Top Comments: Pre-scoop Edition

We have so many insightful and powerful diaries written here at Daily Kos.  Our diaries inform, inflame, impassion, and even entertain.  We Kossacks have strong voices and an even stronger will to be the change we wish to see in this country.

One of the richest, and perhaps most under-appreciated, areas of thought come in the form of comments attached to these diaries.

Here at Top Comments we strive to recognize and promote the talent of this community by highlighting outstanding comments found throughout the day by the diarist, and through nominations at made at topcomments at gmail dot com by your fellow Kossacks.  

These nominations are subjective, and certainly not complete (as no one can read the complete site on a daily basis!). But hopefully they will serve to shine a light where deserved, and to give the reader a good starting point in finding conversation on the site.

Please come in and make yourself at home!   Join us beneath the fold...

I. Top Comments at Daily Kos, pre-scoop

I thought it might be fun to look back at the way things were, back before that fateful day, October 15, 2004, when Markos announced, "This site is closed," and the transfer to the scoop site we know and love was complete. I hope you enjoy reading these old posts and comments as much as I do; I found some great "front page" entries (actually, the front page is all there was - no diaries back then), as well as some wonderful and amusing comment threads.

• Here is a post from December 13, 2002 titled, "Bush's forest plans on hold." I like this one because the first comment in the comment thread is by then-future front pager ("guest blogger") DavidNYC, and because right wing "warblogger" Tacitus is trolling:

  Don't celebrate yet. The Ninth is the most-overturned court on the Federal circuit.

  Posted by Tacitus at December 13, 2002 10:34 AM

• I distinctly remember reading this post, from December 22, 2002, which was about a fake outrage manufactured by right-wingers regarding my Senator, Patty Murray.  The comments are fun, because not only is Tacitus once again trolling, but also archpundit and Marie take the then-unrepentant conservative John Cole to task regarding Osama Bin Laden.
• The following post is dated January 20, 2003. For those relative newbies who might think they have been singled out for allegedly poor treatment at one time or another by kos, you should probably get over yourselves, heh. The funny thing about reading these old comments is how some of the same arguments repeatedly crop up. Here is what I believe is kos' first post about his dislike of protests. So really, it's probably not all about you, LOL. Also, as kos expected, the post generated some disagreement. Here are a couple of comments taking kos to task:

  Steve Gilliard:

  All of the crap about ANSWER amuses me.

  When the OSS had to pick whom to arm, they asked ONE question: will you fight the enemy?

  So they armed the French Communists, armed, trained and advised the Italian Communists, Yugoslav Communists, Greek Communists, Spanish Republicans and anyone else who would pick up a weapon.

  When they tried to arm the Yugoslav royalists and found they were more interested in killing communists and cutting deals with the Germans, they stopped arming them. Simple as that.

  Why? Because they wanted to win the war.

  The fact is that ANSWER gets the permits, deals with the cops, provides the parade marshalls and does all the scut work. Bitching about their politics or their speakers is like complaining about free beer. You take what they give you or you buy your own.

  You want a more centrist message, do what they do and pay for it. You don't like their speakers, get better ones. Don't like the way they do things, do them better yourself.

  But don't sit around and piss and moan about the organizers when you're not doing what they do, which is organizing, large and effective protests.

  The question Kos and everyone else who doesn't like ANSWER needs to ask is this: do you want to protest US policy in Iraq?

  Then you need to either do one of three things: form your own groups and enact you own strategies, join ANSWER and moderate it's message from the inside, or stop your bitching and go to the protests, looking at the larger issue.

  Now, in looking over the coverage of the protests, everyone ignored the boilerplate speeches and talked to the protesters. Which is a good thing. And protests matter. You get 300,000 people in the street, in the bitter cold, that sends a message.
  No one can ignore that, even if the Bushies are trying like hell to do so.

  So for everyone who thinks ANSWER is a problem, you're free to do your own thing.

  Posted by steve gilliard at January 21, 2003 10:10 AM

  . . .

  RonK Seattle:

  Are marches icky? Yeah. Full of newbies who are too green, and lifers who are overripe, and people who are off-topic, and people who think "it's about me". The speeches are drivel, and it's usually too hot, or too cold, or too muggy, or too buggy, or you get beaten half to death, or the Big Game is on TV. Icky. Most of MLK's actions were even ickier.

  Do marches work? Yeah. (Funny you should question that on MLK Day.) Usually not in a "walls came tumbling down" kinda way, but yeah. "Social proof" is incredibly powerful ... humans are more likely to entertain an idea if they see others act on it. Networking is powerful. Information-sharing is powerful. And from where we stand today (a rare confluence of forces, I admit) energetic public disapproval might tip the scales and stop the war before it starts!

  Are the loonies in charge? Great! There's more adminisitrivia to these events than you imagine. Glad somebody else jumped up and did the part I don't like. Loonies fade into background as mainstreamers arrive, and (unlike neo-con's pandering to neo-seg's) nobody goes there to court the loony vote.

  Doesn't that endorse the loony agenda? No, no, no ... and they're not asking you to. Besides, that question's been beaten to death for months (probably by better hand-wringers than you). To answer the ANSWER question, check with progressive labor's Max or libertaria's Jim -- they've done the agonizing so you don't have to.

  Could you do something more effective with your time? Great! Go! Do!

  Get your "national brand" signage (hardcopy, jpg, etc.) here.

  Connect with your neighbors at United for Peace. It's a "big tent" umbrella organization. (It's not about "control", but while you were out, saner heads did take the lead.) Sure, you can find people there you disagree with, but if you can't find like-minded people there, well, it's not them -- it's you.

  Posted by RonK, Seattle at January 21, 2003 01:45 PM

  Hee hee, sorry kos.
• Remember how Saddam refused to permit inspections before the invasion? Funny, because we seemed to have no problem finding reports about such inspections here at Daily Kos. Note the date: February 14, 2003. And for a sadly prescient prediction of what the war would look like, here is Steve Gilliard in the comments:

  Veatch,

  Use a map. The baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) neighbor Poland, the Balkans (the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania) face the Adriatic Sea.

  The idea that we're going to liberate Iraq would be comical if so many people weren't going to die.

  Our "liberation" may well kick off a genocidal civil war between the Turks and the Kurds, who swear they plan to reconquer Mosul and Kirkuk. Not to mention the millions who may face starvation because their government food supplies are cut off and they no longer have potable water.

  In Kosovo, the population was fleeing across the border and being raped and murdered if they stayed. US intervention prevented the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

  Invading Iraq will kill tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people and involve us in a never-ending war.

  Remember Somalia? (The horn of Africa, the pointy part on the map) Everyone was happy when we fed them. When we started to pick the leaders, the guns appeared and the killing began.

  No one who isn't already engaged in war wants to be liberated by a foreign power who shares little in common with them from language to religion.

  This is folly of the highest order.

  Posted by steve gilliard at February 14, 2003 04:23 PM

• This April 25, 2003 post about Rick Santorum is fun because in the comments, I see some familiar old faces: steve gilliard, Marisacat, Marie, BrianVT, Tacitus trollingagain, and some guy named Kos with a capital K.
• Ah, so let's say you'd like to become a mainstream media type ponificating with the benefit of hindsight about the influence of Teh Web-Logs on the 2004 primaries. What is the first piece of zombie propaganda you must regurgitate? Answer: Markos was secretly paid to blog for Dean. But oops, what about this post from June 9, 2003? Please also note that damn disclaimer which can still be found at the upper left of the legacy site.
• Here is the September 19, 2003 comment thread from the post where kos announced that the new "Guest Bloggers" as they were then know would be Meteor Blades and DHinMI.
• This October 13, 2003 entry was just a picture of Bush. It is now gone, but the comment thread is right here. What I like about this thread are all of the familiar names: Bob Johnson, thirdparty, AndyS, Easong, Hunter, Yellow Dog Dem, clonecone, Lupin, Sharoney, wilfred, emptywheel, Kagro X, paradox, Marie, Demosthenes, pyrrho, Swopa. Additionally, you can see the fun of not having to deal with a username. You might notice that George W. Bush, Jacques Chirac, Howard Dean, John Kerry, Dick Gephardt, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Dick Cheney, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh all made appearances in that thread.

OK, enough of that. I'll let you read through the rest of the archives yourselves.

A reminder. Please keep sending in those top comment nominations to:

topcomments[at]gmail[dot]com

II. Tonight's Top Comments

Via Crashing Vor:

Patriot4peace tells the inside story of Junior's Jackson Square "We will rebuild" speech. Yes, it's just as cynical as you suspected.

Via Land of Enchantment:

droogie6655321's reply to lapin (the very first one) in Hunter's serious tech warning diary elicited a chuckle.

Just down from the tip jar in Grand Moff Texan's rant is this little gem also from GMT - he's in rare form today.

Via Andrew C. White:

maxomai's comment about wanting to forget Hurricane Katrina is amazing:

I want to forget (30+ / 0-)

I really, really want to forget that Hurricane Katrina ever happened.

I want to forget the horror of watching an entire city basically fall apart, the chaotic mass of desperate people looking for any kind of help they could get, the stories of how violence spiralled out of control in the Superdome and the Convention Center, the denial by Thom Hartmann and others that any such violence ever happened, and the sheer rage I felt when the White House took the occasion to play air guitar and shop for shoes, while 1800 people died because FEMA couldn't get its act together.

I want to forget the stories of hundreds of thousands of starving animals with no way to rescue them. I want to forget people holed up in their shops with guns and rations and maybe a generator, hoping to fend off looters. I want to forget Baton Rouge doubling in size, Houston growing larger by 90,000.

I want, honestly, to forget hearing that 1000 refugees were going to appear on my lodge's doorstep. I want to forget the panicked efforts to do everything we could to acommodate those thousand refugees. I want to forget all the crap my friends, now virtually family, S and J, had to endure here in Portland -- not only from the bureaucrats at FEMA, but from Portlanders completely unsympathetic to these newcomers.  

I want to forget about the rebuilding scams that they call "federal contractors," where every single damn chore is marked up several thousand percent, so that Bush's cronies get all the money, New Orleans gets dick, and we get the tab. I want to forget that New Orleans, beautiful, seedy, too damn hot, is slowly becoming another Disney theme park.

I want to take all that shit and put it in garbage bags and put it in the dumpster and forget about it. Just looking at it makes me bitter all over again, about the White House, about people who are supposed to be brothers and sisters, about humanity in general.

I want to, but I can't. Because we have to remember. Because next time, we need to handle things much, much better than we did.
Because next time, it could happen to me. Or to you.

Via va dare:

In a diary about mountaintop removal by first time diarist prankster, this comment If only by netguyct speaks for me, too.

Via Liberal Protestant:

darthstar identifies one of the more frightening implications of particles moving faster than the speed of light in this comment in markthshark's diary on an experiment that seems to invalidate Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity

Via sardonyx:

homogenius starts a thread with Eddie Haskell that Sharoney declares the "Funniest. Thread. Ever." right before she gets sucked into the fun. All from Bob Johnson's This diary was not written by the real Bob Johnson YES IT WA. Your wa won't be serene either...

This wasn't the only source for sophomoric humor about safe computing. clonecone gives some sage advice and starts a thread with droogie6655321 and others that could be characterized as outrageous if I used weasel-wording, which it seems I've done. From Hunter's diary Malicious Link Warning (IMPORTANT), which every Kossack should read, as it explains how to keep your Daily Kos account from getting taken over by malicious scripting. If you haven't read it, go read it now! We can wait until you get back.

Niniane suffers from voter's remorse immediately after having taken the poll in goldberry's diary Dear Republican Lurkers.

Via Elise:

the holy handgrenade returns!!  

clonecone and droogie6655321 (and many others) bring out the hilarity once more. Here's how to protect yourself from viruses folks.

Top Mojo (thanks sar!)

Top Mojo excluding search-identifiable tip jars, first diary comments, and C&J comments:

  1) Exactly two years ago... by mlharges — 183
  2) Tell me about it by droogie6655321 — 134
  3) Republicans? Now go away and don't come back by funluvn1 — 109
  4) I'm honored to represent you. by Councilmember Shelley Midura — 106
  5) well, it sort of IS a bad thing... by Dem in the heart of Texas — 98
  6) Bush didn't destroy it. by jarhead5536 — 90
  7) Can't help but think that at least one person... by Melody Townsel — 86
  8) that was funny by peace voter — 77
  9) it's irresponsible by Turkana — 73
10) Heh by droogie6655321 — 69
11) good looking out by JR — 68
12) I find it remarkable by VetGrl — 65
13) Stopping by.... by Larry LaRocco — 64
14) Perhaps by HarveyMilk — 59
15) Obama nails it by Aeolus — 58
16) Yeah, he acted like being gay... by Ken in MN — 57
17) Charles Nathaniel Haskell by Senator Andrew Rice — 57
18) Very funny. Hey, people stop talking on the cell by FXDCI — 55
19) tack a repeal of the tax cuts onto it by skippythebox — 54
20) see, size DOES matter! by guyermo — 54
21) He's not gay, he's a closeted loser by Dallasdoc — 52
22) don't tap your foot. (n/t) by BlueInARedState — 51
23) I've removed the offending link by Hunter — 50
24) Yes. So CONGRESS must check him. by Jesselyn Radack — 48
25) The Republican Party Deserves the Death Penalty by FishOutofWater — 46
26) Republicans who are moral by plf515 — 46
27) REC THS DIARY by rerutled — 46
28) I was endorsed by the Sierra Club by Senator Andrew Rice — 46
29) You Ran Everything-- by Gooserock — 45
30) I'm sure he'll be back. by Hunter — 45

Top Mojo with No Exclusions:

  1) tip jar by goldberry — 379
  2) Tips for public rest rooms. by kharma — 377
  3) Tip jar and contact info for MSNBC by Louise — 275
  4) Staunch denials about one's orientation by wmtriallawyer — 265
  5) Pray for me by Grand Moff Texan — 238
  6) Tip Jar - 29 August by Jerome a Paris — 237
  7) just say by Turkana — 205
  8) Exactly two years ago... by mlharges — 183
  9) I'll be around for a bit to repond to comments by Darcy Burner for Congress — 164
10) Tell me about it by droogie6655321 — 134
11) Thanks for the update Hunter by andgarden — 131
12) also by Turkana — 109
13) Republicans? Now go away and don't come back by funluvn1 — 109
14) Light yo fiyo. . . by Crashing Vor — 108
15) Tip Jar by Councilmember Shelley Midura — 107
16) I'm honored to represent you. by Councilmember Shelley Midura — 106
17) well, it sort of IS a bad thing... by Dem in the heart of Texas — 98
18) Bush didn't destroy it. by jarhead5536 — 90
19) Tip by Carnacki — 90
20) Can't help but think that at least one person... by Melody Townsel — 86
21) tips... by the holy handgrenade — 82
22) that was funny by peace voter — 77
23) Tips/Stay/Safe by fareast — 73
24) it's irresponsible by Turkana — 73
25) Didn't vote... by Melody Townsel — 72
26) You need to add phone numbers to call by jalapeno — 71
27) Heh by droogie6655321 — 69
28) good looking out by JR — 68
29) Tips for a fun EENR!! by TomP — 67
30) Very good diary. thanks. n/t by ExStr8 — 67