Koch

It's no coincidence that Florida Democrats put a referendum on the November ballot legalizing medical marijuana. Aside from passing a really good proposal, the referendum should draw lots of pro-marijuana voters to the polls where, it is hoped, most will vote for Democrats.

I would call this Horsey cartoon from yesterday's L.A. Times pretty risqué. It uses an image of a cocaine snorting Miss McConnell to portray and mock his addiction to extreme right-wing Koch brothers cash. David Horsey is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for the Times and he can get away with stuff like this.

Monday Agence France-Presse reported that Pope Francis denounced those getting rich through speculation in financial markets, sounding a good deal milder than Jesus did when he denounced the banksters-- as the money changers of his day are called now-- at the Temple in Jerusalem, sealing his fate.

Most of their wealth comes from oil and gasThis morning, you may have read that just one of the arms of Koch brothers' political Dark Money assault against democracy, a shady proto-fascist outfit called Americans for Prosperity, plans to spend a minimum of $125 million on the midterm elections.

Clean air-- clearly a Marxist plot against the esteemed Koch borthersThe NY Times called it "a major victory for the Obama administration" but the 6-2 ruling by the Supreme Court yesterday to allow the EPA to regulate the smog from coal plants that drifts across state lines from 28 Midwestern and Appalachian states to the East Coast was a victory for the Amer

It's very hard to trace the Koch cash sloshing around American politics; it's meant to be hard. They funnel so much money into so many right-wing groups that it would be a full time job to sort it all out. Perhaps it's safe to assume, though, that the recipients of legalistic bribes from Koch Industries directly are among those most devoted to the Koch war against democracy.

The Koch brothers prefer a veneer of respectability. Their skins crawl when they are publicly called out by name as fascists and Birchers intent on destroying American democracy. It drives them mad when the media mentions how difficult they have made it to follow the trail of cash they use to bribe right-wing legislators.

West Virginia Blue Dog Nick Rahall is never going to be endorsed by Blue America and we often note that he acts in concert with the GOP more than almost any other House Democrat-- there are a few who are worse. Example: only 9 Democrats refused to sign the discharge petition to force Boehner and Cantor to bring immigration reform to a vote. Every Republican and those 9 shameless Democrats refused to sign and, predictably, Rahall was one of them.

More than a few people have been asserting that Republican Governor Paul LePage, knowing he's already lost his reelection fight, is now only working for an audience of two: Texas neo-fascists David and Charles Koch.

Yesterday MoveOn.org released a new set of polls conducted by PPP from red and purple states. In all seven states-- Maine, Kansas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Florida, Kentucky and Virginia-- large percentages of likely voters thought that their state should accept federal Medicaid expansion dollars.