N Y Times Slams Koch Brothers

In 2006, in a bipartisan vote unheard of today, the California Legislature passed AB 32, a "landmark clean energy bill that many hoped would serve as a template for a national effort to reduce dependence on foreign oil and mitigate the threat of climate change."



Striking terror in their moneyed hearts, a "well-financed coalition of right-wing ideologues, out-of-state oil and gas companies and climate-change skeptics is seeking to effectively kill that law." They are contributing big bucks to ensure the passage of Prop 23 which would kill AB 32 and California's dreams for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gasses by 80 percent by the middle of the century.

Among the contributors to the $8.2 million Prop 23 lobbying effort are Charles and David Koch, who have forked over the obscene amount of $1 million, and two Texas based oil giants, Tesoro and Valcero. The Koch brothers are worried, "partly about damage to the bottom line at Koch Industries, and also because they believe that climate change is a left-wing hoax."

They have argued that the law will lead to higher energy costs and job losses, arguments that resonate with many voters in a state with a 12.4 percent unemployment rate. But this overlooks the enormous increase in investments in clean energy technologies — and the jobs associated with them — since the law was passed.

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The Kochs and their allies are disastrously wrong about the science, which shows that man-made emissions are largely responsible for global warming, and wrong about the economics. AB 32’s many friends — led by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California — have therefore mounted a spirited counterattack in defense of the law.

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Who wins if this law is repudiated? The Koch brothers, maybe, but the biggest winners will be the Chinese, who are already moving briskly ahead in the clean technology race. And the losers? The people of California, surely. But the biggest loser will be the planet. (emphasis mine)

The American people who fear big government should be far more afraid of these giant oil industries and mega corporations. They do not care one stitch for the welfare of the United States or for the American citizens or, for that matter, the planet. Their only loyalty is to unlimited amounts of green but not the kind you find in clean energy.

Koch Industries, Inc.: "A Kansas-based conglomerate that operates oil refineries in several states and is the company behind brands including Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Lycra fibers and Stainmaster carpet. Forbes ranks Koch Industries as the second-largest privately held company in the U.S. — and the Koch brothers themselves? They're worth billions." (NPR)

The following information is provided by Hoovers.

Valero Energy Corporation: Named after the Alamo (the Mission San Antonio de Valero), the company is the largest independent oil refiner in the US. Valero refines low-cost residual oil and heavy crude into cleaner-burning, higher-margin products, including low-sulfur diesels. Ranks # 26 by Fortune 500. 2009 Sales (Mil): $68,144.0

Tesoro Corporations: Produces gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel, fuel oil, liquid asphalt, and other fuel products. Ranks # 139 by Fortune 500. 2009 Sales (mil) : $16,872.0

How does Scott Walker think?

The Republican members of the Wisconsin Senate on Wednesday passed the budget repair bill without the Democrats, by stripping the fiscal elements out of the bill, which meant that they no longer needed a quorum, and could pass it without any Democrats present.

Now, weirdly, the taking away the union's right to collective bargaining was left in the bill that was passed. Which means one of two things: either Walker has been lying all this time by saying that collective bargaining was bankrupting the state, or the Senate just passed an unconstitutional bill and will now be spending more of the budget on defending it in court. I wonder which result Walker prefers?

Likely, neither one. See, Scott Walker believes that God talks to him personally; he claims to have actually heard the voice of Jesus telling him what to do, in the manner of delusional psychopaths throughout history. And you can almost believe that with his attempts to ass-rape the teachers. He's just judging them strictly.

¹Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. ² We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check. (James 3:1-2)

OK, admittedly, this isn't presented as a good thing, but a case of other people's unreasonable attitudes towards teachers. But there it is.

It is frightening that the highest executive in our state suffers from the delusion that God dictates his every move. Consider the personal and historic devastation inflicted by fanatics who think they are acting in the name of their deity. (Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation)

(h/t Uzza)

Of course, this biblical perspective doesn't explain Walker cozying up to the Koch Brothers. Maybe he feels that the eye of the needle that will get them into Heaven is located somewhere in Wisconsin - he's just trying to save their immortal souls.

There's a certain cold-blooded logic to Walker setting himself up so that he can sell the Wisonsin power industry to the Koch brothers for two dollars per plant. After all, many of Winconsin's coal burning power plants require millions of dollars in upgrades to make them compliant with environmental regulations. Let the multi-billionaire Koch brothers pick up the tab.

Here it is, early March, and the average low temperature in northern Wisconsin has been hovering between 10 and 15 degrees Fahrenheit (remember, that page is updated daily - YMMV). The average temperature in the state drops to 5 degrees F in the winter; the lowest temperature ever recorded in the state was -55 degrees Fahrenheit, on February 4, 1996 at Couderay).

So if a couple of 80-year-old Social Security recipients freeze to death because they can't pay the newly-privatized energy bills? Hey, it's not the state's fault, right? (And it's that much less drain on that damned Social Security system that the Republicans can't seem to destroy. So that has to be another bonus right there! Right?)

Mega Donors Buying Politicians and Influence...

Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth

Thinking pro business and pro growth makes sense for everybody; after all economic growth, or an expanding economy (added demand)creates jobs which are in turn filled by folks looking for work, and it gives businesses the opportunity to increase their income (the result of increased demand for goods or services)and provide those extra jobs that get filled by folks looking for work.

All that makes sense; right? It does if viewed from the perspective that all businesses are, to a great extent, concerned with the importance of a growing vibrant middle class. But we all know this is not the case and mega wealthy corporations spend mega millions financing political campaigns of candidates they believe will be most favorable to their interests, not yours or the country's at large.

Very wealthy individuals and corporations spend the millions they do on political campaigns for one purpose and one purpose only, TO BUY INFLUENCE and CONTROL POLIT0ICIANS who make laws and regulations. In short they are attempting to insure their own special interests are protected. Whether that has a positive or negative impact on the larger picture is really of little consequence to the wealthy corporations or wealthy individuals.

So, in looking out for your own self interests be sure to do the research and learn if mega dollar donors are supporting a candidate you are considering voting for, whether they be a congressional, senate, or presidential candidate. Because if they are being bankrolled by big money the chances are the candidate will be looking out after the interests of the corporation or individual(s) whose money bought them.

POLIICO - The Koch brothers’ conservative network is still debating whether it will spend any of its massive $889 million budget in the Republican presidential primaries, but the prospect of choosing a GOP nominee loomed over the network’s just-concluded donor conference in the California desert. 

In an informal straw poll of some conference donors, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida came out ahead of four other would-be GOP presidential candidates who had been invited, according to an attendee familiar with the results. The poll was conducted by Frank Luntz, a veteran GOP pollster, during a break-out session of the conference, which wrapped up Tuesday after a long weekend of presentations and discussions at the Ritz-Carlton in Rancho Mirage, Calif.  

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul — who received the least enthusiastic response from donors during a Sunday night forum of prospective candidates that also featured Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — finished last in Luntz’s poll, the source told POLITICO.  

The poll is by no means a definitive assessment of the feelings of the hundreds of wealthy business leaders who comprise the vaunted network created by billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch. But it does provide an early glimpse into the leanings of a pool of megadonors who are being hotly courted by the field of would-be candidates, and whose checkbooks could go a long way toward determining who emerges with the GOP nomination — regardless of whether the Koch network decides to formally back a candidate.  

The network has thus far steered clear of endorsing specific candidates in primaries, but it is coming under internal and external pressures to do so. It hopes to raise $889 million from wealthy backers like those who gathered in Rancho Mirage to push its agenda in 2015 and 2016, more than double what it spent in the 2012 election cycle.  

In addition to Cruz, Paul and Rubio, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker paid a visit to the Ritz meeting, though he was not present for the forum.  

The three-day conference was organized by Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, a nonprofit outfit that oversees the vast political and policy network created by the Koch brothers.

More BELOW THE FOLD.

Via: Memeorandum

Things Go Dirtier With Koch

A friend from my hometown posted this on his facebook page:


"David and Charles Koch are in the process of hosting their biannual conservative training session for billionaires in Indian Wells, California. The effort this year is to raise millions to mislead the public about Obamacare and to use that information to defeat vulnerable Democratic representatives and senators in the upcoming mid-term elections. They have rented out the entire Hotel Esmerelda (558 rooms), closed the restaurants to the public for three days, and shut down the recreational facilities (see the picture). They have also surrounded the grounds and nearby golf course with telephone laden security guards, all dressed in black (see my new friend). It was truly eerie watching this unfold."


If anyone can refute this, feel free to do so.  But I don't think anyone will.




"Though the donors will funnel tens of millions of dollars into the election this year, they will not have to disclose a single cent. Using an elaborate array of foundations, nonprofits, and other legal entities, the Koch network sponsored bus tours, attack ads, think tanks, and hired Tea Party organizers to shape the midterm elections two years ago. 

Now it appears they are expanding the effort. The most that the public knows about these meetings has been culled from leaked audio tapes, reporting from journalists like Ken Vogel, and from an invitation I exclusively reported back in October of 2010. The document I posted over a year ago explained that during the meetings, strategy is discussed, from legislative campaigns to judicial elections, and money is raised from an assortment of executives from the oil, banking, manufacturing, and real estate industries." --SOURCE



Now what was all that whining about we hear from the GOOPers about George Soros?

Do they really know nothing about the conservative corporatist fascists plotting in their own backyards to forever alter our democracy?  The low-information voters were fed the lie that it is President Obama who would "fundamentally change" America, while, covertly, the billionaire Koch brothers are doing that very thing.  The Koch brothers cynically turn us against each other, while plotting to buy up every legislator they can to make this country into their own private empire.  It won't matter who the president is.  America will belong to the Kochs.

All truths await

All truths wait in all things

-Walt Whitman- 

It's been asserted that Nancy Hanks, Abraham Lincoln's mother was illegitimate and that President Lincoln himself was her illegitimate son.  History as is commonly taught to school children seems to have left the legitimacy claims behind to those who continue to impugn the man on the Dollar bill and continue to say the same sort of things about every enemy of injustice ever since.  Certainly those who continue to growl and grumble about the man who bent and broke rules to get the 13th amendment through Congress have much in common with Lincoln's mid 19th century detractors, Northern and Southern, and our current assailants of  nearly every Democratic president since FDR. It's tempting to believe that Americans of today, with their rabid and intransigent and often delusional views are something quite new, but Lincoln's campaign for re-election has far too much in common with Barack Obama's effort to make that idea stand on it's own.

He's a tyrant! he's the enemy of freedom! He's trashing the Constitution and our rights! -- are we talking about Lincoln, or Roosevelt. or Kennedy or Clinton?  All of them and more have faced such accusations.  Did Obama go on an "apology tour?"  Did Honest Abe openly endorse 'miscegenation' (a term that may have been coined by the Religious Right,) and were there articles and pamphlets describing a ball that never happened where 'colored belles'  danced with white men and containing fake pictures?  Yes there were!  just as Houston was flooded with wanted posters and other leaflets the day Kennedy was murdered.

 "At the very time shots were being fired at President Kennedy a right-wing protestor stood a few feet away, heckling JFK by comparing him to Neville Chamberlain"

Relates Donald E. Wilkes, Professor of Law, University of Georgia School of Law; ostensibly for such things as not forcing Communists to register with the government and for "turning the country over to the UN."  Heard it all before?  Of course we have and we've heard it ever since and from the same damned people in many cases.    "The American Fact Finding Committee" apparently actually the John Birch Society, printed one of those insidious, seditious calumnies. Fred C Koch, founder of Koch Industries ( who used to do business with the USSR) and founder of the John Birch Society and  father to the Koch Brothers bankrollers of the Tea Party now hounding Obama with the same slimy and false accusations.  Like Father, like sons. Like American Conservatism, like Treason.

Perhaps the "Modern Man" of the mid 19th century of whom Whitman sang isn't much different from the modern men and women who sit up nights fabricating stories about Barack Obama's ancestry and actions. 19th century calumnies about "Abraham Africanus I" and his fictitious dialogues with Satan smell as ugly as anything Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh or the Koch boys have ever cooked up in their stew-pots. No, I'm afraid America's 'Conservatives,'  those people who will go to war to preserve the past and particularly a  fictitious past designed to cover up injustice and promote privilege, have been with us all along.

Did the infamous but recently recrudescent Joe McCarthy really say "show me a man who talks about the Constitution and I'll show you a communist?"  I don't know, but his 'Conservative' henchmen didn't think that was as anti-American or trashing the constitution or beyond the definition of free speech as reading Marx or having a certain political opinion or promoting civil rights -- and even, in the case of Lincoln: ending constitutional support for slavery.  The Gospel chewing Bible bullies, the feudal Barons of industry then and now only care about the constitution when someone tries to use it to preserve individual liberty, and so granting the same rights to Biblical pariahs as to others, is "trashing the constitution" when Obama  -- or Africanus II -- favors it.

All truth waits, but who cares to look when it's too likely to challenge our politics, our lies, our precious delusions, our profits, our power?

Liars Can Figure

The last half of the old saying, "figures don't lie, but liars can figure."  I'm referring to what is by far the most important story to have surfaced in the last couple of weeks, the tale of a paper written by two Harvard trained economists, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.

This paper, called Growth in a time of Debt,  purported to show that, when a nation's debt exceeded 90% of its annual GDP, a tipping point was reached which crushed economic growth.  It has been constantly quoted and hailed far and wide by proponents of the miserable "austerity" policies which have nearly destroyed the European economy, and which continue to damage our own.

It now turns out that this paper contained a number of serious errors, the most comic of which (if it wasn't so catastrophic) was a simple Excel coding error that "accidentally" left out the data of several of the most well-off countries.  Including that data, the conclusion of the paper is totally negated.  Thus it may be very fairly said that a large part of the suffering forced upon the people of Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy, and indeed here, is the result of what can at best be considered a mistake which anyone who uses Excel should be able to spot quickly.

I am not an economist.  I tried to find a way to explain the whole thing quickly, but as you might anticipate, I was easily bested by Paul Krugman, who is beginning to seem like the only sane voice in the whole mainstrteam press:

"In fact, Reinhart-Rogoff quickly achieved almost sacred status among self-proclaimed guardians of fiscal responsibility; their tipping-point claim was treated not as a disputed hypothesis but as unquestioned fact.

...the truth is that Reinhart-Rogoff faced substantial criticism from the start, and the controversy grew over time. As soon as the paper was released, many economists pointed out that a negative correlation between debt and economic performance need not mean that high debt causes low growth. It could just as easily be the other way around, with poor economic performance leading to high debt. Indeed, that’s obviously the case for Japan, which went deep into debt only after its growth collapsed in the early 1990s.

Other researchers, using seemingly comparable data on debt and growth, couldn’t replicate the Reinhart-Rogoff results."

I occasionally recommend that your read some article- I plead with you to read all of this one, as it reveals the utter bankruptcy of the endless campaign by the rich and powerful to restructure the whole world for their sole benefit.

Krugman, of course, never gets to the question of motive.  As a civilized individual he is content to let this whole incident pass as a tragic mistake.  Green Eagle has no such brake on his behavior, so he will take up the question with a few comments about Carmen Reinhart.

Before continuing, however, I need to turn to another subject:  that of Peter G. Peterson.  I was surprised a couple of days ago to discover that my wife had never heard of him, and if she hadn't, I suspect most other people haven't either.  Here's some information from an article in the Los Angeles Times:

"Who's the most influential billionaire business figure in national politics?

If you answered one of the Koch brothers (Charles or David) or George Soros, you're wearing your partisan blinders. The former are known for their devotion to conservative causes, the latter to liberal. In either case, you're wrong.

The most influential billionaire in America is Peter G. Peterson. The son of Greek immigrants, Peterson, 86, served as Commerce secretary under President Nixon, then became chairman and chief executive of Lehman Bros. Subsequently, he made his big money as co-founder of the Wall Street private equity firm Blackstone Group.

Peterson doesn't attract venom from the left like the Koch family or bile from the right like Soros. In Washington, he's treated with sedulous respect as a serious thinker about public policy willing to support earnest public discussion with cold cash. His money backs a large number of think tanks across the political spectrum...Peterson's views are subtly infiltrating the Washington debate — which is why Americans should start getting worried about him."

Peterson is the number one proponent of "austerity" proposals in the United States.  And let me say that I put that word in quotation marks, because it always turns out to mean austerity for you and me, but more money for people like Peter G. Peterson.

Now, why the detour to discuss Peterson?  Well, it turns out that, in 2010, a few months after publishing this paper,

"Carmen Reinhart, the University of Maryland professor who has studied eight centuries of financial crises, was named a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Washington-based nonprofit said."

But of course, nothing to be seen here.  You can be positive that, with this "appointment" Reinhart's income increased vastly, but of course that could not possibly suggest that there is anything deliberate in her having produced a fallacious piece of academic "research" which so fully supported the positions of her future employer.  And just to add insult to injury, we learn:

"Her husband, Vincent Reinhart, is a former monetary- affairs director at the Federal Reserve and now resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute"

The American Enterprise Institute- possibly the biggest corporate lie factory in the United States.

So, the question remains, cheesy, high school grade error, or deliberate lie fabricated to delude the nations of the world into following a ruinous economic policy?  Unfortunately, whichever is true, the results are likely to remain the same.  I'll give Krugman the last word:

"So will toppling Reinhart-Rogoff from its pedestal change anything? I’d like to think so. But I predict that the usual suspects will just find another dubious piece of economic analysis to canonize, and the depression will go on and on."

Post-SOTU Reflections and the Continuing War of Words

Contrary to the constant sneer and jeer of rightwing rhetoric, President Obama has always been a centrist politician and hardly the “socialist dictator” as alleged by Republicans.

Perhaps Jon Stewart expressed it best last night: “President Obama is apparently now in the 'f*ck it' stage of his presidency" - given six non-stop years of legislative obstruction, filibustering, gridlock, and Godwin-style name-calling

F*ck it, indeed. Consider this ABC News interview of Warren Buffet and his secretary, Debbie Bosanek, who reveal an inconvenient truth about the American tax system:

 

What drives income inequality in America? Debbie Bosanek pays a Federal income tax rate of 35.5%. In contrast, her boss pays 17.5% on income estimated to be 200 times greater!

“Everybody in our office is paying a higher tax rate than Warren,” she says.

“I pay hardly any payroll taxes, Buffet admits. “Gov. Romney hardly pays any payroll taxes. Newt Gingrich hardly pays any payroll taxes. Debbie pays lots of payroll taxes,” he continues.

Repeat this admission across the economic spectrum of American life, and what you have is a massive redistribution of income from the middle class to a special privileged class. Yet, Republicans have lashed out: They dismiss Buffet’s admission as an act of “class warfare.” One has to ask: Which side of this war is hurling the bombs?

Here are more inconvenient facts: Since 1979, the productivity of American workers has risen 80%; yet, the wages of these workers have risen less than 11%:

Please note the precipitous rise in income for the privileged class: Over 240%.  In other words, American workers have put enormous wealth into the pockets of their employers, yet received next to nothing in return.

Since 2001, this trend has turned ever more ominous as shares in the national economic pie have essentially turned upside down. Middle class wage increases have fallen to less than one percent. The überclass now pockets a whopping 99% slice of the national pie but constitutes only 1% of the population.

Meanwhile, US multinational corporations are laying off workers at home and shipping jobs overseas:

Given these data, consider this thought experiment: If you are a Kochroach raking in $1 billion per year, what is the cost benefit ratio of spending $100 million on PACs and stink tanks to avoid a tax hike? The difference between a 17.5% tax rate versus 35.5% (drum roll) is:

$180,000,000 each and every year

for as long as ye shall live (badda boom)!

“[The GOP] has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of America's plutocracy. Their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con the public … [The GOP] could not abide so much as a one-tenth of one percent increase on the tax rates of the Walton family or the Koch brothers, much less a repeal of the carried interest rule that permits billionaire hedge fund managers to pay income tax at a lower effective rate than cops or nurses” (Mike Lofgren, Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult).

Mike Lofgren's words explain the stalking point phrases of “class warfare” and “job creators” framed and marketed by PACs and stink tanks to protect the überclass. Now you know why the Kochroach Brothers spend buckets of bucks to convince ignorant country bumpkins to vote Republican - and against their own economic self-interest.

Recently one of those country bumpkins - or perhaps a psy-ops troll employed by the überclass - left this comment under a recent post by Shaw:

"Just compare the "poor" in the US to the rest of the world and you have to come to the conclusion that our system is better for poor people. How much more do you Bleeding Heart Liberals want us to do for these people, most of them ar [sic] lazy slobs anyway who just take, take and take!"  Steve

My reply:

"For your information, most of the impoverished people of this country are the working poor earning subsistence wages - people who mow your damn lawn, pick up your damn garbage, flip your fucking hamburgers, and pick your damn fruits and vegetables under a hot sweltering sun – jobs which shiftless lazy bastards such as yourself consider beneath your contemptible dignity."

In response to President Obama’s State of the Union Address, Republicans have responded with:

"Kommandant-In-Chef" - Randy Weber (R-TX);

“6,778 words. 'Benghazi' is not one of them” - Steve Stockman (R-TX);

“Obama speech reads like dictates from a King” - Tim Huelskamp (R-KS);

“The world is literally about to blow up” - Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

Words and more words, but nothing of substance. How long will the middle class tolerate this bullshit? Historically, no society has tolerated unchecked economic privilege and injustice for long. It is only a matter of time before the war of words spills into the streets. When that day arrives, my choice of weapon will not be ink.

Skuby Dooby Do

I'm glad it's a long way to New Jersey but Bill Skuby, who owns Skuby & Co. Lifestyle Clothing in Spring Lake, N.J should be happy too.  I think I felt something snap in my head when I looked at the ABC News web page this morning and saw the thing he has in his store window.  Quite frankly I'm not sure I'd be able to restrain myself.  It's not that I actually advocate an act of violence against him or his property and I certainly don't want the Government to deprive him of the right to be a stupid, ugly, bigoted, ignorant and anti-American bastard ( no insult to involuntary bastards intended here.)  I'm all for the right to sedition.

But I'm only human and a picture of the President of the United States dressed as a semi-naked witch doctor taped to a tombstone and a bold face title with OBAMA CARE in which the letter C is a hammer and sickle, makes me have bad thoughts; very bad thoughts. Why is it that the two legged vermin who insist we worship a flag like some religious icon, that we swoon in an ecstasy of Chauvinistic self-praise at every mention of our often ugly history can condone the kind of disrespect that makes the world laugh contemptuously at our delusional stupidity and willful ignorance.

 

No, Skuby, the health care plan drafted by Republicans in conjunction with the health care corporations has less to do with Communism than you do with sanity or honesty for that matter. Switzerland, the holy land of Capitalism and Conservatism has a similar one and arguably the best health care and healthiest population anywhere and they spend a hell of a lot less then we do.  You're an idiot, Skuby Doo.  You're an idiot not only for putting a disgusting picture of the President on a tombstone but more of an idiot for telling us:

"if Mitt Romney had the same plan as the president; his picture would be in the window."  

You're worse than an idiot, you're a liar, because Slippery Mitt did have that plan until he decided to sell his withered soul to the Devil and run for President. Did you forget?  And no, you're not a racist and if there's racism now, it's Obama's fault, he says.

"This is America, isn't it?Aren't we able to say and do pretty much what we want to do?"

 Asks the scummy Mr. Skuby. I really wish that were true, but then we'd have to condone tarring and feathering and probably worse and if this idiot isn't one of those dumb Limbaugh loving lizard brained bastards who wanted to put people in jail for criticizing W, I'd be very surprised.  You should be thankful we can't do pretty much what we want to do to you.  Damned thankful if you know what I mean, wink wink, nudge nudge.

So, I'm glad people are shunning your store and I truly hope you'll go broke and be unable to file for bankruptcy protection because of the Republican "reforms" and that you'll lose your health insurance and be unable to replace it because of the interrupted coverage.  I hope your kid needs an operation and runs up a quarter million dollar medical bill you can't pay and so you'll lose everything and wind up on the street with a tin can so I can go by and piss in it.Why don't you ask the Koch Brothers for a handout?

GOVERNOR WALKER'S COUP D'ETAT by Robert Reich

Governor Walker's Coup D'Etat


By Robert Reich - March 10, 2011, 2:48PM


"Governor Scott Walker and his Wisconsin senate Republicans have laid bare the motives for their coup d'etat. By severing the financial part of the bill (which couldn't be passed without absent Democrats) from the part eliminating the collective bargaining rights of public employees (which could be), and then doing the latter, Wisconsin Republicans have made it crystal clear that their goal has had nothing whatever to do with the state budget. It's been to bust the unions.


That's no surprise to most people who have watched this conflict from the start, but like any coup its ultimate outcome will depend on the public. If most citizens of Wisconsin are now convinced that Walker and his cohorts are extremists willing to go to any lengths for their big-business patrons (including the billionaire Koch brothers), those citizens will recall enough Republican senators to right this wrong.


But it's critically important at this stage that Walker's opponents maintain the self-discipline they have shown until this critical point. Walker would like nothing better than disorder to break out in Madison. Like the leader of any coup d'etat, he wants to show the public his strong-arm methods are made necessary by adversaries whose behavior can be characterized on the media as even more extreme.


Be measured. Stay cool. Know that we are a nation of laws, and those laws will prevail. The People's Party is growing across America -- and the actions of Scott Walker and his Republican colleagues are giving it even greater momentum. So are the actions of congressional Republicans who are using the threat of a government shutdown to strong-arm their way in Washington.


The American public may be divided over many things but we stand united behind our democratic process and the rule of law. And we reject coups in whatever form they occur."


I too characterized Walker's strong-arm maneuver as a "coup d'etat" in someone's comment section the other day.  And here's one definition of that phrase:

"Linguistically, coup d'état denotes a "stroke of state" (French: coup [stroke] d' [of] État [state]).^[5] Analogously, the looser, quotidian usage means “gaining advantage on a rival."

 
But what Walker has done to Wisconsin's public sector unions is NOT about budgetary problems as Wisconsin's State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald revealed in this candid statement:
 



In an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), one of Walker’s closest allies in the legislature, confirmed the true political motive of Walker’s anti-union push. Fitzgerald explained that “this battle” is about eliminating unions so that “the money is not there” for the labor movement. Specifically, he said that the destruction of unions will make it “much more difficult” for President Obama to win reelection in Wisconsin:


FITZGERALD: Well if they flip the state senate, which is obviously their goal with eight recalls going on right now, they can take control of the labor unions. If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much difficult, much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.

Governor Scott Walker is a liar:
 

"Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says he campaigned on his budget repair plan, including curtailing collective bargaining"  --PolitiFact


 
POLITIFACT GOES INTO GREAT DETAIL ON THIS SUBJECT AND DETERMINES THAT THE ABOVE STATEMENT BY WALKER IS FALSE.
 
Walker contends he clearly "campaigned on" his union bargaining plan.



But Walker, who offered many specific proposals during the campaign, did not go public with even the bare-bones of his multi-faceted plans to sharply curb collective bargaining rights. He could not point to any statements where he did. We could find none either.


While Walker often talked about employees paying more for pensions and health care, in his budget-repair bill he connected it to collective bargaining changes that were far different from his campaign rhetoric in terms of how far his plan goes and the way it would be accomplished.


We rate his statement False.

A coup d'etat by Governor Walker who lied to the people of Wisconsin about his plans to bust unions.

2012, the end of an era

I've been a Newsweek reader and subscriber for more than a half century and of course I haven't always been appreciative of all their regular columnists.  I haven't ever in fact, but none the less, people like George Will or the current counterpoise to rational thinking, Niall Furguson, haven't made me cancel my subscription  as I've threatened to do on occasion. But you can't fight progress and you can't fight the kind of decay progress leaves in its wake and the magazine that once published some of the best political writing and news reporting in America has been fighting a losing battle. Advertising revenue is drying up in the slow economy and advertisers may feel they get a bigger bang and a bigger audience elsewhere.

 The venerable publication was sold last year and combined with The Daily Beast.  Controversial editor in chief Tina Brown, known for saving The New Yorker a few years back hasn't been able to save Newsweek or stem the flight of advertising revenue -- or as I might speculate, stem the rising illiteracy and unwillingness to read objective journalism and I read this morning that as of the end of this year, Newsweek will cease to put out a print edition. Alas.

I had been meaning to write this week about the noticeable trend toward being 'fair and balanced' in Newsweek and indeed almost every other slowly sinking print publication by including a measure of snarky, sulfurous vituperation  to balance out any accurate reportage or fact based opinion that will irritate the delusional Right, as if  there actually were two sides to arithmetic or an alternate and opposite  history despite the accuracy of the record.  I was going to chastise Ms. Brown for the October 15th cover story "Heaven is Real" pandering, once again, to irrational beliefs, but at least for Newsweek, the Mayans were correct.  It's the end of an era.

It may be more of a dignified end however, than being bought up by Darth Murdoch or some corporation controlled by the Koch brothers or Karl Rove.  They plan to continue on the Web and I plan to read them but I can't say I don't have a feeling of loss or a suspicion that the future of Journalism is not the improvement of journalism but more like a large, dark cave full of screaming voices.

Wisconsin's first chance to fight back

Pro-Republican astroturf groups, led by the Koch brothers, will spend an estimated two million dollars this week for next Tuesday's State Supreme Court election.



Wisconsin Democrats are asking everyone supporting them to spread this video as far as possible.

I OWE MY SOUL TO THE COMPANY STORE

I was greatly disturbed by the 2010 SCOTUS ruling that favored Citizens United and the abomination which is known as, among other things, corporate personhood.

The landmark case opened the floodgates of cash expenditures to influence political races, appointments and government policies. Some will argue this has been going on for years under the guise of lobbyism and other shadowy strategies.  And I would agree, influence buying is nothing new.

What has changed is the number of avenues into which this kind of corporate power grabbing can be channeled and the amount of funds that can be invested.  I was waiting for this first national election to see just how pervasive the ad campaigns would be.

Are you as sick of them as I am yet???

One big problem with these so called super pacs and social welfare organizations is their ability to legally hide their donor list and donation amounts.  We know Americans For Prosperity is a functional arm for the Koch brothers and that American Crossroads is a vehicle for the GOP run by Karl Rove, but what of all the others out there? Shells within shells within shells…The megacrooks have lots of places to hide.

This level of corporate involvement harkens back to the days when the robber barons were kings of the hill and middle America was locked into a vicious cycle of hard work and endless debt to the company store. No need to worry about what was going out in wages, most of it was coming right back in. How far are we from the 21^st century equivalent?

There is a bill on Capitol Hill, HR 4010 and S3369, also known as the Disclosure 2012 Act which calls for more robust transparency in donor lists, organizational framework and monetary amounts.

This bill is being strongly opposed by, surprise, surprise, Sen Mitch McConnell and his GOP minions. The list of organizations who oppose this bill includes the US Chamber of Commerce and just about every mega agriculture/industrial organization out there. American jobs may have been exported overseas but not the corporate slimeballs running the show. They are here, on US soil, pretending to be patriots who love their country, all the while gutting it from the inside out.

It will surprise no one that the list of those in the Senate and House who have received campaign funds from these groups is largely Republican but there are a couple of nasty revelations of those Democrats who have also received funds from these groups:

Harry Reid - $859,121 (reported)

Charles Schumer - $678,850 (reported)

As well as several House Dems.

To allow this decision to stand without oversight and some sort of controls is to put democracy on the chopping block. We need real Americans to come together in a genuine grassroots movement and demand this bill is passed before we are sucked back in time:

 

You load sixteen tons, what do you get

Another day older and deeper in debt

Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go

 I owe my soul to the company store.

Koching up some trouble

By Capt. Fogg

"Good Lord. These are truly evil people"

says The Impolitic and it's hard to disagree. Of course the people that thought it would be a "conservative" thing to do; giving struggling Detroit homeowners fake foreclosure notices, don't think they're being vandals trying to destabilize civilization and built a "conservative" Utopia on the ruins. In fact the Koch brothers who seem to be behind this prank have a vision for the future that more resembles an Orwellian horror with the part of Big Brother played by corporate robber barons like them and the sinister, black menace portrayed by Barack H. Obama. Their lackeys see it otherwise, I'm sure. A step in the final solution of the "colored problem" that the Liberals and do-gooders brought upon Detroit and a reaction to the stunning affront of ACORN having forced a black president on us -- a man nobody voted for, of course. The new North. It's the old South without the sheets.

It's truly hard to describe this sort of thing in the way we describe rational human conduct, because it isn't any more rational than drunken football hooliganism or beer hall riot -- and a hell of a lot more dangerous. It's all the more dangerous for the lack of attention given. CNN.com today provides a bright colorful farrago of sex scandal, new Facebook features, the exploits of rappers and little else. Indeed what else concerns us?

You've got to be kidding - part II

There's something infuriating about those election year robo-calls.  For me, it's because of the feeling of helplessness.  You can always interrupt a human or even a sub-human caller, or if one has fallen into an incoherent, blubbering rage, can hope for some small effect by slamming down the phone on someone whining obscene untruths in your ear.

I had just finished an annoying conversation with my mechanic yesterday about being in line for a very expensive marine engine repair and before I could stand up, go outside and scream at the top of my lungs, the phone rang again.  I normally screen my calls because the majority of them are from people I've never heard of trying to sell me everything from Viagra to mortgage scams, but this time I didn't look at the caller ID. I just picked it up.

Before I could issue a surly "hello" I was blasted by a wild and frenzied voice demanding that I make "an emergency contribution to help Romney fight Obama's disastrous policies."  Well, of course it was a recording and no human was offended by my returning the handset to its cradle just a bit harder than the Chicxulub asteroid impact, but the real pain was not so much that I couldn't vent my rage but rather that there was no possibility of asking the paid actor just what those "policies" might be.


Doesn't it seem that the reference is always to unspecified policies?  Why would that be but to harness the inchoate rage of the Teabastards while allowing them to preserve the illusion that that rage had anything to do with President Obama and his policies -- and not his ancestry.  Perhaps it's no different than the constant reference to "liberals" rather than to people who are opposed to the various scams and handouts and outrageous intrusions into private life that constitute the Republican political platforms of recent years -- things like the war on birth control, the war on pornography, the battle against public education (because as Rick Santorum told us, it promotes "elitism.") and the continued persecution of people who don't wish to be bound by religious taboos or would like to speak Spanish now and then.


Yes, I would have liked to get Mr. Roboto in a stranglehold and demand to know why Obama is to blame for paying for Bush's war and Bush's Medicare prescription plan and Bush's gifts to the oil cartel and why Obama is to blame for giving a tax break to the 98% of Americans who are not in the upper 2% of income earners rather than telling them to eat cake and giving an extra 2% to the Koch brothers and their ill bred ilk. I'd like to know whey that had nothing to do with the recession that started under Bush.  Really, the only "Obama Policy" of any stature I can think of is the health care plan written by one Willard M. Romney in conjunction with the health care industry and the one that hasn't really gone into effect yet, nor has it been a "disaster" to Massachusetts.


So what are these "Disastrous Obama Policies" other than paying the bills, other than being unable to remove the Bush tax structure, being unwilling to actually increase the policy that basically broke the back of the economy by neglecting to pay for the Most Expensive War in American History because the Tax Fairy would somehow bail us out by making war profiteers even richer.


Let's face it Tea Twits and  Secessionists and all you dishonest hordes of political whores yearning for a scapegoat to excuse the way you've been fighting to ruin life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in America -- repeating lies that you hear because you can't admit that you've been wrong, because you can't admit that you don't know a damned thing about history or economics, because you can't admit that you've made mistakes and because you can't accept that "I've got mine and fuck you" isn't the definition of Capitalism, Democracy or even decency -- let's face it:  you applauded everything that got us here, you mocked and persecuted everyone who warned you and you ignored the history you should have learned from.


It's your damned fault, not "the Liberals" the Mexicans, the people who told you that no, there were no Goddamn nukes in Iraq and no way to build them: the people who told you that al Qaeda was a menace when your cowboy president shut down the anti-terrorism team right before 9/11 -- it's yours.

Who was it who told us we hated America when we told you slashing the upper bracket would pour a torrent of capital into the markets and hedge funds and real estate, creating the same bubble and bust we had in the 1920's?  It was you, you smug, self pitying, Velveeta and white bread eating, Pat and Rush and Ann cheering sock puppets.


Time to suck it up and take responsibility. There's no way to undo what you've done, no folksy homilies and vague generalities, no Mighty Mitt to save the day.  The debt can't be paid down by putting the old and the sick and the young and dependent on an ice floe. You can't fix things by "deporting" people for their political opinions like that malignant Republican war criminal parasite Allen West suggests. We can't "decrease the size of government by spending even more on Homeland Security the largest Federal Agency ever or by building more carriers and bombers to counter the defunct Soviet Union.  We can't raise taxes enough to do it.  We're going to see inflation - lots of it, at least those of us who can't hide billions offshore like our corporate citizens do, like our Republican supporters and candidates do. We're going to see enough devaluation that foreign countries can hire our non-union, no minimum wage serfs for less than they hire Chinese peasants to work in sweat shops until your grandchildren and your great grandchildren curse your memory, dig up your miserable bones and grind them for fertilizer.

Bullshit

"The wheels of commerce are greased with bullshit"

I don't know who first said it, but it's been passed down in my family for at least a couple of generations. It's true, of course, and it's doubly true of politics. Americans seem to have more fondness for the substance than an African dung beetle and far more ability to swallow huge quantities of it. Bullshit is perhaps the one thing you can have and eat and you certainly can do both and pass on more. Despite our horror of wealth distribution, we do love to share it.

A local souvenir shop made the papers over the weekend, for a huge display of Obamahate items, including an alleged explanation by the president of why Michelle hates the flag. Of course he never said it and it was long ago exposed as having been invented by the Bullshit machine formerly known as the Republican party. Yet it's too precious to let go and the dung beetles formerly known as Republicans are still eager to rub it all over themselves, smear their own walls with it and share it with you without any concern for facts.

Remember the headless bodies Arizona Governor Jan Brewer talked about - the rising crime rate that necessitated 'special handling' for anyone appearing to be of native American descent?
You guessed it, like Saddam's WMD, it's all bullshit and unlike the perpetrators of that disastrous hoax, she's willing to admit she made the whole damned thing up to get votes. Think that's the end of it? Surely not and the headless Mexicans will be talked about long after Washington Irving's tale of Sleepy Hollow disappears into the past -- and they'll be blamed on Obama. It will all be blamed on Obama and more so because more aliens are being deported than by the previous administration, fewer are getting in and crime associated with illegal immigration is going down. Why drink the watery light beer of fact when that Bullshit brew is so much more filling?

Does it matter that the President is not a Muslim? Not as long as Fox is out there spending millions, contributing millions, to tell you he is and that they are doing it is Obama's fault anyway. Bullshit sells the worse it smells.

Think Climate change has nothing to do with human activity? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but what you think you know about it has much to do with the Oil Tycoon Koch Brothers who spend a fortune fighting the idea and financing the "Tea Party." Why does that tea taste so much like bullshit?

Think those Climategate e-mails were proof of a vast conspiracy? Sure you do and sure you don't care that they were edited and redacted to make them seem to say something they didn't. Rupert Murdoch and his Arab Oil allies spent more millions to produce enough bullshit to roll in to make all the dogs in America happy.

Those incriminating ACORN pimp videos --- smell that warm bullshit! Why give it up just because it was another right wing media hoax? Since Fox never bothered to tell you that, you can pretend it's still true and you can just keep rolling in it.

I could go on, because the bullshit never stops, but I'm tired of the futility of living in a country where "if it feels good, believe it" is the state religion and where people will fight for their beliefs to the death. We don't live in an information age, we live in a bullshit age. We love Bullshit because it fertilizes the egos of the uninformed.

If these are indeed at last the end times, we can be sure it will not all end with floods and it won't be by any divine agency. It will end with bullshit and it will be your own damned fault.

The Age of Bull

Some of the lab-coat bozos who dream up fake "studies" to convince you to eat or not to eat and to spend a lot of your money on buying books related to fake health and nutrition scams would like you to believe that wheat is your enemy.  Unless you have celiac disease, it isn't, but  if you're like most Americans, you don't know science from Shinola, don't know a study from a Studebaker or glutin from glockenspiels and the same goes for history and biology, but that's not what this is about.

A popular fiction is that "studies show" that the advent of  agricultural civilization (is there any other kind?) made people smaller and so you should avoid agricultural products. Of course it's hokum designed to sell product and is popular with inflated airheads from Hollywood, but it's not a study, a scientific, randomized large double blind study, it's motivated speculation -- like all those e-mails I get telling me that some new scandal is going to get Obama impeached any day now.

Agriculture allowed cities to form.  Cities allowed greater communication and closer association between more and more people and that fostered diseases and epidemics previously unknown or previously restricted in range. Such things had a strong effect on health and disease can easily explain what the diet "doctors" would like to blame, for their own gain, on grain.   Even in modern times, AIDS, which may have been around for a very long time, was spread around the world by airplanes.  Communication has a dark side, just look at what the spread of Europeans and their diseases did to the Americas.  Still we live longer than ever, are more disease free, are larger than ever and remain active longer, Pizza and TV dinners notwithstanding.


Of course if you like to give names to the "ages" of Man, you'd have to consider the title The Information Age.  Could it be however that pernicious, malicious, malignant and dangerous ideas, memes, lies, stereotypes, maledictions and political doctrines are the deadly side effect of  the electronic media, just as cities, ships and Camel trains spread death along with culture and commerce?

Obama is going to declare martial law, going to take your guns, send you to death camps, murder your grandmother. Apollo 11 never went to the moon, that German plane, that Malaysian plane never crashed, that bomb never went off.  Obama is a Muslim, Clinton tried to have the UN invade the US.  Cell phones will kill you, wheat will damage your brain, cooking your food is bad, The Koch Brothers and Woody Harrelson know what's best for us and Subarus are made with love. Sure, it's the information age, but who can deny, looking at the vast majority of that information, that it's the bullshit age.  Mythology has gone metastatic. It's mass produced for entertainment and profit, for greed and power and even though much of it is benign, much of it is deadly.  It's not only deadly to your health, but to your cognitive, your critical faculties and whether or not it all ends with bangs or whimpers, the cenotaph, the tombstone of our species will be inscribed with these words  STUDIES SHOW.

IN ORDER TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION

The Cap't has addressed this issue in his usual sharp and focused style but this is so important to our future as a nation I felt the need to repeat it.

The photo is of a pen presented to my husband’s cousin who successfully argued a case before the SCOTUS some years ago.  She was very proud of this accomplishment and we were proud for her but I wonder what she would think of the recent rulings handed down from on high.

Actually I don’t wonder, not really as I know what her reaction would be and it would be loud and scathing. How far the SCOTUS has fallen into the political mire of the far right and it’s batshit crazy denizens. Unbelievable and yet, it is happening. Better to disband this crooked den of thieves than to allow them to further desecrate the constitution and our whole legal system.

The SCOTUS most famously ruled in favor of corporations siding with Citizens United  in allowing unregulated spending sprees in political elections thus paving the way for corporations to buy politicians and unduly influence elections. Despite the new Koch Brothers' warm and fuzzy TV ads, they remain one of the biggest offenders to American patriotism.

So when Washington didn’t burn and the people did not rise up, the conservative majority of the SCOTUS became even more emboldened and have since ruled to disallow buffer zones for protests around planned parenthood type facilities that also perform abortions - while considering it constitutional to have a rather large buffer zone around the Supreme Court building (they may be needing that) and will no doubt  rule against any group challenging buffer zones around other legislative facilities such as the zone recently placed into law that keeps Moral Monday protesters away from the North Carolina State Capitol building.

And while the regional news  is broadcasting headlines about the recent case of a toddler cooked to death in a car and a newborn buried in a backyard, the SCOTUS has seen fit to rule in favor of religious exemptions for corporations in order to allow them to deny providing birth control for their employees. Women of limited means are further marginalized while more babies will be born to suffer from torture, neglect and death. Not to say that poor women hurt their babies, but this certainly closes the door on choice so they can limit the number and timing of their childbirth and pull themselves out of poverty. And those who are ill equipped and do not desire to have children will be forced into a situation where their children will be in grave danger.

I’m no legal scholar but doesn’t it seem completely senseless that the SCOTUS majority would rule that a corporation, which exists only on paper, has personhood and religious convictions? Once there is incorporation, there is no “owner”. There are company officers such as the CEO but he or she is NOT the corporation. So, where does the corporation attend church? How did the corporation form its religious convictions?

The right continues to scream that our Kenyan, socialist, leftist President is going to have us under Sheria law which, of course, has not happened in the nearly 8 years he has been in office but the Supreme Court, with just a few strokes of their mighty pen would have us living under Krazy Konservative Khristian law, completely vacating the US Constitution and they have the nerve to call liberals unpatriotic? HA!

Once again I find myself seriously exploring my options to expatriate.

SHAME! On the Supreme Court of the United States and SHAME! On us if we allow this to pass without protest and a demand that the favoring Justices step down. They have proven they cannot be trusted with our most sacred of documents, the Constitution.

This Land is Your Land

Despite the continuing efforts of the Republicans

I was never a big Pete Seeger fan, but my college years having coincided with the folk music revival, I certainly heard him a lot. I appreciated that he came from the time and conditions that produced Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck and a lot of skepticism about how well our version of Capitalism served freedom and democracy.  Those folks and many others weren't well received by the same sort of  -- I hesitate to use the word bastards, but it fits -- who are still calling everything and everyone Communists for every spurious reason they can.  Seeger has my respect, for his courage more than for his musicianship. He used his humor and his banjo against the union bashers and skull crackers, stood up to the Joe McCarthy thugs and the war mongers and spawned a generation of musical protest that seems strangely absent at a time when much of what he fought is metastasizing like a cancer. We still need to be reminded just who it is who owns this land, the Koch Brothers, Roger Ailes, the Tea Party or the voters.

Pete Seeger died yesterday at the age of 94 after a very short illness.  4 days before he entered the hospital he was chopping wood, says his grandson. He died in the hospital 4 days before he could collect the Woody Guthrie Prize.  So long Pete, it's been good to know ya but your conscience still sings to us.

The knock on the door

By Capt. Fogg

We've got a hard core Socialist Radical in the White House if you listen to people like the Koch Brothers -- and make no mistake, we do listen to them whether we want to or not and whether the slander comes from their mouths or the thousand mouths that speak their words. Yet the slide toward the right, the slide toward authoritarianism, the slide toward the business of America being war, continues without much popular resistance. Unless you mean the resistance of the voters of course but the voters don't matter since they're drawn along like hyena puppies following their mother, snarling about Socialism and Taxes.

Can we blame Obama, who hasn't done much to stop the wars, close the torture chambers and offshore prisons, end the DADT charade, temper the growing power of the Executive Branch or give us the kind of transparency in government we were promised? Sure we can, but if every naive campaign promise had been acted upon, we'd still have a long way to go to stop that slide.

Even while the Republicans, including my own Representative Tom Rooney, (R-FL) are howling about Obama exceeding his powers by authorizing a no-fly zone in Libya, his party has proposed giving the president even more war powers. The House Armed Services Committee's National Defense Authorization Act would authorize the United States to use military force anywhere there are terrorism suspects, including within the U.S. itself, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Yes, yes, I know, you hate the ACLU Libtards, but I don't suppose you like the idea of a president sending the marines to your neighborhood or invading any country the president suspects may be harboring "terrorists" either. As it stands there was little opposition in the house save for one member of the House Armed Services Committee: Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) who was the sole dissenter. Now let's all raise our right arms and shout "Libtard."

The President didn't ask for this awesome power boost. He didn't suggest that he needed it. He didn't ask for the extra billions in military spending or another extension of the Afghanistan War. It was the smaller government folks. It was the Republican House hissing with a forked tongue from both sides of their smirking mouths.

Yes, we're sliding and it's not toward Socialism but toward a military/police surveillance state. It's the courts, like the Indiana Supreme Court that has handed us a ruling suggesting that Indiana Police no longer need warrants nor to be in hot pursuit nor need they have probable cause to enter and search your home for any reason - and may beat hell out of you with impunity if you "resist."

“A right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,"reads the decision.

And we're babbling about Planned Parenthood and NPR and the ACLU Commies and against right of the government to flood some fields to save millions of people or take poison of the store shelves in violation of sacred property rights. We're fantasizing about being economic secessionists free or restriction or responsibility. We're oozing lofty proclamations about property rights and the government of no government like medieval monks talking about angels and pinheads and hunting for witches and heretics.

Obama can't fix this and all the Republicans can do is offer people like Tim Pawlenty, Michelle Bachmann. Maybe we can't fix it either and if you want to know who's to blame, you need look no farther than your bathroom mirror.

KOCHROACHES

A scrapbook by Octopus

A hat tip to Elizabeth for bringing this article to our attention: COVERT OPERATIONS, about the secretive Koch brothers who are the money behind numerous far right wing causes. Highly recommended reading.