READER COMMENTS ON
"'Inside the Koch Brothers 2011 Summer Seminar': Part 1 of My 2-Part Exclusive at MOTHER JONES"
(35 Responses so far...)
COMMENT #1 [Permalink]
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molly
said on 9/6/2011 @ 6:35 am PT...
Wow..just wow.Mother Jones..good journalism!
COMMENT #2 [Permalink]
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Steve Heller
said on 9/6/2011 @ 7:30 am PT...
Amazing work, Brad. Congratulations!
COMMENT #3 [Permalink]
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Nunyabiz
said on 9/6/2011 @ 8:00 am PT...
Outstanding work Brad, we need to try to get you on Rachel Maddow or one of the only 3-4 Centrist news shows on cable TV so you can spread this story to larger group of viewers.
COMMENT #4 [Permalink]
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Ernest A. Canning
said on 9/6/2011 @ 8:09 am PT...
A little connecting the dots, Brad. The Koch brothers revealed that one of the $1 million + donors was "Rick and Ellen DeVos (Amway)."
Their daughter-in-law is Betsy DeVos, whose brother is Eric Prince, co-founder of the infamous Blackwater mercenary firm.
Interesting how, in Blackwater = Murder, Inc.?, we covered the failure of the same mainstream media which Charles Koch claims are ninety plus percent against his cause to so much as mention the allegations made by way of sworn federal court affidavits from two former Blackwater employees of how Prince et al were implicated in murder, destruction of evidence, weapons smuggling, underage prostitution and corruption.
COMMENT #5 [Permalink]
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peasantparty
said on 9/6/2011 @ 10:35 am PT...
Go, Brad!
SCOOP the fake nooze. Keep it up and thanks so much for all your work on the vote fraud that removes our ability to participate in our government.
Ya know I's love ya!
COMMENT #6 [Permalink]
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Ernest A. Canning
said on 9/6/2011 @ 11:36 am PT...
peasantparty @5. Any "evidence" for that widespread "vote fraud"? Or are you actually taken in by right-wing propaganda that is designed to disenfranchise millions?
Thanks for being misinformed. Good luck with worshiping plutocracy.
COMMENT #7 [Permalink]
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4earth
said on 9/6/2011 @ 12:06 pm PT...
HOLY LANDRU! Brad you are awesome! What an amazing exposé! I figured from your teaser that this was big, but had no idea it was THIS big! Congratulations!
COMMENT #8 [Permalink]
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Rick H.
said on 9/6/2011 @ 2:30 pm PT...
Canning@6 - Try reading 5 again, without the paranoia.
COMMENT #9 [Permalink]
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Think About It
said on 9/6/2011 @ 2:37 pm PT...
Great article. Now how about unequivocally calling for the removal of all private money from political campaigns so this kind of thing won't be an issue anymore?
COMMENT #10 [Permalink]
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Brad Friedman
said on 9/6/2011 @ 4:02 pm PT...
Are you kidding, Think About It?! Of course I'm in favor of publicly funded elections. Pay attention, chief.
COMMENT #11 [Permalink]
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Think About It
said on 9/6/2011 @ 4:09 pm PT...
Great! I was just wondering, considering you didn't actually say anything to that effect.
COMMENT #12 [Permalink]
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Think About It
said on 9/6/2011 @ 4:10 pm PT...
By the way, I've responded on the other thread to your comment and Ernest Canning's.
COMMENT #13 [Permalink]
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Ernest A. Canning
said on 9/6/2011 @ 4:33 pm PT...
Well, Think About It, since you think The BRAD BLOG is doing such a poor job of focusing on what you think is most important, and how you think it should be said, why don't you start your own blog and have at it.
COMMENT #14 [Permalink]
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Ernest A. Canning
said on 9/6/2011 @ 4:55 pm PT...
Talk about trying to evade context!
Charles Koch said [emphasis added]:
we have Saddam Hussein, this is the Mother of All Wars we've got in the next 18 months. For the life or death of this country.
Koch Industries COO Phillip suggests that "‘Mother of All Wars’ is a common phrase, frequently attributed to Saddam Hussein on the eve of the first Gulf War."
"Next 18 months" and "this country" clearly do not pertain to the First Gulf War. The use of "mother of All Wars" in conjunction with the "next 18 months" and "this country" leaves no room for doubt --- Charles Koch was referring to the pending 2012 electoral battle as the "Mother of All Wars" as what "we've got over the next 18 months."
Ellender himself says, "the U.S. has been plunged into its own ’mother of all wars'" as part of his express reference to "record U.S. unemployment, continued economic decline, and loss of liberty." Ellender's remarks actually leave no room for seriously doubting that the Saddam Hussein reference was intended to apply to President Obama, whom Koch seeks to blame for our economic demise.
To claim otherwise is to ignore context.
COMMENT #15 [Permalink]
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Think About It
said on 9/6/2011 @ 5:07 pm PT...
By the way, why would Brad post his story on Mother Jones? Mother Jones is an obvious left gatekeeper blog along the lines of Daily Kos, Crooks & Liars, Huffington Post, Firedog Lake, MyDD, Joe Cannon's Cannonfire etc. These blogs are part of the controlled opposition. Brad Blog which at least so far does not appear to be part of the controlled opposition, just merely a genuine blog with a bad case of tunnel vision and an inability to see the forest for the trees, would be wise to not have anything to do with the likes of Mother Jones or Cannonfire or any of the other discourse control blogs.
COMMENT #16 [Permalink]
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WingnutSteve
said on 9/6/2011 @ 5:18 pm PT...
Nicely done Ernie! You go girl, slamming peasantparty who paid brad a complement and obviously misspoke. Would have been really easy to accept the compliment on behalf of the blog and maybe correct his error vice resorting to the typical Ernie "judge a book by it's cover" attack. You sir define what's wrong in our political discourse today.
COMMENT #17 [Permalink]
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WingnutSteve
said on 9/6/2011 @ 5:23 pm PT...
Or maybe peasantparty was being deliberate and sarcastic, in which case nevermind.
COMMENT #18 [Permalink]
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Jeannie Dean
said on 9/6/2011 @ 5:36 pm PT...
This is Pulitzer-worth journalism (again) from our modern day Walter Cronkite, Brad Friedman. I'm over the moon to see The Brad Blog splashed all over CNN's THE SITUATION ROOM w/ Wolf Blitzer (even if they DID follow it up with a piece on Madonna's distaste for Hydrangias...)
Still, feels like I woke up in a different country, today, to actually see news on the news!
Way to go, Brad. Amazing work. I'm so proud of you there isn't a Jewish enough word to describe it. Looking forward to seeing you on THE ED SHOW at 7:00!
COMMENT #19 [Permalink]
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Cosimo diRondo
said on 9/6/2011 @ 5:38 pm PT...
"Our nation’s future will be determined in the coming months by the choices Americans make to address the serious economic issues facing our country.”
Um, who do you mean by "our", Mr. Koch-bot? I know, I know, they were at your meeting in Vail.
COMMENT #20 [Permalink]
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Ernest A. Canning
said on 9/6/2011 @ 6:06 pm PT...
Actually, WingnutSteve & Rick H., upon a re-read I've concluded that Peasantparty's comment was sufficiently ambiguous. If it was intended as a compliment (as opposed to sarcasm) then Peasantparty would have my most humble apology.
Perhaps, Peasantparty can enlighten us as to the real intent of his/her comment.
ThinkAboutIt @15 asks: "why would Brad post his story on Mother Jones?" Which is described as being part of the "controlled opposition."
Answer: For the same reason Brad will appear on the Ed Schultz show on MSNBC. Because what he has to say is "news" which will reach a broader audience.
What you mistakenly assume is that Brad, and this blog, strive for some form of ideological purity. Brad Friedman, above all else, is a citizen journalist. His mantra is that it is not about Left or Right, but about right and wrong.
Whether stories appear here at The BRAD BLOG or elsewhere, the only controlling factor is whether they are based on verifiable truth.
If Brad and I share a bias, it is that, in a democratic society, the people are entitled to verifiable truth, especially when it comes to the actions of power brokers, like the Koch brothers, who can have such a profound influence on all our lives; the environment and the very survival of humanity.
COMMENT #21 [Permalink]
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Ernest A. Canning
said on 9/6/2011 @ 7:00 pm PT...
Whatever it is they do at The Weekly Standard, it isn't journalism.
Operating on the theory that the best defense is a good offense, John McCormack launches the bold headline Oops: Mother Jones Falsely Reports Charles Koch Compared Obama to Saddam Hussein.
Sounds like McCormack has evidence Brad Friedman and Mother Jones knowingly lied when Brad wrote "Charles welcomes his 'great partners' to the event, alludes to President Obama as 'Saddam Hussein.'"
But, no, McCormack has no such evidence. Instead he quotes Ben Smith of Politico.com's speculation that it is "possible to hear the transcript a bit differently: The word 'as' isn't in the transcript, but as I [Smith] hear the (ambiguous) line, Koch is quoting Saddam here, not comparing Obama to him."
McCormack then adds an unfounded speculation of his own: "it seems possible that the word 'said' may have been deliberately edited out of the audio recording."
Yes, John McCormack, and it is "possible" that you are a paid-for propagandist who masquerades as a journalist.
But, then there's Charles Koch's actual words.
we have Saddam Hussein, this is the Mother of All Wars we've got in the next 18 months. For the life or death of this country.
As noted above, the reference to the next 18 months belies the contention that Koch was merely quoting Saddam Hussein. Koch said "we have Saddam Hussein." Does "we have Saddam Hussein [said]" make so much as grammatical sense?
The only reasonable inference to be drawn from we "have" Saddam Hussein in the context of the upcoming electoral context for the White House (the next 18 months) as the Mother of All Wars is that Charles Koch alluded that Barack Obama was Saddam Hussein.
By piling speculation upon baseless speculation and ignoring Koch's actual words, The Weekly Standard merely proved that it is but another component of Rupert Murdoch's propaganda machine.
COMMENT #22 [Permalink]
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GWN
said on 9/6/2011 @ 7:09 pm PT...
psst Brad, don't mention "election fraud".
COMMENT #23 [Permalink]
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riverat
said on 9/6/2011 @ 7:12 pm PT...
To give the benefit of the doubt I'm thinking peasantparty may have meant election fraud rather than vote fraud. It's a distinction that not everyone makes.
COMMENT #24 [Permalink]
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Karen
said on 9/6/2011 @ 7:24 pm PT...
Wow...great work Brad.
As I have always said, if you are keeping a secret, it almost means you are doing something bad.
If these guys are really so worried about the overall condition of our nation, it's common good, what's with the secrecy, why not try to get as much media attention as possible?
great work Brad...and this does tie in to election fraud and voter suppression, these ALEC and Kochs are very much pushing the laws to disenfranchise voters
COMMENT #25 [Permalink]
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Ernest A. Canning
said on 9/6/2011 @ 8:34 pm PT...
Riverat @23 wrote:
To give the benefit of the doubt I'm thinking peasantparty may have meant election fraud rather than vote fraud.
Maybe; maybe not.
What do you make of "SCOOP the fake nooze [sic.]" in the context of Brad's "scoop" --- breaking story about the secretive Koch seminar --- in relation to the word "fake," which implies that Brad's story was either not real news, or that it was a diversion from something else, to wit: "voter fraud."
Putting the two sentences together, I perceived that peasantparty was being facetious when he/she thanked Brad for his work on "voter fraud," which work, as you know is exposing the GOP claims of "voter fraud" to be nothing more than a bogus excuse for "voter suppression."
Now, I could have been wrong. But the words "fake nooze" suggest that I am not.
COMMENT #26 [Permalink]
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David Lasagna
said on 9/6/2011 @ 9:52 pm PT...
re:peasantparty @5--
My reading of that comment is that it's sincere and peasantparty merely was merely innocently imprecise with the phrase "vote fraud".
Brad my dude,
You looked good and sounded great on Ed tonight, although I would have liked about 57 more minutes of you. I hope somebody noticed how easily engaging you are. You're a natural for that medium, besides being our secret national treasure. I'm all for letting the secret out of the bag.
love,
Dave
ps. you called Napolitano "Andrew" in your piece. (right next to his picture)
COMMENT #27 [Permalink]
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riverat
said on 9/6/2011 @ 9:52 pm PT...
Hmm... On first reading I took "fake nooze" to mean the MSM who don't report on a lot of important stuff that their corporate masters don't want them to. But you could be right, it could be a drive by troll.
COMMENT #28 [Permalink]
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David Lasagna
said on 9/6/2011 @ 10:00 pm PT...
Ernie at @25,
I read the "scoop the fake nooze" to mean what it says. The news is mostly fake and Brad scooped them. Either I'm right and you misread the comment, or you're right and I'm being my naive, innocent self, or....some other possibility, I suppose.
COMMENT #29 [Permalink]
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MC
said on 9/6/2011 @ 11:07 pm PT...
Thank you for illustrating how insane you and all the other left-wing, nut-jobs are!
COMMENT #30 [Permalink]
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Caleb
said on 9/6/2011 @ 11:53 pm PT...
To Think About It #15. Could you please elaborate further on your comment about a "controlled opposition?" You are lumping together utterly different types of media outlets. FDL is extremely anti-Obama and has turned its back on the Democratic party, including the "progressives" in that party and even Sen. Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist. Daily KOS, in contrast, is basically a Democratic party organ. Huffington Post is run by a closet right winger, Arianna Huffington, who sold out her bloggers and readership by merging with AOL. Mother Jones has been an organ of fearless, muckraking journalism, including Brad's latest expose of the secret Koch brothers' meeting. I am less familiar with the other publications you cite. Where is your evidence that these journalistic outlets represent, collectively, a "controlled opposition?", in that they are so different from each other? And by maligning many leading organs of opposition to the nation's rightwing turn, aren't you in effect seeking to aide these right wing forces?
COMMENT #31 [Permalink]
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irrefudiate
said on 9/7/2011 @ 12:07 am PT...
I just saw you on Ed and scooted over here to thank you for linking up a Koch holy summit with the little trip Perry took last June. Not that there was ever much doubt that he had been summoned to kiss the ring, it's just that it had never officially been reported. Until that trip, Perry was definitely not running for POTUS. Of course, he left Colorado and flew straight to California to start his fund raising.
COMMENT #32 [Permalink]
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David Lasagna
said on 9/7/2011 @ 5:21 am PT...
It's morning and reading over that little controversial comment again I can easily read it with Ernie's interpretation. So, I have no idea. and as we haven't heard back from the author for further clarification...
COMMENT #33 [Permalink]
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GWN
said on 9/7/2011 @ 5:44 am PT...
I have seen "peasantparty's" comments on other progressive sites and I think s/he was being genuine.
COMMENT #34 [Permalink]
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David Lasagna
said on 9/7/2011 @ 6:02 am PT...
I offered what I though was a correction to Brad about Napolitano's name cuz I thought I'd always heard him called "Tony". Now I see that he's sometimes referred to as Andrew and sometimes as Anthony. Is this some new phenomenon of which One-Step-Behind-The-Fun Lasagna is unaware? Do we all get multiple first names now? I don't get it.
COMMENT #35 [Permalink]
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Dan-In-PA
said on 9/7/2011 @ 6:53 am PT...
If memory serves me right, the DeVose family operates, among their many varied interests, a technology services company with a specialty in electronic voting machines. And their name came up in the Ohio 2004 election mess as having replaced, during election night, a hard drive on one or more vote counting tabulators.
It would be a great service to tie the names of the attendees with the services they perform for our corporate overlords.