@Fionnsboy TOP is run just like the Democratic Party. It's private property, owned and operated by the 0.01%s. The proles are tolerated, but only to the extent that they support and serve the purposes of management. Management makes all decisions unilaterally, any ideas that come from the proles will be taken as a "suggestion" at best, and treason at worst.

They want our money and our support, and in return they give us virtually nothing.

I find it hilarious that they wonder why they couldn't take MI.

Interesting that the self-destructive behavior of TOP mirrors that of the Party it worships. The former's number/hits/members are plummeting-- what to do? Ban more members! Censor! Restrict free and open exchange (at a time when free and open exchange MUST happen)!

The Party? Loses to the most imbecilic, moronic, unqualified candidate in the history of our country by running a two-billion-dollar infused candidate that exemplifies (and with her spouse is a primary cause of) the almost-traitorous drift of the once great People's Party of FDR, JFK, RFK, MLK, etc with its abandonment of the people, wages, jobs, health care, unions, etc so it might run into the arms of the MIC, Wall Street, Corporations/Lobbyists, for profit prisons, etc; then, rather than learn from this debacle, doubles-down, replaces Ellison with Perez, declares "nothing wrong here" (Pelosi) does virtually nothing for the two special elections in Kansas and Montana where we had truly progressive people running, but then spends $30 million on a mealy-mouthed Hillary-boy neophyte who doesn't support Medicare for All, a Living Wage, (he said he was in favor of an increase in the minimum wage, but never said how much) tax equality, etc, all the while fueled (the Party and TOP) by an undertone of viciousness, pettiness, revenge, group-think, and suppression, and a keen, almost clinical, aversion to do any needed soul-searching, admission of wrong, and resultant change-- and this has been going on through the loss of over 1000 seats on a national and state level!!!!!!

It sounds to me like Kos had been promised some kind of high position in Her Heinous' administration, and is still throwing things around, this time non-fealty bearing members. Yes, I said her Heinous, for she and her husband and their grifting, war-loving, Neoliberal ilk have been a cancer on this party since they first crawled out of Arkansas. But 'they' (and TOP, and its group-think Hillbots) rather than do some much-needed soul-searching, write diary after diary excoriating Trump (not that he shouldn't be...), Russia, Russia, Russia, and blaming everyone but themselves (Russia again, Comey, Bernie, racism, misogyny, deplorables, the media (!!!!)) while ignoring the elephant (as it were) in the room, i.e., that people who voted for Obama (twice!) finally realized they were being kicked further to the curb by these self-serving sucklers at the corporate teat, and in desperation (or perhaps revenge) turned to the only other option.

How pathetic that they couldn't see that the ultimate white privilege was to support Hillary, in the face of a movement (not just a man) whose mission was to return government to the people vis a vis health care for all, 'free' education (not free at all but paid for by our taxes), a living wage, a multi-billion dollar jobs/infrastructure program, post offices as banks/community centers (Debbie 'Pay Day Loan Wasserman Schultz didn't like that one!) an urgent focus on the most pressing issue of our time, climate change (Climatologist James Hanson declared HRC's (the Queen of Fracking!) climate change proposals utterly inadequate and "just plain silly") etc etc.

Delphine, you were far too kind and gracious in this Swan Song, and TOP will be a less civil, less diverse, less balanced, and less informed place without your voice. In the final analysis, they didn't deserve you.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal @Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

. . . they called TOD on "progressive" back in June 2008. I'm in awe of your persistence in trying to resuscitate the victim. It does you merit.

But we're gonna need a new descriptor for anyone who actually wants to improve things for anyone below the top 1% in the U.S. of A.

With some seriously unfounded ideas:

We're literally fighting for the car keys because one wants to take a left turn and the other a right, but all combinations of turns result in progressive policies (social, racial, and economic) enacted by a progressive majority. At least that's the goal, right? - See more at: https://caucus99percent.com/content/statement-delphine-one-recently-bann...

OK. I'm calling time of death on the word "progressive." It now literally means nothing at all, because, not only can you get to "progressive policies enacted by a progressive majority" by turning right OR left, you can also get there through "all combinations of turns!" So, as long as you get into the majority, regardless of how you get there, you now have a progressive majority, whose policies, of course, will also be progressive, except that no-one knows what the hell that means except that it has this logo on it:

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal How are we going to make progress if we aren't progressive?

With some seriously unfounded ideas:

We're literally fighting for the car keys because one wants to take a left turn and the other a right, but all combinations of turns result in progressive policies (social, racial, and economic) enacted by a progressive majority. At least that's the goal, right? - See more at: https://caucus99percent.com/content/statement-delphine-one-recently-bann...

OK. I'm calling time of death on the word "progressive." It now literally means nothing at all, because, not only can you get to "progressive policies enacted by a progressive majority" by turning right OR left, you can also get there through "all combinations of turns!" So, as long as you get into the majority, regardless of how you get there, you now have a progressive majority, whose policies, of course, will also be progressive, except that no-one knows what the hell that means except that it has this logo on it:

@Mark from Queens

It's appropriate, I think, to remember that (a) delphine was never as far to the left as many here are (and, in fact, many here are not as far to the left as some), and (b) she's in that first stage of breaking up, which almost all of us went through and many are still going through, which is why this story of dK's decline still resounds with us instead of just boring us to death. It's sad to watch, but we all witnessed that sadness more than once. This is not where we criticize the victim, but lend a shoulder.

Sorry to hear about your banning Steven; and I always appreciated delphine's even-keeled and observant comments. But it's kind of pathetic to see this kind of groveling. It's really like being called into the principal's office in high school, of which I know a little about

These phonies, these Protectorates of a failed and corrupt party beholden only to the big money interest of Wall St, Corporate America and Big Pharma, have no interest in the truth, examine why they've lost so many seats nationally, are hemorrhaging membership among the electorate. Why would anyone waste time with those duped robots, expect for to look at as a bellwether for what the MSM is saying and what the next round of propaganda will be?

That place is a complete joke, full of pretenders, living comfortably (white and black), having ensconced themselves too snugly inside the MSM pro sports version of how they view and interpret
politics/history/sociology/economics (the last three practically non-existent). They're so blinded by party politics as not to the reality of American history and fundamental truth about the predations of a Duopoly system beholden to Big Money interests that just serves to divide and conquer the 99%, of which we all, of the human race, belong, but are forced to live within the maniacal dictates of a greedy 1% who play both parties like a fiddle.

DMW nailed it. It's like a peaceful California hippie town, with a socialist/anarchist outlook, being invaded by drunken, obnoxious Neoliberal yuppies partying at 80's tribute band shows and chanting USA!USAUSA!, shopping at all the new monopoly chains, while muttering sweet-nothings "advocating" socially liberal views of equality, as long as their money and lifestyle wasn't challenged.

And it's not just about we "white hippies" here, in that kind of scenario. Even the most cursory look into radical Black leaders of the 60's shows there was a very real coalescing of what Huey Newtown of the Black Panthers called "Inter-communalism," which he expressed in a letter to John Lennon in reference to his song "Imagine." As a white participant in the BLM movement I saw enough to be convinced.

Bobby Seale and Huey Newtown making allies with John Lennon, who financially back some of their initiatives and publicly invited them on his media platform; The Black Panthers and Young Patriots in Chicago forming mutual aid groups: Rap Brown saying the hippies were the only ones who were inviting to the black community and their struggles.

Anybody who is serious about activism, changing the plight of the world knows That Place is a massive joke, a deathtrap for real movement-building. The willful ignorance there to accept the truth of Howard Zinn's life's work, to show that all progress has come from grassroots activism and social movements, was most offensive. As MLK said, what good is the right to sit at a lunch counter if we can't even buy a hamburger.

I began to write an essay on how fraudulent that place is, with examples especially of how the Black contingent were completely out-of-touch with the Black Lives Matter movement and the amazing, energy coursing through the country, especially in the black community, for wholesale change economically and politically, outside of the parties.

The folks There had no or lukewarm interest in this kind of stuff. It was telling to me, and a harbinger of things to come that were exposed for all-time during the Primary.

@Mark from Queens

These phonies, these Protectorates of a failed and corrupt party beholden only to the big money interest of Wall St, Corporate America and Big Pharma,

The military industrial complex is sucking all the oxygen (money) out of the rooom. When the drone king started using them in Pakistan which had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks which was the excuse they needed to unleash the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Which for some reason was written before 9/11, and just needed a New Pearl Harbor event to put it in effect
Obama unconstitutionally used the AUMF that was given for Bush the Lessor to start the war in Irag and continue to take his war of terror on the road to 8 more countries that had nothing to do with the attack.
Then when he and his sidekick Hillary decided to overthrow Gaddafi for the same offenses that the two of them were overseeing here with the OWS protest, where were the countless diaries on ToP about this?
If I or anyone else who had a problem with his use of drones that were killing innocent civilians on a scale of 9/11 each month, we were told to shut the fuck up because HE HAS THIS.
And drones saved our soldier's lives because they didn't have to be in harm's way, don'tcha know?

Where were the massive world wide protests against the Libyan wars like we saw with the Iraq war? Seriously, if the Iraq war was bad then wasn't the Libyan one just as bad? HELL YES!!!

Imagine if those trillions of dollars that were spent after Obama became president were spent on health care for all, free college, a f*cking jobs program that would have seen livable wages and all the other things that this country is lacking because of over 50% OF OUR SPENDING GOES THE THE MICC, the spying ICC, and all the other ICCs.

And since Libya worked out so well for them, they decided that they should continue their wars for profit and attack Syria, which has put us on a very real path to all out nuclear war.

Hillary was campaigning on making this threat much more real by creating a no fly zone over Syria and STILL people were going to vote for her. The same people that voted for Barack because of her Iraq war vote. Really, they didn't see their hypocrisy ?

Sorry to hear about your banning Steven; and I always appreciated delphine's even-keeled and observant comments. But it's kind of pathetic to see this kind of groveling. It's really like being called into the principal's office in high school, of which I know a little about

These phonies, these Protectorates of a failed and corrupt party beholden only to the big money interest of Wall St, Corporate America and Big Pharma, have no interest in the truth, examine why they've lost so many seats nationally, are hemorrhaging membership among the electorate. Why would anyone waste time with those duped robots, expect for to look at as a bellwether for what the MSM is saying and what the next round of propaganda will be?

That place is a complete joke, full of pretenders, living comfortably (white and black), having ensconced themselves too snugly inside the MSM pro sports version of how they view and interpret
politics/history/sociology/economics (the last three practically non-existent). They're so blinded by party politics as not to the reality of American history and fundamental truth about the predations of a Duopoly system beholden to Big Money interests that just serves to divide and conquer the 99%, of which we all, of the human race, belong, but are forced to live within the maniacal dictates of a greedy 1% who play both parties like a fiddle.

DMW nailed it. It's like a peaceful California hippie town, with a socialist/anarchist outlook, being invaded by drunken, obnoxious Neoliberal yuppies partying at 80's tribute band shows and chanting USA!USAUSA!, shopping at all the new monopoly chains, while muttering sweet-nothings "advocating" socially liberal views of equality, as long as their money and lifestyle wasn't challenged.

And it's not just about we "white hippies" here, in that kind of scenario. Even the most cursory look into radical Black leaders of the 60's shows there was a very real coalescing of what Huey Newtown of the Black Panthers called "Inter-communalism," which he expressed in a letter to John Lennon in reference to his song "Imagine." As a white participant in the BLM movement I saw enough to be convinced.

Bobby Seale and Huey Newtown making allies with John Lennon, who financially back some of their initiatives and publicly invited them on his media platform; The Black Panthers and Young Patriots in Chicago forming mutual aid groups: Rap Brown saying the hippies were the only ones who were inviting to the black community and their struggles.

Anybody who is serious about activism, changing the plight of the world knows That Place is a massive joke, a deathtrap for real movement-building. The willful ignorance there to accept the truth of Howard Zinn's life's work, to show that all progress has come from grassroots activism and social movements, was most offensive. As MLK said, what good is the right to sit at a lunch counter if we can't even buy a hamburger.

I began to write an essay on how fraudulent that place is, with examples especially of how the Black contingent were completely out-of-touch with the Black Lives Matter movement and the amazing, energy coursing through the country, especially in the black community, for wholesale change economically and politically, outside of the parties.

The folks There had no or lukewarm interest in this kind of stuff. It was telling to me, and a harbinger of things to come that were exposed for all-time during the Primary.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

And it seems like it's not coming from here but somehow the zeitgeist, that one cannot be for economic justice AND for social and racial justice. Those of us who think we can and must address both were routinely savaged for being all about 'privilege' and throwing women and PoC under the bus in favor of white racists. And once that took hold here, we were caught up in a fight we for some reason could not find our way out of.

Now that I've read the whole sad thing, this is the part still keeps coming back.

For some reason? Not coming from there?

Is she serious? This racial divide on dkos is intentional, blatant, and it's coming directly from Kos. Reinforced by the people he promotes and hires and features on his site. This has been obvious for a long time now.

When the first essay on this recent incident appeared here, I once again succumbed to curiosity and looked in. Bob Johnson had a rec list diary about it. This theme was prevalent. The prevailing message is that you have to worship Hillary/the Clintons/DNC neoliberal ideology, or you're a racist. Period. Wanting single-payer healthcare is racist. Wanting a higher minimum wage is racist. Tuition free college, racist. It's fucking ridiculous.

ANY idea of policies that help *everyone* is strictly forbidden there. They hate -- hate, hate, hate -- white working people who are struggling and need help. The attacks on WWC (white working class) were ubiquitous. They want us dead, the sooner the better. Kos believes white poor people deserve death. He said so openly not too long ago. His site reflects that. It's pretty clear that's what this is about.

The purges will continue until the only white people left there are those who grovel and agree with that belief, that we deserve nothing but to wither and die off as quickly as possible.

It is coming from there, Delphine. From kos and his followers. Wake up and smell the coffee.

They don't want economic justice for poor or struggling white people. They truly don't. They don't even care that millions of poor and struggling black people and Latino people need these things too. They will sacrifice them to the higher goal of punishing white people who would benefit from anything like a progressive agenda in this country.

I quickly felt ill from the toxicity over there.

If I haven't said it lately: thank you, JtC and everyone who built this site and welcomed us refugees when it became clear that dkos was unhealthy and toxic. I'm sorry it took me so long to see that place for what it is. And very grateful for this site.

Whether or not I am ever able to post here [i.e., Dkos] again, I wish that for this site. That it becomes a microcosm of the party

Done. It is that. Right down to one half of it holding all the power and treating the other half like the nerdy new kid at a boarding school.

finding a way to heal this divide,

The party isn't trying to find a way to heal this divide. Neither, obviously, is Markos.

I do feel bad for the people who thought that if they were civil, kind, rational and conciliatory enough they would be allowed to stay at DKos and even be treated as friends by the people they see as being on the same team. But it was obvious to a lot of us by 2011 that, not only was that never going to happen, but that the Daily Kos site seemed to exist for the purpose of spreading the exact bullying dynamic that is the fundamental social contract inside the Democratic party. That bullying dynamic is the Democratic party's, shall we say, domestic policy. It's how it interacts within itself.

The frenemy relationship it has with the Republicans, in which Republican politicians are alternately demonic monsters who must be removed at all costs and rational people with whom we must engineer a civil compromise that unifies all, when Republican voters are alternately "deplorables" who degrade the national conversation and desired new recruits who will replace the working class voters that most of the Democrats are practically chasing out of their Big Tent with tazers, is one piece of the Democratic party's foreign policy: how it relates to things outside itself.

The other piece of the Democratic party's foreign policy is the Washington consensus: the unshakable promise to the wealthy of the country that the government will remain captured.

and that in the future no one who genuinely wants the party to heal and regain the majority (and isn't flagrantly and constantly violating site rules) is excluded just because they have a different point of view about how to get there. - See more at: https://caucus99percent.com/content/statement-delphine-one-recently-bann...

But there's the rub: the site rules, if they were not consciously designed to provide opportunities to ban dissidents, are certainly enforced that way, to the point that large numbers of people get banned without, apparently, even a nod given to the rules as a formality--again, Markos' site functioning as a "microcosm of the party."

@wilderness voice

Stalinesque is exactly right. Banning so many long time users who were seemingly dkos citizens in good standing could only have been done at Kos' direction. Whatever the exact reason may be I doubt this was merely petty personal politics. As such it bodes ill for the future of the Democratic party.

@UntimelyRippd I think this is all in preparation for another possible wave of exiles. I don't know whether they will come here or not, but it's as well to know they might.

it is that the minions at The Odious Place are saying and thinking about folks who occasionally experience actual moral qualms with respect to their political engagement, I suggest that in the not-much-longer run, and for their own emotional health, people need to put dailyPOS behind them.

I wandered off in hopeless dis-somethingorother almost 21 months ago, with a diary that somebody else -- some jackass, probably PhoenixWoman -- tagged as GBCW. It was interesting that about half the comments in that rec-listed diary were a pissing match.

It's also interesting that when I just reviewed it for the first time in months, I noted a few familiar names amongst the not-pissy commenters: Cassiodorus, thanatokephaloides, BOHICA.

@Citizen Of Earth

Be mindful of your own karma, because whatever you wish on others comes back at you threefold - or occasionally three times threefold.

I hardly ever agreed with anything Delphine said, but she had every right to say it - and throwing her under the bus without warning or explanation (have you paid ANY attention to the details?) is not something any reputable site should do.

she used to show up in the What's Happenin diaries at dkos (authored by Joanne Leon). She would act like a troll and bait people into fighting with her about Obama's purity with the intent of having her posse gangup on people an HR them to get them banned.

So yeah, fuck that delphine bitch. Glad she got banned. Bad Karma never expires.

@Citizen Of Earth Ultimately though it's a moderation problem. The site itself encourages that sort of posse behavior.

I'm glad we're here.

she used to show up in the What's Happenin diaries at dkos (authored by Joanne Leon). She would act like a troll and bait people into fighting with her about Obama's purity with the intent of having her posse gangup on people an HR them to get them banned.

So yeah, fuck that delphine bitch. Glad she got banned. Bad Karma never expires.

@native

with the aim of a sharpshooter. Especially deft with his comments about the media, and the "journalists" we once trusted and respected, I could only nod in agreement.

The situation is no better on television. Rachel Maddow, once the charming spokesperson of a kinder world, crazily unveils tax returns she found in Al Capone’s vault. Keith Olbermann — never charming but at least self-confident — now squats on the floor in promotional photos, swaddled in an American flag. The newer stars of the left — the Louise Mensches and Eric Garlands — are using game theory to outwit invisible Soviet assassins. Elected Democrats are paralyzed. They repeat, over and over, that none of this is normal, commit themselves to the fight, and then roll over, confirming the president’s appointments, praising the beauty of a missile strike, or begging the FBI to save them. Hillary Clinton emerges from the woods to blame Jim Comey, the DNC, and the Russians for her loss, and the day before the United States withdraws from the Paris Climate Agreement, she tweets a covfefe joke.

They have descended to a place that renders them all unrecognizable.

Great article. Thanks for the link.

by Emmett Rensin at the la review of books.

LIBERALISM IS NOT working. Something deep within the mechanism has cracked. All our wonk managers, our expert stewards of the world, have lost their way. They wander desert highways in a daze, wondering why the brakes locked up, why the steering wheel came off, how the engine caught on fire. Their charts lie abandoned by the roadside. It was all going so well just a moment ago. History was over. The technocratic order was globalizing the world; people were becoming accustomed to the permanent triumph of a slightly kinder exploitation. What happened?.

.

In the six months since the election of Donald Trump, American liberals have managed to regroup, assembling themselves into a self-styled “Resistance” and attempting to reassert control over a world they no longer recognize. But something happened out there in the desert. There is something off about them now. On every level, our most prominent technocrats have entered the new year like uncanny valley copies of themselves, stuttering and miming their old habits, with each take trying to remember what their lives felt like before the accident. They can’t quite get the message right. For months, serious journalists studied The Origins of Totalitarianism like a divination manual, wondering when Trump would pass his enabling act. First, the president was a fascist, until he failed to consolidate power. Then he was an authoritarian, until he showed no interest in micro- or macro-management. Then he merely had authoritarian tendencies, or something, and at any rate was probably a Kremlin agent.

The essay goes on to discuss Freud, the Id, and the Superego in relation to the liberal conception of morality. It's an intriguing attempt to explain why the wheels came off Hillary's machine so unexpectedly.