EDIT: Good suggestion: Software tweak: Make it take ten troll ratings to neutralize one recommend.

Second edit: The troll gangers have arrived. Posts are going missing. Sorry it won't make much sense now. QED.

Third edit: If you have Trusted User status, look at the Hidden comments. If you click on the TR section (the numbers) it will show you who troll rated. Since none of the comments violated any rules, it means that all the troll raters were violating the FAQ, and should be banned, although I'd warn them a couple times first. I wonder what Markos will do?

When I first encountered DailyKos, after migrating from blog to blog, I was uplifted by the range of topics and the quality of the writing.

It became apparent that the quality of the writing was due only to the merit  rating software and the steady approval of the community peer rating system, free of the bias of the site owner(s). Of course, you need the writers, and there are always writers working to be heard, on any topic.

I really didn't notice the troll ratings, because I didn't see them for a while, being a newbie and not writing to the audience.

Just finished watching Ron Paul totally crush Tim, without exception.

Batted away every stupid gotcha, clearly explained himself,
washed away the stain of lies from others,
dealt clearly with the racism and social security issues by explaining he understood the need for transition,
corrected the lies about absolutism,
pointed out correctly the need to pull all troops from everywhere quickly,
successfully explained his desire for strict construction and that amendments are constitutional,
and laughed Tim into incoherence.

We need more like him. I can see where he gets the money. Interview

He's a tremendous danger to the Republicans, because unlike the Democrats with Kucinich, he hasn't been muzzled yet. I foresee a heart attack.

If Obama and Edwards made it clear by dogwhistle that they'd pick the other as running mate, would it pull the anti-DLC/Clinton independents AWAY from Hillary?

Would it change the whole dynamic of the campaign?

We keep trying to figure out how to stop the Inevitably Machine. Why not remove some fuel?

Update: Why won't Edwards go for VP? He's young and ambitious... Why couldn't Obama go for pure single payer? It's the only one that will work in the real world.

Hint. Rec the Diary. Wider view.

I have a good friend who writes on Venezuela, as an insider and knowledgable commentator.

I'd like to present his views, from dissidentvoice.org, as an antidote to some of the poisoned CIA-backed propaganda so much circulated.

His name is Clifton Ross, and he's a college teacher and writer.

His essay is produced below, with permission: I agree with it, but think he could have indicated which Articles should have been voted on separately.

I've been here a while. I give up. Glad to see Kos is catching on. I'll save my election donations for food and ammunition, because the country can't take this any more.

The Dems are too (take your pick) greedy, stupid, incompetent to run the country, and the Rethugs are too greedy.

Been fun, learned a lot. Thanks to Jerome, bondaddad, and those who recc'd up the donuts. I just can't handle this level of co-dependence and lame-ass ignorance any more.

Thanks to the many people who read what I wrote, and responded intelligently. I didn't mind the differences of opinion.

I just don't see what effect this writing is having on politics. It certainly is helping the social life of activist Democrats.

I'm convinced that the economy is going to take a hard fall, as bad as the Depression, and that there are going to be riots in the streets about food and shelter.

The obvious, to me, self-aggrandizement of the legislators, Jerry McNerney for instance, who talk progressive and then vote DLC, is too clear an indication that the election system is fatally flawed, and that perhaps democracy itself as a political system has run its course.

I think I'll just tend my garden.

It's really about faith in other people, and faith in your own ability to connect with them, and faith in the process of community evidence verification.

Over and over we hear the false dichotomy of "people of faith" versus "people of evidence" but we're ALL people of faith.

What really matters is your psychological makeup: do you trust your fellow monkeys and whether they will get your back? Or do you so distrust others that you must invent a super-Neighbor who can do the impossible. You call him/her/it God/Allah/Buddha/etc and pray for things that are never more than luck.

Some interesting insights come from this frame of thought...

By now it would have been obvious to anyone but the recipients that most of the citizens of the USA are the pitiful and brainwashed self-wounding winners in this famous award competition.

I just spent three hours listening to a self-described moderate explain how the current credit and liquidity situation is the fault of the citizens, and that by now everyone should know that signing papers without the advice of a lawyer or financial expert is dangerous to your credit.

He would not, however, admit to an analogy with the larger situation with the United States in the world credit situation, in which our Congress doesn't make good law, and the Justice Department doesn't enforce the ones we have, and voters refuse to correct the situation. I guess we will get the government we chose.

Stunned to find people advocating free speech by Ted Nugent when he waves a gun and talks about killing candidates. What kind of dim-wiited absolutists are we nurturing here?

Free speech is a civil liberty that implies civil responsibility. We are NOT a tribe of pre-teens stomping the other tribe.

Are you in favor of ABSOLUTE free speech? Including advocacy of violence?

So now it's occurring to our gummint guyz that Iraq wasn't ready for "full democracy" because it has never had a chance to practice it.

The real question is the one asked at a seminar in Berkeley a couple months ago:

Was Iraq caused by Saddam, or Saddam caused by Iraq?

If you think about the world economy as a problem in maximizing status rewards for the rich, a lot of seemingly paradoxical elements fall into place.

We tend to think of solving the world's problems where X is set as "Minimizing Suffering" and then we can't figure out what's preventing that from happening.

If we set X as "Maximizing Comfort for the Already Rich" then the wars and wild economic fluctuations make sense: harvesting the output of the non-rich.

Hat tip to xaxodo for the idea.

Most people need religion for psychological and social stability.

Science replaces religion by pointing out and delegitimizing faith-based morality, leaving just legislation to guide one's life.

Further, the vast majority of people are not able to psychologically stably function without a concept of Big Brother and Heaven, thus leading either to elitism or practical moral anarchy.

Theory of governance is essentially what we do here. We work on a hypothesis that electing Democrats is the next and necessary first step, but, as Jerome a Paris says in his recommended diary, we need to talk about what we are going to do if we get in, and pick people in the primaries that will have a strong understanding of, and commitment to progressive principles.

But if we are going to advocate, people need to know precisely what it is we advocate, or at least the outside lines of what we will accept.

The people who overbought houses with pools are abandoning them as foreclosures loom, leaving huge green pools for West Nile virus mosquitos to  breed in.

One commentator noted that many of the "Stated Income" borrowers were people who have no legal identification. That would be "Illegal Aliens" who are being driven out of the country by increased enforcement of immigration laws.

OBAMA IS GREAT! EDWARDS IS GREAT!

You clowns don't get it. Stop running down Democratic candidates!

Tell us about the wonderfulness of your candidate. They're all better than 'Thugs, and all of ours will be good enough to be a vast improvement.

I like Kucinich, I'll vote for him in the primary, and then gleefully vote for whoever comes out ahead!

The 'Thugs want us to fight and build nasty memes. Are you gonna fall for it?

Rational self interest

Since the concept is SO fundamental to economics, psychology, sociology and governance, you'd think we all knew what it is.  It's the flaw in practical economics -- observe the credit crunch, SUVs, McMansions, ecotravel.

Because we are brainwashed by psychologists who know perfectly well how to coerce us into acting against our survival, accumulation of energy, ability to give our kids a solid foundation, we act against both our individual and our collective self interest.

Shall we hang all the psychologists who flog consumer goods and warp election minds, AND those who hire them?

Shall we enforce a Hippocratic Oath for psychologists?

As a technoid, with wide experience in the use of tools to build boats, houses and vehicles, I'm concerned about the degradation of infrastructure building and repair when it becomes politically correct to hire illegal aliens.

So much money can be saved by contractors by skipping union labor, which is accountable and usually highly skilled, due to the apprentice system and relatively high pay, that there is a race to the bottom.

My last job before I retired showed me some very frightening tendencies under the illegal alien labor system.

It's been excruciatingly painful to watch the latest seeming failure of our elected legislators to do what we think is the right thing.

I can only say that it ain't over yet; that we haven't walked that mile in their shoes; we aren't in the briefings, haven't seen the figures, haven't talked to the other members face to face in the cloakroom, or most importantly, haven't been disappointed in the voters who sat at home.

WE DON'T KNOW! Everybody's a damn expert on things they only theoretically qualify about. Regardless of academic and Founder theory about democracy and concerned citizens, one thing we DO know is that if ten percent more Democrats had voted, we'd be looking at a whole different picture.

So once again, chain the black dog of despair in the backyard, and traipse out the front yard with an armful of leaflets and doorbell the neighbors -- in the parking lot of WalMart, at the Water Park, at the grocery, at church. Make it work! Some of it is our fault for putting our legislators into an extremely difficult situation.

"I will either inspire them to be real citizens, or I will manipulate their narcissism." From a really true, really nasty diary from Antifa, whose work is well worth reading.

After you've read that diary, come back and tell me if the way to convince voters to become progressive and active is NOT an either/or like the statement above, but an AND: tell them that being an Internet Voter is cool and hip and the next Big Thing.

Appeal to their narcissism to inspire them to become good citizens.

What do you thing