Oh- and to let the door hit me where the good lord split me.

Ayup.

It is about exchange of information and view points, and not about controlling the view points of others, as far as I'm concerned.

And I was actually very easy on Edwards. I am not a sycophant for anyone and if I think a candidate, especially one of our candidates, needs a kick in the pants, I will gladly perform that duty. If we don't, we get a replay of the 1994 Congressional elections.

I have this wierd theory that bloggers (and other journalists) are the Fourth Branch of Government. We ARE oversight. We have no voting power, but we have our voice and voice is a very powerful tool. So powerful it is the first thing fascism must silence - the right to free speech.

So the banning of folks over at Kos worries me. Yeah, some I am sure are warranted - spam diaries and such, but I have read some of the diaries of that got folks banned and I am at a loss. These were polite, well written and important. Some may disagree, but disagreement should not be a reason for banning.

Palestine is such a topic that seems to get a lot of folks booted. I would ask that everyone should keep an open mind about this issue. I would also like to recommend to everyone a film titled A Wedding In Ramallah.

And watch it with an open mind.

• the progressive movement is wide and growing, but needs all the friends it can get. When standard-bearers are perceived as arrogant and exclusive, we shut out a lot of people who want to belong and could add value in many ways. I've seen new, curious, excited first-posters get trounced by know-it-alls throwing the FAQ's at them for some mundane offense.

• in the same line of thought, hubris seems to have woven its way into the dkos framework. How many times can they repeat that it's kos' blog, and how the front-pagers have omnipotent powers, without the whole experiment starting to look like a sham...

• like with many institutions, hot air and belligerence seem to be effective personality traits to achieve positions of power. Armando was an early example of this: we were constantly reminded that we were in the presence of a talented debater, but I mainly just saw hot air and attitude. DHinMI is an extreme example: you'll be reading snippets of intuitive, value-added commentary from genuine thinkers like Josh, Glenn, Juan Cole, etc., and then suddenly you step on a big cowpie with byline DHinMI. Nine times out of ten he seems to be hoping that his belligerence will cover the mediocrity of his intellect, and of course the ace up his sleeve is that if he doesn't like your reply, he'll ban you...

• dkos administrators may be forgetting that one reason for the success of blogs is that people are fed up with being told by the mainstream media what information they are entitled to. I can understand the need to reduce the number of trolls on the site, because trolls by definition are spreaders of dischord and dis-information, without any good faith desire whatsoever to add to the dialogue. But to disallow any discussion of a topic as serious as possible vote fraud in Ohio: this brings us right back to where we started from with mainstream media and backroom producers deciding what we may and may not see.

• dkos is a bit conflicted when it comes to image. On the one hand, they're sensitive that they'll be perceived as a "conspiracy theory" site; yet on the other hand, the site is proud to have been directly and indirectly involved in helping uncover actual conspiracies, such as the Jeff Gannon affair, parts of the Abramoff conspiracies, etc. One the one hand, they aim to be a serious political blog, but then they accept ads like the infamous beach volleyball ads... On the one hand, they are disturbed (rightly so) by inhumanity in Saipan and Iraq, but on the other hand they demand "see no evil" when it comes to I/P.

• Progressives, like all groups, benefit from dialogue. If they ban all those whom they disagree with, the site will turn into a big amen corner. Nothing wrong with that per se, just that the value of the site becomes a lot less, and the site will be a lot farther from reaching its potential.

I still read blogs, comment now and then, and write an occasional piece. But after one too many pretty miserable experiences trying to belong to any blog "community" and to help it grow as a regular contributor,  it's clear that casual, free lance blogging is the only sensible road for this ol scribe!

ONward!

I will say that I was banned

1. because I think that the gay marriage issue cuts against Dems in the political sphere;

2. because I believe that illegal immigration is NOT an unmitigated good; and

3. because I was against impeachment.  I'm now for impeachment.

I was banned at kos the first time in the big purge of people who recommended the wrong diaries.  I recommended one that pointed out that some historical conspiracies turned out real, like the standard oil conspiracy to take over oil refineries, that resulted in passing the Sherman antitrust act, and the Tuskegee experiment, where black men with syphilis were left untreated.

Then I was banned 3 other times because I had already been banned that first time, but the discovery of my signing up with new accounts generally involved flamewars with Dhinmi.  I also know the conspiracy theory pet peeve is his, so the first purge banning was probably his doing too.

that is why I am very concerned about this overzealous Hunter purge.   Those who have been banned for no reason can now be banned for having been banned, despite the fact that Hunter admits he has no reason to ban them other than the fact that they expressed the wrong opinion.

The dkos suckups will lie about these posters and claim they were trolls, just like they did me.

Stray Roots Message Board,Thus far unmoderated! Dameocrat Blog

I was thrown off Free Republic years ago, and it was like a good flea dip as far as I am concerned, I never felt better and there has been no re-infestation of right winger fleas since!

I don't have many problems at Daily Kos, as my focus is primarily in ending the Iraq fiasco, bringing this administration to bow before the law of the land, and awareness of what is real, and what isn't in the Global Warming dust-up.

Ideas concerning gay rights must be addressed by a public ready for such issues.  Ideas about Israeli/Palestinian issues must proceed, but in this administration, screaming about the issue being an index for everything Middle Eastern is going to go nowhere.  For God's sake, As'ad Abu Khalil at Angry Arab can't even talk of his preference for Palestinian hummus as opposed to Lebanese hummus without someone screaming Anti-Semetism, or some else issuing a Fatwa-wa-wa-wa-wa over the matter.  Conditions have to change.  But I vehemently disagree with some at DK that I/P issues cannot be discussed!  That's cowardly, and stupid.  However, I am not so blind that to see in this atmosphere of intense propaganda, discussions of the I/P issue amounts to piss on a rock.

So, "I tip my hat for the new revolution"
"Take a bow for the new Constitution"
"Smile and grin at the change all around"
"Pick up my tools and work today"
"Just like yesterday"
"Then I get on my knees and pray"
"We don't get fucked again!"

For a whole bunch of comments, I suppose, all in one fatal late night comment string.

Lets see, first I confessed I once found the dreaded Ann Coulter hot.  ("A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.")  That got the collective community's back hair up.

Then, in the face of a withering barrage of attacks that got very ad hom, I made the mistake of using the word "strident," which I was unaware was verboten in feminist circles.  Then I called my Mom the original MILF, and confessed I was raised to open doors for women.

Then I got mad, went off, got mean (but still not personal!), and sort of dared them to ban me, and they did.  I felt bad the next day.  I really like that site, to this day.

Pretty shrill, though.  duck/cover

John O

Every once in a while, Dean Esmay purges his rolls in a drunken fit of unreasonable vitriol in order to make the world resemble his personal psychosis.

But with me, it was personal.  I had the audacity to defend Michael Moore.

Mark Adams from Dispassionate Liberal

1. Resemblance to a Harold Pinter play where everyone is shouting and no one is listening


2. Group think & group reaction type of cliqueness which tends to favor personality over content


3. Rules that MSOC states that aren't there but are there when expeidient...i.e. arbitrary deleting of diaries/comments


4. General hostility and incivility that are major barriers to effective discourse

My thinking is that it is possible to disagree without being entirely disagreeable. While I believe that a blog owner is entirely within their rights to run their blog as they see fit, I recognize my responsibility to spend my time on blogs that I can reasonably and rationally participate and I simply don't see DKos or MLW as blogs that are suitable for my time.

Being banned at some site is probably not a big deal but I would probably withdraw from that site long before it came to that because it's indicative that my opinions are not going to get through anyway.

What's ironic is that I was an extremely minor player in helping to organize one phase of one project of YKos 2006, but did not attend, and had been looking forward to attending this year.  Pity.

I have not been banned to my knowledge elsewhere.

Please check out Crablaw's Maryland Weekly for your Maryland commentary and snark needs.

As to Kos, I agree that Markos really jumped the shark on  the Kathy Sierra thing. But Daily Kos is much bigger than Markos and his enormous ego. I see Daily Kos as two different sites: the front page, to which I pay little attention, and the diaries, which are the only reason I keep coming back. Steve, I would encourage you to rethink your self-imposed exile. Really, who gives a shit about Markos? I find your diaries to be timely and illuminating.  I think your thoughts deserve all the exposure they can get.

Your boycott hurts you, and your readers, more than Markos.

"If Adolph Hitler flew in today, they'd send a limousine anyway" -- Joe Strummer

Well, needless to say, I have probably been banned more times than I can count. My first experience with political blogs was at Daily Kos. Being interested in values issues, like civil and human rights, poverty, etc., my readings of the front page and diaries were disappointing. Perhaps I was too impatient, but I eventually left for the more exciting world of being a liberal, often troll, on right wing blogs. As a troll, being a progressive/liberal Democrat from adolescence, I was very unsympathetic with the right wing Republican plate, and I was quite obvious about it in my posts. I did not last long on many of them as shergald.

Not in any order, my stay at Red State ended when I suggested that Lynn Swan's candidacy in PA may signal a turning point in the Republican party's dependence on Jim Crow Republicanism in the south to attain national offices. The end was swift. I never went back.

At Little Green Footballs, for some reason, my stay was prolonged in spite of intense arguments with Charles Johnson about his bigoted nature and prejudice against Arab peoples and Muslims, especially, Palestinians. I was particularly incensed at his prejudice against lizards and his use of the term lizardoids for everything and everyone he disliked. What have lizards ever done to deserve such treatment. Charles  was also pushing the Huntington nonsense about the West's conflict with Islam, a badly research piece of trash, and my critiques were not pleasant for the true believers that populate his site. My debates with Charles eventually ended when he outed me because my IP address corresponded to a State of Michigan site, my employer at  the time, and I got the hell out of there, but not I called him and his site the most bigoted one on the internet. After I left, he banned me, as I never succeeded in getting back in to make a pain of myself, especially on the Palestinian issue.

I had my longest stay at John Hawkins' place, Right Wing News. John can ban people but it is so easy to come back as with alterego that he had difficulty keeping me off. To his credit, he does allow a small number of left wing bloggers on his site, so long as they are not too effective in representing liberal Democratic positions. I lasted as shergald for many months. Thus, I had ample opportunity to argue with the right wing about all sort of things liberal Democrat argue about, such as poverty, wealth inequality, lack of universal medical care, Republican dependence on racial bigotry, evil Reagan politics, economics (about which I knew only a little), and all sorts of things. When I was eventually banned the first time, I came right back, and when discovered, I returned again, many times in many guises. I realized after a while that fraudulence and democratic principles were my fortes. You put them together. I never felt entirely comfortable about it, but after continually hearing the right wing's addiction to division, hate, and demonizing the poor, disadvantaged, the least able to defend themselves, it was no problem.

Returning to Daily Kos eventually, to sum up a long story, I defended the poor, those subject to bigotry, and illegal immigrants, those people that progressive/liberals typically defend. I felt that illegal immigrants were not any different from other Americans, given our immigrant heritage. But it was in the IP area, where I defended the Palestinian cause that I was eventually banned, twice, after being what I felt was an effective advocate. I won't go into the details. After the first occasion, I was rescued by a group of Dkos members who felt that it was unjustified, and eventually got me reinstated. I never knew why I was banned in the first place, but of late I notice that some dimmi administrators at Daily Kos are still searching for some rationale, going for the big one, criticism of Israel is antiSemitic (have a diary on board right now about that issue). Out of feelings of injustice, especially after noting that other Dkos members were being similarly banned for trivial or no reasons at all, I returned under the guise of altered identities (sock puppet is actually the wrong term to apply). In any case, those false identities enabled a continuation of advocacy for the cause, and resolved the problem of silence that erupted after my banning, on both occasions. With the publication of Jimmy Carter's courageous book on Palestine and the progressive lifting of the veil of propaganda Americans have been subject to for the past 25 years, it was no time to be squeamish about trivial blog morality.

If you don't like it Kos, get your own internet, was my attitude. Daily Kos is afterall a political blog and the members collectively determine the content.

So that's my history of being banned. Thanks for letting me tell it, and I hope that my friends and compatriots who felt deceived by my altered identities, whose diaries they sometimes unknowingly recommended, will understand. I also apologize to Jay Elias, often an opponent, who likewise complimented and recommended many of my altered identity diaries.

I enjoy all these sites, I really do (including the so-called paparazzis), except the wingnut ones like RedState and Freeperville. Oh, and I've never actually visited DU. Don't really care about it. Maybe that means that I stand for nothing in the eyes of some, or that I'm hopelessly sold out or compromised in x or y way, but that's how I feel.

Now that we're all at a point where many of these blogs have, for good or ill, solidified, I pretty much know what I'm going to get at a given high-profile blog, and adjust my expectations accordingly. On DKos, for example, I have and will never expect Markos to say anything about so-called "women's issues" without sticking his foot in his mouth, but I don't think everyone there- high or low profile- behaves that way, so I'm not going to write off the whole site for that reason or because of the I/P flap or the blogroll flap or whatever.

People are people and they're never perfect. I would guess that all of our expectations have been running a trifle high for a number of things, since the last 15 years have been so bizarre (and the last 7 have been so soul-deadening), so when people we thought we knew (itself a silly concept even if we've met blogiverse people in meatspace) disappoint us for one reason or another, it's awful easy to just jettison everything and look for some new haven.

It's hard to not get emotionally invested in this stuff, but maybe people shouldn't take everything so personally (or, hell, assume that someone's taking something personally!). We can't really know anyone via this medium- and not just cause no one knows you're a dog on the web- because of the ease of making impersonal snap judgements in this medium.

Not like I should have any credibility on this, of course. Most of the time I feel like a mere armchair activist fatally ensnared by my cushy western lifestyle. What was the term BooMan used from some article somewhere? "Chickenhawk Protestor?" Something like that.

Sorry for the ramble. Short answer: never been banned, and not looking to be, from anywhere.

mbr + dv + woyg

So, I decided to be a little more persuasive: I started posting comments all in gibarish,for example,
alskdlkdjflksdjfkdjkslkdfjlsdkjf.

Paragraphs and paragraphs like that. I could post comments like that much faster than they could TR them and delete them.

Finally Supersoling posted that it was not cool, and to come to the pond.

Finally I saw a comment by King Kos and told him that if he would not ban me, I would restart my disruptive behavior. So, he finally did.

Since then, I got another ID so I could go there and recommend BTers diaries.  

I say inexplicable because I always really liked most of the insights expressed by that person, (I think she's a woman with the last name O'Brien), and I was surprised at what I regarded as an excess of antagonisim in response to a post of mine where I expressed, (in what I thought was a respectful way), a subtle disagreement on something she had posted.

I still read Mahablog and still appreciate the often brilliant insight shown by the proprietor, but I don't bother to comment there any longer.

Denial is our most dangerous adversary.

I'm still trying to live down having to leave the class in 3rd grade for jumping up to touch the flag, so be kind.

I am new to this place and landed here because someone at a policy site I do comment on regulary mentioned a post here and after reading some it seemed like a fairly well rounded pretty open discussion site.

BUT....I have to say that a year or more ago I made some comments on a blog, a well known one, not DKos though or any overtly political one..and I guess the management didn't appreciate my "inquiring mind".

They didn't ban me but sent me an email saying .."you MUST quit asking our foreign policy experts questions about their personal political backgrounds or you will not be allowed to post comments".....heheheh...sig heil!...I took that as bad sign and deleted it from my reading list. I am pretty sure they would have banned me if I had gone back because no way would I have been able to resist not asking a question again after that.

I love your writing Steven, and I know you would never intentionally hurt anyone. But its just hard for me.

Doesn't information itself have a liberal bias? Steven Colbert