-The banks that got the most bailout money spent the most on lobbying to influence that “reform” bill.

-CEOs that cut the most jobs during the ongoing collapse, regardless of the profitability of the company, got paid the best.

-”Y’know what would’ve cushioned the economic crash?  Bailing out Lehman Brothers.” — says ex-CEO of Lehman Brothers.  How convenient…

Toss a hunk of Rearden metal at a D.C. libertarian organization or scholar and you’ll hit something connected to the Kochs. The brothers fund successful internships and fellowships via the Koch Associate Program, and every summer, dozens of budding libertarians in Washington work for think tanks before coming home to a group house nicknamed “Kochwood.” Koch interns are placed (often, not always) at Reason, Cato, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and other libertarian organizations while attending classes on media and economics. What’s so sinister about this? Nothing—at least until the Tea Party started winning, and then liberals started getting very annoyed.

So pre-empt the coming exposes. Libertarians: Embrace the Kochs! Kochs: Embrace the Tea Parties! You are, Kochs and libertarians alike, among the few activists who should feel no need whatsoever to apologize for wealth and success. (emphasis mine)

Translation: libertarians should deliberately discredit themselves in the eyes of anyone who is not already on their side.  Oh, and also completely ignore anyone pointing out the blind spots in their own ranks.

From nearly the moment it got any public traction, the Tea Party “movement” flushed any consistency down the toilet.  Consider that at one point Thomas Knapp started a “Boston Tea Party” that was to be an actual political party.  This got shoved aside by a parallel (albeit way better funded) movement claiming a similar name, which conveniently rose critique of government power with a laser focus on what the Donkey Crips did in power versus the Dixie Pachyderm Piru.  That parallel “movement” exists now as little more than a contradictory right-wing quivering ball of fear, locked & loaded to vote Republican.

Considering the result of political gridlock, and how the worst things the government here does are the ones that get “bipartisan” support, I can understand why less radical people may opt to play each side against each other.  But this isn’t a deliberate “when A has one branch, hand B the other for a monkey wrench, and vice versa” strategy, no.  Dave is saying to take the tea party — and by extension the Kochs — as if they are we and we are they.  What I want to ask him is this: who is this “we” you speak of?

The quip about “NOW liberals are annoyed” is a surprise to me, since by now the annoyance is solidly partisan.  Besides, pretty much anyone who frequents web forums & blogs who could place themselves anywhere on a spectrum of libertarian views knows that progressives have always been annoyed by libertarians.  Problem is, the type of connections & political influence the Koch brothers have obtained are exactly what they point at when asked why.

As I stated in comments at Roderick’s place, whether their disproportionate influence on a narrow section of corporate regulation (namely, less of it, even though corporate status itself is a distortion of the market) versus all other issues (Cato Institute, after all, also advocates for an end to the War on Drugs & against a militaristic foreign policy…) is a matter of playing Telephone or not doesn’t really matter.  Public credibility is important, and losing it costs more than even 10 Kochs could pay back.

As for “apologizing for wealth”, it depends on how they got it.  In the long run, rent-seekers have more to worry about than apologies…

(* – The origin of this term should sum up just how false the libertarianism-as-one-note assumption is.)

…isn’t having a dictatorship without a military a bit like having a burger without meat?  Or is this guy trying to also say that Obama is so bonkers that he doesn’t realize any dictator worth their salt traffics in militarism?

“Oh, I’ll show these unworthy peons!  First I’ll take over everything, then I’ll dismantle the armed forces!  They’ll be powerless to stop me!  MUAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!”

Tiger Woods finally looked like the No. 1 player in the world.In his first tournament since his divorce, Woods played his best round of the year Thursday at The Barclays by missing only one fairway, putting for birdie on all but two holes and shooting a 6-under 65 for his lowest score all season.

“It feels good to be able to control my ball all day like this,” Woods said. (emphasis mine)

Yeah, turns out I lied.  Sue me, I chuckled.

-There’s one societal norm that needs to shift (or, more accurately, be completely thrown out) that encompasses everything else on this issue: the deliberate ignorance of any line between your time spent as an employee & your actual life.  Matt refers to Germany here, but there have been reports of U.S. companies scouring social networking sites for ammunition against workers already.  To act as if there is no such thing as a social life for people independent of whoever they may work for is to build the technological equivalent of a Company Town around them.

-Shorter Daniel Larison: “No matter what Newt Gingrich says, there’s a wide range of Muslim opinion between Al-Qaeda-Sympathizing-Wackaloon and Neo-Con-Militarism-SockPuppet”

-Tim Lee questions the feasibility and desirability of of seasteading.

-Hopefully for Nate & co. they negotiated that their blog not get paywalled…

-dL has a good point about Wikileaks here.  It’s kinda like the states that they’re playing against each other are selling the bandwidth that’ll be used to hang them.  That said, I’m probably somewhere in the middle on this.  I think what makes Wikileaks so indispensable is precisely that their example hasn’t been implemented wide enough to do without yet.  In a way, you can say they’ve cornered the market for now, at least when talking about high-level whistleblowing.  It won’t be like that for long.

-Few minutes ago spotted a political commercial.  Had random people in it voicing opposition to an “energy tax”, followed by a screen saying “sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute”.  Considering how heavily subsidized oil is here, the ad is so internally contradictory that it’s practically a work of art.  The folks in the ad are already paying an energy tax, where do they think the oil companies get their welfare checks from?

-Hearts and minds y’all, hearts and minds…

Mehlman, The Atlantic said, acknowledged that if he had publicly declared his sexuality sooner, he might have played a role in keeping the party from pushing an anti-gay agenda been fired.

The former head of the RNC turns out to be gay.  Coming up: PETA member reveals that they’ve secretly been eating fried chicken in their home, at least once a week, for years.  But first, these messages from your local sponsors…

Jim Henley: “I dunno about that.  But…too bad the popularity of limiting gov’t, let alone doing away with it, tracks with irrational fear of waves of Undeserving Darky.”

dL: “Um…Jim?  Last I checked, writing off chunks of the populace as cockroaches led to calling the Orkin men, not ‘let us leave them be’…”

Yes, this conversation still exists.  A key to why it’s still so persistent is that John & his peers seem to take everyone who says they want “less gov’t” seriously, regardless of how incoherent they end up when asked to clarify.  What those suburban Republicans really end up saying when you scratch the surface is “don’t mess with ME, mess with THEM!!”, with the obligatory finger-pointing.  The lifestyle that he cites as a better deal than “going Galt” is only so because said Republicans are heavily subsidized.  “Red” states are on average tax-eaters (meaning they get more money from the federal government than they pay into the system); within a state, “red” areas act similarly, with regard to tax revenue vs spending, compared to the generally more HippieLibrulSocialist cities.

In other words: Wannabe Galts aren’t paying the market rate.

Want to know why they aren’t?  dL has that covered…

I hear a great way to make sure that you don’t become a member of a group is to not attempt to join it.  Sounds crazy, but I’ve tested it out for myself, and it works!  There was this local group, and I didn’t want to join it, so I made it a point to not enter their meeting place and sign up.  I even went so far as to not bother to find out where they met, and that helped a lot.

Anyway, Black Reagan put in his two cents, and his own damn party scattered, including, well…:

The Senate’s top Democrat on Monday came out against plans to build a mosque near the site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, moving away from President Barack Obama on the controversial election-year issue.Locked in a tight race, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid became the highest profile Democrat to respond to Obama, who last week backed the right for the developers to build a mosque near ground zero. Since his comments Friday, the Democratic president and his aides have worked to explain the statement, which drew criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike.

“The First Amendment protects freedom of religion,” said Jim Manley, a Reid spokesman. “Senator Reid respects that, but thinks that the mosque should be built some place else.” (emphasis mine)

If I even have to explain that this is naked pandering, check your brain.  That said, there’s no pandering without a target.  Reid’s target is obviously those who, while maybe not outright bigoted, still think of this proposed building as offending their sense of P.C.  That’s completely irrelevant, but whatever, that never stopped anybody.

Critics have said the location of the mosque is insensitive because the terrorists who struck were Islamic extremists. The plans call for a $100 million Islamic center two blocks from where almost 3,000 people perished when hijacked jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

The more obvious ends of this sentiment take it further, claiming the Cordoba House is some kind of victory lap, a monument to conquest.  Let’s see, how best to respond to that one…

At least theirs has plans for a swimming pool.

Tea party groups converged on a remote section of the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday to show support for Arizona’s controversial immigration law.More than 400 people gathered about 70 miles west of Nogales on a private ranch where the steel posts of the Arizona-Mexico border wall are set closely together to prevent people from crossing the border.

Demonstrators attached hundreds of U.S. flags with messages about curbing illegal immigration to the 15-foot posts, and chanted “U-S-A” when spectators gathered on the Mexico side of the border. (emphasis mine)

Hundreds of people gather by a fence in the middle of nowhere, with media, during temperatures in the mid nineties.  People who happen to live on the other side of the imaginary line wonder what’s going on.  According to the “tea party” gathering, the logical response to this curiosity is to treat it as intimidation.  Might wanna switch to decaf…