Grass. Grass. Grass.

I love grass, don't you?

STICK 'EM UP! YOU'VE BROKEN THE RULES! If your diary's tags have brought you here read on.

As the illegal domestic spying scandal unfolds and as midterms approach, your discretion as a member of this community will be CRITICAL.  I ask that we all exercise our discretion with more judgment in two key areas: submitting entries and recommending diaries.

Given kos's credentials, having both a journalism and law degree, he is at the very least the equivalent of an editor of a successful magazine on a still developing communication medium.  The internet will not replace journalism, simply the medium of which it is communicated, and judging by all the trees that will save: good!  I would dare say that there is an artistry to "blogging" as there is to any communication medium, it's what I often strive for when I have the time and peace of mind.  Many of you might accuse me of "sucking-up", and perhaps that's true, but I believe DailyKos to be one of the most beautiful, thought-out websites on the internet.  If you never have I suggest subscribing to DailyKos, if only for a month (it only costs $4 dollars), then visit our competitors like Boing Boing, PostSecret or Instapundit: they don't even compare.

This site is free in every sense of the word. No one forces you to come here and participate: you come here because like all humans you're addicted to expressing yourself, so what is it we on DailyKos are aiming to express?  

We know for a FACT that there are animals that would put out "feelers" offering to pay people to blog for them.  All I/We want to know is, would melvin take them up on the offer?  If you read some of his/her comments/replies to anti-animal Kossacks (trolled so I can't link to them) it's not hard to understand why I am asking this valid, legitimate question.

melvin seems to have no problem with answering simple yes-or-no questions.   Rather, he/she goes off on these tirades, that address the real issue (see examples below the fold).  I'm not the only person he/she has done this to.  This question has never been asked.  Yet, each time, he/she refuses to give a straight answer.  Why do you suppose that is?  melvin have you been bought and paid for by the Radical Salamander Agenda??!.

There are many things people are dealing with every day that I fear happening to me.  I don't ever want to know what it's like to have taken a life, even in self-defense.  I don't ever want to drop a bomb or leave one on a train.  I don't ever want to be blown to parts or pierced with a bullet.  I don't ever want to know what must be going through these peoples mind (taken from RubDMC's Daily Witness diaries):

I never hope to witness such a scene.

I never want my sister or anyone to experience this.

Right now the "left-blogospher" struggles with just how deep allegations of sloppiness on 9-11 should be made political.  I remember a diary I particularly liked but just because it had the tag "9-11 was an inside job" I went from recommending to unrecommending.  It's an interesting question, but seriously guys some things should just wait until we're in power and can have a real bipartisan investigation before declaring it was an "inside-job".  The investigation was clearly white-washed, yes, but theories of inside job are founded on 2nd hand evidence from what I can tell.  Clearly there are many of us who have had harsh thought for such theorists.

It's hard to sleep at night.  Your mind is so anxious with burning thoughts of how to survive can only be calmed by substances, preferable a $1.70 40 oz. of Ice House.  Being poor doesn't justify violence, stealing, or vandalism but it affects every action you take.  It weighs on your mind like a burden, it forces a fatalism onto your every thought and spoken word.  It means walking your sneakers thin and wearing whatever you raided from Old Navy's clearance rack for years.  You cling to all your possessions and your past because it's all you have.