"If Donald Trump is at the top of the Republican ticket, the risk of one-party rule by a Democratic Party captured by the progressive left is severe."

Wrote Emily Seidel, the chief executive of the Koch political network (Americans for Prosperity Action).

Quoted in "Months After Backing Haley, Koch Network Suspends Support for Her Campaign/The group’s chief executive wrote in an email to staff on Sunday that it would now focus on House and Senate races" (NYT).

Trump's response:

ADDED: Trump flaunted his status as a man of the people by deploying the grocer's apostrophe.

"David H. Koch, who amassed a multibillion-dollar fortune with his brother Charles from the corporate behemoth they ran and then joined him in pouring their riches into a powerful right-wing libertarian movement..."

"... that helped reshape American politics, has died. He was 79.... Three decades after David Koch’s public steps into politics, analysts say, the Koch brothers’ money-fueled brand of libertarianism helped give rise to the Tea Party movement and strengthened the far-right wing of a resurgent Republican Party....ince the 1970s, the Kochs have spent at least $100 million — some estimates put it at much more — to transform a fringe movement into a formidable political force aimed at moving America to the far right by influencing the outcome of elections, undoing limits on campaign contributions and promoting conservative candidacies, think tanks and policies.... Under the administration of Donald J. Trump, the Koch brothers’ prospects in Washington seemed improved, at least superficially. But beneath the surface lay substantive political and personal differences between the Kochs and Mr. Trump.... As the 2018 congressional elections approached, the Kochs’ frustrations with Mr. Trump broke into an ugly and open exchange between Charles Koch and the president. Charles denounced Mr. Trump’s restrictive trade and immigration policies as divisive, and threatened to withhold the family’s support for Republican candidates who opposed the free-trade, government-shrinking policies at the heart of the Koch political philosophy. Mr. Trump struck back on Twitter, calling the Koch political apparatus 'overrated' and 'a total joke in real Republican circles.'"

From the NYT obituary.

"President Donald Trump appeared to return a call from a prankster posing as New Jersey’s Democratic Senator Bob Menendez during an Air Force One flight earlier this week..."

Bloomberg News reports.

Audio of an exchange with Trump and the pranksters was posted online by “The Stuttering John Podcast” and features the president speaking with a comedian, who pretends to be Menendez. In a three-minute conversation, the two men discussed the Supreme Court, the debacle over immigrant family separations and Menendez’s corruption trial.

The White House did not refute the authenticity of the audio, and declined to comment.

What a screwup by Trump's call screeners, but Trump just sounds like typical Trump in the recording. So it's not as juicy as the prank call that got through to Governor Scott Walker in February 2011, at the height of the Wisconsin protests:

I never thought Scott Walker’s people would be dumb enough to put me through....

I told Keith Gilkes, who was then Walker’s chief of staff, that the governor couldn’t return my call because “my goddamn maid, Maria, put my phone in the washer. I’d have her deported, but she works for next to nothing.” (In reality, I was calling with a free Skype number and couldn’t receive calls from a land line at the time.)

In my business, that’s called tipping your hand. All ethical liars do it. It’s the ridiculous, implausible hints that separate the ethical prankster from the confidence man, the satirist from the unrepentant political hack. But they didn’t get the joke, and soon Walker and I were comparing notes on how he could break the backs of those pro-union demonstrators....

At the appointed hour, Walker and I enjoyed a friendly chat during which I suggested that he physically intimidate his Democratic opposition with a baseball bat, whip up a good counter-protest by dressing hobos in suits and most disturbing: that he ought to plant troublemakers to discredit the pro-union demonstrators.

“[W]e thought about that,” Walker replied, and eventually added, “My only fear would be if there’s a ruckus caused is that would scare the public into thinking maybe the governor has to settle to avoid all these problems.” So it wasn’t morality, but a cynical calculation, that saved the public from that particular ruse.

"Okay, I am just going to right out and say that Time's Man of the Year should have been me."

Lewis Wetzel wrote in the comments to yesterday's post "It can't be that Time colludes with prospective Persons of the Year to see what access it can get out of the process of honoring somebody." Wetzel offers these "bullet points":

-changed the oil -- myself -- on the 2001 Explorer.
-learned how to make a darn good Alfredo sauce.
-read both "Iliad" and "Odyssey."
-hired a guy to do some yard work I've been putting off.
Have you done better? Your immediate response will be to say "Yes!", but then look at the bullet points again, especially the one where I changed the oil in the 2001 Explorer. By myself.

Also in the comments Leslie Graves wrote: "Who would be on the cover of Time this year if the Koch acquisition had already taken place?"

Meade answers that question: "Someone born November 27, 1953 in Norfolk, VA maybe?"

Google tells me Meade is talking about Steve Bannon. That brings up 2 points:

1. Why would the Kochs want to highlight Bannon? The Kochs don't like Bannon publicly, but Bannon was instrumental in getting Trump elected and he's gone now. The Kochs haven't publicly liked Trump either, but as Bannon famously said: “If Pence were to become President for any reason, the government would be run by the Koch brothers—period. He’s been their tool for years... I’m concerned he’d be a President that the Kochs would own" (quoted in "The Danger of President Pence" in The New Yorker).

2. In yesterday's post, I expressed suspicion that Time did have the idea of making Trump Person of the year again this year, but only as a co-winner, and pairing him with someone in a negative way, which is what Time did to Bill Clinton in 1998 (making him co-Person with Kenneth Starr). Now, I'm seeing that the co-winner could very easily have been Steve Bannon.

Here's the post where I reject the term "false equivalence."

First, is it "equivalence" or "equivalency"? The Ngram says "equivalence":



The 2 words are equivalent, and neither is wrong. I'm just noticing that there are 2 words and interested in picking one and being consistent. It's not a word I've used much in the 12-year history of this blog. It appears almost only in quotes and almost always when someone is saying "false equivalenc[e/y]" (or "moral equivalenc[e/y]").

It occurs to me that "false equivalence" is a bad expression. What's "false" about thinking 2 things are alike? You might falsely claim that 2 things are identical, but if you are just putting 2 things side by side and saying they are similar when there are also differences, you don't deserve to be accused of falsehood. Maybe "equivalence" is the wrong word. If you haven't said the 2 things are exactly equal, you don't deserve to be said to have asserted that there is "equivalence." To concentrate on the word "false" in the phrase "false equivalence" is to get distracted, perhaps by taking offense at the pejorative.

I'm drawn into this language issue by an off-line discussion of the alleged sexual misdeeds of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. In case you are wondering.

Anyway, looking at my own archive, I don't think I've ever accused anyone of relying on "false equivalence," but I have discussed the usage. For example, in June 2014, David Brock was trying to convince rich liberals to spend big money on politics even as he was lambasting the Koch Brothers (nonliberals) for spending big money on politics:

“You’re not in this room today trying to figure out how to rig the game so you can be free to make money poisoning little kids, and neither am I... Subscribing to a false moral equivalence is giving the Kochs exactly what they want: keeping us quiet about what they’re doing to destroy the very fabric of our nation."

And I said: 

His idea is: Since the Democrats are in politics to do what is good and the Kochs want what is bad, there's a "false equivalence." Seeing the false equivalence — I observe — requires that you look at the end and not the means.

The phrase "false equivalence" is very common rhetoric these days. Watch out for it. I think it's being used to inhibit comparisons. But there is nothing wrong — nothing false — about comparisons. You just need to be perceptive and honest about how much alike things are. Those who say "false equivalence" are really saying they'd prefer to call attention to the differences or for you to just not bother them with a comparison that makes them uncomfortable.

One last thing. There are different reasons to resist someone's saying 2 things are alike. There's the familiar political argument. X criticizes Y's candidate, Y says X's candidate did the same kind of thing, X wants to get back to the problem with Y's candidate, and the phrase "false equivalence" seems like the tool for the job.

But quite apart from politics, there are different psychological orientations. I'm thinking of lumpers and splitters:

A "lumper" is an individual who takes a gestalt view of a definition, and assigns examples broadly, assuming that differences are not as important as signature similarities. A "splitter" is an individual who takes precise definitions, and creates new categories to classify samples that differ in key ways.

Some people see similarities much more than differences, and for other people differences predominate. I tend to see the ways we're all alike, but there are other people who look for ways to segment us off into little groups. I think I'm more of a lumper but to say that is to be something of a splitter, no? Those other people are splitters. It makes no sense. Or, yes, I see how it does, I need to see how it does. I don't think there are lumpers and splitters. That's too splitter-y for me. I think we're much more alike than different, but if you think we are more different, that's okay too, as long as you don't accuse me of falsehood for saying that we are more alike.

This election is pathological. Path-o-logical.

"Clinton’s advisers tell her to prep for a landslide Displaying unchecked confidence, the Democrat’s paid consultants see plenty of paths to the White House." So they say, according to Politico.

“Hillary Clinton has many paths to 270 electoral votes, more than any candidate in a generation,” said Jeff Berman, a paid consultant to her campaign....

Meanwhile, also according to Politico, "Inside Trump Tower: Facing grim reality/Three weeks until early voting, the campaign scrambles to pick a path and stay on it."

So, let me get this straight: Hillary has "plenty of paths," but Trump is struggling to "pick a path and stay on it."

Is it good to have different paths or is it bad? Good for Hillary, bad for Trump? Would it be pathological to want some logic in all this talk of paths?



I'm thinking the Hillary side figures it serves their cause to make people feel that it's all over, that there's no way to fight them off, because they've got another way and another way. It's like how you can't build a wall, because if you build a wall, they'll dig a tunnel and then another tunnel, and you'll never find all the tunnels. Ha ha! Give up! 

From the Trump article:

Late last week... Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met with Republican National Committee brass... Those present for the meeting... said Kushner’s questions reflected a growing realization within Trump’s team that for all the party’s talk about implementing a major swing-state deployment plan, it hasn’t yet materialized.... The absence of a clear plan has spread to something even more fundamental — the campaign’s path to 270 electoral votes....

Making matters tough for Trump has been the ongoing reluctance of the party’s biggest contributors to open their wallets.... The billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch also have refused to come around.

The antipathy has had far-reaching consequences....

That's it. Antipathy! The opposition to paths.

If you're celebrating the generosity of Marc Zuckerberg, you're a hypocrite if you won't also celebrate the Koch brothers.

That's what crossed my mind as I read this NYT op-ed, "How Mark Zuckerberg’s Altruism Helps Himself," by Jesse Eisinger (of ProPublica).

[Zuckerberg] created a limited liability company.... An L.L.C. can invest in for-profit companies.... An L.L.C. can make political donations. It can lobby for changes in the law. He remains completely free to do as he wishes with his money.... [H]e amassed one of the greatest fortunes in the world — and is likely never to pay any taxes on it....

Maybe Mr. Zuckerberg will make wonderful decisions, ones I would personally be happy with. Maybe not. He blew his $100 million donation to the Newark school system, as Dale Russakoff detailed in her recent book, “The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools?” Mr. Zuckerberg has said he has learned from his mistakes....

But I think I might do a good job allocating $45 billion. Maybe even better than Mr. Zuckerberg. I am self-aware enough to realize many people would disagree with my choices. Those who like how Mr. Zuckerberg is lavishing his funds might not like how the Koch brothers do so. Or George Soros....

[W]e are turning into a society of oligarchs. And I am not as excited as some to welcome the new Silicon Valley overlords.

Eisinger wants "some kind of tax on wealth," even as he recognizes that "nobody thinks our government representatives do a good job of allocating resources." We do at least have some say in what the government does... which is part of why Soros, the Kochs, and presumably Zuckerberg would like to use their wealth to influence elections. But what happens when they act directly, using their vast wealth to skew choices that would otherwise belong to the people, as Zuckerberg did in Newark? We need to be skeptical and not naively appreciative of gifts. 

I'm keeping track of the media's use of the "clown" metaphor to describe the GOP.

My theory is that this is a tell and that what it really indicates is anxiety about there only being one candidate on the Democratic side. The "clown" idea is usually expressed as "clown car." That is, it's a way to say there are an awful lot of individuals crammed into a space that shouldn't be able to hold so many.

But this morning I'm seeing "clown show," which either assumes we know the "show" is the old car routine or hopes to get away with simply portraying Republicans as ridiculous:

"The Koch brothers try to rein in the GOP presidential clown show." (A WaPo headline for an article that doesn't contain the word "clown." This article currently ranks #1 on WaPo's "most read" list.)

ADDED: Remember the time Obama was portrayed as a clown? It was a time of outrage! 

"We will support whoever the candidate is. But it should be Scott Walker."

Said David Koch of the notorious Koch Brothers.

"NYTimes Edit Board ruthlessly attacks some guy named 'Mr. Scott' who they claim is the governor of Wisconsin."

"No, but he’s a damn fine starship engineer, I don’t care what the Timesmen say."

Hilarious screwup. And it's all the more hilarious because the subject of the editorial is doubt about Governor Scott Walker's use of the expression "drafting error" to explain a proposed change in the statutory law about the mission of the University of Wisconsin System.

NYTimes Edit Board ruthlessly attacks some guy named "Mr. Scott" who they claim is the governor of Wisconsin pic.twitter.com/y8iNv5ROO8
— Logan Dobson (@LoganDobson) February 6, 2015

So was that really, truly a drafting error by The New York Times, or was this behind-the-scene mockery that accidentally got published, "Mush from the Wimp"-style?

Here in Wisconsin, Walker-haters have often called the man "Scottie." Here's an example in some video Meade shot during the protests of 2011: "Koch Brothers" (in top hats) manipulating their puppet Walker and saying "Come along, Scottie!"



The New York Times has "brazenly deleted" its use of the moniker "Mr. Scott," and if confronted, I supposed it would say it was a "drafting error." If so, we could get all derisive and contemptuous and call the "excuse" "ridiculous" and the original draft "pernicious" in precise emulation of the NYT editorial.

Here's my post from a couple days ago on the underlying substance of this controversy: "Why did Scott Walker attack the University of Wisconsin's century-old 'Wisconsin Idea' slogan/mission?" I don't know whether Scott Walker and his people intended to delete some statutory verbiage because they recognized it to be "The Wisconsin Idea" and they oppose that idea or because it just looked like meaningless blabber. Here's a photograph showing the editing that seems to mean so much to Walker's antagonists.


(Click to enlarge.)

To my eye, it looks like the changes were, first, to augment the mission to include meeting the state's "workforce needs" and then to eliminate what the editor thought was excess verbiage. Note that The Wisconsin Idea is still there in the first sentence in the words "to... discover and disseminate knowlege... beyond the boundaries of its campuses."

The Times editorial ends with some perseveration about "red meat for conservative zealots," but come on. If that editing counts as red meat for conservative zealots, this outrage over word editing is a big bloody slab of red meat for liberal zealots.

AND: I'm frontpaging something I said in the comments:

As with the Wisconsin protests, we're seeing an effort to make people think they must be enraged at this monster Walker.

I backfired in 2011 and in 2012 and in 2014. Maybe it seems new to some people outside of Wisconsin, but it's so stupid and boring to me.

And this is especially stupid, because look at the words that people are throwing a fit about. Do they really think the American people are going to understand this tempest in a teapot? First, you have to internalize the devotion to something called The Wisconsin Idea (which I suspect will read as banal and obvious to people in other states: Why is that something special about Wisconsin as opposed to what all universities try to do?). Second, you have to believe that the change in the language was anything other than weeding out some verbose obviousness. Third, you have to think that the University's mission statement needs to appear in the statute... and not just appear, but appear repetitiously.

Who would go there? It makes absolutely no sense.

MORE: The editorial reads as though some local Wisconsin hothead spewed it out for them. Maybe the original referred to Walker by his first name and the minimal editing inserted the "Mr.," because that's a longstanding NYT convention and some mindless functionary was tending to the superficial task. That is, no fact-checking was going on and Scott looks like a last name. There actually is a Governor Scott in the U.S. right now (in Florida).

"I know where the money is. I know where to get it."

Said Nancy Pelosi.

She knows the Koch Brothers?

"As the cable shows signed off last night, it was dawning even on the most conventional pundits that the Republicans had not elected an escadrille of Republican archangels..."

"... to descend upon Capitol Hill. It was more like a murder of angry crows. Joni Ernst is not a moderate. David Perdue is not a moderate. Thom Tillis is not a moderate. Cory Gardner -- who spiced up his victory by calling himself 'the tip of the spear' -- is not a moderate. Tom Cotton is not a moderate. And these were the people who flipped the Senate to the Republicans. In the reliably Republican states, Ben Sasse in Nebraska is not a moderate.  James Lankford in Oklahoma is not a moderate. He's a red-haired fanatic who believes that welfare causes school shootings. Several of these people -- most notably, Sasse and Ernst -- won Republican primaries specifically as Tea Partiers, defeating establishment candidates. The Republicans did not defeat the Tea Party. The Tea Party's ideas animated what happened on Tuesday night. What the Republicans managed to do was to teach the Tea Party to wear shoes, mind its language, and use the proper knife while amputating the social safety net. They did nothing except send the Tea Party to finishing school."

Wrote Esquire's Charles P. Pierce, live-blogging the election results. I note that he called Scott Walker "the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin."

Yes, it's interesting to go back and relive Tuesday night from the perspective of someone who — we know in retrospect — is going to get deeply wounded.

A few stray observations about Pierce's style of humor:

1. Why is "red-haired" considered acceptable as an insult?

2. Why is it considered okay to call attention to what seems to be an eye disorder? Whether something is wrong with Scott Walker's eyes or not, the epithet "goggle-eyed" is disrespectful to all of the people who suffer from conditions like esotropia.

3. To speak of teaching the Tea Party "to wear shoes" is to try to be funny by evoking the stereotype of barefoot hillbillies. When will elite urban white people ever get the feeling that it's bigoted to mock rural white people? Oh, the answer is easy. You can find it in the book title "What's the matter with Kansas"? There's something wrong with these people as long as they fail to vote for Democrats.

(By the way, "escadrille" is how you say "squadron" or "small squadron" in French. I'll refrain from adding an anti-French kicker, given my attention to political correctness above.)

A thuddingly simplistic interpretation of the risks advertising on "The Daily Show."

Jaime Fuller at WaPo points out the "Daily Show" bit where Jon Stewart acknowledges that Koch Industries is one of the show's sponsors and runs a parody of their ad in which the voiceover listing good things the company does is replaced by a list of bad things, like "rearranging polar bears" and "lubricating birds."

Fuller articulates the "lesson": "Make sure that the content surrounding your ad buy doesn't disagree with you and have the ability to try and neutralize the effectiveness of your ad. Because they probably will."

That's a thuddingly simplistic interpretation. It could be a perfectly good choice for Koch Industries to put its ad on "The Daily Show" even knowing that it would trigger the parody.

"The Daily Show" continually slams the Koch brothers, whether they advertise on the show or not. At least the ad provides some counterweight, some nudge toward skepticism about the world view presented on the show. And the parody is so heavy-handed that some listeners might begin to think: Is it really that bad? Or even: What are liberals so afraid of here?

Some independent thoughts might arise. Like: Dark money? Don't Democrats have their own "dark money"? And: There's something creepy about fixing upon and demonizing 2 particular American citizens.

"A week's worth of Wisconsin 2014 political ads, from best to worst."

There are 5 ads ranked (at Isthmus). I gravitate to the worst one:



That's from the AFL-CIO.

Second worst is one we already talked about in a post called "'What’s eleven dollars buy you in Wisconsin? Well, Scott Walker thinks eleven dollars buys your vote.'"

Isthmus rates one of Scott Walker's ads the second best of the week, but kicks it with "Everything Walker says here is a lie, but he says it very well."

The #1 best ad of the week is about how Scott Walker is poisoning children and wrecking the earthscape of northern Wisconsin.

The Democrats are big hypocrites about "dark money" in politics.

According to Thomas B. Edsall (in the NYT).

He has this horrifying quote from Media Matters chairman, David Brock, speaking to a Democracy Alliance group:

You’re not in this room today trying to figure out how to rig the game so you can be free to make money poisoning little kids. Subscribing to a false moral equivalence is giving the Kochs exactly what they want: keeping us quiet about what they’re doing to destroy the very fabric of our nation.

That's one of the many, many ways of saying the end justifies the means.

I love the Supreme Court's emerging unanimity.

And so does former acting solicitor general Neal K. Katyal:

The justices’ ability to cross partisan divides and find common ground in their bottom-line judgment in roughly two-thirds of their cases... should remind us that even in this hyperpartisan age, there is a difference between law and politics....

This path, of trying to forge places of agreement even among people who are inclined to disagree, is the essence of what the American experiment is all about. In an era when the leadership of the House of Representatives is suing the president, when people across the aisle cannot even be in the same room with one another, the modesty and cultivated collegiality of the nine members of the Supreme Court this year remind us all that there is another way.

Do I detect a political agenda in the guise of anti-partisanship?

ADDED: The link goes to the NYT, where the editors flag reader comments they deem worthy of attention. The top editors' pick is:

"Unanimity" but at what price?
Court rulings have been less than nice,
The Koch boys must be
As proud as can be,
This "wedding" of minds? Don't throw rice!

"David Brock has a message for liberal millionaires: Don’t sweat being called hypocrites."

"Brock, a former 'right-wing hit-man'-turned-top-big-money-Democratic-operative, is part of a behind-the-scenes campaign to convince donors it’s OK to attack the Koch brothers for spending millions of dollars while doing the exact same thing for the left."

Presumably, Brock makes money saying stuff like this. Koch Brocking.

His idea is: Since the Democrats are in politics to do what is good and the Kochs want what is bad, there's a "false equivalence." Seeing the false equivalence — I observe — requires that you look at the end and not the means.

And, of course, you have to believe that your end is good and theirs is bad... or at least you have to be willing to portray your end as good, which is making the ostensible end only a means. And that's common in politics where the true end is often power, control, and perpetuation of one's own job. Seeming ends like immigration reform or marriage equality can easily be means to those ends.

In any case, let me congratulate Brock for getting these speaking gigs and for the hair. That's political hair par excellence. That's beyond Teddy Kennedy hair. That's outright Bob La Follette hair.

The NYT informs us that Madison residents thought Madison's World’s Largest Brat Fest was insufficiently liberal for Madison.

The article is called "A City Split Over the Mixture of Church and Sausage."

I love this quote from Lisa Subeck (referred to as a member of "the City Council," which, if you're going to used capital letters is called the "Common Council"):

"My reaction was, this doesn’t have a very Madison feel to it... It really will turn many people off." With Mr. Lenz appearing as a speaker, she said, 'you really have to think, this isn’t reflective of our values."

Lenz = Bob Lenz, a motivational speaker, with "ties to anti-abortion groups, particularly one called Save the Storks, which parks buses in front of abortion clinics and offers ultrasounds to pregnant women."

Lenz, we're told, was disinvited after a Wisconsin State Journal article — "In the Spirit: Brat Fest takes a big turn toward religion this year," highlighting a plan for a morning worship service and a stage devoted to Christian rock music — caused some locals to complain and threaten a boycott.

At that point, the religionists looked excluded and unwelcome instead of the other way around.

Does the NYT rehabilitate the pride of the locals who ended up looking hostile to religion? Incredibly... I mean, predictably... Scott Walker gets blamed:

Perhaps nerves are still a little frayed here, three years after angry protests over a collective-bargaining law shook the Capitol, and the failed attempt to recall Gov. Scott Walker the year after that.

Some longtime residents said they missed the time when Wisconsin seemed more politically easygoing, a place where voters kept a Republican governor, Tommy G. Thompson, in office from 1987 to 2001.

Please. Madison was always liberal, even when Wisconsin elected Tommy Thompson.

Sorry I didn't notice this Madison-centric story until I read about it in The New York Times. I thought I opened up the local news sites nearly every day. (I guess my aversion is more severe than I realize.) And I should have seen David Blaska's "Boycott Bratfest? Another progressive assault on free speech."

And the NYT missed (or choose to ignore) past lefty protests against the Bratfest that were based on the brats themselves. Local news from 2011:

... Bratfest -- the traditional Goliath known as World's Largest -- is beset on three sides by little Davids trying to make the case that a Johnsonville brat is as good as a couple bucks in Governor Walker's pocket: the People's Bratfest, Wurst Times, and Alt Bratfest.

3 Pinocchios to Harry Reid's claim that the Koch brothers are "one of the main causes" of climate change.

Why only 3 and not the maximum of 4? Glenn Kessler explains:

Certainly, Koch Industries contributes to climate change, but the relative impact falls well short of being a “major cause.” We understand Reid’s overall point, but it’s important to stick to the facts when making such claims. Given that Reid did not accurately describe the U-Mass. report, our rating on this statement tips toward Three Pinocchios.

Paraphrase: An old politico with his heart in the right place is entitled to a little hyperbole.

I don't agree with that statement, by the way. That's just my translation of Kessler's analysis. What I think is that those who've got their hands on government power should never evince partisan hostility toward private citizens. They should always take pains to appear neutral toward the people they are in a position to harass, and shame on them when they don't.

Writing that made me look up Obama's speech from last weekend's White House Correspondents Dinner, because I remember that he mentioned the Koch Brothers and my reaction was outrage, expressed (out loud) in just about the words you see in the previous 2 sentences. Looking at the text of the speech, I see the precise words were:

And speaking of conservative heroes, the Koch brothers bought a table here tonight. But as usual, they used a shadowy right-wing organization as a front.  Hello, Fox News.  (Laughter and applause.)

Doesn't that seem rather mild? Was I unduly cantankerous late at night, listening for trouble? Or was I right to be outraged? This is the President of the United States, in a position to impose endless anguish on the citizens whose names he called out. He sounds good humored, as though we're supposed to somehow believe that he'd never do any mischief, but look at the IRS scandal, and remember that Obama joked about auditing his enemies.

"Because serious muckrakers who parrot their husband's captive political POVs in a once-grand newspaper buy lipstick at Kmart..."

"... and smear it all over themselves, because, hey, they're serious people -- and also sexually desirable. Or something."

A comment on WaPo's "Why we wrote about the Koch Industries and its leases in Canada’s oil sands," which responds to Power Line's "Washington Post Falls for Left-Wing Fraud, Embarrasses Itself," which referred to a WaPo article by Steve Mufson and Juliet Eilperin titled (apparently falsely) "The biggest lease holder in Canada’s oil sands isn’t Exxon Mobil or Chevron. It’s the Koch brothers."

Power Line responds to the material at the first link with "The Washington Post Responds to Me and I Respond to the Post," and I got there via Instapundit, who said: "I’d really like to see a list of who’s married to/sleeping with whom in the Washington press corp, rather than having this drip out scandal by scandal."

Here's the lipsticky pic that Power Line includes at the "Responds to Me/I Respond" post that seems to have fired up the commenter I quoted:



When does it detract from your argument to go after a woman for her looks? When the aspects of her looks that strike you as ridiculous are things that she's done to herself? When your objection to her seems to have something to do with how she's deployed her looks to make herself part of a Washington power couple? When she's been really despicably deceptive and you want to lock onto an image to feel hate toward?

Why go after the female half of a co-written article? Because the male half has maintained the kind of natural look for himself that is really not much of a choice for a man. Only a woman's look — because there's such a range of choice — seems revelatory of the inner space of her mind. But be careful of getting drawn in to your fantasies of what's going on in that female mental vortex. You could get hurt. Badly. Quite aside from the way it distracts us from the meat of your argument.

Whither the meat?