ANOTHER BLOW FOR THE NARRATIVE: Texas Gov. Abbot: Gunman was denied gun permit. “The gunman in Sunday’s mass shooting at a church in rural Texas was not legally eligible to buy firearms and had been denied a state gun permit, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Monday.”

WEIRD HOW ALL THE DEMOCRATS WHO FAVOR TAXING THE RICH ARE UPSET ABOUT ELIMINATING THIS DEDUCTION: Ilya Somin: Mortgage interest deduction mostly benefits the rich — end it.

MORE SHIFTING SAUDI SANDS: Second Saudi Prince Confirmed Killed During Crackdown.

The Duran and Al-Masdar News both report that the prince died when his security contingent got into a firefight with regime gunmen attempting to make an arrest.

Prince Aziz (44) who was the youngest son of King Fahad.

The Duran’s Adam Garrie points out that Prince Abdul Aziz was deeply involved in Saudi Oger Ltd, a company which until it ceased operations in the summer of this year, was owned by the Hariri family. Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri was punitively in charge of the company until it ceased operations.

You’ll recall that late last night it was reported that Hariri may have been pushed out by the Saudis, and some say he’s being forcibly detained in the Kingdom.

More:

Prince Abdul Aziz’s strange and sudden death which is said to have occurred during an attempted arrest, sheds light on the theory that the clearly forced resignation of former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri had more to do with internal Saudi affairs than the Saudi attempt to bring instability to Lebanon.

The Saudi Royal family has now lost two princes in 24 hours.

Yes, but they have thousands of them. The question seems to be whether a few deaths and a little infighting will bring them more or less into line with Crown Prince Salman — or if they’ll stage a revolt.

POLL: Democratic advantage for ’18 might not be what it seems.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is Roger Goodell Deliberately Pushing the NFL Leftward?

Remember that the NFL was cultivated into prominence by Pete Rozelle, a pro-war conservative. In the 1960s, Rozelle hired a World War II veteran-turned-filmmaker, Ed Sabol, to produce highlights, commercials and documentaries that marketed the sport as patriotic and militaristic. Sabol’s NFL Films made football feel more American than baseball. His work was so critical to the league’s wild growth that in 2011 he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The same honor had been bestowed on Rozelle in 1985, while he was still commissioner.

By contrast, a year ago Mr. Goodell hired a Democratic political strategist, Joe Lockhart, as the NFL’s executive vice president of communications. Mr. Lockhart, best known as President Clinton’s press secretary for two years, also worked for Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry. Last week the New York Times credited him with crafting the NFL’s message on the anthem controversy.

Joe Lockhart was among the least effective of Bill Clinton’s spinmeisters, and he’s bringing those same foot-in-mouth skills to the NFL these days. If only the NFL had the sense to react to the anthem protests the same way the NBA did — while Bill Clinton was actually in office.

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CULTURE OF COLLUSION: Tony Podesta Lobbied For Russia’s ‘Uranium One’ And Did Not File As A Foreign Agent.

GEORGE KORDA: Americans ‘politicizing’ terror and tragedy in their own way, unfortunately for the ‘enlightened.’

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Hollywood, ESPN and other debacles: Why can’t our ruling class do its job? “Our elites care more about what their peers think of them than about what they’re supposed to be doing. No wonder so many institutions are failing.”

PATRICK POOLE: Trump’s Koigate Is Fake News Spun by Shameless White House Press Corps.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Crisis in Venezuelan hospitals — too many patients, too few beds.

Services are very limited in both public hospitals and private clinics, where shortages of supplies have reduced the number of beds available to little more than 25 percent of what the country needs, according to experts.

But finding a hospital bed is no guarantee that the patient will receive the required treatment because hospitals have less than 5 percent of the supplies and medicines needed to function normally, said Douglas Leon Natera, president of the Venezuelan Medical Federation.

“Any Venezuelan who gets sick here in the country today runs the risk of entering a clinic only to have the relatives leave crying” because “there’s nothing” in many hospitals, Leon Natera told el Nuevo Herald in a telephone interview.

“We have barely 3 or 4 percent of the supplies and medicines [needed], which is really nothing,” he said. “And the showcase hospitals, which receive the most resources, may have only 10 to 12 percent.”

Pummeled by the collapse of the Chavista economic model and low oil prices, the government of President Nicolas Maduro has put strict limits on the importation of food, medicines and other basic goods.

Unexpectedly.

I HAVE TO DISAGREE WITH MEGAN MCARDLE HERE ON THE GOP “WEAPONIZING” TAX REFORM:

It is hard not to notice that this bill is designed to spread benefits among Trump supporters, particularly the Republican donor class, while laying most of the costs on a single group of people: six-figure professionals living in blue states, a group known as the HENRYs (High Earning, Not Rich Yet). One can make a principled justification for levying high taxes on the rich, who can most easily spare the money. One can make a principled justification for taxing everyone equally, share and share alike. But what is the principle by which almost all of the pain of this tax bill should be borne by affluent, but not rich, people who happen to live on the coasts? Other than “we don’t like them.” …

But while cui bono should not be the only consideration, it always is at least one. Republicans are trying to sell this tax package as a fairer reform that will make things better for all Americans. If that is what they are actually trying to do, then they should probably not offer something so obviously shaped as a shiv for Donald Trump’s political enemies. If not out of principle, then out of naked self-interest. However astonishing their current disarray, Democrats are going to be back in power someday. And if Republicans weaponized the tax code in this fashion, Democrats are likely to pick up this crudely crafted weapon and turn it on its creator.

First, I doubt very much that the GOP has started the tax-weaponization process, leaving aside the longstanding weaponization of the IRS by Democrats.

But it’s also the case that the people who are being “targeted” are people who generally support higher taxes and government power. This is a teaching moment:

There’s an old joke about a boy who complains to his mother that his little sister keeps pulling his hair.

“Oh,” responds the mother, “she doesn’t know that it hurts.”

A few minutes later, the mother hears the girl scream and runs into the other room. “She knows now,” the boy explains.

You know?

Meanwhile, Greg Mankiw has some suggestions for improving Trump’s tax plan that I’m mostly okay with, and I think Trump might be too. “Mr. Trump is right that the current system is in desperate need of repair and that sensible reform could simplify our lives, promote economic growth and benefit all Americans. But I fear that what he is offering, while attractive in some ways, is not bold enough to get the job done.” I don’t favor Mankiw’s final proposal, but Trump — and many Trump voters — might.

RENT SEEKERS GOTTA SEEK RENTS: Insurers make billions off Medicaid in California during Obamacare expansion.

Medicaid is rarely associated with getting rich. The patients are poor, the budgets tight and payments to doctors often paltry.

But some insurance companies are reaping spectacular profits off the taxpayer-funded program in California, even when the state finds that patient care is subpar.

Health Net, a unit of Centene Corp., the largest Medicaid insurer nationwide, raked in $1.1 billion in profit from 2014 to 2016, according to state data obtained by Kaiser Health News. Anthem, another industry giant, turned a profit of $549 million from California’s Medicaid program in the same period.

Overall, Medicaid insurers in the Golden State made $5.4 billion in profits from 2014 to 2016, in part because the state paid higher rates during the inaugural years of the nation’s Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Last year, they made more money than all Medicaid insurers combined in 34 other states with managed care plans.

There’s something rotten in California.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Prof bemoans ‘toxic masculine capitalism’ in Disney film “Beauty and the Beast.” Plus: “We need ‘men’ to become human, perhaps not again but for the first time in history on a mass scale.”

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Hollywood, ESPN and other debacles: Why can’t our ruling class do its job? “Our elites care more about what their peers think of them than about what they’re supposed to be doing. No wonder so many institutions are failing.”

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Another Massacre, Rand Hurt, Donna Sings and Much, Much More.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: Army Close to Finalizing Pinks and Greens Uniform for All Soldiers.

SALENA ZITO: Modernity and the old days meet in a model train store on the banks of the Allegheny.

SMART POLITICS: “Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez further complicated Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam’s chances of winning the statewide election on Tuesday by refusing to unequivocally tell NBC’s Chuck Todd that people who drive pickup trucks aren’t racist.” (Bumped).

WEIRD HOW BILL KRISTOL STILL SEEMS SO CHAFED: Despite the chaos, Trump has managed to push the most conservative agenda in a generation. “This hitherto ideologically unmoored man has set in motion an administration arguably more conservative than Ronald Reagan’s. While the Congress controlled by his adopted party remains gridlocked, Trump is rolling back regulations and a number of the Obama administration’s most controversial achievements, including the internal structure of Obamacare and the Clean Power Plan. His foreign policy resets look increasingly sure-footed. His judicial nominees are uniformly conservative. It is inconceivable that any of the other leading Republican candidates from the 2016 cycle would have governed as boldly as Trump has.”

WELL, YES: The Research Proves The No. 1 Social Justice Imperative Is Marriage.

Professor Bill Galston, President Clinton’s domestic policy advisor and now a senior fellow at Brookings, explained in the early 1990s that an American need only do three things to avoid living in poverty: graduate from high school, marry before having a child, and have that child after age twenty. Only 8 percent of people who do so, he reported, will be poor, while 79 percent who fail to do all three will.

Sociologists have referred to keeping these things in proper order as the “success sequence.” It remains true, according to a new research investigation from the Brookings and the American Enterprise institutes. It takes a deeper look at this “first comes love, then comes marriage” sequence by class and generation.

The increase of baby carriages coming before marriage is terribly alarming among the working poor. Working-class women are nearly three times more likely to have babies out of wedlock than upper-class women. Poor women are about five times more likely. These two groups are far less likely to be married overall and twice as likely to be cohabiting, suffering further from inherent instability of living together without marriage.

Successful lefties practice bourgeois values while promoting anything but — almost as though they enjoy having a permanent underclass to lord over.

HOW BAD IS GEORGE CLOONEY’S SUBURBICON? So bad that the New York Times reviewer chokes on its “moral piety.”

By the final bogusly optimistic shot, it’s obvious what “Suburbicon” wants you to know: This movie voted for Obama.

If Hollywood movies are in trouble, something as confused as this one signals a hastening of their demise.

As even David Brooks admits, the problem with our elites is that “they really do stink.”

Related: The Suicide Of Expertise.