Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

When, in the wake of the Kavanaugh hearings, Comrade Trump recently launched the current hit Republican diatribe featured in tonight's meme, my mind immediately went to two things: 1) The usual mangling of the English language by a profoundly uneducated "president," and 2) The horrific case of The Central Park Five from 1989 and his role in the ugliness surrounding it.

For those who don't remember, the Central Park Five case centered around the vicious beating, rape and attempted murder of a 28-year-old white female jogger in New York's Central Park. Four African-American teens and one Latino teen were arrested and charged. The case got nationwide headlines and things got even uglier than one could expect. Leading the charge was then real estate magnate Donald Trump who spent $85,000 dollars on full page ads that called for the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York City's four major daily newspapers. In his full page ad, Trump said, among other things:

Mayor Koch says that hate and rancor should be removed from our streets. I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer... Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these muggers and murderers and I always will. How can our great society tolerate the continued brutalization of its citizens by crazed misfits? Criminals must be told that their CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!

Shortly after, in an interview with Larry King on CNN, Trump doubled down on his lust for hate and his total contempt for the American Constitution, saying:

The problem with our society is the victim has absolutely no rights and the criminal has unbelievable rights... maybe hate is what we need if we're gonna get something done.

The FBI did DNA tests of the 5 suspects and the victim and no matches were made. The DA told the media that the tests were "inconclusive." The Central Park Five were found guilty, twice. The five teens went to jail and served sentences varying from 6 to 13 years. Fortunately, if there is much of a fortunately in the case, Trump's call for the death penalty was not heeded. In 2002, the real rapist confessed. His DNA matched, he provided details of the crime that only he could possibly know, and the Central Park Five were set free. To this day, now President Trump insists that the Central Park Five are guilty. In his Republican mind, of course they are. They're, well... you know. He has also publicly insisted that the settlements the Central Park 5 have received are a "disgrace."

The irony of the juxtaposition of Comrade Trump's recent statement that has become a near mantra to republicans this week, and the words of his racist hate-mongering actions in 1989, is of course totally disregarded by Republicans; and the kind of blatant racism exhibited by Trump in 1989 is obviously a big part of Trump's current appeal to Republicans.

The NYT obituary department has further thoughts about Mayor Ed

Joe Cutbirth identifies himself on his Twitter page as "Texas expat, journalism professor, Longhorn fan and Democrat."

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar. . . ."

-- Shakespeare's Mark Antony, in Julius Caesar

by Ken

It must be a number of years now -- even though it feels "recent" -- that I reread Julius Caesar, having maybe seen a production or film or two along the way but not read the thing since high school -- and was blown away by it. I could still see why professional curriculumographers think the play is suitable for infliction on high schoolers, even as I was overwhelmed by the unlikelihood of any but the most precocious teen having more than the tiniest glimmering. But my goodness, the precision and intensity and depth and heat of the characterizations and the characters' human stakes in it all -- just staggering.

If you believe that characters in plays always speak the truth, or even the truth as they see it, then Mark Antony's funeral oration is as flat and purple as it always seemed when we were urged/forced to memorize a chunk of it. (Just about every comment on every version of the speech posted on YouTube makes reference to this agonized circumstance.) But once you factor in that people always have reasons for saying what they do, and that Antony has enormously powerful stakes indeed for couching his case in this seemingly simple platitude, then my goodness, how fascinating the rhetoric and the manipulation become! Able rhetorician and rabble-rouser that he is, a good half of what he says is the opposite of what he means, and means for the crowd to register.

Because as we all know, as a general principle he is stating it backwards. Yeah, sometimes the evil that men do lives after them, and sometimes the good is interred with their bones, but in public life it's just as likely, if not more likely, for the opposite to happen, especially when it comes to political figures.

In all the e-commotion I've tapped into regarding the general whitewash of Ed Koch which set in as soon as his death was announced, leading to what Noah dubbed "Eulogize an Asshole Day" in our joint remembrance on Friday night, I've actually encountered the suggestion that it's unseemly because of the timing, that now is apparently the time for respectful remembrance, and there will come a time for raising the uncomfortable questions.

Except that that time never seems to come. I think back to the deaths of those superheroes of the Republic Nixon and Reagan, and I'm still waiting. If the stock-taking that takes place immediately post mortem is given over to omissions and outright lies, reality has a mighty hard time catching up.

All of which is a prelude to the surprising news (surprising to me at least) reported this afternoon by HuffPost's Jack Mirkinson: "New York Times Revises Ed Koch Obit To Include AIDS." Jack's report begins (links onsite):

The New York Times revised its Friday obituary of former New York City mayor Ed Koch after several observers noticed that it lacked any mention of his controversial record on AIDS.

The paper's obituary, written by longtime staffer Robert D. MacFadden, weighed in at 5,500 words. Yet, in the first version of the piece, AIDS was mentioned exactly once, in a passing reference to "the scandals and the scourges of crack cocaine, homelessness and AIDS." The Times also prepared a 22-minute video on Koch's life that did not mention AIDS.

This struck many as odd; after all, Koch presided over the earliest years of AIDS, and spent many years being targeted by gay activists who thought he was not doing nearly enough to stop the spread of the disease. Legendary writer and activist Larry Kramer called Koch "a murderer of his own people" because the mayor was widely known as a closeted gay man.

Jack notes that "the Times' omission did not go unnoticed on Twitter," and reproduces a bunch of tweets to this effect. "In response," he writes, "the paper's obituary editor Bill McDonald told New York magazine that the issue was being 'addressed.' "

A few hours later, three paragraphs were added in. The meatiest one read, "Mr. Koch was also harshly criticized for what was called his slow, inadequate response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Hundreds of New Yorkers were desperately ill and dying in a baffling public health emergency, and critics, especially in the gay community, accused him of being a closeted homosexual reluctant to confront the crisis for fear of being exposed."

"Even there, the Times got it wrong," Jack writes, "as journalism professor Joe Cutbirth noted," and he reproduces the tweet I've put at the top of this post.

Brando as Mark Antony

#

Winter blues? Just remember, one day Donald Trump is going to die

If fantasizing about the demise of The Donald doesn't buck you up, you may be beyond help.

"[I]f my death in 15 or 20 years feels like it’s too far in the future to wash away your blues, you can take heart knowing that I’ll start to physically and mentally deteriorate well before then. . . . Hey, I’ve got an idea! Let’s try a surefire pick-me-up that is certain to buoy your spirits right this very moment: let’s think of ways I could die!"

-- from "When You're Feeling Low, Just
Remember I'll Be Dead In About 15 or 20 Years,"
a "commentary" by "Donald Trump" in The Onion

by Ken

I only just saw this "commentary" by "Donald Trump" from The Onion, as passed on by my friend Paul. Obviously it was written and published well before "Eulogize an Asshole Day," as our colleague Noah dubbed yesterday's orgy of kvelling over the passing of 88-year-old son-of-a-bitch former NYC Mayor Ed "How'm I Doin'?" Koch. Noah and I, you may have noticed, declined to participate in that particular exercise, at least in the regrettably traditional way, preferring to, well, call an asshole an asshole.

I thought I was being commendably gracious when I conceded that, while Mayor Ed "was a miserable self-serving son of a bitch," he "wasn't such an evil son of a bitch as to command a slot on my personal 'would like to dance on his grave' list." I'm not sure that even Donald Trump qualifies for that -- it seems like more trouble than it would be worth. But I think he will one day qualify for the list that I suggested "largely duplicates" this one, my "happy we're finally rid of him" list.

I'm flashing back to the sublime and tragically short-lived Jackie Thomas Show, in which Tom Arnold played an utterly loathsome human being who had magically lucked into a TV sitcom (of the same name) in which he became so generally beloved by televiewers as a sad-sack schlump that it became necessary for everyone involved in the show from the lowliest stagehand to the highest ranks of network management to put up with his obscenely savage behavior. Until, that is, the most ecstatically loony episode, when Jackie made such unimaginably sociopathic contract-renewal demands that the network brass (represented by old-time sidekicks Martin Mull and Fred Willard) called his bluff, and the writers were ordered to write a script in which the character of Jackie was killed off, and the long-suffering writers were so unhinged with joy that they began trotting out script ideas that, as head writer Jerry (Dennis Boutsoukaris) [pictured above] pointed out, weren't TV-Jackie's-death ideas but highlights of their real-Jackie's-death revenge fantasies.

(In the show, the network's idea was to kill TV Jackie off and replace him with Jackie's brother, who would move in with "Jackie's Family," as the episode was titled. So we wound up with a huge room filled with actors prepping to audition for the new role by doing their imitations of Jackie's signature ticks -- eventually including Jackie himself, wanting to audition for the role. I see that there were actually 18 episodes of The Jackie Thomas Show, which would make a splendid DVD package -- it was one of the funnniest shows ever put on the air. But I assume that the state of affairs between Arnold and ex-wife Roseanne, who presumably has a major ownership stake in the show, is so toxic that there's zero possibility of commercial release.)

It's in more or less that spirit that I approached The Onion's splendid fantasy of Donald Trump contemplating his own demise. It begins thusly:

My friends, everybody has their down days, and during these long winter months it is especially easy to succumb to the doldrums and find yourself in a bit of a funk. But not to fear! I have a simple tip that’s guaranteed to pick you up and get you back in good spirits in no time, and here it is: Whenever you’re feeling low, just remember that I, Donald Trump, will be dead in roughly 15 to 20 years.

That’s right. In the not-very-distant future I will die and then be gone from the world for all eternity. You may even get to watch me in a casket on national television being lowered into the ground, never to be seen again. I bet you’re smiling just thinking about that.

Now, I recognize that the news out there in the world has been particularly depressing lately, and these days it’s understandable that one might begin to feel like there’s no hope and no reason to go on, but let me assure you that there is. Oh, boy, is there ever! Indeed, you can always take solace in the fact that the monstrous, unimaginable piece of shit that is me will stop existing fairly soon, and that I will continue to not exist for the remainder of your lifetime. Biologically speaking, I, the host of NBC’s The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice, have no more than two decades left to live. In fact, right now I’m just 10 years away from reaching the average lifespan of an American male.

How does that make you feel? Pretty good, right?

Sure, I’ll have a grand, opulent funeral that will be talked about and broadcast extensively, and all the news segment retrospectives on my life will probably be obnoxious to watch and listen to, and will very likely make you angry. But just think: all of those segments will end with a picture of my blustery, self-important face and the dates 1946–2031 printed beneath it. Or maybe 1946–2032. Or, who knows, maybe earlier! Even if you’re not feeling glum, I guarantee the recognition that my death is a concrete and rapidly approaching inevitability will make you feel even better. . . .

And then, in the same spirit as that hilarious scene in the Jackie Thomas Show writers' room, Onion Donald invites us to fantasize about the manner of his demise.

Perhaps I’ll suffer through a slow, excruciating kidney failure that leaves me in profound pain that the doctors just can’t treat. It could be a massive heart attack while I’m delivering a speech to investors, forcing me to clutch my chest in agony and stagger into the audience. It could be Alzheimer’s. Or I could even be diagnosed with a vicious form of cancer that at first appears to be responding well to chemotherapy but then takes a rapid and inescapable turn for the worse.

And of course there’s always the possibility that I’ll be declared brain-dead after a stroke and lie immobile on a hospital bed for a year or more before Melania finally works up the courage to pull the plug.

And if you need a real shot in the arm to get you laughing and smiling again, just remember that I could trip down a flight of stairs in my own ultra-plush luxury high-rise this very night and shatter my skull right there. Isn’t that great?

So there’s no reason to be wearing a frown, my friend. I will die, and I will die soon. And as long as you remember that, your days will be brighter. I promise.

I don't know about you, but I sure feel better! The feeling may not last, but hey, it's something. And I'll bet the principle can be extended to any number of other human excrescences whose departure would not only upgrade the physical human stock but provide at least a momentary buck-up to the spirit.

#

Ed "How'm I Doin'?" Koch (1924-2013)

And Noah declares today "Eulogize an Asshole Day"

Mayor Ed's final kvetching place has been waiting for him in uptown Trinity Church Cemetery. Do click to enlarge -- it's a pretty picture.

by Ken

Ed Koch wasn't such an evil son of a bitch as to command a slot on my personal "would like to dance on his grave" list, but he was a miserable self-serving son of a bitch, and while I can't say I'm happy we're finally rid of him (I've got a list of those too, which largely duplicates the "would like to dance on his grave" one), I can't say I'm sorry either.

Early today our poor colleague Noah, finding himself trapped in front of a screenful of "all Ed, all the time," sent this cry from the heart to Howie and me:

EULOGIZE AN ASSHOLE DAY

by Noah

The former mayor was naturally on hand that day in April 2011 when the Queensboro Bridge was formally renamed -- according to the sign Hizzoner is partially obscuring -- the "Ed Koch Queensboro Br". (Yes, the sign says "Br".) Of course for our Ed everything was pretty much always about, well, our Ed. -- Ken

Ed Koch: My 2 cents. Today is apparently "Eulogize An Asshole Day" on our local Channel One. Koch is gone. Ding Dong, the bitch is dead. There is literally nothing but Ed Koch, Ed Koch, Ed Koch, Ed Koch on New York's local news channel; not even a decent weather forecast. What a waste of valuable airtime! It's bad enough that the city had already renamed the 59th Street Bridge after him, a renaming that most New Yorkers do not accept. Officially, it's called the Edward Koch Bridge or something unearned and miserable like that. It's a beautiful bridge. It deserves better. What was wrong with "The 59th Street Bridge", as celebrated in song by no less than Paul Simon? I often think of hurling paint-filled balloons at the new signs, but damn it, they have those cameras everywhere now, so that avenue of free speech is closed to me now. The only good thing about all of this love for Koch is that it's probably driving Rudy Julieandrews completely nuts with jealousy and envy. In fact, Rudy's probably decided to hire a film company to construct a glowing all day long program about "America's Mayor -- The Incomparable Rudy G!" for the day he goes -- directly to hell. Yes, the days when cretinous politicians die should be celebrated but in more of a "good riddance" way; a "don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya" kind of way... well, actually, a "may your fingers be smashed by them slamming Pearly Gates up yonder in the clouds as the big boot of St. Peter sends you the other way" kind of way! There, I feel better now. Let his body be dragged along the subway tracks by the A train.

I especially love the image of Rudy Giuliani seething at all the love being showered on Mayor Ed, since Rudy is one of those people who resents any attention paid to anyone else as attention that should have been paid to him. Another person like that, of course, was Mayor Ed. (By the way, for the record what has generally been known on the Manhattan side of this vital bridge to Queens as the 59th Street Bridge used to be called formally the Queensboro Bridge and is now officially the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge.)

Noah returned to the subject later in the day, explaining:

I guess the man just makes me feel quite nihilistic. Perhaps ol' Ed was the man who inspired the punks in the 70s. The reporters say he cleaned up the city. Hell, I still remember my feet crunching the crack vials that littered the sidewalks in his time.

AT LEAST THOSE WHO DO WISH TO DANCE ON
MAYOR ED'S GRAVE DON'T HAVE TO HUNT FOR IT

The prepared grave, complete with mausoleum-quality stone, has been waiting for him since 2009 in the southeast corner of the eastern half (i.e., east of Broadway) of Manhattan's uptown (in the mid-West 150s) Trinity Church Cemetery. As is so often the case with Mayor Ed, there is irony here.

If you blow up the photo of the waiting headstone, you will see inscribed the final words of murdered Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl, "My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish." Trinity Church, which sits on lower Broadway at the mouth of Wall Street, has been, just about since the English takeover of formerly Dutch New Amsterdam, the heart of Episcopalian New York City, and as some wag once ventured, "In New York City, all money is Episcopalian."

Apparently that's not how Mayor Ed is coming to rest here. As the AP reported today:

At age 83, Koch paid $20,000 for a burial plot at Trinity Church Cemetery, at the time the only graveyard in Manhattan that still had space.

"I don't want to leave Manhattan, even when I'm gone," Koch told The Associated Press. "This is my home. The thought of having to go to New Jersey was so distressing to me."

Not long after buying the plot, he had his tombstone inscribed and installed.

But if ever there was a man who belongs in the bosom of Moneyed New York, a man in thrall to the power interests of the city, it's Mayor Ed. Which is cruelly ironic, since he entered public life as a crusading Reform Democrat, at the heart of the struggle to wrest control of the party and city government from the tight-fisted grasp of the political bosses emblemized as "Tammany Hall." Oh, I suppose it's possible that he was always more conservative than he let on back in the day, but if so, he kept it awfully well hidden.

By the end, though, Mayor Ed was not only endorsing Republicans but participating actively in New York State Republican Party politics. He liked to claim that he hadn't changed, that it was his onetime liberal allies who had. Of course that's BS. He went from a crusading-against-the-bosses reformer to a full-blown stooge of the city's power elites, Democratic and Republican. (I don't think he had to dig that deep in his pockets to come up with the $20K for the Trinity gravesite, not to mention the extra scratch for the fancy stone and the rest of the plot decor.)

On a recent walking tour somewhere around the city, I heard it told that Mayor Ed had actually said that it's the function of artists in search of affordable space to move into blighted neighborhoods and revitalize them to the point of pricing themselves out of the neighborhoods. I should add that I haven't absolutely verified that the mayor said this, but the authority for it seems plausible.

What I find remarkable isn't that Mayor Ed thought this, since as far as I can tell it has been a basic governing principle of the city's power elites for some decades now -- dating back, perhaps, to the Koch administration. No, what I find remarkable is that Hizzoner may actually have said it. No matter how fervently you may believe stuff like this, you're not supposed to say it.

I'm sorry, but this is not the Ed Koch who stood David-like against the Goliath of Tammany Hall. It's some cruel parody of that Ed Koch. So when we latter-day New York liberals, folks like Noah and me, think about Mayor Ed, the feeling goes beyond a level-headed assessment of the (much overrated) pros and (scandalously underconsidered) cons of his political legacy. There is always that feeling of betrayal.

As there has been with regard to his private life. Is there anyone who doesn't take it as an article of faith that the lifelong bachelor was gay? I'm prepared to believe that by and large he just didn't do sex, but his steadfast refusal to allow discussion of his sexual politics goes way beyond his undoubted right to privacy. During his years in public life, and in particular his three terms as mayor, the city was beginning to come to grips with the issue of the basic rights of citizenship of what we think of now as its LGBT citizens. Mayor Ed was pretty much MIA -- as was the post-mayoral Ed. (UPDATE: I should have noted that during Mayor Ed's tenure, 1978-89, the AIDS epidemic was raging, and he wasn't much more engaged than the notoriously oblivious President Reagan.)

Early on in his time as mayor, Mayor Ed became celebrated for mingling with ordinary New Yorkers and asking, "How'm I doin'?" It had a nice folksy air, the mayor hobnobbing with the commonfolk and asking -- as I assume he meant the question -- for their sense of the job he was doing for them.

Still, the way it came out, and the way it lingers in memory, it was always about Mayor Ed himself, and also the people who thought just the way he did. Other people basically had no place in his social or political cosmos. Is it any wonder that he wound up in the bosom of the Republican Party?

I won't be dancing on Mayor Ed's grave. Spitting is another matter, though.



Simon and Garfunkel sing "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" at their 1981 "Concert in Central Park."

#

Who Are The Real Enemies of The American People? Hint: It Isn't Oceana, Eurasia Or Even Eastasia

I'll go out on a limb and say what's left of American democracy isn't under threat by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, Robert Mugabe or even Osama bin Laden. I'm sure you've noticed that until about a week ago when he started strafing his own citizens with fighter jets, we were getting along just swimmingly with Muammar Qaddafi and have quite cordial relations with similarly brutal tyrants from high profile allies King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Hu Jintao of China to no less horrific despots like Isayas Afewerki of Eritrea and our dear oil pals Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov of Turkmenistan and Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equitorial Guinea. All a repulsive disreputable lot, but none an especially existential threat to the American way of life. The Koch Brothers, on the other hand, are. They have the wealth-- ill-gotten and untaxed to push a highly reactionary, anti-social vision that insists "that taxes and government regulation are destructive forces and that government generally makes people’s lives worse." They started the Cato Institute, the Mercatus Center, and Americans for Prosperity, which funds and manipulates American teabaggery. They rabidly oppose healthcare, financial regulation, taxes and environmental and consumer protections. When you have billions of dollars and all that it will buy, the law of the jungle works quite well, thank you.

In the week-long battle taking place in Wisconsin over Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to strip state workers of their collective bargaining rights, you'd expect Fox News to be doing what it's done: misreporting the story, mistakenly characterizing a poll supporting public workers to mean its opposite, featuring Glenn Beck painting the protests of union workers as something cooked up by Stalinists. And you might be tempted to think, well, that's just Fox playing to its base of frightened Tea Partiers who prefer a fact-free zone to the more challenging territory of actual news, where the answers are never pat, and the world is a bit more complicated than it seems in the realm of Fox Nation.

You might think it's all about what brings in the advertising dollars for Rupert Murdoch, CEO of Fox's parent company, News Corporation. But it runs much deeper than that, involving key players at the Wall Street Journal, News Corp.'s crown jewel. The informal partnership between billionaire David Koch, whose campaign dollars and astroturf group, Americans for Prosperity, have fomented the Wisconsin crisis, and billionaire Rupert Murdoch, is profoundly ideological-- the ideology being the exponential enrichment of the two men's heirs, all dressed up in the language of libertarianism and free enterprise. Together with his brother, Charles-- also a big donor to right-wing causes-- David Koch runs Koch Industries, the conglomerate that sprang from the oil and gas company founded by his father.

In yesterday's NY Times conected the dots between anti-democratic tendencies bubbling over on the American right and the Koch Brothers in his brilliant essay about the teabaggers demanding that the U.S. government be shut down until they get their way.

[T]he Wisconsin governor’s fawning 20-minute phone conversation with a prankster impersonating the oil billionaire David Koch last week, while entertaining, is merely a footnote. The Koch Industries political action committee did contribute to Walker’s campaign (some $43,000) and did help underwrite Tea Party ads and demonstrations in Madison. But this governor is merely a petty-cash item on the Koch ledger-- as befits the limited favors he can offer Koch’s mammoth, sprawling, Kansas-based industrial interests.

Look to Washington for the bigger story. As the Los Angeles Times recently reported, Koch Industries and its employees form the largest bloc of oil and gas industry donors to members of the new House Energy and Commerce Committee, topping even Exxon Mobil. And what do they get for that largess? As a down payment, the House budget bill not only reduces financing for the Environmental Protection Agency but also prohibits its regulation of greenhouse gases.

Here again, the dollars that will be saved are minute in terms of the federal deficit, but the payoff to Koch interests from a weakened E.P.A. is priceless. The same dynamic is at play in the House’s reduced spending for the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Internal Revenue Service. and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (charged with regulation of the esoteric Wall Street derivatives that greased the financial crisis). The reduction in the deficit will be minimal, but the bottom lines for the Kochs and their peers, especially on Wall Street, will swell.

These special interests will stay in the closet next week when the Tea Partiers in the House argue (as the Gingrich cohort once did) that their only agenda is old-fashioned fiscal prudence. The G.O.P. is also banking on the presumption that Obama will bide his time too long, as he did in the protracted health care and tax-cut melees, and allow the Fox News megaphone, not yet in place in ’95, to frame the debate. Listening to the right’s incessant propaganda, you’d never know that the latest Pew survey found that Americans want to increase, not decrease, most areas of federal spending-- and by large margins in the cases of health care and education.

The Kochs and their right-wing political subsidiaries-- whether the Tea Party or political shills like Scott Walker-- are holding pat. They sense weakness, a conflicted agenda, and irresolution from Obama and the Democrats. And why shouldn't they sense that; it's highly accurate. If it weren't, the Kochs would be in prison where they belong for stealing oil from American Indians and from the federal lands and for releasing huge amounts of cancer-causing benzene from a Texas refinery and then trying to cover it up, as well as for running their shady businesses as organized crime pure and simple.

Before you watch the video below, read this excerpt from last July's New York exposé of David Koch, whose father, Freddy, was one of the principle financiers of the John Birch Society, an insidious anti-democratic, anti-American hate group:

Earlier this year, he found himself attacked for being the financial engine of the largely white, largely male, very angry crowds that were gathering in towns across the country-- a few waving overtly racist or menacing anti-Obama signs-- to protest the president’s proposed health-care bill and other issues. Koch denies being directly involved with the tea party--“I’ve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me”-- but he and his brother Charles were being accused of supporting the group through an affiliated conservative organization. Rachel Maddow had effectively called Koch the tea party’s puppet master. “The radical press is coming after me and Charles,” he said. “They’re using us as whipping boys.” Burnishing his reputation was no longer his concern; now, it seemed, he needed to save it.

GOP Overreach-- Koch Bros Have Scott Walker Taking Away Voting Rights From Poor People

Libya's drug-addled dictator, Muammar Qaddafi, is either getting ready for an OK Corral type shoot-out/last stand or is getting ready to fly to Zimbabwe or Venezuela in front of the imposition of a no-fly zone... or, according to one rumor, has already been shot. The powers behind reactionary politicians, like the vampiric Koch Brothers, who have set up dozens of Scott Walkers and John Kasichs around the country to shill for their interests, deserve everything coming Qaddafi's way-- and more.

Earlier in the month, we saw in New Hampshire-- which, like Wisconsin, gave the keys to the car to the corporatist Republicans and their retarded sibling, the teabaggers-- a move to strip voting rights from college students in the state legislature. Yesterday Republican Greg Sorg's bill came under attack from Democrats and students, just as Wisconsin's overreaching legislature went down a very similar path-- taking away voting rights from people they suspect might vote for Democrats. These Republicans are, ironically, Stalinists (and there's a Koch relationship there as well).

Wisconsin Republicans are targeting seniors, college students and minorities with a new law demanding photo ID for voting, although these groups often include people who can't afford photo IDs. Mike Tate, Chairman of Wisconsin's Democratic Party:

"Without honest reasons, with total malice, the Republicans in Wisconsin's Senate today showed that Scott Walker's moment in history is about accruing all power to the state's shameful Republican party, and about nothing else. Not about creating jobs. Not about increasing our freedoms. Not about the better good for Wisconsin. The vote today, when Jim Crow finally came to Wisconsin, is a shameful episode in our state's long march toward progress. Without a single Democrat present, and in the same petulant manner as their godshead, Scott Walker, the Republicans have shown themselves for what they really are, pawns in the Koch Brothers plan to grind the less-powerful in Wisconsin, those working men and women who work for a living, underfoot."

And this morning Tate was still on a role, fuming about the GOP tactics in the state Assembly last night to ram through the union-busting bill Walker is demanding:

"Under cover of darkness, in a practice that Scott Walker denounced while he was campaigning for governor, the Republicans of the Wisconsin Assembly sold their soul. Upending seven decades of labor peace and putting Wisconsin up for sale to the likes of their Koch Brothers masters, they voted to sanction the most divisive piece of legislation in our state's history. Democrats tried bravely, and in vain, to amend this putrid piece of legislation to the benefit of the working families of Wisconsin. But the Scott Walker march to the bottom continues."

In yesterday's Capitol Times, Andrea Kaminski, Executive Director of Wisconsin's nonpartisan League of Women Voters, accused Republicans of playing partisan games with the bill.

The Republican members of a Senate committee on Tuesday passed an amended version of the voter ID bill. Democratic Sen. Jon Erpenbach was present by telephone, but committee Chair Sen. Mary Lazich did not allow him to ask questions or vote. The amended bill could be taken up on the Senate floor this week, although it may have to be stripped of its spending elements.

With all 14 Democratic senators out of state, the Senate does not have the 20-member quorum needed to pass a bill with fiscal impact. Lazich does not see the lack of a quorum as a hurdle. She said the appropriations for implementing the bill can be removed and instead put into the budget bill.

This is double-speak. For weeks proponents of this bill have been downplaying the very significant costs of implementing an ID program. Now they want to pretend there is no cost at all.
There is a reason why 20 senators are needed to pass a bill with fiscal impact-- to protect precious tax dollars from being wasted.

There is also a reason why voter ID is expensive. It is because without certain costly provisions, a voter ID law amounts to a poll tax. Poll taxes were widely used decades ago in Southern states to deny African-Americans the right to vote. Poll taxes eventually were struck down by the courts as unconstitutional. Case law has made it clear that voter ID laws need to make acceptable IDs available free of charge for all eligible citizens who do not already have one. The IDs must be readily accessible to all voters, without undue burden. At a minimum, Wisconsin would likely have to expand the number of ID-issuing offices and extend their operating hours to meet this requirement.

The courts have also made it clear that states must undertake substantial voter outreach and public education so that citizens understand the new law and the procedures for obtaining an ID. In addition, some courts may require states to ensure that all of the documents required to obtain a photo ID are free and easily available. (Brennan Center for Justice, “The Cost of Voter ID: What the Courts Say.”)

Without appropriations for free IDs, training of election officials and voter education, this bill is unconstitutional. There is no guarantee that these appropriations will be approved in the state budget. Ignoring the costs, or pretending they don’t exist, is irresponsible.

Ezra Klein, writing yesterday in the Washington Post chalks it up to Scott Walker-- a cat's paw for the Kochs and their ilk-- trying to "reshape the balance of power in Wisconsin... using the absence of the state's Senate Democrats to pass a law requiring photo identification from voters. Such laws tend to exclude groups of voters who move a lot, don't drive or can't afford the fees required to keep their identification current-- groups that just happen to overlap with traditionally Democratic constituencies. Here's NYU's Brennan Center for Justice on who tends to get excluded":

The impact of ID requirements is even greater for the elderly, students, people with disabilities, low-income individuals, and people of color. Thirty-six percent of Georgians over 75 do not have a driver’s license. Fewer than 3 percent of Wisconsin students have driver’s licenses listing their current address. The same study found that African Americans have driver’s licenses at half the rate of whites, and the disparity increases among younger voters; only 22% of black men aged 18-24 had a valid driver’s license. Not only are minority voters less likely to possess photo ID, but they are also more likely than white voters to be selectively asked for ID at the polls.

Primary Day In New York-- And Six Other States

Howie drags another unsuspecting congressional candidate, Jon Powers, to a raw food restaurant

There are a seven states with primaries today, although New York's is the only one worth reporting on. A gaggle of greasy Republicans are fighting amongst each other to take on Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes in New Hampshire but Carol and Paul are expected to beat back whichever clown is nominated by the reactionaries. The gubernatorial primary in Delaware takes on some meaning because whoever wins the Democratic nod is likely to be appointing a U.S. Senator after November.

In New York, however, there really are some hot races. In the Staten Island/Brooklyn district (NY-13), the Democratic Establishment has gotten behind pro-war, pro-corporate, conservative shill Michael McMahon from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party while grassroots Democrats back Steve Harrison. According to this morning's CQPolitics "Harrison held Fossella to the lowest take of his congressional career, 57 percent, in 2006 but with the scandal surrounding Fossella and the subsequent chance to pick up the seat, Democrats turned to McMahon for the general election. McMahon reported raising $717,000 and had $413,000 on hand through Aug. 20, according to his pre-primary report, while Harrison raised $201,000 and had $45,000 on hand by the same date. The Republican primary, meanwhile, has turned nasty. Two candidates are competing for the party nomination: former state Rep. Robert Straniere and Staten Island GOP Finance Chair Jamshad Wyne. The district encompasses all of Staten Island and the southern tip of Brooklyn and both county Republican parties have endorsed Straniere. But Wyne has boosted his candidacy with $325,000 in self-loans, which puts him far ahead of Straniere in fundraising. Wyne raised $334,000 and had $203,000 on hand through Aug. 20 while Straniere raised $15,000 and had $12,000 on hand by the same date. The local Conservative Party favors McMahon but the state party overruled their attempt to endorse him. Instead the Conservatives are running their own far right lunatic fringe candidate, depriving the GOP of their line-- and likely to help the Democrat in November.

Up in the suburban/exurban area between Buffalo and Rochester (NY-26) the DCCC insiders and the grassroots are on the same side-- both backing Jon Powers against an extremely nasty and deranged Republican billionaire running as a Democrat, Jack Davis. Davis has spent $3.6 million on his campaign and, according to CQPolitics has no support whatsoever from the Democratic Party and is simply running a "sabotage campaign against Powers... bleeding him dry,” something which may well help Davis' old friends in the GOP come November.

In the Albany district, where Mike McNulty is one of the few Democrats retiring from Congress this year, the field is crowded and the campaign hasn't yielded much heat or light. Soundpolitic over at TheAlbanyProject has the best analysis I've seen and has come to the conclusion that Phil Steck is the best candidate.

There is also an outside chance that Kevin Powell will beat corrupt reactionary Democratic hack Edolphus Towns in Brooklyn. CQPolitics: "It will be Towns’ second tough challenge in a row after winning the 2006 Democratic primary with less than 50 percent of the vote over two little-known Democratic challengers. Towns was criticized by party leadership for failing to vote with the party, including a vote in support of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which passed 217-215 but was unpopular with many top Democrats. Towns is favored to survive the primary; he has raised more than 10 times more money than Powell ($1.2 million to $100,000) and had seven times more cash on hand ($417,000 to $57,000) by Aug. 20."

And speaking of New York, Ed Koch, a posterboy for Democrats who have gone over to the Dark Side, has taken leave of his Republican allies and endorsed Obama. He says Palin is too scary for mainstream Americans to support the McCain-Palin ticket.

I have concluded that the country is safer in the hands of Barack Obama, leader of the Democratic Party and protector of the philosophy of that party. Protecting and defending the U.S. means more than defending us from foreign attacks. It includes defending the public with respect to their civil rights, civil liberties and other needs, e.g., national health insurance, the right of abortion, the continuation of Social Security, gay rights, other rights of privacy, fair progressive taxation and a host of other needs and rights.

If the vice president were ever called on to lead the country, there is no question in my mind that the experience and demonstrated judgment of Joe Biden is superior to that of Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is a plucky, exciting candidate, but when her record is examined, she fails miserably with respect to her views on the domestic issues that are so important to the people of the U.S., and to me. Frankly, it would scare me if she were to succeed John McCain in the presidency.