Not even a week after Buzzfeed’s relationship with the Koch Brothers is exposed do we learn that a near civil war erupted in public television over documentaries that focused on Charles and David Koch. In an expose written by Jane Mayer of the New Yorker it is revealed that two public television affiliated documentaries prominently featuring the Koch family came under pressure to be censored and edited due to fear that Charles and David Koch, major donors to public media, would withdraw support.

The Koch Brothers seem to be in the middle of a strategy shift. Previously the billionaire oil barons who made their money the old fashioned way (they inherited it) used various think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation to launder their deregulation and tax cut agenda. Now the Kochs, after advancing astroturfing groups like FreedomWorks to browbeat the press, are trying to get into the media business outright.

After years of mismanagement, the Tribune Company newspapers — including the Chicago Tribune and L.A. Times – are up for sale. And one of the potential buyers? The Koch brothers. And wow are people outraged!

Most everyone knows the most common use of welfare as helping those in danger of being left behind by society. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP although often still referred to as Food Stamps, and Medicaid are the most well known programs available to people. And no, Social Security and Medicare are not welfare programs.

President Obama and his inner Ronald Reagan protect the rich from the possibility of a dent in their wealth and power.

They’ll deny global warming as long as politically possible…and then they will copy this gentleman’s style: If there’s a need, a Chinese entrepreneur will find a way. The foul smog swallowing much of China has inspired one such man to launch a humorous campaign to focus on environmental issues — by selling canned fresh air. [...]

“I’m afraid that President Obama may have this ‘king complex’ sort of developing, and we’re going to make sure it doesn’t happen.”

Thus spake Rand Paul, US Senator (!), somewhat before he knew what, exactly, Obama’s proposals would entail. But does that really matter? True believers like Paul are reliably armed with two of the three things they’ve ever half-read (not written by Ayn Rand), the Bible and the Constitution, and have come to some pretty novel conclusions about both works. Of course, such conclusions are completely nuts, but nonetheless at least as infallible as whatever comes out of the Pope’s ass on any given day, so there.

Renewable energy is under attack in the Tar Heel State. That’s the word from Greenpeace USA‘s Connor Gibson today in a report that implicates King Coal powerhouse, Duke Energy and the fossil fuel industry at-large.

Sometimes it seems like the system is rigged and the rich just keep getting richer – it seems that way for a reason, it’s true.

In any normal country, there would be no particular reason to expect 2013 to be an awful year. The right-wing Presidential candidate, who preached austerity, family values, and military adventurism, was soundly defeated by the center-left candidate, who favored, well, austerity-lite, personal freedom, and a fiscally convenient “peace dividend.” Overconfident and overfunded Republicans were similarly trounced in the House and Senate, losing seats in both despite stunning structural advantages.

It seemed that the Right’s perennial hobby horses, from favoring the wealthiest above all others and demonizing minorities of every type, to demanding that every non-military expenditure be slashed to the bone, had clearly been sent to the glue factory by the electorate. Alas, things are never what they seem in Washington.