@dystopian
I'm glad you found your way here. Your wit and wisdom is always refreshing.

Open discussion boards are scarce these days, especially from the left-o-sphere. That free thinking policy leads to a lot of derision from the true believers, a phenomena old as civilization.

I used to get a kick out of searching the comments at la naranja amarga when certain posters would pound their chests in a virtue signalling swell of how terrible c99 was, in hopes of gaining brownie points from the assorted peanut gallery. Easy mojo for the ladder climbers. I used to push back on some of it and then decided that it was a waste of time and effort. You can't reach the unreachable.

Thanks for weighing in on your busy day.

Hi Fridayers, Hey JtC! Hope all are well!

I was quite late to all this blogosphere stuff... Perhaps a few years before the Ides of March decree I started visiting the orange satan site. It was such a mixed bag there. Some great posts and comments, and others not so much. I never registered just lurked. The comments often seemed to go off the rails. But there were some great progressive voices. Until March of what 2016? Then it went into the commode. It went from being fairly free and open, to having an agenda, in a little tiny box. Sycophantly fellating the Dems and DNC. I still go occasionally to read the aviation posts, only.

It was posts there that I saw someone mention C99 in a comment, as the hammer of DNC fellater chipmunk boy (apologies to chipmunks) came down. And so y'all are stuck with me now. It was my first (and remains my only) registration to a social media site. Sure I have been (are) in bird or reef-keeping groups, but that is special interest, not general politics. I do not recall who the poster was that said 'check out Caucus 99'. Within a year of the great departure of progressive voices from 'the other orange turd' a couple other sites I lurked at were JackPineRadicals and FeelTheBern. Just to know there were others outside the brainwashed box was great.

So, thanks to you JtC, and Joe with the Blues, for creating the place and keeping the lights on for all of us. It is a great thing and place to have. I wish I could do more to help, but am totally spent of time and money. I'm running late now so gotta fly.

Have a great day!

peace and love all,

@Lookout
your writing is the blogosphere's loss and c99's gain. Your Sunday OTs have become a pillar of the c99 standard as far as I'm concerned. Please keep it up.

Have a great Friday and weekend!

I couldn't bring myself to join the orange satan, but I lurked there especially on the BNR (Bernie news roundup). When the ides ban was announced I think it was Gulf gal and Raggedy Ann that recommended C99. I liked this place and have been a resident since March 2016.

I very much appreciate this community and a special thanks to you JtC for keeping the lights on and the place operating. This is the only social media platform where I participate...no facebag, twittersphere, googleplex, etc. for me.

Take care and everyone have a great Friday!

@enhydra lutris
at the Evening Blues back in the day when it was at DKos, did we not. I miss some of the folks that participated. Much of the c99 core group came from the DKos EBs as well.

Please tell us more about mom and dad's participation in the process. Nah, don't do that, I was just joking.

You've been a good friend and a steadfast supporter all these years. Thanks for that, mi hermano.

I suppose it is improper to start with my mom and dad's participation in the process, heh, So, at some point in Junior High, careening down the highway of life on foot, I took a left. That was kinda it for me. It wasn't long before I realized I was in completely the wrong town and after High School I headed north to Mecca Berkeley and the Bay Area just in time for FSM and decades of wild experiences.

Much later I found myself involved in a couple of political forums on Compuserve and wound up on staff on them and one other apolitical one, but AOL bought them out and it turned to shit and I bailed, but with a tendency to roam around on line a lot. At some point I stumbled across one or more communiques indicating that there was a great new online home for progressive thought, discussion, organization and all that: Daily Kos, so I went and had a look. After lurking a bit I joined, in part with an agenda to improve the level of discourse which I found disappointing in the high number of fallacies and other illogic in many of the comment threads. This was during the HRC v Obama pre-primary wars. If this was the epitome of lefty thought, thought I, then we're all doomed.

Though I originally intended to subtly (unfortunately I am not very capable of subtility) working to simply push back on illogic and afactuality, but wound up writing a lot of diaries on a lot of things and got invited to positions of some responsibility in a ton of forums. This was even while the place was becoming more repressing, restrictive and confining. Meanwhile I finally became aware of the evening blues and began hanging out there as it was quite refreshing and enjoyable. At some point, iirc, I may have assisted Joe with the evening greens, and at some point JtC got me involved in the weekend edition.

There was a lot of discomfort and discussion around the DK issues and plans for relocating at some point as a result, and at some point CSTMS asked me to participate in an alternative she was building and, on paper, I did. My participation was minimal because of the format and interface and god only knows what else and then I got an email from JtC who said that he had a substitute and I was approved but he needed an email to which to send my credentials, so I gave him one and here I is.

be well and have a good one

@Socialprogressive
wow, time flies!

Thanks for hanging with us and for hosting the great Friday Night Photos. It's one of my favorites.

I don't remember how I found my way to the blogosphere but it did start at DKOS in either late 2015 or early 2016. By that time it was already a swamp. I left there when Marky Moosetits issued his Ides of March decree and have not been back since. That's when I checked out C99 and found it to be a much more accommodating community and I liked what people had to say. Having been here for six years C99 feels like home and the members are family. Thanks for all the work you do to provide us a place to express our thoughts.

@mhagle
fellow Texan. Thanks for being with us. I enjoy your writing, please do more. That is, if you have the time. I know how busy you are.

This is an interesting read.

How did I get here? Similar to others but like Dysto and Lookout, I was late to the blog sphere. Not until 2015 when I was following Bernie's rise did I stumble upon DK. When I learned I could write essays there, I was really excited. Did a couple of climate change ones that made it out, but quickly realized there was a weird sort of censorship. I was already uncomfortable with the place when March 2016 hit. So glad to have found c99. It's the only social media I do as well. Did Facebook for a while . . . it was great to find old friends . . . but eventually I realized it annoyed me. Great freedom to quit in 2020 and delete it all. Lost touch with some friends though.

Thank you sincerely for keeping c99 going! Thanks also to all of the regular contributors!

@FutureNow
at la naranja amarga that I actually cringed when I saw their username. They were the ones that kept me from registering all those years. It was and still is filled with trolls and sock puppets, with a large contingent of operatives.

Thanks for finding your way here and hanging with us.

It was certainly refreshing to read “non-mainstream” views at a time when I hadn’t yet caught on that newspapers and cable news were promoting a pro-corporate agenda. As illuminating as the site could be, there was also plenty of partisan bunk - which didn’t bother me so much back then - and a tendency among commentators to speak in cliches (“That’s insulting to actual _____!”, “Teh stoopid! It burns!”, “Frist!”), which did annoy me.

By 2008, I was certain that the site was filled with trolls and sock puppets. Over the years, I had been castigated variously for my flaming pinko support of decriminalizing sex work and recreational marijuana, opposing the Keystone pipeline (“The American people believe it will mean jobs,” according to NO poll ever), packing the Supreme Court (“FDR already tried that”), and encouraging Elizabeth Warren to run for President in 2015 (“She doesn’t want the job!”, “We need her in the Senate!”). And of course, there was that entire contingent of alleged dedicated progressives that regularly promoted RKBA, and nothing else.

After the Ides of March, I was asked to kindly STFU, so I realized I had no further use for the place. I do miss Dallasdoc and Bob Johnson, though.

@lotlizard
That's one I visited daily. Is it still a thing?

I remember you from docudharma and writingintheraw as well, I think.

Thanks, lotl. Keep warm, my friend.

German Green party… German “alternative / undogmatic Left” (1968-generation counterculture, Sponti movement)… German daily die tageszeitung (now taz.de)…

(Not a supporter of the above anymore, now that German Greens, German “progressives,” and related milieu mostly seem to have become a blend of neocon Atlanticist, neolib globalist, and woke id-pol practitioner…)

When political blogs became a thing, began posting comments at Jeff Tiedrich’s The Smirking Chimp…

Registered at The Orange Place in 2005. Peak participation: live-blogging Arab Spring events in 2010 and 2011.

Fled the undemocratic Democrats’ crackdown in 2016. After brief interlude at Docudharma, ended up here following pfiore8 and Macedonian Signal.

@on the cusp
in more ways than one.

I find your Couples Cooking essays riveting, in a vicarious sense. I can sometimes picture myself, right there, in B's shoes, whipping up those culinary delights, donning a toque blanche, of course.

bored me, between trips around the globe. So, I browsed the internet a lot, happened upon a blog at a time when I had no idea what a blog was. Huffington Post. Months after joining, the place changed, and disagreeing with any essayist got you banned. I was banned, of course. It was later sold, became a news consortium.
I accidentally found Dkos. Either an ad, or some mention of it on MSNBC. I joined, supported the site, enjoyed it for OPOL, Dallasdoc, and the kitteh posts. Even before Bernie was a thing, I noticed posting was conditioning me and others to conform. There was always a concern the flying monkey squad would harass the hell out of you. I found Docudharma, spent a little time there, left Dkos at or near the Ides of March, helped fund The Progressive Way, only to find that site had lost its' format rather quickly, and I lost my appreciation of Bernie. Docudharma lost its' cachet.
Someone at Dkos said to check out this place called c99.
Now, where else could I possibly write dumb ass Couples Cooking essays?

@exindy
"Everyone has to age, no one needs to get old." Like wine, right?

Thanks for hanging with us, exindy.

Hmm, I was hoping you would remember. I can't recall where or when but I'd been in a couple nasty bar fights in the previous forums. I was beat up pretty badly and had lost some skin and blood. You picked me up and suggested I come here.

It'd been a dicey decade or so of postings, dealing with some news outlet's comment sections which fell apart because they decided that I needed to use a Facebook identity and then somebody (nefarious, no doubt) questioned my identity and FB wanted me to send them a copy of my DL license. Like that would ever happen.

For the last few years I've been lurking here and enjoying the crowd. Got one heluva great gathering. The participants are more intellectual and help to keep me young. Everyone has to age, no one needs to get old.

You help a lot. Thanks so much.

@snoopydawg
republicans say the same about democrats, only in reverse:

Dems helpless, repubs omniscient! Vote harder!

We need a viable third party.

Thanks snoops.

and talked about it with the nurse at the pain clinic who happened to be a friend of kos and she told me about his blog. It didn’t make sense to attack Iraq when most of the supposed terrorists came from Saudi Arabia. Everyone then seemed like they were anti war, but that changed when Obama got elected. Loved the EBs and thought provoking essays by OPOL and Dallas doc and others. I started getting dawg piled when I pushed back on how great Obama was doing and boy howdy did it get much worse when I started pointing out how heinous Hellabitch’s policies were. Especially when I kept posting kos' 2006 essay on how bad she would be as president. CTSM sent me a pm and invited me to check out the new blue blog. I sure miss those who came here in the early days. I see a lot of them back over there and I don’t recognize them anymore. I still look at the site daily but find myself reading less essays because they are basically an echo chamber. Trump, republicans, Russia bad, democrats can do no wrong. Probably because no one there is actually paying attention to what they are doing as to what they say they want to do.

Weird how democrats can never find enough votes to pass their agendas during Clinton, Obama and now Biden when they had the majority, but the republicans always can even though they don’t hold the presidency and only one house. The media is saying that they might be able to cut social security now that they have the house only and Biden’s president. Anyone else see through this bull crap? Dems helpless, repubs omniscient! Vote harder!

Thanks for keeping the lights on for us JtC. I’d be lost without this place.