"We have Saddam Hussein," declared billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, apparently referring to President Barack Obama as he welcomed hundreds of wealthy guests to the latest of the secret fundraising and strategy seminars he and his brother host twice a year. The 2012 elections, he warned, will be "the mother of all wars."
Charles Koch would probably not publicly compare the president of the United States to a murderous dictator. (As a general rule, he and his brother don't do much politicking or speechifying in public at all.) But Mother Jones has obtained exclusive audio recordings from the Koch seminar, a private event that took place in June at a resort near Vail, Colorado.
Inside the Koch Brothers' Secret Seminar
Cheney Won’t Take Anything Back, Laughs At War Crimes Accusation
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, continuing his “heads exploding” book tour, pushed back against criticisms of his book by former Secretary of State Colin Powell that the book contained, “cheap shots that he’s taking at me and other members of the Administration who served to the best of our ability for President Bush.”
Powell’s former chief of staff retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson offered even more pointed criticisms of Cheney, telling ABC News that, “[Cheney] was president for all practical purposes for the first term of the Bush administration,” and “fears being tried as a war criminal.”
Perry sought to sideline nuclear waste site critic
Texas governor Rick Perry tried to sideline a state commissioner who opposed expanding the scope of a nuclear-waste landfill owned by one of the governor's biggest political donors, Reuters has learned.
Bobby Gregory, owner of a wildlife ranch and landfill company south of Austin, had opposed a plan to let 36 states send nuclear waste to a 1,338-acre site in Andrews County.
The Other Koch Brother
Two mansions, two miles apart, spark intrigue in Palm Beach, Florida. The first, on the northern end of the oceanfront street nicknamed Billionaire's Row, is 30,000 square feet of arched windows and red, Spanish-tile roof, a villa that includes a ballroom where flappers danced and sipped moonshine in the 1920s.
This is David Koch's vacation home. The billionaire oil baron, along with his brother Charles, has gained recent notoriety as the sugar daddy of the Tea Party. In 1979, David Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian Party ticket, and he and Charles have since given more than $100 million to right-wing causes and organizations, according to a 2010 New Yorker profile that exposed their tremendous influence in politics. David lives in New York City and winters in Palm Beach.
Texas Gov. Perry became a millionaire while serving in office
Since his first race for office more than a quarter-century ago, Gov. Rick Perry has emphasized his roots as a rural farmer.
Yet Perry's bank account no longer reflects those humble beginnings as his bottom line has soared in recent years, records show, thanks largely to a handful of real estate deals that critics allege were achieved through the presidential candidates' political connections.
Rick Perry signs anti-abortion pledge
Anti-abortion activists cheered news today that Texas Gov. Rick Perry had signed a sweeping pledge promising to use federal government power to curtail abortion.
Leading activists had expressed concern about Perry in recent weeks, worried that his zeal for state sovereignty under the 10th Amendment of the Constitution would get in the way of using the federal government to prevent abortions.
Clint Curtis blew the whistle on Republican election in Florida (and no one listened—or is listening now) (MUST-SEE)
Clint Curtis is a United States computer programmer, ex employee of NASA, ExxonMobil, etc., who worked for Yang Enterprises (YEI) in Oviedo, Florida until February 2001. He is notable chiefly for making a series of "whistleblower" allegations about his former employer and about Republican Congressman Tom Feeney, including an allegation that in 2000, Feeney and Yang Enterprises requested Curtis's assistance in a scheme to steal votes by inserting fraudulent code into touch screen voting systems.
Curtis specifically alleged that: At the behest of Rep. Tom Feeney, in September 2000, he was asked to write a program for a touchscreen voting machine that would make it possible to change the results of an election undetectably. This technology, Curtis explained, could also be used in any electronic tabulation machine or scanner. Curtis assumed initially that this effort was aimed at detecting Democratic fraud, but later learned that it was intended to benefit the Republican Party.
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