(See below)  <g>

And Granny, get your gun! Them holier than thou candidate thumpers are coming up the garden path. I'll go get some rock salt shells. A blast or two in their backsides'll keep away fer a while.

addition to this diary.  Thank you.

the story on the front page here today about the destruction of those emails and all the criminal activities still be carried out by this administration.

I guess that 7 years under the rule of Bush II has made me paranoid, but I sometimes wonder if there aren't "saboteurs" wandering around dKos making trouble. I'm not trying to suggest that every person who writes a diary or comment in favor of a candidate is a troublemaker, but that there are people subtley dropping a word here and there to encourage disharmony.

We're all famililar with trolling, but I think we forget sometimes that the best trolls aren't the ones who charge in and make a lot of noise. Those trolls get kicked out fairly quickly, and do little damage. The really good trolls move quietly among the group, scoring points by making us argue amongst ourselves without getting caught.

I have my candidate picked out. I have my 2nd choice picked out and then 3rd. Reading someone's trashing of my candidate is not going to change my mind. In fact, I will be less likely to vote for the person who has such hateful supporters.

Today I was ready to yell Stop the Insanity. Remember that lady? I was thinking, Gawd, what has happened to us? All these issues are appearing daily and if it was 10 months ago, we would be thrilled  at all the material we have to work with now. Instead, we are eating our own and it not a lot of fun. I have been here since November 04 and this is the least fun I have had on this site.

I am suspicious of the nubies who are plugging their candidate and trashing anyone else and wary of the old timers who should know better. Oh wait, Keith is a Nubie and he had to sign on to defend himself against accusations he was being partial on his show. Amazing, but glad to have him as one of us and I bet he now knows the feeling of writing witty comments. I like witty. I don't like nasty havoc among the pie fighters. If you want to post a positive diary without mud slinging, that is good information. Please do so but let's stick with the current issues happening right now by GWBush and company. He is the enemy among us, not each other.

... in spades!

I think being wrapped up too much in candidate minutia is blinding us to other things that should be accomplished before we get to the end of August and the DNC.

If we don't pay attention to things besides candidate diaries, one day we may wake up and wonder how the hell we got into an official dictatorship when no one was paying attention... and that's straight out of Turd Blossom's manual.... Distract sheeple with all these other insignificant things and no one will notice the crimes and ursurpation of power going on right under our noses.  It could even lead to a Rethuglican win in November....

the other day I came on DKos and looked and NOTHING but candidate diaries..no news or political discussion at all. That is the main reason I haven't been posting much lately.

I like and am going to vote for John Edwards. But I come to DailyKos for more than political discussion, I come here for news, the real news, the stories behind the MSM reports. The DKos roster of star investigators lets me know that the truth is not dead, it is alive, kicking and yelling right here. But that has changed recently.

Lately, I come here and nope, no news, everyone still thrashing out candidate diaries, by the hundreds. Some of them are good policy discussions on various planks in the political platform, others are not. I am amazed that the candidates haven't had someone checking on what is being said on their behalf here on DKos.

I know I would if I were running for office. And I would be emailing the people putting up the trash diaries in my name and telling them, "No, that is NOT appropriate, and I DO NOT subscribe to your point of view and I do not condone your attacks on my fellow candidates." If the trash diaries continued, I would post a diary disowning the people who had posted them and name them and their diaries in the process. Some of the crap that is going under the guise of "discourse" is nothing less than libel. I always thought that was the province of Faux News, not DKos.

I think every diarist who is going to put out a candidate diary should have this tattooed on the inside of their eyelids.."Just because you can say something about someone doesn't mean you should."

In 2001, as soon as Bush took office, I created a little mailing list of about 25 progressive friends who were too busy to ferret out the real news every day and began sending them an assortment of "must read" daily articles. Eventually, through "referrals," that list grew to about 60 people. I quit doing it in 2002 when blogs made alternative voices easier to find.

But a number of those people have told me that, if I hadn't done that, they wouldn't have known about most of the things I highlighted in those first two years. So much of this administration's approach to seizing power has been about working in the dark, out of sight. I might have been extra sensitive to that in 2001 because I had had many years experience watching Dick Cheney operate by that time. After he nominated himself, lied about his WY residence to get around Constitutional prohibitions, and then stole his way again into the White House, I knew we were in trouble.

They have had two plans from the beginning:  work under the radar to cement power and keep the news cycle so short -- i.e., do so much so fast -- that no one could possibly remember all the radical changes.

Only the vigilance of every single meerkat, and other species, will prevent them from succeeding in this. And vigilance is not a quality I would lately assign to dKos.

Power once given is rarely conceded freely.

Moves are being made just outside our line of vision

Not always. Sometimes they are made right in front of our noses, only people are too busy cheerleading and attacking to see even that.

not a vegan!!

If my candidate or candidates were delivered to the American people on a sliver platter, the last thing I'd want would be negative discussion of them here.  But maybe if I was really smart, I'd rather have it here than initiated by the Republicans.

We complain about Republicans being robots who will quietly follow whomever is chosen.  Many of us feel that we have to try to stop some very huge mistakes from happening even if we are not in agreement with the majority of those on this site.

If not now, when?

Looser!

My candidate will cure cancer while feeding the hungry of the world with a couple of loaves and fishes. That's right after my candidate negotiates the mideast peace agreement.

Your candidate TOTALLY SUCKS.