MoDo is making me ill again

It's just too early in the morning to be this nauseous. Two excerpts I can manage to keep down:

It’s too late to relitigate the shameful Thomas-Hill hearings. We’re stuck with a justice-for-life who lied his way onto the bench with the help of bullying Republicans and cowed Democrats.

... and ...

The 5-to-4 Citizens United decision last January gave corporations, foreign contributors, unions, Big Energy, Big Oil and superrich conservatives a green light to surreptitiously funnel in as much money as they want, whenever they want to elect or unelect candidates. As if that weren’t enough to breed corruption, Thomas was the only justice — in a rare case of detaching his hip from Antonin Scalia’s — to write a separate opinion calling for an end to donor disclosures.

In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court chose the Republican president. In Citizens United, the court may return Republicans to control of Congress. So much for conservatives’ professed disdain of judicial activism. And so much for the public’s long-held trust in the impartiality of the nation’s highest court.

Justice Stephen Breyer recently rejected the image of the high court as “nine junior varsity politicians.” But it’s even worse than that. The court has gone beyond mere politicization. Its liberals are moderate and reasonable, while the conservatives are dug in, guzzling Tea.

And if you want more of this, vote Republican.

Sunday Evening Funnies

Rangers and Giants in the World Series

Here's a good story about how the American League champions turned things around and got to the Fall Classic.

Wearily, Nolan Ryan plopped down in the Rangers Ballpark press box dining area, covered his face with both hands and rubbed. It didn't help.

On this Thursday, July 8 evening, he scarcely touched his tuna salad and cantaloupe. Glumly, he described his day in bankruptcy proceedings and the previous day's hospital visit to a fan who had tumbled from the stands.

The rock-like Rangers president and Hall of Fame pitcher who KO'd a record 5,714 batters and pummeled Robin Ventura's face seemed – gasp – defeated.

"This just isn't a whole lot of fun right now," Ryan said.

Thus began the most pivotal 24 hours in Rangers history. There was no hint that half-century-old dark clouds were about to disperse, that this luckless and literally broke franchise would unearth a diamond rabbit's foot:

Cliff Lee.

With Texas now in the World Series, its heist of star pitcher Lee from the New York Yankees' greedy clutches is the Cliff-hanger moment of a Hollywood-esque story.

Without Lee, there would be no feel-good plot about the manager who tested positive for cocaine use but, given a second chance, guided Texas to its first American League pennant – 78 days after the franchise was auctioned in federal bankruptcy court.

It was Lee who twice beat Tampa Bay in the American League Divisional Series, including in the decisive Game 5. It was Lee who earned Texas' first playoff victory in Yankee Stadium – fittingly, against the team that nearly acquired him from Seattle in July.

And it will be Lee who starts Game 1 of the World Series on Wednesday night.

There's also the renaissance of Josh Hamilton, who beat his addiction demons to come all the way back to MVP for the ALCS, and the team celebrated (again) by showering him with ginger ale and not champagne. However I still feel like a National League guy, despite the storyline and the bandwagon effect, and not just because Vlad Guerrero has to play in the field.

I feel kinda bad for Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman, who once again will be watching it on teevee like the rest of us.

I'll say it will be a classic seven-game series with the Giants prevailing. But I won't be unhappy -- or jealous -- at all if the Rangers get it done.

Update: On the other hand, this could give Texas a significant advantage.

Sunday Funnies

Koch Suckers

It's been making news elsewhere, I'm just playing catch-up here.



Via Palingates, the ThinkProgress reveal:

In 2006, Koch Industries owner Charles Koch revealed to the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore that he coordinates the funding of the conservative infrastructure of front groups, political campaigns, think tanks, media outlets and other anti-government efforts through a twice annual meeting of wealthy right-wing donors. He also confided to Moore, who is funded through several of Koch’s ventures, that his true goal is to strengthen the “culture of prosperity” by eliminating “90%” of all laws and government regulations.

Ninety percent of all? Hmmm.

ThinkProgress has obtained a memo outlining the details of the last Koch gathering held in June of this year. The memo, along with an attendee list of about 210 people, shows the titans of industry — from health insurance companies, oil executives, Wall Street investors, and real estate tycoons — working together with conservative journalists and Republican operatives to plan the 2010 election, as well as ongoing conservative efforts through 2012. According to the memo, David Chavern, the number two at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Fox News hate-talker Glenn Beck also met with these representatives of the corporate elite. In an election season with the most undisclosed secret corporate giving since the Watergate-era, the memo sheds light on the symbiotic relationship between extremely profitable, multi-billion dollar corporations and much of the conservative infrastructure. The memo describes the prospective corporate donors as “investors,” and it makes clear that many of the Republican operatives managing shadowy, undisclosed fronts running attack ads against Democrats were involved in the Koch’s election-planning event ...

More from Salon:

According to that document, the Palm Springs meeting attracted such corporate and financial titans as Stephen Schwartzman of the Blackstone Group, Philip Anschutz of Anschutz Industries, and Steve Bechtel of Bechtel Corp., as well as representatives of Bank of America, Allied Capital, Citadel Investment, among many others – all of whom gathered to learn how to “elect leaders who are more strongly committed to liberty and prosperity” with a “strategic plan to educate voters on the importance of economic freedom.”

More from HuffPo:

(T)he New York Times reported that an upcoming meeting in Palm Springs of "a secretive network of Republican donors" that was being organized by Koch Industries, "the longtime underwriter of libertarian causes." Buried in the third to last graph was a note that previous guests at such meetings included Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, two of the more conservative members of the bench.

And from that article in the NYT, more on the inclusion of Supreme Court Justices Thomas and Scalia in the conspiracy:

To encourage new participants, Mr. Koch offers to waive the $1,500 registration fee. And he notes that previous guests have included Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court, Gov. Haley Barbour and Gov. Bobby Jindal, Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn, and Representatives Mike Pence, Tom Price and Paul D. Ryan.

Of course "some say" there is nothing wrong with this sort of thing at all. Nothing illegal or unethical at all about people with similar interests gathering together to discuss ways to affect political change.

Why it's the same thing as when, say, the Harris County Democrats have a rally over a dinner, or a blockwalk followed by a fish fry. Except without the Supreme Court justices or the captains of industry. Or their money.

Bob Guccione 1930-2010

Bob Guccione tried the seminary and spent years trying to make it as an artist before he found the niche that Hugh Hefner left for him in the late 1960s. Where Hefner's Playboy magazine strove to surround its pinups with an upscale image, Guccione aimed for something a little more direct with Penthouse.

More explicit nudes. Sensational stories. Even more sensational letters that began, "Dear Penthouse, I never thought I'd be writing you..."

It worked for decades for Guccione, who died Wednesday in Texas at the age of 79. He estimated that Penthouse earned $4 billion during his reign as publisher. He was listed in the Forbes 400 ranking of wealthiest people with a net worth of about $400 million in 1982.

Guccione's magazine broke ground by exposing female genitalia (previously the undiscovered territorial boundary in print was pubic hair, in Playboy). This was decades before the word "Brazilian" entered the language as a noun not in reference to a person from Brazil.

His other revolution was publishing the graphic tales of other people's encounters. That's the "Dear Penthouse Forum, I never thought I would be writing this to you, but..." part mentioned in the excerpt.

Yes, Playboy typically had more beautiful women -- some of them courtesy of the darkroom's airbrush -- but Penthouse had the ones who looked slightly more like the kind of girl you might actually meet at your local bar. This was before even discos were popular, you Twittering little Facebookers.

Not too sure about the articles *ahem* but allegedly they were subversive for the time.

In 1984 it was the magazine that took down Miss America, publishing nude pictures of Vanessa Williams, the first black woman to hold the title. Williams, who went on to fame as a singer and actress, was forced to relinquish her crown after the release of the issue, which sold nearly 6 million copies and reportedly made $14 million.

But Guccione's empire fell apart thanks to several bad investments and changes in the pornography industry, which became flooded with competition as it migrated from print to video and the Internet. His company, his world-class art collection, his huge Manhattan mansion — all of it, sold off.

Guccione's family said in a statement that he died at Plano Specialty Hospital in Plano. His wife, April Dawn Warren Guccione, had said he had battled lung cancer for several years.

Only the good die young, as they say.

(In 1986) U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese's Commission on Pornography issued a report attacking the adult entertainment industry. Guccione called the report "disgraceful" and doubted it would have any impact, but newsstands and convenience stores responded by pulling Penthouse from their magazine racks.

Sales dropped after the Meese commission report and years later took another hit with the proliferation of X-rated videos and Web sites. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Penthouse's circulation dipped below 1 million in the late 1990s and fell to about 463,000 in 2003, the year General Media Inc. filed for bankruptcy. Over the first six months of 2010, Penthouse reported circulation of barely 178,000.

"The future has definitely migrated to electronic media," Guccione acknowledged in a 2002 New York Times interview.

Larry Flynt took everything Bob G did a few steps further and raunchier with Hustler about the same time Guccione was declaring war on Hefner and Playboy. As noted above, by the time the '90's rolled around the only ground left to break after Hustler was moving pictures and an easy distribution system. In the present day, videos (video stores and mail order) have already given way to the Internet's porn-on-demand, as well as the proliferation of niche/fetish options. "You want Asian midget ladyboys dressed as cheerleaders and nurses? We got that ..." minus the interaction with the scruffy-looking dude at the counter, of course. More anonymity than a brown wrapper.

The passing of Bob Guccione is just another sad ending to one of my youthful era's iconic figures.