The Commentariat -- October 3, 2017

Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times: "In the frustrated anguish of Puerto Rico, we can see the real-world consequences of Donald Trump's flagrant incompetence. A little more than eight months ago, the United States inaugurated one of its worst people as president, a nasty showbiz huckster whose own staffers speak of him as if he were a malevolent toddler.... Under any president, Hurricane Maria would have been disastrous, but it seems clear that Trump's inattention made the fallout worse.... According to The [Washington] Post, it was only when Trump started seeing Puerto Rico coverage on cable television that a sense of urgency kicked in. Maria should be a lesson: We need a working executive branch. The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services both lack permanent leadership. The State Department has been hollowed out, and Trump undercuts his own secretary of state while threatening war with North Korea. America has largely survived eight months of Trump. That's no guarantee we'll survive eight months more." ...

... Steve Benen: Despite all of Trump's bad behavior, Paul Ryan gave the presidunce a thumbs-up on CBS's "Face the Nation." "His heart's in the right place," Ryan said. Benen: "Reasonable people can debate whether that core goodness exists or not, but the significance of the answer pales in significance to the president's actions." ...

     ... Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Here was the question 'FTN' host John Dickerson asked Ryan: "A year ago we talked about race relations in the country and -- and you said you hoped candidate -- then-candidate Trump would be inclusive.... It's been a year now. How would you rate his ability to bring this country together, which has clearly [been] -- an issue[.]" This is apparently the new, popular, euphemistic way "journalists" handle the question of Trump's racism & his other biases. They don't say he's a racist, sexist, etc., bigot, or ask such a question of the interviewee. No, the "issue" isn't racism or whatever; the "issue" is whether or not Trump "can bring the country together." What bull! President Obama couldn't "bring the country together," either, but it surely wasn't because he was a racist or some other "ist." It was because powerful forces were bigots who would not accept him.

... Timothy O'Brien of Bloomberg: "... 'POTUS vs. the media' is ... of note because of the fear that animates the president's attacks.... Trump is waging a war on the press because of the role it plays in recording, sometimes imperfectly, what occurs in real time all around us and during harrowing events, such as those in Puerto Rico. The president is waging a war on the media as part of his war on the public;s collective memory.... Pushed back on his heels by criticism about how quickly he recognized and called attention to the crisis in Puerto Rico, Trump is trying to hide by reshaping any criticism as an attack on first responders and the military.... As Martin Dempsey, a retired U.S. Army general and former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointed out on his Twitter feed on Sunday: 'Great leaders are motivated by results not reviews, accomplishments not accolades, humility not hubris.'" ...

... Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Dhrumil Mehta of 538: "... compared to the other natural disasters of the past few weeks, Hurricane Maria has been relatively ignored. Data from Media Cloud, a database that collects news published on the internet every day, shows that the devastation in Puerto Rico is getting comparatively little attention. U.S. Top Online News' collection, which looks at 49 top online news sources as of 2015 according to Pew/Comscore. This includes newspapers like The New York Times and digital-native sites like Vox." ...

... Alvin Chang of Vox: "But even with the dismal levels of coverage, there's one particular media outlet that has neglected Puerto Rico more than everyone else -- and it happens to be the most-watched cable news outlet in the country. That is, of course, Fox News.... And it's not just the volume of coverage but also the content. Both CNN and MSNBC spent a lot of time talking about the resource shortages in Puerto Rico -- the lack of fresh water, food, electricity, and gas. This is the kind of coverage that reiterates that Puerto Ricans are both part of the American tribe and facing a dire situation. It's the kind of coverage that humanizes a disaster. But Fox News didn't dwell on this aspect of the story[.]... It focused on what Trump was doing, like waiving the Jones Act, saying there are 'tremendous strides' being made, and, of course tweeting.... There was also a brief focus on how the mainstream media is politicizing Puerto Rico."

Fred Kaplan of Slate: "What to make of President Trump's slap-down of his top diplomat's back-channel overture to North Korea? 'I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,' Trump tweeted early Sunday morning, adding one minute later, 'Save your energy, Rex, we'll do what has to be done!'... We were witnessing the stumbling interaction between a secretary of state who doesn't get diplomacy and a president who doesn't want it.... Normally taciturn to the point of cloistered, he told reporters traveling with him in Beijing on Saturday -- on the record -- that he had 'a couple, three channels' of communication going on with North Korean officials.... Tillerson doesn't seem to realize that the whole point of ... 'back channels' ... is to explore intentions and possibilities out of the limelight away from political pressure.... Tillerson had the right idea. There need to be direct talks.... Too bad that Tillerson doesn't know how to do this sort of thing. And worse still that we have a president who doesn't want to back him up, whether because he;d rather solve the problem militarily or because he really believes that acting 'crazy' will sire a better deal." Mrs. McC: As usual, I like Kaplan's analysis better than my own -- in this case, one I made a few days ago.

Jonathan Chait: "Republicans Angry at Economists for Finding Their Tax Cuts Go to the Rich. Friday, the Tax Policy Center published an analysis of the Republican tax-cut plan, finding that nearly 80 percent of its benefits would accrue to the highest-earning one percent of the public. Asked about these findings, White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney called the center the 'National Tax Center,' erroneously charged that a former economic adviser to Joe Biden works there, and used this imagined fact to discredit its calculations[.]... The [Wall Street] Journal dismisses the Tax Policy Center's findings as 'propaganda,' arguing that the Republican plan is not completely finished." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... How to Manage Inconvenient Facts -- Erase Them & Lie Like Hell. Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post: In 2012, Treasury's Office of Tax Analysis "released a paper explaining ... that 82 percent of corporate taxes were borne by capital owners, and 18 percent were borne by labor.... The answers these Treasury staffers produced are not so far from those of most other major nonpartisan tax crunchers, including the Congressional Budget Office, the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Tax Policy Center. The Treasury paper ... [was] generally ignored. Until now. That's because Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been lately claiming that nearly all of the corporate tax burden is passed on to workers. It's an argument that he has to make if he hopes to sell the administration's tax cuts ... as a helping hand for the Forgotten Man. On Fox News, Mnuchin claimed that 'most economists believe that over 70 percent of corporate taxes are paid for by the workers.' At an event in Kentucky, he declared that 'over 80 percent of business taxes is borne by the worker.'... Tax watchers and interviewers began pointing out that Mnuchin's claims were at odds not only with most credible estimates but also with those of his own staff. Which clearly annoyed Mnuchin. So Treasury took the unusual -- unprecedented? -- step of quietly deleting the inconvenient findings from its website." Rampell suggests that Mnuchin can't get his own lies straight, even in a single conversation. ...

... Paul Krugman: "Last week the Trump administration and its congressional allies working on tax reform ... released a tax plan -- or, actually, a vague sketch of a plan — that manages both to add trillions to the deficit and to raise taxes on a large fraction of the population. That takes talent. But like the G.O.P.'s terrible, no good, very bad health plans, this tax debacle was years in the making. On taxes, as with health, leading Republicans have been lying for years. And now the fraud has caught up with the fraudsters.... Almost 60 percent of households between the 80th and 90th percentiles of the income distribution would face tax increases.... Did I mention that many of those facing tax hikes vote Republican?... In broad outlines, the tax story is a lot like health care. In both cases, Republicans have spent years getting away with big promises backed by lies. Now, with real policy to be made, the lies won't work anymore. And they can't handle the truth."

Ben Lefebvre of Politico: "The Interior Department;s inspector general's office has opened an investigation into Secretary Ryan Zinke's use of taxpayer-funded charter planes, a spokeswoman said Monday.... The secretary has flown on government-owned or -chartered aircraft several times this year, including one $12,000 trip from Las Vegas to an airport near his hometown in Montana and another trip in the Caribbean, as Politico reported last week. The Las Vegas trip has attracted particular scrutiny, because Zinke was appearing at an event affiliated with a major campaign donor that kept him from catching a commercial flight to Montana."

William Wan, et al., of the Washington Post: "Before he opened fire late Sunday -- killing at least 50 people at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip -- the gunman Stephen Paddock lived a quiet life for years in a small town outside Las Vegas. A retired man, Paddock, 64, would disappear for days at a time, frequenting casinos as a professional gambler with his longtime girlfriend, neighbors said. Relatives also said Paddock had been quietly living out his retirement years, visiting Las Vegas to gamble and take in concerts." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... New Lede: "Before he opened fire late Sunday, killing at least 58 people at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip, gunman Stephen Paddock was living out his retirement as a high-stakes gambler in a quiet town outside Las Vegas. Paddock, 64, would disappear for days at a time, frequenting casinos with his longtime girlfriend, neighbors said. Relatives also said Paddock had frequently visited Las Vegas to gamble and take in concerts." ...

... Ken Belson, et al., of the New York Times: "The police said they found 23 firearms in [Paddock's hotel] suite. And when they searched the attacker’s house, they discovered an additional 19 firearms and, according to Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, 'some explosives, and several thousand rounds of ammo.' He added that they also found ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer sometimes used in making bombs, in the gunman's car. The sheriff said some rifles found in the hotel room may have been modified to make them fully automatic. Automatic rifles, which fire multiple rounds with a squeeze of a trigger, are highly regulated, and on videos posted online by witnesses, the rapid-fire sound indicated that at least one weapon was fully automatic.... [Paddock] brought in more than 10 suitcases during his stay [at the Mandalay Bay hotel], but no one saw anything amiss, the sheriff said." ...

... Odd. Ed Kilgore: "After expressing shock that his brother, 'just a guy' who liked to go to Vegas and gamble and see some shows and 'eat burritos,' had gone on a murder spree from the window of his room at Mandalay Bay hotel, Eric Paddock disclosed something else about Stephen Paddock's background. '...their father was Patrick Benjamin Paddock, a bank robber who he says was on FBI Most Wanted list.' citing Peter Alexander.].... There was indeed in the late 1960s and early 1970s a bank robber, an escaped federal prisoner, and eventually a fugitive by that name (and others) who made the Most Wanted list. The FBI poster ([pictured in the story]) from 1969 notes that Paddock the Elder had been 'diagnosed as psychopathic, has carried firearms in commission of bank robberies' and 'reportedly has suicidal tendencies and should be considered armed and very dangerous.'... Paddock apparently stayed on the lam until 1978, when he was 'captured in 1978 in Oregon where he was running a bingo parlor.'" Mrs. McC: Several news outlets have confirmed the report. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Trump's Ability to Stiffly Read Scripted Speech Awes CNN. Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Erik Wemple of the Washington Post: "There was nothing glorious about President Trump's short speech Monday morning in reaction to the massacre that unfolded Sunday night in Las Vegas. There was plenty of language that has become grimly standard in situations like this one.... Nor was there anything embarrassing or dismal about the presentation. No big blunders, though the speech had that hollow feel that accompanies scripted presentations from Trump.... On CNN, though, it was a marvel of possibly historic proportions. 'Look, pitch perfect from the president right there,' said John King.... Poppy Harlow said, 'This is the time to bring the country together -- that is exactly, John King, what the president did with those remarks. This is not a time for politics, nor did he inject them at all in those remarks.' Jeff Zeleny said, 'The president clearly, as John said, striking a pitch-perfect tone.' And analyst David Chalian: 'That's everything you would want to hear from a president of the United States, everything that you wanted to hear there. I agree with what John and Jeff were saying -- this was certainly pitch perfect.'... Speeches provide journalists from mainstream organizations a remarkable opportunity to render a positive judgment on a man who is patently unfit to discharge the duties of his office." ...

... John Bresnahan, et al., of Politico: "A controversial bill to loosen restrictions on purchasing gun silencers won't be reaching the House floor anytime soon after a horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas that left at least 59 dead and hundreds more wounded, according to GOP sources. A bill to allow concealed-carry permit holders to take their guns with them to another state could also be affected after the tragedy, the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.... [The silencer] bill, introduced by Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), has been approved by the Natural Resources Committee and was expected to be on the House floor soon though it had not yet been scheduled for a vote. Consideration of the bill was postponed earlier this year after Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot in June at a congressional baseball practice." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: And that's what passes for "gun control" in GOP circles: delaying votes on reprehensible bills to loosen gun restrictions for a short period of time following mass shootings perpetrated by white people. I'm sure these bills would have gone sailing thru Congress if the shooters had been called Ahmed & Mohammed. ...

... Former Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), in a New York Times op-ed: "In the wake of one the deadliest mass shooting in our nation's history, perhaps the most asked question by Americans is, 'Will anything change?' The simple answer is no. The more vital question is, 'Why not?' Congress is already doing what it sees as its part. Flags have been lowered, thoughts and prayers tweeted, and sometime this week it will perform the latest episode in the longest-running drama on C-Span: the moment of silence. It's how they responded to other mass shootings in Columbine, Herkimer, Tucson, Santa Monica, Hialeah, Terrell, Alturas, Killeen, Isla Vista, Marysville, Chapel Hill, Tyrone, Waco, Charleston, Chattanooga, Lafayette, Roanoke, Roseburg, Colorado Springs, San Bernardino, Birmingham, Fort Hood and Aurora, at Virginia Tech, the Washington Navy Yard, and the congressional baseball game practice, to name too many.... [After Sandy Hook,] I heard my colleagues turn this into a debate over the rights of gun owners instead of the right to life of children." Read on. Israel describes the craven self-interests of members of Congress, the righty-right-wing NRA & the willingness of "responsible" citizens to vote for members the NRA has captured...." ...

     ... When will Trump lash out against Jimmy Kimmel? ...

... Alan Yuhas of the Guardian: "The lead guitarist of a country music band playing Route 91 Harvest festival, where a gunman murdered 58 people on Sunday night, has said the horrific experience of the attack has changed his views on gun laws in America. 'I've been a proponent of the [second] amendment my entire life,' Caleb Keeter posted on Twitter. 'Until the events of last night. I cannot express how wrong I was.'... But Keeter went further, describing the deadliest shooting in modern US history as a revelation. He said that members of the band's crew have concealed handgun licenses, and legal firearms on the bus. 'They were useless,' he said. 'We couldn't touch them for fear police might think that we were part of the massacre and shoot us. A small group (or one man) laid waste to a city with dedicated, fearless police officers desperately trying to help, because of access to an insane amount of firepower. Enough is enough.... 'We need gun control RIGHT. NOW.... My biggest regret is that I stubbornly didn't realize it until my brothers on the road and myself were threatened by it.'" ...

... Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker: "If the ... [mass murderer] was someone who had, even once, communicated with or been radicalized by ISIS, no matter how remote or long-distance that radicalization, or if he was merely a Muslim from a Muslim country, then a massive act of terrorism would have been committed and a militant response, including travel bans and broad suspensions of rights, would be essential. If it was just one more American 'psycho,' then all we can do is shrug and, as the occupant of the Oval Office put it, send 'warmest condolences and sympathies...' President Trump, deprived from birth by some genetic accident of all natural human empathy ... speaks empathy as a foreign language and makes the kinds of mistakes we all make in a second language that we have barely mastered.... Between the consolidated power of the pro-gun right, and the truth that gun control has slipped down the agenda of even anti-violence liberals, this means that the only American response to regular mass gun killings will be a shrug and faked sympathy." ...

... The Right-Wing Lynch Mob. Abby Ohlheiser of the Washington Post: "Geary Danley was not the gunman in Las Vegas who killed at least 50 people late Sunday. But for hours on the far-right Internet, would-be sleuths scoured Danley's Facebook likes, family photographs and marital history to try to 'prove' that he was. Danley, according to an archived version of a Facebook page bearing that name, might have been married to a Marilou Danley[, the woman who reportedly lived with the actual shooter].... The briefest look at the viral threads and tweets falsely naming Geary Danley as the attacker makes it easy to guess why a bunch of right-wing trolls latched on to him: His Facebook profile indicated that he might be a liberal.... [The far right's] That phony story quickly embedded itself into the algorithms of Google and Facebook, where sites promoting the rumor remained at the top of the results for anyone searching for Danley's name." ...

... Cale Weissman of Fast Company: Facebook & Google algorithms have pushed numerous alt-right conspiracy theories to the top of the "news." The spread of misinformation remains a huge problem for large platforms like Facebook and Google, which rely on algorithms to push the most engaged stories to the top. ...

... Callum Borchers of the Washington Post: Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Wayne Allyn Root "could not wait to weigh in on Sunday's mass shooting in Las Vegas. On Twitter, he jumped to the conclusion that the shooter must be Muslim, before police had identified him.... Several hours later, police identified the gunman as a Nevada man named Stephen Paddock, who Las Vegas police described as a white man. Root, however, was not ready rule out a connection to Islamic terrorism. In fact, he argued that 'liberals' are the ones rushing to judgment by assuming the shooter is not a Muslim.... Root is not alone in spreading the idea that Islamist terrorism was behind the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history on Sunday -- despite the absence of evidence." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Ryan Broderick of BuzzFeed lists 19 hoaxes being spread on the Internet about the Las Vegas mass shooting. Mrs. McC: I'm sure Broderick's report will be quite outdated by the time you read it.

Tom Hamburger, et al., of the Washington Post: "Associates of President Trump and his company have turned over documents to federal investigators that reveal two previously unreported contacts from Russia during the 2016 campaign.... In one case, Trump's personal attorney and a business associate exchanged emails weeks before the Republican National Convention about the lawyer possibly traveling to an economic conference in Russia that would be attended by top Russian financial and government leaders, including President Vladimir Putin, according to people familiar with the correspondence. In the other case, the same Trump attorney, Michael Cohen, received a proposal in late 2015 for a Moscow residential project from a company founded by a billionaire who once served in the upper house of the Russian parliament.... The previously unreported inquiry marks the second proposal for a Trump-branded Moscow project that was delivered to the company during the presidential campaign...." ...

... Mike Isaac & Scott Shane of the New York Times: "The Russians who posed as Americans on Facebook last year tried on quite an array of disguises. There was 'Defend the 2nd,' a Facebook page for gun-rights supporters, festooned with firearms and tough rhetoric. There was a rainbow-hued page for gay rights activists, 'LGBT United.' There was even a Facebook group for animal lovers with memes of adorable puppies that spread across the site with the help of paid ads. Federal investigators and officials at Facebook now believe these groups and their pages were part of a highly coordinated disinformation campaign linked to the Internet Research Agency, a secretive company in St. Petersburg, Russia, known for spreading Kremlin-linked propaganda and fake news across the web. They were described to The New York Times by two people familiar with the social network and its ads who were not authorized to discuss them publicly. Under intensifying pressure from Congress and growing public outcry, Facebook on Monday turned over more than 3,000 of the Russia-linked advertisements from its site over to the Senate and House intelligence committees, as well as the Senate Judiciary Committee." ...

... Elizabeth Dwoskin, et al., of the Washington Post: "Russian operatives set up an array of misleading Web sites and social media pages to identify American voters susceptible to propaganda, then used a powerful Facebook tool to repeatedly send them messages designed to influence their political behavior, say people familiar with the investigation into foreign meddling in the U.S. election. The tactic resembles what American businesses and political campaigns have been doing in recent years to deliver messages to potentially interested people online. The Russians exploited this system by creating English-language sites and Facebook pages that closely mimicked those created by U.S. political activists." ...

... Adam Entous, et al., of the Washington Post: "One of the Russian-bought advertisements that Facebook shared with congressional investigators on Monday featured photographs of an armed black woman 'dry firing' a rifle -- pulling the trigger of the weapon without a bullet in the chamber, according to people familiar with the investigation. Investigators believe the advertisement may have been designed to encourage African American militancy and, at the same time, to stoke fears within white communities.... The apparent tactic underscores how the Russians used U.S.-based technology platforms to target Americans with highly tailored and sometimes-contradictory messages to exploit divisions in American society over the past two years.... The Russian campaign frequently sought to widen existing fractures in American society, while also helping to boost Republican Donald Trump's presidential campaign.... In addition to sharing the ads, Facebook is providing information to lawmakers about which users those ads targeted, the views and clicks the ads received, and the methods of payment used by the Russian operatives, said people familiar with the investigation. The ads were viewed tens of millions of times...."

To Nanny Yulia: Mr. Kushner and I are going on a secret visit to Russia next Tuesday to deliver a top-secret message from Daddy to a friend in the Kremlin Moscow. Best not to tell the kids or your boyfriend Boris. I'm sure we can count on your discretion. Ivanka ...

... E-mails! Javanka, Oh My. Josh Dawsey & Andrea Peterson of Politico: "White House officials have begun examining emails associated with a third and previously unreported email account on Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump's private domain, according to three people familiar with the matter. Hundreds of emails have been sent since January from White House addresses to accounts on the Kushner family domain, these people said. Many of those emails went not to Kushner's or Ivanka Trump's personal addresses but to an account they both had access to and shared with their personal household staff for family scheduling. The emails which include ... some official White House materials -- were in many cases sent from Ivanka Trump, her assistant Bridges Lamar and others who work with the couple in the White House. The emails to the third account were largely sent from White House accounts but occasionally came from other private accounts, one of these people said. The existence of additional accounts ... raises new questions about the extent of personal email use by the couple during their time as White House aides. Their use of private email accounts for White House business also raises concerns about the security of potentially sensitive government documents which have been forwarded to private accounts."

NEW. Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on Tuesday in a case that could reshape American democracy. The justices will consider whether extreme partisan gerrymandering -- the drawing of voting districts to give lopsided advantages to the party in power -- violates the Constitution. The Supreme Court has never struck down an election map on the ground that it was drawn to make sure one political party wins an outsize number of seats. The court has, however, left open the possibility that some kinds of political gamesmanship in redistricting may be too extreme."

Typed on my HP Computer:

Capitalism is Awesome, Ctd. Joel Schectman, et al., of Reuters: "Hewlett Packard Enterprise allowed a Russian defense agency to review the inner workings of cyber defense software used by the Pentagon to guard its computer networks, according to Russian regulatory records and interviews with people with direct knowledge of the issue. The HPE system, called ArcSight, serves as a cybersecurity nerve center for much of the U.S. military, alerting analysts when it detects that computer systems may have come under attack. ArcSight is also widely used in the private sector. The Russian review of ArcSight's source code, the closely guarded internal instructions of the software, was part of HPE's effort to win the certification required to sell the product to Russia's public sector, according to the regulatory records seen by Reuters and confirmed by a company spokeswoman." Mrs. McC: Just un-fucking-believable.

Bill Vlasic & Neal Boudette of the New York Times: "In a push to produce cars powered by batteries or fuel cells, General Motors on Monday laid out a strategy to vastly expand the number of electric models in the marketplace. G.M. said it would introduce two new all-electric models within 18 months as part of a broader plan toward what the company says is its ultimate goal of an emissions-free fleet. The two models will be the first of at least 20 new all-electric vehicles that G.M. plans to bring out by 2023. The announcement came a day before a long-scheduled investor presentation by Ford Motor that was also expected to emphasize electric models. After the G.M. news emerged, Ford let loose its own plan, saying it would add 13 electrified models in the next several years."

Way Beyond the Beltway

Raphael Minder of the New York Times: "A day after a referendum on independence for Catalonia that was marred by clashes between supporters and police officers, the Spanish region's leaders were meeting on Monday to determine how to convert the vote into a state free from the rest of the country. Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan leader, said late Sunday that Catalans had won the right to have their own state and that he would soon present the result of the referendum to the regional Parliament to make it binding." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

News Ledes:

Washington Post: "Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne have won the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics. The three are members of the LIGO-Virgo detector collaboration that discovered gravitational waves. The prize was awarded 'for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves,' the committee said in a news release. 'This year's prize is about a discovery that shook the world,' said the Nobel committee representative Göran K. Hansson during a conference in Stockholm on Tuesday. Albert Einstein had predicted that distortions in gravity would ripple through space-time like a shockwave. It took nearly a century to confirm these distortions exist. One half of the prize went to Weiss, born in Berlin and now a U.S. citizen, who is a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The other half was split by Barish, a Nebraska native, and Thorne, who was born in Utah. Both work at the California Institute of Technology."

New York Times: "Tom Petty, a songwriter who melded California rock with a deep, stubborn Southern heritage, died on Monday after suffering cardiac arrest. He was 66 and had lived in Los Angeles." ...

... Petty's Rolling Stone obituary is here.

The Commentariat -- October 2, 2017

Afternoon Update:

Cristiano Lima of Politico: "White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday said now was not the time for a debate on gun control, but rather that today was 'a day of reflection, a day of mourning' for the victims in Sunday's deadly Las Vegas shooting." Mrs. McC: Somehow, there's never a good time, is there, Sarah? ...

... Cristiano Lima: "Democratic lawmakers called for swift congressional action in response to the Las Vegas shooting that left at least 58 dead -- the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history — with Sen. Chris Murphy saying it is 'time for Congress to get off its ass and do something' on gun control. Murphy, who led a filibuster on the Senate floor last June in protest of legislative inaction following the Pulse club shooting, called it 'cruelly hollow' for politicians to not back up their words of sympathy with a governmental response." ...

... William Wan, et al., of the Washington Post: "Before he opened fire late Sunday -- killing at least 50 people at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip -- the gunman Stephen Paddock lived a quiet life for years in a small town outside Las Vegas. A retired man, Paddock, 64, would disappear for days at a time, frequenting casinos as a professional gambler with his longtime girlfriend, neighbors said. Relatives also said Paddock had been quietly living out his retirement years, visiting Las Vegas to gamble and take in concerts." ...

... Odd. Ed Kilgore: "After expressing shock that his brother, 'just a guy' who liked to go to Vegas and gamble and see some shows and 'eat burritos,' had gone on a murder spree from the window of his room at Mandalay Bay hotel, Eric Paddock disclosed something else about Stephen Paddock's background. '...their father was Patrick Benjamin Paddock, a bank robber who he says was on FBI Most Wanted list.' citing Peter Alexander.].... There was indeed in the late 1960s and early 1970s a bank robber, an escaped federal prisoner, and eventually a fugitive by that name (and others) who made the Most Wanted list. The FBI poster ([pictured in the story]) from 1969 notes that Paddock the Elder had been 'diagnosed as psychopathic, has carried firearms in commission of bank robberies' and 'reportedly has suicidal tendencies and should be considered armed and very dangerous.'... Paddock apparently stayed on the lam until 1978, when he was 'captured in 1978 in Oregon where he was running a bingo parlor.'" Mrs. McC: Several news outlets have confirmed the report. ...

... Callum Borchers of the Washington Post: Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Wayne Allyn Root "could not wait to weigh in on Sunday's mass shooting in Las Vegas. On Twitter, he jumped to the conclusion that the shooter must be Muslim, before police had identified him.... Several hours later, police identified the gunman as a Nevada man named Stephen Paddock, who Las Vegas police described as a white man. Root, however, was not ready rule out a connection to Islamic terrorism. In fact, he argued that 'liberals' are the ones rushing to judgment by assuming the shooter is not a Muslim.... Root is not alone in spreading the idea that Islamist terrorism was behind the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history on Sunday -- despite the absence of evidence."

Jonathan Chait: "Republicans Angry at Economists for Finding Their Tax Cuts Go to the Rich. Friday, the Tax Policy Center published an analysis of the Republican tax-cut plan, finding that nearly 80 percent of its benefits would accrue to the highest-earning one percent of the public. Asked about these findings, White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney called the center the 'National Tax Center,' erroneously charged that a former economic adviser to Joe Biden works there, and used this imagined fact to discredit its calculations[.]... The [Wall Street] Journal dismisses the Tax Policy Center's findings as 'propaganda,' arguing that the Republican plan is not completely finished."

Raphael Minder of the New York Times: "A day after a referendum on independence for Catalonia that was marred by clashes between supporters and police officers, the Spanish region's leaders were meeting on Monday to determine how to convert the vote into a state free from the rest of the country. Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan leader, said late Sunday that Catalans had won the right to have their own state and that he would soon present the result of the referendum to the regional Parliament to make it binding."

*****

Gerry Mullany & Russell Goldman of the New York Times: "A gunman firing from a Las Vegas hotel rained a rapid-fire barrage on a huge outdoor concert festival on Sunday night, sending thousands of people fleeing until SWAT units found and killed him. More than 50 victims died, and at least 200 others were wounded, officials said, making it one of the deadliest mass shootings in United States history. Online video of the attack outside the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino showed the country singer Jason Aldean performing outside at the Route 91 Harvest Festival, a three-day country music event, interrupted by the sound of automatic gunfire. The music stopped, and concertgoers ducked for cover.... Several SWAT teams were sent to the hotel immediately after the first reports of the shooting at 10:08 p.m., and officers overheard on police radio reported being pinned down by gunfire. Shortly before midnight the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department reported that 'one suspect is down,' and soon thereafter the police said they did not believe there were any more active gunmen.... Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of Clark County told reporters early Monday morning that more than 50 people were killed and more than 200 injured. He identified the gunman as Stephen Paddock, 64. He said the police were seeking 'a companion' named Marilou Danley...." ...

     ... New Lede: "A gunman on a high floor of a Las Vegas hotel rained a rapid-fire barrage on an outdoor concert festival on Sunday night, killing at least 58 people, wounding hundreds of others, and sending thousands of terrified survivors fleeing for cover, in one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history." Ken Belson has been added to the byline. Mrs. McC: Cable news is reporting that at least 500 were injured. ...

     ... Goldman (update: and Liam Stack) are live-updating here. Police "said they were 'confident' they had located a female person of interest described as [the gunman's] 'companion' and 'roommate.'" ...

... The Los Angeles Times report, by David Montero & Alene Tchekmedyian, is here.

... The Las Vegas Sun report is here. ...

... The AP has a running account of developments here. ...

... Heavy has some sketchy information about the shooter. "Sheriff Joe Lombardo, when asked by a reporter if it was an 'act of terrorism,' said 'no, not at this point. We believe it was a local individual. He resides here locally. I'm not at liberty to give you his place of residence yet, because it's an ongoing investigation, we don't know what his belief system was at this time.... Right now we believe he is the sole aggressor at this point and the scene is static.'" Mrs. McC: Not sure what Lombardo thinks an "act of terrorism" is if it's not shooting, killing & maiming hundreds of people attending a concert.

What a Real President does when a hurricane hits while he's on vacation:

Photo by Pete Souza.While on vacation on Martha's Vineyard in 2011, President Obama, with Homeland Security Advisor John Brennan and others, waits to start a conference call with mayors and governors affected by Hurricane Irene. The President cut short his vacation to monitor the situation from Washington as the Category 2 storm moved its way up the eastern seaboard. -- Pete Souza ...

... Thanks to Exalto for reminding us of Pete Souza's Instagram account. ...

... What a President* does when a hurricane hits during his $3MM weekend vacations:

Trump at Bedminster. Not Photoshopped (but, okay, shot in November 2016).Thanks to Old McDonald for reminding us what a complete dick he is. ...

On behalf of all of the people of Texas, and all of the people -- if you look today and see what is happening, how horrible it is but we have it under really great control -- Puerto Rico and the people of Florida who have really suffered over this last short period of time with the hurricanes, I want to just remember them. And we're going to dedicate this trophy to all of those people that went through so much that we love -- a part of our great state, really part of our great nation. -- Donald Trump. at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City

You don’t give a shit about Puerto Rico! -- A shout-out from a person in the crowd at the Jersey City golf club 

... Daniel Politi of Slate: "After a weekend of picking Twitter fights with the mayor of Puerto Rico's capital ... from the comfort of his own golf resort in Bedmnister, N.J...., Donald Trump seemed to know exactly what those suffering from the devastation left behind by Hurricane Maria needed: the dedication of a golf trophy. Trump's offer of goodwill wasn't just for Puerto Rico though, as the commander in chief also dedicated the Presidents Cup Golf Tournament trophy to the victims of the recent hurricanes that struck Texas and Florida as well." ...

... Mary Shelbourne of the Hill: "The number of Puerto Ricans without access to drinking water has risen sharply [to 55 percent], the Defense Department announced on Saturday.... The military said last week that 44 percent of the island did not have access to drinking water." ...

... Following are a few representative stories from reporters on the ground around Puerto Rico. Either these reporters are terrific fabulists or Donald Trump is a liar. ...

... ¿Dónde está FEMA? A. J. Vicens of Mother Jones: "As two Puerto Rican journalists and I walked through Ciales, a mountain town hit hard by Hurricane Maria..., at least a dozen residents approached us with the same question: Are you from FEMA? Earlier in the day..., Donald Trump had slammed San Juan Mayor Yulín Cruz on Saturday for 'such poor leadership ability,' boasting that federal efforts to assist in hurricane recovery were robust. '10,000 Federal workers now on Island doing a fantastic job,' he tweeted from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. But according to residents, none of those 10,000 federal workers have made it to Ciales, just 45 minutes from San Juan. The storm in this town of 19,000 knocked out the power grid, destroyed entire blocks, and filled streets and homes with a pervasive chocolate-brown mud. Everyone we talked to in Ciales -- young and old, residents of public housing and private homes, and even the mayor -- complained about the local, Puerto Rican, and federal response to the disaster." ...

... Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the Los Angeles Times: "... in places like rural, southwestern Lajas..., locals said they are ... helping each other. But there is only so much they can do.... Lajas Mayor Marcos Irizarry Pagán arranged for [two families] to stay at a hotel..., because he feared they couldn't survive at the [town's] shelter. 'These are elderly people sick due to a lack of oxygen, diabetes -- it's a lot of complications and they can't resist it. We want to help them, but our hands are tied,' he said. FEMA sent its first shipment to Lajas on Friday. Police picked it up from a nearby city under guard, concerned about looting. The shipment contained 200 boxes of food and 786 24-packs of water for a town of 25,000.... The mayor was issued a satellite phone to contact FEMA in San Juan, but he said the agency never calls back. He has started using the phone to let residents call worried relatives on the U.S. mainland.... About 100 people died in the three days after the storm in the Lajas region, twice the typical rate, according to a local funeral director. Eight elderly people have died in Lajas since the storm, at least one directly related to a shortage of medical supplies." ...

... Ingrid Arnesen of the Daily Beast: "Twenty-eight U.S. Army reservists answered the call of duty ... and reported to an abandoned base on the eastern tip of the island. Then they waited for orders. And waited. It was one week before the soldiers heard from the outside world. That is how desperate, how disorganized, the situation in Puerto Rico has been. Try as he may to deflect blame for the response to Hurricane Maria..., Donald Trump is the commander-in-chief of these soldiers who were marooned while their countrymen needed all the help they could get." ...

We've spent the entire weekend, as we have last weekend, working on Puerto Rico, making sure we're out saving lives, sustaining lives. And making sure everyone in Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, is taken care of. The United States has gone through extraordinary efforts to delivery goods to the islands. -- Gary Cohn, White House economic advisor, on Fox "News" Sunday (Also linked yesterday.)

Great! Apparently composing nasty tweets running down media coverage & local Puerto Rican efforts is "work." -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie ...

... David Jackson of USA Today: "President Trump defended his administration's response to the humanitarian disaster in Puerto Rico, dismissing any critics of his relief efforts as 'fake news' and 'politically motivated ingrates.' 'We have done a great job with the almost impossible situation in Puerto Rico,' Trump said. 'Outside of the Fake News or politically motivated ingrates ... people are now starting to recognize the amazing work that has been done by FEMA and our great Military.'... In a third tweet on Sunday morning, Trump had kind words for Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello, thanking him and 'all of those who are working so closely with our First Responders. Fantastic job!'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: John Kelly needs to hire a cold-hearted no-texting nanny to babysit Terribly Trumpy on the weekends. ...

... Chas Danner of New York: "White House budget director Mick Mulvaney joined [Trump] in the attack on Cruz on Sunday morning. 'My understanding is that as of yesterday, she had not even been to the FEMA operation center in her own city,' Mulvaney said on CNN.... Also on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on NBC's Meet the Press that Cruz's comments 'were unfair, given what the federal government has done.'... Mulvaney and Mnuchin's criticism follows a White House official's anonymous statement on Saturday suggesting that Cruz has been 'too busy doing TV' to properly gauge federal relief efforts." ...

... Mike Allen of Axios: "In contrast to dire reports from the island, White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert sent West Wing colleagues an unusually upbeat update -- leaked to Axios -- that points to a rapid recovery no one on the ground is witnessing. Bossert, back from a trip to Puerto Rico earlier in the week, says it's 'still an urgent situation,' but that the administration has "a strong ground game in place on the island with military leadership[.]... The White House's sunny plan comes as TV reports 'increasingly echo those after Katrina a dozen years ago in sounding the alarm for a desperate population frustrated by the pace of relief efforts,' AP's David Bauder points out[.]" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

The President is personally retweeting himself about PR instead of personally overseeing PR relief. He struggles with basics of being POTUS.... Part of being President is driving federal agencies to work together and get the job done. Another part is moral leadership. - Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), in tweets (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

... Matt Yglesias of Vox: "For the first nine months of his administration, observers have had occasion to wonder ... how exactly Donald Trump would manage to handle a real crisis imposed by external events rather than his own impulsiveness. The answer is now apparent in the blackened streets of San Juan and the villages of interior Puerto Rico that more than a week after Hurricane Maria struck remain without access to food or clean water. To an extent, the United States of America held up surprisingly well from Inauguration Day until September 20th or so. The ongoing degradation of American civic institutions, at a minimum, did not have an immediate negative impact on the typical person's life. But the world is beginning to draw a straight line from the devastation in Puerto Rico straight to the White House. Trump's instinct so far is to turn the island's devastation into another front in culture war politics, a strategy that could help his own political career survive." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Charles Blow: "The subtext [of Trump's tweets disparaging Mayor Yulín Cruz of San Juan & Puerto Ricans in general] -- or perhaps the actual text -- was to blame the victim and berate them as a group: These brown people want/need help, but won't/can't help themselves because their community/culture is inferior/ineffective. It was a revolting, racialized attack, but one delivered in much the same way that his racialized attack on the N.F.L. players was delivered: by using hijacked glory. He used the nobility of veterans and active service member to shield his ignoble attack on the N.F.L. players, and he used the nobility of first responders to shield his ignoble attack on Puerto Ricans.... As Jelani Cobb brilliantly observed last week in The New Yorker, 'Ungrateful is the new uppity.'" ...

... Margaret Hartmann: "President Trump is not one to let a controversy fade away, so on Saturday he made sure to fan the embers of his standoff with the NFL.... 'Very important that NFL players STAND tomorrow, and always, for the playing of our National Anthem. Respect our Flag and our Country!' [Trump tweeted.]... However, Trump was clearly more invested in his new beef with the mayor of storm-ravaged San Juan; over the weekend, he posted more than a dozen tweets defending his administration's response to Hurricane Maria. The NFL scaled back its response as well. A few teams -- including the Baltimore Ravens, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the New Orleans Saints, and the Jacksonville Jaguars -- took a knee as a team before the anthem, then stood for the song. Jacksonville players announced before the game that they would would kneel in prayer 'for change, progress and equality for everyone who calls the United States their homes.'"

Trumpty-Dumpty Dumps on Diplomacy. Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Trump seemed to undercut his own secretary of state on Sunday as he belittled the prospect of a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear-edged crisis with North Korea even as the administration was seeking to open lines of communication. In the latest Twitter messages from his New Jersey golf club, where he was spending the weekend, Mr. Trump diminished Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson's outreach to Pyongyang and its autocratic leader, Kim Jong-un. On a visit to China, Mr. Tillerson acknowledged on Saturday that he was trying to open talks. 'I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,' Mr. Trump wrote, using the derogatory nickname he has assigned to Mr. Kim. 'Save your energy Rex,' he added, 'we'll do what has to be done!'" Thanks to MAG for the lead. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Clio Chang of the New Republic writes "An Oral History of the Trump Administration as told through anonymous quotes from White House and Republican officials.... Over the course of a young presidency composed of nothing but disasters and scandals, a torrent of anonymous backstabbing and grumbling has found its way into the mainstream media. Taken together, these quotes show what it is like to work for a mercurial boss who is painfully unqualified to hold the office -- a mosaic that depicts the experience of living within the whirlwind.... What emerges from this anonymous stew is an ongoing record of the Republican failure to speak up in public, while the president wreaks havoc both here and abroad. It is a story about a rotting GOP, as told by the greatest cowards of the Trump era." Thanks to P. D. Pepe for the link.

Lyin' Ryan & Mendacious Mnuchin Go on Teevee to Lie about Tax "Reform." Kelsey Snell of the Washington Post: "Republican leaders on Sunday were unable to guarantee tax cuts for all middle-class workers as a part of a tax plan that GOP leaders have pledged to produce by the end of the year. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin defended the newly released GOP tax plan as a boon for the middle class amid accusations from Democrats and some outside groups that it is primarily a chance to cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy. The pair argued that such accusations are based on faulty information and lack of details. 'The entire purpose of this is to lower middle-class taxes,' Ryan said in an interview on CBS's 'Face the Nation.' 'So yes, people are going to get tax cuts. How big are those tax cuts? That depends on the individual.'"

** Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times: "Advocates for children's health started worrying months ago that congressional incompetence would jeopardize the nation's one indisputable healthcare success -- the Children's Health Insurance Program, which has reduced the uninsured rate among kids to 5% from 14% over the two decades of its existence. Their fears turned out to be true. Funding for CHIP runs out on Saturday, and no vote on reestablishing the program's $15-billion appropriation is expected for at least a week, probably longer.... The consequences will be dire in many states, which will have to curtail or even shut down their children's health programs until funding is restored. Hanging in the balance is care for 9 million children an pregnant women in low-income households. What happened? The simple answer is that congressional Republicans' last harebrained attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act got in the way." Thanks, Graham, Cassidy, et. al! Mrs. McC: Republican incompetence is often a good thing; in this case, it's life-threatening.

Peter Baker & Robert Pear of the New York Times discuss the possible Trump nominees to replace Tom Jet-Setter Price as head of Health & Human Services. Also, see commentary in yesterday's thread on making Mitt Rmoney HHS secretary. Funny -- and realistic. (Also linked yesterday.)

Zuckerberg's Yom Kippur Atonement. Kristine Phillips of the Washington Post: "On Saturday night, the end of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jewish people, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg went on his social-media platform and apologized. 'For those I hurt this year, I ask forgiveness and I will try to be better,' he wrote in a brief post. 'For the ways my work was used to divide people rather than bring us together, I ask for forgiveness and I will work to do better.' He did not say anything specific in his most recent post, but Zuckerberg's mea culpa came in the face of mounting evidence that Russians had used the social-media platform he created more than a decade ago to spread propaganda and influence voter sentiment -- all to tip the U.S. presidential election in Donald Trump's favor."

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court, which was short-handed and slumbering for more than a year after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, is returning to the bench on Monday with a far-reaching docket that renews its central role in American life. The new term is studded with major cases likely to provoke sharp conflicts. One of them, on political gerrymandering, has the potential to reshape American politics. Another may settle the question of whether businesses can turn away patrons like gay couples in the name of religious freedom.... 'There's only one prediction that's entirely safe about the upcoming term,' Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said last month at Georgetown's law school. 'It will be momentous.'" Mrs. McC: Naturally, this sickens me, because we do have an idea how the "moment" will go.

Benghazi, Reality Edition. Charlie Savage & Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "... beginning on Monday in a federal courthouse in Washington, prosecutors will put forward an account [of the Benghazi attack on Americans in September 2012] that focuses ... squarely on the attacks themselves and a man they say bears direct responsibility: Ahmed Abu Khattala.... The trial will serve as the latest test of the civilian court system's ability to handle foreign terrorism suspects captured by Special Operations commandos under battlefield conditions, rather than subjecting them to military detention and prosecution.... Prosecutors are expected to portray Mr. Khatalla as a ringleader of a local militia of Islamic extremists who was angry about the American presence in Benghazi and played a leading role in directing the attacks."

Way Beyond the Beltway

Ralph Minter & Ellen Barry of the New York Times: "Catalonia's defiant attempt to stage an independence referendum descended into chaos on Sunday, with hundreds injured in clashes with police in one of the gravest tests of Spain's democracy since the end of the Franco dictatorship in the 1970s. National police officers in riot gear, sent by the central government in Madrid from other parts of Spain, used rubber bullets and truncheons in some places as they fanned out across Catalonia, the restive northeastern region, to shut down polling stations and seize ballot boxes.... Voting went ahead in many towns and cities, with men and women ... singing and chanting as they lined up for hours to cast ballots. Just after midnight, the Catalan government said that the referendum had been approved by 90 percent of some 2.6 million voters. Those figures could not be independently confirmed. The Spanish government declared that the referendum had been disrupted. More than 750 people were injured in the crackdown, Catalan officials said, while dozens of Spanish police officers were hurt, according to Spain's interior ministry." ...

... William Booth of the Washington Post: "Just minutes after the first boisterous voters entered the polling station at an elementary school here on Sunday, dozens of National Police officers in riot gear smashed through the front window and began searching for the ballot boxes. But the activists who organized this controversial vote on independence for the Catalan region were two steps ahead. As the police forced their way through shouting crowds into the polling station, the organizers spirited away the ballots and hid them in the classrooms amid coloring books and crayons. An hour later, after police had driven away in their big black vans, under a hail of insults, the ballot boxes reemerged and the voting recommenced. The pattern was repeated again and again across hundreds of polling stations Sunday in the Catalan region of northeast Spain, where a secessionist movement is pushing ahead with a disputed referendum on independence that the central government in Madrid, backed by the courts, has called illegitimate and illegal." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... The Guardian is running live updates. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Looks a little like a preview of U.S. election day in "urban areas" November 3, 2020.

Jonny Wakefield & Paige Parsons of the Edmonton (Alberta, Canada) Journal: "Edmonton police say a suspect accused of going on a rampage with two vehicles Saturday night has been arrested to face several charges, including terror charges, attempted murder and dangerous driving. Police chief Rod Knecht said at a Sunday afternoon news conference that the man, who came to the attention of law enforcement in 2015 for 'espousing extremist ideology' is believed to have acted alone. Sources confirmed the identity of the man as Abdulahi Hasan Sharif. RCMP K-Division[s assistant commissioner Marlin Degrand said the man is a Somali national. The public safety minister's office has said he is a refugee. Knecht said four injured pedestrians suffered injuries ranging from broken limbs to brain bleeds. Two remain in hospital, the most serious with a fractured skull...."

News Lede

Washington Post: "Three Americans -- Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young -- have won the 2017 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their work on molecular mechanisms that control circadian systems. Hall was born in New York, Rosbash in Kansas City, and they both worked at Brandeis University. Michael Young was born in Miami and worked at Rockefeller University.... In announcing the winner in Stockholm on Monday, the prize committee said the scientists elucidated how a life-form's 'inner clock' can fluctuate to optimize our behavior and physiology. 'Their discoveries explain how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronized with the Earth's revolutions.' Working with fruit flies, the scientists isolated a gene that is responsible for a protein that accumulates in the night but is degraded in the day. Misalignments in this clock may play a role in medical conditions and disorders, as well as the temporary disorientation of jet lag that travelers experience when crisscrossing time zones."

The Commentariat -- October 1, 2017

Afternoon Update:

Trumpty-Dumpty Dumps on Diplomacy. Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Trump seemed to undercut his own secretary of state on Sunday as he belittled the prospect of a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear-edged crisis with North Korea even as the administration was seeking to open lines of communication. In the latest Twitter messages from his New Jersey golf club, where he was spending the weekend, Mr. Trump diminished Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson's outreach to Pyongyang and its autocratic leader, Kim Jong-un. On a visit to China, Mr. Tillerson acknowledged on Saturday that he was trying to open talks. 'I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,' Mr. Trump wrote, using the derogatory nickname he has assigned to Mr. Kim. 'Save your energy Rex,' he added, 'we'll do what has to be done!'" Thanks to MAG for the lead. Mrs. McC: See my comment on Tillerson's efforts below & MAG's in today Comments thread.

We've spent the entire weekend, as we have last weekend, working on Puerto Rico, making sure we're out saving lives, sustaining lives. And making sure everyone in Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, is taken care of. The United States has gone through extraordinary efforts to delivery goods to the islands. -- Gary Cohn, White House economic advisor, on Fox "News" Sunday

Great! Apparently composing nasty tweets running down media coverage & local Puerto Rican efforts is "work." -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie ...

... David Jackson of USA Today: "President Trump defended his administration's response to the humanitarian disaster in Puerto Rico, dismissing any critics of his relief efforts as 'fake news' and 'politically motivated ingrates.' 'We have done a great job with the almost impossible situation in Puerto Rico,' Trump said. 'Outside of the Fake News or politically motivated ingrates ... people are now starting to recognize the amazing work that has been done by FEMA and our great Military.'... In a third tweet on Sunday morning, Trump had kind words for Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello, thanking him and 'all of those who are working so closely with our First Responders. Fantastic job!'" ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: John Kelly needs to hire a cold-hearted no-texting nanny to babysit Terribly Trumpy on the weekends. ...

... Mike Allen of Axios: "In contrast to dire reports from the island, White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert sent West Wing colleagues an unusually upbeat update -- leaked to Axios -- that points to a rapid recovery no one on the ground is witnessing. Bossert, back from a trip to Puerto Rico earlier in the week, says it's 'still an urgent situation,' but that the administration has "a strong ground game in place on the island with military leadership[.]... The White House's sunny plan comes as TV reports 'increasingly echo those after Katrina a dozen years ago in sounding the alarm for a desperate population frustrated by the pace of relief efforts,' AP's David Bauder points out[.]" ...

The President is personally retweeting himself about PR instead of personally overseeing PR relief. He struggles with basics of being POTUS.... Part of being President is driving federal agencies to work together and get the job done. Another part is moral leadership. - Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), in tweets

... Matt Yglesias of Vox: "For the first nine months of his administration, observers have had occasion to wonder ... how exactly Donald Trump would manage to handle a real crisis imposed by external events rather than his own impulsiveness. The answer is now apparent in the blackened streets of San Juan and the villages of interior Puerto Rico that more than a week after Hurricane Maria struck remain without access to food or clean water. To an extent, the United States of America held up surprisingly well from Inauguration Day until September 20th or so. The ongoing degradation of American civic institutions, at a minimum, did not have an immediate negative impact on the typical person's life. But the world is beginning to draw a straight line from the devastation in Puerto Rico straight to the White House. Trump's instinct so far is to turn the island's devastation into another front in culture war politics, a strategy that could help his own political career survive."

Peter Baker & Robert Pear of the New York Times discuss the possible Trump nominees to replace Tom Jet-Setter Price as head of Health & Human Services. Also, see commentary in today's thread on making Mitt Rmoney HHS secretary. Funny -- and realistic.

William Booth of the Washington Post: "Just minutes after the first boisterous voters entered the polling station at an elementary school here on Sunday, dozens of National Police officers in riot gear smashed through the front window and began searching for the ballot boxes.... As the police forced their way through shouting crowds into the polling station, the organizers spirited away the ballots and hid them in the classrooms amid coloring books and crayons. An hour later, after police had driven away in their big black vans, under a hail of insults, the ballot boxes reemerged and the voting recommenced. The pattern was repeated again and again across hundreds of polling stations Sunday in the Catalan region of northeast Spain, where a secessionist movement is pushing ahead with a disputed referendum on independence that the central government in Madrid, backed by the courts, has called illegitimate and illegal." ...

     ... The Guardian is running live updates.

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Looks a little like a preview of U.S. election day in "urban areas" November 3, 2020.

*****

Matthew Nussbaum & Marc Caputo of Politico: "... Donald Trump attacked the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Saturday, writing on Twitter that she and other leaders on the storm-ravaged territory 'want everything to be done for them.' Trump's early morning broadsides came after San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz slammed the administration's response repeatedly on Friday amid growing media coverage of the devastation.... Her plea and others like it have led critics to liken Trump's response to that of George W. Bush in New Orleans after Katrina struck that city a decade ago. In his latest fight with an opponent few other politicians would engage -- waged from his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club -- Trump dismissed Cruz as a partisan. 'The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump,' Trump wrote on Twitter. 'Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help.' Trump added that the Puerto Ricans 'want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort. 10,000 Federal workers now on Island doing a fantastic job.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: See commentary in yesterday's thread. I'm so pissed off, I'm in tears. Here's the presidunce, sitting around on his fat ass sending Twitterbombs as he gets ready to go golfing at his fucking club. Meanwhile, the mayor of San Juan tries frantically to save lives. And he's dissing her? Maybe she's supposed to follow Trump's lead & get out her clubs? Oh, wait, the golf courses in Puerto Rico are disaster zones. And as she herself said, "General Buchanan, a three star general has said as one of the first comments he's made about the Puerto Rico situation that he doesn't have enough troops and equipment of what he needs to get the situation under control." ...

... Lee Moran of the Huffington Post: "The mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Saturday defended her request for federal aid in the wake of Hurricane Maria, hours after ... Donald Trump lashed out at her for asking for assistance and accused her of unnecessarily criticizing him. During an appearance on MSNBC, Carmen Yulin Cruz reiterated that Puerto Rico needed more help and said her previous critiques of the administration's response had not been intended as a personal slight. 'Actually, I was asking for help,' she said. 'I wasn't saying anything nasty about the president.'" ...

... ** Arelis R. Hernández & others of the Washington Post profile San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz. after one of the worst "leaders" of the world criticized her for "poor leadership ability." ...

... Kristine Phillips of the Washington Post: "Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-Ill.), one of four members of Congress born in Puerto Rico, said the Trump administration has done a 'disgraceful job' of helping the 3.4 million Americans on the island devastated by Hurricane Maria. 'I think it isn't a good job; it's a disgraceful job. The United States of America is the most powerful, wealthiest country in the world, and this is not a response that's demonstrative of our power and our wealth,' Gutiérrez said, his voice breaking during an interview Friday night with CNN's Jim Scuitto.... Local officials on the island, including San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, decried the failure to deliver basic necessities to communities across Puerto Rico and said the federal response had 'collapsed.' In response, Trumpfaulted the island's 'broken infrastructure & massive debt,' blamed the news media, and personally attacked Cruz. The president also praised his administration's relief efforts, saying in a tweet Saturday that the thousands of federal workers on the island are doing a 'fantastic job.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I don't doubt that the vast majority of federal workers in Puerto Rico are doing "a fantastic job." The problem seems to come from the top, where the leaders charged with coordinating efforts are sitting in an air-conditioned room & accomplishing too little. I do think the Katrina response was worse. In fact, the other day, MSNBC introduced an "expert" on disaster relief to discuss the situation in Puerto Rico. The "expert" turned out to be Michael Brown, a/k/a Helluva Job Brownie. When the host asked Brownie what the federal government could have done to prepare for the disaster before Maria hit Puerto Rico & the Virgin Islands, Brownie opined, "Well, there's not much they could have done." I turned off the teevee. ...

... Justin Baragona of Mediaite: "During an appearance on CNN this morning, the general who was put in charge of the Hurricane Katrina response was asked to give his reaction to Trump's tweets.... After noting that the citizens of Puerto Rico were indeed doing everything they could to help themselves, Lt. Gen. Russel Honore (Ret.) was then pressed by host Christi Paul to respond to Trump taking aim at the mayor. 'I have no reaction,' Honore said from the streets of San Juan. 'The mayor is living on a cot. I hope the president has a good day at golf.'" ...

... James Fallows of The Atlantic: "[H]is Twitter outburst [about San Juan's mayor] ... is a significant step downward for him, and perhaps the first thing he has done in office that, in its coarseness, has actually surprised me.... Temperamentally, intellectually, and in terms of civic and moral imagination, he is not fit for the duties he is now supposed to bear.... During the campaign, I argued that the greatest responsibility for Trump's rise lay not with the man himself -- he is who he is, he can't help it -- but with those Republicans who know what he is, and continue to look the other way. Their responsibility for the carnage of this era increases by the day, and has grown by quite a lot this weekend." --safari ...

... Joy-Ann Reid in the Daily Beast: "Trump lacks impulse control on a good day, but can hardly contain himself when dressed down by a woman.... Fresh off his war with black professional athletes, in which he tried to impugn their patriotism and wrapped his repugnant self in the flag (five Vietnam deferments not withstanding) he tried to twist the San Juan mayor's urgent pleas into an attack on the military and first responders. He then threw in a typically Trumpian attack on the media, implying that CNN and NBC too are attacking first responders and soldiers by criticizing Donald Trump.... Not surprisingly, Trump's attacks on Yulin Cruz echoed those of his most vile supporters from the white nationalist fever swamps, including Pizzagate's Mike Cernovich, who the night before took to Twitter to denounce Yulín Cruz as 'garbage' and a 'murderer.' Trump's attacks, dredging up trite racial stereotypes about supposed government dependency, echoed theirs, because at the end of the day, Donald Trump is them. Clearly, he so readily channels their rage and bigotry because he identifies with it." ...

... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "In three tweets, Trump has moved a simmering, somewhat-negative story for his administration to the front burner. He decided to attack a sympathetic character and turn this into a partisan political debate. Cruz is pleading for help by saying, 'We are dying.' Trump essentially told her to stop complaining. He's also arguing that somebody who is in charge of saving lives is somehow more interested in politics. That's a stunning charge. And it all shows just how much Trump still doesn't quite grasp what a crisis Puerto Rico is -- both for its people and for him.... This humanitarian crisis for Puerto Rico may not wind up being a political crisis for Trump, but Trump should be doing everything in his power to prevent that. Instead, he's making excuses and paying more attention to how unfairly he's being treated." ...

... Democracy Now! explains the vulture capitalism descending on Puerto Rico, and how American companies have been price-gouging the island for private profits. --safari ...

Fake News Fails Dear Leader Again. Max Greenwood of the Hill: "President Trump on Saturday accused the so-called 'fake news' media of failing to recognize that Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), who was vanquished in a runoff election against GOP candidate Roy Moore this week, gained in the polls earlier this year after Trump endorsed him. 'In analyzing the Alabama Primary race, FAKE NEWS always fails to mention that the candidate I endorsed went up MANY points after endorsement!' Trump tweeted.... Despite Trump's claim, a poll released Monday -- a day before the runoff election -- showed that the president's endorsement had little effect on the race between Strange and Moore."

Rationalizing Trump. Nate Silver: "Whenever President Trump lashes out against someone or something in a way that defies traditional expectations for presidential behavior -- for instance, his decision to criticize the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Saturday morning after her town was just devastated by Hurricane Maria -- it yields a debate about what was behind it. After Trump's series of attacks on the NFL and its players earlier this month, for example, there were two major theories about what motivated his conduct.... But the theories are in conflict because they'e about the intent and motivation for Trump's behavior and not necessarily its effects.... Many ... times, journalists come up with overly convoluted explanations for Trump's behavior ('this seemingly self-destructive emotional outburst is actually a clever political strategy!') when simpler ones will suffice ('this is a self-destructive emotional outburst.'). In doing so, they violate both Ockham's razor and Hanlon's razor -- the latter of which can be stated as 'never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.' One can understand why journalists who rely on having close access to Trump avoid explanations that portray Trump as being irrational, incompetent or bigoted. But sometimes they're the only explanations that make sense."

David Sanger of the New York Times: "The Trump administration acknowledged on Saturday for the first time that it was in direct communication with the government of North Korea over its missile and nuclear tests, seeking a possible way forward beyond the escalating threats of a military confrontation from both sides.... 'We can talk to them,' Mr. Tillerson said at the end of a long day of engaging China's leadership. 'We do talk to them.' When asked whether those channels ran through China, he shook his head. 'Directly,' he said. 'We have our own channels.'... So far, the North Koreans have shown no interest in a serious negotiation." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I know many of you don't like Rex, & he certainly would not be my choice for Secretary of State, but this is not the first time I've thought Rexxon was one guy standing between some stupid or catastrophic war & (relative) peace. Early on, he said he didn't want the job, but his wife insisted he had a duty to take it. At the time, I kinda thought she meant, "You've got to save us from Trump!" Maybe I was right. ...

... Karen DeYoung, et al., of the Washington Post: "Early in his administration, President Trump signed a directive outlining a strategy of pressure against North Korea that involved actions across a broad spectrum of government agencies and led to the use of military cyber-capabilities, according to U.S. officials. As part of the campaign, U.S. Cyber Command targeted hackers in North Korea's military spy agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau, by barraging their computer servers with traffic that choked off Internet access. Trump's directive, a senior administration official said, also included instructions to diplomats and officials to bring up North Korea in virtually every conversation with foreign interlocutors and urge them to sever all ties with Pyongyang. Those conversations have had significant success, particularly in recent weeks as North Korea has tested another nuclear weapon and ballistic missiles, officials said."

Swamp Creatures. Andy Kroll of Mother Jones: "The Trump administration on Friday rolled back key regulations on one of the Wall Street firms responsible for the 2008 economic collapse -- a move that could result in a huge windfall for a billionaire former White House adviser. In a 6-to-3 vote, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), which is chaired by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, declared that insurance giant American International Group (AIG) should no longer be considered a 'too-big-to-fail' institution that could trigger a wider economic catastrophe if it went under...That's a big win for Carl Icahn, the irascible billionaire, who is reportedly AIG's fourth largest shareholder and one of America's wealthiest investors.... Icahn lobbied Trump to choose Mnuchin to run the Treasury Department, which Trump ultimately did. Now it is Mnuchin who is returning the favor for Icahn." --safari

John Bowden of the Hill: "The former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) under President Obama blamed President Trump on Friday for rising health-care premiums around the country. Andy Slavitt, who was acting CMS administrator from 2015 to 2017, accused Trump on Twitter of 'purposely raising' health-care premiums as part of his plan to let ObamaCare 'implode.'... Slavitt was reacting to news reports that Oklahoma's health commissioner was blaming the Trump administration for missing a key deadline to approve a waiver for the state, which Oklahoma officials say will mean& higher premiums for thousands of residents.... 'The lack of timely waiver approval will prevent thousands of Oklahomans from realizing the benefits of significantly lower insurance premiums in 2018..., Oklahoma's health commissioner Terry Cline wrote to administration officials earlier Friday...., saying approving the waiver would have helped more than 130,000 Oklahomans and reduced premiums by 30 percent." ...

... Noor Al-Sibai of RawStory: "Less than a day before ... Tom Price resigned from his cabinet position amid a week of controversy about his expensive travel habits, his department quietly moved to delay an Obamacare rule that would punish drug companies for knowingly price-gouging.... [T]he rule was supposed to go into effect on Sunday, but on Thursday, the HHS department logged a delay into the federal register -- the fourth time they've done so this year." --safari ...

... Faint Praise. Mark Stern of Slate: "The inglorious resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price on Friday leaves vacant an extremely powerful position in ... Donald Trump's cabinet. The early frontrunner for the job is Seema Verma, a former healthcare consultant who currently heads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Despite this administration's crusade against Medicaid, Verma actually worked to expand Medicaid in Indiana while she worked as former governor Mike Pence's protégé in that state. Verma is no friend of the Affordable Care Act, and she has long wished to impose extra burdens on Americans who receive subsidized health care. She is, however, almost certainly the most qualified and least dogmatic official who could possibly lead HHS under the Trump administration. In fact, Verma replacing Price would be a significant improvement.... Make no mistake -- Verma wants Congress to kill the ACA. But until it does, she does not seem opposed to letting the law run smoothly." ...

... Washington Post Editors: "Bipartisan negotiators in the Senate are talking once again about a compromise that would stabilize health insurance markets while giving states some additional flexibility. They could have a bill ready as soon as this week. But it will go nowhere if Republican leaders refuse to consider it. Mr. Price would have been an obstacle. Mr. Trump suddenly has a new opportunity for a win on health care. He should take full advantage."

Joshua Eaton & Alejandro Alvarez of ThinkProgress: "Thousands of people rallied for racial justice in the nation's capital on Saturday as part of the March for Racial Justice and the March for Black Women. The two rallies, which were organized separately but in close coordination, took place in different nearby parks before meeting up to march past the Department of Justice's headquarters and onto the National Mall, where marchers heard from feminist activist Gloria Steinem, Muslim rights activist Linda Sarsour, and Philando Castile's mother Valerie Castile."

Gorsuch's Bad Calls. Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker: "Earlier this week, [Supreme Court Justice Neil] Gorsuch gave a speech before the Fund for American Studies, a conservative educational and advocacy group.... What made Gorsuch's appearance especially notable was that it took place at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, which is the focus of several pending cases that may well wind up before the Supreme Court. These lawsuits allege that the Trump family's ownership of the hotel.... Gorsuch's Trump Hotel speech followed one he gave at the University of Louisville, where he was introduced by Mitch McConnell ... who was, more than anyone, responsible for blocking Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the seat that Gorsuch now occupies.... Gorsuch's tiptoeing up to the line of advocacy for and gratitude to conservatives might earn some advice from the Chief Justice to mind the unwritten rules. Gorsuch's speeches might appear less distasteful to his colleagues if he had made an otherwise more graceful début on the Court. As Linda Greenhouse observed in the Times the end of Gorsuch's first term, he managed to violate the Court's traditions as soon as he arrived."

Beyond the Beltway

Ken Ritter of the AP: "... O.J. Simpson became a free man Sunday after serving nine years for a botched hotel room heist in Las Vegas that brought the conviction and prison time he avoided in the killings of his ex-wife and her friend after his 1995 acquittal in the 'trial of the century' in Los Angeles."

News Lede

New York Times: "S.I. Newhouse Jr., who as the owner of The New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Architectural Digest and other magazines wielded vast influence over American culture, fashion and social taste, died on Sunday at his home in New York. He was 89."