Tag: koch brothers

Everybody Harry Reid’s ever viciously attacked is getting ready for 2016.

They’re coming to get Harry Reid.

Harry Reid’s reelection is more than two years off, but the Koch brothers’ political machine is already methodically laying the groundwork that will be used to try to take him out.

The efforts in recent months have been largely subterranean, but they are unmistakable. A handful of nonprofit groups in the vast political network helmed by allies of the conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch have established or expanded permanent ground operations in Reid’s backyard. Focused on wooing key demographics like Latinos and veterans, they’ve also paid for ads assailing the Senate Democratic leader.

Basically, it boils down to this: nobody loves the Senate Majority Leader, and if Reid runs for re-election in 2016 he’s undoubtedly going to be facing Brian Sandoval, the very popular and term-limited Republican Governor of Nevada. That combination of a horde of enemies and a top-shelf candidate has gotten the Reid machine rattled, although they’d rather chew broken class than admit it.  Since Harry Reid is currently polling remarkably badly against Sandoval, the efforts for 2016 have already taken on the aspect of a hastily-built firewall.  For one thing, Harry Reid has already hamstrung the Democratic candidate for governor and thrown him to the wolves: Continue reading Everybody Harry Reid’s ever viciously attacked is getting ready for 2016.

Harry Reid: wait until the Koch brothers get a load of *me*.

Oh, dear.

I bet.

Conspiracy-reid-2

I just bet.

Moe Lane

PS: I know, I know. But this is how I get better at photoshopping: learning by doing.

Bernie Sanders comes down with Harry Reid’s Koch Fever.

Dear God.

“Right now, as we speak, a concerted effort to undermine the VA,” [Bernie Sanders] said. “What are the problems? The problems are, is, that all of these are large, governmental institutions and you have folks out there now, Koch Brothers and others, who want to radically change the nature of society, and either make major cuts in all of these institutions, or maybe do away with them entirely.”

And here I thought that the problem is that the VA was covering up the fact that veterans were being denied timely care, and in some cases fatally so.  Silly me: I should have realized that it was all a right-wing plot.  And you just know that next they’ll be spying on Bernie Sanders! Spyin’ on him with RAYS!

Moe Lane

PS: Bernie Sanders is the chair of the Veterans Affairs committee.

[pause]

For now.

Harry Reid brings up Koch brothers. AGAIN.

Pro-tip for Democrats: when Politico casually mocks your favorite rhetorical flourish, it’s pretty bad.

Responding to the [McCuthcheon v. FCC] decision, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) invoked his favorite boogeymen: the Koch brothers.

“The Supreme Court today just accentuated what they did on Citizens United, which is a decision that is one of the worst decisions in the history of that court,” Reid said during a press conference on raising the minimum wage. “All it does is take away people’s rights because, as you know, the Koch brothers are trying to buy America.”

Bolding mine.  It is a measure of just how surreal the whole situation is that most people still weren’t ready to immediately believe that Harry Reid would start babbling about the Koch brothers buying America*. If you are a Reid staffer, take my sincere advice: get your boss to his doctor for a check-up.  Fast.

Via

https://twitter.com/BrianFaughnan/status/451407070529851392

Moe Lane

*Almost a shame that they won’t; God knows nobody in the Democratic party apparently knows how to do a budget properly.

Washington Post publishes sloppy anti-Koch hit piece, forgets to correct mistakes.

Wow, but Wonkblog has gone downhill since Ezra Klein left….

Yeah, I’m shocked to write that, too.

Anyway, here’s the summary of today’s epic oil sand reporting oopsie, in a nutshell:

  • The Washington Post’s Wonkblog’s Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin essentially wrote a hit post on the Koch brothers (two high demons in American Orthodox Progressivism, or AOP) by attempting to link them to Canadian oil sands (a terrifying place of pure evil and fear, likewise in AOP theology) – and hence, to the Keystone Pipeline (a harbinger of the End Times to the AOP faithful).  You have to understand: the goal here?  Getting the right keywords in place, for the benefit of SEO.  That’s all that Mufson and Eilperin cared about.  It’s certainly why they didn’t correct the post…
  • Oh, yes, the post needs correcting. Turns out – as per Powerline – that the “biggest lease holder in the northern Alberta oil sands is” not “a subsidiary of Koch Industries.”  Oil sands in Alberta don’t have any of the big oil companies heavily involved, not that Koch Industries is a big oil company. Or really prepared to make money off of Keystone. Or even likely to.
  • So why did that Wonkblog post get published?  Power Line, again, notes that Ms. Eilperin is linked through her husband to the fundamentalist environmentalist wing of the AOP: and while it would be rude of me to suggest that serving that faction might be more important to her than mere journalistic integrity please note the exact word that I used.
  • So, what was Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin’s response to it being pointed out that they wrote a factually challenged hit piece on the behest of radical religious fanatics? “The Powerline article itself, and its tone, is strong evidence that issues surrounding the Koch brothers’ political and business interests will stir and inflame public debate in this election year. That’s why we wrote the piece.”
  • Using that… ‘logic’ …I could write a post on RedState about how Barack Obama probably relaxes on the weekend by castrating sheep* and anybody who objected to that would be justifying my article on the grounds that at least we’re all inflaming public debate.

Depressing. Say what you like about Ezra Klein, but at least he has some self-respect.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*I am absolutely certain that I could find somebody who would be willing to assure me that of course Barack Obama castrates sheep, particularly if I promised to not directly reference that assurance.

 

 

 

Over/under on Harry Reid declaring that the Koch brothers are secret Jews?

Because that’s the endgame.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday accused Republicans of holding up crucial assistance to Ukraine in order to protect the Koch brothers.

Reid tied the billionaire brothers who have bankrolled conservative causes to GOP demands that language delaying the Internal Revenue Service’s regulation of non-profit political advocacy groups be added to the Ukraine package.

That’s where conspiracy theorists always end up. Eventually, they just come out and say It’s all because of the Jooooooos and then we have to kind of… shuffle the sufferer over to the fringes of polite society. It’s really a tragedy when it happens, of course.  Even the most miserable human being is a child of God.

Y Continue reading Over/under on Harry Reid declaring that the Koch brothers are secret Jews?

Ex-FCC chairman Reed Hundt freaks out about rumored Koch Brothers LA Times purchase.

Heh.  I remember when it was Rupert Murdoch that the Democrats all hated…

A former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said rules limiting common ownership of newspapers and television stations in the same market should be gutted — even if it clears the way for media mogul Rupert Murdoch to control more news outlets including the Los Angeles Times.

Reed Hundt, Democratic chairman of the FCC during much of the Clinton administration and a self-confessed progressive, said in a speech Wednesday at UCLA that the long-standing rule is “perverse” and needs to be thrown out.

Continue reading Ex-FCC chairman Reed Hundt freaks out about rumored Koch Brothers LA Times purchase.

The Koch brothers should totally buy those papers.

It’s apparently freaking the right sort of people out.

Let me show you the following quotes from this USA Today article by Michael Wolff on the Koch brothers’ rumored desire to buy them some print newspapers. See if you can spot the internal contradictions: all bolding mine.

  • “The Koch brothers, the unimaginably rich and combatively conservative oil heirs, are telling people that they might like to buy the newspapers owned by the recently bankrupt Tribune Co.”
  • “…there are many simpler and cheaper ways to get attention for your view than buying troubled newspapers… All of which the determined Koch brothers have done. But that has not, apparently, been enough.”
  • “[The Koch brothers] may believe, with some justification, that media, and by that they mean mostly liberal media, is the real government — the cultural advance guard that is changing this country.”
  • “Curiously, most of the papers they are proposing to buy are in cities that voted overwhelmingly for the president — cities that have not had a reliably conservative base in a generation or two… Why you would go into a business trying to sell things that your customers don’t seem to want is hard to understand.”
  • “Have I mentioned that the news business is not very good?”

Continue reading The Koch brothers should totally buy those papers.

Your 2012 baseline for ‘pathetic.’

Being this bitterly envious and jealous of… Ezra Klein.

Ezra.
Klein.

Talk about lowered expectations: I sincerely hope that somebody will intervene before I ever get this bad.

Moe Lane

PS: Seriously: this is so inane that it wasn’t even worth a RedHot.