It calls itself the 60 Plus Association and describes itself as "a non-partisan, conservative leaning seniors organization." In fact, it's one of the Koch Brothers' spider web of organizations with names that make them sound like a bunch of regular folks who've come together to fight for what makes America great — Americans for Prosperity, American Commitment, Concerned Women for American Action and on and on — but are funded by the Koch Brothers and their ultra-rich friends. And it's spent $304,000 to put up an attack ad against Terry Goddard.

If you want to learn more about 60 Plus Association, its dark money political operations and its links to the Koch Brothers and their Arizona money funneler Sean Noble, read AZ Blue Meanie's excellent post on Blog for Arizona, complete with links to other articles and a visual of the whole interconnected $400 million Koch Brothers political network.

The ad is 30 seconds connecting Goddard to Obama: "Instead of fighting for us, Goddard fights for Obama's policies." You know, policies like immigration reform and ObamaCare. It's so cliched and cartoonish, it should be laughable, but with $304,000 worth of repetition, it may be effective. It bears a striking resemblance to an ad the group put out during the primary campaign targeting Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Smith, which begins with the words, "What do Scott Smith and Obama have in common?" The answer is, Smith supports Medicaid expansion, just like Obama. And then there's the group's ad against DuVal, where the link is to Hillary Clinton, not Obama.

Back in September we began sharing a series of posts from Narco News on their friend, the late journalist Gary Webb and the new movie about his career, released this month, "Kill the Messenger," starring Jeremy Renner.

Narco News founder Al Giordano, in his first essay about his friend and the movie, predicted that the big news outlets that attacked Webb and his ground-breaking work, would be back to defend themselves and bring Webb down once again:

“In the coming weeks we can expect more such panicked response to the Kill the Messenger movie from the same career apparatchiks that smeared Gary Webb to begin with, doubling down on their worn and rusted hatchets.

“Like Wile E. Coyote, they’ll hoist the piano over their heads one last time, and predictably the piano will fall back down upon them.”

And sure enough, in Giordano's latest, with Narco News writer and editor Bill Conroy, that attack came from Washington Post's Jeff Leen, assistant managing editor in charge of the paper's investigations unit. Why would Leen get in on the anti-Webb action?

According to his Oct. 17 essay in The Washington Post, he was there and of course remember all of it very differently than what was portrayed in the move:

I had a ringside seat to the Webb saga. As an investigative reporter covering the drug trade for the Miami Herald, also a Knight Ridder newspaper, I wrote about the explosion of cocaine in America in the 1980s and 1990s, and the role of Colombia’s Medellin Cartel in fueling it.

Beginning in 1985, journalists started pursuing tips about the CIA’s role in the drug trade. Was the agency allowing cocaine to flow into the United States as a means to fund its secret war supporting the contra rebels in Nicaragua? Many journalists, including me, chased that story from different angles, but the extraordinary proof was always lacking.

And, of course, lucky for us Giordano and Conroy see it differently:

Poor Jeff Leen had to report to work each day and seek some other path to the Hollywood stardom and millions he thought being a journalist would someday bring him. How many times he sent his resume to the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times while cursing his fate in Miami is a number between him and his god. In his desperate plea for their attention, according to a book by the late Gary Webb, he cooked up a fake idea in his Herald reporting: That Miami was the birthplace of the crack cocaine explosion in the United States. In Miami, a city that would like to be first in something, anything, even crack, they inhaled those fumes eagerly.

Then along came Gary Webb, over on the West Coast, with the documents that proved Jeff Leen’s entire journalistic gambit had been a fraud.

Why are we telling you about this Jeff Leen character? You’ve probably never heard of him or read any his work or, if you did, found it important or memorable, not even during his 17 years at the Washington Post. You might be able to name other Post writers and columnists, including people who’ve been there far less time than Leen. But for good reason, you’ve never heard of this guy.

A few days ago, Leen wrote an opinion column for the Post, a newspaper whose shameful behavior in 1996 is now topic of the major motion picture, “Kill the Messenger.” Two-time Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner portrays Leen’s old imaginary nemesis, Gary Webb, and convincingly depicts the latter’s reporting of the most important investigative news story of the 1990s, and the turmoil that engulfed Webb when the big three daily newspapers in Washington, New York and Los Angeles then ganged up to destroy Webb’s career.

Leen apparently burst a spleen when he saw “Kill the Messenger” on the silver screen. There was the late Gary Webb. Although he never made the “millions” Leen said back in 1997 that he aspired to win through journalism, Webb is suddenly occupying the heroic space in Hollywood’s star pantheon that Leen told us in 1997 was his dream to fill. And so Leen took his butthurt grievance to the Washington Post editorial pages last Friday.

“Gary Webb was no journalism hero despite what ‘Kill the Messenger’ says,” shouted the headline on Jeff Leen’s essay.

Let's boil the three-candidate race for the two Legislative District 9 House seats down to essentials.

If you vote for Democrats Victoria Steele and Randy Friese, you'll be represented by two solid progressive legislators. Randy Friese emphasizes education as his most important issue. Victoria Steele emphasizes mental health issues, along with a focus on "women's issues," a term she uses to encompass a wide range of issues which benefit all Arizonans. If you lean toward supporting Democratic principles, vote for both of them. If you lean conservative, they're not your candidates.

If you vote for Republican Ethan Orr, you'll get a legislator who votes for the NRA agenda (he has a 92 percent approval rating from the gun lobby), votes against abortion (he signed a fetal personhood proclamation which states that embryos are people, meaning that abortion should be illegal, including in cases of rape and incest) and votes for expanding private school vouchers (he supports private school tuition tax credits and "Empowerment scholarship accounts," aka vouchers on steroids). You'll also get someone who occasionally votes with Democrats on health care (he was one of the Republicans who gave the Democrats enough votes to expand Medicaid), education (he believes in giving money to public schools with one hand while taking it away for vouchers with the other) and some budget items. If you like the Ethan Orr grab bag, he's your man. If you're thinking about voting for him but have trouble with his stands on gun safety regulations, abortions and vouchers, don't. The two Democrats are far better choices.

Knowing some of the challenges families with kids with special needs go through, here's a new PSA for Linkages, an organization that makes employment a possibility for people of varying disabilities. In the heartfelt video, Tucsonan Maricela Martinez-Whitmore talks about her son, Bradley, and how wonderful it is for him to have a job he loves. Something we can all understand.

Linkages' 7th annual Building Bridges Awards Luncheon is Tuesday, Oct. 29, at the Westin La Paloma Resort and Spa. Tickets are $60 each. The luncheon recognizes the employer of the year, individual of the year, project of the year, and job developer of the year.

For more info on the luncheon, email [email protected] or call 209-2656.

Wonkette has always had a good hard-on for our crazyland politics in Arizona, but a recent post calls out that journalistic train wreck called the Arizona Daily Independent.

Wonkette wrote about the right-wing clamor from Maricopa County GOP chairman A.J. LaFaro, who has gotten a lot of attention thanks to a video of a Latino man delivering a box of completed early ballots. Of course, everything that took place was legal, even it does tend to stir fears that Mexican thugs are stuffing the ballot box.

Poor LaFaro. I just wonder if he should consider moving some place else so that he doesn't have to run into terrifying Mexicans who make life so difficult.

Wonkettehttp://wonkette.com/564064/latino-guy-delivers-absentee-ballots-in-arizona-youll-never-guess-what-happens-next:

Finally, the right has incontrovertible evidence of voting fraud! Democrats say it’s rare, but here is the video that proves just how real and scary it is: “Liberal activist caught on video stuffing hundreds of ballots.” Or, from some of the more responsible rightwing sites who are pretending to hedge a little, “This Video Appears To Show A Guy Stuffing Hundreds Of Ballots Into A Ballot Box.”

The shitstorm broke late last week at the “Arizona Daily Independent,” which recounts the claims of A.J. LaFaro, chair of the Maricopa County Republican Party, who was observing early primary balloting at the Maricopa County Elections Department in August, just to make sure the wrong kind of people didn’t try to do any voter fraud. He’s a real patriot.

LaFaro, according to his own account of the encounter at this rightwing blog — which The Arizona Daily Independent piece copied verbatim, without a byline, just “ADI News Services,” because journalism — was protecting democracy from “behind bullet proof glass because of the violence and protesting that occurred by militant groups during the November, 2012, General Election.” We were unaware of any reports whatsoever of thuggish militants rioting throughout Arizona in 2012, but, sure, we’ll just take LaFaro’s word for it.

All of a sudden, LaFaro spotted an obviously suspicious Latino wearing a Citizens for a Better Arizona t-shirt delivering votes. LaFaro “watched in amazement” as the obviously suspicious Latino “dropped a large box of hundreds of early ballots on the table and started stuffing the ballot box.”

The obviously suspicious Latino was very rude and very suspicious and when LaFaro demanded his name, he dared to say, “Go fuck yourself! I don’t have to tell you who I am.”

LaFaro, who was perfectly calm and polite the entire time, of course, while the scary Latino was screaming obscenities at him and threatening him with his being Latino and all, pointed out that one of the ballots wasn’t sealed, at which point, according to LaFaro, the suspicious vote-frauding Latino “hid behind the ballot box and table as he slipped the unsealed ballot into his brief and left.” Moments later, he returned with the ballot now sealed and put it in the ballot box. Then, as he was leaving the building, he said to LaFaro, “Go fuck yourself gringo.”

Poor LaFaro adds, in his unedited version of the story, how the scary Latino man scared him so very much:

I don’t know if that person in the video is an illegal alien, a dreamer or a citizen. What I do know is that he was a vulgar, disrespectful, violent thug who has no respect for our laws. I would have followed him to the parking lot to take down his tag number, but I feared for my life.

As the Wonkette points out (listen up, AZ Daily Independent), it only took a phone call to Arizona to Citizens for a Better Arizona founder Randy Parraz to get bigger picture of what's taking place:

Here's a special Friday night sneak peek of this Sunday's "Zona Politics with Jim Nintzel." Fred Duval, the Democratic candidate for governor, stops by the set to talk about why better schools are at the heart of his campaign, his support for marriage equality and his plans to have a DREAMer to lead the pledge of allegiance if he take the oath of office.

Then in a roundtable discussion, Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Lea Marquez Peterson and former Pima County Democratic Party chairman Jeff Rogers talk about the state of the governor's race; catch up on what's happening in the Attorney General's contest; ponder whether Democrat Terry Goddard can beat Republican Michele Reagan in the Secretary of State's race; weigh David Garcia's chances against Diane Douglas in the race for State Superintendent of Public Instruction; discuss Gabby Giffords' campaign against gun violence in key districts around the country; break down the arguments in the three-way House of Representatives race between Republican Ethan Orr and Democrats Victoria Steele and Randy Friese; and bark a bit over whether Pima County voters should approve a $22 million bond for a new animal-care center.

On the second episode of Zona Politics with Jim Nintzel: A one-on-one interview with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Fred DuVal, followed by a conversation with Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Lea Márquez Peterson and attorney Jeff Rogers about the hot races around the state, the latest on Gabby Giffords' anti-gun-violence push, the politics of gay marriage and much more! Tune in at 9:30 a.m. Sunday on KGUN 9 or watch it online later this weekend at ZonaPolitics.com.

So on Friday, Oct. 17, we had a little party, right? People got married in the breezeway between the Pima County administration building and the courthouse, and we have posters being made of U.S. District Court Judge John Sedwick and we're booking him now for next year's pride parades.

Put away the party hats folks, because crazyland has not left the building. It's time for another fight.

H/T to Arizona Republic columnist EJ Montini, who wrote today about how the Alliance Defending Freedom is i Arizona chatting up our crazyland lawmakers to revive a new version of SB 1062, the bill Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed after huge public pressure from people who understood that legalizing description was just not a good idea. In this case, the bill would have allowed individuals and business could deny services to anyone LGBT, claiming "sincerely held religious belief." Yeah, that's always the problem with discrimination—it's always so damn sincere.

From Montini:

An outfit called Alliance Defending Freedom is backing the idea of legalized discrimination. And a legislator or two are talking like they'd be happy to see a new version of Senate Bill 1062, which would have legalized (or at least attempted to do so) discrimination by individuals and businesses who claim to be acting on what they called a "sincerely held religious belief."

Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed that bill, saying it wasn't necessary and hopefully understanding the negative impact such a proposal would have had on our businesses and our tourism.

Let alone our souls.

Now, apparently, it's back.

According to an article by The Republic's Mary Jo Pitzl discussions about this are going on at the State Capitol. She noted: "House Speaker Pro Tem J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, told the Arizona Capitol Times that the issue of how to protect businesses from being forced to work with groups with whom they have a moral objection will need to be addressed."

How about you address it by telling people that discrimination is illegal?

H/T to Latino Rebels for their reaction to Google's launch of .SOY, a web domain for Latinos.

I'm confused. I mean, since the reconquista already happened doesn't that mean that ALL web domains are Latino?

Well, yes and no.

From Latino Rebels:

The development of which I speak has to do with how Mountain View, California-based Google’s launch of .SOY, a web domain targeting the country’s Latinos, was supposed to herald a new day on the Latino web, with some “Hispanic marketing experts” waxing triumphant about our (finally) getting some respect from a company that has a less-than-triumphant record of hiring Latinos or black people.

And then the Latino and vegan web responded: Hey Google, “soy” (Spanish for “I am”) sounds more like a domain name for one of the tony vegan Mexican restaurants where Google and other Silicon Valley workers eat $15 tacos than it does a hub for online Latinos.

Far from being the Latino web sensation Google and its “experts” expected, .SOY provides fodder for the amateur comedian in us all, with Latinos and vegans joining forces, taking the “.SOY” domain and applying it to different adjectives like quépendejo.soy (how stupid I am), #soyhispandering or calling .SOY “The must-have domain for the lactose-intolerant.”

Twitter desmadre:

In the end, can't help but think of Cheech and Chong's "Mexican Americans," because, well yeah, Latinos kinda like lots of different things, even soy milk.

• http://www.modernhiker.com/2014/10/21/instagram-artist-defaces-national-parks/

It takes a particular type of arrogance to believe that the national parks of the Western United States would be improved by your crappy artwork, but hey, that's apparently what was going through Casey Nocket's head as she travelled through Yosemite, Crater Lake, Death Valley, Zion and elsewhere painting acrylic versions of stuff from the back of high school notebooks as she went along.

Even better, she cataloged this vandalism across Tumblr and Instagram.

Ms. Nocket got at least somewhat wise and set her photos to private, according to the website Modern Hiker, but through the power of screenshots, it would seem she'll be having an unpleasant conversation with the authorities soon.