Daily Kos

Donald Trump was not off-base to smile and nod along with a question describing President Obama as a Muslim and the man asking the question may not have been a bigot, if you ask Donald Trump. A CBS interviewer asked Trump about the now-notorious exchange with a New Hampshire supporter who, along the way to asking what Trump would do about Muslims and their alleged training camps, characterized Obama as not only Muslim but "not even an American," Trump never batting an eye.

Unsurprisingly, Trump disagreed with every possible criticism of his positive response to the question, insisting that "I don't have to defend President Obama" (or, apparently, reality) and pointing out that "there were people in that audience, as you probably noticed, that did agree with him." Then interviewer Scott Pelley got to the bigot question:

"You don't know that. I mean, he asked a question. You don't know that he was a bigot," Trump said.

Pelley reminded Trump that the man said that Muslims are "a problem in this country."

"All right. I love the Muslims. I have many, many friends -- people living in this building, Muslims. They're phenomenal people. But like everything else you have people where there are problems," Trump said in response.

"Now we could say there are no problems with the Muslims. There's no problems. There's no terrorism," Trump continued. "They didn't knock down the World Trade Center. To the best of my knowledge the people that knocked down the World Trade Center -- you know where they're -- they didn't fly back to Sweden."

Well ... they didn't actually fly back anywhere after, you know, crashing planes into buildings.

Oh, it's hopeless. We can talk till the cows come home about white-dude domestic terrorism a la Timothy McVeigh or Eric Rudolph or Dylann Roof and you'll never get a Donald Trump figure saying "They're phenomenal people. But like everything else you have people where there are problems." Because bigotry. Bigotry to defend bigotry while denying the original bigotry was in fact bigotry. And backing the whole thing up by saying that other people in the audience—an audience composed of people on the same general ideological wavelength—agreed. Welcome to Donald Trump's America, folks.

Martin Shkreli really thought he could talk his way out of this one. The former hedge funder and current CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals seemed to think that if he just explained that he'd raised the price on a drug by 4,000 percent or 5,500 percent, depending who you asked, because he needed to profit, see, and it was only just and right that he should profit as handsomely as he wanted to, people would stop pointing out that he was price gouging out of sheer greed and go quietly away. That's not how it worked out, and now Shkreli is saying he'll lower the price of Daraprim, a 62-year-old drug used to treat AIDS patients and others with compromised immune systems, from the $750 a pill he'd hiked it to.

"We've agreed to lower the price of Daraprim to a point that is more affordable and is able to allow the company to make a profit, but a very small profit," Shkreli told ABC.

But how much are they lowering the price? Shkreli and Turing aren't saying just yet, which means that eventually we're going to find out what Martin Shkreli thinks "more affordable" and "very small profit" mean. When that announcement comes, remember that the drug's $13.50 price prior to Turing acquiring the rights to it was already a substantial price hike over where it had been not all that long ago.

What made Shkreli fold? He didn't seem to mind the public hate at first, but presumably everyone has a breaking point on being the subject of viral loathing. And stuff like this may have influenced his thinking, too:

[Rep. Elijah] Cummings, the Ranking Member of the House Committee On Oversight And Government Reform, has requested a hearing next week to question Martin Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager known as the “Pharma bro.”

Having a member of Congress as noteworthy as Elijah Cummings (D-MD) coming for you has to be an unsettling feeling if you're a price-gouging scumbag.

Pope Francis began his first full day in Washington, D.C., with a welcoming ceremony at the White House, where an audience of 15,000 crowded the South Lawn. Francis does not address Congress until Thursday, but already he is giving Republicans reason to grind their teeth, introducing himself as "the son of an immigrant family," and noting that America "was largely built by such families." But he focused more on climate issues:

Mr. President, I find it encouraging that you are proposing an initiative for reducing air pollution. Accepting the urgency, it seems clear to me also that climate change is a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation. When it comes to the care of our “common home”, we are living at a critical moment of history. We still have time to make the changes needed to bring about “a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change” (Laudato Si’, 13). Such change demands on our part a serious and responsible recognition not only of the kind of world we may be leaving to our children, but also to the millions of people living under a system which has overlooked them. Our common home has been part of this group of the excluded which cries out to heaven and which today powerfully strikes our homes, our cities and our societies. To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King, we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honor it.

Even his mention of religious liberty cannot assuage that blow to all the congressional Republicans who have been running around dismissing this pope's moral statements on climate and inequality as mere politics about which he's not really entitled to speak, while practically begging him to talk politics in the form of abortion and marriage. If "proud Catholic" Rep. Paul Gosar didn't extend his in-person boycott of the pope to a total news blackout, someone should probably go check to be sure he's okay.

Following the White House ceremony, a parade around the Ellipse and parts of the National Mall is planned for 11:00 ET.

7:31 AM PT: Here's video of Francis speaking on climate.

Reposted from Comics by Barbara Morrill

A strategy, of sorts, is emerging from Senate Republicans about how to not shut down government. It begins, as all things Republican do these days, with voting to defund Planned Parenthood. But what happens after that isn't so clear.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has fast-tracked a defunding bill, the same bill that was blocked by Senate Democrats back before the August recess.

The Republican leader finished the fast-track process, which was started on Monday night, that will allow the House-passed bill to skip the committee process and go directly to the Senate floor, where it could be brought up for a vote.

The legislation, which passed the House last week by a 241-187 vote, would place a one-year freeze on federal funding for the organization, giving lawmakers more time to investigate claims of wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood made in a string of controversial videos.

Senate Republicans also finished the fast-track process on legislation that would tighten restrictions on abortion doctors who violate infant protections.

Yes, it's abortion week in the Senate, but that's supposed to end up in votes that will prove that there aren't the votes to defund Planned Parenthood, and that the Senate will have to pass a clean continuing resolution bill to keep the government open on October 1. Following the failed vote on a 20-week abortion ban, McConnell has teed up that defunding vote for Thursday, the day the Pope speaks to Congress. When that vote fails, he will move a "clean" continuing resolution, one that maintains Planned Parenthood funding. What else it contains isn't clear at the moment—notably how long it will last and when the next shutdown drama could happen. Also not clear right now is what Sens. Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or Rand Paul might do to block that vote.

Speaking of shutdown drama, what none of this resolves is what happens in the House, which isn't even scheduled to do any work on anything this week until Thursday. That tells you something about Speaker John Boehner's priorities. The hardliners in the House already know that there aren't the votes to defund Planned Parenthood there, and they don't seem to give a damn. They reject that reality as a reason for not moving ahead with a government shutdown and seemingly won't be deterred. In other words, we're a day closer to the government shutting down and nowhere nearer a solution for avoiding it.

Sign if you agree: Democrats must stand strong. No cuts to Planned Parenthood. No government shutdowns.

Reposted from Daily Kos Elections by Jeff Singer Leading Off:

• IL-10: Opponents of President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran had hoped to make Democratic supporters of the agreement pay a price. But ironically, the only Democrat who's suffered a concrete loss as a result of his views on the deal is former Rep. Brad Schneider, who came out against it. Ex-Rep. Abner Mikva, a revered liberal figure who had been the last Democrat to represent this suburban Chicago seat, pointedly switched his endorsement from Schneider to Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering, and now former Sen. Adlai Stevenson III has followed suit.

Not only does Stevenson hail from one of Illinois' most famous political families—his father, Adlai Stevenson II, served as governor and was the Democrats' presidential nominee twice—but he also has deep ties to the 10th District. The Stevenson family home, which was designated a national historical landmark last year, is in the district, as is the Adlai Stevenson Center on Democracy (named after Adlai II), which Stevenson chairs.

Both Schneider and Rotering are hoping to take on GOP Rep. Bob Dold!, who defeated Schneider in a rematch last year.

Another all-new, but pre-recorded show for today. There was just too much left to say about the bizarre drug price-raising CEO story to let it drop at the end of yesterday's show, so we plow forward with that one, which really becomes completely nuts.

Sticking with a theme of business follies—and hey, why not run the government like this, right?—we start to examine the business record of Carly Fiorina, both at HP and in her previous job at Lucent, which also pretty much collapsed. Hmm! And of course, we have to ask WTF, VW? Finally, in our Entrepreneurial Spirit corner: who says you have to "own" or "have rights in" the property you put on AirBnB? Don't be a dinosaur, man!

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David Waldman explores the gray areas between truth and complexity, meaning and interpretation, English and Aramaic, lumpers and splitters, philanthropists and psychopaths, The Boy Scouts and getting to High Holiday services. Greg Dworkin is as shocked as you are that Scott Walker is out of the race - if you too expected that Scott Walker’s many shortcomings would quickly do him in. Rubio’s numbers are up, mostly because the rest are so awful. Hillary Clinton still doing pretty good. With Perry and Walker out, there are less insiders left in. Not that it makes it any easier for the outsiders. Fiorina climbs polls, but was still a terrible CEO. Jack Shafer says Trump isn't a media creation, then explains how he is. And - Ben Carson is still an incredible bigot but is OK with 80% base support. Despite 4 Pinnochios, Taquiyya falsehoods gain traction. Denying one’s religion to persecutors has been seen as a good strategy in the past. This leads David into continuing a discussion on how interpreting scripture, whether from the Torah, Bible, or Quran depends on the perspective, and honesty, of the interpreter, including a contrasting of the tenets of Taquiyya and Kol Nidre. David also attempts to show mercy to this jerk, who is raising a pill’s price by 5,500%. He isn't alone.

Thanks again to Scott Anderson for the show summary!

Need more info on how to listen? Find it below the fold.

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…

Alphabet Soup: New Polls Edition

A says the latest poll shows Bernie's on fire!
B says that's just one state poll. Hillary leads the nationals!
C says B is full of crap because this constitutes a trend!
D says nonsense. Check the bogus sampling.
E says the sampling is spot-on and for D to stop misleading people with half-baked nonsense and go read his post from June.

F says E is wrong, that D totally ignored that post, and the real problem isn't sampling it's weighting.
G says anyone who agrees with B, E and F now, but agreed with A and C in 2008 is guilty of sheer hypocrisy LOL LOL LOL.
H says G is right and this is what gives our side a bad name….but criticizing B is unfair and if you'd read her blog post from March 12, 2009 you'd know that!!!
I says calm down. Let's sort through this polling data rationally.
J says this kind of thing never happens in Canada.

K and L say A, C and E are guilty of cherrypicking.
M says Hitler cherrypicked, too, and gets hide-rated into oblivion.
N and O say that whoever wins the nomination will be a lot better than any Republican candidate.
P says go back and read B, E and G again because you missed several bullet points that prove you're delusional.
Q says no, don’t read B, E and G because A just put up a post about a NEW BOMBSHELL POLL that will set your skull on fire where your hair used to be before it got burned off by A's first bombshell.

R says now you can earn up $80k a year working from home in your spare time, and gets banned for being a spambot
S says the poll Q cited was a crappy online poll that allows people to vote multiple times.
T points to anomalies in his multivariate analysis of the dependant variables, ordinal variables, ratio variables, discreet variables, continuous variables, independent variables and interval variables, and posts a table so large it shuts down the blog for six hours.

U and V stumble into the argument late and have no clue what's going on.
W explains to U and V what's going on, causing U to fall asleep and V's hair to catch fire.
X says it's a sprint, not a marathon.
Y says it's a marathon, not a sprint.
Z posts a gif of Bernie dancing a jig while Hillary ladles scrambled eggs on top of Donald Trump's head. Everyone agrees that Z wins the internet.

Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Chris Cillizza:

Sorry, Ben Carson, you weren’t misquoted about a Muslim president. That’s ridiculous.

Amid a giant uproar over his comments on "Meet the Press" that he would be uncomfortable with a Muslim being elected president, Ben Carson is trying to recast what he said by using that most-convenient of scapegoats: the media.

Carson insisted Tuesday that he was talking about radical forms of Islam, not the religion more broadly. “It’s on the record on NBC. On 'Meet the Press.' Did anyone pick up on that? Of course not, because that wasn’t the juicy story,” he said at an event in Ohio.

In the words of Warner Wolf, let's go to the videotape! (Or, more accurately, the transcript.)

Yes, we get that the right loves it. All the sweeter to watch him go down because of it.

Jill Lawrence:

Amateur Hour

We get it, Republicans. You're mad as hell. You're sick of the "professional political class." You've put two CEOs and a neurosurgeon at the top of national and New Hampshire polls. Because why not?

Listen to Joel Arends, chairman of Veterans for a Strong America, explain why his group has endorsed Donald Trump. He wants a president with "courage," and he doesn't think experienced politicians have any. "It's time to consider somebody else," Arends said at a Trump rally in Los Angeles. "It's time to say to ourselves, do we really need a former governor?" "No," the crowd roared. "Do we need a current senator?" "No!" "Do we need a reformer businessman?" "Yes!"

One caution: Politics is not as easy as it looks. Two of the professional outsiders in the GOP nomination race don't even seem aware of the old saw that it's a game of addition, not subtraction. Trump started out alienating Hispanics and other immigrants, then moved on to women. Now he and fellow GOP hopeful Ben Carson are competing to see who can be most offensive to voters who are Muslim. That's a lot of groups and people! Who will be next?

More politics and policy below the fold.

Here's the Daily Kos community in action: today Senior Campaign Director Director Rachel Colyer represented Daily Kos in presenting 1,236,596 petition signatures to Sens. Harry Reid and Elizabeth Warren, urging Congress not to cut any federal funding to Planned Parenthood.

"The cold, hard fact is that a vote to defund Planned Parenthood is a vote to limit women's access to cancer screenings, contraceptives, and all the other important services Planned Parenthood provides." Senator Reid said at the event. "This Planned Parenthood bill isn't going anywhere here in the Senate." Reid added.

"No cuts, no compromises," added Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was also in attendance.

The signatures were collected and delivered by CREDO, MoveOn.org Civic Action, and Democracy for America along with Daily Kos. The petitions are not only a very strong show of support to Planned Parenthood for all the work it does for the nation's women, but also a signal to congressional Democrats that the progressive base of the Democratic party expects them to stand behind Planned Parenthood as well.

Sign if you agree: Democrats must stand strong. No cuts to Planned Parenthood. No government shutdowns

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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2013—Michelle Obama—hugs and haters:

The right-wing racists in this country who still haven't recovered from the two-time installation of a black family in the White House have dredged up yet another reason to hate on the first lady. This last week it was about water. When I read about the manufactured controversy at Wonkette, I thought it was a joke. Rush-bloat got into the act, with his par-for-the-course bigot act, and so it went ... on and on ad nauseum, from one right-wing website to another. The FLOTUS has, as part of her goal to improve our children's health, simply suggested that they—gasp—drink more water.  

The comments sections to the stories on those sites were predictably slime-filled. Usually, I can just brush the crud off of my psyche, shrug my shoulders and wonder who are these people who seem to spend an extraordinary amount of time on the internet inventing new ways to degrade and demean the FLOTUS?

The problem is that they are people, who own computers, who though faceless and sometimes anonymous, live real lives in my country. And though I may be able to withstand the filth and accept that my world is still full of too many hateful folks, I began to wonder what effect of all of this has on the Obama daughters. [...]

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Tweet of the Day

Today’s RW doesn’t want "religious liberty," they want Christianity affirmed as the dominant religion. Can we all stop pretending otherwise?

— David Roberts (@drvox) September 22, 2015

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On today's Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin is as shocked as you are that Walker is out. Rubio’s numbers up, mostly because the rest are so awful. With Perry & Walker out, less insiders left in. Fiorina climbs polls, was still a terrible CEO. Jack Shafer says Trump isn't a media creation, then explains how he is. Carson keeps digging, but thrills his base. This leads David Waldman to continue the discussion on how interpreting scripture, whether Torah, Bible, or Quran, depends on the perspective, and honesty, of the interpreter, as with stories about Taquiyya & Kol Nidre. David also attempts to show mercy to this jerk, who is raising a pill’s price by 5,500%. He isn't alone.

Find us on iTunes | Find us on Stitcher | RSS | Donate to support the show!

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High Impact Posts • Top Comments

The boy who was facing felony charges for possessing nude photos of himself has agreed to a plea deal.

As a reminder, the 17-year-old was charged with both taking and possessing sexually explicit photos of a minor. But the pictures were of himself, meaning the minor in both cases was him. In this case, he was both adult and minor, perpetrator and victim. If convicted, the teen could have potentially spent years in prison.

Like 95 percent of criminal defendants, he pled to a lesser charge rather than go to trial and risk years of prison over pictures of himself. According to the Fayetteville Observer:

District Court Judge April Smith sentenced [him] to a year of probation. During that year, her order says, [he] must stay in school, take a class on making good decisions, complete 30 hours of community service, not use or possess alcohol or illegal drugs, not possess a cellphone, and must submit to warrantless searches.

If [he] complies with the punishment, District Attorney Billy West's office in September 2016 will dismiss the misdemeanor. This will prevent a conviction from going on his record.

While it's a relief that this boy is not going to prison and has the opportunity to expunge this from his record, it is still ridiculous that he is forced to deal with any criminal sanctions. And insisting on warrantless phone searches is a violation of his privacy. Including that provision as a part of his probation because he had naked pictures of himself is absurd.

Thoughts? Discuss below.

All of the terrible, no good, horrible things that were going to happen under Obamacare still don't seem to be happening. Here's another one that's not happening: primary care doctors aren't overwhelmed with new patients, forcing everyone else to wait to get appointments say the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Commonwealth Fund.

Overall, primary-care physicians did report increased demand for services under the ACA. Four in 10 (44%) said the total number of patients they see had increased since January 2014, and six in ten (59%) reported an increase in the number of patients who were newly insured or covered by Medicaid. But providers did not report that this increased demand was swamping their practices.

[M]ost primary-care physicians (59%) said their ability to provide high-quality care to all their patients had stayed about the same since the ACA went into effect, with equal shares (20%) saying it had improved and had gotten worse. Even among physicians most affected by the coverage expansions–primary-care physicians accepting Medicaid and working in states that expanded the program, and those working in community clinics–most said their ability to provide quality care had stayed about the same, with about one in five saying it had gotten better and a similar share saying it was worse. Results were similar when we asked physicians about patient satisfaction and experiences with care: Most said things had not changed under the ACA.

Most things not changing—except millions more having insurance—was the promise of Obamacare, so this on the provider side of things is really encouraging. It's not to say that further down the road the situation won't change, because there's still a shortage of primary care doctors, not enough medical students going into primary care, and an aging population that will create more demand. But all of that existed a year ago, too, when all these new Obamacare enrollees merged into the system. That suggests that there's time and opportunity to start addressing some of these issues. If we ever have a rational Congress to do it.