Smartest Things I Read from Today's NY Times

Electing Mr. (Doug) Jones, who is admired nationally for prosecuting racial crimes, would be a cultural watershed for Alabama voters and a sign that the Trump base will fracture with unexpected ease. Deep in their bones, Alabamians know that it Roy Moore goes to Washington, the wardrobe department at "Saturday Night Live" will surely accommodate them by finding a cowboy vest, a tiny pistol and a Girl Scout dress, and they're prepared to feel very put upon.

Howell Raines

 I consider Mr. Trump's Republican Party to be a threat to conservatism, and I've concluded that the term evangelical – despite its rich history of proclaiming the "good news" of Christ to a broken world – has been so distorted that it is now undermining the Christian witness.

 Assume that you are a person of the left and an atheist, and you decided to create a couple of people in a laboratory to discredit the Republican Party and white evangelical Christianity. You could hardly choose two more perfect man then Donald Trump and Roy Moore.

Peter Wehner, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center

 So Franken, who is good on women's rights, resigns for wet kisses and random squeezes while Pres. Trump, who is awful on women's rights, skips right past his braggadocio on groping. Meanwhile the accused pervert and pedophile Roy Moore, who is  a Neanderthal on women's rights, leads once more in the Senate race in Alabama, led by the president – who believes in nothing but winning – and the souless RNC.

Maureen Dowd

The Republicans' Really Really Big Lie

Excellent Philadelphia Inquirer article by Dick Polman today. I know I will reference this article when I argue with my conservative and Republican friends.

"Ever since Chief Justice John Roberts upheld the law, writing that the noncompliance penalty was akin to a tax and that such taxes are constitutional, the GOP and its allies have been scaling new heights of hyperbole. The conservative Koch brothers bankrolled an ad calling it "one of the largest tax increases in American history." A Florida congressman upped the ante, calling it "the largest tax on the American people in history." Rush Limbaugh went further, calling it "the largest tax increase in the history of the world."

But the GOP's new tax claim is in another league. So let's bridge the chasm between the lie and the truth:

Obama's supposedly sweeping tax — his penalty for noncompliance — will be levied on a grand total of 1.2 percent of the American people.

So says the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, in its projections for 2016. This means that 98.8 percent will not pay a cent, because virtually all Americans (a) will already have health coverage, (b) will have obtained coverage for the first time, thanks to federal subsidies and tax credits, or (c) will be exempt from the penalty, because of economic hardship or religious beliefs. The penalized 1.2 percent will be those Americans who can well afford coverage but simply refuse to buy it.

In an ideal world, the GOP would pay a political price for peddling its phony charge, but that's not how the game works. A huge share of the American public is still in the dark about the details of health reform, and is hence open to all manner of disinformation. The old Mark Twain line, about how a lie can circle the Earth before truth can lace its shoes, is apt in this circumstance.