Tag: daily kos

Rabble rouse, agitate, disturb, unsettle, disrupt, push, unnerve, disturb, battle.

“War is a Racket”  Come on, he didn’t mean some wars, he meant all wars!”  Figure it out.

I see Daily Kos, a partisan Democratic party political blog is asking “Where are the Antiwar Protests.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

Of course alot of us have been asking that same question for a long time, over ten years. But it’s ironic that a site like Daily Kos can be asking that question now.

We’re talking about a democratic party political blog that in cue with the party itself, has done more than it’s share to squash, ridicule, and marginalize antiwar and imperialism dissent since Obama took office. It is a blog with the singular goal of supporting the Democratic party, especially it’s feckless leader, no matter what it or Obama does. The Democratic party that does not represent you or me, the one that represents the 1% (or less). We all know about that, we’ve taken the Occupy training class. Repeat the mantra, 99 percent vs. 1 percent.

The Democratic party that is fully on board with U.S. imperialism. The current Democratic administration, led by a Democratic party POTUS and CINC, has taken U.S. imperialism to the mind bender stage. We’re talking what appears to be end game defcon level five to those who want to try to stop it. That’s a fact, there should be no doubt any longer, and make no mistake, what is happening in Iraq and Syria is U.S. imperialism in action. Just ask John McCain, or Lindsey Graham, or John Boehner. who agree with Obama.  If you believe them relative to what’s happening in Iraq and Syria right now, then you must be a Democrat.

It wasn’t always that bad, not when Bush was President. In fact, that site actually rode the coattails, unjustly considering it’s owner, management and agenda, of the antiwar movement by pretending to be against Bush (U.S.) imperialism while building it’s partisan democratic party corporate establishment blog. Although in the end, the semi-antiwar stance was deceitful and based on partisan poltiics instead of opposition to U.S. imperialism. Once Obama was elected, the democratic partisan’s savior who can do no wrong, it was all antiwar, anti-imperialism downhill from there for the Democratic party, partisan democrats, and Daily Kos. At this point there is just a tiny contingent remaining who will use their voices against war and imperialism on that site and in the Democratic party. There are many more that say they’re against U.S. imperialism but they continue to vote for the Democratic party which supports it. They have some soul searching to do if they are really against all this murder and manipulation. It’s pretty hard to support something and be against it at the same time, especially something so fucking evil.

It’s nearly always been the left leaning people who have led the protests against war and imperialism. There are still many out there, many organizations. Many of those organizations have been weakened since the early part of the century due to lack of participation (Obama), lack of money for organizing (Obama), and many are just plain getting old. Not enough new blood has taken up the slack at this point. Climate change seems to get the bigger share of the youth. Maybe they’re used to war now and think it’s normal. Maybe climate change is more fashionable because they can pretend to be earthy like the Indians. We’ve seen that before with the hippies. Then most of us became yippies. Yippiee!! Socrates knew, humans are predictable.

The Democratic Party is a warmonger imperialist political party. It fully supports U.S. imperialism from top to bottom. It is represented as such by the POTUS CINC, Obama, who has now attacked seven Muslim countries since in office, in less than six years. Can you count them? (Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, and Somolia.) The Democratic Party and Daily Kos have been right behind him all the way, including now with his illegal bombing in Iraq and Syria. At this point, neither has any moral standing left when it comes to war and imperialism. The verdict is in and they are both joined at the hip and all in for Obama’s imperialism and resulting wars. If you vote for and support the democratic party you are voting for U.S. imperialism and all it entails. It’s kind of like buying shirts from Walmart made in those Bangladesh sweatshop factories, only worse.  Hey man, own up.

What does that mean? It means what we’ve known for years, that the Democratic party and all it’s accoutrements is part of the establishment, part of the 1% or less of the population that it represents. There will be no participation against U.S. imperialism and it’s wars from the Democratic party or Daily Kos.

Until we get a republican president it will stay that way relative to the partisan democrats and the Democratic party. I think it’s too late for the party, which amazingly is prepping it’s serf delusionoid partisans for Hillary “Rodman” Clinton, warmonger and imperialist extraordinnaire. But, if an effort could be made, it would be to punish those democratic politicians, and by extension the entire party, by removing from office the 114 Democratic party congressional representatives (a higher percentage voting yes than republicans) and 44 Democratic party senators (also a higher percentage voting yes than republicans) that recently voted for the latest imperialist plan in the ME/NA region, H.J. Res. 124, Obama’s illegal imperialist war crime plan to bomb Iraq and Syria.

If you are against U.S. imperialism, DO NOT Vote for these people.  They are accessories to war crimes.

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/201…

http://www.senate.gov/legislat…

However that works out, we who are against U.S. imperialism should know that we cannot count on the Democratic party or any of it’s allegience subjects, not while Obama is President. We have over two more years of Obama as President. Many thought his second term would show less proclivity toward imperialism and war as a lame duck with no reelection aspirations. Those of us that knew better, knew the imperialist agenda would continue no matter what, the only factors being timing and tactics. Obama still has plenty of time to kill us all. And we have this big fucking political party supporting him.

I have Joslyn Stevens's permission to repost this interview.

This week I conducted an interview with a progressive populist I follow on twitter, Priceman, whose annoying habit of using facts and common sense with a dose of in-your-face realness to prove his points tends to piss off democrats over at the “progressive” DailyKos. I feel it’s necessary to showcase often ignored voices representative of the people who speak truth to power and will continue to do so on a weekly basis.

The democratic blog DailyKos claims to be a reform blog open to all views but as we both know opposing views aren’t welcome. Are they doing their readers a disservice by promoting and defending a corporate Democratic Party that doesn’t represent working-class Americans and hasn’t for a long time?

A. Hi, Joslyn. It’s nice to talk to you. I have a lot to say on this topic. Not only are they doing their readers a disservice, they are making a laughing stock of the so called progressive blogosphere as a whole. Wanting “more and better Democrats” does not mean a whole lot when those who administer and run that site, coddle so called Democrats that are openly hostile to the programs that shaped the party’s platform in the first place, from the New Deal and Great Society. That site’s administrators play favorites there and try to hide it; President Obama and his enablers are who take precedence over everything else on Daily Kos.

I base this on the very poor job their site moderators do at that site, and the lack of self awareness that comes from denying it, which happens every time anyone looks into it. There are a number of good diarists that write there, but they do not receive equal treatment; posters whose sole mission is to protect their hero in the White House, are allowed to break the site rules and troll any posts not favorable to the Obama administration. And if anyone retaliates against them, only then does the site’s administration get involved in order to put them in their place while pretending to just enforce site rules, which are arbitrary, selective, and not clearly defined at all except in secret.

Sure, they might ban an obvious sockpuppet whose sole mission is to attack Glenn Greenwald, but that is low hanging fruit and does not hide the obvious bias at that Democratic gatekeeper site. The business model there relies on pretending that every problem in our society must be the fault of the Republicans, instead of both parties colluding together for the continuing grand austerity bargain happening now with the first step: the sequester. The White House wrote the sequester and put out there, but to mention that is blasphemous at Daily Kos like most other critiques of the President when it comes down to it. This is specifically true during election season; posters are banned for harshly criticizing the President.

I witnessed this first hand, and even I was warned in 2012 for doing so; I merely uprated a factual comment that in some ways there is little difference between Mitt Romney and President Obama. The 2012 Obama campaign went after Bain for outsourcing jobs, closing plants, and devastating US communities. Yet, now that the election is over, President Obama has appointed Jeff Zients, a former executive of Gov. Mitt Romney’s Bain & Company investment firm, as head of the National Economic Council.

To add insult to injury, on civil liberties issues, the owner of the Daily Kos, Markos Moulitsas, was asked how he feels about what Snowden revealed with regard to the 4th amendment being trashed by this administration continuing and expanding the Bush administration’s NSA war on terror abuses, and he said he honestly didn’t care. He said that worrying about spying was a very white privileged thing to do. However, anyone who has done even a modicum amount of research, knows that New York — pretty much the whole country, but especially New York — has changed after 9/11; it is now outfitted with a massive surveillance arsenal to more efficiently conduct racist policies like stop and frisk which does affect black people suffering from real white privilege in the real world.

This is similar to the drug war President Obama is continuing, which is also racist, since most incarcerations for drug possession are disproportionately black even though white people use the same amount or much more in many cases. Some on Daily Kos will try to deny this by saying the drug war is mostly a state issue and that you should just go yell at your local mayor and city council, and leave Obama alone. That would be fine if the Obama administration did not deploy for-profit prison lobbyists in their Justice Department like U.S Marshall, Stacia Hylton. The Prison Industrial complex lobbies all states to have access to the prisoners arrested for drug possession in whatever state they set up. This is coddled and supported at the federal level.

Not to mention all the broken promises from Eric Holder and the President about not raiding medical marijuana dispensaries. None of this is mentioned on Daily Kos when it comes to issues about race, and it’s perpetuating real racism which involves institutions like this and always has. So, this is not something Markos — and those that like him who scoff at what Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden have revealed — can ignore while claiming to care about real white privilege, real racism, and what’s going on in the real world on the federal level and at the state level aided and abetted by the drug warriors in the Obama administration at the federal level.

No, once Markos wrote a book about “Crashing the Gate” with regard to the political blogosphere he was instrumental in creating, along with Howard Dean’s campaign, in filling the void that the bought oligopoly — the mainstream media that failed and is still failing the public — left. However, now that a Democrat is in the white house, sites like Daily Kos are gatekeepers. They are not interested in crashing any gates. This is how they run the site and ultimately this is their business model.

I wrote there for a time, but I would now warn others that Daily Kos is not the site where intellectual debate is allowed on anything substantial. Only about how bad the other bought political party is. That is, instead of Democrats, with few exceptions, and Republicans working together to subvert representative Democracy. Oh, how mighty the once promising site has fallen and will continue to fall now that we know what the site’s true purpose is; shilling for the status quo as long as it has a (D). This, we all now know and can see.

There’s no reason to read anything on that site. It’s no different than what’s on MSNBC.

This is not directed at the reality based The Stars Hollow Gazette 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?

It’s nice to see that Daily Kos is focusing on important things like Rush Limbaugh….

…and not silly news stories like:

‘People keep falling sick’: How poor Indians are recruited for clinical drug trials

Volt production halted; 1,300 workers out of work

High health care costs: It’s all in the pricing

Red Cross says Syrian authorities blocked aid to Bab Amr; atrocities reported

High turnout reported in Iran for parliamentary elections

Miami valedictorian fighting deportation

I know all too much about writing for free.  I do it here all the time. It’s a labor of love.  I’ve been at it for more than 900 blog posts and more than 5 years.  I know about writing without being paid for it.  Despite that, and despite my understanding that when I post at group blogs I know I won’t get paid, I am absolutely furious about the AOL-Huffington Post Deal.  Why?  Because the writers are getting screwed, and they’re not going to get a cent out of the deal. Not a sou.

The news this morning–  I’m sure you haven’t missed it–  was that that beleaguered, dinosaur of dial up AOL has bought Huffington Post and made that doyenne of self promotion and faux progressive politics, Arianna, an AOL executive.  Here’s the essence of the story from the New York Times: