. In fact, Trump wanted it so much he was even willing to make a deal with “Chuck and Nancy” to get it done. This one seems to be a bit less urgent for some reason.

He finished the self-congratulatory photo-op and ring kissing ceremony and traveled around San Juan for a short tour, ending up in a church where they were delivering some supplies. He took selfies with the locals and then started throwing those paper towels into the crowd as if he were Elvis tossing one of his sweat-soaked scarves to the swooning ladies in the audience.

Afterwards, he actually said, “There was a lot of love in that room.”

Mingling with the peasants is something he believes makes them feel uncomfortable. He once said:

I’m sitting in an apartment the likes of which nobody’s ever seen. And yet I represent the workers of the world. And they love me and I love them. I think people aspire to do things. And they aspire to watch people. I don’t think they want to see the president carrying his luggage out of Air Force One. And that’s pretty much the way it is.

He believes people want to admire him from a distance, see him as bigger than life, as one anointed to leadership by dint of genetic destiny and special talent. But once in a while an ingrate will toss the coin he generously sent their way back in his carriage and he gets angry.

Stacking a legislature
by Tom Sullivan

Some donations are just donations. Other “donations” are bribes. Some gerrymandering is politics as usual. Some is election rigging. (And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.) Knowing the difference these days is as hard as knowing news from “news.”

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in Gill v. Whitford, the Wisconsin gerrymandering case challenging whether a Republican Party that garnered only 48.6 percent of the votes but 60 of 99 legislative seats might have drawn districts that robbed Democratic voters of proportional representation. Part of that will turn on use of the “efficiency gap” in deciding how much gerrymandering amounts to election rigging.

Chief Justice John Roberts seemed more concerned about the reputation of his court than voters’ rights, as Rick Hasen pointed out at Election Law Blog:

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Mr. Smith, I’m going to follow an example of one of my
colleagues and lay out for you as concisely as I can what — what is the main problem for me and give you an opportunity to address it.

I would think if these — if the claim is allowed to proceed, there will naturally be a lot of these claims raised around the country. Politics is a very important driving force and those claims will be raised.

And every one of them will come here for a decision on the merits. These cases are not within our discretionary jurisdiction. They’re the mandatory jurisdiction. We will have to decide in every case whether the Democrats win or the Republicans win. So it’s going to be a problem here across the board.And if you’re the intelligent man on the street and the Court issues a decision, and let’s say the Democrats win, and that person will say: Well, why did the Democrats win? And the answer is going to be because EG was greater than 7 percent, where EG is the sigma of party X wasted votes minus the sigma of party Y wasted votes over the sigma of party X votes plus party Y votes. And the intelligent man on the street is going to say that’s a bunch of baloney. It must be because the Supreme Court preferred the Democrats over the Republicans. And that’s going to come out one case after another as these cases are brought in every state. And that is going to cause very serious harm to the status and integrity of the decisions of this Court in the eyes of the country.

MR. SMITH: Your Honor –

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: It is just not, it seems, a palatable answer to say the ruling was based on the fact that EG was greater than 7 percent. That doesn’t sound like language in the Constitution.

Hasen observes that, first, a mechanical test was not recommended, and that, second, the court is already seen as political. Hasen writes, “The Court that decided Shelby County and Citizens United along party/ideological lines is looked at by the intelligent woman (or man) on the street as the product of a highly ideological politicized Court.” Roberts seems not to have noticed that horse has left the barn.

The newest member of the bench seems to have a pedantic streak and — as the only one on the bench with a true concern for the Constitution — a thing for lecturing his fellow justices, Jeffrey Toobin observes for the New Yorker:

Gorsuch went on to give his colleagues a civics lecture about the text of the Constitution. “And where exactly do we get authority to revise state legislative lines? When the Constitution authorizes the federal government to step in on state legislative matters, it’s pretty clear—if you look at the Fifteenth Amendment, you look at the Nineteenth Amendment, the Twenty-sixth Amendment, and even the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 2.” In other words, Gorsuch was saying, why should the Court involve itself in the subject of redistricting at all—didn’t the Constitution fail to give the Court the authority to do so?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is bent with age, can sometimes look disengaged or even sleepy during arguments, and she had that droopy look today as well. But, in this moment, she heard Gorsuch very clearly, and she didn’t even raise her head before offering a brisk and convincing dismissal. In her still Brooklyn-flecked drawl, she grumbled, “Where did ‘one person, one vote’ come from?” There might have been an audible woo that echoed through the courtroom. (Ginsburg’s comment seemed to silence Gorsuch for the rest of the arguments.)

But all eyes were on Justice Kennedy, seen as the swing voter on the otherwise divided court. Mark Jospeph Stern writes at Slate:

The judicial holy grail for gerrymandering opponents is Kennedy’s concurrence in 2004’s Vieth v. Jubelirer. Kennedy wrote that truly excessive partisan gerrymanders may run afoul of the First Amendment. This makes good sense. Consider Wisconsin. When Republican legislators drew lines designed to diminish the power of Democrats’ votes, they were punishing these voters for associating with, or expressing their support for, the Democratic Party. This kind of viewpoint-based burden on freedom of expression and association would seem to run afoul of basic First Amendment principles. In Vieth, Kennedy explained that he was thus prepared to strike down a political gerrymander, but not until he was provided standards that are manageable and consistent.

When Wisconsin Solicitor General Misha Tseytlin argued that using a set of standards to decide when gerrymandering had gone to far would result in a battle of experts, the liberal women jumped in, as NPR’s Nina Totenberg transcribed:

Justice Sonia Sotomayor observed that Wisconsin Republicans relied on these very experts to design and refine maps and to make the districts “more gerrymandered.”

“That’s true,” conceded Tseytlin.

So why didn’t they take one of the less gerrymandered maps? Sotomayor asked.

“Because there was no constitutional requirement that they do so,” Tseytlin replied, “as long as they followed traditional principles like having districts with equal populations.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wasn’t buying the argument. “What’s really behind all this?” she asked. What becomes of the “precious right to vote, if you can stack a legislature?”

What indeed? Gindberg asking what’s behind it, one assumes, was both a serious and a rhetorical question. The larger question is whether there are five justices dedicated to defending popular democracy. Or a majority satisfied we must live with the founders neglecting to write in an explicit safeguard against those bent on subverting the democracy they so painstakingly built. And that the Supreme Court is not it.

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Paul Ryan’s priority

by digby

Yes, we have a catastrophe of epic proportions in Puerto Rico, a historic mass shooting in Las Vegas and the expiration of funding for health care for millions of children but Paul Ryan has other priorities:

During a news conference on Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) was asked whether House Republicans still plan to forge ahead with a bill to deregulate gun silencers on the same week as the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

But instead of addressing the question head-on, Ryan quickly pivoted to touting the need for corporate tax cuts.

Pushed about the so-called Sportsmen Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act (SHARE Act), Ryan said he’s not sure when that bill will be scheduled, but “right now, we’re focused on passing our budget.”

With a chuckle, Ryan told reporters, “by the way, we’re bringing up our budget this week — I don’t know if you knew that.”

“The reason we’re bringing our budget up this week is because we want to pass tax reform, because we think that’s one of the most important things we can do to improve people’s lives,” he added. “That is our present focus and the Sportsmen’s Bill is not scheduled.”

Mitch McConnell said the same thing.

No matter how many people die these people will do nothing.

Recall that even after 9/11, the NRA successfully got the government to destroy background check documents even for terrorists suspects becausem in this one way only, they have constitutional rights too. There is nothing that will change their minds. We’re going to have to change the culture.

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The saddest day

by digby

 As measured on twitter, anyway, was yesterday:

The previous saddest days they measured was the Orlando shooting and the election of Donald Trump.

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