Tuesday Reads

I don't know if the Kochs are a "total joke" in the GOP since they own the party lock, stock, and barrel, but Putin puppet Trump may be onto something.

On the other hand, they do own Mike Pence.
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If the Kochs were simply out of public life using their ill-gotten gains to destroy democracy, that would be a good thing.
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I hope Yvette Cormier puts Planet Fitness out of business.

The company is asking for a major liability suit because of pandering to the trans mob.

The decision is here.
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Obituary:  I just knew I would forget to post the obituary of Anna Chennault, who died this past April at the age of 94.  She was a longtime Republican activist, the widow of a prominent military man, who was at the center of one of the most infamous scandals in American history.  She was used as a conduit to the South Vietnam officials in order to sabotage the 1968 Paris Peace Talks because Richard Nixon thought LBJ was doing the negotiations for strictly political reasons, which wasn't true.  Nixon clearly committed a violation of the Logan Act, which LBJ described as treason.  He had authorized an illegal wiretapping in order to get the dirt on Nixon's crime.  The Paris talks fell through right before the election.  Nixon of course was elected--barely--and he spent the next several years trying not to get his crimes discovered and trying to find the file that had the evidence that would have put Nixon away.  This helped form the basis of Watergate and similar illegal activities of the Nixon administration.

Snip:

General Chennault died of lung cancer in 1958 at 67, and Mrs. Chennault moved to Washington.

She was soon embraced by her husband’s friends, including Thomas G. Corcoran, a New Deal strategist who became a notable Washington lobbyist for corporations and foreign powers. He showed her the ropes of lobbying, and she dedicated her memoir to him, calling him “the best teacher of them all.”

In Washington Mrs. Chennault joined the Republican Party and right-wing cadres of influential Americans supporting Taiwan and opposing Communist China. In 1962, with President Kennedy’s blessing, she founded Chinese Refugees’ Relief, which assisted thousands fleeing China. She testified in Congress, wrote articles, gave speeches and, from 1963 to 1966, made weekly broadcasts in Chinese on the Voice of America radio.

In a penthouse apartment resembling a James Bond movie set overlooking the Potomac, she entertained 80 to 100 people a week, serving concoctions like “concubine’s delight” (chicken/snow peas) and “negotiator’s soup” (for Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger). At her soirees, Mrs. Chennault, less than 5 feet tall, cut a striking figure in slim Chinese dresses and spike-heeled satin shoes.