One down, one to go. If there was any justice in the world, once he and his brother are dead the kids who inherit the wealth would then spend their fortunes on greenpeace and black lives matter and voting rights organizations and the like. I remember one of their kids is some trustafarian who made the worlds ugliest shirts:
can't look away pic.twitter.com/J88UwJ8eY2
— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) December 20, 2017
David’s son is apparently a glibertarian.
Elizabelle
Good.
Frankensteinbeck
Whatever their politics, the kids are unlikely to be obsessed with forcing it on the rest of the country. The Koch Brothers are willing to spend more than they gain, and they gain a lot.
Mart
I dunno Cole, think those shirts would look good on you.
Kay
I can’t keep the Koch Bros straight but about six months ago one of them launched a fake “bipartisan” new venture to gut public schools. So they’re still at it full bore. They just got quieter, with slightly better marketing. VERY slick. Old hard Right wine, new bottles.
Kay
Moulton dropped out. Now we just need ten more.
I liked Inslee. I would have kept him. He grows on you. I hope we don’t keep the jerks and lose the good ones.
The Moar You Know
Hope all the coal that sack of shit dug out of the ground is being shoveled into the furnaces of hell as I write. Also hope his foul sibling joins him there ASAP.
tokyokie
Anybody who wears a long-sleeve aloha shirt is a knucklehead. And anybody who designs such is essentially hopeless. If you’re going to spend $100+ on an aloha shirt, why wouldn’t you get something cool from Reyn Spooner rather than this Koch krap? And I speak these truths from the vantage point of someone who has designed aloha shirt fabric.
the Conster
This is a good start to my birthday, not gonna lle.
chris
Good.
B.B.A.
Stop, traveler, and piss.
joel hanes
Good.
Lapassionara
Ding, dong . . ..
Ian G.
I’d honestly rather have Sheldon Adelson kick the bucket before either Koch brother, but I’m not exactly mourning this.
Yarrow
Is David the one who was sick? Or the one who forced the sick brother to get out of the business?
Yarrow
@Ian G.: i’ll take the Mercers before any of them. That includes Robert Mercer and his kids. Maybe the grandkids too but I don’t know enough about them.
Aleta
Yarrow
@the Conster: Happy Birthday! Hope the day continues to get better and better!
Ian G.
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yes, this. Please sink your inheritance into shitty business ventures, heirs, rather than obsessively trying to turn the country into a paradise like El Salvador.
zhena gogolia
Lot of nil nisi bonum proponents on here.
the Conster
@Yarrow:
Thanks Yarrow! There’s so little good news these days, I’ll take it where I can get it. There are so many others on my “I wish they would just die already” list, and the day is still young, so fingers crossed!
zhena gogolia
@Yarrow:
He’s the one who was sick.
E.
An obituary to be read with great satisfaction.
Yarrow
@zhena gogolia: Thanks. So the one without the power, who the even more evil brother had already kicked to the curb. So, basically nothing changes.
@the Conster: LOL. That made me laugh. Have a great day!
Nina
The glibertarian is Charles’s son. David’s kids are under 25, he married in 1998.
HalfAssedHomesteader
The way it seems to work is the sense of entitlement accrues with each generation. I fully expect the next generation to be even worse. No one needs to be a billionaire. No one.
SFAW
@the Conster:
Congrats! Happy Birthday! And many more!!
With any luck, the gods will take notice of that gift, and finish off the rest of the RWMFs who are destroying this country, to REALLY make it a birthday to remember.
rikyrah
This is why I believe in Hell.
Aleta
@the Conster:
Happy ? Birthday ? to you! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Steeplejack
@Kay:
Yeah, I saw Inslee on Rachel Maddow’s show when he dropped out, and I liked him. Not as a presidential candidate, but I could see him as head of the EPA or, dare I dream, “climate czar.”
It always (mildly) surprises me that most people’s “I’m announcing for president” ads are such by-the-book clichés that it kills any sense of who they are. Ten minutes with Maddow was better than whatever he spent on all his ads.
Steeplejack
@the Conster:
Happy birthday! ??
the Conster
@SFAW:
Thanks SFAW! I’ve been waiting for Cheney to die since 2008. He’s been #1 on my PLEASE JUST FUCKING DIE ALREADY list for years, but has been surpassed by guess who.
West of the Rockies
@Kay:
I’d put Moulton in the jerk category, personally.
JPL
thoughts and prayers
Yarrow
@Steeplejack: I always feel the same about failed presidential candidates. They lose the election, go quiet for a few months, then turn up on some late night show and they’re relaxed, funny, and engaging. I always think, “Where was that person during the election?”
JPL
@the Conster: Happy Birthday. May you have many other joyous announcements throughout the day.
Mike in Pasadena
Glibrtarians are just too embarrassed to admit they are Republicans.
Raven
@Yarrow: The pucker factor.
West of the Rockies
I won’t attend the Koch funeral, but I will send a nice letter saying I approve.
(With a nod to Twain.)
Tinare
His is a grave that needs to have a built in dance floor for sure. These are the deaths that make me hope for an afterlife with a vengeful god.
gvg
@Yarrow: Maybe that means they wouldn’t deal well with the pressures of the actual job.
Steeplejack
@Yarrow:
Exactly.
@Raven:
Ditto.
ThresherK
As Jack Benny’s violin instructor (Mel Blanc) said, when Benny broke a string:
That’s one!
Steeplejack
Well, I’m off to take the housecat to see some alleged ninja-level groomer about removing some hair mats. I think they are really bothering her and have contributed to some odd behavior lately. And who doesn’t like a spa day?
Yarrow
I know nothing about this case except for seeing a headline or two but this is funny.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mike in Pasadena:
For the Kochs, I think the ‘libertarian’ act is a scam. Remember they ran the Teabaggers, and given a choice of candidates overwhelmingly picked social conservative bigoted nutjobs rather than merely economically right-wing nutjobs. They don’t want to be perceived as the hate-driven, racist, conspiracy-obsessed Birchers they are.
RedDirtGirl
@the Conster: A very happy birthday to you, fellow jackal!
catclub
@HalfAssedHomesteader:
yeah, they will be even more likely to say that “nothing was ever given to me, I earned my place in the world.”
catclub
@rikyrah:
“I don’t believe in God, but the God I don’t believe in is a kind and forgiving God, not the angry jealous God that you all talk about.”
chris
@the Conster: Woohoo! Happy birthday!
OT: My new Canadian passport just arrived. Comes with a printed set of instructions and, new to me, a separate little card that says in very large print: Don’t travel internationally with Cannabis.
Gee, ya think?
Mike in NC
Any day with one less Kochsucker is a good day.
donnah
@Steeplejack:
Just did this. We took our himalayan Fiona to the groomer and she was shaved except for her head, tail, and legs. She looks adorable, like a little cat wearing Uggs.
She’s older, adopted ten years ago when she came to our front porch and decided she wanted to live here. We had no choice, and she’s been an indoor cat ever since. But probably due to her advanced age, she isn’t grooming herself like she used to, and the mats took over. I know it was making her uncomfortable when she lies down and it had to be hot.
Now she’s a pretty girl again.
Miss Bianca
@Steeplejack:
Uh…if it involves water in any way, I’d say…a cat?
ETA: Still giggling a little over “ninja-level groomer.” Very odd images coming to mind.
Amir Khalid
@chris:
You certainly shouldn’t bring your cannabis stash when you visit Malaysia. I’ve mentioned quite a few times that the threshold amount for a capital trafficking charge here is very low.
Elizabelle
Our world is better for David Koch having left it.
Next up, Charles. And Mitch McConnell. Neither deserves the breath he draws. They are from hell.
Jager
@tokyokie:
My grandson bought an Aloha bowling shirt in a thrift shop on the Big Island. It has Hilo Plumbing Supply on the back and the original owner’s name was Stan. At 17, he thinks it is the coolest shirt in the freaking world. His pals in Santa Cruz agree.
chris
@Steeplejack: @donnah: Good luck! Pumpkin goes twice a year to the groomers. She hates the car but loves having her matts buzzed off. Purrs so hard she blows bubbles.
Amir Khalid
@Yarrow:
If A$AP Rocky started cozying up to Trump, he would probably find himself having to apologise to his fans.
Gin & Tonic
@Jager: He is absolutely correct.
chris
@Amir Khalid: Of course. I laughed because it reminded me of: Do not iron shirt while wearing it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Isn’t David Koch the one who almost died in a plane crash and on a mission from God?
Omnes Omnibus
Should you guys be gloating like this over the death of a commenter?
geg6
This is the kind of day I wish I believed in heaven and hell. Because that mother fucker surely would go to hell if there was one.
Raven
@Jager: My niece is a Banana Slug.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yarrow: a combination of trump’s racism and obsession with TeeVee and notions of fame and celebrity: “How can they say I’m against The Blacks? Do they not see me on TeeVee with Kanye? and when I got the king of Denmark to free ASAP Rockne? even though his wife was very nasty to me”
And good for ASAP Rocky for blowing off the fat fuck
Miss Bianca
David Koch was actually the only one of the Koch Brothers I ever met. Briefly. Very briefly. At a social gathering in Paonia, where he owned one of the local coal mines. He actually did give money away locally, so I snagged some for my library-based literacy program, because hey, I ain’t proud. That money helped fund ESL programming for local migrant workers, I got some grim pleasure out of that factoid.
He also bought this huge complex outside the neighboring hamlet of Somerset. Had tanks and all kinds of weird boy-toys out there. One of the tanks used to make an appearance at the Cherry Days parade (Fourth of July) which caused a bit of controversy. One of the Paonia town councilors (who was also my hairdresser at the time) actually stopped it going down the street one time by standing in front of it Tianamen Square-style. He avoided the grisly fate of the Tianamen Square protestors. Got a lot of flak for spoiling the fun and shaming the local big rich boy, tho’.
Central Planning
@Steeplejack:
Cats.
Miss Bianca
@Raven:
This is one of those times and phrases where, if I didn’t know the context, I’d be seriously wondering about the commenter.
Elizabelle
@donnah:
Very fashion forward. Fiona is smiling, too.
trollhattan
@the Conster:
I’d like to petition for a Kissinger slot on your list, pretty please. Thank you for considering my proposal.
As to the now-discontinued Koch the elder, I don’t expect any more improvements from Koch Industries+politics then we got at Walmart from the Sam Walton heirs. Bidnez as usual.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: My mother is a fish. Jewel’s mother is a horse.
Eljai
@geg6:
Yeah, he should at least have to experience the effects of climate change like the rest of us!
Booger
@HalfAssedHomesteader: IIRC the Koch brothers were strongly influenced by the Soviet seizure of dad’s oil infrastructure back in the day, plus a literal Nazianz nanny. That’s some strong sauce to marinate kids in.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m trying to remember what I would be. Oh, Wolverine! WOLVERINES!!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The King of Israel has issued a Royal Decree, a Diktat, an Ukase, a Bull!
“hereby”…. I think helped him write this one. Or maybe Eric is reading a Golden Book about a mighty king.
Will the skittish deer of Wall St panic, or are they ignoring him at this point? ETA: Markets off by more than 1%. I don’t follow them closely, but I think I saw about an hour ago they were more or less flat. I don’t pretend to understand how Wall St folk read their goat entrails. Aren’t they all supposed to be at the Cape or the Hamptons till Labor Day?
WereBear
@B.B.A.: Talk about your “Find a Grave” action.
Yarrow
@trollhattan: I’m just imagining if someone one like Kissinger or Cheney also died today. Can you imagine how fearful the evil old white guys would be? “Am I going to be number 3? Is today my day?” Heh.
Ruckus
@JPL:
Ouch.
Nice burn.
jl
@Yarrow: Heard on the news that Trump is (very falsely) claiming that doctors, during his visit to El Paso, abandoned operations and ER patients, since meeting with the greatest president ever was more important. Trump is deteriorating fast.
If we’re lucky, as his approval rating drops, he’ll just withdraw into reality nutty fantasies and broadcasting them on twitter.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: The presence of wolverines in As I Lay Dying would have improved it immensely.
Kelly
Trump on twitter this morning
He can’t possibly believe any great American company will comply. What a pure play for aggrieved, ignorant voters.
Martin
Meet your anti-vaxxers:
‘treason’. Simplest conceivable machine language algorithm to detect extremists.
LuciaMia
Uhhh, except they didnt. I thought he was found guilty but released for time served.
lurker dean
https://twitter.com/joshgondelman/status/1164900157932167169
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: “As I Lay Dying: Red Dawn edition”
Ruckus
@Steeplejack:
Who doesn’t like a spa day?
Cats.
And some dogs. The ornery bastard didn’t like spa day so much every groomer in the area told me after the first time, “Never bring him back.” I had to learn to groom him myself because he could grow hair faster than any other animal alive. First step, muzzle. Second step, work fast, don’t worry about being dainty, it will grow back too soon no matter what you do.
LuciaMia
Recommending empty Kleenex boxes as great bedroom slippers!
SFAW
@the Conster:
Although I assume his evil has not abated, he’s been passed by so many in the Maladministration.
Maybe we can get them to have a steel-cage death match melee? I’d pay good money to see that. Can you talk to your birthday angels, see if they can help us out on that?
Martin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Market fell 350 right after that tweet. Investors know the guy is a lunatic.
West of the Rockies
@Miss Bianca:
My mother is a fish.
Ah, I see someone beat me to it!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: WTF? Trump has no power to order this stuff.
Seriously, we have become numb to how crazy this is.
Miss Bianca
@West of the Rockies: My father was a hamster. No, wait…
Martin
Points for headline:
PPCLI
@Kelly: Is Trump going to start making his merchandise (and the campaign’s merchandise) in the USA? Is Ivana going to start making her line of clothes and shoes in the USA?
Ruckus
@catclub:
They did earn it, by being born. I know, it’s a hard thing to do, you have to chose your parents correctly, learn that the words ass, asshole, fuckstick, dumbass, and a few more choice ones are endearing, early on, if you want to make it in the hard core world of inherited wealth. All that work, having to take time out of your many days of tanning, drinking, etc, to got to the bank to make a withdrawal from your trust fund, just so you can buy a new Italian sports car.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
does he know he used sarcasti-quotes around brilliantly?
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
From someone I know who used to work for the family, Sam Walton was the best of the lot. And by a not an insignificant bit.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Anyone who asks if Powell or Xi is the bigger enemy has had every last marble fall out of his head.
chris
Intraday chart of the Dow shows Powell speaking and the market turns positive. Trump tweets and panic ensues, down almost 2%. I won’t be surprised to learn that he and cronies are short everything.
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I know the list of stuff he does know is much shorter than what he doesn’t but really, does he know what an average 4th grader would know?
NO, he doesn’t. Because that’s the test. He might know what a 3rd grader is supposed to know, but 4th grade and beyond flies right past him. At warp speed.
rikyrah
Dow Jones down 434 points.
So much winning.
dww44
@Yarrow: I so agree with you. If our democracy is gonna be saved, we have to figure out ways to effectively and permanently marginalize the pervasive influence of big money and its owners.
joel hanes
@Elizabelle:
Next up, Charles. And Mitch McConnell
and Rupert Murdoch
and Richard Bruce Cheney
and Sheldon Adelson
and Betsy DeVos and her brother
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I just wonder if Xi giggles or guffaws when he sees this stuff. Or is he with Putin in the cold, sly half-smile faction?
and does Jay Powell look longingly at the crystal decanter of brown liquor graciously provided in his spacious Jackson Hole suite and think of the Goldman Sachs offer he turned down for this shit and wonder, “is it close enough to lunch?”?
Villago Delenda Est
Nuke them all from orbit.
Only way to be sure.
RedDirtGirl
@Miss Bianca: What reference am I missing here?
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@RedDirtGirl: Monty Python and the Holy Grail. “Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!”
laura
@the Conster: Happy Birthday and many happy bad men death announcements today to you!
WereBear
@West of the Rockies: Like Groucho said, surveying the turnout for the most obnoxious Warner Brother: “Give the people what they want.”
Don K
@The Moar You Know:
I wish I believed in a hell that would have an appropriate punishment in store for this pair.
PAM Dirac
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
“Now go away before I taunt you a second time!” (said in outrageous accent)
J R in WV
Not only did the founding father Koch take offense when Stalin confiscated the petroleum infrastructure Koch had built in Soviet Russia, but Koch grandfather was happy to go the Stalinist Soviet Russia to build a technically advanced oil bidness for Stalin in the first place.
Being willing to spend years in Soviet Russia building refineries and pipelines and drilling oil wells back then… that was seriously perverted. And he didn’t return to America from Soviet Russia a penniless immigrant, he came home a seriously wealthy sociopath.
Thanks, Unkle Joe Stalin for all you did for everyone!
We have had the second wave of workers come and go… the path is newly paved with crusher-run stone, nicely compacted, and the pond is full of new water. Sweet. Two weeks of other people up in our tiny hollow, the new silence is wonderful!! Saw a tiny tree frog hopping across the new path last night, hope they fine the pond. I will have to put a log in to allow them to climb out easily.
ETA fix typo
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I always thought the under-covered part of Romney’s 47% tape was when he hissed with rage “I inherited nothing!” Which I suspect is technically true, he was probably richer than old George when the latter died. But… son of a governor of one of the largest states in the country, and Cabinet secretary, and Establishment-darling presidential candidate, the Cranbrook School, Harvard, to say nothing of the little post-college nest-egg The Lady Ann giggled about, which IIRC was worth about $350K in 2012 dollars, but they used an old door on sawhorses as a dining room table while eating tuna casserole, so those plucky kids knew from struggling. How dare you suggest he was born on third base!
There was a “Republican strategist” on Joy Reid’s show last weekend who got apoplectic at the mention of white privilege because he grew up in a trailer park and was the first in his family to go to college, and he worked two full time jobs to get himself through college! He was so mad his eyes got that crazy Ann Coulter quiver and he announced he would say no more.
Gin & Tonic
Trump “hereby orders”? Under what authority? And what is he “ordering” businesses to do, exactly?
I’d like to laugh, but I can’t.
Mandalay
@chris:
This x1000.
I’m sure Trump, his family and his cronies make gazillions in a day by shorting stocks just before he tweets some carefully contrived idiocy. And unless they are very stupid about it, it is impossible to prove.
And he’s laughing (at us) all the way to the bank.
cynthia ackerman
@Steeplejack:
One of mine, with medium length fur, had severe matting and wouldn’t let me deal with it.
Then I switched them both from all dry to lo carb all wet food, and the matting quickly disappeared.
Worth a try if you’re dry feeding. Plus other health benefits.
RedDirtGirl
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: Thanks.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kelly:
I see no reason he can’t believe that. He’s dumb as a stump, senile, arrogant, and under huge stress. His history suggests he thinks there should be no limits to his power and has trouble understanding when he is denied. Instead, he’ll be pissed off when he doesn’t get what he wants again.
Kelly
@Frankensteinbeck: Josh Marshall, Trump’s Razor
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.
Elizabelle
@joel hanes:
I’m good with that. The more, the merrier. We will all be. The safer, too. They’re all sociopaths.
mrmoshpotato
Nice try Dave, but McTurtle the Fascist Fucker is still getting all the contents of my full bladder.
TenguPhule
Ding Dong, David Koch is dead.
Another grave to piss on.
Ruckus
@Kelly:
The problem with that approach is to make it work properly you have to think as stupid as trump. Now there are people who can do this. They are called trump supporters. But your average human can’t think that stupidly in the first place. What you have to do is think what would a normal human do, even what is the range of things. Every thing that you leave out, which ever one is the most costly, least likely to do the whatever, most harmful to the largest number of people, that can not possibly benefit anyone in that normal human group, that’s your winner. trumps gift is that is the first thing that comes to him, and with his narcissistic personality, always the right answer. In his tiny, diseased mind.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh, please, don’t make me relive it!
MisterForkbeard
@chris: It’s an important warning.
I knew a guy who was travelling cross-country in an old ricket station wagon with two friends in the late 90s. They were going to some very right-wing/backwards stops on their way, and they all agreed ahead of time (and repeatedly) not to carry any kind of drugs or illicit tools because they might be targets for some bored fascist cops who’d think these california young teens must be trafficking because they had no other business there.
Sure enough, when they stopped for gas in a small town in the midwest a cop car circled the gas station three times waiting for them to leave, then immediately pulled them over for a ‘bad break light’ that was coincidentally just fine when they checked it. The cops then intimidated them into allowing them to search the car.
Turns out one of the kids brought a bong despite their agreement, because he was stupid. They were all thrown into holding cells overnight, one of them with a child rapist as a roommate. They got sprung the next day and the arrest was later declared illegal for obvious reasons.
But this was in America, with white kids, where they’d agreed ahead of time NOT to do something stupid. These warnings can be really useful to kids – if this had happened in Malaysia, at least one of them would have been in huge trouble.
TenguPhule
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
You can spot the exact moment Wall Street heard Donald Trump’s insanity statement.
LivinginExile
Wasn’t Fred Koch a founding member of the John Birch Society?
sigyn
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ann Romney is way too pretentious to serve, or admit to eating a casserole. She called it “tuna and pasta”; I remember because it made me laugh & call my mother so she could laugh too.
Leto
Way late to this thread but I’m finally checking BJ today and this is probably the second best news I’ve heard this week (first being that I was selected to go down the Philadelphia Union soccer complex and watch them practice, and then eat lunch with them. USO arranged trip via my base). I hope the rule of the idiot children wasting the wealth continues to hold true. Fuck’em.
Miss Bianca
@RedDirtGirl: Faulkner/Monty Python mash-up.
Quaker in a Basement
May he come to know the meaning of compassion in the afterlife.
chris
@MisterForkbeard:
Yup, one which some of my compatriots will not heed.
jonas
@Martin:
And yet they all eagerly line up to throw millions at the guy every time he holds a campaign fundraiser in the Hamptons or at Mar-a-Lago. They seem to be enjoying the wild ride just fine. Fucking ghouls.
Cemet
@J R in WV: You forget that father Kock sucker of the kock sucker brothers stole all the patient designs from other companies and used this to make the equipment that he then sold – with no royalties paid to the creators – to stalin. He started as a thief, built massive wealth and returned to the U.S. The low life shit then spawned further low life shit that has done its best to ruin this country. Glad one more is dead and soon, the other should follow – asap if we are lucky.
J R in WV
@Cemet:
Jjust got home from weekly shopping errands — thanks for the education, no surprise at all. He probably believed, and perhaps true, that since Soviet Russia was not signatory to any treaty upholding patents or copyrights he was home free and clear. Like all thieves. Still glad his older son is no longer with us, which is a little bit surprising to me. But only a little bit. Tiny nanometer of surprise.