So, you had a big party. You got to watch all the Presidential wanabees give their speeches, each one searching your faces for flickers of approval. So you greeted each kossack like long lost friends, saying how you never expected someone who wrote so brilliantly to also be so attractive. You had a few drinks together. And after a few more, you compared notes on who had the most revealing chat in the hall with your new pals, Johny, Barry, Hilly and Denny.
And we stay-at-homes are now expected to be hanging on every word from you insiders. Yeah, we who were stuck in our studio apartments in the teeming city or sterile McMansions in the burbs, all over the country-but not in Chicago, where it was all happening. Gee, maybe we will be treated to some more inside information, some more tid-bits. Gee, I just can't wait!
You want me to believe that you all had such a terrific time? Weren't there any fights. Didn't anybody come on to someone and get shot down—brutally, you know, really devastated like what happens on comments here.
How about after a sharing a few drinks after the last event, when the conversation naturally turns to the viability of a pure progressive movement in the face of widespread voter apathy compounded by the ascendancy of amygdala mediated pre-cognitive responses to policy initiatives? Will she, or he respond with, “I'm not sure that I completely understand you since it is so intelligent, but maybe you could explain it in more detail later on.” Or was it a scornful, “Your obvious attempt at erudition as a mask for your utter vacuity is pathetic.” You know, like those comments that I always get!
So, Ykos attendees, I've had it up to here with your “good times,” “new friends” and brilliant personal insights from your close encounters with the candidates. If I hear another analysis of a speech capped with “I was there” I will puke. Didn't anyone have a lousy time? I want to hear of disappointments, overpriced restaurants, arrogant people, insults, devastated egos, lost wallets, missed planes......
Didn't anyone come home with a strange rash that they didn't have when they left? Come on. Throw us outsiders a bone, here. Make us feel how smart we were to have stayed home, rather than risk interacting with real flesh and blood people.
Now get back to your computers and write those diaries and comments like the rest of us. Your moment of glory is over for at least another year.
Aug 6, 2007
Friday
Facial Features of Dangerous Criminals
A little before 1 PM today I got home from the grocery store after playing tennis in the morning. When I checked my email I was struck by this listing of events:
Having spent three years doing graduate work in Social Psychology, while I never did my dissertation, I did learn quite a bit about human behavior, enough to know that there are no distinctive facial features of Dangerous Criminals, other than perhaps a tattoo of a gang insignia.
This was an offering of the public library of my city, one that I have participated as a citizen in it's governance and had a degree of involvement with. The clock was running, as I was a ten minute drive from the library, and needed to change and shower from tennis. First thing is I went on the speakers web site, and it got worse. Here's a video sample of her "science," applied to O.J. Simpson.
I was running out of time, as I was thinking of how I would respond, whether I would confront her as she was speaking, or try to be more reserved, I wrote the following letter that I decided to give to the highest level person on duty at the library:
I got to the library exactly as the talk was beginning, gave my letter to the librarian and entered the auditorium. The first part of the presentation was innocuous enough, a variation of palm reading, tarot cards or astrological charting. She brought a few women to the front,( only two others of the thirty three in attendance were men,) and gave the standard personality evaluations for these venues such as, "You often feel disappointed in life, but you manage to keep on trying" or "sometimes you have difficulty making decisions and after you do often regret it." In other words every variation of "face reading" were the universal qualities of human nature, give in a way that seems like personal insight.
As she said herself, her career began with advising women in areas of "Love, Sex, and Money” Only later did she expand into something of much greater seriousness, and where her exaggeration of her credentials and absurd "teachings" can have life altering effects.
I had to make sure that my concern about these people who now feel that the shape of an ear, or the whites of the eye can be the signal of a dangerous criminal with "95% accuracy" was valid. So, gently, when she asked for questions I broached the issue. Taking careful notes, here's the gist of the conversation:
At the end of the second part, on Criminology, where she went into excruciating details of the facial characteristics that betray criminal minds. Mustaches were important. Anyone who had a little mustache like Hitler is a bad man. And rapists tend to have mustaches that are a quarter inch below the top of the upper lip. An oddly shaped ear is another giveaway. These were all accompanied by a picture book that she was selling, including one of Jesus Christ illustrating features representing pure goodness.
This would all be easy to dismiss as beyond absurdity, yet the books that Ms. Roberts has written on this subject have been quite popular, and her audience is amplified far beyond little gatherings such as this, being a frequent guest on local and national television. Actually, the experience was frightening, not for my personal safety, but it was chilling to be surrounded by seemingly intelligent individuals who actually bought into this inanity.
Since I was there, I felt the least I could do was connect with Ms. Roberts on a personal level. So, as the program was wrapping up and she asked for questions or comments, with a calm respectful voice, I started off by saying that I admire her, that she has followed the American Dream of finding her niche and creating a career. Then I told her my concerns, in these words:
She listened intently, without any attempt to refute my comments. I continued, after responding to some members of the audience, who were surprised and interested in my words
As I walked out I checked with the librarian whom I gave my letter, who assured me that it will be passed up the chain to the person who made this booking. She read it and understood my point clearly. She told me that Roberts had given two earlier talks on the "fun" aspects of face reading, and that this topic may have slipped by. I'll be looking for a response from whomever did the booking.
And that was it. It was 3:45 and I was on my way home.
There are many problems in this world, a few that I feel I have some insight into, but no way to make a difference about them. But this time, by acting on my instincts, it's just possible that this particular woman will always wonder whether there will be another person like me in the audience, or watching her TV appearance, who will point out the absurdity and the danger of what she is promulgating.
Let her stick to her fun specialty, giving her followers some sense of control over “Love, Sex, and Money” and stay away from identifying "dangerous criminals" and I would wish her all the luck in the world.
6/05/2010 Dailykos
SPECIAL EVENTS—from newsletter of Encinitas Library
Facial Features of Dangerous Criminals
Saturday, June 5
2-4pm
Each facial feature has a corresponding psychological interpretation that will reveal a person’s true inner nature. Learn about specific visual features that will help you protect your family, date safely on the internet, and gain more of an understanding of news and politics. Barbara Roberts will teach you the patterns in body-mind psychological assessment that she’s seen on 6,000 people’s faces in her 20 years of practice. More information at FaceReading1.com
Having spent three years doing graduate work in Social Psychology, while I never did my dissertation, I did learn quite a bit about human behavior, enough to know that there are no distinctive facial features of Dangerous Criminals, other than perhaps a tattoo of a gang insignia.
This was an offering of the public library of my city, one that I have participated as a citizen in it's governance and had a degree of involvement with. The clock was running, as I was a ten minute drive from the library, and needed to change and shower from tennis. First thing is I went on the speakers web site, and it got worse. Here's a video sample of her "science," applied to O.J. Simpson.
I was running out of time, as I was thinking of how I would respond, whether I would confront her as she was speaking, or try to be more reserved, I wrote the following letter that I decided to give to the highest level person on duty at the library:
There is a point when good old fashion hokum crosses a line and become a danger to society, to the people who believe in the nonsense being spouted. This appears to be the case for Barbara Roberts, who has gone from claiming that she has a system to read faces to allow for financial and romantic success to something much more serious.
She was featured at a municipal library, Encinitas California with the headline: Facial Features of Dangerous Criminals. She also alludes to vague psychological and medical credentials, such as a phi beta kappa in Social Psychology. She may have a Phi Beta Kapa, but it is not IN social psychology. She seems to have achieved a BA in these areas with no advanced training at all.
Her Internet site describes her system as “science” yet the essential element of science is verifiability, that the conclusions are subject to objective critical review. There is no evidence at all that her “facial reading” is even in this tradition, much less accepted. Actually it is too silly to even be called “pseudo science”
The greatest danger is that those who actually believe that they are gaining scientific expertise are the same people who could end up on juries, deciding the fate of those accused of crimes. Such people could use these tools to help them decide guilt or innocence, without knowing that they are absolutely without any scientific support. Innocent people will be jailed or worse, because of Ms. Roberts nonsense.
One would have to question the ethics of someone who would perpetrate such a false sense of being able to understand the criminal tendencies of an individual. Based on her claims it is meant to assure a parent that the person they entrust their child with is safe, or a women that an Internet dating connection is not a danger. If taken seriously this person could cause serious harm, and more so, since it seems that she has been validated by an official at the city of Encinitas.
P.T. Barnum was right about a sucker being born every minute. But this person who is taking advantage of this truism, could be causing more harm than she imagines.
I got to the library exactly as the talk was beginning, gave my letter to the librarian and entered the auditorium. The first part of the presentation was innocuous enough, a variation of palm reading, tarot cards or astrological charting. She brought a few women to the front,( only two others of the thirty three in attendance were men,) and gave the standard personality evaluations for these venues such as, "You often feel disappointed in life, but you manage to keep on trying" or "sometimes you have difficulty making decisions and after you do often regret it." In other words every variation of "face reading" were the universal qualities of human nature, give in a way that seems like personal insight.
As she said herself, her career began with advising women in areas of "Love, Sex, and Money” Only later did she expand into something of much greater seriousness, and where her exaggeration of her credentials and absurd "teachings" can have life altering effects.
I had to make sure that my concern about these people who now feel that the shape of an ear, or the whites of the eye can be the signal of a dangerous criminal with "95% accuracy" was valid. So, gently, when she asked for questions I broached the issue. Taking careful notes, here's the gist of the conversation:
AR (arodb): This would seem to be useful if somebody were on a jury with a really tough case and you hear stuff from both sides and if you have these cues I guess that could help a jury decide......
..... people who have internalized and learned your material, they could be better jurors.
BR: They could be better jurors or better jury selectors (a profession that advises lawyers on selecting jurors).
AR: No, jurors, I'm talking about people who are jurors.
BR: Could be. Well, I think the bottom line of face reading is whether you're a juror or you're working with your teenager or working to rear a child or you're dating or you're trying to get along with your boss, it helps you to see people clearly, know where they're coming from and know what they're capable of. So it would be great for a juror.
AR: It would be. They would have a better idea. You know sometimes the evidence is unclear. So they would be able to tell.
BR: Sure. Absolutely. (spoken with a strong voice)
AR: Thank you very much.
At the end of the second part, on Criminology, where she went into excruciating details of the facial characteristics that betray criminal minds. Mustaches were important. Anyone who had a little mustache like Hitler is a bad man. And rapists tend to have mustaches that are a quarter inch below the top of the upper lip. An oddly shaped ear is another giveaway. These were all accompanied by a picture book that she was selling, including one of Jesus Christ illustrating features representing pure goodness.
This would all be easy to dismiss as beyond absurdity, yet the books that Ms. Roberts has written on this subject have been quite popular, and her audience is amplified far beyond little gatherings such as this, being a frequent guest on local and national television. Actually, the experience was frightening, not for my personal safety, but it was chilling to be surrounded by seemingly intelligent individuals who actually bought into this inanity.
Since I was there, I felt the least I could do was connect with Ms. Roberts on a personal level. So, as the program was wrapping up and she asked for questions or comments, with a calm respectful voice, I started off by saying that I admire her, that she has followed the American Dream of finding her niche and creating a career. Then I told her my concerns, in these words:
Most of what you do is in areas of love, money and relationships. What disturbs me very much is that in our county everyone here is a potential juror. Everyone here could be looking at a person on the dock to try to find out whether he is someone who deserves to go to jail for a long time or even be executed. You are claiming, erroneously, that you have tools that will aid these people. This is not the place to go into a debate on the details, but unfortunately I don't know whether you are even aware of the potential damage you could be doing.
She listened intently, without any attempt to refute my comments. I continued, after responding to some members of the audience, who were surprised and interested in my words
You mentioned that one sign of a character defect is that the left eye shifts outward. When I was 12 years old, and you can still look at my eye and I can make it shift out, but my mother, bless her soul, took me to a specialist who helped me control it. Whatever my personality flaws I can attest that controlling this problem, amblyopia, has absolutely no effect on my character.
As I walked out I checked with the librarian whom I gave my letter, who assured me that it will be passed up the chain to the person who made this booking. She read it and understood my point clearly. She told me that Roberts had given two earlier talks on the "fun" aspects of face reading, and that this topic may have slipped by. I'll be looking for a response from whomever did the booking.
And that was it. It was 3:45 and I was on my way home.
There are many problems in this world, a few that I feel I have some insight into, but no way to make a difference about them. But this time, by acting on my instincts, it's just possible that this particular woman will always wonder whether there will be another person like me in the audience, or watching her TV appearance, who will point out the absurdity and the danger of what she is promulgating.
Let her stick to her fun specialty, giving her followers some sense of control over “Love, Sex, and Money” and stay away from identifying "dangerous criminals" and I would wish her all the luck in the world.
6/05/2010 Dailykos
Three weeks before the war
May 5, 2007 Dailykos.com
I was going over my old emails when I came across this one to several friends. It was a few days after the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated, killing all 7 astronauts. For a few weeks this story pre-empted that of the war we all knew was approaching, in spite of President Bush looking America in the eye and saying that he had not yet decided.
We need to keep, and to share, personal documents such as this. It allows us to refute the big lie of “No one could have known it would turn out this bad?” If I knew; if we knew, how could our elected officials not have known?
History is being rewritten. This is becoming a no fault war, fomented by a no fault administration, and acceded to by a no fault opposition party. We must keep our own notes, our own records, to preserve the reality of what actually happened.
Here's what I sent to my friends, only slightly abbreviated:
I discussed the goals that the administration was defining, and the hope of achieving them.
I commented how we were ignoring the larger question
And then I considered how the characteristics of our president affected the prognosis of the outcome of the war:
I then expressed my disappointment with the Democrats in Congress who didn't resist the President:
And I concluded:
So, I wrote a letter. I also joined a rally that took several hours out of my enjoyable life in Southern California. I spoke at the rally, but so what. It was preaching to the choir.
I would like to think if I were in Congress I would have joined Wellstone, Byrd, Kennedy and Feingold in voting against the Iraq War Resolution. But, who knows. What makes me think that having worked all my life to gain political prominence, I would have risked it all by taking an unpopular stand.
Perhaps, rather than condemning those Democrats who folded, we should admire those who had the courage to go against public opinion. I wish I could be that magnanimous and understanding. But it is difficult for me to do.
I was going over my old emails when I came across this one to several friends. It was a few days after the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated, killing all 7 astronauts. For a few weeks this story pre-empted that of the war we all knew was approaching, in spite of President Bush looking America in the eye and saying that he had not yet decided.
We need to keep, and to share, personal documents such as this. It allows us to refute the big lie of “No one could have known it would turn out this bad?” If I knew; if we knew, how could our elected officials not have known?
History is being rewritten. This is becoming a no fault war, fomented by a no fault administration, and acceded to by a no fault opposition party. We must keep our own notes, our own records, to preserve the reality of what actually happened.
Here's what I sent to my friends, only slightly abbreviated:
February 4, 2003
Dear Marta,
Yesterday, I watched a panel discussion on CSPAN titled "Iraq after the War" sponsored by the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Most of the speakers were pessimistic, seeing the war as bringing internal chaos and possible invasion by Turkey and Iran. Each time I watch one of these discussion among knowledgeable people it is like an onion being peeled, with infinite levels of complexity being exposed, each with their own unsolvable quandaries.
I discussed the goals that the administration was defining, and the hope of achieving them.
What are some of the things that are desired when nations are formed? Democracy, self determination, stability and, in Iraq's case, maintenance of existing territorial boundaries. Self determination of ethnic groups, the old Wilsonian ideal, is not even part of the idealized blueprint. The historical antipathies between sects have had too long to fester. Historically, when you lose in Iraq, you lose big. You do not simply get put out of office, you and your family and your tribe all die.
So, what will the new Iraq be like? Democracy as an ideal- forget about it. One person-one vote would bring something akin to the Ayatollah in Iran. But maybe not. Do we check this out by sponsoring an election with the caveat that it only counts if the outcome is to our favor? That's what we did in Iran in the 1950s when we deposed Mossadegh, the elected prime minister, and installed our Shah. This worked for a few decades, but then we reaped what we have in that country now. So, in the new Iraq we will be left with no democracy, no self determination and our providing an autocratic government that will impose pro-American policy . From Saddam being the despised ruler, the US puppet will soon have the honor.
I commented how we were ignoring the larger question
Watching this panel yesterday, made me aware that the antiwar movement is focusing on the war against Saddam, while we should be looking at what comes after. Of course, Saddam will fall quickly. Yet, I am not so sure about that either. The point is I don't know, and I fear no one else knows either.
How many American soldiers would have to die before we pack it in?. It took only a dozen for us to abort Somalia (did Bush see the film "Blackhawk Down") a couple hundred and we were out of Lebanon. Just how great will be the American resolve if the war does not go according to the hopes of Rumsfeld-Chaney et al. (I was about to say, if it does not go according to the war games, but the war games show us losing-but then we can just hit the reset button and do it over- like when we were kids playing war) So, a few hundred, or a few thousand casualties and the American mood changes.
Lets say a miracle happens; that the most optimistic scenario of quick victory and a breakout of amity occurs in Iraq; that the different tribes who have hated and battled each other decide to let bygones be bygones . This still leaves a monumental job of nation building to an administration that has no use for complexity. It leaves this solving of the ultimate Rubic's cube to a president who can't handle two dimensions, much less three. Without the simplicity of a mythical good against evil, this man and the rest of his cohorts are in un-chartered territory.
And then I considered how the characteristics of our president affected the prognosis of the outcome of the war:
As a secular Jew I was stunned at the President's covert reference to a hymn of praise to Jesus Christ during last week's State of the Union Message. Yes, we all know that Christianity is a religion of love, but over the course of history there has also been a good deal of hate. It has also been a clarion of death to non-believers. It was the cross of Jesus that inspired those who killed my family in the pogroms of Poland and this same cross that fueled the ravages of the crusades against the Muslim infidels.
While President Bush demands war against Iraq in language of geopolitical rationality, his subtext of religious fundamentalism grows. He seems oblivious to the Muslim view that Christianity represents a soul destroying rejection of Allah. How many American's will die at the hands of Muslims whose fears of Christianity inspire martyrdom? And who can foresee the ultimate course of events if this military operation becomes infected with the fervor of religious war? The President's spin doctor's explanation of his use of "crusade" just may not carry the day among the unwashed masses in the trenches preparing to die for their faith.
He slipped in the code words "power, wonder-working power" in his state of the union speech to evoke a praise to Jesus. What other code words have I missed. What are the lines to the hymns to the elite of corporate America that he uses to show his solidarity, and the verbal wink that means not only will they not see a jail cell, but they need not pay taxes on their ill gotten wealth. I wouldn't have any idea. The Democrats seem not to be to outraged about anything (Except Ted Kennedy, he seems pretty outraged)
I then expressed my disappointment with the Democrats in Congress who didn't resist the President:
Those in the Senate will not use the tools of Filibuster to stop the right wing agenda where they can, since they will not initiate “class war” or “weaken our commander in chief.” The decisions taken today will not be reversed after the next election, no matter the outcome, or the one after that. The course of events for decades to come are being set right now, both domestically and internationally.
George H.W. Bush (old #41) was shown briefly on the news yesterday when he visited NASA to express his condolences. There is an irony here of classic proportions. Years ago, George H. W. Bush referred to his son's tax policy as "voodoo economics." He refrained from toppling Hussein when the Shias were in full revolt after Desert Storm, while his son is going ahead. Bush Sr. volunteered to serve in the second world war, while his son sat out his war. He was shot down in a real dog fight, while his son protected the skies over Texas from his gilded perch in the National Guard.
Yet, it will be the son who will eclipse the father on the stage of history. It was the influence of "Pappy" (family name for Bush Sr.) that gave everything to his son, from admittance to Yale to the Presidency. There is a reason why dynasties do not work. Sadly, while using the mechanism of democracy, a dynastic succession has taken place. We anointed a leader, without the usual trial by political fire that winnows out those who lack the skills to meet a nations great challenges.
And I concluded:
Saturday, when the Shuttle Columbia was lost, we experienced a national tragedy. President Bush stepped up and, genuinely touched, led the country in mourning. But the fates continue to conspire to favor George W. Bush. Just as his war on terror resulted in terrorizing the Democratic party into passively ceding their constitutional war powers in order to get on with the election campaign, only to lose the election along with their dignity; the Columbia tragedy allows the President to don the robe of comforter-in- chief, while the fuse burns ever closer to the explosion that will make him once again the Chief of the Military.
The few precious days that had existed for this country to re-think what we are about to begin are thus lost in the mist of sadness over the death in the sky.
So, I wrote a letter. I also joined a rally that took several hours out of my enjoyable life in Southern California. I spoke at the rally, but so what. It was preaching to the choir.
I would like to think if I were in Congress I would have joined Wellstone, Byrd, Kennedy and Feingold in voting against the Iraq War Resolution. But, who knows. What makes me think that having worked all my life to gain political prominence, I would have risked it all by taking an unpopular stand.
Perhaps, rather than condemning those Democrats who folded, we should admire those who had the courage to go against public opinion. I wish I could be that magnanimous and understanding. But it is difficult for me to do.
Newdow's Innauguration Suit...Why it Matters
There is a lawsuit that has just been filed by Michael Newdow, that among other demands, would restore the Presidential oath of office to the actual words of the constitution.
Our founders wrote a secular document, with defenses against the encroachment of the majority religion, something that was one of the reasons that many of their forebears had left Europe. They knew it would be a difficult principle to maintain, but they did what they could, by writing the protections clearly.
But in the words of Benjamin Franklin, we only have a democracy, we only have the formula set out in the constitution, "if the people can "keep it."
And that's exactly what Michael Newdow is attempting to do....for us, for the future, and for those who labored in to give us a charter for The United States of America that hot summer of 1787 in Philadelphia.
Here's the AP report of the law suit. It's hard to condense into a paragraph the thousands of hours of legal research that is behind this suit, and the seriousness of it for those who care about the secular principles that our founders incorporated in the constitution.
While this suit is a broad based challenge to the recent tradition of turning a presidential inauguration into a sacred anointment by "God Almighty," rather than the elevation of a fellow human being by his peers, the immediate demand is much less grand and more accessible.
The first of the two causes of actions would not require the ending of prayer, but would simply require the Chief Justice, a man who promised to do the humble task of enforcing the constitution, acting like a baseball umpire who enforces the rules of the game, to do exactly that.
And this isn't a tough call. The words are written right in the body of the document, thirty five words that are to be said by a person who has won the majority of the electoral college votes, and by agreeing to the prescribed oath shall become president.
In the words of the suit:
What follows is Newdow's argument that the story of George Washington first appending "So Help Me God" at his first inaugural is a myth. I argued strongly in an exchange of emails that this was a diversion, that even if he said it, it was not as part of the oath, but as a reply. The story of his saying these words never implied that Washington was was trying to amend the oath, by intent or by process.
But Newdow has spent years refuting this myth, and felt he had to make the argument of its falsity in this case, even though it was an aside. But the central point is that the Chief Justice has a clear duty to deliver the words of the constitution as written.
He continues:
This suit is demanding that the Chief Justice deliver the constitutional 35 word oath of office, but is not denying the right of then President Obama from appending "So Help Me God." Perhaps, this is close to what the first president did in his inauguration.
The second count, to eliminate all prayer from the inauguration is well researched and presented, and in a better world with more truly originalist justices it would be endorsed. It is a more complex issue than the oath, and is separable from the first count, which is clear and could be followed without disrupting the planned inauguration.
What it would do is remind the billion or so people who view this historical event of exactly what the founders of this country wrote into our constitution. It will be a small step, the first in memory, to counter the creeping theocratization of our government that has become so ubiquitous that trying to reverse it is seen as inappropriate by too many of us.
This count, restoring the constitutional oath, was not in his suit that he brought to end prayer in 2004, so there is no restriction on it being brought now.
For those who doubt the sincerity, knowledge and courage of Newdow, I suggest you listen to the oral argument of his Pledge case, and how he gained the respect of each of the seven justices who he dialoged with. Scalia recused himself because of his statement that atheist are so far beyond the pale that they need not be considered in constitutional issues. Thomas, as usual said nothing, perhaps ironically agreeing that atheists were not fully worthy of constitutional protection.
Here is the 39 page complaint which is well worth reading for the history and jurisprudence of this issue.
Our founders wrote a secular document, with defenses against the encroachment of the majority religion, something that was one of the reasons that many of their forebears had left Europe. They knew it would be a difficult principle to maintain, but they did what they could, by writing the protections clearly.
But in the words of Benjamin Franklin, we only have a democracy, we only have the formula set out in the constitution, "if the people can "keep it."
And that's exactly what Michael Newdow is attempting to do....for us, for the future, and for those who labored in to give us a charter for The United States of America that hot summer of 1787 in Philadelphia.
Here's the AP report of the law suit. It's hard to condense into a paragraph the thousands of hours of legal research that is behind this suit, and the seriousness of it for those who care about the secular principles that our founders incorporated in the constitution.
While this suit is a broad based challenge to the recent tradition of turning a presidential inauguration into a sacred anointment by "God Almighty," rather than the elevation of a fellow human being by his peers, the immediate demand is much less grand and more accessible.
The first of the two causes of actions would not require the ending of prayer, but would simply require the Chief Justice, a man who promised to do the humble task of enforcing the constitution, acting like a baseball umpire who enforces the rules of the game, to do exactly that.
And this isn't a tough call. The words are written right in the body of the document, thirty five words that are to be said by a person who has won the majority of the electoral college votes, and by agreeing to the prescribed oath shall become president.
In the words of the suit:
CAUSES OF ACTION
COUNT 1:
THE ALTERATION OF THE PRESIDENTIAL OATH OF OFFICE
SPECIFIED IN ARTICLE II OF THE CONSTITUTION, TO BE
PERPETRATED BY DEFENDANT ROBERTS WITH NO AUTHORITY
WHATSOEVER, VIOLATES THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE
Of all governmental officials, the one who most personifies the rule of law and the supremacy of the Constitution is the Chief Justice of the United States. 28 U.S.C. § 1. One might argue that he, more than anyone, has a duty to maintain the document’s purity.
The oath of office for the President of the United States is specified in the Constitution’s Article II, Section 1. In its entirety, it reads:
‘I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the
Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my
Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United
States.’’
It is to be noted that the words, “so help me God” are not included in this oath.
What follows is Newdow's argument that the story of George Washington first appending "So Help Me God" at his first inaugural is a myth. I argued strongly in an exchange of emails that this was a diversion, that even if he said it, it was not as part of the oath, but as a reply. The story of his saying these words never implied that Washington was was trying to amend the oath, by intent or by process.
But Newdow has spent years refuting this myth, and felt he had to make the argument of its falsity in this case, even though it was an aside. But the central point is that the Chief Justice has a clear duty to deliver the words of the constitution as written.
He continues:
104. In fact, it isn’t until 1881, ninety-two years after George Washington’s initial ceremony,
that the first use of the “so help me God” phrase can be verified. That occurred when Vice
President Chester A. Arthur took the oath upon hearing of President James Garfield’s death.
The phrase, (So Help Me God)if used at all during the next half century, was apparently used only intermittently until 1933, at President Franklin Roosevelt’s first inauguration. (It is known that neither President Herbert Hoover nor Chief Justice William Howard Taft used those
words at Hoover’s inauguration in 1929.40)
Since 1933, “so help me God” has been used at every public inaugural ceremony, with that unauthorized alteration interposed each time by the Chief Justice of the United States.
If President-elect Obama (as a black man fully aware of the vile effects that stem from a majority’s disregard of a minority’s rights, and as a Democrat fully aware of the efficacy his Republican predecessor’s “so help me God” oath additions) feels that the verbiage formulated by the Founders is so inadequate that he needs to interlard his oath with a purely religious phrase deemed unnecessary by the first twenty presidents, Plaintiffs have no objection at this time. The President, like all other individuals, has Free Exercise rights, which might permit such an alteration.
This suit is demanding that the Chief Justice deliver the constitutional 35 word oath of office, but is not denying the right of then President Obama from appending "So Help Me God." Perhaps, this is close to what the first president did in his inauguration.
The second count, to eliminate all prayer from the inauguration is well researched and presented, and in a better world with more truly originalist justices it would be endorsed. It is a more complex issue than the oath, and is separable from the first count, which is clear and could be followed without disrupting the planned inauguration.
What it would do is remind the billion or so people who view this historical event of exactly what the founders of this country wrote into our constitution. It will be a small step, the first in memory, to counter the creeping theocratization of our government that has become so ubiquitous that trying to reverse it is seen as inappropriate by too many of us.
This count, restoring the constitutional oath, was not in his suit that he brought to end prayer in 2004, so there is no restriction on it being brought now.
For those who doubt the sincerity, knowledge and courage of Newdow, I suggest you listen to the oral argument of his Pledge case, and how he gained the respect of each of the seven justices who he dialoged with. Scalia recused himself because of his statement that atheist are so far beyond the pale that they need not be considered in constitutional issues. Thomas, as usual said nothing, perhaps ironically agreeing that atheists were not fully worthy of constitutional protection.
Here is the 39 page complaint which is well worth reading for the history and jurisprudence of this issue.
President George W. Bush Declares Emergency Rule
This was a satiric essay I wrote on Dailykos, November 3, 2007- It was marked as satire (snark) at the end and there was a future date at the beginning to indicate it was not real. The comments were extensive, many believing that it was true. When one person said that he expected it would happen, I clearly said as much as I detest President Bush, I didn't think so.
-------------------------
Provisional Constitution Instituted, Leader Expected to Address Nation Saturday
The Washington Post
Saturday, February 13, 2008; 2:11 PM
President George W. Bush declared emergency rule Saturday, suspending the constitution and removing the Supreme Court chief justice from office.
"The chief of army staff has proclaimed a state of emergency and issued a provisional constitutional order," a newscaster on state television said in announcing the decree, which referred to President George W. Bush as Commander in Chief of the Military and did not mention his dual role as president.
The declaration referred to a "visible ascendancy in the activities of extremists and incidents of terrorist attacks . . . and the banding together of some militant groups." It also cited "an unprecedented level" of violence that poses "a grave threat to the life and property of the citizens of The United States." No specific mention was made of the terrorist bombings of Los Angeles and Chicago last week.
President George W. Bush was expected to address the nation later Saturday.
While other television news stations in The United States were blacked out Saturday evening, only Fox News ran segments in which pro-government analysts criticized political opponents and the independent media for not backing President George W. Bush at a time of crisis.
Political analysts said that by suspending the constitution and removing Supreme Court justices, President George W. Bush had essentially declared martial law, even if he was not calling it that. One columnist, who asked his name be withheld stated:
Secretary of Defense Gates, who had been a close adviser to President Bush, until his resignation yesterday, said the steps amounted to "de facto martial law." He said he had repeatedly tried to persuade the president against the measures in recent days but was outvoted within President George W. Bush's inner circle.
Gates predicted that the moves would be disastrous for President George W. Bush and for the country. "The way forward has to be democratic and constitutional. Any other course is a recipe for disaster. More importantly, it will not be accepted by the people of The United States and it will not work," he said.
According to Gates, President George W. Bush convened a meeting of his top advisers and cabinet members on Wednesday to discuss their options and that 20 of 25 were in favor of emergency rule.
The key voice for declaring the state of emergency came from Attorney General Mukasey, who forcefully articulated the exact words that he had spoken during his confirmation hearing. “No law supersedes the obligation of the president to defend the country. This abrogation of the constitution is implicit in the words of this document when he is acting for the good of the country.” he went on to state, "The fact of my confirmation shows approval of this principle and validates the action of the President."
Senators, Dianne Feinstein of California and Charles E. Schumer of New York, the two Democrats who allowed Mr. Mukasey to gain office have not been available for comment.
President Bush appointed as the new chief justice, Associate Justice Atonin Scalia, to take the place of John Roberts, whose whereabouts remained unknown Saturday night. In addition to the other dissenting judges were also removed Saturday. The four remaining judges signed new oaths and have been sworn in to a new panel.
Hundreds of police and army rangers set up multiple checkpoints in and around Pennsylvania Avenue, the wide, leafy boulevard where the president's house, the Congress building and the Supreme Court all are situated. Agents from Blackwater International have been identified as manning some key intersections.
At one of the checkpoints, dozens of President George W. Bush opponents began to gather in an apparently spontaneous display of anger at the emergency declaration, shouting " President George W. Bush must go!"
It is unknown how long the Washington Post will continue to publish, as a new edict to require prior approval is being drafted that must be signed by all media outlets. It is doubtful that this paper will accede to this requirement.-----------------
My first coment:
-------------------------
Provisional Constitution Instituted, Leader Expected to Address Nation Saturday
The Washington Post
Saturday, February 13, 2008; 2:11 PM
President George W. Bush declared emergency rule Saturday, suspending the constitution and removing the Supreme Court chief justice from office.
"The chief of army staff has proclaimed a state of emergency and issued a provisional constitutional order," a newscaster on state television said in announcing the decree, which referred to President George W. Bush as Commander in Chief of the Military and did not mention his dual role as president.
The declaration referred to a "visible ascendancy in the activities of extremists and incidents of terrorist attacks . . . and the banding together of some militant groups." It also cited "an unprecedented level" of violence that poses "a grave threat to the life and property of the citizens of The United States." No specific mention was made of the terrorist bombings of Los Angeles and Chicago last week.
President George W. Bush was expected to address the nation later Saturday.
While other television news stations in The United States were blacked out Saturday evening, only Fox News ran segments in which pro-government analysts criticized political opponents and the independent media for not backing President George W. Bush at a time of crisis.
Political analysts said that by suspending the constitution and removing Supreme Court justices, President George W. Bush had essentially declared martial law, even if he was not calling it that. One columnist, who asked his name be withheld stated:
"He's pretty much carrying out a second coup," "For all practical purposes, it is direct military rule. And he becomes the supreme ruler of The United States. There's no constitutional limit on him because he's set aside the constitution.
The first coup was bloodless, and no one prevented the signing statements and defiance of law that was the hallmark of his first seven years in office.
“What is ironic is that he is using the constitution to eliminate the constitution. President George W. Bush's stated reasons for declaring an emergency were misleading. "It has nothing to do with the insurgency," he said. "It has to do with President George W. Bush's political survival."
Secretary of Defense Gates, who had been a close adviser to President Bush, until his resignation yesterday, said the steps amounted to "de facto martial law." He said he had repeatedly tried to persuade the president against the measures in recent days but was outvoted within President George W. Bush's inner circle.
Gates predicted that the moves would be disastrous for President George W. Bush and for the country. "The way forward has to be democratic and constitutional. Any other course is a recipe for disaster. More importantly, it will not be accepted by the people of The United States and it will not work," he said.
According to Gates, President George W. Bush convened a meeting of his top advisers and cabinet members on Wednesday to discuss their options and that 20 of 25 were in favor of emergency rule.
The key voice for declaring the state of emergency came from Attorney General Mukasey, who forcefully articulated the exact words that he had spoken during his confirmation hearing. “No law supersedes the obligation of the president to defend the country. This abrogation of the constitution is implicit in the words of this document when he is acting for the good of the country.” he went on to state, "The fact of my confirmation shows approval of this principle and validates the action of the President."
Senators, Dianne Feinstein of California and Charles E. Schumer of New York, the two Democrats who allowed Mr. Mukasey to gain office have not been available for comment.
President Bush appointed as the new chief justice, Associate Justice Atonin Scalia, to take the place of John Roberts, whose whereabouts remained unknown Saturday night. In addition to the other dissenting judges were also removed Saturday. The four remaining judges signed new oaths and have been sworn in to a new panel.
Hundreds of police and army rangers set up multiple checkpoints in and around Pennsylvania Avenue, the wide, leafy boulevard where the president's house, the Congress building and the Supreme Court all are situated. Agents from Blackwater International have been identified as manning some key intersections.
At one of the checkpoints, dozens of President George W. Bush opponents began to gather in an apparently spontaneous display of anger at the emergency declaration, shouting " President George W. Bush must go!"
It is unknown how long the Washington Post will continue to publish, as a new edict to require prior approval is being drafted that must be signed by all media outlets. It is doubtful that this paper will accede to this requirement.-----------------
My first coment:
It can't happen here, can it??? (53+ / 0-)
This was easy, too easy to do with a few global find and replace from the article on the Pakistan Martial Law edict.
And the Attorney General would find it perfectly legal based on his testimony.
And the Attorney General would find it perfectly legal based on his testimony.
PBS airs religious right's "Wall of Separation
PBS airs religious right's "Wall of Separation
A recent diary warned us about this Christian Right's Falsified History, and asked us to try to get PBS to cancel it.
This rubbed me the wrong way since it was asking us to boycott that which we hadn't even seen. So, I searched for the program, which wasn't easy, since it wasn't on any of my cable channels. It was only available on HDTV, which by luck I can pick up on my little rabbit ear antenna. But with no TIVO to record it, I would have to take notes and use my digital camera to capture key excerpts. I have now viewed it carefully three times—including getting up this morning at 4:30 to capture a key segment for the readers here.
Did this program falsify history? If not for one statement, I would have to say, technically, no. They were much too clever, if not for the one example, to do something so crude. Just like George W. Bush never said that Iraq was responsible for 9-11, there are ways to convey false messages far more powerfully than blatant lying.
It is done by tone, by selective presentation of facts, by repetition and by the skillful placement of verbal and visual symbols. This program could be used as a case study in the art of public manipulation—at the post graduate level.
For an example of one technique they used there is this segment showing a recitation of religious symbols that adorn monuments in Washington D.C. Note the calming voiceover, conveying the unspoken certainty that all of these symbols demonstrate a transcendent connection between our country and the almighty. And then there is the music. Turn up your volume and listen to the soaring sound of serenity, of spiritual upliftment as we are wordlessly assured that God is an integral part of our country.
Those who manufactured this pseudo history were very careful not to convey something that was not true. They got by with endless repetition of those examples that supported their argument, while ignoring those events that tell a different story. Now watch the following excerpt for their one outright deceit.
In the context of the spokesman making an elaborate claim that article six of the constitution means something other than what its words convey, the screen shows a copy of the hand written constitution panning to this sentence:
The voiceover appears to reads along: ...every government official has to take an Oath to God.
The video image panning the sentence stops at the word “oath” and then cuts away. Here is the completion of the actual sentence as written by Congress and approved by the thirteen states:
Thats it. Not only is God not mentioned in this clause, he is not mentioned in the entire United States Constitution. This simple obvious deceit conveys the overriding motivation of this film enterprise, to spread their claim that God and County are inextricably bound together. They were not to be deterred by trivial impediments such as mis-characterizing the words of our constitution.
Only such extreme ideological fervor could have blinded them to the outrageousness of such an insult to this revered document. It demonstrates more than anything we can say how little they respect this Constitution they claim to be so dedicated to preserve.
-----
I wrote a second part of this diary, with some completely different angles that is linked here.
A recent diary warned us about this Christian Right's Falsified History, and asked us to try to get PBS to cancel it.
This rubbed me the wrong way since it was asking us to boycott that which we hadn't even seen. So, I searched for the program, which wasn't easy, since it wasn't on any of my cable channels. It was only available on HDTV, which by luck I can pick up on my little rabbit ear antenna. But with no TIVO to record it, I would have to take notes and use my digital camera to capture key excerpts. I have now viewed it carefully three times—including getting up this morning at 4:30 to capture a key segment for the readers here.
Did this program falsify history? If not for one statement, I would have to say, technically, no. They were much too clever, if not for the one example, to do something so crude. Just like George W. Bush never said that Iraq was responsible for 9-11, there are ways to convey false messages far more powerfully than blatant lying.
It is done by tone, by selective presentation of facts, by repetition and by the skillful placement of verbal and visual symbols. This program could be used as a case study in the art of public manipulation—at the post graduate level.
For an example of one technique they used there is this segment showing a recitation of religious symbols that adorn monuments in Washington D.C. Note the calming voiceover, conveying the unspoken certainty that all of these symbols demonstrate a transcendent connection between our country and the almighty. And then there is the music. Turn up your volume and listen to the soaring sound of serenity, of spiritual upliftment as we are wordlessly assured that God is an integral part of our country.
Those who manufactured this pseudo history were very careful not to convey something that was not true. They got by with endless repetition of those examples that supported their argument, while ignoring those events that tell a different story. Now watch the following excerpt for their one outright deceit.
In the context of the spokesman making an elaborate claim that article six of the constitution means something other than what its words convey, the screen shows a copy of the hand written constitution panning to this sentence:
......and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath
The voiceover appears to reads along: ...every government official has to take an Oath to God.
The video image panning the sentence stops at the word “oath” and then cuts away. Here is the completion of the actual sentence as written by Congress and approved by the thirteen states:
.....shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
Thats it. Not only is God not mentioned in this clause, he is not mentioned in the entire United States Constitution. This simple obvious deceit conveys the overriding motivation of this film enterprise, to spread their claim that God and County are inextricably bound together. They were not to be deterred by trivial impediments such as mis-characterizing the words of our constitution.
Only such extreme ideological fervor could have blinded them to the outrageousness of such an insult to this revered document. It demonstrates more than anything we can say how little they respect this Constitution they claim to be so dedicated to preserve.
-----
I wrote a second part of this diary, with some completely different angles that is linked here.
End of life care: torture for the patient, bankruptcy for the country
This is a review, more of a strong recommendation for reading a long article in New Yorker Magazine "Letting Go, What should medicine do when it can’t save your life?" by Atul Gawand on end of life medical care. It is well researched, written by a physician who follows several individuals facing death from terminal cancer. While this depressing subject is systematically ignored, for many reasons it must not continue to be so. I am writing this because I learned important information that is contrary to what I thought about the Hospice movement, and how it is handled under Medicare.
This article does not focus on the fiscal effects of end of life care, as important as this is since the current system is far beyond this nation's financial ability to maintain. Written by a physician, he writes with both a professional and a human sensitivity. While there is a natural aversion for individuals to face their own, or loved one's, impending death, adding to the difficulty of addressing this is it's being distorted for partisan political purposes. As a person who did considerable research resulting in serious objections to the recently passed Health Reform, this article describes one laudable, and actually cost saving provision that encourages primary physicians to discuss this issue with their Medicare patients. This became part of the attack by right wing opponents, decried by many as a foot in the door for "Death Panels."
For those who don't read the long article, I will cover a few of the points that were most important. The writer introduces the subject with:
Dr. Gawand does not place himself above the pressures that militate for treatment beyond objective reason. He describes his own experience, this time in his role as a surgeon. It was with one the patient followed for the article, a women named, Sara Monopoli, in her thirties whose terminal cancer was discovered shortly before giving birth to her first child:
Under Medicare, to receive Hospice care one has to agree to forgo aggressive treatment. In surveys this is appreciated by those in their final months, and their families suffered less, including measurable indexes of depression. Much of the article goes into the details of this type of treatment. The following experiment by a private insurer went further, with unexpected result that has serious implications on the the fiscal and individual level
The marshaling of the most advanced technology for medical care creates issues that we as a society have managed to ignore. We are a religious people, and too easily ascribe to a higher being the right to determine when life should end. And that "higher being" is as often wearing a white coat with a stethoscope as he is clerical robes. This article gives some practical information on those facing these painful decisions for themselves or loved ones, and raises larger questions that we must answer as a society.
This article does not focus on the fiscal effects of end of life care, as important as this is since the current system is far beyond this nation's financial ability to maintain. Written by a physician, he writes with both a professional and a human sensitivity. While there is a natural aversion for individuals to face their own, or loved one's, impending death, adding to the difficulty of addressing this is it's being distorted for partisan political purposes. As a person who did considerable research resulting in serious objections to the recently passed Health Reform, this article describes one laudable, and actually cost saving provision that encourages primary physicians to discuss this issue with their Medicare patients. This became part of the attack by right wing opponents, decried by many as a foot in the door for "Death Panels."
For those who don't read the long article, I will cover a few of the points that were most important. The writer introduces the subject with:
(pp 4) Like many people, I had believed that hospice care hastens death, because patients forgo hospital treatments and are allowed high-dose narcotics to combat pain. But studies suggest otherwise. In one, researchers followed 4,493 Medicare patients with either terminal cancer or congestive heart failure. They found no difference in survival time between hospice and non-hospice patients with breast cancer, prostate cancer, and colon cancer. Curiously, hospice care seemed to extend survival for some patients; those with pancreatic cancer gained an average of three weeks, those with lung cancer gained six weeks, and those with congestive heart failure gained three months. The lesson seems almost Zen: you live longer only when you stop trying to live longer. When Cox was transferred to hospice care, her doctors thought that she wouldn’t live much longer than a few weeks. With the supportive hospice therapy she received, she had already lived for a year.
Hospice has tried to offer a new ideal for how we die. Although not everyone has embraced its rituals, those who have are helping to negotiate an ars moriendi for our age. But doing so represents a struggle—not only against suffering but also against the seemingly unstoppable momentum of medical treatment.
Dr. Gawand does not place himself above the pressures that militate for treatment beyond objective reason. He describes his own experience, this time in his role as a surgeon. It was with one the patient followed for the article, a women named, Sara Monopoli, in her thirties whose terminal cancer was discovered shortly before giving birth to her first child:
Ealier that summer, a PET scan had revealed that, in addition to her lung cancer, she also had thyroid cancer, which had spread to the lymph nodes of her neck, and I was called in to decide whether to operate. This second, unrelated cancer was in fact operable. But thyroid cancers take years to become lethal. Her lung cancer would almost certainly end her life long before her thyroid cancer caused any trouble. Given the extent of the surgery that would have been required, and the potential complications, the best course was to do nothing. But explaining my reasoning to Sara meant confronting the mortality of her lung cancer, something that I felt ill prepared to do. (Eventually he said:) We could monitor the thyroid cancer and plan surgery in a few months.
I saw her every six weeks, and noted her physical decline from one visit to the next. Yet, even in a wheelchair, Sara would always arrive smiling, makeup on and bangs bobby-pinned out of her eyes. She’d find small things to laugh about, like the tubes that created strange protuberances under her dress. She was ready to try anything, and I found myself focusing on the news about experimental therapies for her lung cancer. After one of her chemotherapies seemed to shrink the thyroid cancer slightly, I even raised with her the possibility that an experimental therapy could work against both her cancers, which was sheer fantasy. Discussing a fantasy was easier—less emotional, less explosive, less prone to misunderstanding—than discussing what was happening before my eyes.
Under Medicare, to receive Hospice care one has to agree to forgo aggressive treatment. In surveys this is appreciated by those in their final months, and their families suffered less, including measurable indexes of depression. Much of the article goes into the details of this type of treatment. The following experiment by a private insurer went further, with unexpected result that has serious implications on the the fiscal and individual level
(pp8) In late 2004, executives at Aetna, the insurance company, started an experiment. They knew that only a small percentage of the terminally ill ever halted efforts at curative treatment and enrolled in hospice, and that, when they did, it was usually not until the very end. So Aetna decided to let a group of policyholders with a life expectancy of less than a year receive hospice services without forgoing other treatments. A patient like Sara Monopoli could continue to try chemotherapy and radiation, and go to the hospital when she wished—but also have a hospice team at home focusing on what she needed for the best possible life now and for that morning when she might wake up unable to breathe. A two-year study of this “concurrent care” program found that enrolled patients were much more likely to use hospice: the figure leaped from twenty-six per cent to seventy per cent. That was no surprise, since they weren’t forced to give up anything. The surprising result was that they did give up things. They visited the emergency room almost half as often as the control patients did. Their use of hospitals and I.C.U.s dropped by more than two-thirds. Over-all costs fell by almost a quarter.
snip-
Among elderly patients, use of intensive-care units fell by more than eighty-five per cent. Satisfaction scores went way up. What was going on here? The program’s leaders had the impression that they had simply given patients someone experienced and knowledgeable to talk to about their daily needs. And somehow that was enough—just talking.
The marshaling of the most advanced technology for medical care creates issues that we as a society have managed to ignore. We are a religious people, and too easily ascribe to a higher being the right to determine when life should end. And that "higher being" is as often wearing a white coat with a stethoscope as he is clerical robes. This article gives some practical information on those facing these painful decisions for themselves or loved ones, and raises larger questions that we must answer as a society.
Atheism on the defense, Scalia and Congress
I just finished reading Pentagon Pushes Apocalyptic Christianity. and took a careful look at the comments. It is always so much more rewarding on this site to slam Republicans and support the belief that once we regain power everything will be different, that rationality, good government and reason will return to the halls of government.
While I would love to believe this, the evidence is not promising for reversing the encroachment of Religion in government. And it never will be until Secularists, that means atheists, agnostics or those in progressive branches of the major religions, demand more from the Democratic party.
The referenced diary describes one aspect of the infiltration of evangelicals into the military, focusing on the pentagon building. I am familiar with this and have had the privilege of meeting Mikey Weinstein who is leading the battle against the Christianizing of the American Military. I have written many diaries on this same subject from a different perspectives.
Even PBS felt compelled to air a blatant propaganda piece entitled "Wall of Separation" a term the producers argue is fraudulent. After several viewings I was able to find a specific misleading aspect in this film, that was featured on the web site of the PBS ombudsman.
A more detailed description of our Democratic party deferring to the Religious right was in this diary Feds now control Mt. Soledad Cross Site This tells of legislation that illustrates the thesis of this diary. The Democratic Senators refused to stop the takeover of land for the sole purpose of maintaining a 42 foot high Christian Cross over San Diego.
When I spoke to Representative Bob Filner about his Senate colleagues lack of courage, having voted against the bill in the house, he responded with a sad shake of his head, “Sometimes you have to do what is right, no matter the political cost.”
What is rarely said on this site, and needs saying, is that the candidates for the nomination of our party, are more concerned in capturing the Religious vote then they are in taking a stand against the Christianizing of our country-which includes the military. Do I hear a communal, “Duh, they have to get elected, dude.”
Yes, and they can get elected if they differentiate themselves more clearly from those who would erase the separation of church and state that has served our country so well for so many decades.
The nine candidates for the Presidential nomination were asked during the Iowa debates a few weeks ago their feelings about a personal God who responds to prayer, specifically to thwart disasters such as Katrina:
This was Dennis Kucinich's response
His words, that the founders never meant America to be separate from spiritual values is the prime talking point of those who would return prayer to public schools and the ten commandments to the walls of our courts.
Other candidates took the occasion to proclaim their personal relationship with God, even though they explained they prayed for more abstract comfort than changing the course of hurricanes. But not a single viable candidate refuted the idea that praying to God was an essential component of being a national leader, along with the implication that this belief is integral to what it means to be an American.
Only one candidate, Mike Gravel, the one with support that wavers between zero and one percent, felt free enough to utter these words.
The mass delusion of Apocalyptic Christianity may, in fact, lead this nation, and perhaps the world, into the catastrophe that they predict. I'm sure that there are those in the Military who are outraged by this, but where are they to draw their strength. When they look at the Republicans they see this belief reflected in the highest places. Yet, when they look at the Democrats they see a quiet acceptance, a refusal to explicitly reject this pernicious distorted sect of Christianity,out of fear of losing votes.
Just as we demand that Gays, Blacks and the impoverished not be marginalized by our candidates, we have a right to demand that they demonstrate their acceptance and respect for those who do not believe in God. We are part of the fabric of America. While this should go without saying, this is under attack, from the leaders of the Republican party, to the burgeoning Evangelical movement, to the new majority of the Supreme Court.
It is about time we insist that our party- the secular party, the “reality based” party- stand up for these principles. Silence, and just being a bit better than the Republicans will not reverse the blind ideology that is taking over our hitherto Secular Democracy.
****
Addendum:
Some comments indicate a lack of awareness of the current aggressive antipathy towards non believers. Nothing better illustrates the current view of those who would reject the concept of “Separation of Church and State” as these:
This was not from a Fox pundit or a right wing blogger. This was written by Justice Anton Scalia in his dissent in this 2005 Supreme Court Case on allowing a copy of the ten commandments in a court house. He has since been joined by two justices who share his world view on many issues, so there is reason to believe this would now be the decision of the court, that our constitution permits the “disregard of devout atheists.”
If this were to be adopted, atheists would legally become non-persons. And Monotheism would have become our national religion. ------------
Originally posted at Dailykos on 9-2-07- Still relevant today
While I would love to believe this, the evidence is not promising for reversing the encroachment of Religion in government. And it never will be until Secularists, that means atheists, agnostics or those in progressive branches of the major religions, demand more from the Democratic party.
The referenced diary describes one aspect of the infiltration of evangelicals into the military, focusing on the pentagon building. I am familiar with this and have had the privilege of meeting Mikey Weinstein who is leading the battle against the Christianizing of the American Military. I have written many diaries on this same subject from a different perspectives.
Even PBS felt compelled to air a blatant propaganda piece entitled "Wall of Separation" a term the producers argue is fraudulent. After several viewings I was able to find a specific misleading aspect in this film, that was featured on the web site of the PBS ombudsman.
A more detailed description of our Democratic party deferring to the Religious right was in this diary Feds now control Mt. Soledad Cross Site This tells of legislation that illustrates the thesis of this diary. The Democratic Senators refused to stop the takeover of land for the sole purpose of maintaining a 42 foot high Christian Cross over San Diego.
When I spoke to Representative Bob Filner about his Senate colleagues lack of courage, having voted against the bill in the house, he responded with a sad shake of his head, “Sometimes you have to do what is right, no matter the political cost.”
What is rarely said on this site, and needs saying, is that the candidates for the nomination of our party, are more concerned in capturing the Religious vote then they are in taking a stand against the Christianizing of our country-which includes the military. Do I hear a communal, “Duh, they have to get elected, dude.”
Yes, and they can get elected if they differentiate themselves more clearly from those who would erase the separation of church and state that has served our country so well for so many decades.
The nine candidates for the Presidential nomination were asked during the Iowa debates a few weeks ago their feelings about a personal God who responds to prayer, specifically to thwart disasters such as Katrina:
This was Dennis Kucinich's response
So when we think of the scriptures, Isaiah making justice the measuring line; Matthew 25, "whatever you do for the least of our brethren"; where the biblical injunction, "make peace with your brother" -- all of these things relate to my philosophy.
Now, the founders meant to have separation of church and state, but they never meant America to be separate from spiritual values. As president, I'll bring strong spiritual values into the White House, and I'll bring values that value peace, social and economic justice, values that remember where I came from.
His words, that the founders never meant America to be separate from spiritual values is the prime talking point of those who would return prayer to public schools and the ten commandments to the walls of our courts.
Other candidates took the occasion to proclaim their personal relationship with God, even though they explained they prayed for more abstract comfort than changing the course of hurricanes. But not a single viable candidate refuted the idea that praying to God was an essential component of being a national leader, along with the implication that this belief is integral to what it means to be an American.
Only one candidate, Mike Gravel, the one with support that wavers between zero and one percent, felt free enough to utter these words.
And so you can pray -- I was always persuaded or struck by the fact that many people who pray are the ones who want to go to war, who want to kill fellow human beings. That disturbs me.
The mass delusion of Apocalyptic Christianity may, in fact, lead this nation, and perhaps the world, into the catastrophe that they predict. I'm sure that there are those in the Military who are outraged by this, but where are they to draw their strength. When they look at the Republicans they see this belief reflected in the highest places. Yet, when they look at the Democrats they see a quiet acceptance, a refusal to explicitly reject this pernicious distorted sect of Christianity,out of fear of losing votes.
Just as we demand that Gays, Blacks and the impoverished not be marginalized by our candidates, we have a right to demand that they demonstrate their acceptance and respect for those who do not believe in God. We are part of the fabric of America. While this should go without saying, this is under attack, from the leaders of the Republican party, to the burgeoning Evangelical movement, to the new majority of the Supreme Court.
It is about time we insist that our party- the secular party, the “reality based” party- stand up for these principles. Silence, and just being a bit better than the Republicans will not reverse the blind ideology that is taking over our hitherto Secular Democracy.
****
Addendum:
Some comments indicate a lack of awareness of the current aggressive antipathy towards non believers. Nothing better illustrates the current view of those who would reject the concept of “Separation of Church and State” as these:
One cannot say the word "God," or "the Almighty," one cannot offer public supplication or thanksgiving, without contradicting the beliefs of some people that there are many gods, or that God or the gods pay no attention to human affairs. With respect to public acknowledgment of religious belief, it is entirely clear from our Nation's historical practices that the Establishment Clause permits this disregard of polytheists and believers in unconcerned deities, just as it permits the disregard of devout atheists.
This was not from a Fox pundit or a right wing blogger. This was written by Justice Anton Scalia in his dissent in this 2005 Supreme Court Case on allowing a copy of the ten commandments in a court house. He has since been joined by two justices who share his world view on many issues, so there is reason to believe this would now be the decision of the court, that our constitution permits the “disregard of devout atheists.”
If this were to be adopted, atheists would legally become non-persons. And Monotheism would have become our national religion. ------------
Originally posted at Dailykos on 9-2-07- Still relevant today
Obama interview with O'Reilly
I just finished watching the last of four segments of an interview recorded on the last day of the Republican Convention. At first I thought this was a blunder by Obama, and after the first segment, I felt I was right.
O'Reilly was abrupt, and his demeanor was as much to show his dominance over a Presidential nominee than to explore his interviewee. I thought three more days of this would not be good.
Coincidentally this last segment coincided with the "Lipstick on a Pig" comment by Obama, something that has been touted as a direct attack on Sarah Palin by the McCain group, and retorted as a distortion by Obama. There have been a number of these claims of nefarious "dog whistles" by both sides in this campaign. Most notoriously was the "Celebrity" ad that many here maintained were racist assaults.
So, how did Bill O'Reilly respond to his party's attack on Obama's purported misogyny. He not only said it was unsupported by the evidence, but called the accusation unfair, and warned that it could come back to harm McCain. Interesting!
Although the interview took place over one half hour period, its being spread over a period of six days gives an illusion of a developing .....friendship, is the only word that comes to mind. It reminded me of the kind of conversations I have with my conservative tennis friends, the few that have the ability to think about the issues.
We disagree, but we welcome each others knowledge, perspective and conclusions. It has the quality of the tennis games we play, where the competition is the essence of the enjoyment, and the better the players, the more fun it is.
Obama went toe to toe with O'Reilly. When he saw a mis-perception he pointed it out and O'Reilly listened. "No, you are wrong when you say I oppose nuclear power." "No, it's not true that I will raise taxes." and, "I have acknowledged that the surge has lessened violence."
Let me confess something here. I am not one of the greatest fans of Obama on this site. No one can possibly know whether he will be a transformational historical figure, but he sure is a damn effective politician. And I disagree with a whole batch of his policies, and his tactics.
However, watching how he interacted with O'Reilly impressed me greatly. Of course he had his facts down cold, but any policy wonk can do that. What he was able to do was interact with someone who had a different political ideology with firmness that never even approached hostility. His skills were enough to interface with the man, so that he never really felt he had to demonstrate his toughness. It was self evident.
At the end there was a little impromptu tease that O'Reilly initiated, asking, "on a game of one on one basketball, what will you spot me?" Barack, lawyer that he is, made sure the terms were clear asking, "How many points?" When they agreed they would play to eleven, Obama thought for a second and seriously said, "I'll spot you ten."
It was a mock put down that was as skillful as any basketball play or negotiation with a world leader. They connected "man to man, which is close to "boy to boy." I had a strong sense that both of them had enjoyed the interaction, the bantering; and had gained some mutual respect.
I don't know whether there were any in The Factor audience whose votes were changed, but I'd be surprised if there weren't quite a few. For me, it was a demonstration of the type of personal skills that got him elected to the Presidency of the Harvard Law Review. It's a rare combination of personality and intellect, which is the ultimate quality needed in a President of the United States.
---------
Addendum: djrez wrote a comprehensive diary describing in detail all four segments after this was posted. It's here and worth reading.
----------
9/10/2008 Daiilykos Rec diary
O'Reilly was abrupt, and his demeanor was as much to show his dominance over a Presidential nominee than to explore his interviewee. I thought three more days of this would not be good.
Coincidentally this last segment coincided with the "Lipstick on a Pig" comment by Obama, something that has been touted as a direct attack on Sarah Palin by the McCain group, and retorted as a distortion by Obama. There have been a number of these claims of nefarious "dog whistles" by both sides in this campaign. Most notoriously was the "Celebrity" ad that many here maintained were racist assaults.
So, how did Bill O'Reilly respond to his party's attack on Obama's purported misogyny. He not only said it was unsupported by the evidence, but called the accusation unfair, and warned that it could come back to harm McCain. Interesting!
Although the interview took place over one half hour period, its being spread over a period of six days gives an illusion of a developing .....friendship, is the only word that comes to mind. It reminded me of the kind of conversations I have with my conservative tennis friends, the few that have the ability to think about the issues.
We disagree, but we welcome each others knowledge, perspective and conclusions. It has the quality of the tennis games we play, where the competition is the essence of the enjoyment, and the better the players, the more fun it is.
Obama went toe to toe with O'Reilly. When he saw a mis-perception he pointed it out and O'Reilly listened. "No, you are wrong when you say I oppose nuclear power." "No, it's not true that I will raise taxes." and, "I have acknowledged that the surge has lessened violence."
Let me confess something here. I am not one of the greatest fans of Obama on this site. No one can possibly know whether he will be a transformational historical figure, but he sure is a damn effective politician. And I disagree with a whole batch of his policies, and his tactics.
However, watching how he interacted with O'Reilly impressed me greatly. Of course he had his facts down cold, but any policy wonk can do that. What he was able to do was interact with someone who had a different political ideology with firmness that never even approached hostility. His skills were enough to interface with the man, so that he never really felt he had to demonstrate his toughness. It was self evident.
At the end there was a little impromptu tease that O'Reilly initiated, asking, "on a game of one on one basketball, what will you spot me?" Barack, lawyer that he is, made sure the terms were clear asking, "How many points?" When they agreed they would play to eleven, Obama thought for a second and seriously said, "I'll spot you ten."
It was a mock put down that was as skillful as any basketball play or negotiation with a world leader. They connected "man to man, which is close to "boy to boy." I had a strong sense that both of them had enjoyed the interaction, the bantering; and had gained some mutual respect.
I don't know whether there were any in The Factor audience whose votes were changed, but I'd be surprised if there weren't quite a few. For me, it was a demonstration of the type of personal skills that got him elected to the Presidency of the Harvard Law Review. It's a rare combination of personality and intellect, which is the ultimate quality needed in a President of the United States.
---------
Addendum: djrez wrote a comprehensive diary describing in detail all four segments after this was posted. It's here and worth reading.
----------
9/10/2008 Daiilykos Rec diary
Not just a lie, a "Big Lie"
10/12/08 Dailykos
See the President of the United States of America rewrite history in front of your very eyes when he was asked this Wednesday whether there was any choice other than going to war with Iraq:
It's important to document the actual history of those days, when there was a choice to be made, since this version, repeated often enough without a single objection soon becomes the new reality
Here are the President's words, which he has spoken numerous times before almost verbatim, from the White House Transcript:
Let me paraphrase his statement:
This statement is so clear and reasonable, if only it were true. This was not an off the cuff answer. This is the story that is being repeated to the public. It could be taken from this description of Joseph Goebbels' "Big Lie," that if you you repeat something consistently over a long enough period, even though false, it becomes a new reality.
Now comes the easy part, dissecting this sham for what it is: Yes, Saddam did refuse to disclose his WMD. But in this case his excuse is pretty compelling: he didn't possess any to disclose. My source? How about President Bush from the same news conference, spoken about one minute before he said Saddam was attacked for not disclosing WMD:
O.K. He couldn't "disclose" what he didn't possess; now what about the "destroy" part of the ultimatum?
It turns out that there was only one type of weapon that Iraq possessed that was marginally illegal based on the outside limit of its range. Weeks before the invasion these missiles were being destroyed as fast as possible as indicated in this report from the New York Times of March 8, 2003, twelve days before we attacked:
Disarm?: far from refusing, Iraq was acceding to the demand, as reported by the U.N. Chief Inspector.
So what else is wrong with President Bush's summarization of why we attacked Iraq? I'm talking about proximate causes here, not underlying motivations which is another more complex subject. He mentions U.N Resolution 1441 as containing the ultimatum and threat of war. Here's how one newspaper saw it:
This wasn't from the New York Times or the Washington Post. It was from the July 26, 2006 edition of The Washington Times, considered the Fox News of the print media.
There's more, so much more that refutes the content and implications of the President's statement, such as the acknowledgment by his Press Secretary as the war was approaching that even acceding to the 1441 demands would no longer be sufficient,
the above report from a New York Times' article concluded with, "All pretense of Iraq being attacked based on the will of the international community was abandoned."
There are those who are convinced that everything that President Bush has said about this war is a lie, most importantly his underlying motivation for it in the first place. While some may refute this, and many do, how does one justify his blatant rewriting of the events leading up to this war.
We could not have possibly attacked Iraq because Saddam refused to "Disclose and Disarm." He was disarming and he had nothing to disclose. This is irrefutable fact-- from the President's own words, that of his press secretary, and the most extreme right wing newspaper in the country.
--------------
A few days ago there was a highly recommended diary by a noted humorist that showed a video of a fictional white house reporter challenging the President at a news conference. While most of us were enjoying the satire, I almost believed it was real. And I was somewhat peeved that I was tricked into buying into it.
Perhaps I was made numb by the routine bizarre fiction coming from the highest office in the land. What I find more incredible than the satiric video is that among the assembly of white house correspondents who listened to President Bush say these words, not a single one stood up and challenged him.
Not a single one of these "respected" journalists was willing to state the facts that refute his statement, to incur the wrath of this one man, who willfully and purposefully perpetrated an illegal act of war; and now has the effrontery to attempt to rewrite history, by erasing his crime with this "big lie." ----------
180 comments, 400 recs
See the President of the United States of America rewrite history in front of your very eyes when he was asked this Wednesday whether there was any choice other than going to war with Iraq:
It's important to document the actual history of those days, when there was a choice to be made, since this version, repeated often enough without a single objection soon becomes the new reality
Here are the President's words, which he has spoken numerous times before almost verbatim, from the White House Transcript:
Q So there was no choice -- so there was no choice between the course we took and leaving Saddam Hussein in power? Nothing else that might have worked?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we tried other things. As you might remember back then, we tried the diplomatic route: 1441 was a unanimous vote in the Security Council that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. So the choice was his to make. And he made -- he made a choice that has subsequently left -- subsequently caused him to lose his life under a system that he wouldn't have given his own citizens. We tried diplomacy. As a matter of fact, not only did I try diplomacy; other Presidents tried diplomacy.
Let me paraphrase his statement:
The United Nations, the nations of the world, speaking in unity, gave Saddam Hussein an ultimatum to disclose his Weapons of Mass Destruction and to disarm (destroy his illegal weapons, (specifically defined as WMD along with certain long range missiles.) He then adds that this was encompassed in Resolution 1441 which stated that if he refused, he would face "serious consequences" which is diplomatic language for war.
This statement is so clear and reasonable, if only it were true. This was not an off the cuff answer. This is the story that is being repeated to the public. It could be taken from this description of Joseph Goebbels' "Big Lie," that if you you repeat something consistently over a long enough period, even though false, it becomes a new reality.
Now comes the easy part, dissecting this sham for what it is: Yes, Saddam did refuse to disclose his WMD. But in this case his excuse is pretty compelling: he didn't possess any to disclose. My source? How about President Bush from the same news conference, spoken about one minute before he said Saddam was attacked for not disclosing WMD:
I obviously thought he had weapons, he didn't have weapons; the world thought he had weapons. It was a surprise to me that he didn't have the weapons of mass destruction everybody thought he had....
O.K. He couldn't "disclose" what he didn't possess; now what about the "destroy" part of the ultimatum?
It turns out that there was only one type of weapon that Iraq possessed that was marginally illegal based on the outside limit of its range. Weeks before the invasion these missiles were being destroyed as fast as possible as indicated in this report from the New York Times of March 8, 2003, twelve days before we attacked:
The assessment from the weapons inspectors took account of Iraq's cooperation since Nov. 27, when inspections in Iraq resumed for the first time since 1998, after the Security Council passed a unanimous resolution. In addition to casting severe doubt on the reported Iraqi attempt to buy uranium in Niger, Dr. ElBaradei said that ''there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminum tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment'' of uranium into weapons-grade material. For months, American officials have cited Iraq's importation of these tubes as evidence that Mr. Hussein's scientists have been seeking to develop a nuclear capability.
Mr. Blix reiterated that the destruction of 34 Al Samoud 2 missiles in the past week ''constitutes a substantial measure of disarmament indeed, the first since the middle of the 1990's. We are not watching the breaking of toothpicks.''
Disarm?: far from refusing, Iraq was acceding to the demand, as reported by the U.N. Chief Inspector.
So what else is wrong with President Bush's summarization of why we attacked Iraq? I'm talking about proximate causes here, not underlying motivations which is another more complex subject. He mentions U.N Resolution 1441 as containing the ultimatum and threat of war. Here's how one newspaper saw it:
It should be remembered that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, adopted in November 2002 regarding Iraq, was also unanimous but not definitive. The consensus was an additional resolution would be needed to authorize action against the Baghdad regime. But when Washington tried to get such a resolution, it failed to even muster a majority of the Security Council, with three veto-yielding members (China, Russia and France) opposed.
This wasn't from the New York Times or the Washington Post. It was from the July 26, 2006 edition of The Washington Times, considered the Fox News of the print media.
There's more, so much more that refutes the content and implications of the President's statement, such as the acknowledgment by his Press Secretary as the war was approaching that even acceding to the 1441 demands would no longer be sufficient,
Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said today that President Bush was hopeful that war could be averted, but that to escape military action, Iraq must disarm and Mr. Hussein must be deposed.
That combination of events, he said, looked highly unlikely.
Pressed on the point, Mr. Fleischer said both would be necessary conditions because disarmament was the United Nations' goal and changing Iraq's government was the president's.
The statement puts the United States on a different track from the United Nations, whose resolutions have been concerned with the immediate and unconditional disarmament, not with a change of government in Baghdad. that Saddam must give up power.
the above report from a New York Times' article concluded with, "All pretense of Iraq being attacked based on the will of the international community was abandoned."
There are those who are convinced that everything that President Bush has said about this war is a lie, most importantly his underlying motivation for it in the first place. While some may refute this, and many do, how does one justify his blatant rewriting of the events leading up to this war.
We could not have possibly attacked Iraq because Saddam refused to "Disclose and Disarm." He was disarming and he had nothing to disclose. This is irrefutable fact-- from the President's own words, that of his press secretary, and the most extreme right wing newspaper in the country.
--------------
A few days ago there was a highly recommended diary by a noted humorist that showed a video of a fictional white house reporter challenging the President at a news conference. While most of us were enjoying the satire, I almost believed it was real. And I was somewhat peeved that I was tricked into buying into it.
Perhaps I was made numb by the routine bizarre fiction coming from the highest office in the land. What I find more incredible than the satiric video is that among the assembly of white house correspondents who listened to President Bush say these words, not a single one stood up and challenged him.
Not a single one of these "respected" journalists was willing to state the facts that refute his statement, to incur the wrath of this one man, who willfully and purposefully perpetrated an illegal act of war; and now has the effrontery to attempt to rewrite history, by erasing his crime with this "big lie." ----------
180 comments, 400 recs
Man Behind Obama Attacks-N.Y Times- with Update
10/12/08 Dailykos.com
Man Behind Obama Attacks-N.Y Times- with Update
The N.Y Times article was posted just a few minutes ago online, and should be on the front page tomorrow. His name is Andy Martin*, and his background, associations and character explains the root of a venom as vicious as it is surreal.
The article begins:
It continues....
While this article is mostly an indictment of Mr. Martin, Fox News, who knew of his background, became his patron last week. Rather than being a fringe radical that his career should have defined him to be, he was given a platform to spew his hatred to those who were eager to hear the worst about the Democratic candidate.
And what a career he had:
It seems like the party of tort limitation could have made a major contribution by exposing rather than enhancing this individual, who seemed to have used his legal training like a blunt instrument of terror.
From this article, we get a picture not so much of an extreme partisan, but of someone who has the skills, unhampered by any need for truthfulness, to spuw calumny just short of being actionable libel. I guess he did get something out of going to law school after all.
I will be sending this around to my right wing friends who hear these libels so often that they feel it must be true. Perhaps when they learn of the nature of the person who started it all, it might give them some second thoughts.
--------------------
*Update from comments:
The subject of this diary originally was named Anthony Martin-Trigona, but he became so notorious under that name that he change it to Andy Martin. Several people, including some attorneys, give specific examples of his gross abuse of the legal system, their personal experiences with him and the response of the judiciary to this abuse of process.
Here are the links to some relevant comments:
This is an extensive report on the legal trail of destruction left by this man.
Here is the top comment from a lawyer who describes defending media companies against Martin's meritless suits of intimidation.
----------Barack Obama, Smears, Andy Martin, Fox News, Recommended
---------------
452 comments, 903 recs
Man Behind Obama Attacks-N.Y Times- with Update
The N.Y Times article was posted just a few minutes ago online, and should be on the front page tomorrow. His name is Andy Martin*, and his background, associations and character explains the root of a venom as vicious as it is surreal.
The article begins:
The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that arguably set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: “Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.”
.....The press release was picked up by the conservative FreeRepublic.com Web site and spread virally and steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail messages, Web sites and, ultimately, books.
It continues....
Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyber-whisper campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs where he is a bête noir.
But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The Fox program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.
While this article is mostly an indictment of Mr. Martin, Fox News, who knew of his background, became his patron last week. Rather than being a fringe radical that his career should have defined him to be, he was given a platform to spew his hatred to those who were eager to hear the worst about the Democratic candidate.
And what a career he had:
An examination of legal documents and election filings, and interviews with those from Mr. Martin’s past, revealed a man with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims, who has left a trail of animosity – including anti-Jewish comments -- among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over the course of more than 30 years.
A law school graduate, his admission to the Illinois state bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.” Though he is not a licensed lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of lawsuits, and he also made various unsuccessful attempts to run for public office in three states, as well as for president at least twice, in 1988 and 2000. Based in Chicago, he now identifies himself as an author and writer who focuses on his anti-Obama Web site and press releases.
It seems like the party of tort limitation could have made a major contribution by exposing rather than enhancing this individual, who seemed to have used his legal training like a blunt instrument of terror.
The CBS News program “48 Hours” devoted an hour-long program to his legal prowess in 1993 entitled, “See You in Court; Civil War, Anthony Martin Clogs Legal System with Frivolous Lawsuits.” He has filed so many lawsuits – and paperwork containing anti-Semitic slurs – a judge barred him from doing so in any federal court house without preliminary approval.
He prepared a run for Congress in Connecticut – where paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose “to exterminate Jew Power.” He ran for the Florida State Senate and the United States Senate in Illinois. When running for president in 1999, he showed a television advertisement in New Hampshire that accused George W. Bush of cocaine use.
In the mid-1990s he was jailed in relation to an assault case in Florida.
His newfound prominence, and the persistence of his line of political attack -- updated regularly on his Web site and through press releases -- amazes those from his past.
From this article, we get a picture not so much of an extreme partisan, but of someone who has the skills, unhampered by any need for truthfulness, to spuw calumny just short of being actionable libel. I guess he did get something out of going to law school after all.
I will be sending this around to my right wing friends who hear these libels so often that they feel it must be true. Perhaps when they learn of the nature of the person who started it all, it might give them some second thoughts.
--------------------
*Update from comments:
The subject of this diary originally was named Anthony Martin-Trigona, but he became so notorious under that name that he change it to Andy Martin. Several people, including some attorneys, give specific examples of his gross abuse of the legal system, their personal experiences with him and the response of the judiciary to this abuse of process.
Here are the links to some relevant comments:
This is an extensive report on the legal trail of destruction left by this man.
Here is the top comment from a lawyer who describes defending media companies against Martin's meritless suits of intimidation.
----------Barack Obama, Smears, Andy Martin, Fox News, Recommended
---------------
452 comments, 903 recs
Kitty Werthman, distorted memories of anschluss
Too often when we look across the chasm to that other side, we see the snarling faces of Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck or perhaps Pat Robertson. We quickly decide whether something is from the "Great Right Wing Conspiracy" and if so to be rejected out of hand without serious consideration.
It's a bit different when the voice is from an 84 year old woman, Kitty Werthmann whose antipathy towards the left is based on her own experiences as a child when Hitler took over her native Austria. I have a good friend, Bill S., a bright man of generous spirit, who at my request keeps me up to date on the viral email that he gets as a bonafide Christian Conservative.
I read most of them, and when I point out those that are fraudulent he sends my "correction" back down the email chain, hopefully having some effect on the most extreme accusations. Recently I recieved one that is the basis of this diary:
The email that was sent to me is long, so I made it available here. After I responded, implying that the whole essay was fiction, Bill sent me this web address, which showed the actual woman giving a long speech, 45 minutes, that the original letter accurately condensed.
I watched it carefully, taking notes, did some research; and I want to share my response, not only with my liberal friends here on Dailykos, but to Bill, whose fairness and good will continues to provide hope that our political divide can be productively bridged.
I'll intersperse my comments in italics to her excerpted letter:
I happen to have a rare yellowing copy of Liberty Magazine, one of the most popular magazines in the U.S., of May 21,1938, probably written almost exactly at the time of the Anschluss Here's the conclusion of an article by Edward P. Bell, that is mostly laudatory of Heir Hitler:
This was the conclusion of an American mainstream publication, that it was not Hitler who was the danger to world peace, but those who overreacted to this "sincere" man. The writer, and supposedly the American people were satisfied with Hitler's answer to the question of the "Jewish Problem" which was, "we are not against Jews, we are for the Germans as Germans"
Around this same time, people such as Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes among many others spoke kindly of Hitler, especially when he was seen as the bulwark against Stalin, who was considered the far greater evil. So, Ms Werthmann's memory of Hitler not persecuting his people was plausible.
I can see that this process of critiquing all of Ms. Werthmann's essay here, and her video would make this much too long, so I invite readers to go to the links above if interested.
Every reader here looks back at Nazi Germany with knowledge of the horror it would inflict on the world, and finds it difficult, if not impossible, to go much beyond that. To illustrate this problem, I will reference this article: Nazi Medicine and Public Health Policy By Robert N. Proctor
This article was not from Stormfront.com or even National Review, rather it is from the website of the Anti-Defamation League, an organization dedicated to fighting antisemitism.
While Ms. Werthmann does make some errors of fact, after some careful analysis, acknowledging that I am not highly versed in this specific history, I believe that her writing and speaking for the Republican party, now going on for some two decades, is based on her actual memories of events.
In a certain slice of the left-right economic spectrum both Adolph Hitler and Barack Obama were believers in a left oriented mixed economy. This means that both of them favored more government participation, even control, of some areas of life than those of the right. In this narrow spectrum Adolph Hitler was a progressive.
Here, of course, is where the similarity ends. Ms. Werthmann then makes assumptions that such similarity means that those of the left have the same intention, are of the same mentality of Hitler. She is very careful, never to say these exact words, but the allusions are obvious, as I will show in this example from her video:
In her essay she wrote
In the video she referred to Hitler's new rights for women as "The equal rights amendment" which, of course, was a provision that would have amended the United States constitution. It is highly unlikely that Hitler, who at the time was ruling by edict, needed an amendment of anything to do this.
This is just one clear example that Ms. Werthmann has managed to seamlessly merge in her own mind the most heinous man of the twentieth century with any Democratic Leader, specifically at this time, President Barach Obama. According to her story the actual fact that Hitler removed the crucifixes from the public schools, means that being opposed to Catholicism is the necessarily and sufficient condition for brutal dictatorship. The counter example of Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco, who as a defender of Catholicism ruled as an absolute dictator for over thirty five years does not interfere in this belief, since she benefits from the simplicity of her thinking.
Medical Care after Anschluss
Werthmann, in the video, says that Hitler nationalized medical care, and that "doctors had long waits of people after this occurred." After considerable research I have not been able to find a single source, other than she, to confirm or refute her statements. The closest I could come to finding a carefully researched work on this era was this piece from the Annals of Internal Medicine. It is a concise essay focusing on the medical profession, which in Austria had been overwhelmingly Jewish. In the age of contagion before antibiotics, it was one of the few professions allowed to this group.
While Werthmann has explained the shortage of medical care on Hitler's socialized medicine, here's another explanation, that happens to be authentic.
Conclusion:
What is important is not so much this one individual, Kitty Werthmann, but that what she says resonates with many in this country. They know how one political leader promised his people everything, eliminated all organized opposition, and then destroyed their country, not to mention a good part of the rest of the world.
I have learned something from this process. While many here on Dailykos, myself included, can't understand why Obama would not make health care a national program with the simplicity of single payer, or why he did not nationalize the banks that were no longer viable economic entities....the answer lies in Ms. Wertmann's speeches, and the reaction of them to a fairly large following----currently under the banner of teabaggers.
Hitler did (to the best of my knowledge) actually nationalize the banks, and in Austria replaced private health insurance companies with British Style universal care. And this was a surprise to me--he believed in an activist government that in other ways would protect the people (well, not all people) in promoting epidemiological studies and preventing use of tobacco (See ADL article)
The ADL article linked above actually describes the positive aspects of Nazi governance and refutes the illusion that since the regime was the apotheosis of evil, that nothing about it could have been positive. I doubt that such an article could have been written much before now, after those who lived through the Nazi horrors are mostly gone.
What I can tell my friend Bill, and Kitty, were she ever to read this, is that she misses the essential quality of Hitler, that his quest for power was built on hatred--- of Jews, victors of WWI, Slavs, and all of those whom he saw as inferior. He happened to have emerged at a moment of great distress of the Germanic people. He was enough of an intuitive master of the art of politics to marshal this suffering to his own ends.
Hitler's job was made easier by the degree of hatred, the vicious murderous state of the Kulturkamph, a permutation of our own culture war that currently is on low simmer. Ms. Werthmann equating Obama to Hitler, does a disservice the her adopted country, and threatens this country that I believe she loves. She makes the possibility of her fears someday coming true that much more probable.
The constant drumbeat that lawful exercise of Presidential power is tantamount to tyranny creates a dire risk that healthy political dialog will be transformed into rabid mutual hatred, resulting in the very chaos that will produce an actual tyrant, someone with a Final Solution to all of our vexing social problems.
Nazism has not become the epitome of evil because Hitler promoted equality of women, universal health care or secular public education. He will forever be equated with evil because of a remorseless hatred that was divorced from reality. Our country has been immune to such excesses because with all of our disagreements about policy, we have preserved a common set of values, along with mutual respect for those whom we disagree with.
It's sad that Kitty Werthmann who lived through the efflorescence of hatred that destroyed her country along with much of the world has learned the wrong lessen, and has made a career of fostering the very distortions that contributed to such a calamity.
It's a bit different when the voice is from an 84 year old woman, Kitty Werthmann whose antipathy towards the left is based on her own experiences as a child when Hitler took over her native Austria. I have a good friend, Bill S., a bright man of generous spirit, who at my request keeps me up to date on the viral email that he gets as a bonafide Christian Conservative.
I read most of them, and when I point out those that are fraudulent he sends my "correction" back down the email chain, hopefully having some effect on the most extreme accusations. Recently I recieved one that is the basis of this diary:
The email that was sent to me is long, so I made it available here. After I responded, implying that the whole essay was fiction, Bill sent me this web address, which showed the actual woman giving a long speech, 45 minutes, that the original letter accurately condensed.
I watched it carefully, taking notes, did some research; and I want to share my response, not only with my liberal friends here on Dailykos, but to Bill, whose fairness and good will continues to provide hope that our political divide can be productively bridged.
I'll intersperse my comments in italics to her excerpted letter:
America Truly is the Greatest Country in the World. Don't Let Freedom Slip Away
By: Kitty Werthmann
What I am about to tell you is something you've probably never heard or will ever read in history books.
I believe that I am an eyewitness to history. I cannot tell you that Hitler took Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history. We elected him by a landslide - 98% of the vote. I've never read that in any American publications. Everyone thinks that Hitler just rolled in with his tanks and took Austria by force. In 1938, Austria was in deep Depression. Nearly one-third of our workforce was unemployed. We had 25% inflation and 25% bank loan interest rates.
-she then describes her home life, her mother helping those in need.
The Communist Party and the National Socialist Party were fighting each other. Blocks and blocks of cities like Vienna, Linz, and Graz were destroyed. The people became desperate and petitioned the government to let them decide what kind of government they wanted.
-she then described how much better things were in Hitlers Germany adding:
Nothing was ever said about persecution of any group -- Jewish or otherwise. We were led to believe that everyone was happy.
-Here was my first gotcha, so I thought. Surely Kristalnacht would have been widely publicized. So, I did some research and while the statement was too broad, since the Nuremberg Laws that restricted Jewish participation in German Society had been promulgated in 1935. But in almost all of Eastern Europe such restrictions were not uncommon. And Kristalnach, the beginning of Nazi homicidal antisemitism, was still eight months in the future.
I happen to have a rare yellowing copy of Liberty Magazine, one of the most popular magazines in the U.S., of May 21,1938, probably written almost exactly at the time of the Anschluss Here's the conclusion of an article by Edward P. Bell, that is mostly laudatory of Heir Hitler:
I left convinced of his sincerity, his rectitude of intention, his high purpose according to his light. The international danger, such as it is, arises from suspicion and fear and misapprehension and their ugly, formidable children, hated and swelling armaments.
This was the conclusion of an American mainstream publication, that it was not Hitler who was the danger to world peace, but those who overreacted to this "sincere" man. The writer, and supposedly the American people were satisfied with Hitler's answer to the question of the "Jewish Problem" which was, "we are not against Jews, we are for the Germans as Germans"
Around this same time, people such as Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes among many others spoke kindly of Hitler, especially when he was seen as the bulwark against Stalin, who was considered the far greater evil. So, Ms Werthmann's memory of Hitler not persecuting his people was plausible.
I can see that this process of critiquing all of Ms. Werthmann's essay here, and her video would make this much too long, so I invite readers to go to the links above if interested.
Every reader here looks back at Nazi Germany with knowledge of the horror it would inflict on the world, and finds it difficult, if not impossible, to go much beyond that. To illustrate this problem, I will reference this article: Nazi Medicine and Public Health Policy By Robert N. Proctor
The Nazis...supported many kinds of science, left politics (as we often think of it) out of most, and did not abandon ethics. There was an ethics of Nazi medical practice -- sometimes explicit, sometimes not.
snip-
The story of science under German fascism is not, as conventional wisdom would have it, only a narrative of suppression and survival; a truthful account will explain how and why Nazi ideology promoted certain areas of inquiry, and how projects and policies were championed or disappeared because of political considerations.
This article was not from Stormfront.com or even National Review, rather it is from the website of the Anti-Defamation League, an organization dedicated to fighting antisemitism.
While Ms. Werthmann does make some errors of fact, after some careful analysis, acknowledging that I am not highly versed in this specific history, I believe that her writing and speaking for the Republican party, now going on for some two decades, is based on her actual memories of events.
In a certain slice of the left-right economic spectrum both Adolph Hitler and Barack Obama were believers in a left oriented mixed economy. This means that both of them favored more government participation, even control, of some areas of life than those of the right. In this narrow spectrum Adolph Hitler was a progressive.
Here, of course, is where the similarity ends. Ms. Werthmann then makes assumptions that such similarity means that those of the left have the same intention, are of the same mentality of Hitler. She is very careful, never to say these exact words, but the allusions are obvious, as I will show in this example from her video:
In her essay she wrote
Hitler decided we should have equal rights for women. Before this, it was a custom that married Austrian women did not work outside the home. An able-bodied husband would be looked down on if he couldn't support his family
In the video she referred to Hitler's new rights for women as "The equal rights amendment" which, of course, was a provision that would have amended the United States constitution. It is highly unlikely that Hitler, who at the time was ruling by edict, needed an amendment of anything to do this.
This is just one clear example that Ms. Werthmann has managed to seamlessly merge in her own mind the most heinous man of the twentieth century with any Democratic Leader, specifically at this time, President Barach Obama. According to her story the actual fact that Hitler removed the crucifixes from the public schools, means that being opposed to Catholicism is the necessarily and sufficient condition for brutal dictatorship. The counter example of Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco, who as a defender of Catholicism ruled as an absolute dictator for over thirty five years does not interfere in this belief, since she benefits from the simplicity of her thinking.
Medical Care after Anschluss
Werthmann, in the video, says that Hitler nationalized medical care, and that "doctors had long waits of people after this occurred." After considerable research I have not been able to find a single source, other than she, to confirm or refute her statements. The closest I could come to finding a carefully researched work on this era was this piece from the Annals of Internal Medicine. It is a concise essay focusing on the medical profession, which in Austria had been overwhelmingly Jewish. In the age of contagion before antibiotics, it was one of the few professions allowed to this group.
Of the 4900 physicians practicing in Vienna in 1938, 3200 were of Jewish origin. Thus, the proportion of Jews in medicine was greater in Vienna than in Germany, where it was about 20%. The relationship between Viennese Jews and non-Jews had been relatively unproblematic until the late 19th century, when the ideas associated with social Darwinism began to spread and combine with overt anti-Semitism [7].
Academic promotion in general became more and more difficult for Jews to obtain. The “Society of German Doctors in Austria,” a professional organization in favor of German (and Nazi) influences, grew and published lists of non-Aryan colleagues, lists that later provided some of the reference material for the events to follow. Because of this insidious change in climate, many Jewish colleagues emigrated well before 1938, and the seed of Nazism fell on fertile ground. The events that ensued must therefore not be seen as an “accident of history.”
While Werthmann has explained the shortage of medical care on Hitler's socialized medicine, here's another explanation, that happens to be authentic.
Medical care in general showed similar deficits. Before the Anschluss, more than 5000 physicians were practicing in Vienna; by 1942, the figure had decreased to 519 general practitioners and 211 specialists. The first anniversary of the above events was celebrated in a newspaper article by Professor Hans Eppinger: “Now that all disease has been eradicated, the Viennese School of Medicine can in future dedicate itself to its great task without inhibition”
Conclusion:
What is important is not so much this one individual, Kitty Werthmann, but that what she says resonates with many in this country. They know how one political leader promised his people everything, eliminated all organized opposition, and then destroyed their country, not to mention a good part of the rest of the world.
I have learned something from this process. While many here on Dailykos, myself included, can't understand why Obama would not make health care a national program with the simplicity of single payer, or why he did not nationalize the banks that were no longer viable economic entities....the answer lies in Ms. Wertmann's speeches, and the reaction of them to a fairly large following----currently under the banner of teabaggers.
Hitler did (to the best of my knowledge) actually nationalize the banks, and in Austria replaced private health insurance companies with British Style universal care. And this was a surprise to me--he believed in an activist government that in other ways would protect the people (well, not all people) in promoting epidemiological studies and preventing use of tobacco (See ADL article)
The ADL article linked above actually describes the positive aspects of Nazi governance and refutes the illusion that since the regime was the apotheosis of evil, that nothing about it could have been positive. I doubt that such an article could have been written much before now, after those who lived through the Nazi horrors are mostly gone.
What I can tell my friend Bill, and Kitty, were she ever to read this, is that she misses the essential quality of Hitler, that his quest for power was built on hatred--- of Jews, victors of WWI, Slavs, and all of those whom he saw as inferior. He happened to have emerged at a moment of great distress of the Germanic people. He was enough of an intuitive master of the art of politics to marshal this suffering to his own ends.
Hitler's job was made easier by the degree of hatred, the vicious murderous state of the Kulturkamph, a permutation of our own culture war that currently is on low simmer. Ms. Werthmann equating Obama to Hitler, does a disservice the her adopted country, and threatens this country that I believe she loves. She makes the possibility of her fears someday coming true that much more probable.
The constant drumbeat that lawful exercise of Presidential power is tantamount to tyranny creates a dire risk that healthy political dialog will be transformed into rabid mutual hatred, resulting in the very chaos that will produce an actual tyrant, someone with a Final Solution to all of our vexing social problems.
Nazism has not become the epitome of evil because Hitler promoted equality of women, universal health care or secular public education. He will forever be equated with evil because of a remorseless hatred that was divorced from reality. Our country has been immune to such excesses because with all of our disagreements about policy, we have preserved a common set of values, along with mutual respect for those whom we disagree with.
It's sad that Kitty Werthmann who lived through the efflorescence of hatred that destroyed her country along with much of the world has learned the wrong lessen, and has made a career of fostering the very distortions that contributed to such a calamity.
My Personal Dailykos story
It began four years ago when my first diary here on a special congressional election in my district was rescued. There were many thoughtful comments, and when I sent the link to the candidate, Francine Busby, she appreciated it, and I felt that I found a home on this site.
I'm now first doing this "retrospective" as I'm doubtful that what I have found here will be continued on the new version of Dailykos that is about to replace this one. I will certainly try, as I have already on the beta edition, but I know who I am, my limitations, my personality. And just as this particular format and the people whom it attracted worked for me as no other one did, V 4.0 is an open question.I'm writing this as a thank you note.... to those who have read my diaries, those who have commented on it, those who have applauded my work, and a special thanks to those who have disagreed with what I have said with courtesy, respect and pointed challenges.
I have to thank the one person who made this all possible, Markos Moulitsas, Kos, who provided this venue and managed to build it (basically by letting the group that he attracted have a free rein) into something worthwhile. I wish he would keep it as it is, but it's his choice and of course I wish him and this community nothing but success.
Only a few weeks ago I got an email from a stranger thanking me for a diary I wrote here a year ago, that I had all but forgotten about. It was an extensively researched piece that was a response to a right wing spokesperson, who does a national speaking tour comparing the policies of President Obama with that of Hitler. Kitty Werthmann: Distorted Memories of Anschluss
It turned out that this diary, that never made a big splash here, was the second Google selection under her name, for those who want to better evaluate what Werthmann says in her recollections. I was sympathetic to her as I carefully explained the many errors that she based her conclusions on. In the process I learned more of that historic event, and how perceptions of it have changed over the time that has passed. If there had not been a Dailykos, there would have been no venue for this essay, and this analysis that provided a dispassionate refutation of her thesis would not have been available to the public.
There is so much more that Dailykos has provided for me personally. Being on this site has empowered me, allowing me to feel that I had a following, as small as it may be, to attempt to affect issues. The serious essays were levened by the occasional satire, like this one that hit a communal funny bone, Buzz off Ykos Attendees. I become somewhat of a correspondent for North Coastal San Diego County, with many diaries written on the Soledad Cross controversy (example here), building on my personal friendship with the deceased originator of the suits to remove a religious symbol from public property.
I prodded the columnist for the regional newspaper, against his instincts to avoid this charged subject where three quarters of residents are for "saving the cross" to write about my position. Just this week I had a letter in "The San Diego Reader"-third down," that made the connection between Constantine the Great and the mentality of the militaristic nationalists of our day.
Fighting the rise of pseudo science is a consistent theme of Dailykos, one that resonates with me. Last summer, I noted that our public library was presenting a talk by a woman who would explain how you could identify criminals by their facial features. With only an hour to get there, I grabbed my camera, and arrived just as she started her speech. By the end of the day, I had written a description of the event, my confrontation of her, and my letter to the director of libraries and it was posted here, Facial Features of Dangerous Criminals
The only reason that I have been effective in these diaries, defending separation of church and state, finding new contradictions in our run up to war, and other consensual progressive causes, is that I also happen to write diaries that are anathema to the vast majority of this group. This means defending at different times, Rush Limbaugh, Joseph Lieberman and even recently Sarah Palin. These diaries were essential for my tenure on this site, as it was my answer, both internalized and expressed, to those who attacked me for my progressive positions. And the very fact that I was accepted here in spite of these diaries was a defense of this site, a refutation that this was, as O'Reilly states, "A hate site." No, we do have hate here, and rage and irrationality, but that does not define us, and I point to my own contrarian diaries as one example among many.
As I look over those 375 diaries, and over 10,000 comments from several thousand different people, I have to have a sense of satisfaction-and appreciation. Sure, the few hostile personal attacks hurt, but that's more a sign of the value that I have gotten from this community, that the harsh comment was seen as posing a danger to my belonging here.
There is a miraculous aspect of this outgrowth of the internet, this "blogisphere" that has become so much a part of our world. It has the power to disrupt entrenched dictatorships, but also to trivialize and divert attention from hard learned verities. It is both public and intimate; as interpersonal connections can cause terrible emotional pain, leading to violence to one's self or others. But it also has the potential to provide comfort and intellectual stimulation, in my case to a person of advancing years and declining mental abilities.
Change happens. I will be there at the grand opening of DK4 with an open mind and energy to try to make it work for me, and for the community.
Let's all keep in touch.
I'm now first doing this "retrospective" as I'm doubtful that what I have found here will be continued on the new version of Dailykos that is about to replace this one. I will certainly try, as I have already on the beta edition, but I know who I am, my limitations, my personality. And just as this particular format and the people whom it attracted worked for me as no other one did, V 4.0 is an open question.I'm writing this as a thank you note.... to those who have read my diaries, those who have commented on it, those who have applauded my work, and a special thanks to those who have disagreed with what I have said with courtesy, respect and pointed challenges.
I have to thank the one person who made this all possible, Markos Moulitsas, Kos, who provided this venue and managed to build it (basically by letting the group that he attracted have a free rein) into something worthwhile. I wish he would keep it as it is, but it's his choice and of course I wish him and this community nothing but success.
Only a few weeks ago I got an email from a stranger thanking me for a diary I wrote here a year ago, that I had all but forgotten about. It was an extensively researched piece that was a response to a right wing spokesperson, who does a national speaking tour comparing the policies of President Obama with that of Hitler. Kitty Werthmann: Distorted Memories of Anschluss
It turned out that this diary, that never made a big splash here, was the second Google selection under her name, for those who want to better evaluate what Werthmann says in her recollections. I was sympathetic to her as I carefully explained the many errors that she based her conclusions on. In the process I learned more of that historic event, and how perceptions of it have changed over the time that has passed. If there had not been a Dailykos, there would have been no venue for this essay, and this analysis that provided a dispassionate refutation of her thesis would not have been available to the public.
There is so much more that Dailykos has provided for me personally. Being on this site has empowered me, allowing me to feel that I had a following, as small as it may be, to attempt to affect issues. The serious essays were levened by the occasional satire, like this one that hit a communal funny bone, Buzz off Ykos Attendees. I become somewhat of a correspondent for North Coastal San Diego County, with many diaries written on the Soledad Cross controversy (example here), building on my personal friendship with the deceased originator of the suits to remove a religious symbol from public property.
I prodded the columnist for the regional newspaper, against his instincts to avoid this charged subject where three quarters of residents are for "saving the cross" to write about my position. Just this week I had a letter in "The San Diego Reader"-third down," that made the connection between Constantine the Great and the mentality of the militaristic nationalists of our day.
Fighting the rise of pseudo science is a consistent theme of Dailykos, one that resonates with me. Last summer, I noted that our public library was presenting a talk by a woman who would explain how you could identify criminals by their facial features. With only an hour to get there, I grabbed my camera, and arrived just as she started her speech. By the end of the day, I had written a description of the event, my confrontation of her, and my letter to the director of libraries and it was posted here, Facial Features of Dangerous Criminals
The only reason that I have been effective in these diaries, defending separation of church and state, finding new contradictions in our run up to war, and other consensual progressive causes, is that I also happen to write diaries that are anathema to the vast majority of this group. This means defending at different times, Rush Limbaugh, Joseph Lieberman and even recently Sarah Palin. These diaries were essential for my tenure on this site, as it was my answer, both internalized and expressed, to those who attacked me for my progressive positions. And the very fact that I was accepted here in spite of these diaries was a defense of this site, a refutation that this was, as O'Reilly states, "A hate site." No, we do have hate here, and rage and irrationality, but that does not define us, and I point to my own contrarian diaries as one example among many.
As I look over those 375 diaries, and over 10,000 comments from several thousand different people, I have to have a sense of satisfaction-and appreciation. Sure, the few hostile personal attacks hurt, but that's more a sign of the value that I have gotten from this community, that the harsh comment was seen as posing a danger to my belonging here.
There is a miraculous aspect of this outgrowth of the internet, this "blogisphere" that has become so much a part of our world. It has the power to disrupt entrenched dictatorships, but also to trivialize and divert attention from hard learned verities. It is both public and intimate; as interpersonal connections can cause terrible emotional pain, leading to violence to one's self or others. But it also has the potential to provide comfort and intellectual stimulation, in my case to a person of advancing years and declining mental abilities.
Change happens. I will be there at the grand opening of DK4 with an open mind and energy to try to make it work for me, and for the community.
Let's all keep in touch.
Classic Dailykos FAQ
DailyKos FAQ
From dKosopedia
Quick links- Where can I find out information about DK4? See DK4 FAQ
- What are Tags and how do I create good ones? See Tag Guidelines
- How do I put text in a nifty grey box? See Block Quoting
- I'm having trouble reading and/or posting comments! See Comment problems
- How do I make text bold or italic? See Auto Format
- How do I include a picture? See Pictures and images
- How do I find my user ID number? See UID numbers
- Why are the times on all my comments off by an hour? See Time Zones
- Why did my 'First!' comment disappear? See First comments
- What's a Tip Jar? See Tip Jars
- Why are people yelling at me for posting a link to my diary? See Diary Pimping
- I like the previous version of the FAQ better; where is it? See DailyKos FAQ 1
[edit] Introduction
This FAQ file is intended as an introduction to the daily kos website and community. It includes an overview of the site, a guide to reading and posting diaries and comments, and answers to some frequently asked questions.[edit] What is Daily Kos?
[edit] Who is kos?
"kos" is the US-Army/screen nickname of the founder of Daily Kos, Markos Alberto Moulitsas Zúniga. (See also the in-progress dkospedia entry Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, and the Wikipedia pages Kos and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga.)[edit] What is the purpose of this site?
(Condensed from this diary written by kos in late 2004)This is a Democratic blog, a partisan blog. One that recognizes that Democrats run from left to right on the ideological spectrum, and yet we're all still in this fight together. We happily embrace centrists like NDN's Simon Rosenberg and Howard Dean, conservatives like Martin Frost and Brad Carson, and liberals like John Kerry and Barack Obama. Liberal? Yeah, we're around here and we're proud. But it's not a liberal blog. It's a Democratic blog with one goal in mind: electoral victory. And since we haven't gotten any of that from the current crew, we're one more thing: a reform blog. The battle for the party is not an ideological battle. It's one between establishment and anti-establishment factions. And as I've said a million times, the status quo is untenable.The site has grown in the years since that diary. In a comment made in kos's town hall diary in early 2010, he noted:
Daily Kos will be what Daily Kos is, and that oftentimes evolves. I know everyone wants their clearly defined rules, but nothing is that simple.
This site is CERTAINLY NOT for all Democrats. Joe Lieberman learned that. Blanche Lincoln is about to learn it.
This site is about more and better Democrats, not necessarily in that order.
[edit] Who speaks for this site?
(from Who "represents" Daily Kos? by kos, Tue Dec 12, 2006 at 09:35:47 AM PST)... here's a quick rundown on who can "represent" Daily Kos. First of all, no one speaks for Daily Kos other than me. Period. Those who could be said to "represent" the site are the following Contributing Editors:Jeremy's user name is 'ct'.On tech matters, Jeremy also "represents" the site. That's it. Update: Actually, that's not it. One more: Adam B. represents the site in regulatory and legal matters, and is also an occasional contributor on such issues.
- BarbinMD
- Darksyde
- DavidNYC
- DeminCT
- Devilstower
- DHinMI
- Hunter (fellow)
- Georgia10
- KagroX
- Mcjoan (fellow)
- Meteor Blades
- MissLaura
- Plutonium Page
- SusanG (fellow)
- Trapper John
[edit] Current Masthead (1/15/11)
MASTHEADPublisher/FounderExecutive Editor
- Markos Moulitsas Zúniga
Associate Editor
- Susan Gardner (formerly SusanG)
Senior Policy Editor
- Barbara Morrill (formerly BarbinMD)
Director of Community
- Joan McCarter (formerly mcjoan)
Contributing Editors
- Meteor Blades (Timothy Lange)
General Manager
- Arjun Jaikumar (formerly brownsox)
- DarkSyde
- DavidNYC
- David Waldman (formerly Kagro X)
- DemFromCT (Greg Dworkin)
- Georgia Logothetis aka georgia10
- Hunter (Michael Lazzaro)
- Jake McIntyre (formerly Trapper John)
- Jed Lewison (formerly Jed L)
- Kaili Joy Gray (formerly Angry Mouse)
- Laura Clawson (formerly MissLaura)
- Mark Sumner (formerly Devilstower)
- Scout Finch (Jennifer Bruenjes)
- Steve Singiser
Lead Developer
- Will Rockafellow (formerly wilburtronic)
Featured Writers
- Jeremy Bingham (username ct)
- Adam B (Adam Bonin)
- Bill in Portland Maine (Bill Harnsberger)
- brooklynbadboy
- Dante Atkins (formerly hekebolos)
- exmearden (Kris Froland, RIP)
- Laurence Lewis (formerly Turkana)
As noted above, Adam B speaks for the site in legal matters. These people, with the exception of Will and Jeremy, are referred to collectively as Front Pagers because they can post directly to the left hand side of the Daily Kos main (front) page. You can contact them by using the Contact Us button.
Arjun Jaikumar and Georgia Logothetis aka georgia10 are both still listed as being "currently on leave," but both resumed posting to the front page in early January 2011.
On August 16, 2010, Markos announced that Chris Bowers had been hired to manage the new Daily Kos email list; though Chris has been posting to the front page in that role and on other topics, he does not yet appear on the masthead.
Note: Edits have been made here to correct screen names which are sometimes typoed in the actual masthead, and to update to current screen names if a switch has been made (or is being made) from the original username to actual name.
[edit] Who posts here?
The quick answer is "anyone who wants to". There are a wide variety of people writing diaries and comments on dkos. They include elected politicians, candidates hoping to become elected politicians, experts in a range of fields, and active bloggers from around the net. The vast majority of writers, however, are ordinary citizens interested in talking about and participating in the political process. The majority of people posting here fall on the liberal side of the US political spectrum, however people of conservative views are welcome to come and debate. If you are polite, you will be treated politely. Unfortunately, there are some people who post comments or diaries with the sole purpose of provoking others. These people are called trolls. Some tips and techniques for dealing with trolls are described below.[edit] Is that post really from Somebody Famous?
Fairly often, there are diaries that claim to be authored by Senators, Representatives, and other people in the news. The site administrators make every effort to ensure that posts claiming to come from a Senator really do originate from that Senator rather than a prankster or dirty trickster. To date, there are no known cases of anybody impersonating a Representative or other noteworthy person. However, it is better to be safe than sorry; if in doubt, ask, especially if the person is a candidate looking for funds. In addition, it should be noted that diaries that are listed as being by a particular elected official are sometimes written by someone on the staff, rather than by the official themselves.[edit] Anonymity
Many people chose to post to Daily Kos under pseudonyms, keeping their real names confidential. There are many reasons why people would choose not to reveal their real names. Revealing the identify of someone who has chosen to remain anonymous is a bannable offense. It is also a morally reprehensible thing to do.[edit] UID numbers
Often, people refer to UID, or User ID, numbers. Every registered user has an ID number; these are assigned sequentially in order of registration. To find a UID, either yours or someone else's, find a comment written by that author. At the bottom of the comment, there are two links, one with the name of the author and the other with the date and time of the comment. The one with the author name contains the UID. For example, a comment by kos will have a link that looks like http://www.dailykos.com/user/uid:3, indicating that kos has UID 3. Note that the UID appears in the address bar at the top of your browser, not on the web page itself (it will look something like: http://www.dailykos.com/user/uid:1234567). At the time this was last edited, there were over 220,000 registered IDs.[edit] How can I post here?
First, you need to create an account. The registration link is in the menu of links, or you can click here. Choose a username, fill in the rest of the fields, and send in the form. After a 24 hour waiting period, you will be allowed to post comments. After a 1 week waiting period, you will be allowed to post diaries. These waiting periods are intended to discourage "drive-by" trolling.[edit] Parts of Daily Kos
This section of the FAQ gives an overview of the different components of the dkos environment. More detailed information on these components is given in the next section on Contributing to Daily Kos.[edit] The front page
The first thing that you see when loading Daily Kos is the front page. Most of the stories on the front page are written either by kos or by a set of contributing editors and featured writers designated by kos as front page posters. At the present time, twenty people in addition to kos are authorized to post to the front page, and another two are currently on leave. Daily Kos formally became a group blog on March 9, 2007.[edit] Diaries
Most of the action takes place inside of diaries. These are written by users, and then read and commented on by other users. Diaries can be found in three places. Most diaries appear in the Recent Diary list on the right-hand side of the screen. By default, this shows the last 20 diaries that have been posted; this can be reset as high as 50 diaries using the field at the bottom of the list. People reading diaries can recommend them (see below). If a diary receives enough recommendations, it will automatically be promoted to the Recommended Diary list, which sits above the Recent Diary list. Recommended diaries tend to attract a wider audience and more comments than most diaries. The length of time that a diary spends on the Recommended list depends on how many users recommend it; it can vary from a few minutes to more than one full day. Diaries moving to the Recommended list is a democratic process; the diaries on the list are the ones that received the most "votes" to be there. For more detail on this process, see this diary. The third, and most prominent, place to find diaries is the front page of the site. These are the articles that are seen when going to www.dailykos.com. Front-page stories have two sources. First are diary entries written by kos, or by one of the twenty-odd contributing editors and featured writers that make up the Daily Kos group blog, and are posted directly to the front page. kos and the other front-pagers often promote interesting diaries from the Recent list to the front page. These promotions are at the discretion of the front-pagers, unlike the voting process which governs promotion to the Recommended list.[edit] Comments
Inside diaries and front page posts, users can post comments. Generally, these comments are in response to something in the diary, or are responding to other comments. Next to the title of each comment are two numbers inside a set of parentheses. These numbers are the number of people who have recommended and hide-rated the comment respectively (see #Rating_comments).Comments can be shown in expanded form (showing subject, author and text) or shrunken form (just the subject and author); clicking the small triangle to the left of the subject line toggles between the two forms. An useful shortcut is the ability to expand or shrink an entire subthread at once. Simply hold down the control key (on Windows/Linux, or the Command key on Mac) while you click on a triangle. The comment and all its replies will be expanded or shrunk. In between the diary text and the comments, there are a set of buttons which will Expand, Shrink, or Hide (completely hide) all of the comments in the diary. If you select the 'Always' checkbox after clicking one of these buttons, your user preferences will be set to default to that comment display type.
With AutoRefresh selected, the comments list periodically refreshes (without having to manually hit the 'Reload' button). When new comments come in, a little panel slides up in the lower right-hand corner offering links that scroll to view them. Comments that are marked as 'new replies' are replies to comments that you have made; all other comments are marked 'new comments'
[edit] User Pages
Every user has a User Page. There is a link to this page in the menu sidebar. The User Page contains a collection of links gathering all of the diaries and all of the comments written by that user. The 'My Profile' tab on that page is the place to change all of your preferences. The User Page is also where you can edit your blogroll. To do this, go to the 'Blogroll' tab of your user page, and fill in URLs and titles for the sites which you wish to add to your roll. These sites will then appear on your user page and in all of your diaries.From the User Page, you can also add a signature, a short bit of text which will be automatically appended to all of your comments. This can be set by going to the 'My Profile' tab and clicking on the 'Account Info' link. The signature field takes HTML code, so if you wish, you can embed links. It is not a good idea to put images in your signature; besides the visual clutter, it's very unfriendly to people on slow net connections
[edit] Hotlist
The hotlist, found under the Tools sidebar, is a place to store links to diaries that you want to refer back to. Next to the title of every diary is a
; clicking this icon will add that diary to your hotlist for future reference. Clicking the 'Subscribe' link next to a diary author's name will automatically add future diaries by that author to your hotlist. Once you have subscribed to a diary or diarist, the icon will change to a 
. Click this to remove the story from your hotlist. Comments that are replies to any of your comments are automatically added to your hotlist. [edit] Search
(note: this is a very brief overview of the Daily Kos search engine. For more detailed instructions, see the search help).There is a vast amount of information and writing contained in Daily Kos. One tool which is useful for finding specific pieces is the Search function. To use the search function, go to the page, type in the search term or terms, and hit the 'Search' button. A Search can be restricted to look only within certain categories of text, including authors, tags, links, and images. See the search help for a complete list and examples.
The type of search performed depends on the setting of the 'Find' pulldown menu. By default, it is set to Stories; these are front-page articles. Setting it to Diaries will return results from user diaries; Stories and Diaries will return hits from both sources. Setting the 'Find' menu to Authors will return links to the user pages of the writer you are looking for. The 'Diaries By' and 'Comments By' options use the previous version of the search engine which only supports author searches and only returns date-sorted results.
The results can be sorted by several criteria. Relevance, the default, is based on such things as where the search terms occur (near the beginning is best, in the title even better). Comments, Recommendations, and Impact result in lists sorted numerically, with highest values at the top of the list. Impact is a measure that combines the number of comments and the number of recommends into a single value. The other pull-down menus allow you to restrict the date range for the search and change how many results appear per page.
Important note: If you use the 'Diaries By' or 'Comments By' settings in the Find menu, the sorting is strictly by date. If the 'Search Archive' checkbox is not selected, the search is over the last 30 days and if the checkbox is selected, the search is over everything older than 30 days. The 'Search Archive' checkbox has no effect for other search types.
[edit] Tag Cloud
All diaries posted to dkos are tagged. Tags are keywords that the diary author and/or readers add to identify the subject(s) of the diary. This allows people to easily find all of the diaries that deal with a specific subject. The complete list of tags is called the Tag Cloud. By default, it is sorted by number of diaries that use each tag, but this can be changed to alphabetical sorting in the Interfaces section of the 'My Profile' portion of the User Page. Trusted Users (TU) can edit the tags in any diary and that is a community job as important as hiding inappropriate comments. A list of the most used and approved tags can be found on the List of approved tags page. Tags should be added according to the Tag Guidelines below. See also: Tag Editors Workspace and DailyKos Tag Cleanup Project.[edit] dKosopedia
The dKosopedia is a wiki (an easily editable collaborative website) associated with the Daily Kos site.Unlike Daily Kos, where new articles effectively displace old ones within the current focus, the dKosopedia functions like an encyclopedia. Once added, pages remain where they are (unless they are moved). Thus, the emphasis is on building a reference work rather than attracting immediate attention to an individual piece of news.
Anyone can register at dKosopedia and add/edit articles. Note that registration at dKosopedia is separate from registration at Daily Kos, though most people register using the same user name.
Daily Kos has a simple syntax for linking to dKosopedia pages within a diary or comment: place the name of the dKosopedia page in double square brackets. Thus, for instance, if you write "[[Voting Rights]]" (no quotes) within a comment to a Daily Kos diary, you'll insert a link to the Voting Rights page.
For navigating in the reverse direction, there is a template that will allow you to insert a box on a dKosopedia page that points to the most recent and the most highly recommended diaries with a given tag. See the Voting Rights page for an example.
[edit] Advertising
On the right side of the page, there is a column of advertisements. The cost of maintaining a large internet site such as dkos is signficant; the great majority of this cost is covered by the sale of advertisements. Advertisements can be turned off by purchasing a subscription; subscribing currently costs $4/month, $40/year, or $100 for a lifetime subscription.[edit] Advertising policy
The site's ad policy is mapped out by kos himself in the following piece:http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/11/14/121448/33
Advertising guidelines
by kos
Tue Nov 14, 2006 at 12:14:48 PM EDT
There was some pre-election controversy over my running a Chevron ad. (It may still be running, for all I know.) I avoided talking about it then to prevent an ill-timed pie war. But given the increased interest in advertising on the site by interests that may sometimes not be aligned with the goals of the site, I had to figure out an official ad policy. And I found it over at The Nation:Although the relationship of the First Amendment to commercial advertising is complex, we start with strong presumption against banning advertisers because we disapprove of, or even abhor, their political or social views. But we reserve (and exercise) the right to attack them in our editorial columns. The Nation does not consider itself bound by standards that must be applied to just any public forum. Our pages are primarily given over to articles that are consistent with the views of the editors. While we also publish articles and letters from readers that diverge from, or even diametrically contradict, the views of the editors, this is not out of a sense that our pages should be open to all or because we believe we are obliged to achieve balance. Whatever we publish appears in the magazine because in our judgment the views expressed deserve to be called to the attention of our readers by us. We are a magazine of limited circulation that enjoys no monopoly on the attention of our readers. They obtain other views in other places, and, through that process, determine for themselves what views to accept or reject. Advertising is different. We accept it not to further the views of The Nation but to help pay the costs of publishing. We start, therefore, with the presumption that we will accept advertising even if the views expressed are repugnant to those of the editors. The only limits are those that grow out of our interest in assuring that the advertising does not impede our use of the editorial columns of The Nation to say what we want [...] In imposing such limits, we will refrain from making judgments based on our opinions of the particular views expressed in an advertisement. If the purpose of the advertisement is to sell a product or service rather than to express a view, we will allow ourselves greater rein in making judgments about suitability. This reflects our view that commerce is less sacrosanct than political speech [...] Clearly, the whole question is a matter of drawing fine lines and making nice distinctions. Ethics and practicality are interwoven throughout the substance of the issue of how to enable journals of opinion to survive and expand their reach. We do not pretend that troublesome problems are absent from this question.
Running an ad doesn't imply endorsement. But, if I start rejecting ads, THEN every ad that DOES run has an implied endorsement.
And you guys aren't idiots. The advertising purity trolls seem to think that site readers are moron automatons easily manipulated by advertising. I have a higher opinion of you guys. I actually think you're quite intelligent and capable of independent evaluation of the advertising you consume here and elsewhere.
Finally, I'm not afraid of money, and I'm putting it to good use -- the abandonment of Scoop and a massive ground-up redevelopment of Daily Kos to be the ultimate blogging platform in the world, and the establishment of a corps of "fellows" to do great activism.
More details on those projects will emerge in December, but bottom line is that I won't cry if Chevron or anyone else wants to help fund the rise of a professional netroots activist class.
The Nation's guidelines are fair all around and so I'm stealing them for myself.
[edit] IRC Channel
For those of you who just can't get enough Kos from diaries and comments, DailyKos has a little used IRC channel on EFnet, #dailykos. For more info on how to get to IRC, [1].[edit] Contributing to Daily Kos
[edit] Registration and posting privileges
To do anything beyond simply reading diaries and comments, it is necessary to become a registered user, as described above. When you first register, there is a one day waiting period, after which you can write comments. After one week, you can write diaries, recommend other people's diaries, and rate comments. Posting and other activities are privileges granted by kos, who owns this site. Sufficiently obnoxious behavior, at his discretion, can result in banning.Deleting Accounts
Accounts are forever, or at least as long as DailyKos remains in existence. Don't ask to have your account deleted. Especially, don't publicly demand that your account be deleted, as this is virtually certain to lead to large amounts of mockery. See GBCW.
[edit] Writing comments
Once you've been registered for at least 24 hours, you can post comments inside diaries and front page stories. To post a comment to the diary or story itself, click on the 'Post a Comment' link immediately beneath the diary or story text or at the very bottom of the page. To post a comment that replies to a comment, click the 'Reply To This' link underneath the comment text. Either way, a Comment window will open up in the middle of the page. Choose a Subject (a title for your comment), and write what you want. The buttons beneath the comment window give some common formatting shortcuts. Once you've written your comment, click the Preview button. If the preview looks OK, click the Post button; otherwise, edit your text and Preview again.The first thing to remember when writing a comment is that it is going to be read by other people. Personal attacks are strongly discouraged. If you disagree with what someone is saying, express your disagreement, but don't go directly after the other person. Because tone of voice and facial expressions are lost in online discussions, it's easy for something to be taken the wrong way. Flame wars do nobody any good.
[edit] First comments
On many sites, such as Atrios, it is a tradition for the first commenter on a new thread to post a message of 'First' or similar. That tradition is not followed on dkos. Posting a 'First' message here is likely to get your comment hidden (see Rating Comments below) and/or yelled at.[edit] Diary pimping
People sometimes post comments urging people to read some other diary. This practice is known as "diary pimping". It is a legitimate thing to do under two circumstances. Firstly, when the subjects of the two diaries are closely related. Secondly, pimping is accepted in open threads, generic storyless diaries posted to the front page at regular intervals. Pimping in random diaries (or, especially, diaries on the Recommended list) will likely result in the comments being hidden.[edit] No Text (NT, n/t) and End of Message (EOM)
You'll often see comments whose titles end in the acronyms "NT" (also "n/t") or "EOM." NT stands for no text, while EOM stands for end of message. These acronyms indicate that the commenter's message is short enough to be contained entirely within the comment's subject line, and let you know there's no point in expanding the comment to read the body of the message.[edit] Writing diaries
Writing a diary is, in principle, quite simple. Click the 'New Diary Entry' link in the Tools sidebar, pick a title, write some text, choose a tag or two, and hit 'Publish'. Well, OK, maybe there's a bit more to it than that. For starters, The Rules, as posted by kos on Jan 3, 2006:Diary guidelinesThese rules are mostly common sense and courtesy. There are a lot of diaries posted here; keeping up is like trying to drink from a firehose. Adhering to these rules helps cut down on duplicate and low-content diaries, and makes everyone's life easier. Please follow The Rules.
- All users are limited by the system to one diary per calendar day.
- New users cannot post diaries for one week after an account has been created.
- "Intro" box for new diaries has a three paragraph limit. If you exceed that limit, use the "Extended Body" box for the remainder of your diary.
- Diaries should be substantive. A good guideline is that if you don't have at least three solid paragraphs to write about your subject, you should probably post a comment in an open thread, or in a recent diary or front-page post that covers a topic relevant to what you wish to write about.
- Copying and pasting complete copyrighted articles without permission from the copyright holder is absolutely prohibited by both this site's policies and copyright laws. Copyright infringement can expose both you and the site's owners to financial liability. Just don't do it. And if you see someone else doing it, please politely ask them to edit their diary accordingly. This is a bannable offense.
- Limited copying within the bounds of the doctrine of "fair use" is permitted. A reasonable rule-of-thumb is that copying three paragraphs from a normal-length news article or editorial is acceptable. (This, however, is not a safe-harbor. If even three paragraphs seems like "too much," then copy less or nothing at all.) For more on fair use, please visit this site.
- When you quote material that is not your own, please provide a link whenever possible. Also, use the blockquote tags to set off the copied material so that your writing is distinct from the material you are copying. For more on HTML tags, see the #Formatting section.
- Hotlinking images without permission is prohibited. Hotlinking means using the [img src] tag to display an image on a diary which is hosted on someone else's server. Hotlinking, especially on a site as popular as this one, can cost people real money in bandwidth costs. It's essentially stealing. If we get complaints from sites about images being hotlisted, we will consider that as possible grounds for banning.
- Duplicative diaries are prohibited. Please scan the recent diaries and front-page posts before starting to compose your own diary. This rule operates on a sliding scale. A repeat diary with minimal analysis or originality (particularly on "breaking news" items) is prohibited. Such diaries are subject to deletion without notice. But if you write on a recently-covered subject and provide original analysis or research, that is acceptable and in fact welcome.
- If you receive a reasonable request from a fellow Kossack to delete your diary (i.e., your diary is duplicative as per above), please do so.
- Cross-posting from your own blog is welcome. Remember, though, that you can only write one diary a day at Daily Kos.
- Diarists are strongly encouraged to back up all assertions with facts (and preferably links to supporting materials) whenever possible. Use reputable sources whenever possible. If you can't find a reputable source that supports your position, then perhaps reconsider writing your diary.
- As a corollary, diarists should always make it clear when they are expressing an opinion - please do not assert opinions as facts, as this tends to be needlessly inflammatory.
- Diaries which engage in wild speculation without any proof are strongly discouraged. Repeatedly posting diaries consisting largely or entirely of wild speculation is an abuse of site policy. Bear in mind that that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
- Diaries which contain hateful or defamatory writing are prohibited.
- Diaries which are deliberately designed to inflame are prohibited.
- Deliberately inflammatory titles, or titles which contain attacks, are prohibited. Also, while this site doesn't prohibit profanity, please think very carefully before using any curse words in a diary title.
- "Calling out" other site users by name in diary titles is prohibited. Diaries which "call out" another by name tend to needlessly inflame. If you feel compelled to address another user's comments or diaries in a diary of your own, please do so cautiously. Avoid ad hominems and stick with substantive, constructive criticism only.
- Some topics which tend to make for poor diaries: Breaking news. Something you just saw on a TV show. Something currently on the front page of a major news site (eg, New York Times). Something currently on the front page of a major blog (eg, Atrios).
- What makes for a good diary: Anything which showcases original research or original analysis. Political calls to action with substantive information on how to get involved. News (plus analysis) on interesting/relevant topics that are not widely discussed.
- Diaries on contested Democratic primaries: Be positive. Make an affirmative case for your favored candidate. If you do criticize a Democratic candidate, don't make ad hominem attacks - stick to substantive criticisms, and back them up with hard evidence. Be very cautious if you go after a fellow Democrat. Odds are, that candidate will have supporters on this site. Reasonable people will accept reasonable criticism - unfair criticism will only needlessly inflame. And remember, deliberately inflammatory diaries are prohibited.
- "Open Thread" diaries: Diaries designed to serve as "open threads" for discussion on major, breaking events (such as a speech or hearing) are permissible. Please provide links to information about the events (such as news articles or webcasts) in such diaries. Do not post duplicate diary open threads unless an earlier open thread exceeds 150 comments.
- When writing a diary on a political race, prefixing the title is always helpful. For example: FL-Gov (Florida governor's race), NY-Sen (New York senate race), CA-25 (California's 25th congressional district race).
- Do not use ALL CAPS or exclamation marks !!! in diary titles.
- Do not put "Please Recommend" or similar language in diary titles.
- Please read an entire diary before hitting "Recommend." Recommending based on just the first few paragraphs or the author's name is strongly discouraged.
[edit] Diary drafts
New diaries exist first as drafts. When you click the 'New diary' link, a draft is automatically created. Once you have a draft, you can fill in the content you want. A draft stays around for 3 weeks after being created; during that time, the author can make changes, add text, and so forth. A list of all drafts that an author has is listed on the right side of the dkos hompage. Drafts are only visible to the diary's author. Once the author publishes the draft (hit the 'Preview' button, check the preview for any mistakes, and then hit 'Publish'), the diary becomes visible to other people to read and comment on.A diary can include a poll. To create a poll, fill in the fields at the bottom of the New Diary screen. You need to specify a question, and at least 2 answers.
[edit] Diary titles
When choosing a title, please avoid the following:- Profanity in titles is disallowed. The use of asterisks is acceptable. Profanity in the title of a diary will be changed by an admin to contain asterisks (e.g., "Fuck" => "F**k"). Profanity in the text of diaries, and in comments, is OK; just keep the curse words out of the diary titles.
- "Calling out" other users. This consists of referring to another user, by name, in the title of a diary with a negative connotation. So, diary titles of the form "UserX is a moron" are not allowed. More neutral titles like "A response to UserX" isn't technically "calling out", but many people will interpret it as such. The best strategy is simply not to mention other users in diary titles at all.
- "BREAKING". If some piece of breaking news happens, feel free to write about it, but putting 'BREAKING' in the title won't make you any friends. Just use the news headline itself for the title.
- ALL CAPS. STOP SHOUTING
- 'Please Recommend'. Chances are, people won't.
[edit] Editing diaries
After a diary has been posted, its text can be edited. To edit a diary, click on the 'Edit diary' link just underneath the title. The page that appears is similar to the New Diary screen, except that the existing text of the diary has already been filled in. Make the desired edits, click Preview to check that everything is displaying correctly, and then click the 'Publish' button to change the text.Updates can be timestamped by placing [UPDATE] (including the square brackets) in the diary; when the story is saved, this will be replaced with the date/time of the update and the user ID of the updater (almost always the diary author).
If the edit consists of removing text, it is preferable to use strike-out (use the
[edit] Diary deletion
There are some times when you will want to delete a diary. To do so, click on the 'Edit Diary' link next to the diary title. Down at the bottom of the edit screen, there is a 'Delete Diary' button. When you click this, a dialog box will pop up asking you to type in some text and then click OK. This is to cut down on people accidentally deleting diaries by clicking the wrong button.When should diaries be deleted? If there are two (or more) near-identical diaries on the same subject, people will request that all but one be deleted. This often happens when a news story breaks, and several diaries are posted consisting of a link to the story and a few quotes from the AP wire. Please consider deletion if your diary isn't the first diary to break the news. Front-page posters will sometimes delete diaries if there are too many covering exactly the same content. Additionally, sometimes diary authors just have second thoughts about posting a particular diary. Don't delete a diary just because a discussion in the comments has gone off in some direction you don't like.
Please delete your tags before you delete your diary. If you cannot delete them for some reason, replace your tags with the "deleted diary" tag.
Note that when diaries are deleted, the associated comments (if any) are not deleted. A search, or a user's comment history, will still be able to access any such comments.
A deleted diary nevertheless counts toward your "one diary per calendar day" limitation—once you published the diary, it used up your diary for that day. You will not be able to post another diary until after midnight eastern time.
[edit] Some Rules Regarding Participation in Diaries and Comment Threads
- Do not make threats or calls for violence. Threatening to beat up or kill someone, or suggesting that people should kill themselves, or saying that poison should be put in somebody's crème brûlée, or making similar remarks, even as a joke, is prohibited and can lead to banning. This does not mean that all forms of cartoon violence, literary references, metaphors and the like are barred.
Admin Moderation: A single warning. Second offense: Banning.
- Revealing the real identity or other personal information of a registered user who has not him- or herself made that identity known at Daily Kos or otherwise given permission for such information to be publicly revealed will result in summary banning. Among other things, such revelations include, but are not limited to, phone numbers, addresses, including email addresses not publicly available at Daily Kos, places of employment or clients, gender, sexual orientation, and the identities of other family members. Asking hostile outing questions such as: Do you work at such and such a place? when research has shown this to be true or likely to be true is a form of outing and will be dealt with as such.
Admin Moderation: Summary banning.
- Registered users working in paid (or unpaid positions of authority) for political campaigns must disclose their affiliation when it is relevant to the conversation.
Admin Moderation: Warning, suspension, banning and, in an exception to the outing rule, exposure of the paid person's real name.
- Registered users who write GBCW diaries – saying they are leaving and never coming back – will be banned after their diary's 24-hour recommendation period has expired. A user who changes their mind may return to Daily Kos under their pre-ban moniker and user identification number only after appealing for reinstatement to the Director of Community or Markos. Users who write diaries saying they are taking a temporary hiatus from posting at Daily Kos are not banned.
- This is a site for adults and language is not generally policed here, in terms of "shit," "fuck," "asshole," or any of those other family-unfriendly words. Avoid "fuck" in headlines to avoid triggering browser filters of users who log on at their workplace. Anti-semitic, anti-Arab, racist, sexist, ableist and heterosexist language, however, is unwelcome.
Admin Moderation: Warning, suspension, banning.
- Thread stalking is defined as having three requirements:
- On multiple occasions, one or more commenters follow a community member into diary threads; and,
- The commenter(s) posts comments that include false information, personal attacks, lies, or implied/express disclosure of private information; and
- The commenter(s) engages in this conduct with the intent to harass, harm, humiliate, frighten or intimidate another poster. This intent may be inferred from the number of times that the commenter follows a community member into threads and/or the nature of the comments posted.
- Stalking does not include the mere expression of disagreement, seeking out diaries or comments of favorite diarists or simply frequent interaction on the boards.
- Accusations of stalking should not be made on comment threads but emailed to Meteor Blades or another administrator together with relevant links to evidence that comports with the requirements cited above. Repeated accusations of stalking in the comment threads will lead to a suspension of posting privileges. Admin Moderation: Warning, suspension, banning.
[edit] Dealing with trolls
Trolling is a sad reality of internet life. Most trolls tend to be blatant, posting comments or diaries that are clearly intended to provoke an angry response. Other trollish messages are posted simply to disrupt the conversation in a diary. But some people like to label others trolls who aren't. This is typically done to stifle someone's point of view or to deflect attention away from a real troll. Such promiscuous use of the term muddies discussions and is just another form of name-calling that reduces productive interaction on the site. Be judicious in calling someone a troll or in treating someone as such.Directly responding to an argument a troll makes is a waste of time; trolls tend not to be interested in actual debate. The community relies on a number of other methods to keep the community as troll-free as possible.
Primary among these methods is hide-rating comments. Trusted Users can give comments a rating of Hide. If a comment has been hide-rated by two users and recommended by none, then that comment (and all replies to it) are automatically hidden. If a comment has been recommended at least once, then Hides must be applied to the ratio of 3x+1 (where x is the number of recommends) in order to hide that comment (again, all replies to the comment will also be hidden). Hidden comments and their responses can only be seen by Trusted Users.
There is no mechanism for hiding trollish diaries. The most common alternative is to post a comment to the troll diary containing a recipe for a tasty dish. (This alternative can be used in replies to troll comments also.) Plenty of examples can be found in the Troll Diary tag (note: Most of those examples will probably be old, as the use of the "Troll Diary" tag is currently discouraged). An entire cookbook of recipes has been collected and is being sold as a fundraiser.
Another alternative for trollish diaries is to post completely blank comments, or comments with a single letter or symbol, as a way of filling up the diary without actually rising to the bait of the troll.
[edit] Appropriate use of Hide ratings
An excellent discussion of when a hide-rate is appropriate, and some of the common types of trolls, can be found in the troll rating article, originally from this diary. Reading this article is highly recommended before issuing any Hides. Also read: An Exegesis for Troll Ratings posted by Hunter Tue Jan 01, 2008. (note that Hide ratings used to be called Troll ratings, and are referred to by the earlier name in these references)Some posters create accounts at dkos strictly for the purpose of causing disruption. It is considered acceptable to hide all of the posts made by such people, even the ones that are not in and of themselves trollish. It should be emphasized, however, that this should not be done lightly. Before rating comments en masse, you should be very very sure that the author is really a troll, and not just a regular poster who is having a bad day. If there is any shadow of a doubt as to whether a person is a dedicated troll, you should refrain from mass-hiding their comments. To reiterate, this "hide on sight" approach should be used cautiously and rarely.
Any and all insults are HRable. Although users are never required to uprate any comment, it is considered a violation of site policy to uprate a comment with an insult in it.
To prevent abuse of the Hide button, as of June 2, 2006, Trusted Users are limited in the number of hides they can give out each day. Currently, the limit is five per day.
An Exegesis for Troll Ratings by Hunter Tue Jan 01, 2008 at 04:09:14 PM PDT
To Troll Rate something has exactly one meaning. When you Troll Rate something, as a trusted user, you are stating that the comment should be made invisible to all site users. You're saying that the comment is so bad -- so disruptive or damaging to the community -- that it isn't worth even a debate, but should be deleted from the discussion as being simply inflammatory, simply off-topic, or simply a lie. Remember that, because that is the only use of the troll rating. It is an editorial vote to delete a comment from the conversation. Conversely, there is one particular reason troll ratings should never be used: to express disagreement with a poster's opinion.
...
- Do not troll rate people for expressing a contrary opinion, so long as it is expressed in a civilized fashion. The exceptions are for conservative talking points or debunked or false information; this isn't a site for conservatives, they have entire swaths of the internet in which they can regale each other with their reality-impaired fantasies.
- Do not troll rate someone you are actively having a fight with. If you are in a heated argument with someone, you should not be judging whether or not what they say is trollworthy. Leave it to others to decide what behavior is or isn't over the line.
- Do not give positive ratings to people having fights in the comment threads. It is insulting to a diarist to hijack a portion of their comment threads in order to have a fistfight between two or three users. It is insulting to the rest of the community to have to scroll past a fight dozens of comments long in order to get back to the topic at hand. If the fight is off topic or otherwise egregious, it should be trollrated in order to remove it from the thread, but there are almost no circumstances in which users should be rewarded for having a fight. Behavior like that isn't worth positive mojo -- don't do it.
- The exception to the normal troll rating golden rule of "rate the comment, not who makes it" is for people so disruptive to the community that they need to be quickly autobanned. This is a very difficult threshold to reach, and is reserved almost entirely for freepers or other trolls here only to disrupt. "Troll rate on sight" is not intended to be used against anyone but the most obvious and egregious of trolls -- if your definition of obvious and egregious is not the definition used by the rest of the community or by the site administrators, expect your rating ability to be suspended.
- Troll rate a trollworthy comment, regardless of who makes it. Everyone has bad judgment from time to time. Everyone can have a bad day. Even if the person who made the offensive or inflammatory comment is someone you know and respect, you still owe it to the diarist and the community to remove the comment. You can make it up to them later.
- Do note give retaliatory troll ratings. If you get what you believe to be an undeserved troll rating, do not retaliate. Leave it to others to decide if the rating was abusive. It is begrudging community practice to respond to an undeserved troll rating by troll rating the ratings abuser, thus reducing their own level of "trustedness" and making them less able to abuse ratings in the future. But don't do it unless you are absolutely positive the original rating was abusive -- and I mean 100% positive. And never do it if you're the one that got troll rated. I repeat: do not troll rate fights that you yourself are in.
- On the other hand, one troll rating does not matter. If you get troll rated by one person, know that you will continue to walk this earth. It's not the end of the world. Unless a second person rates the same comment (either with a recommend, or another troll rating), it doesn't even count. There's no point in complaining to the admins -- they already see every troll rating on the site, and do not usually yank ratings abilities based on one troll rating, or even one thread's worth of troll ratings. It's larger patterns that are more likely to require intervention.
- There isn't actually any site rule that says you can't quote hidden comments in order to make a point. You should still think carefully about doing it -- after all, they were hidden because we believe that they are so unrepresentative of the community as to be unworthy of display -- but there are valid reasons to bring them up, and it isn't against the rules to do so.
- Banned users are banned permanently -- they are not permitted to return under new names. This is true even if you are autobanned by the community, and even if it was "unfair" -- if you've garnered so much resentment during your time here that it reached that point, we're not going to bail you out. You're done. If you see a new user banned after they make only one or two comments, it's because they're users who have had previous accounts here and blew it the first time. We don't give second chances, and we check new users who seem to get into trouble. For that reason, you should consider your reputation here before getting into fights -- if people start thinking of you as someone who always gets into fights, they will begin trollrating you more and more frequently, and it will be very difficult to convince others of your goodwill. You are responsible for your behavior.
[edit] Hidden vs. Deleted comments
Occasionally, a comment disappears from view and there is some dispute (usually from the comment author) as to the fate of that comment. The following text is provided as a reference to use in such disputes:Comments are not deleted. If you think your comment has been deleted, you are wrong. If you really really think your comment has been deleted, you are wrong. Yes, really. Your comment has been hidden, but Trusted Users can still see it, and have the option to un-hide it. Your comment is unlikely to be unhidden (trust us on this one).
[edit] Autoban
If enough of a user's comments are hidden, the site will automatically ban that user. Banning means that a user can no longer post diaries or comments, or give out recommends. The exact algorithm for determining how many comments are enough to trigger autoban is not publicly known. Kos has, however, stated that the determining factor is the number of comments that are hidden, not the number of troll-rates that each individual comment receives. In other words, once a comment has entered the Hidden Comments section, additional Hides have no effect. Since Trusted Users are limited in the number of hide ratings they can issue per day, it is recommended that they refrain from "piling on" additional Hides to an already-hidden comment.[edit] Tag Guidelines
You cannot post a diary until you have entered at least one tag. Tags are keywords that identify the concepts and content of the diary. The diary author must choose at least one tag for the diary to be posted. After the diary is posted, any user can add tags to their own diary; trusted users can remove or edit tags in any diary. We strongly suggest that you enter one tag, publish your diary and then spend a few minutes creating GOOD tags to add.The best and quickest way to find good tags is from this list most frequently used tags - the higher the number, the better the tag because it means more people are using it and it is the tag most likely to be searched on. It is updated daily. The Tag Search Tool also makes it very easy to find good tags being used by the community.
You can also find a complete list of tags in the tag cloud. By clicking on a tag, you get a list of all diaries that contain that tag. However, generating the list via the tag cloud" is slow (30 minutes on a dialup connection), so we suggest that you use the Frequently used tag list or the Tag Search Tool or do a search specifying tag=xyz, where xyz is the string you're looking for (surrounded by quotes if the string contains spaces).
Trusted Users (TU) can edit the tags in any diary, and that is a community job as important as hiding inappropriate comments. If you want to be more involved in tag cleanup as a Tag Librarian, please add your name on the Tag Librarians page and join our Google Group. At a minimum, it is important that names in the diary are entered properly as tags.
Guidelines for choosing tags:
Note: As of September, 2007, the Daily Kos tag guidelines have changed. While all of the above guidelines are still recognized as "best practices" and are strongly recommended, the editing or deleting or existing tags is to be limited to the correction of obvious typos or malformed tags, and the deletion of insulting or derogatory tags. It is understood that this might lessen the utility of tags as a research tool, but the administrators felt the trade-off in terms of user freedom and the avoidance of tag deletion "wars" was worth it.
- Use commas between your tags. Not spaces, not periods, not semicolons.
- Please remember that tags are an indexing system, not a tool for demonstrating creativity. This is a tool to help organize content, not show how clever you are by inventing keywords such as "HUNTERRIFIC" to praise a diary by Hunter.
- When using a person's name as a tag, use both their first and last name and use proper capitalization.
- If there is an ambiguity, include middle initials (with a period and space following each initial). For example, don't use Bush as a tag; use the George W. Bush tag or the George H. W. Bush tag depending on whether the diary refers to the previous President or his father, or Laura Bush for President Bush's wife, etc.
- Do not use titles. Use John Kerry, not Senator Kerry or Senator John Kerry.
- Use combinations of simple tags rather than inventing complex ones. For instance, use tags CIA, LEAK and INVESTIGATION, instead of CIA-LEAK-INVESTIGATION. (note that Plamegate is the most used tag for this issue,)
- Re-use existing tags Try to use tags from this most frequently used tags list (regenerated daily; the higher the number, the better the tag).
- Keep it simple. Don't use tags that are redundant. Example: Don't use both "health care" and "healthcare".
- For election related diaries:
- Add the first and last names of candidates being discussed and their party affiliation (EX: Hillary Clinton, Democrats)
- Add the office being discussed. EX: "President", "House", "Senate", "Governor", etc.
- Add the abbreviation of the race (two digit state abbreviation and race). So a governor's race would be CA-Gov, a secretary of state's race would be CA-SoS, a Senate race CA-Sen, and a congressional race would be CA-06. (Use "AL" [at large] for states such as VT, which have only one congressional district.) In all other instances spell out the name of the state.
- Add the year: 2008 and then the word "elections" EX: "2004 elections" "2008 elections"
- For state elections add the tag "statename elections" EX: "California elections"
- Use the "primaries" tag during primary season.
- Review all standard election related tags in one place.
- '/' characters are not allowed in tags, and will be converted to '-'. Other punctuation like "?" or "=" or "*" will make your tag unreadable.
- When posting a diary that is primarily about, or in reaction to, a story from a conventional media outlet, include the name of the outlet, e.g. New York Times. This will help cut down on the number of repetitive diaries covering the same "breaking" story.
The new tag guidelines are as follows:
Tag abuse (changing the tags in a diary to express your editorial opinion of the diary) is a bannable offense.
- Always err in favor of adding new tags, rather than deleting or modifying existing tags. Some folks have expressed concerns about the size of the tag database. In terms of server strain, we can assure you, there is no need to worry. (The tag db is comparatively very small.)
- Tags should generally only be modified when you see misspellings (eg, Gorge W. Bush) or obvious ambiguities (eg, George Bush instead of George W. Bush, to distinguish son from father). If an ambiguity is not clear-cut, please add a new tag rather than modify an existing one.
- If a diarist chooses a particular tag that might be different from what you've chosen (say, "bellwether state" instead of "swing state"), please respect the diarist's choice, even if your preferred tag is in wider use. Feel free to add your suggested tag as well - just don't modify or delete the diarist's tags.
- Tags should generally only be deleted if they contain abusive language (eg, "this diary sucks," "sh*t diary", etc.). We emphasize in the strongest of terms that these kinds of tags are completely unacceptable. The use of abusive language in tags will be treated as a bannable offense.
- If you see a tag that seems to be completely out of place, please post a comment asking for clarification (there might be a good reason for it) rather than deleting it.
- Don't use the "troll diary" tag, or any variant thereof, when you think a diary is trollish. Tags are designed to help folks search for information. There isn't a need to be able to search for alleged "troll diaries" - the administrators have many tools at our disposal to find trolls, and this one is not necessary. It also creates needless flamewars and thread hijackings when people disagree over whether a particular diary is, in fact, a troll diary. (Obviously, if a diary is discussing the issue of troll diaries, then this tag might be appropriate.)
First, and most importantly, you need to know that tag abuse is a bannable offense. If an administrator sees you've engaged in tag abuse, you will be formally warned. Repeat abuses can result in banning at any time without a follow-up warning. This diary should be taken as a warning in itself - now that we are unequivocally on the record about this, we will be more willing to take action against tag abusers the first time we see it. So do not express your dislike of a diary or diarist in tags. Reserve that for the comments. Tag abuse includes deletion of tags in order to replace them with "troll diary."
[edit] Controversial Diary Topics
Diaries on certain topics are likely to generate angry responses. Most of these topics fall under the general heading of "conspiracy theories", e.g., "JFK was killed by Martians". The rule for posting such diaries is "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". The more extreme the claim, the higher the burden of proof that commenters will demand. If you can't provide evidence to back up your claim, it is best not to post the diary. This guideline also applies to recommending extraordinary-claims diaries. If a diary makes an extreme claim with little or no evidence to back up that claim, it shouldn't be recommended, no matter what that claim is.Addendum
Some people have been confused by the above discussion. Let me make it perfectly plain. Diaries advancing 'Conspiracy Theories' are subject to ridicule and derision from the community at the very least. Repeat offenders can and will be banned. Yes, this does include 'controlled demolition' of WTC 7.
Here is what kos has to say-
The conspiracists by kos Fri Jul 08, 2005But, what about Freedom of Speech?
Today I did something I've never done before (not even during the Fraudster mess), and wish I'd never had to do.
I made a mass banning of people perpetuating a series of bizarre, off-the-wall, unsupported and frankly embarassing conspiracy theories.
I have a high tolerance level for material I deem appropriate for this site, but one thing I REFUSE to allow is bullshit conspiracy theories. You know the ones -- Bush and Blair conspired to bomb London in order to take the heat off their respective political problems. I can't imagine what fucking world these people live in, but it sure ain't the Reality Based Community.
So I banned these people, and those that have been recommending diaries like it. And I will continue to do so until the purge is complete, and make no mistake -- this is a purge.
This is a reality-based community. Those who wish to live outside it should find a new home. This isn't it.
Update: I've been reinstating some of the banned accounts as they email me. Some people wondered why there wasn't any warning. There have been warnings from others -- repeated pleadings for people to ground themselves in reality.
It's telling that I have NEVER done something like this before. Because this has been an extreme situation. This isn't about disagreeing with what people are saying. If that was the case, everyone would've been banned by now. The myth of the "echo chamber" is just that. A myth.
But as for warnings, well, this has been my warning. I wanted it clear that I was serious, and I think that has come through. I am reinstating those who ask to be reinstated. But the message has been sent.
Doesn't the First Amendment give me the right to talk about whatever I want here?
No. Daily Kos is owned by kos. The servers are his. He pays the bandwidth charges. He makes the rules; we are here as his guests. If he decides tomorrow that anyone not posting in iambic pentameter will be banned, your options are either to brush up on your poetry skills or find/start another forum.
Controversial 9/11 Diaries
DailyKos accepts that the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by agents of Al-Qaeda. It is forbidden to write diaries that:
- refer to claims that American, British, Israeli, or any government assisted in the attacks
- refer to claims that the airplanes that crashed into the WTC and Pentagon were not the cause of the damage to those buildings or their subsequent collapse.
[edit] Webbugs, Scripts, and other mischief
From time to time some bright bulb decides to post an executable script or a webbug...such as an image linked to a browser stats package...in a diary or comment. Doing so will result in the immediate banning of that user.[edit] Liveblog diaries
From time to time, there are events that people want to track and talk about in realtime, in what are called "Liveblog" diaries. Diaries of this sort can attract a large number of comments, so to keep things manageable, there are a few special guidelines for liveblogs:- No pictures. Not even cute cats. Not everyone is on a fast network connection.
- For high-traffic liveblogs, multiple diaries may be necessary. Once roughly 300 comments are in a diary, a new one should be created. If the old diary is on the Recommended list, people should unrecommend it before recommending the new one. This keeps the Rec list from getting dominated by a liveblog series.
- Have people volunteer ahead of time to post the next diary in a series; this will prevent two or three people from posting "Part IV" simultaneously.
- Part n should have a link to at least part n-1, and preferably all of the prior parts. It's also a good idea to have a link, or links, to sources of streaming video/audio of the event in question.
[edit] Formatting
[edit] Auto Format
Comments and diaries are both written using HTML, which stands for Hyper-Text Markup Language, the basic "language" or set of invisible instructions that your browser software uses to format all the text, images, and other data in a way that makes sense for viewing. On dKos sometimes people use a very few simple HTML formatting tags to spiff up their posts. But please know that you need not do anything other than type in your ideas to be able to post. The default formatting of the site will make sure you look pretty good. If you want to embed a hyperlink to somewhere, you enclose the link in square brackets:[http://www.dailykos.com Daily Kos]
gives
Daily Kos
A shortcut to link to dkosopedia pages is to enclose the name of the page in double curly brackets with 'dk' in front:
dk{{DailyKos_FAQ}}
becomes
DailyKos_FAQ.
Two sets of square brackets: [[DailyKos_FAQ]] will also link to a dkosopedia page.
A shortcut for inserting links (and pictures, see below) in comments is to use the link editor. When posting a comment, click on the 'Link' button at the bottom of the editor. In the 'URL' field, put in the URL that you want to link to; in the 'Label' field, put in the text that you want to appear in the comment. When you click the 'Add' button, the link will be inserted into your comment.
Most additional HTML formatting spiffiness for dKos posts can be accomplished using "Auto Format Mode," the default writing mode here, so you don't have to be an HTML formatting expert to add a little shine to your prose. Think of Auto Format Mode as little cheater characters or shortcuts so you don't have to remember a bunch of HTML tags. Some of the things you can do in Auto Format mode include:
- Bold text, by putting an asterisk on either side of the text you wish to bold, like *bold text*.
- Italicized text, by using the underscore character: _italicized text_
-
strikeout textby using hyphens: -strikeout text- - Lists, by putting a * or a - followed by a space at the beginning of each line in your list. And if you get really wordy, like this list entry, notice that the indentation is automatic when the entry drops to the next line,
- and starts over again when you create a new line with a carriage return and a new * or - character.
- Numbering each line like this
- produces a numbered list
- and periods after the numbers
- are optional.
There are a few other common effects you'll see here that do require actual HTML tags. A tag is always preceded by its tagname enclosed in
- underline is made by underline
[edit] Block Quoting
A common sight in diaries is some text set off from the main body by a grey box. To create this effect, called a 'blockquote', you typesome textto get
some text
[edit] Tables
Unfortunately, there is no straight-forward way to create tables. The two options are to do it manually (insert a bunch of spaces and blank lines between elements until things look right) or to use the table tools built in to HTML. A brief overview of the latter is given here. Tables require some care to get right; be sure to preview your diary/comment carefully before submitting. Information in a table is contained within 3 seperate layers of HTML. First, every cell (entry in the table) is enclosed by a table-data tag:. Then, sets of cells are combined to make rows, using the table-row tag:. Finally, all of the rows are combined into a table using the table tag:New YorkChicago
Finally, put a couple of rows together, and enclose the whole thing inside a table tag:
| New York | Chicago |
| Houston | Los Angeles |
| New York | Chicago |
| Houston | Los Angeles |
Column 1Column 2
Putting this immediately after the
| Column 1 | Column 2 |
|---|---|
| New York | Chicago |
| Houston | Los Angeles |
Finally, you can add a border around the tables by changing the
| Column 1 | Column 2 |
|---|---|
| New York | Chicago |
| Houston | Los Angeles |
[edit] Over-riding AutoFormat
Sometimes, AutoFormat is too smart for its own good, doing things to your comment that you would prefer it didn't. For example, if you try to use the '<' character, AutoFormat will try to turn that into some sort of HTML command, probably not what you want. The way around this is to use the '\' character to tell AutoFormat to leave the next character alone. To get a '<', type '\<'. Similarly, to get a '[', type '\['. To get a backslash, type '\\'.[edit] Browser extensions
Users of the Firefox browser can download an extension which provides access to many of the formatting shortcuts in a convenient right-button menu.[edit] Pictures and images
Another common thing to do is put an image into a diary or comment. Before you do this, please stop and think for a moment. Pictures require much more in the way of network resources than text. Big pictures make life difficult for people without fast net connections. Keep your pictures small, and only use them when it really adds something to the point you want to make. That said, there are three steps that need to be followed to insert a picture into a diary or comment:[edit] Putting the image on the web
The first step is to put the image on an approved Web image hosting provider. This is required: you are not allowed to directly link to images from news media, personal sites, or others. This requirement prevents those sites from suffering large bandwidth fees if not being taken offline due to the enormous traffic Daily Kos can cause for them.The approved image hosting services are currently:
- http://www.photobucket.com
- http://www.imageshack.us
- http://flickr.com
- http://smugmug.com
- http://webshots.com
- http://picturetrail.com
- http://mac.com
- http://allyoucanupload.com
Daily Kos makes no guarantees about the quality or security of these services, and including them on the allowed server list doesn't imply any endorsement of those companies or their services. These were simply selected as a subset of sites that were already in use by Daily Kos members that appeared to satisfy our policy at the time they were examined. Use of any of these services is strictly at your own risk. You are advised to read and understand their terms of service before deciding whether to use them.
You may request others for approval using the Contact Us link; approval will only be given if the provider is willing to support this traffic and does not allow the images to be used as "web bugs" (this is a security measure). No, your own ISP or your organizations' will not be considered, this recommendation ability is intended to allow a list of sites that specialize in hosting images for these purposes. Please don't bother the admins with requests to allow your own servers to be included on the allowed image hosts list.
The homepages for the hosting services, and the technical-support pages for the ISPs, will have instructions for how to upload an image from your home computer or from elsewhere on the web. Once you've uploaded the image, the hosting service or ISP will give you a URL for the image.
There are some issues to be aware of when uploading images; see the section #Image_sizing_and_hotlinking below.
[edit] Linking the image
Once you have the image on the web, you need to link it into your diary or comment. There are two ways to do so; linking and hotlinking. Linking an image means that in the text of the diary/comment, the reader will see a URL; clicking on that URL will open the picture. Hotlinking, by contrast, will cause the image to show up alongside the text, without the reader needing to click on a hyperlink. Hotlinking can result in significant loads on whatever server is holding the image; pure linking is to be preferred whenever possible.To link to an image, you create a hyperlink pointing to that image: Elephant The URL of the image goes between the quotation marks; the text immediately before the is the text that the reader will see marked as a hyperlink.
To hotlink an image, you need to put an 'IMG tag' into your diary or comment. This tag contains the URL pointing to the image that you put on the web:
which will insert the image into the text. Hotlinking is only allowed from a few hosts; see #Image_sizing_and_hotlinking below for details. The URL pointing to the image goes inside the quotation marks: 
There are a couple of shortcuts for inserting images. If you use a hosting service, it will typically generate the necessary code for you; just copy and paste. You want to use the code labelled 'For Websites' (Imageshack) or 'Tag' (Photobucket). Other hosting services will have similar labels. The other option is to use the link editor. In comments, you can use the 'Link' button at the bottom of the comment window. Click this button, fill in the URL to the picture and a title. Select the 'Image' checkbox, and then click the 'Add' button to insert the link into your comment.
[edit] Formatting the image
The final step in image insertion is to format the picture. The most important formatting issue is the size of a picture; many pictures have a lot of pixels, and if they appear in a post at full size, they can fill the window and screw up the rest of the page's formatting. For large pictures, you can specify a "width" field when you are putting in an image. Using the same image as an example, gives
A width of 500 is the maximum that can be accomodated without causing problems.
In addition to changing the image size, you can change where the image appears in the text. By default, it appears at the left margin, and any following text starts beneath the image. You can get text to wrap around an image by using an "align" field:
Lastly, to keep space between the image and the text, use the hspace field, e.g. hspace=2
[edit] Image sizing and hotlinking
Unlike text, images require a significant amount of network bandwidth to transmit. To minimize the impact of images, there are two things to keep in mind: don't hotlink images, and keep the file size small. A hotlink is when you find an image somewhere on the web and plug its URL directly into a IMG tag. When you do this, every time your diary or comment is loaded, that external site has to supply a copy of the image. With the sort of traffic that dkos gets, that can amount to a significant load (and cost) to the host site.Hotlinking is only allowed from certain approved hosts. In other words, you can't hotlink to some random image that you saw on the web. Currently, hotlinking is only allowed from images hosted at the following sites:
For images under your control (photos that you took, for instance), you can reduce the bandwidth load on everyone by decreasing the file size as much as possible before uploading to the web. Try to keep image sizes below 50 kilobytes; below 20 is better. Dropping the resolution to 640x480 in an image editor and saving as a jpeg with a low quality setting (high compression setting) will help a lot in reducing file sizes.
[edit] Embedding YouTube Video
To embed YouTube videos, put the word youtube and the video ID of the clip in question in a double set of parentheses: ((youtube vid-id)). YouTube URLs are of the format http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MpOy1ujOYo ; the video ID is everything after the equals sign, so for this example, you would type ((youtube 9MpOy1ujOYo)). You can also copy and paste the YouTube 'embed' code into your diary/comment (do not use the Link dialog box), but after clicking on Embed you must also select "Use old embed code" for it to work; otherwise, the embed code will include the "iframe" tag, which is not allowed in Daily Kos diaries or comments.When embedding a video, it's a good idea to give at least a short recap or summary of what's in the clip; not everybody can easily play embedded video.
Note: At the moment, YouTube videos whose video IDs contain underscores (for example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKm_zrxL0p0) will not work properly using the double parenthesis method. You must copy and paste the Youtube 'embed' code and escape the EACH instance of "_" in the embed code with a preceding '\". For example, xKm_zrxL0p0 becomes \xKm_zrxL0p0.
[edit] Embedding Video from Other Sources
At the moment, embedding video from sources other then YouTube is a hit-and-miss proposition. Many sites provide cut and paste embed code, but that code may not actually work within the Daily Kos AJAX comment forms. For instance, some sites whose embed code contains "iframes" will not embed correctly.Daily Kos user SuperBowlXX has designed a nifty guide for embedding videos from Comedy Central.
MSNBC no longer uses iframes in their embed codes, but the HTML for MSNBC videos still contains some unusable tags. However, there are a couple of user-friendly guides for embedding videos from MSNBC programs. Daily Kos user wader has come up with a somewhat complicated but definitely usable workaround with a couple of freeware programs. SuperBowlXX has outlined an alternate method that requires no program downloads.
[edit] Embedding Documents and PDF Files
Using the publishing network Scribd, it is possible to embed other kinds of files such as Microsoft Word documents, PDFs, Powerpoint presentations, and Excel spreadsheets. Embedding a Scribd file allows you to publish a large report (for example, a Supreme Court decision) in its entirety without taking up much space in your diary. SuperBowlXX has designed a quick how-to guide for embedding these kinds of files.[edit] Recommending diaries
Almost all diaries can be recommended; the exceptions are those that are posted directly to the front page. To recommend a diary, click on it, and then click on the 'Recommend' button on the right side of the window. Diaries can only be recommended in the first 24 hours after posting. When should you recommend a diary? Very simply, recommend a diary if you think other dkos users should read it. That may mean that the diary is covering a breaking news story, or it has an insightful bit of analysis, or even is an extremely funny bit of humor. Note that diaries can have much more content in the comments than in the main text; it is perfectly legitimate to recommend a diary because of an interesting discussion in the comments. Don't recommend a diary simply because of who the author is.Note: Please use common sense when recommending diaries. Diaries that rely entirely on unreliable sources such as Wayne Madsen, Capitol Hill Blue, or Lyndon LaRouche are generally not considered acceptable. Recommending poorly sourced conspiracy theory diaries may result in banning without warning for all recommenders.
[edit] Rating comments
Any registered user can rate comments in a diary. Buttons to give these ratings are at the bottom of each comment. For regular users, comments can be recommended; trusted users can recommend or hide comments. The number of ratings that your comments gather, and their average value, determines your comment mojo. Mojo is used primarily for determining whether a user has trusted user status. So, when is each rating appropriate? Much virtual ink has been wasted in arguments, but the following is generally accepted:- Hide rating: Comments whose only purpose is to disrupt the discussion. Do not hide posts simply because you disagree with what the commenter is saying. Any given user can give out a maximum of five hide-ratings per day.
- Recommend: Good comment. Also usually a shorthand for 'I agree', or also 'good job'. Most ratings given out tend to be recommends.
If you wish to remove a rating that you gave to a comment, simply click the recommend or hide button a second time. Comments can be given ratings for 24 hours; after this point, ratings cannot be given or removed from the comment.
One piece of Daily Kos slang worth knowing refers to a recommend as a "4" and a hide as a "zero" or, by analogy, a "donut" (or "doughnut"). Hides used to be called 'troll-rate', and some people still use the old language.
[edit] Tip Jars
Because diaries can't be rated, a comment titled 'Tip Jar' is automatically posted with each diary*. This is intended as a place to give mojo for the diary; if you feel that the diary was worthwhile, it's a nice gesture to leave a recommend in the tip jar. A tip jar should only appear under the username of the author of a diary. Posting a tip jar in somebody else's diary will be regarded as an attempt to take credit for the diary; at the very least, you will be yelled at by other commenters. There is no rule, however, that says commenters must wait for a tip jar to appear before they can legitimately comment on the diary.*A diarist's opening comment can also be customized. Just follow the advice of Kossack LaughingPlanet in: How to pre-post (a.k.a. personalize) your "Tip Jar"
[edit] Trusted Users
If a user gathers enough comment mojo, they become a Trusted User. To prevent people from gaming the system, the exact amount of mojo required is not publicly revealed. Trusted Users have a few additional privileges compared to regular users. A regular user can recommend comments; a TU can also hide comments. If a comment gets enough hide ratings, it becomes hidden to regular users (also see the trolls section below). TUs can, if they wish, see the hidden comments. TUs thus have the responsibility of deciding whether comments should be hidden or not. In addition, TUs can edit and remove tags from diaries; regular users can only add new tags. There are two easy ways to tell if you are a TU. First is to look at the Tools sidebar; if there is an entry reading 'Hidden Comments', you are a TU. The other way is to try to rate a comment; if there is a 'Hide' button next to the 'Recommend' button, you are a TU.One of the factors that goes into determination of TU status is time. If a user stops commenting, or their comments stops getting recommendations, eventually that user will lose TU status. This can be easily remedied by posting more comments that meet with the approval of the readership community.
[edit] Sock Puppets
(portions adapted from the Wikipedia entry on Sock Puppet)Definition
A sock puppet is an additional account of an existing member pretending to be a separate user. This may be used to mimic community support in an argument or for acting without consequence to one's 'main' account. It is considered dishonest, trollish behavior.
At Daily Kos the term 'sock puppet' is also commonly applied to non-authorized accounts of previously banned users.
Identifying a Sock Puppet
Typically, the user has more knowledge than would be expected of a newcomer regarding the site's methods, rules, and community members; takes part in similar discussions and has mostly same opinions as the user's main account; and sometimes has an account name similar to those of other suspected sock puppets.
Penalties for Sock Puppetry
Though there is no officially articulated penalty for 'Sock Puppetry', there are many recorded instances of banning for the offense.
If you are banned as a user for any reason, the only court of appeal is Markos himself. Banned users posting using an account not authorized by Markos are subject to repeated, continued banning. It is the user, not the account, that is being penalized.
[edit] Tag Abuse
Tags: New Features & New Guidelines by DavidNYC Wed Sep 12, 2007 at 11:14:25 AM PDTThe seminal supporting work is-
- Always err in favor of adding new tags, rather than deleting or modifying existing tags. Some folks have expressed concerns about the size of the tag database. In terms of server strain, we can assure you, there is no need to worry. (The tag db is comparatively very small.)
- Our general principles behind this policy are two-fold. First, different folks have different ways of mentally categorizing things. That's the strength of a folksonomy, and by letting a plurality of tags bloom, we play to that strength.
- The second reason is the flip-side of the first, namely, that individual tags have to be "allowed to fail." The tag system is not the Dewey Decimal System - it's not designed to be. On a site as large and free-wheeling as this one, it's almost certainly futile to try to enforce a rigid classification system. So it's okay if some tags only get used once. Other tags will "succeed' and be used many times.
- If you would like to search for a particular tag, you can always check out the DKosopedia tag search tool here, or use the "Sort by Tag" feature found at the top of the Recent Diaries section of the sidebar.
- Tags should generally only be modified when you see misspellings (eg, Gorge W. Bush) or obvious ambiguities (eg, George Bush instead of George W. Bush, to distinguish son from father). If an ambiguity is not clear-cut, please add a new tag rather than modify an existing one.
- If a diarist chooses a particular tag that might be different from what you've chosen (say, "bellwether state" instead of "swing state"), please respect the diarist's choice, even if your preferred tag is in wider use. Feel free to add your suggested tag as well - just don't modify or delete the diarist's tags.
- Tags should generally only be deleted if they contain abusive language (eg, "this diary sucks," "sh*t diary", etc.). We emphasize in the strongest of terms that these kinds of tags are completely unacceptable. The use of abusive language in tags will be treated as a bannable offense.
- If you see a tag that seems to be completely out of place, please post a comment asking for clarification (there might be a good reason for it) rather than deleting it.
- Don't use the "troll diary" tag, or any variant thereof, when you think a diary is trollish. Tags are designed to help folks search for information. There isn't a need to be able to search for alleged "troll diaries" - the administrators have many tools at our disposal to find trolls, and this one is not necessary. It also creates needless flamewars and thread hijackings when people disagree over whether a particular diary is, in fact, a troll diary. (Obviously, if a diary is discussing the issue of troll diaries, then this tag might be appropriate.)
Meta: Tagging and Tag Abuse by MissLaura Wed Apr 25, 2007 at 12:47:16 PM PDT
"Tags should generally only be deleted if they contain abusive language (eg, "this diary sucks," "sh*t diary", etc.). We emphasize in the strongest of terms that these kinds of tags are completely unacceptable. The use of abusive language in tags will be treated as a bannable offense."
I don't know how you can be much clearer than that.
[edit] Technical Problems
Daily Kos is a large and complicated site, with much going on behind the scenes to make everything work. Sometimes, things don't work as they should. If you are having trouble with some part of the site, check here first to see if your issue is addressed.- I can't find the publish button on my diary! - or - I can't publish my diary because it says I need to have between 300 and 1150 words in my intro!
- I just signed up, but I don't seem to be able to post a comment. What's up?
- It's been 24 hours, and I still can't post!
- My question is just like the one above, but about diaries. How come I can't post a diary, even though I just signed up?
- Help! I can't remember my username, lost my password, or I'm trying to log in and you're not accepting my username or password!
- I just tried to create an account, but it said that an account with this email address already exists! What can I do?
- I'd like to change my username. How do I do that?
- Will you kindly delete my account, please?
- When I try to post a comment, I just get this weird form, without the fancy Ajax stuff. I have a vaguely modern browser and have Javascript enabled. What happened?
- When I try to log in, it doesn't give me an error, but it sends me to the front page still not logged in. What's up?
- I have one of the two proceeding problems, tried the solutions there, and neither worked. By amazing coincidence, I'm running an unusually aggressive suite of antivirus/anti-spyware/etc. software, like the Computer Associates Security Suite.
- I have a subscription, but the ads have come back! What should I do?
- I signed up, but when I clicked on the confirmation link I got a 'Permission Denied' message in red letters. Help!
- Why have my abilities to comment and participate on the site been revoked?
- I'm using Internet Explorer 8, and my browser locks up when I click on the "view comments" link for stories with more than 500 comments.
- I'm using IE8, and sometimes when I'm writing a comment, the page will refresh unexpectedly and I'll lose everything I've written.
[edit] Login problems
Most login problems are related to browser cookies. These are small files which sit on your computer and are used to keep track of various preferences and the like. You must have cookies turned on to be able to log in (and hence write comments) to dkos.If you have cookies turned on (typically found in the Security section of your browser preferences) and logging in is still not working, first try logging out and then logging back in. If that doesn't work, try using your browser's preferences to delete all cookies that reference dailykos.com, and try logging in. If it still doesn't work, contact the technical team. Include the details of what operating system and what browser you are using.
[edit] Comment problems
In early 2006, the comment system was given a complete overhaul to deal with the ever-increasing volume of comments. The new system requires a relatively recent web browser to work correctly. Recommended browsers for different operating systems are listed below; for more details, see these diaries.- Windows
- Firefox 1.5 (recommended)
- Internet Explorer 5.5 or above (works, with some issues)
- Opera 8.5 (some rendering issues)
- Macintosh
- Safari (recommended for OS 10.3 and above; not supported for 10.2)
- Firefox 1.5 (works; slower than Safari)
- Camino 1.0 (recommended for OS 10.2)
- Internet Explorer 5.2 (legacy mode only; works under 10.1)
- Linux
- Firefox 1.5.0.1 (recommended)
- Mozilla 1.7.12 (works well)
- Konqueror 3.4 (has some rendering and posting problems)
When reporting problems with the comment system, please include the operating system and web browser that you are using (including version numbers) and the type/speed of net connection (dialup, DSL, etc.).
[edit] Time Zones
To make sure that the comments show up with the proper time-of-writing, you need to set your time zone. To do this, go to your user page (link is on the right-hand sidebar), and click on the 'My Profile' tab. Click on the 'Display Preferences' link. On the pull-down menu labelled 'Your Time Zone', select the proper zone. Important Note: The software powering Daily Kos does not automatically adjust for Daylights Savings Time. You need to change the zone manually. For example, if you are located in the Central timezone of the US, during the fall and winter, select 'Central Standard Time' as your zone; during the spring and summer, change it to 'Central Daylight Time'.[edit] Diary series
Several series of diaries are or were posted on at least a semi-regular basis. These are listed below along with links associated with dedicated tags where possible. Where no dedicated tags exist, links point to tags that also encompass diaries outside the series, or to the author's diary page, or to a search shortcut for the series. Ordering is alphabetic within each category.[edit] By category
[edit] Political news overview
- Political news overview series provide an overview of the day's or week's political news stories from the traditional media
- Cheers and Jeers contains a roundup of daily political news, spiced with snarky humor that lets the writer, Bill in Portland Maine, call his diaries the "kiddie pool" of Daily Kos. Reader participation is always welcome. "C&J" is posted Monday through Thursday mornings and Friday early evening (Eastern time).
- Overnight News Digest is a compilation of the day's news stories, to help the late-night crowd keep caught up with important, interesting, and unique news stories. Started by Magnifico, the OND now includes a number of regular and periodic editors. It is published daily at around midnight.
- Sunday Talk is posted by Silly Rabbit, aka Trix, early Sunday (shortly after midnight). It provides a summary of the week's media coverage and a preview of the Sunday morning political talk shows, and appears on the front page.
[edit] Daily Kos overview
- Daily Kos overview series (often tagged as "meta") give an overview of recent Daily Kos diaries
- High Impact Diaries, produced by jotter, is a daily diary listing the most-recommended and most-commented of the previous day's diaries, generally appearing in the morning. jotter also publishes a weekly summary every Sunday.
- Open Thread and Diary Rescue was founded by SusanG and is assembled by a daily team of Rescue Rangers; it summarizes and links to diaries that didn't make the recommended list and aren't likely to get very high on the high impact list, but which in the opinion of the Rescue Rangers deserve another look. It is posted on the front page under the Diary Rescue account. The Rescued tag lists diaries that have been featured in Diary Rescue.
- Top Comments is a daily series founded by Carnacki and posted each evening by one of a team of diarists. These diaries serve to highlight noteworthy comments made during the course of the past 24 hours. Daily Kos users are encouraged to send in nominations of the best of the day's comments (including their username and a link to the comment) to TopComments@gmail.com by 9:30 p.m. Eastern; the Top Comments diary is published at around 10 p.m. Eastern.
- The Recommended tag lists diaries that have spent time on the recommended list.
[edit] Political specialty
- Political specialty series represent in-depth coverage of a individual subjects highly relevant to contemporary politics
- Black Kos publishes two diaries a week addressing African-American issues: Tuesday's Chile, on Tuesday afternoons, and Week In Review, on Friday afternoons.
- Countdown to $100 Oil by Jerome a Paris is a series investigating the effects of post-peak oil production on the global economy.
- dogemperor writes a series on the Dominionist movement.
- Frameshop by Jeffrey Feldman is a recurring series on how to frame political issues.
- Green Diary Rescue & Open Thread is posted to the front page shortly after midnight on (early) Monday and Friday by Meteor Blades, and brings to notice diaries on environmental issues since the previous diary.
- I Got the News Today (IGTNT) by i dunno and others is published daily with death announcements of soldiers with personal details often added.
- ilona covers combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other post-war reintegration issues.
- nyceve writes a regular series of healthcare diaries.
- Press the Face: Sunday Talks Liveblog by Greek Goddess is a weekly liveblog that posts Sunday at around 9:30am ET that offers threads for discussing all of the political talk shows of the day.
- RKBA (the Right to Keep and Bear Arms) is a DKos group of progressive second amendment supporters that doesn't think that being a liberal means you're automatically anti-gun. They publish a weekly group diary on Thursdays, usually in the evening though sometimes in the morning or early afternoon.
- Teacher's Lounge, founded by rserven, provides a collegial atmosphere and a venue for intelligent discussion on the topics of education, teaching and learning. Formerly weekly, it is now posted once or twice a month on Saturday mornings by other authors.
- WGLB Presents, by GLBT and Friends at Daily Kos, covers GLBT issues, and is posted Friday mornings at approximately 11:30am ET.
[edit] Alternative specialty
- Alternative specialty series provide in-depth coverage of subjects that are either not explicitly political or not explicitly contemporary
- Daily Kos University (formerly WHYGTL/What have you got to learn?) is posted Saturday mornings by plf515, and is a summary of the past week's diaries that teach a particular subject.
- History for Kossacks by Unitary Moonbat, Sunday evenings (usually). Historical background for various current events.
- Marine Life by Mark H is a look at the wonders of the sea, posted Friday afternoons.
[edit] Community
- Community series wander somewhat afield of the site's core mission, but do wonders for fostering a sense of community
- Ask A Kossak, W/Free Answers by buhdydharma, is a free-wheeling question and answer session, posted Sunday nights.
- Brothers and Sisters, founded by pastordan, is a Sunday night prayer/meditation/good thought/karma/mojo space hosted by various authors, now published under a group account.
- Bookflurries: Bookchat by cfk is a Wednesday evening bookclub
- Chronic Tonic is a place to share stories, advice, and information, and to connect with others with chronic health conditions and those who care for them. The diary publishes every Thursday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern.
- Countdown with Keith Olbermann is published weeknights by CityLightsLover and reviews that day's Countdown show on MSNBC.
- The Daily Show/Colbert Report Chat is a place to talk and snark during the late-night comic shows. Posted weeknights by TiaRachel.
- Dawn Chorus is a Sunday morning birding series by lineatus.
- FAQ Forum is a Wednesday evening series by dmsilev that answers questions about how Daily Kos works, whether asked frequently or for the first time.
- Friday Evening Photoblogging is a place to share photographs and talk about pictures. Posted by dmsilev.
- Friday Night at the Movies, posted by occams hatchet.
- Frugal Fridays is a Friday afternoon series posted by sarahnity, and is a forum to share money saving tips, discuss living frugally and generally talk about personal finance issues.
- Good Morning Daily Kos, posted Saturday by maxomai at 9:00 west coast time (noon eastern), presents various items of interest from the previous week.
- Got a Happy Story is a Monday evening series originated by Carnacki, alternately hosted by sobermom and Eddie C. You are invited to read a happy story and post your own.
- The Grieving Room, posted Monday evenings, is for those who have lost (or perhaps are about to lose) loved ones.
- GUS (Gave Up Smoking) is a daily (AM/PM) community support diary series for Kossacks who are in the process of quitting. Diaries (substantive and "Open Thread") are posted on a volunteer basis. For more information, please visit the GUS Library.
- Insomniacs' Vent Hole with Craig Ferguson was founded by Oke and Colorado is the Shiznit around Craig's late-late show, and is posted weeknights at around midnight by a roster of insomniacs.
- Iron Chef Kos is a Wednesday morning series which recreates the TV show. A theme ingredient is announced, and recipes using that are posted.
- KosAbility is a gathering place for people who are living with disabilities, who love someone with a disability, or who want to know more about the issues surrounding this topic. It is published at 5:00 p.m. every Wednesday and Sunday by volunteer diarists.
- Mojo Friday, posted Friday mornings by TexDem and an occasional pinch-hitter, is a place to chat, have fun, and garner large amounts of comment mojo.
- Mojo Friday Postgame Show, posted Friday afternoons by Hedwig. It's a statistical look at Mojo Friday's comments and commentors.
- Morning Feature, posted by NCrissieB and guest lecturers from Blogistan Polytechnic Institute (BPI), serves as a daily meeting place for political discourse in a community setting; features include Ask Ms. Crissie, Non-Cynical Saturday, Meta Monday, and Kossascopes. Morning Feature Commenting Customs: We assume good intentions, meet flames with silence, and assume others’ children are reading.
- Saturday Morning Garden Blogging is a weekly diary by Frankenoid. It is in fact about gardening and has a high graphic image content.
- Saturday Morning Home Repair by claude. Covers Home Repair topics and provides questions and answers in the comments.
- Saturday Morning Parenting Diary by Elisa. Covers parenting issues, with links to articles from the past week at the Daily Kos sister site, Mother Talkers.
- Saturday Night Loser's Club by ChingChongChinaman. Blogging on Saturday night? What a loser! Come join the Loser's Club and tell us how pathetic your life is, loser (note- not for the snark impaired).
- Saturday Painting Palooza. boran2 explains the techniques he is using in his current painting and sometimes even accepts input on what the final work should look like.
- Sunday Puzzle, posted Sunday morning by various diarists. It usually contains 6-10 puzzles that people work on throughout the week. Collaboration occurs in the comments.
- The Tuesday Diversion by The Centerfielder, usually on Tuesday about mid-day, typically asks for opinions or recollections on something unrelated to the events of the day.
- What are you reading? (WAYR) is a weekly book club, posted Wednesday mornings by plf515. Fiction and Non-Fiction, not necessarily political.
- What Are You Working On (WAYWO) is a weekly series on crafting, posted Sunday evenings by emeraldmaiden.
- What's for Dinner. Basic cooking info & recipes, published Saturday evenings by rotating authors.
- WYFP? is a long-standing Saturday evening series, now by a rotating group of authors. Having a problem? Tea and sympathy available.
[edit] Defunct
- Defunct series are no longer being actively run, but are listed here for reference. Series that have not been published for at least a year are considered defunct, if their retirement hasn't been made explicit.
- bonddad wrote a regular series on economic issues.
- BREAKING!...the Earth by jillian provided a digest of news on environmental issues.
- Class and Labor was a Tuesday evening series looking at those issues.
- Cooking With AAF by Asinus Asinum Fricat was posted Friday afternoons and typically focused one one food or ingredient.
- DIDS (Damn, I Did Something) was a Tuesday evening opportunity created by cskendrick for all of us to offer up the cool and awesome things we have DONE in the past week.
- Edwards Evening News Roundup was posted by a crew of Edwards Supporters, including Be Inspired, Cosbo, NCDem Amy, Predictor, Sarahlane and Tom P.
- Election Race Diary Rescue by sidinny was a supplement or complement to Diary Rescue that collected links to diaries on House races each day in one place.
- Feminisms was a series posted every Wednesday evening between 8 and 9 p.m. Eastern with alternating diarists, and presented discussion on a wide variety of topics related to Feminism and the various Feminist philosophies.
- Iraq War Grief Daily Witness, produced daily by RubDMC, was dedicated to all who suffer due to war and other disasters.
- Kossacks Under 35 was a Thursday evening series in which the focus was on topics that directly affect those under 35, though any age was welcome.
- Literature For Kossacks was a Tuesday evening series published by pico, exploring the wonder of the written word.
- Math Mania by plf515 covered a variety of mathematical subjects from the work of Gödel to number theory.
- Morning Reaction by Kula2316, an expatriate living in South Korea, was a daily digest of political commentary from the traditional news media.
- The Music Room, Music and Musicians, by madhaus, was posted on weekends.
- Planet of the Savage dKos Feminist SuperVixens discussed feminism, women's issues, and anything even tangentially related. Was posted Thursday evenings, by hrh and others.
- The Rhetoric of Now by kellogg examined the current political scene through the lens of rhetoric.
- Science Friday was a science-themed story posted to the front page every Friday by DarkSyde.
- Spider Friday was by hekebolos. Spiders. On a Friday. Honest. Graphic images of creepy crawly things, beware.
- Statistics 101 was a discussion of math and statistics by plf515.
- Storytime by Cronesense, on Friday evenings, presented personal reflections on mundane moments of wonder.
- Sunday Afternoon Action Diary, posted by Elise, provided a comprehensive list of action links.
- Superribbie provided monthly rankings of the status of races for the House of Representatives.
- Swordsmith wrote a series on How To Get Published.
- This Week With Barack Obama, posted Sunday evenings by icebergslim, covered the Presidential campaign of Senator Obama.
- Top Ten Good News of the Week was by geri. Good news (for a change!), environment, business, civics, celebrities, pets, heroes, and other inspiring stuff.
- Ultrageek's Taking back the House State-by-state series focused on House races, one state at a time.
- Vegetables of Mass Destruction was posted by OrangeClouds115 on Sunday mornings. About nutrition and healthy eating, mostly vegetarian but carnivores were welcome.
- Welcome New Users appeared on Fridays at 11 p.m. Eastern. It was a good place to learn about the mechanics of using dKos and to ask questions, and was posted by ek hornbeck.
- 17 Best-Rated Comments by social democrat appeared from 2004-2005 in 303 editions, each updated every half hour by computer program.
[edit] Diary Series Calendar
This table shows the various series in a weekly-planner format. Times are based on the official "diary day", Eastern Time midnight to midnight. Defunct series, and those which aren't posted on a regular schedule are not included here; all others should be. Daily series shown with an asterisk appear on weekdays only (early Tuesday through Saturday if late night); those with a plus will appear many days out of seven, but not all. See individual entries for further details. The new "Late Night" section refers to diaries posted after midnight in the new day (though they could be a little early).| Daily | Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Late Night | ||||||||
| Morning | ||||||||
| Afternoon | ||||||||
| Evening |
[edit] Links to other resources
DKOS community normsVersion 1 of the FAQ
[edit] Some useful dkos diaries
This section is for listing some important 'meta' diaries, diaries about how Daily Kos operates.[edit] General
- Getting on the Recommended list, by Jerome a Paris
- Daily Kos 101: The Basics A graphical introduction to several of the site features, by theleftknew
- Sipping from the Firehose, or keeping up with Daily Kos by dmsilev
- Diaries 101: Let's Share Writing Tips :) by OrangeClouds115
- See That Caps Lock Key on Your Keyboard? by PatsBard
- The RenaRF Guide to Daily Kos by RenaRF
- This is a Test Diary by BentLiberal
[edit] Meta Diaries by Tag
- Meta, Diaries about the operations of Daily Kos
- New Users, Diaries targeted at New Users
- Tags, Diaries about tags
- Daily Kos, Community discussions about Daily Kos (Not quite meta)
- FAQ, Diaries about dkos FAQ issues
[edit] Diaries by ek hornbeck
- Naked dKos, How to examine your history
- Speed Reading dKos, How to read many diaries
- dKos Censorship?, How things disappear
- The Little Search Engine that Could, Database (scoop) Searches
- Pig Wings, Scan Diaries Easily
- Not buhdydharma's New User's Guide to dKos, Comprehensive introduction to dKos (single volume)
- New Users Guide, Table of Contents for ek hornbeck's New Users Guide (13 volumes)
- Welcome Colbert Nation! (and Countdown fans), Specifically for Late Night
[edit] Common terms and acronyms
An extensive list of terms and acronyms can be found in the Kossary; a few of the more common terms are listed here.n/t – no text. Also nt or eom (end of message). Used by commenters when the entirety of the comment is the title.
asdf – The opposite of "n/t", this comment title means "I don't have a title and I'm required to type something in this field; read the comment text". It represents the first four keys on the home row of a standard English keyboard.
aoeu – Like "asdf", except it represents an easily typed sequence on the Dvorak keyboard, the first four keys on the home row.
UID – User ID. Assigned sequentially in order of registration. Lower UIDs mean a person has been registered at Daily Kos for a longer period of time.
GBCW – Good-Bye, Cruel World. A type of diary where a user announces that they are through with Daily Kos and are leaving for all time. Posting a GBCW diary is usually not a good idea; they tend to be greeted with ridicule. There is now a penalty for doing so: the user's account will be deactivated permanently, unless Markos or Meteor Blades are later willing to consider reinstatement. This diary (big download) is considered to be the Platonic ideal of GBCW diaries.
SCLM – So-Called Liberal Media. Many people think that the idea of a "liberal media" is a myth.
MetaJesus – MetaJesus is invoked when there is too much meta-discussion, that is to say discussion about dkos itself, usually with the phrase "stop making MetaJesus cry" or similar. MetaJesus was given life by Hunter in this diary; other diaries invoking MetaJesus's name can be found here.
[edit] One final note
Congratulations on making it all the way through a rather long document. Think you know the FAQ? Try taking the FAQ Quiz to test your knowledge.
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