(Original planned title: Restore my f*&^ing Mojo, Kos!)

WTF?!?!?!

It has happened again.  Lots of positive comments with 201 recommends and not a single Troll rating over two days, yet my TU went away after posting in the diary of a popular member on Saturday night.

Okay, I'm a marginal TU but it came back Saturday morning after posting to Frankenoid's Garden Blogging.  From Friday night until Sunday morning I made 18 comments and garnered 201 recommends and no troll ratings.  99 of the recommends were outside of the diary in question and normally would have kept my TU for 2 or 3 days of lurking.  The 101 recommends in OPOL's latest diary seem to have reversed my status.

Go below the fold for more:

Crossposted from Docudharma.

If our near extraterrestrial neighbors are aware of us at all, I’m sure we’re an embarrassment.  Must we forever be the savage planet?  Is civilization less a veneer and more an illusion?  Does it have to be this way?  Are humans really this bad - this hopeless?  Is war a permanent feature of the human condition?

Sometimes I wonder.  But then I think of Michelangelo, said to be somewhat beastly himself, and yet a font of beauty, transcendent and sublime – and I have reason to hope that we are better than our history suggests.  Even in all our crudeness there is something profound within us.

This is not a call-out diary.  I do not submit it to inflame or start some sort of range war on the issue of the diaries of one person.  And for those of you whe believe that this diary is contrary to the site rules, I will remind you that the proscription of calling out, even if that is what you believe this to be, applies not to the content of the diary, but the diary title.  From the FAQ:

"Calling out" other site users by name in diary titles is prohibited. Diaries which "call out" another by name tend to needlessly inflame. If you feel compelled to address another user's comments or diaries in a diary of your own, please do so cautiously. Avoid ad hominems and stick with substantive, constructive criticism only.

As I believe it at least somewhat fair to say that the diary OPOL and the True Power of Daily Kos is in some measure aimed at me or what I write, I offer this explanation and statement of my position on this issue in like means (a diary) as this issue was today here raised.  

Almost every time One Pissed Off Liberal posts a diary, a small army of commenters rush in to challenge it. And almost always that challenge revolves around the lack of a reasonable strategy  to affect the change that he is calling for. The argument really comes down to the idea that talk is cheap - you can decry the injustices of the world all you want, but unless you have a 5 point plan to address them, you should really just shut up.

The flaw of this argument, however, is that it fails to understand the true power of Daily Kos, and the internet revolution in general. It fails to understand that until people are aware of the problem, they cannot be organized, or motivated to take action to solve it.  

Understanding the source and nature of our real power is essential to maximizing it.

Crossposted at Docudharma

This is a defense of OPOL’s diary "Why I Am A Radical."  Some of the respondents thought that OPOL wasn't "really a radical," others thought that   our "solution" to present-day political problems should focus on the election of Hillary or Obama or Edwards or whomever, more others just cheered another well-decorated OPOL diary.  Here I wish to set radicalism on the bedrock of economic thinking incited by Karl Marx in the Preface to "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy," and compare the words of OPOL to those of Vijay Prashad, from his book "Fat Cats and Running Dogs."

I know a lot of people will be in DC this weekend letting Bush and Congress know that we need to be out of Iraq now. My friend OPOL says it so well but I will be there in spirit.

I'm honored to be on FDL tomorrow for an online interview with Howie Klein. I've talked to Howie off and on since I was first considering running for Congress and his support and help along the way has been invaluable. I will never forget the part he played in helping me decide to do this.

Even though a lot of us connect here online, tomorrow will be a chance to ask for more details on the campaign or me in general. Many of you know me through DKos and have come to know me as the candidate for Congress born from the netroots. I've shared some of my pain-turn-joy and some of my concerns for America now is chance for us to get to know each other a little bit more.

I'm still beating the drums for the Iraq Moratorium project here, with the IM website rollout days away (he said, knocking wood) and the daily calender pages flipping, like in an old movie, toward the first Moratorium Day, September 21.

This time I have an actual teaser from the soon-to-go-live IM website, a short historical piece on the Vietnam Moratorium of October 15, 1969, an event which serves as model and inspiration for the current project. Months ago I briefly diaried that historic event right here and a couple of days back, One Pissed Off Liberal name-checked it or rather (we are talking OPOL here) image-checked it, in a diary which earned many recs.

While many people are under the impression that the customers of the media are the end users (viewers, readers, and listeners) that impression is incorrect.  The customers of the media are the corporate advertisers.  The end users are the product being sold.  Did you get that?  We are the product.

That's a major problem with pushing a progressive message in the corporate media. Seeing as how people are the product being sold, the needs of the people are of little importance, while the needs of the customers, heretofore, corporations and other big money institutions, are well taken care of.  

What if we became a customer of the media? What if we paid to play?

It was really hard, One Pissed Off Liberal, reading your diary Suffering in America today.

Today.
Today is the day I decided to give in and not fight my landlord anymore.  I'm going in to see him tomorrow and I'll give notice because that is what he wants me to do so that this house can be rented again before the fall. I'm not certain I know where to move - bad credit, still catching up from being unemployed for a year, no money, no savings, no assets, no family, no friends with money anymore.