Author: JT

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Eschaton:

So, let’s do a recap on the Very Serious junior senator from Connecticut. About a year ago Lieberman wrote: Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do. In March Lieberman was still claiming that things were getting better. In June he said: I believe, that we will be able to withdraw a significant number of our men and women in uniform from Iraq by the end of this year and even more by next year. And I express that optimism based on the election and formation of the new Iraqi unity government, the increasing capacity of the Iraqi security forces to protect their own people, and the commitment of the new government to disarm the sectarian militias. In July he said: So I am confident that the situation is improving enough on the ground that by the end of this year, we will begin to draw down significant numbers of American troops, and by the end of the next year more than half of the troops who are there now will be home. A little later in July he said: BRIDGEPORT — U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman believes the U.S. will withdraw a “solid” contingent of its military forces in Iraq by the end of the year because of gains made by the Iraqi armed forces. “There really has been progress made by the Iraqi military,” Lieberman said Tuesday during a meeting with the Connecticut Post’s editorial board. “Two-thirds of it could stand on its own or lead the fight with our logistical support.” The three-term U.S. senator said he believes a complete withdrawal is possible by late 2007 or early 2008. Apparently all of that is no longer operative and now he’s standing with St. John McCain calling for more troops. Joe Lieberman, wrong about everything, yet still a very serious person. -Atrios 11:50 AM

You link to it, you OWN it

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Canadian Cynic: You link to it, you OWN it. Deal with it.:

You link to it, you OWN it. Deal with it.  Back here, we have a thoroughly exciting comments section going, where “Strong Conservative” Jonathan Strong finally just plain pisses me off when he writes: Miscommunication, I didn’t personally link Condit stuff, I was just linking Gateway, that was my intent. I don’t give a fuck what your intent was. I am thoroughly tired of people who link elsewhere, get called on what they linked to, then throw up their hands with, “Hey, I didn’t write that, I was just linking to it,” as if that absolves them of any and all responsibility. I don’t think anyone has put it as well as Glenn Greenwald in his sixth update here: Tiger Hawk claims that the other Reynolds — Glenn — merely linked to, but did not endorse, Hinderaker’s reprehensible argument, an excuse which Reynolds quickly embraces. Are there really still people left who don’t understand that Reynolds links to extremist arguments all the time in order blatantly to promote them, only to then claim that he “only linked to it, not endorsed it” once the argument gets exposed, as it so often does, as deceitful, inaccurate or hateful garbage? As Robert Farely said just yesterday when pointing out the utter incoherence in a Victor Davis Hanson article promoted by Reynolds: “I swear to you, the first person to write ‘but Reynolds just linked; he didn’t say that he approved of Hanson’ in comments gets permanently banned.'” If you knowingly promote an argument like Hinderaker’s — which disgustingly asserts that it was to be expected that Foley harassed underage pages because he’s gay — then it is incumbant to make your objections clear (as Tiger Hawk did when linking to my post, or I did when linking to Hinderaker’s). Otherwise, it amounts to: “Hey, I just linked without comment to that white supremacist article, knowingly sending tens of thousands of readers to read it, but I wasn’t endorsing it.” That is Reynolds’ modus operandi, and virtually everyone has caught on. Once and for all, Jonathan, did you catch that? I mean, really, did you catch that? If you link to someone else’s article in any kind of supportive and unqualified way, then you fucking own that article, lock, stock and barrel. All of it. So grow the fuck up and stop being such an infantile whiner. If you have a case, make it. If you can use your own words, terrific. But if you choose to link elsewhere, then that stuff becomes your problem as well. If you can’t handle that, then I suggest you find a less dangerous avocation than blogging. Because you just don’t seem prepared for it. posted by CC

Government Of the Corrupt, By the Corrupt and For the Corrupt

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Government Of the Corrupt, By the Corrupt and For the Corrupt

By: Pachacutec

wall-street-skylt.jpg

Your government, looking out for the not-so-little guy:

The Justice Department announced new rules yesterday that will make it harder for prosecutors to bring criminal charges against companies, bending to intense pressure from business groups that claim the government has overreached in its pursuit of financial malfeasance.

In presenting the revised rules, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty called the changes a substantial and direct response to a lobbying drive by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, among others.

Since devastating bankruptcies at Enron and WorldCom prompted Congress to pass a stringent corporate accountability law four years ago, business interests increasingly have pushed back on efforts to police their operations, arguing that the government has imposed too many costs on companies with too few benefits for investors.

I’m sorry, did you mention the US Chamber of Commerce?  Let’s have a look at the US Chamber’s CEO, Tom Donahue:

If it were possible to pick one person as the representative for American business in Washington, Thomas Donahue is that man.  He is the President and CEO of the United States Chamber of Commerce, the most important business lobbying group in the country.  He is also on the Board of Directors and the Audit Committee of Sunrise Senior Living, and was caught selling stock ahead of the revelations of accounting problems.  That is a serious no-no for any board member or any business executive.  It’s deeply unethical and possibly illegal, because it’s stealing from investors.  If there’s any indication that the business lobby under Republican rule became unbelievably corrupted, look no further than Thomas Donahue, the man that the business community picked to represent them to the Republican power structure.

I’m a small businessman, and the big business lobbies of big pharma, the US Chamber of Commerce and all the rest do not represent me.  They work against my interests and pump a steady stream of lying economic happy talk out through the media.  Net neutrality is good for me, but the telcos and cable companies want to sell me out to extract extra money from big corporate citizens who can pay for better access and accessibility online.  American big business is against universal health care while those of us doing the hiring and growing in the grass roots business community are much more for it.  Big business wants to stifle innovation to protect its markets from little business guys like me. To hell with them.  You want to see what their big corporate welfare does for American jobs and prosperity?  Look no further than the US auto industry.

We don’t need less accountability on our big multinational corporations.  We need more.  Milton Freidman is dead.  Companies have more stakeholders than just shareholders.  Companies that do business in the US are not just global citizens, they are accountable to US citizens.  In earlier times, you had to have property to have a say in government.  That supposedly changed.  But now, government is owned almost outright by multinationals writing laws against the interests of the people in the dark of night for bad actors in Congress – Democrats and Republicans –  to pass as is, without debate, in exchange for campaign contributions and lucrative lobbying jobs for their families, friends and even themselves.

It’s up to us to stop it.  What’s happening to the little guy?  I’m guessing there’s a clue in the fact that late mortgage payments increased in the third quarter of this year.

toohotfortnr

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tooho:tfortnr Since you been gone, I can breathe for the first time

Hey, Frank, great editing, buddy. You really are a credit to the magazine, and I’m a total dick. Here’s what you let Bob Kagan write for you this week:

Schmuck – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Schmuck – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “In his famous cultural lexicon, The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten lists the Yiddish schmuck as related to the Slovene word, šmok, meaning ‘a fool, an innocent, a gullible dolt”

CNET editor James Kim, family missing

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CNET senior editor and Crave blogger James Kim and his family are missing. The 35-year-old Kim, his wife Kati and daughters Penelope (4 years) and Sabine (7 months) left their home in San Francisco last week on a road trip to the Pacific Northwest. They were last seen on Saturday, November 25, in Portland, Ore.

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