Corporations can now have their feelings hurt. We await Supreme Court confirmation.

A press release:

Statement from Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC in Response to Obama Campaign Remarks

WICHITA, Kan., Feb. 10, 2012 PRNewswire — We will exercise our First Amendment rights and not be intimidated or silenced by the President’s aides and his allies who criticize private citizens that disagree with the President’s policies.

The Obama campaign’s decision to embrace Super PACs is similar to the President’s hypocrisy in 2008 when he broke his promise to use public campaign financing, and became the first major party presidential candidate in history to turn down public financing in a general election. It is worth noting that President Obama outraised and outspent his opponent by hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2008 Presidential campaign, relying in large part on the same corporate executive funding sources whose productivity, business practices, and profitability he pretends to denounce.

Apparently, the President and his allies do not want to lose that perceived fundraising advantage during the 2012 Presidential campaign, and are trying to intimidate into silence those who may disagree with them and who may decide to support other candidates.

— Philip Ellender, president and COO

Government and Public Affairs

Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC

SOURCE Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC

Apparently they don’t have anyone on their payroll who knows how to start up a blog. Even with all that money.

It’s not that we’re volunteering.

Announcer: Secretive oil billionaires attacking President Obama with ads fact checkers say are not tethered to the facts, while independent watchdogs call this president’s record on ethics unprecedented. And America’s clean energy industry, two point seven million jobs and expanding rapidly. For the first time in thirteen years our dependence on foreign oil is below fifty percent. President Obama kept his promise to toughen ethics rules and strengthen America’s energy economy.

President Obama: I’m Barack Obama and I approved this message.

It’s time.

It’s late, it’s Saturday, and, in my present state, I don’t imagine I could do justice to the complexities of opening a box of Post Toasties (if I even had such a box). However, during a listless half-hour meandering around the blogosphere, I came across these two tidbits I’d like to share:

— Think Progress notes the similarities between the right-to-work-for less legislation in Missouri, Maine, New Hampshire and other states, discusses the leading role that is played by the Koch brothers’ front group, Americans for Prosperity, in pushing this type of legislation in Maine (and elsewhere?), and finally observes:

The conservative strategy for decimating the labor movement is being replicated with great speed – and little creativity. Each state, from Wisconsin, to Ohio, to Maine, and others across the country face a similar threat of phony Tea Party groups, business front organizations, and even nearly identical legislative proposals.

In other words, a conservative tsunami is on us – and it’s every bit as destructive politically  and socially as the one in Japan is physically.

— Duane Graham of The Erstwhile Conservative wonders why Claire McCaskill can’t talk about the deficit like a Democrat. Noting what I think of as her efforts to play political catch-up with the GOP on the topic while refusing to acknowledge the full range of complex economic issues that are involved, he comments about an email he received in response to a letter he sent her:

In any case, read it and weep liberals.  But remember that the moderate Senator McCaskill is the only horse we have in the upcoming race. The alternative is unthinkable.

Missouri’s progressive dilemma in a nutshell.

“What would you do with a brain if you had one?”

If you haven’t heard it already go listen to the audio of the phone conversation between anti-worker Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (r) and who he thinks to be a right wingnut billionaire supporter.

Athenae at First Draft:

….It’s not that what he said was all that new, given what anyone with a pair of eyes can see, it’s that at no point during this call, during all these monstrous things, did Walker even THINK this might be a prank. At no point did he say, wait a minute, this person is rather a douche, and excuse me but who are you? No, he giggled along with casual discussions of smashing the entire state’s underpinnings like he talks to people like this a thousand times a day.

A lot of his defenders spent the day pointing out that most of Walker’s comments aren’t anything new, and that the blogger actually comes off far worse for saying all those horrible things, and that’s the entire goddamn point. Walker is someone who is totally used to being around people who say shit like that, so used to it he didn’t even question whether the call was real. That’s the real news here: That this guy is even more of an asshole than everybody who already hates him thought he was.

Bingo.

Oh, hell, we’ll save you the click through. Here are the audio recordings of the phone call:

Stoopid is as stoopid does.

Update:

Dennis G. at Balloon Juice:

….The call was funny and useful in the way it exposed Walker, but the fact that the call even got through says even more. The prankster got a hearing by claiming to be David Koch, but he proved himself to be the real deal through his racism, his meanness and just being a dick. That got him connected to Walker without any further review. In some way it is a bit comforting to know that Team Walker is staffed by idiots. But only a bit comforting as George W. Bush has recently proven that a team of idiots can do real and lasting damage as they play out their fantasies in the real world….

In response to the Kochs’ campaign to undermine democracy, I’m not going to buy any Georgia-Pacific products – i.e. Dixie cups, Angel Soft, Quilted Northern, Brawny, Soft n’ Gentle, Vanity Fair, Mardi Gras. I hope this action goes viral. Nothing like a spontaneous boycott for driving companies up the wall!