1.  Paul Waldman: The GOP has successfully liberated itself from shame

As much as people believe that all politicians are liars, the truth is that most of them don’t lie all that often, and except for the occasional high-profile “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” they’re much more likely to mislead voters with claims that are intended to deceive but are still technically accurate in some sense.

Most politicians, that is, other than Donald Trump.

From the moment he became a candidate, it was apparent that he put no effort into finding that tether to the truth — he’d just lie outright, and not care whether he was called on it. I suspect that for most Republicans, the undeniable fact that Trump is by far the most dishonest politician in American history is a source of some discomfort, though they manage to explain it away by telling themselves that he’s a showman, or that even when he’s lying he reveals some deeper and more significant truth.

But as we approach the election that is less than a month away, significant portions of the Republican Party have taken their own dishonesty to a new level.

I don’t mean that candidates and parties haven’t lied about their opponents before, because they have. What’s different now is a level of brazenness, of shamelessness in lying that is absolutely, well, Trumpian. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/10/11/the-gop-has-successfully-liberated-itself-from-shame/

2. Jamil Smith: Watch the Georgia Minority Vote Disappear Before Your Eyes

Brian Kemp, the Republican running against Democrat Stacey Abrams, is blocking more than 53,000 people from the polls over a technicality, continuing his history of voter suppression

Kemp is Georgia Secretary of State, the state’s top elections official. He has decreased the overall number of voters in Georgia since 2012 by more than 1 million — all while purging the rolls in a way that has predominantly affected black residents. Kemp is also the Republican nominee for governor. Democrat Stacey Abrams, the first African American woman nominated by a major party for that job anywhere in the country, is competing against a rival who is also the referee.

This past Tuesday, the deadline for Georgia residents to register to vote, the AP reported that at Kemp’s insistence, more than 53,000 voter applications have been suspended indefinitely. More than two-thirds of those applications were filed by black people. As the AP report makes clear, a lot of people in Georgia don’t even know that this has happened to them. One woman, while trying to demonstrate to her college students how Georgians can verify their registration, discovered that she had been removed from the rolls, herself. She and tens of thousands may have to submit a provisional ballot if their issues are not rectified in the next three weeks and change.

Abrams is within half a percentage point of Kemp in the RealClear Politics average as of this week. Already implicated in a failed effort to close seven of nine polling places in a sparsely populated but majority-black county, it is clear that Kemp and his allies understand how close this race will be. Those 53,000 voters could make all the difference in this race, which he surely realizes. Even if this was a blowout, his move would be suspect. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/georgia-voter-suppression-736362/

3. Paul Waldman: Trump owns the Republican Party, and there's no going back

Republicans, who complain all the time about the stifling hand of big government, use their power to weaponize bureaucracy against people they don’t like. They impose “work requirements” on programs such as Medicaid, forcing recipients to navigate a bureaucratic maze in order to maintain their benefits — and if you make a mistake on a form, you can lose your health insurance. Did someone input an “i” in your name when it’s actually an “l”? Sorry, we’re suspending your registration. Haven’t voted in a couple of elections? We’re purging you from the rolls.

The final and perhaps cruelest piece of this puzzle is that Republicans have closed off the legal avenues for voters to challenge these discriminatory policies. In 2013, the Republican majority on the Supreme Court eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, in a case involving Shelby County, Ala. In a bit of head-spinning illogic, Chief Justice G. Roberts Jr. wrote that “largely because of the Voting Rights Act,” racial discrimination in voting had been greatly reduced, and therefore it was time to gut the Voting Rights Act. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in her dissent, destroying the Voting Rights Act because it had succeeded in limiting discrimination was “like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” Because of the Shelby County v. Holder decision, legal challenges to Kemp’s actions are unlikely to succeed.

So we may wind up in Georgia with the same situation we’ve seen over and over again. Republicans gain power, then enact a series of policies and laws to make it harder for Democrats to vote. Democrats undertake a herculean effort to register and turn out voters, but when subsequent elections are extremely close, it turns out that the Republican vote suppression efforts were enough to make the difference.

If Kemp wins, Republicans around the country will celebrate it as further proof of the efficacy of their vote suppression strategy. And knowing that the Supreme Court is likely to endorse whatever new suppression tactics they come up with, they’ll move even more aggressively to restrict access to the ballot. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/10/11/republicans-may-be-about-to-steal-an-election-in-georgia/

4. Paul Krugman: Goodbye, Political Spin, Hello Blatant Lies

Black is white, up is down, and Republicans are defenders of Medicare.

And they aren’t just lying about their own position. They’re also lying about their opponents’. Incredibly, Republicans have spent the years since passage of the A.C.A. accusing Democrats of wanting to destroy Medicare.

All of which brings me to a remarkable op-ed article on health care in USA Today, which was published under Donald Trump’s name this week. (If he actually wrote it, I’ll eat my hairpiece — although, to be fair, it was rambling and incoherent, suggesting he may have played some role in its composition.)

Part of the article claimed that the Trump administration is defending health insurance for Americans with pre-existing conditions, when the reality is that it has tried to destroy that coverage. But mostly it was an attack on proposals for “Medicare for all,” a slogan that refers to a variety of proposals, from universal single-payer to some form of public option.

And what did “Trump” say Democrats would do? Why, that they would “eviscerate” the current Medicare program. Oh, and that they would turn America into Venezuela. Because that’s what has happened to countries that really do have single-payer, like Canada and Denmark.

Why do Republicans think they can get away with such blatant lies? Partly it’s because they expect their Fox-watching followers to believe anything they’re told.

But it’s also because they can still count on enablers in the mainstream news media. After all, why did USA Today approve this piece? Letting Trump express his opinion is one thing; giving him a platform for blatant lies is another. And as fact-checker Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post put it, “Almost every sentence contained a misleading statement or a falsehood.” Even the president of the United States isn’t entitled to his own facts.

So will the G.O.P.’s Big Lie on health care work? We’ll find out in a few weeks. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/opinion/republicans-lies-medicare-pre-existing-conditions.html

5. Gabriel Pogrund: Trump calls on blacks to ‘honor’ Republicans with votes, then praises Confederate general Robert E. Lee

LEBANON, Ohio — President Trump praised the Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee while asking African American voters to “honor us” by voting Republican at an Ohio rally that featured an unexpected and provocative monologue on America’s Civil War history.

Addressing an open-air rally of around 4,000 supporters, Trump appeared buoyant as he declared that Lee was a “true great fighter” and “great general.” He also said President Abraham Lincoln once had a “phobia” of the Southern general, whose support of slavery has made his legacy a heavily contested and divisive issue.

The comments came during an anecdote about Ohio-born President Ulysses S. Grant’s alleged drinking problems. “So Robert E. Lee was a great general. And Abraham Lincoln developed a phobia. He couldn’t beat Robert E. Lee,” Trump said. “Robert E. Lee was winning battle after battle after battle.”

“And Abraham Lincoln came home, he said, ‘I can’t beat Robert E. Lee,’ ” Trump said. “They said to Lincoln, ‘You can’t use him anymore, he’s an alcoholic.’ And Lincoln said, ‘I don’t care if he’s an alcoholic, frankly, give me six or seven more just like him.’ He started to win.”

Minutes earlier, Trump had hailed African American unemployment numbers and asked black voters to “honor us” by voting Republican in November. “Get away from the Democrats,” he told them. “Think of it: We have the best numbers in history. . . . I think we’re going to get the African American vote, and it’s true.” He also celebrated hip-hop artist Kanye West’s visit to the Oval Office on Thursday, adding: “What he did was pretty amazing.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-calls-on-blacks-to-honor-him-with-votes-then-praises-confederate-general-robert-e-lee/2018/10/12/ab819a9c-ce33-11e8-a360-85875bac0b1f_story.html

6.  Jonathan Chait: Calling Democrats the ‘Angry Mob’ is Trump’s Biggest Lie Yet

Donald Trump during a Bikers for Trump event at the Trump National Golf Club on August 11, 2018. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

In the closing weeks of last year’s special election in Georgia, Republicans used footage of a riot by Antifa — a fringe sect that views the Democratic party with contempt — to characterize the moderate Democratic nominee Jon Ossoff as a dangerous loon. In the closing weeks of the 2018 midterm elections, Republicans have taken this message national. Democrats are an “angry mob,” charges President Trump. “You don’t hand matches to an arsonist, and you don’t give power to an angry, left-wing mob. And that’s what the Democrats have become.”

Conservatives have begun repeating Trump’s message. “Yes, Democrats, It’s a Mob,” writes David Harsanyi. “Sorry, Democrats, Progressive Mob Action Is a Real Problem,” declares an almost–identically headlined David French column. Neither Harsanyi nor French is prepared to fully defend all of President Trump’s behavior in this department. What they argue, instead, is that Trump’s sins have been exaggerated and are minor in comparison with those of his opponents. Harsanyi clucks that reporters have been “hypersensitive” about Trump’s “metaphorical overindulgence.” Trump’s just an excitable kid who gets carried away sometimes. French insists “there is no comparison between a ‘lock her up’ chant at a controlled-entry rally and the kinds of direct, in-your-face actions we’ve seen from #Resistance protesters or the Antifa street takeovers we’ve seen in Portland and elsewhere.”

I agree that there’s no comparison between the excesses of a tiny handful of revolutionary cosplayers and the president of the United States calling for the imprisonment of his political opponents. But French, incredibly, means just the opposite: The demonstrators in his mind are far worse.

The threat Trump poses does not excuse the left from upholding democratic standards. (I have made this case repeatedly, in fact.) That said, Trump’s illiberalism only works because respectable conservatives cooperate with his fiction that he is more victim than aggressor. French writes, “It’s time to stop excusing, rationalizing, and minimizing behavior that is dangerous, menacing, and threatening.” Indeed it is. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/calling-democrats-the-angry-mob-is-trumps-biggest-lie-yet.html

7. Joel Mathis: Trump and the end of American ideals

If you watched President Trump's interview with Lesley Stahl on Sunday night's 60 Minutes, you may have noticed that he gave two answers to the question of what America would do if it's proven — as widely believed — that the Saudis murdered Jamal hoggi, a dissident and frequent contributor to The Washington Post.

Trump's first answer was the same answer just about any president would've given: "We would be very upset and angry if that were the case."

The second answer — and probably the more honest one — was also the same answer most presidents would've given, but almost never in public: He talked about military contracts. "I tell you what I don't want to do," Trump told Stahl. "Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, all these com — I don't want to hurt jobs. I don't want to lose an order like that."

In other words: America is making too much money off of Saudi Arabia to let something so trifling as the murder of a journalist upend the relationship. There's nothing new about that — the United States' relationship with Saudi Arabia and its royal rulers has always been transactional. What is new is this American president, who can barely be bothered to espouse his country's traditional humanitarian and democratic ideals.

Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. Trump might be a prolific liar, but he's not actually much of a hypocrite. He wears his vice — and now America's — squarely on his sleeve. http://theweek.com/articles/801888/trump-end-american-ideals

8. Ryan Cooper: Unleash the IRS

Staffing up the IRS with aggressive analysts and auditors and siccing them specifically on the top 1 percent is likely to cut income inequality substantially and rake in a tidy sum for Uncle Sam.

A good indicator of the level of tax-dodging in this county can be found in the gargantuan New York Times story about how Trump built his initial wealth. It's a spectacular piece of reporting, worth reading carefully and in full. But in essence, Trump reportedly received at least $413 million from his father through a huge number of questionably-legal acts and several "instances of outright fraud," as the Times writes.

This story got little attention, because fresh Trump scandals (and other disasters) are constantly flushing the old scandals off the front page, providing a sort of protective effect. Whether it's his constant flagrant violation of the Emoluments Clause, his alleged hush money payments for adulterous affairs, his grotesque failure to rebuild Puerto Rico, his staggeringly corrupt Cabinet, or any of a dozen others stories, another scandal has reliably come along to distract the public from the last one.

So it's worth taking a step back to really internalize the Trump tax scandal, because it goes to the heart of how American government has been gradually undermined by corruption. Starting in the mid-20th century, the president's father, Fred Trump, built up a gigantic real estate empire, and being such a skinflint, spent almost none of the proceeds on himself. Instead, from nearly the moment they were born, Fred reportedly transferred huge sums of money to his children, by fair means and foul. He established trusts for his children and hired them directly in some instances. Some taxes were reportedly just straight-up not paid at all. In one particularly egregious case outlined by the Times, he reportedly set up his kids with a fake independent contractor service, which did nothing but pad existing service prices by 20-50 percent.

But probably the key tactic was real estate appraisals that reportedly drastically undervalued Fred's properties. When he was near death, the Trumps reportedly got bunk value estimates that meant they only had to pay gift or estate taxes on a fraction of the properties' worth. Ownership transferred, the children could reportedly then sell the properties at their real value and rake in massive free profits. Overall, the Times reporters estimate that the Trump parents transferred well over $1 billion to their children, which by rights should have incurred a roughly $550 million estate tax bill. Instead, they reportedly paid $52.2 million.

The remarkable thing about this was that the IRS reportedly cottoned onto many of the various alleged scams and forced the Trumps to pay up — but only a tiny fraction of the actual amount owed. In the case of a $17.1 million property claimed at just $2.9 million, an IRS auditor reportedly made them increase the value by ... $100,000. Even back when America was dramatically less corrupt than it is today, entitled rich jerks were constantly skating on egregious tax scams. http://theweek.com/articles/801580/unleash-irs

9. Elizabeth Kolbert: What Is Donald Trump’s Response to the U.N.’s Dire Climate Report?

But, if a smoke alarm rings in the kitchen and everyone’s watching “Fox & Friends” in the den, does it make a sound? Asked about the report last week, Donald Trump said, “I want to look at who drew it—you know, which group drew it.” The answer seemed to indicate that the President had never heard of the I.P.C.C., a level of cluelessness that, while hardly a surprise, was nevertheless dismaying. The next day, as a devastating hurricane hit Florida—one made that much more destructive by the warming that’s already occurred—the President flew to Pennsylvania to campaign for Lou Barletta, a climate-change-denying Republican congressman running for the Senate.

Though the Administration often seems incapable of systematic action, it has spent the past eighteen months systematically targeting rules aimed at curbing greenhouse-gas emissions. One of these rules, which required greater fuel efficiency for cars and trucks, would have reduced CO2 emissions by an estimated six billion tons over the lifetime of the affected vehicles. In a recent filing intended to justify the rollback, the Administration predicted that, by the end of this century, global temperatures will have risen by almost four degrees Celsius (nearly seven degrees Fahrenheit). In this context, the Administration argued, why would anyone care about a mere six billion tons? Come the apocalypse, it seems, we’ll all want to be driving S.U.V.s.

The Supreme Court, for its part, appears unlikely to challenge the Administration’s baleful reasoning. Last week, it declined to hear an appeal to a lower-court ruling on hydrofluorocarbons, chemicals that are among the most potent greenhouse gases known. The lower court had struck down an Obama-era rule phasing out HFCs, which are used mostly as refrigerants. The author of the lower-court decision was, by the dystopian logic of our times, Brett Kavanaugh. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/what-is-donald-trumps-response-to-the-uns-dire-climate-report

10. Eric Levitz: Millennials Need to Start Voting Before the Gerontocracy Kills Us All

As “once in a lifetime” storms crash over our coasts five times a year — and the White House’s own climate research suggests that human civilization is on pace to perish before Barron Trump — our government is subsidizing carbon emissions like there’s no tomorrow. Meanwhile, America’s infrastructure is already “below standard,” and set to further deteriorate, absent hundreds of billions of dollars in new investment. Many of our public schools can’t afford to stock their classrooms with basic supplies, pay their teachers a living wage, or keep their doors open five days a week. Child-care costs are skyrocketing, the birth rate is plunging, and the baby-boomers, retiring. And, amid it all, our congressional representatives recently decided that the best thing they could possibly do with $1.5 trillion of borrowed money was to give large tax breaks to people like themselves.

There are many plausible explanations for why America has embraced “carpe diem” as its governing philosophy. Our ruling political party is dominated by geriatric billionaires and millenarian Christians; our electoral system gives politicians little incentive to prioritize the nation’s long-term well-being over their constituents’ immediate gratification; and the conservative movement’s decades-long assault on “big government” has constrained the public sector’s capacity to invest in the future. But all these causes of American misrule are informed and exacerbated by this overriding fact: Young people vote much less than those who aren’t long for this Earth.

Although America’s voting-age population includes a roughly equal number of millennials and baby-boomers, the 2016 electorate featured 14 million more of the latter. Voters under 30 backed Hillary Clinton by 18 points — but their verdict drowned out by those over 65, who favored her opponent by eight.

The consequences of that election have not persuaded America’s (predominantly left-leaning) millennial nonvoters of the importance of political participation. A new survey from PRRI and The Atlantic suggests that only one-third of 18-to-29-year-old voters are certain to cast ballots next month. Among Donald Trump’s cohort, that figure is 81 percent. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/millennial-voters-2018-midterms-climate-change-gerontocracy-survey-polls-turnout.html

11. Jennifer Rubin: Trump is brutal authoritarians’ best advocate

President Trump is the best advocate the world’s worst human rights offenders and state-backed murderers could ever hope for. When it comes to international thugs, who include the United States’ enemies, they have no better friend than Trump.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has routinely received aid and assistance from Trump. During the campaign, Trump defended Putin’s alleged involvement in deaths of journalists. “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?” he told Bill O’Reilly. Since the election, Trump has been Putin’s go-to guy for casting doubt on Putin’s interference in U.S. elections. In Helsinki, Trump declared: “My people came to me. Dan Coats came to me, and some others. They said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.” (He later claimed he meant to say “why it would not be,” which makes absolutely no sense.) He told Lesley Stahl on Sunday, “They [the Russians] meddled. But I think China meddled, too.” (Stahl pointed out: “This is amazing. You are diverting the whole Russia thing.”)

No one has received more enthusiastic advocacy from Trump than the world’s most infamous human rights abuser, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. “Great personality and very smart — good combination,” Trump said after the Singapore meeting. “I learned that he’s a very talented man. I also learned that he loves his country very much.” Last month at a rally in West Virginia, he gushed that “We fell in love, okay? No, really — he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters.”

Thus, Trump’s willingness this week to echo the Saudis’ denials of responsibility in the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is hardly unprecedented. He is well practiced in echoing the moral equivalence and out-and-out lies of brutal autocrats. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/10/16/trump-is-brutal-authoritarians-best-advocate/

12. Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression

The Arab world is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power. During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe, which grew over the years into a critical institution, played an important role in fostering and sustaining the hope of freedom. Arabs need something similar. In 1967, the New York Times and The Post took joint ownership of the International Herald Tribune newspaper, which went on to become a platform for voices from around the world.

My publication, The Post, has taken the initiative to translate many of my pieces and publish them in Arabic. For that, I am grateful. Arabs need to read in their own language so they can understand and discuss the various aspects and complications of democracy in the United States and the West. If an Egyptian reads an article exposing the actual cost of a construction project in Washington, then he or she would be able to better understand the implications of similar projects in his or her community.

The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events. More important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices. We suffer from poverty, mismanagement and poor education. Through the creation of an independent international forum, isolated from the influence of nationalist governments spreading hate through propaganda, ordinary people in the Arab world would be able to address the structural problems their societies face. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/jamal-khashoggi-what-the-arab-world-needs-most-is-free-expression/2018/10/17/adfc8c44-d21d-11e8-8c22-fa2ef74bd6d6_story.html

13. Max Boot: Trump has given every despot on the planet a license to kill

Trump gives every indication that, far from fighting for freedom, he would rather fight against it. This is the president who said it’s “great” that Xi is declaring himself ruler for life, praised Duterte for the “unbelievable job” he was doing “on the drug problem,” congratulated Recep Tayyip Erdogan for winning a rigged referendum that spelled the death of Turkish democracy and declared his “love” for Kim Jong Un of North Korea. When confronted by Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes” about Kim’s catalogue of crime — “repression, gulags, starvation” — Trump was dismissive. “I get along with him really well,” Trump said. “I have a good energy with him.” He was equally blasé when Stahl asked him about reports that Putin is involved in “assassinations” and “poisonings.” He probably is, Trump conceded — but “it’s not in our country,” so who cares? Britain can deal with Russian hit teams on its own.

The only thing that matters to this intensely solipsistic president is how other rulers treat him; how they treat their own people or even their neighbors is irrelevant.

Thus, it is hardly surprising that Trump has shown so little outrage about the fate of Khashoggi, an American resident and a columnist for an American newspaper who was reportedly murdered in a NATO country. Trump’s threat of “severe punishment” is undercut by his willingness to accept at face value Saudi denials of complicity — just as he accepted Putin’s denial of hacking the Democratic Party. Trump even speculates, echoing a possible Saudi cover story designed to protect the crown prince, that “rogue killers” could be responsible. How long before he claims that Khashoggi could have been killed by a 400-pound couch potatowho somehow waddled into the heavily guarded Saudi Consulate? https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-has-given-every-despot-on-the-planet-a-license-to-kill/2018/10/17/cf3d6ea2-d211-11e8-8c22-fa2ef74bd6d6_story.html