Koch Industries has been at the helm of all opposition and lies around the Affordable Care Act. Koch Industries pushed back against the claims in Jane Mayer's article with a fact-check on their positions. One section, entitled "Government-Run Healthcare", states their position:

Innovation drives our country – and in the healthcare field it brings us better treatments, improved procedures and cures for life-threatening diseases. Government takeover of healthcare may stymie innovation, affect medical research negatively and reduce the reimbursements our leading research institutions receive.

Of course, the Affordable Care Act is not government-run healthcare, but the Kochs have been the largest moneybags behind that particular impression. So we get it, right? The Kochs believe insurance companies should discriminate and do whatever they want to do to maximize profits on the backs of Americans' health. You'd think that would mean they'd reject any benefit of the Affordable Care Act.

You'd think. Today, Wonk Room reports this:

Today, the Department of Health and Human Services announced the “first round of applicants accepted into the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program,” a $5 billion program established by the new health care law to help employers and states “maintain coverage for early retirees age 55 and older who are not yet eligible for Medicare.” According to the agency, “nearly 2,000 employers, representing large and small businesses, State and local governments, educational institutions, non-profits, and unions” applied and have been accepted into the program and “will begin to receive reimbursements for employee claims this fall.”

Ironically, one of those employers is the oil, chemicals, and manufacturing conglomerate Koch Industries, which as Lee Fang has reported, has also spent millions of dollars opposing reform:

They hate it until they love it. Whatevs.

A heavily armed gunman entered the Discovery TV building with an explosive device strapped to his body, and is reportedly holding a security guard and possibly more people hostage.

Via MSNBC:

SILVER SPRING, Md. — A gunman with an explosive device strapped to himself has entered the Discovery Communications building in Silver Spring, Md., and may have taken at least one person hostage, police said.

Montgomery County police said there may also be other explosives in the building, but they said they could not confirm reports that one or more shots had been fired.

Law enforcement authorities identified the man as James J. Lee. They told NBC News that he had a long history of protesting at the building. NBC said the man may have posted environmental and population-control demands online.

His demands are bizarre. Expect conservatives and liberals alike to point fingers at each other. Examples below:

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Back in 2002 while Carly Fiorina ran the show, Hewlett-Packard engaged in a kickback scheme to get in on government contracts. In a nutshell, HP approached procurement contractors with a sweet deal if they would use Hewlett-Packard products. Fiorina was head of HP from 1999 to 2005, so this would have been right in the middle of her tenure.

Kickbacks are illegal. You'd think Carly would have known that, but now the DOJ is collecting $55 million in settlement fees to clear it all up.

The Justice Department announced today that HP wants to settle the case alleging it paid kickbacks, or "influencer fees," to systems integrators in return for recommendations to agencies to buy their products.

Justice said in a news release that the settlement also resolves claims that HP's 2002 contract with the General Services Administration was defectively priced because HP provided incomplete information to GSA contracting officers during contract negotiations.

"Contractors must deal fairly with the government when doing business with federal agencies," said Tony West, assistant attorney general for the Civil Division at DoJ. "As this case demonstrates, we will take action against those who seek to taint the government procurement process with illegal kickbacks."

Of course, HP says the settlement does not admit illegal activity, but the DOJ had no problem calling it what it is. Now let's hope Californians see that Carly Fiorina is a corrupt self-dealer who won't do anything for this state.

Just two days after his Beckapalooza, or the #doucheBeck rally, as we're calling it on Twitter, Glenn Beck rears his ugly head yet again, this time with a brand new "news" website, edited by former Breitbart denizen Scott Baker.

We talked to Baker today about what readers can expect from the new site, the team behind it and more. “It’ll be news and information,” he told Mediaite. “Some commentary and opinion stories we’re interested in that are being under-covered or not covered.”

People will inevitably make the comparison to Arianna Huffington – whether Beck’s role as figurehead behind the site will make The Blaze into a conservative Huffington Post. “The one thing pretty clear around Mercury [Beck's company] is that Glenn is not short on ideas or hesitant on input,” Baker said. “His input is already evident in how the site looks, and that’s what will continue. It will be a continual flow of tips and suggestions and encouragement.”

There's another corner of the Internet to avoid...is "TheBlaze.com" some kind of dog whistle? Also, the Huffington thing? Not so much.

Here's my retort to the Wall Street Journal's Robert Barro for this: Screw you and the horse you rode in on. I have had enough of the unrelenting blame-the-victim messaging from the financial experts and the Murdoch stable of reliable conservative idiot ideologues. This little crap-bomb from Barro is exactly what I'm talking about:

Now the administration wants to kill the 2003 income-tax cuts, at least the parts that reduced marginal income tax rates for high-income earners and for all recipients of dividend income. This proposal is particularly disturbing because the 2003 law was George W. Bush's main economic achievement; unlike most of Mr. Bush's policies, this one was well-conceived and effective.

Oh, boo hoo. As a corollary to my "screw you" to Barro, another middle finger for that. But wait, we haven't gotten to the best part yet:

The unemployment-insurance program involves a balance between compassion—providing for persons temporarily without work—and efficiency. The loss in efficiency results partly because the program subsidizes unemployment, causing insufficient job-search, job-acceptance and levels of employment. A further inefficiency concerns the distortions from the increases in taxes required to pay for the program.

Once again, we have a hack Hooverite writer for a Murdoch publication (who is employed and making entirely too much if he makes more than a buck) not looking at the more complex picture of why unemployment is what it is. No, that would be too much work for Barro. Instead, he blames the people who lost their jobs for not hunting hard enough, not bearing down and taking that McDonald's gig down the street. Because if they were all working at McDonald's or Wal-Mart, we wouldn't have this stubborn unemployment rate.

By God, Republicans will make them work. Republicans wouldn't let them live off the dole this way. Republicans would take the tax cuts and fly the bird at the middle class, but those bastards would work.

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There are small evils and big ones. Focus on the Family is, in my view, a big one. Besides promoting child-beating as a method of keeping your little darlings in line, they are the most homophobic people on the planet. Dobson (even though he is no longer affiliated with them in an official capacity) made a point out of doing everything he could possibly do to make gays and lesbians look like Satan.

The newest FotF "concern" is that gay activist groups are "bullying" schoolchildren:

As kids head back to school, conservative Christian media ministry Focus on the Family perceives a bully on the playground: national gay-advocacy groups.

School officials allow these outside groups to introduce policies, curriculum and library books under the guise of diversity, safety or bullying-prevention initiatives, said Focus on the Family education expert Candi Cushman.

"We feel more and more that activists are being deceptive in using anti-bullying rhetoric to introduce their viewpoints, while the viewpoint of Christian students and parents are increasingly belittled," Cushman said.

Public schools increasingly convey that homosexuality is normal and should be accepted, Cushman said, while opposing viewpoints by conservative Christians are portrayed as bigotry.

In case you haven't seen what happens when children are taught that homosexuality isn't normal and shouldn't be accepted, let me introduce you to the story of Lawrence King.

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My response to all the hoo-ha over the new Gallup poll showing the GOP up ten points?

That's all.

Republican plans for their victory laps in November should definitely get more publicity. Everyone needs to know what they plan to do to us and against us.

Here's one from the odious Dick Morris:

"There's going to be a government shutdown, just like in '95 and '96 but we're going to win it this time and I'll be fightin' on your side," Morris said at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation Conference on Friday in Washington.

Yep, that's surely what the country needs, isn't it? But when the Washington Post offers Sharron Angle campaign advice to help her win, they should also point out that if she does win, she plans to do exactly nothing. Except possibly to stir an armed insurrection or two, right here in this country.

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In Tennessee, ten candidates file suit after discovering widespread voter disenfranchisement in the August 5th primary.

In Houston, 10,000 voting machines and associated data spontaneously combusts, incinerating the machines and tapes, and leaving a right-wing Republican's allegations of voter fraud standing with nothing to prove or disprove them.

In South Carolina, ES&S voting machines are used to nominate an unknown and non-viable Democratic candidate to run against Jim DeMint.

In Alaska, tea party candidate Joe Miller alleges vote tampering by the Murkowski campaign.

These are only a few of the stories we're not seeing about voting machines and their role in shaping government and politics, particularly in areas with heavy Latino and African-American populations. It could almost be called a pattern -- one that threatens to undermine the fundamental pillar of our democracy: one person, one vote.

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A conservative economist with a progressive idea? I'm guessing he won't be doing consulting work for the RNC anytime soon. Kevin Hassett is director of economic policy studies at AEI, a very conservative think tank.

But when I got him on the phone to talk about the unemployment crisis, he struck a different tone. His problem with the stimulus wasn't that government spending inherently fails to grow jobs and the economy. The problem, he said, was that Obama's stimulus was not direct enough.

With the Recovery Act, the White House eschewed direct hiring and aimed instead to raise overall economic output in the hope that more activity would lead to more demand, which would lead to more hires. "Look at the stimulus and the number of jobs we've actually created, and it comes out to a couple million bucks per job created," Hassett told me.

"My idea is simpler. Find the unemployed and hire them."

[...]

"Employers don't want to take a chance on some guy without a job for two years," he said. "The cycle is so long and deep that the cyclical becomes the structural." The easiest way for the government to end somebody's jobless spell is, very simply, to end it by straight-up hiring the worker.

"Since the economy has created this class of long-term jobless, the arguments for government hiring become stronger," he said. "If you give the person a job for a while, it helps them get a job later. You remove the stigma."

What a concept. Hopefully, the White House is paying attention. And Congress. And yes, even conservatives.