Posted on 06/08/2006 4:03:05 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
First, some friends of mine at NMI, the new media watchdog project at the Swedish free-market think tank Timbro, informed me that a Swedish magazine recently published an interview with Kos. Here's a sample of what he had to say:
“I wouldn't want to be a senator or congressman. I'm able to influence politics much more effectively doing what I do. Now I can shape the national political debate. The only way I could exert more influence would be if I were president. But I’d never want that guy’s job. Never.”
”Joe Trippi contacted us about helping Howard Dean. And we successfully used our tools and methods to make him one of the election's more important candidates…It was a little scary to carry so much responsibility on your shoulders. And it still is. I daydream about turning things over to a younger generation, but people wouldn't allow it. Not yet”
”I get lots of calls from people who want to learn how to leverage the Internet…The Swedish social democrats, for instance, asked me to come to Sweden to hold a talk, but I didn't have the time. Soon they'll have to come to Berkeley to learn the ropes.”
”I was in England recently, where they don't allow political ads on TV. It was a fantastic experience. It was so beautiful that I cried.”
I especially like that last one, in which Kos tells us that the suppression of political speech in England literally brought tears of joy to his eyes.
NMI's Michael Moynihan writes:
These pearls of wisdom were found in the latest issue of the Swedish magazine Att:ention. They are typical Moulitsas: a mixture of delusion, pomposity and just plain absurdity. For instance, his suggestion that he could "help" the Swedish Social Democrats is more than a little bizarre, considering that they have been in power for 65 of the last 74 years (and hold a slight lead over the "conservative" alliance in current opinion polls). So perhaps he would do us a solid, come to Stockholm and do for the Social Democrats what he did for Howard Dean.
Our second Kos-related item was brought to our attention by reader W.J.M.L., who directed us to some strange activity on the "Daily Kos" Wikipedia entry. Apparently, Kos diarist Armando Lloréns-Sar isn't comfortable with too many people knowing about his day job as an attorney at McConnell Valdés (it's clearly the same guy):
Click on the "history tab" on the top [of the entry for Daily Kos] and it will take you to this page.
Then if you click through the different versions you can see where wiki user "armandoatdailykos" deleted the entry.
Then here he writes, "this post should be deleted. It constitutes harassment."
W.J.M.L. did some digging and discovered a few reasons why Lloréns-Sar might be uncomfortable with too many people knowing about his professional activities (he threatened to ban one commenter for getting too close to his "personal circumstances"):
A Daily Kos guy working for Wal-Mart? No wonder he doesn't want anyone to know.During his time filling in for Kos as the "front page diarist" he wrote a number of pro-corporate articles, of course without disclosing that he is a corporate attorney promoting these same issues for his clients. For example, in this post he takes the pro-corporate position that modern anti-trust law is based on activist judges' rulings and not as the law as written. He fails to mention that he recently represented Wal-Mart in an anti-trust capacity in Puerto Rico.
1st
A corporate lawyer who represented Wal-Mart. Horrors.
Boing!!!!
I wonder who should be more upset- the Kosites, knowing that Armando is an attorney for Wal-mart, or Wal-mart knowing that Armando is a Kosite blogging about "corporatism" while eating lunch at his desk.
Anyway, Armando is right about anti-trust regulations being mostly the creation of activist judges. I like that version of Armando. He would make a good FReeper.
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