Tag: Daily Kos
Are We Really the Reality Based Community? We Don't Act Like It.
By priceman in Barack Obama, Community, Congress, Economy, Media, Meta
This is not directed at the reality based Docudharma community.
And by "we" I don't mean me or I, because I make a good effort to at least try. I'm talking about blogs like Daily Kos. I had always assumed, because of the many insightful writers on the site and on the front page that was the case. However, we are starting to see some of what we see with corporate control of all airwaves in how site moderation is run.
For instance, whether on Fox News, CNN or MSNBC there is always a fake debate when it comes to climate change which is undeniably happening since we have hit 400 ppm of CO2 in our atmosphere for the first time in 3 million years. When this spectacle that pretends to be a live debate on TV happens, there are always two guys picked by the network to come on TV to debate the issue; one a NASA scientist like say James Hansen and one fringe dwelling Koch funded climate changed denier to debate as if there is something to debate as if both sides have an equal argument to make. WRONG. The science is in.
I always thought we in the progressive blogosphere prided ourselves on not accepting that dynamic, but now I am starting to wonder. On the issues I go to great lengths to cover when it comes to the economy, there are certain undeniable facts that have to be acknowledged whether you are a Post Keynesian MMT proponent like me or not. I mean, if we are any different than debates on red state or the corporate owned media, that is. I have to wonder about that now, because it now appears from what went on in my last diary in the comment section that a moderator here stepped in and made an effort to portray the troll like behavior and continual denial of established facts in every diary of mine as "just an honest disagreement."
It was inferred that I was "out of line" for accurately describing a commentator while using a term that accurately describes his brand of troll like behavior. That's not out of line. When people act like trolls in every diary of mine I can only ignore it for so long before calling it out directly. We can't just ignore this kind of behavior forever in this community. I mean, not if we still consider ourselves part the reality based community. Do we?
anti intellectualism, Chartalism, Daily Kos, data, facts, John Maynard Keynes, labor, law, MMT, moderation, reality based community, trolling, trolls, White House
They're Fired Up, They're Ready To Go
By Rusty1776 in Barack Obama, Politics
Fear not, wanderers in this WTF Wilderness. Be not dismayed, let not your hearts be troubled. Lift up your eyes like you never have before, and behold the shiny objects flashing around the White House and the DNC. Look upon them in wonder and sing hallelujah, for salvation is at hand. Again.
Fired up!
I hope Obama and the clap louder crowd at Kos Communications will forgive me, but I'm not fired up. I'm not ready to go. The idiocy on full display every hour of every day on the campaign trail exposes how far gone this country's political system is. We don't see any real political debate, we don't hear any real political commentary, there's no dialogue about the fundamental problems we're facing, no real solutions are offered. It's not a campaign. It's a beer commercial.
Corporate capitalism tastes great. No, it's less filling. Gosh, I just can't decide who's right, it has so many appealing features. It's not perfect yet, but perfection is so close the Beltway binge-drinkers can almost taste it.
Their friends at the five-hundred billion dollar Beltway Brewery are really cranking out the suds, the bipartisan beer trucks are rumbling down the highways of America, driven by austerity alcoholics with places to go and people to see.
It's Happy Hour, it's always Happy Hour here at the Trickle Down Tavern, so drink up everyone, order another round, put another trillion dollars in the jukebox. Yeah, I know, Too Big To Fail is the only song on it, but what the hell, get over it, quit pouting and grow up, be a patriotic patriot and praise the plutocrats, they created this paradise of prosperity and are disappointed because we haven't been grateful enough, so grab a beer-soaked flag and wave it on high.
2012 Elections, Antemedius, Bruce Springsteen, Chimes of Freedom, Daily Kos, Democratic Party, Firefly Dreaming, Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, national conventions, Netroots, Republican Party, Wall Street
Today on Daily Kos
Today, May 31, 2011, on Daily Kos…
Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!
Yesterday, May 30, 2011, on Daily Kos…
The day before yesterday, May 29, 2011, on Daily Kos…
And the day before the day before the day before the day before the day before…
Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!Hurrah for Obama and the shit-head Democrats!
Hurrah for Obama and the Democrats!Hurrah for Obama and the shit-rag Daily Kos!
Why Daily Kos Is Probably Wrong About Obama, Again
The recent transformation at Daily Kos from non-stop cheerleading for Obama into bitterly critical diaries at the top of their popularity list reminds me of my last term as a destitute graduate student in 1999, when I couldn't even afford to ride a bus, and used to walk home from the library late at night through a series of black, Latino, and Native American slums.
After midnight I was more or less alone on the street except for a few gang-bangers who usually recognized me as that guy who taught basic reading skills at the local juvenile prison, out of books by Malcolm X and César Chávez and Russell Means' autobiography, Where White Men Fear to Tread.
About halfway home I would pass a halfway house for mentally challenged individuals, many of them only recently emancipated from unpleasant institutions or exhausted families. There were almost always three or four residents socializing on their front porch until two or three o'clock in the morning, and after a few nights of getting-to-know-you banter back and forth we quickly became friends.
Promptly at 1 AM all of us would rush inside for the late-night weather report on TV, and we played a crazy game with the weatherman.
"Current temperature is 72 degrees Fahrenheit, 22 Celsius, clear skies and a gentle breeze from the southwest," and we had been outside in exactly that weather only moments before. But someone would immediately scream…
"Sleet and freezing rain!"
"Tornado warnings for the Greater Boston Metro!"
"Hail-stones bigger than Toyotas!"
"Earthquake in the Back Bay!"
The Mid-Term Morons of Daily Kos
You fucking morons!
First it was Obama, the Progressive Hero!
Then it was Obama, the 13-Dimensional Chess-Politician!
And month after month after month you were nothing but brain-dead cheerleaders for that stinking con-man.
On the basis of what?
On the basis of nothing but ridiculous blather that anybody with the brains of a flea could see through in one second.
Weren't you supposed to be "the reality-based community?"
But you were nothing but a mob of TV-intoxicated morons.
"Behold the charisma of Barack Obama!"
So you shit-eating thugs ganged up and banned anybody who didn't drink the fucking Koolaid, and erased every comment that questioned your shit-head Messiah.
And now what?
We can all look forward to year after year of paralysis, while thousands species are wiped off the face of the earth and millions of Americans lose their jobs and houses and sink into total destitution, and Obama's goddamned surge in Afghanistan destroys the lives of thousands of Afghan civilians and makes us hundreds of thousands of new blood-enemies, and citizens of every nation in Southwest Asia are tortured at Bagram, while Obama sucks ass for the banks.
So thanks for everything, you ass-sucking thugs and morons!
"Forward" With Obama
By Jacob Freeze in Barack Obama
Some chump is currently celebrating Obama's "fine form" on the front page of Daily Kos, in a review of the President's speech October 22 at USC.
All in all, the president was in fine form, and he hasn't lost his mojo.
Mojo and fine form! That's what Daily Kos was boosting month after month in the primaries! What else could you ask for in a candidate for President of the United States? Looks good on TV! Nothing else matters!
Who cares what kind of drivel Mojo Obama mindlessly repeats?
A choice between hope and fear. Moving forwards or going backwards. And Trojans, I want to move forward.
Did you hear that, Trojans?
Mojo wants to move forward! And if you missed it at USC, you could have heard exactly the same meaningless blather June 2 in Pittsburgh.
We can go backward, or we can keep moving forward. And I don't know about you, but I want to move forward.
And July 9 in Las Vegas…
This is the choice between falling backwards and moving forwards, and I don't know about you but Harry Reid wants to move forward, I want to move forward, I think most people in Nevada want to move forward, they don't want to go backwards.
Forward! Forward! Forward!
That guy talks about moving forward so much, he almost sounds like a progressive.
But he isn't.
And apparently Obama and Daily Kos haven't noticed that for millions of Americans, "forward" means…
Forward into foreclosure!
Lenders seized more U.S. homes this summer than in any three-month stretch since the housing market began to bust in 2006.
Forward into unemployment!
Joshua Shapiro of MFR Incorporated points out that today's jobs report also contained revisions for the March 2009-March 2010 period. Those revisions show that the job market was in even worse shape than previously thought.
Forward into homelessness!
With cold weather just weeks away, the District of Columbia has shelved a plan to expand its already packed shelter for homeless families at the former D.C. General Hospital, a decision that advocates fear could leave vulnerable families even worse off than last winter.
Forward into war!
Sgt. Tamara Sullivan pulled out her cellphone charger and braced for a night of tears. She called her children in North Carolina, ages 3 and 1, and told them she would soon be going to work in a place called Afghanistan. For a year. She reminded her husband to send her their artwork. She cried, hung up, called him back and cried some more.
How We Will Fix This: Undoing Citizens United Part 3
By SumofChange
cross-posted from Sum of Change
This is our last round of videos from the Netroots Nation panel, Undoing Citizens United: A Comprehensive Plan to Prevent Corporations from Buying Elections (here is part 1, and part 2). Today, we are going to focus mostly on how to move forward. But first, some inspiration from Congresswoman Donna Edwards:
2010, Citizens United, Daily Kos, July 22nd-25th, las vegas, Lisa Graves, Netroots Nation, NN10, Rep. Donna F. Edwards, Representative Alan Grayson, Robert Weissman
ICE Checkpoint @ Netroots Nation…
So folks in Las Vegas for the 2010 Netroots Nation conference got a surprise when they showed up for the session on Civil Rights in the Modern Era to find a checkpoint of "ICE agents" looking for illegal European immigrants:
2010, Daily Kos, ICE Checkpoint, immigration, July 22nd-25th, las vegas, Netroots Nation, NN10, Satire, snark
Welcome to My World, Keith
Daily Kos, Olbermann
This Post Was Originally Written on Daily Kos (And What's Wrong with That?)
By cabaretic in Media
It is at least interesting to see the latest mainstream media insult circulate liberally across the country, one designed to reduce bloggers to little more than reactive agitprop sensationalists. This week it's "(insert example of ridiculously overblown commentary here) could have been found on Daily Kos". I might take more offense, except when I know the major players frequently fall far short of their own lofty journalistic standards. We've consistently recognized, called out, and sometimes outright mocked op-ed columnists, television commentators, pundits, and members of the fourth estate. We shouldn't expect a mea culpa any time soon. But when we can produce all sorts of facts to prove our point, we can certainly make a strong case on our own behalf. And we can certainly keep sharing our own voices for the benefit of all, unimpeded by what anyone might say.
bias, bloggers, blogosphere, cabaretic, Daily Kos, independent media, journalism, mainstream media, Mass Communication, meritocracy, newspaper, newspaper circulation, print journalism
David Waldman on Process And Lessons Learned Fighting for Health Care
By SumofChange in Health Care
Congress Matters, Daily Kos, David Waldman, Healthcare, process, public option, reconciliation
Davy Crockett, Daily Kos and Net Warfare Multiplicity.
By Pen
My wife is descended from Davy Crockett so naturally all our kids have wanted to watch the old Disney shows about him and both Alamo movies. We let our kids know that most of what they see is complete BS. One bit of Disney BS is the scene in the wilderness where Crockett and Bowie drive off a much larger enemy force with a little trick the two of them have gotten adept at. They can fire and reload their guns much more quickly than normal men and can do so on the run. They run from hiding spot to hiding spot, firing rapidly and giving the impression to the enemy that they are up against a much larger fighting force than they really are. This forces the enemy to retreat when, if they knew they were only facing two men, they'd charge in and rapidly defeat them.
I don't know if there is a word for this tactic, but it is being used extensively against the left on the internet today. If someone can point out the name for this, great, but for now I'm going to call it Multiplied Duplicity, or Multiplicity for short. It is the tactic of making it seem that there is a large group of people who are on one side of an issue when in fact, it is only a small handful of people using multiple identities and who are usually being paid to work full time giving the impression they are part of a large movement which in reality doesn't exist.
I first heard about Multiplicity about 8-10 years ago from Joe Lyles of Conceptual Guerrilla. It seems that when Lyles was in college earning his law degree he belonged to the Young Republicans. It was there that he learned a standard tactic of theirs was to assault bulletin boards on the fledgling internet with multiple user ids and "work the web" to give the illusion that the vast majority of internet users were conservatives. This is why the internet seemed, in the early years, to be dominated by conservatives and their talking points. The truth, it seems, was that all those conservatives were actually just small groups of Young Republicans across the nation coordinating on a local level.
Lyles termed these guys the first Net Warriors. This was the beginning of Net Warfare. From day one Multiplicity was their standard tactic.
What drew me into Joe Lyles circle was the idea of becoming a Net Warrior myself. Joe had abandoned the right when his eyes had opened to the truth of their phoney conservative philosophy. He realized that conservatives only believed in one thing: Cheap labor. Everything else was BS. He exposed the truth behind every conservative meme in his excellent article "Defeat the Right in 3 Minutes.". It was this article that first brought him to my attention. It was on an older website of his that I, along with a host of other progressives, first learned all the tricks of becoming Net Warriors for the left. We would go onto websites back in the day when people were afraid to admit they were liberals – remember those days? They weren't that long ago – and take over the forums by challenging the conservatives and working together as a team. We employed multiple user ids and gave the impression that a great many progressives were there who – gasp! – actually disagreed with the "conventional wisdom" of the right.
This was rather unheard of at that time on the internet. A wonderful thing began to happen thanks to our efforts. People began to stop lurking on these websites and began to actually speak up. Our presence had emboldened them. Until we came along, most people were so brutally put down, name called, mocked and derided that no one had the courage to ever post there. The conservatives had full reign to spew their lying spin on everything. Once we challenged – and defeated – their hollow talking points, people began to feel they weren't alone. They were no longer afraid to agree that they thought the conservatives were full of shit.
By the time we left a forum, it no longer needed us anymore. There were plenty of progressives there who'd found their voices and were no longer intimidated into silence.
Which brings us to Daily Kos. The tactics being used at Daily Kos are the same tactics that the conservatives have always used. Ad hominem attacks, mocking the poster, derisive put downs, straw man arguments. Anything but actually addressing the issues. The purpose of which is to drive away progressives and silence those who stay so that only their spin dominates the website.
The thing is, just like when the Young Republicans created the first Net Warriors, these Konservassacks (conservative Kossacks) aren't really as numerous as they would lead you to believe. They are practicing Multiplicity. How do I know this? I've been watching them do it for many, many years and over that time they've made more than enough mistakes to give themselves away. Consider the following:
A: The Double Diary Incident. I was probably the only non-Konservassack who witnessed the Double Diary Incident. It was about two or three years ago, before Obama was elected. For a very brief time, maybe ten minutes, two diaries with the exact same titles hit the rec list just minutes after each had been posted. Both had to do with a single payer healthcare rally. Both came out one right after the other. Who could have foreseen such a coincidence? Certainly not the Konservassacks. They evidently knew that one diary about the rally was coming out with that name. Unfortunately, the other dairy about the rally with the exact same name came out just a minute or two before theirs did. The first diary was definately pro-single payer. The second diary was the exact opposite. It was full of spin that single payer wasn't ever going to happen and supported us going for the public option instead. In short, it was a hit piece against the single payer rally.
Naturally, I got curious and looked up who had recced each diary and found out that 90% of the people who'd recced the first diary had also recced the second. That seemed fishy to me as anyone who recced the first diary would hate the second one. Sure enough, by the time I'd finished checking out the second diaries rec list and went back to the main page, the first diary had already fallen off the rec list. So I rechecked the first diaries rec list and all those people who had recced both diaries had unrecommended the pro single payer diary.
This all happened within minutes of both diaries being posted. Why is the timing of this so pertinent? Because of the logistics of such a rapid response. If a large group of about 80-100 people had all known to rec, or been asked to rec, a certain anti-single payer diary and then mistakenly recced the wrong one, there would have been enough confusion caused that it would have taken a bit of time to sort out what had happened, get the word out and then rectify the situation. But the response time here was far too rapid for that. It took about one minute for me to call up the second diaries rec list and see it was almost identical to the first and in that short time, all the people who'd erroneously recced the wrong diary and rectified that situation.
That means one of two things: There were 80-100 people all sitting in an office somewhere paid no doubt by someone with a corporate agenda, or – which is more likely – there were 20 or so people, each with 5 alternate identities, sitting in an office somewhere, paid no doubt by someone with a corporate agenda, using good ole Multiplicity tactics to make it look like a large number of people believed that the public option was a better idea than sticking to our guns and demanding single payer.
B: There have been many instances, not just with me, but I've read others on this website note the same thing: People they are arguing with on Daily Kos forget that they've changed their names and continue the arguement under different personas. It happens often enough to know that sock puppetry is going on there.
A funny thing about sock puppetry on DKos. When my wife finally registered there about a year ago, I immediately got a message that sock puppetry would not be tolerated and I had been banned for it. I had to explain that – though the IP address was mine – the account belonged to my wife. I said they should have asked me before banning me. So Meteor Blades undid my ban and my wife now has an account. Meteor stated that there was so much sock puppetry going on that they couldn't respond to everyone guilty of it and just auto-banned them instead.
So this means one of four things must be true:
1: There is no Multiplicity going on at DKos because Multiplicity requires sock puppetry. Therefore, in the Double Diary Incident, there would have to be an office full of 80-100 people actually working together to pull off what they did that day. I don't believe this, however.
2: Multiplicity is going on at DKos and those responsbile have some way to mask their IP addresses. There are tons of IP Masking programs out there. No doubt, DKos can't guard against all of them.
3: Multiplicity is going on at DKos and those responsible have multiple PC's at their disposal. I doubt this as simply using masked IPs would be less expensive.
4: Multiplicity is going on at DKos and DKos is in on it. This has to be a seriously considered possibility as Markos has admitted he worked for the CIA when he started up the Daily Kos website. It is possible – and when one looks back on the history of the Daily Kos it certainly seems to be – that the Daily Kos was set up from day one to be an anti-populist website who's purpose was to undermine the left.
So whichever of the above are true, what this means is that a small group of people are actively working to give the impression that a much larger group has taken hold of the Daily Kos using the tactic of Multiplicity. If the average reader really understood that only a few people are basically holding an entire net community hostage – and by extension an entire political movement- they'd abandon the site en masse or else demand that the moderators do something to stop this deceitful manipulation.
The question is: is DKos in on it?
The only way to answer that question is to first prove that Multiplicity is happening. To do that might take no less than a paid hacker to break in and track down the culprits to their lair. The next time Blackwaterdogs "Obama is God" shoots to the reclist, or a diary against Obama hits the rec list and immediately after, the diary railing against it shoots to the rec list, we'd need someone to investigate all those names on the rec list and see if something fishy is going on.
Naturally, it would be preferable if the moderators did this, as they obviously have the power to do so, but we can't trust them to be truthful. So unless a hacker traces those IP addresses, we simply have no way to prove it's happening. And of course, we can't have hackers breaking into websites. But should we somehow manage to come up with the evidence, then we'd know once and for all if DKos is in on it or if an outside force is simply using an age old (in internet years) tactic against us once again.
Either way, the progressive movement would be better off being aware of such tactics and proceeding accordingly.
Daily Kos, Multiplicity, sockpuppetry