I’ve not been to Firedoglake since the summer of 2009 when they went magical purity pony on healthcare. They have some good writers, but the signal to noise ratio just isn’t worth my time or effort.
That was probably a wise decision as I went into comments at their one post concerning King v. Burwell:
TPP as an ACA clincher:
So the odious corporate bailout ACA stands. It won’t be fixed because the TPP will prohibit it.
The Corporate Coup d’Etat is almost complete.
A good 15 comment sub-thread on who is intellectually dishonest:
The first comment — “he sold us out to corporations” which if one believes that Roberts is solely a corporate whore was the only way to get the a 5-4 working majority on the Supreme Court.
Of course the Supreme Court didn’t touch the Obama administration’s massive giveaway to private insurers, pharmaceutical companies and for-profit hospitals. That was a foregone conclusion.
Nothing is better than something :
I’ve been bitching about it here at the Lake since Obama selected sleazy Senator Max whatever the hell his name is from Montana to shepherd this piece of crap legislation through the Senate and entered into those secret backroom deals with Big Pharma.
Single payer or bust:
HR 676 is thirty pages and is comprehensive, but sitting on the shelf. The ACA was one thousand pages.
A thousand pages to conceal the bullshit.
Unsupported by evidence predictive assertions:
God forbid the ACA becomes the model for Employer policies going forward. The ACA is neither health Care nor is it Health Ins. what it is is a not so clever con of the American public.
Probably should have stayed away from FDL.
Richard + 3
chopper
in all honesty, why?
raven
They banned me when I went after Queen Jane when she hooked up with Grover.
Baud
@chopper:
+3
chopper
@Baud:
hey, i like the booze too, but it doesn’t make me hate myself enough to go there.
Roger Moore
Is the +3 the cause or the effect of going to FDL?
ArchTeryx
There’s an old saying going around about newspaper and Yahoo comment sections: Don’t Get Out Of The Boat.
That sometimes applies to left-wing websites, too, and FDL has to be the crowner. I used to frequent the place as well, but I left during the 2008 primaries, when FDL decided they’d rather have McCain then Obama. My decision to leave was more then validated when Jane Hamsher decided to play footsie with Grover Norquist and the right to “kill the bill”.
Really, though, it started when they dumped T-Rex, apparently for the crime of being male. Berift of his blogging platform, he disappeared entirely from the scene.
Anyone remember him?
beltane
FDL still exists? Do they still complain about the shit sandwiches served in the “Veal Pen”?
David Koch
Corner Stone
Isn’t there a FIFA match on that goes better with some variant of + ?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore: I was thinking it was the effect.
beltane
Remember MyDD/Open Left and Jerome Armstrong? Taylor Marsh?
Richard Mayhew
@Roger Moore: happy hour from the Mayhew Insurance Crisis Team that was assembled to figure out what to do re: King.
The COO had us scheduled for an 80 hour week this week including on the 4th. He took us out for dinner and craft beer instead
Baud
LGM occasionally critiques “serious” (not FDL comments) lefty critism Obamacare. It really is tired and passé. Happy to listen to ideas on how to move forward.
Roger Moore
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I could see it either way:
Effect: OMG! I need some booze to numb my brain after reading that crap
Cause: Yeah, reading what FDL has to say about King v. Burwell seems like a good idea!
Corner Stone
@David Koch: Which of those 10 do you feel are factually inaccurate?
Baud
@Richard Mayhew:
Did you toast Roberts and Kennedy for saving your asses (by following the law)?
mai naem mobile
I think I’ve been there once since Tbogg left and I think that was because it was an old Tbogg link. It looked dead. Didn’t Jane’s media company declare bankruptcy? I don’t remember the details but I vaguely remember some other company owed her some money for ads. At one point she had some really good writers.
Richard Mayhew
@beltane: I was okay with bowers at OpemLeft, we shared a common reality with different value weights on things. Stoller et al are a different story
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: +3 isn’t enough.
Richard Mayhew
@Baud: yep, at least company legal poured one out for the law students not needing to buy new admin law text books
Corner Stone
@Richard Mayhew: You have a problem with Matthew Stoller?
phoebes-in-santa fe
Used to go to FDL often but in 2008 Jane Hamsher pulled my last nerve with some bullshit about Obama not being liberal enough. Idiot. She and other far lefties have no idea how government works. (For the record, I am a moderate leftie!) They’re as stupid as the Tea Baggers.
Elizabelle
Never over there. They sound histrionic, from what I hear, second hand. A shame.
raven
@phoebes-in-santa fe: It went to hell when Christy got lupus.
Baud
@Richard Mayhew:
Someone should send one of those text books to Scalia.
mai naem mobile
@ArchTeryx: I remember Trex. I used to read Christy, Trex and Tbogg. I think there was another guy – Derek? David? who also.disappeared.and
Richard Mayhew
@Corner Stone: what is the counterfactual… The kill the bill crowd counteractual was that the could get something way better in the winter 2010 or at least no change was better than ACA.
I don’t think that value analysis on ACA v Nothing is right and ACA v Something Better in 2010 was ludicrous
raven
@Elizabelle: Some of it was no worse than here but they had bullshit censorship.
Richard Mayhew
@Corner Stone: a whole lot of wishing/asserting/green lanterning without sufficient attention to how previous decisions were made. Any one that disagreed with preferred policy positions had to be either/both amoral or corrupt.
Davis X. Machina
No revolution without martyrs! (1)
(1) So long as they’re not me…
beltane
@Richard Mayhew: Stoller was just obnoxious. Once on DKos he accused me of being a sexist for supporting Obama, said I had no idea of the sufferings of upper middle class white women like Hillary Clinton. Being a woman from a low-income background, I found his attitude offensive and typical of a certain type of upper middle class white progressive. Chris Bowers is a good guy, if somewhat long winded.
Corner Stone
@Richard Mayhew: That’s not the question being asked.
Davis X. Machina
@Richard Mayhew: People who assume everyone else is venal, I always assume are venal themselves.
raven
Richard Taylor is a good guy too.
JPL
I haven’t been on since before Obama became president. I guess I haven’t missed anything.
Richard, you need to find another way Just to have some fun.
p.a.
@David Koch: isn’t #5 accurate? My company plan was just under the taxable rate.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
If someone wants to tell me that we need further legislation to improve ACA and continue moving towards our ultimate goal of affordable universal coverage for all, I’m all ears. There are a lot of things that need to be improved.
If someone tells me that ACA is a total failure that has to be repealed, I don’t care if they’re an uninformed right-wing idiot or an uninformed left-wing idiot. All I know is that they’re an uninformed idiot and can be safely ignored.
Omnes Omnibus
@JPL:
DIY dental work?
raven
@JPL: Like coming back to the world cup thread and straighten us out!
Linnaeus
As one who has directly benefited from the ACA after going two years without health insurance because neither of my jobs provides health insurance (or any benefits at all except one 401k plan that’s virtually worthless to me), I think FDL is, to put it mildly, full of shit.
Which of course doesn’t mean that the ACA is the endpoint. Not even close. But there are institutional constraints in American government that have to be dealt with.
Culture of Truth
Purity: at least it’s an ethos
Richard Mayhew
@Richard Mayhew: The BOPNews crew was always an interesting read, usually as they approached things from a different angle. At some point as a collective they got stuck in their own heads where everything was internally coherent and superficially externally connected but the challenge was always finding their interesting unstated assumptions to yank on their string.
Culture of Truth
GOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
.
.
.
.
L
Frankensteinbeck
@Corner Stone:
#10, the most important one. #3, #5, and #8 are highly deceptive, pretending that things that were likely to occur then and could theoretically occur under the ACA would be widespread, ignoring that there are protections to make them much less likely. #4 is either an idiotic misreading of existing law, or more likely pretending that addendums that were removed actually went through. #6 is moot. #9 is complaining about something they’d have liked added to the bill, and thus moot.
The ACA is a fantastic success. This list implies it will be a fantastic failure. Thus, even beyond arguing the details, the point of that list is also wrong.
p.a.
Saying the ACA is a big wet kiss to insurers isn’t inaccurate. Saying the ACA as written is the best law that could have been enacted is conjecture. We’ll have to wait for the memoirs, emails and minutes of meetings to be published to know whether the admin. pushed the Dem. invertebrates as far left as they would go. And it’s a rare (U.S. Grant) memoir that is not self-serving.
raven
@p.a.: Emails??? They was deleted!
joel hanes
Kick FDL all you like; I’ll mostly agree.
But Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel) still does some of the best investigative digging on the internet; she cares deeply enough about the facts to read and integrate everything.
Frankensteinbeck
@p.a.:
It is highly inaccurate. The ACA loads down insurance companies with regulations they did not want and do not want now. It keeps them in business. That’s a big, big difference from ‘a big wet kiss’.
Richard Mayhew
@raven: I can not, watching wonder pets with my kids
PsiFighter37
Oh man, taking me back to the blog wars of yore. Who even reads FDL anymore? They literally hadn’t come to mind for years before I read this post. Jane Hamsher is terrible; I place a good amount of blame on her for making Lamont toxic right before the primary victory in 2006. Her firebagging and the whole teaming up with Mr. No New Taxes was fucking pathetic. Who the hell even reads FDL nowadays?
As for the MyDD crowd – I always have respected Bowers, who I met several times back in college and thought was a bit more of the realistic, pragmatic guy at MyDD. Stoller was an insufferable prick in person who turned into a firebagger, and Jerome Armstrong – the dude definitely comes off as a huckster who had a passing affinity for politics as his vehicle of choice for a time being. I somehow ended up as Facebook friends with him a long time ago, and all he does nowadays is yoga.
The only blogger I can say I’ve met in person and liked without question is Booman.
raven
@Richard Mayhew: You is a good pop!
raven
@joel hanes: TRex helped us find a home for a cat here so that counts.
Corner Stone
@PsiFighter37:
Did he offer to let you borrow his well used kneepads?
different-church-lady
Oooh, oooh, do Daily Kos next!
Corner Stone
@Frankensteinbeck: Jeebus, talk about delusional.
Cervantes
Richard, it surely cannot be your position that the comments here are always a feast of reason and a flow of soul.
Corner Stone
@Cervantes: Mmmm, soul food…
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: Mine are.
raven
@Cervantes: More on his posts because he knows what the fuck he is talking about so there is less room for bullshit comments.
joel hanes
@raven:
TRex
oh, I’d have included Trex if I thought he/she was still blogging.
Not, though — right ?
And tbogg was at FDL for a while, but no more, right ?
raven
@Omnes Omnibus:
Now when you’re feelin’ low and the fish won’t bite
You need a little bit o’ soul to put you right
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Corner Stone:
It’s the missing subtext;
before they could kick you off for no reason, deny coverage altogether, deny wimmens care, kids were kicked off at 18 years of age, lifetime caps of a million, which could be run through in a week long hospitalization, etc.
The “up to $11,000 in addition to premiums” was also true before.
The “8% of income” was true before.
We were NEVER getting the public option in 2010.
#6 is patently false
# 10 is conjecture, and ignores that costs are rising MORE SLOWLY than they did prior to 2010.
raven
@joel hanes: Nah, I see him around now and then. I think he still does the late night classical music radio show.
eta, wrong, he’s not on that show
srv
Roberts isn’t a corporate whore?
If only BJ could be less tribal like FDL
Felonius Monk
@joel hanes: I thought she detached emptywheel from FDL a long time ago.
Bobby Thomson
@Richard Mayhew: nice. Assuming you are salaried, the decision is already improving the economy.
joel hanes
@Felonius Monk:
[ checking ]
By damn, you’re correct.
I hadn’t noticed (I’ve bookmarked her separately for many years)
Thanks for correcting my misconception.
Oh well, now no reason to go to FDL at all.
raven
@joel hanes: he does have a twitter
joel hanes
It would be more fun, maybe, to talk about excellent blogs we miss,
rather than decayed blogs we despise.
Fafblog still has up that damning last post from 2011.
And I wish The Editors would revive The Poor Man.
joel hanes
@raven:
Alas, I do not tweet.
Nor consult the Book of Faces.
Omnes Omnibus
@joel hanes: Luddite or sane person?
Elizabelle
@raven: Good to hear (other than the bullshit censorship).
But here is plenty.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: DIY body piercing.
Another Holocene Human
@Richard Mayhew: Sounds like every radical socialist rap group ever.
I know people who spend hours doing direct lobbying every month who don’t have a frigging clue how government works.
Corner Stone
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): #6 is not patently false and #10 is accurate as stated.
joel hanes
@Omnes Omnibus:
A bit of each.
I had a facebook account for about six months, and worked hard putting up old family photos to share with my cousins.
But then that insufferable prick Zuckerberg changed the privacy settings without warning or permission (exposing more than one stalked woman to her stalker, just collateral damage) and I could see what his promises were worth, so I had my account deleted.
(Also, I was pretty tired of Farmville updates from my dullest “friends”.)
The fact that I’m not LinkedIn is pretty much pure contempt for Networking as a career strategy, combined with my glaring social deficiencies.
Richard Mayhew
@Cervantes: not even close, but usually they are tied to either a) shared consensual reality or b) self trolling
ArchTeryx
@raven: Really? What’s his Twitter feed?
I have a congenital dislike for the Tweet Machine, but I’ll make an exception for TRex. I thought it was a crying shame that, unlike some of the other FDL apostates, he quit blogging altogether after being driven out.
Cervantes
@Richard Mayhew:
!
And (a) differs from FDL … how?
(Caveat: I do not read FDL; my direct knowledge of the place amounts to zero.)
Shakezula
It’s weird that no one seems to remember that the insurance companies fought the ACA down to the wire and then bitched about it for a while afterwards. And by weird I mean you’d have to be patently dishonest or excessively friggin’ ignorant about the ACA to think it was a favor for the members of AHIP and in either event obviously can’t comment meaningfully on the law, so perhaps shut up a lot.
And I have no idea why the fuck they think the ACA was a huge favor for “Big Pharma” aside from the fact morans probably think the pharmaceutical industry is the same as the insurance companies and/or saying “Big Pharma” shows they’re hip & with it. Gads, I don’t care what side they’re on, stupid people are the pits.
Corner Stone
@Cervantes:
Well, well, well.
different-church-lady
@Richard Mayhew: I do not consent to this reality in any fashion. This reality is entirely coerced.
raven
@ArchTeryx: TRexstasy
Cervantes
@Corner Stone:
A hat trick!
Matt McIrvin
@beltane: Wasn’t Stoller the one who was going on in fall 2012 about how we needed to make Romney win to sharpen the contradictions in the system, or some such thing?
Another Holocene Human
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): It’s funny how we’re supposed to just forget about all this for the sake of their (GOP and firebaggers’) arguments.
I had COBRA and when I filed a claim they declined to pay, retroactively cancelled me and (because Massachusetts) refunded my premiums. Thank goodness it was only a piddling $100 office bill, not a $10,000 hospital bill.
I like my ACA, TYVM. Status quo ante was garbage.
beltane
@joel hanes: Orcinus covered right-wing extremism and white supremacist movements very well.
beltane
@Matt McIrvin: It wouldn’t be surprising. By mid-2008 I had completely tuned him out.
Omnes Omnibus
@beltane: And whale pics.
Cervantes
@Another Holocene Human:
A truly beautiful move, you have to admit.
Bobby Thomson
@joel hanes: whiskey blog also, too.
Bobby B.
On weekends it seems Firedog Lake becomes what used to be called The Women’s Sunday Supplement. On the other hand, MSNBC spends weekends as Spike TV’s mentally disabled brother (Lockup San Antonio: Hot Dusty Dogshit Edition)
joel hanes
@beltane:
Orcinus is back in business, although he posts infrequently.
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Mine as well.
Corner Stone
@Bobby Thomson:
Big fan of Billmon and I wish he had a blog again. His tweetstorms are exhausting sometimes.
Richard Mayhew
@joel hanes: orcinus was always amazing, I counted on Tanta @CR, Group News Blog after Steve G’s death, a couple of great local blogs I can not mention..the Oil Drum
joel hanes
@Bobby Thomson:
I think you refer to Billmon at The Whiskey Bar ?
Now he tweets, and Anne Laurie of this very blog frequently features same.
Corner Stone
TRMS is just beating on Christie.
Cervantes
@joel hanes:
Die Dreigroschenoper, if you will.
Woodrowfan
I’m glad TBogg left FDL. Haven’t been back since…
joel hanes
@Richard Mayhew:
Tanta
One of the truly good ones. I raise a glass in her honor.
Anyone else remember Rivka’s “Respect for Otters” ?
Ruckus
It seems like more blogs have gone offline than have stayed on over the last 5-6 yrs. I wonder if some were actually trying to make money and found out that pure blogging really doesn’t pay much or if life just got in the way. Keeping up with and discussing crazy conservatives does have a tendency to make one a little disheartened. To say the least.
Joel
@Corner Stone: Jesus Christ, guy, fall off the wagon?
different-church-lady
@Ruckus: Or maybe people figured out blogs weren’t all that after all.
joel hanes
Also I miss Wege at Norwegianity.
tomtofa
@Bobby Thomson: whiskey blog also, too.
He’s a regular twitterer these days; his best Whiskey Bar posts were, in effect, beautifully crafted extended tweets. Miss them.
dogwood
Lots of these sites like FDL and Kos became a community for liberals and progressives who were so angry at the Bush administration. But eventually what happens is the anger becomes addictive. Anger as an end in itself is pathetic; just look at the Fox News crowd. A liberal who needs to be angry all the time needs to believe that Obama=Bush.
Corner Stone
@Joel: Booman is an unabashed, full on Obama supporter. He’s completely in the tank.
Sorry if you don’t like it being put that bluntly, but then again, who cares?
dogwood
As far as blogs I miss, well, RIP Jon Swift.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@beltane: Armstrong restarted MyDD a few months ago. I figured he was getting the band of PUMAs back together, but then he just kind of left it there. I was curious and made a google, and it seems he has written a book on yoga, and that’s his thing now.
scav
@Richard Mayhew: Ahh, Tanta.
Baud
@dogwood:
I started out as on kos. I thought it had a lot of good energy during the Bush years. They really couldn’t handle success, and fell apart quickly after Obama was elected.
phoebes-in-santa fe
The blogger I really miss is Steve Gilliard. He was tops in politics and history. Oh, what a historical font of knowledge that man was. I wish he’d been alive to see Obama elected. I can’t imagine anyone being as pleased as he would have been to see a black man become president.
Here’s the NYT “Lives” piece about Gilliard.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/magazine/30gilliard-t.html?_r=0
BillinGlendaleCA
@phoebes-in-santa fe: Steve was the best.
joel hanes
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
The blogger I really miss is Steve Gilliard.
[removes notional hat; silent for a minute]
I miss Hilzoy’s front-page pieces at Obsidian Wings.
One of the minor glories of Balloon Juice is that she occasionally comments here.
newdealfarmgrrrlll
@ArchTeryx: TRex is David Ferguson @TRexstacy on twitter. He’s also full of the usual snark and sarcasm on Facebook. He occasionally fills in at RawStory, that’s also where you’ll find TBogg.
joel hanes
@different-church-lady:
maybe people figured out blogs weren’t all that after all.
Blogs were a great stepping-stone for some.
Cheryl Rofer and Lindsay Bernstein ended up with serious journalistic cred; I think they both freelance now.
And of course, there’s Yglesias and Ezra Klein, who I once used to read every day.
newdealfarmgrrrlll
Like many here I gave up FDL in disgust when Jane urged liberals to make cause with Ron Paul. WTF lady! Uffda, no way.
MomSense
@Richard Mayhew:
Wonder pets wonder pets we’re on our way to help a baby animal and save the day.
different-church-lady
@efgoldman:
Did you ever file a complaint about that?
Cervantes
@joel hanes:
Lindsay Beyerstein.
japa21
@Corner Stone: Actually, he isn’t and has criticized Obama on several occasions. However, he actually believes in reality politics, not dreaming of unicorn politics.
That being said he is an Obama supporter, yet he is quite tolerant of several of his commentators who seem to come to his place right after being at FDL.
Baud
Heh. I’m getting Ben Carson ads here.
beltane
I first heard of Elizabeth Warren through her regular column in the old Talking Points Memo.
different-church-lady
@Baud: Ron Paul’s Big Warning for US seniors and Ready to Meet Charming Russians?
The algorithms are punking us.
dogwood
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I look forward to the return of the PUMAs. I hope Harriet Inadequateblackman, who is mostly likely running a teaparty franchise out of her basement, is ready to come back into the fold.
Woodrowfan
I got the same vibes from Democratic Underground. And then the tinfoil heads got louder and louder…
I miss the old Sadly, No for different reasons…
Baud
For real journalism, forget blogs and read Newsmax
Corner Stone
@japa21: Nuh-uh!
Woodrowfan
Maybe title it “cute puppies need help!” 8-)
joel hanes
@Cervantes:
Lindsay Beyerstein
Exactly. I’d apologize if I thought she had the slightest awareness of this blog and it’s commentariat.
phoebes-in-santa fe
@joel hanes: Hold it. I KNOW Cheryl Rofer! She lives in Santa Fe and speaks to our life-long learning program.
http://www.renesan.org. She gave a marvelous multi-session class on Nuclear Age of the 1950’s last fall!
Cervantes
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
Sounds like a wonderful program. Enjoy!
GregB
The overtures to Grover Norquist at FDL was a bridge too far me too.
Used to enjoy some of the late nights at FDL.
MYDD, Steve Gilliard, Bartcop. Some quit, some passed on.
Taylor Marsh turned into Harriet Christian.
joel hanes
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
Next time you see her, you can tell her that there is still some guy out there who clicks on the Phronesisaical link a couple times a week.
That last post from March 6 linked to some great stuff.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
watching Christie shriek about “handwringing indecisive weakness in the Oval Office”… I guess next week is lawless tyrant dictator week. Will that be Kasich or Rick Perry? I can’t remember who’s announced and who’s merely announced they’re going to announce.
Beatrice
I would actually love to live in the imaginary United States of Firedoglake, where we are only the right President away from a socialist workers paradise. If they would just stop selling us out.
I ventured in a few months ago just long enough to see that Elizabeth Warren had apparently already made some fatal mistake and was now dead to them too. Purity is a fine but fleeting thing.
different-church-lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Me, I’ve got an exploratory committee. And a Kickstarter…
Cervantes
@different-church-lady:
Both sound painful.
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s around 14 at the moment. A few more and we could get to something really interesting!
different-church-lady
@Beatrice: Well, she committed the sin of actually getting elected, for starters…
beltane
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The speed with which Obama goes from being Hitler to Neville Chamberlain is truly astonishing. How does he manage it.
different-church-lady
@Corner Stone: Just two more and we can start filling out our brackets.
Corner Stone
Yes, Lawrence. The Trade Deal is certainly a great thing we should applaud a D president for working closely with all R’s on.
beltane
@different-church-lady: Elizabeth Warren will never live up to the standard set by Darcy Burnor.
MomSense
Does anyone else visit theawl.com?
Corner Stone
@different-church-lady: I find it hilarious that Cole’s crush Chris Christie can’t come to a higher polling result than Carly.
joel hanes
@MomSense:
I like the weather reports.
Walker
The Bush years really were the Golden Age of blogging. A lot of it was in response to the myopic press which always put forth the same narratives, be it political, economic, or whatever.
There existence clearly demonstrated a demand. So what happened was commercial start-ups swooped in to fill the demand. Hence Vice and the Gawker empire. The independent blogs either got bought out, or they eventually quit as there audiences dwindled.
The fact that Balloon Juice, an independent, early 00s style blog is still running is a miracle. It is not the norm. This place is essentially a local pub that has managed to survive while Starbucks appears on every corner.
Corner Stone
@beltane: What Senate seat does Darcy hold?
MomSense
@joel hanes:
Yes!
beltane
@Corner Stone: She is above such things as Senate seats.
different-church-lady
@Corner Stone: That was his point.
different-church-lady
@Walker:
The fact that Cole himself is still running is a miracle.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Why is Ted Cruz doing shitty Simpsons impressions in front of a camera? I’d give him props for not taking himself too seriously if I hadn’t seen him talk about…. everything.
Corner Stone
@different-church-lady: Her point.
Mike in NC
Haven’t bothered to look at FDL in years. Are Jane H and Grover N still BFFs?
different-church-lady
@Corner Stone: Well if you know so much why do I need to explain it to you?
joel hanes
@Walker:
The fact that Balloon Juice, an independent, early 00s style blog is still running is a miracle.
Other survivors of An Earlier Era :
Skippy, The Bush Kangaroo
alicublog (Roy Edroso)
Lawyers Guns and Money
Eschaton/Atrios
digby
First Draft
Suburban Guerilla
FlyingToaster
@MomSense: @Richard Mayhew: I finally got to stop singing that… but I still own all the DVDs. And there’s Tony Bourdain’s version (he sings at 0:45).
It’s been really nice having WarriorGirl demanding Doctor Who and Harry Potter and having to go to B&N today to get the new Wings of Fire book.
Matt McIrvin
There was always a lot of churn with blogs starting up and shutting down. The main thing that happened was that the social networks like Facebook and Twitter came along, and people seeking to start yawping on the Internet are more likely to do it there, which reduces the incentive to figure out how to start up a blog in the traditional sense. So the startup rate went way down.
Cervantes
@joel hanes:
TPM
phoebes-in-santa fe
@joel hanes: I will!
Walker
@joel hanes:
Does Atrios still produce a lot of content? His primary strength was as an aggregator/hub, and he lost that advantage long ago.
Corner Stone
@different-church-lady: No one does. Won’t stop you.
joel hanes
@Walker:
No long front-page posts in a while; a couple links per day to things worth reading, some brief but tasty snark, and a pretty worthless commentariat (compared to this place, at least).
His “worst person” thing is still well-merited by the honorees.
Walker
@Matt McIrvin:
I agree that this was some of it – particularly for the aggregator blogs. But it still does not account for the demise of the long-form verticals (e.g. New content, like we got from Tanta). That was taken over by the new commercial start-ups.
Corner Stone
@joel hanes: There is money to be made. Look at the progression of TPM.
I think, and no bullshit, that the evolution of Balloon-Juice is a huge outlier in this field. Cole, for all his faults, could have easily sold the blog down a different path. For whatever, or many reasons, he did not. This place is really a bulwark.
It’s kind of crazy to think about.
Kerry Reid
@Beatrice: Well, these were the people who wanted to primary Bernie Sanders for voting for ACA. Because it’s possible to primary independents in their Opposite World Politics.
Omnes Omnibus
@Woodrowfan: He’d forward it, unread, to AL.
magurakurin
@Walker:
Well, us grumpy old men and mean old ladies need a place,too.
magurakurin
@Corner Stone:
RandomMonster
@Walker:
It’s true. I never had any interest in the opinions of people online until the country went off the rails invading Iraq. Then my only source of sanity was confirming that I wasn’t crazy, it was the rest of the fucking country that had lost its collective mind.
The only good thing Bush ever did for me was radicalize me more to the left.
Omnes Omnibus
@magurakurin: Not to mention mean old men and grumpy old ladies. Plus the old trans folk, both mean and grumpy.
pseudonymous in nc
I was a regular at Gilliard’s place, and I still miss him, FTFY. I also miss the camaraderie of the TBogg commentariat, because for some reason Disqus at Raw Story hates me.
I also miss the original Sadly, No! posters who have gone on to more productive things, but were great in their day. There was a really smart piece that Bradrocket did for Late Night FDL on why S, N! focused on minor-league wingnuts at places like RenewAmerica instead of the more prominent ones.
Omnes Omnibus
@pseudonymous in nc: Gilliard’s place was great.
joel hanes
Oldest still-running blog of which I’m aware is
Danny Yee’s Pathologically Polymathic
I think it may be the second-oldest thing ever called a “blog”; it retains the exact format of the ur-blog, Jarn Borger’s Robot Wisdom, which invented the form and the term “weblog”.
RandomMonster
I second (or third?) the wish that Billmon still blogged at Whiskey Bar. He was a great source of sanity during the Bush years.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Richard Mayhew:
That’s one I really miss. Nothing like having real experts explain WTF is going on. The BP blowout coverage was excellent.
Bruce Webb
Well I got banned at FDL for actually doing an analysis of their preferred alternative to ACA, i.e. HR676 the Conyers-Kucinich (so-called) Medicare for All Bill. Obviously no one had actually read it or they would have discovered the major reason it never went through Committee – it literally could not be scored. It had multiple sources of revenue but didn’t actually specify levels on any of them. Not to mention that the way it was written it would have made every retail pharmacy in the country illegal. And that was just the start. I could (and did) go on at length about the multiple fatal flaws – some political but many just substantive “it won’t work” types.
What it was was a purely aspirational bill that would have had the entire U.S. Health Care system transformed into a socialized form WAY more so than Britain’s NHS. And did it all through hand waving. Yet the FirePups got are FieryDoggy on my ass and insisted that it was actually a serious plan. Without of course ever responding to my critiques drawn, you know, from the text of the bill. Hell it got so bad that Jane tried to get me thrown off econoblog Angry Bear (where I was and am a contributer).
Anyway it was all just magical thinking. Obama just had to snap his fingers and endorse HR676 and all would be well.
joel hanes
@joel hanes:
I wrote
Jarn Borger’s
Should have been Jorn Barger’s.
I regret the error
Omnes Omnibus
@joel hanes: Too late.
Steeplejack (phone)
Anybody remember the Smirking Chimp? I never went there, but I had a friend who said it kept her sane during the Dubya years.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack (phone): The Smirking Chimp was brilliant.
mclaren
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
No, you’re a corporate tool who’s either too corrupt to care that Obama has massively sold out the Democratic party and trhe American people except on mating habits (which his corporate masters don’t care about, so yay! Gay marriage!). Or you’re so fanatically far-right that you actually think the corporate coup misnamed the TPP is a good thing:
http://crookedtimber.org/2015/06/12/why-tpp-sucks/#more-36067
Obama’s secret assassination of U.S. citizens, his drone murders of children and women in wedding parties that go on and on and on and on and on and on, and his sell-out to the corporate coup d’etat misnamed the TPP are so insanely evil that if you described these kinds of monstrous activities to someone without mentioning Obama, the first thing anyone would think of was a Bond villain stroking a white cat in a hollow volcano lair.
But none of that matters. Because, ooohhhh! Ahhhhh! Gay marriage!
Fuckwits.
mclaren
And for the record, Billmon’s old blog was the fucking bomb. That blog rocked.
Nothing comes close today.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: I should warn you that someone namejacked you and talked about nuance earlier today. Thank god, you are okay.
mclaren
Oh, and by the way:
Your tax dollars at work — burning like they’re doused in gasoline and set on fire.
Navy’s new 11 billion dollar aircraft carrier can’t launch jets with extra fuel tanks.
The F-35 randomly catches on fire sometimes — and the Navy has known about it for years.
Pilot admits the F-35 can’t dogfight worth shit, and loses to the older John-Boyd-designed F-16 in simulated combat every single time.
But c’mon! Please! This is the real world, people! Whaddaya expect for a mere trillion dollars per year spent on national defense?
Steeplejack (phone)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Okay, I LOL’d.
mclaren
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh, I can do nuance. When Obots hijack the commentary and start swooning about how magnificent Obama is right after he hijacked the democratic process and rammed through Fast Track for the totalitarian corporate putsch called the Trans Pacific Penis-up-the-ass, welllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll…nuance takes the back seat, buckaroo.
When you’re dealing with commenters that fucking clueless, you need to use a bsaeball bat with fence nails pounded into it and sharpened to stiletto points.
Seriously, people. Are you so fucking unaware and unsentient and decerebrated by political shiny objects like gay marraige that you stop noticiing the grotesque increase in health care costs that will result from the TPP???
Really???
You actually think that giving corporations the power to raise drug prices by 2000 fucking percent and then sue any nations that try to prevent those kind of greed-crazed corporate smash-and-grab isn’t going to break the U.S. health care system like a goddamn engine block thrown through a plate glass window…?
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack (phone): As long as someone does.
mclaren
@Steeplejack (phone):
And I replied to the astroturfer Omnes Corporatespeak, but of course my comment in marooned in moderation. Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?
burnspbesq
@ArchTeryx:
David is still around. He pops up in my Facebook feed about 10x/day. Most recently he was editing for Salon, but that didn’t go well, so he’s freelancing to keep a roof over his head and the cats fed and groomed. And he’s probably getting married in the not too distant future.
Sly
@Woodrowfan: DU is mostly tolerable when there isn’t a presidential primary going on that includes more than one Democratic Party candidate. Otherwise it’s a giant shitpit that’s best to be avoided.
Steeplejack (phone)
@mclaren:
Yes, I’m sure it’s nothing so simple as too many links or a forbidden FYWP word. I’ll check back later to see how deep the conspiracy runs.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack (phone): As will I.
mclaren
@Richard Mayhew:
Perfect!
Thank your, Mayhew, for destroying your crediility with a single sentence.
The Oil Drum was the great clueless clusterfuck of the blogging world. Run by a group of “experts” so completely unaware of objective reality that they kept confidently predicting the arrival of Peak Oil and $200-a-barrel oil prices here to stay right up to the very moment that oil prices collapsed, the Oil Drum was a sinkhole of ignorance and incompetence so extreme that it requires epic poetry to adequately decribe.
So we would expect the Price of the Clueless Mayhew to praise the Oil Drum to the skies.
And by the way…why isn’t the Oil Drum around anymore?
Because the fools who ran that blog embarrassed themselves so badly with their non-stop record of faulty predictions and Dunning-Kruger-style botched analyses that there was no way out but to pull the plug and end the whole mess before they had to commit hara-kiri.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: I am starting to suspect that you are a Koch employee who was hired to be a thread killer.
mclaren
Source: “Drones kill rescuers in ‘double tap,'” BBC News, 12 October 2013.
Deliberately murdering 14-year old boys who happen to be innocent bystanders.
Tell me again what a “good man” Barack Obama is, assholes.
mclaren
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m a thread killer, all right — a killer of threads that mindlessly praise the corporate tool Barack Obama and swoon over Obama’s bribed corporate atrocities disguised as legislation and war crimes misrepresented as “military action against terrorists.”
Head on back to your Pentagon handlers and tell them you need better talking points, buckaroo.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: Wow, you really were threadjacked earlier today. Dude, you should check for your ‘nym in the earlier threads. And then you should go back to your Koch Brother paymasters and tell them that you were found out.
This is a fun game; let’s keep playing.
J R in WV
@Omnes Omnibus:
Would even the Koch boys hire mclaren? Pour qua?
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV: He disrupts conversations. He causes people to move on to other threads. I start to suspect that when a beneficial progressive/liberal conversation is starting, the Kochs send him in.
Just for context, he has accused me of being a PFC in a Pentagon basement and of masturbating to Holocaust porn. I fell free to suggest anything I like about him without any supporting evidence. He is vile scum.
Steeplejack (phone)
@mclaren:
I see that your “suppressed” comment has appeared at #193. Looks like the word penis tripped you up, numbnuts, not some sinister conspiracy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack (phone): Might have been the lack of nuance.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: FTR: I had an E-3 pay grade in Basic and an E-5 pay grade in OCS. I maxed out at 1LT.
mclaren
@Omnes Omnibus:
I disrupt the chorus of mindless praise for war crimes and corporate coups because IOKIYAD (It’s OK If You’re A Democrat).
Omnes Omnibus, who refuses to disclose his real name, has aggressively and beligerntly tried to defend Barack Obama’s murder of U.S. citizens. I suggested when he did this several years ago that he needed to go back to jerking off to vidoes of the Holocaust and leave this forum to people who care about democracy.
I stand by that statement foursquare, 100%, absolutely.
Omnes Omnibus’ behaviour strongly suggests that he is a member of a disinformation group like Britain GCHQ, whose motto is “DENY, DISRUSPT, DEGRADE, DECEIVE.” The CIA and the U.S. military have both been thoroughly documented to have implemented such domestic disinformation campaigns in modern American history — in the case of the CIA, Operation Mockingbird. (Not paranoia, a government program documented in detail as a result of the Church Hearings.)
In the case of the Pentagon, a long-standing pattern of disinformation running back to Vietnam:
“The Los Angeles Times revealed last year (12/1/04) that the U.S. military lied to CNN in the course of executing psychological warfare operations, or PSYOPS, in advance of the November attack on Fallujah. In an October 14 on-air interview, Marine Lt. Lyle Gilbert told CNN Pentagon reporter Jamie McIntyre that a U.S. military assault on Fallujah had begun. In fact, the offensive would not actually begin for another three weeks. The goal of the psychological operation, according to the L.A. Times, was to deceive Iraqi insurgents into revealing what they would do in the event of an actual offensive.”
Original source: Los Angeles Times, December 2004.
Of course, Omnes Omnibus wants us to believe that the Church hearings of the 1970s were an optical illusion and that the Los Angeles Times is just making shit up.
Check my sources. I constantly cite the New York Times, the congressional record, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, and other reputable sources.
Omnes Omnibus calls me “vile scum” and offers no evidence, no logic, nothing beyond name calling.
Which one of us is credible?
Examine the evidence. Decide for yourself.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Omnes Omnibus:
It can’t be that. Lack of nuance never kills my comments (unfortunately).
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren:
I am willing to live with that.
David M
@mclaren:
Public service announcement: Examining the evidence not actually recommended. (The stupid…it burns.)
mclaren
As for the evidence that Omnes Omnibus is a paid Pentagon or CIA astroturfer, the evidence is circumstantial but strong. Consider that Omnes Astroturfer constantly defends corporate atrocities and Obama’s war crimes, including assassination of U.S. citizens.
Then consider that Omnes accuses me of being paid by the Koch brothers in retaliation.
This is a standard Ann Coulter tactic — accuse your debating opponent of the things you yourself are guilty of. Coulter says liberal “tell savagely cruel lies for sport” when in fact she is the only person in the political debates who consistently does that.
Now ask yourself: what on earth would the Koch brothers have to gain from bankrolling me? Do the Koch brothers somehow stand to gain something from revelations of government abuses, of corporate collusion with the military industrial complex, with evidence that keeps coming out about how Chicago police partnered with the paramiltary Department of Homeland Security to deploy military weaponry against Occupy demonstrators?
How does any of that information help the Koch brothers?
Explain it to us, Omnes.
I keep citing documented facts like “The NDAA legalizes the use of propaganda on the U.S. public.”
Source: Business Insider, 21 May 2012.
How does that benefit the Koch brothers?
And then add in the following reportage by the British paper The Guardian:
Source: “The need to protect the internet from ‘astroturfing’ grows ever more urgent,” The Guardian, 23 February 2012.
And the final piece of the puzzle:
Source: “Pentagon buys social networking `spy software,’ The Telegraph, 17 March 2011.
Now ask yourself:
What do the Koch brothers have to gain from bankrolling me to post these documented facts?
Compared to the much more pertinent question: What does the Pentagon and CIA have to gain from bankrolling astroturfers like Omnes Omnibus to defend presidential extrajudicial assassination of U.S. citizens, paramilitary police abuses, Orwellian panopticon surveillance, and the general destruction of American democracy by the lawless growth of an out-of-control security state presided over by secret kill lists and anonymous black ops death squads and phalanxes of disinformation specialists who warp and twist American media and social networks for pay?
Clearly, the Pentagon and the CIA benefit greatly if they can secretly sway public opinion that assassination is hunky-dory and endless unwinnable wars overseas are just peachy-keen ‘n dandy and presidential murder of U.S. citizens without trial is marvelous and Orwellian panopticon surveillance is magnificent and the very flower of democracy.
The Pentagon and the CIA and the Executive Branch benefit enormously from swaying public opinion in this way because that lets the Pentagon and the CIA and the Executive Branch operate outside the law, without oversight, without democratic checks and balances on their abuses, without public revelation of their screw-ups and failures.
As the psychopathic shogun explained in the 2011 Japanese film 1″Jûsan-nin no shikaku”:
That is the philosophy that guides paid military-corporate-industrial whores like Omnes Omnibus.
Omnes claims that the Koch brothers are paying me and this makes no sense; he offers no logic to back up his absurd claim, and provides no evidence. I claim that Omnes is an astroturfer based on the circumstantial evidence of his grotesquely anti-democratic pro-war pro-extrajudicial-murder pro-totalitarian comments, and backed up the circumstantial evidence of the documented facts about the Pentagon’s proven online disinformation astroturfing campaign cited above.
Moreover, I further claim that other commenters on Balloon Juice are also Pentagon or CIA corporate military-industrial-complex paid disinformation astroturfers, including Martin, eemom, and Mnemosyne. In fact, they might all be the same person operating multiple IP addresses and using multiple online personas courtesy of the Pentagon’s social networking spy software.
When you dismiss my speculations as “mere paranoia,” recall that Dirty Fucking Hippies like me have for years warned about these kinds of creeping totalitarian abuses by the U.S. military-industrial-surveillance complex, and we have consistently been proved correct by the facts.
Years ago people like me warned that the atrocities committed against alleged terrorists in overseas third world countries would eventually be committed routinely against U.S. citizens. And look at the evidence: an epidemic of police abuse against ordinary Americna citizens. And many of the very same soldiers who indiscriminately kicked in doors in hovels in Iraq and Afghanistan and shot down Iraqis and Afghans like dogs, with no evidence that they were guilty of anything, walked away scot free, and got preferdential hiring as police officers. And now we have an epidemic of police in America kicking in doors in American houses and shooting people down like dogs, with no evidence that they were guilty of anything.
The documentation of ever-growing police abuse is overwhelming:
“15 Reasons America’s Police Are So Brutal,” Alternet, 6 December 2014.
“US cited for police violence, racism in scathing UN review on human rights,” Al Jazeera, 15 May 2015.
“The Brutality of Police Culture in Baltimore,” The Atlantic magazine, April 2015.
And the list goes on. If you don’t realize the problem of expoentially worsening police abuse in America, you must be living in a bathyscaphe.
DFHs like me have been warning for years now that the military “black sites” overaseas where prisoners were secretly and illegally imprisoned and tortured would eventually migrate to domestic U.S. soil. And guess what?
“The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden ‘black site,'” The Guardian, 24 February 2015.
DFHs like me have been warning for years that military disinformation ops like Operation Mockingbird that were conducted on U.S. soil for many years and discontinued after the Church hearings in 1976 were almost certainly being resurrected as part of the Global War on Terror. And guess what?
Source: “Military May Be Engaged in Illegal Psychological Operations and Propaganda Against U.S. Citizens,” ACLU website, 2 March 2011.
For year after year, DFHs like me have warned all of you that illegal unconstitutional activities like extraordinary rendition and extrajudicial assassination and psyops and government disinformation and the brutal treatment of ordinary citizens in third-world nations always suffer mission creep. Soon enough, these kinds of illegal unconstitutional activities become normalized. Then they get routine. And eventually they get so ingrained in the military-police-surveillance-prison complex that these kinds of illegal unconstitutional activities come home to roost in America, on domestic soil.
We’ve seen it before with the Watergate plumbers, with COINTELPRO, with Operation Mockingbird.
But astroturfers like Omnes Omnibus wants to believe that’s all paranoid fantasy, and I’m the astroturfer, not him.
Good luck with that story, buckaroo.
The evidence for systematic government manipulation of public opinion through disinformation is circumstantial but strong:
Source: “Democrats lose the ‘torture’ debate,” The Washington Post, 5 January 2015.
20 years ago 80% of Americans polled strongly disapproved of torture. Today, 76% polled approve of torture. That didn’t just happen. That kind of dramatic swing in public opinion only occurs as the result of a systematic massive intense concentrated disinformation campaign by the American military-industrial complex, and its paid astroturfers like Omnes Omnibus.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: And there is the evidence for my case.
/drops the mic.
joel hanes
@mclaren:
20 years ago 80% of Americans polled strongly disapproved of torture. Today, 76% polled approve of torture. That didn’t just happen. That kind of dramatic swing in public opinion only occurs as the result of …
[ mclaren identifies a thing ]
Here’s another thing: 9/11 was a spectacular propaganda victory, and shattered the complacent sense of utter security that Americans had enjoyed.
White Trash Liberal
Late to the party, as always. Damn sleep.
I miss the formative grounds of Salon’s TableTalk a lot. A lot of high quality writers were members, and the beginnings of the activist/advocate schism were there. Stirling Newberry and Ferguson Foont represented the activist wing, and I still retain a great deal of respect for the quality of their prose and ideas. Foont could dance circles around mclaren, and it’s a shame she represents the alarmist wing of leftist activism at BJ.
I also miss TPMCafe, and Josh’s decision to not only can the Cafe in favor of sloppy breathless clickbait, but redesign in the aggregator mode was disappointing beyond measure. There too was a very distinct schism. I also learned the hard lesson that nothing you write on someone else’s sight is your own. I broke down many of the military cables dropped from the Manning leaks and realized that the doc dump included troop movements, 5 paragraph orders, and other sensitive information… Enough to allow insurgents to reverse engineer US strategy. I also audited the Greenwald/Hamsher PAC Accountability Now, and discovered a combination of graft and brilliance that still leaves me uneasy to this day.
I now post pretty rarely and exclusively here when the mood strikes, but I lurk. I love diversity of opinion, quality of prose, and the quest to pierce the veil of disinformation which is the hallmark of our era. Blogs and comments are the western samizdat: ideas exchanged beneath State Narrative, collected to both pursue truth and find kindred spirits so we all feel a bit less crazy for thinking the Empire Has No Clothes.
And mclaren: you are truly a moron if you think police brutality is somehow a new thing. It may be decorated in military gear now, but police brutality is woven into our history. Police, if not regulated properly, become enforcers of class, race and gender barriers which irrigate us into our cantons. If you are trying to pretend this is a novel simister shift, you are either misinformed or disingenuous. I think the latter, and you are building a circumstantial case out of bare-assed assumptions.
chopper
@Steeplejack (phone):
you know classic unmedicated mclaren is back when the obsessive ass-rape references come out. dude’s crazy about ass rape.
chopper
@Omnes Omnibus:
i think he gets paid extra for working in certain buzzwords. I’ll bet working in COINTELPRO got him an extra 20 bucks.
different-church-lady
@mclaren: Have you ever considered decaf?
chopper
@different-church-lady:
(pulls shirt over head) ARE YOU THREATENING ME?
Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
@Steeplejack (phone):
Loved the Smirking Chimp in the early days. Was among the first blogs I began reading right after Bush assumed office. Along with Media Whores Online (maybe the very best of the early lefty blogs), Billmon (Whiskey Bar), Bartcop, Digby, and The Editors/Poorman (of those that are gone the one that I miss most of all) the Smirking Chimp helped keep me sane in those darkest days of the Cheney/Bush mis-rule. And I am still sad that Steve Gilliard did not get to see Barack Obama elected President.
I used to hit many others fairly often like Atrios and TPM and Oliver Willis and DKos, etc., but for some time now BJ, LG&M, and Roy Edroso (alicublog) have been the only blogs I regularly visit (these also have the best commentariats, IMO — Atrios’s and DKos’s have sucked hard for a very long time).
I visit here most of all, which seems like home to me (going back to John’s Road to Damascus conversion in ’05) even with the trolls and nutjobs like the current set that includes srv and mclaren.
Neither of those two can hold a candle to the likes of matoko-loco (in her various manifestations) and Brick Oven Bill, though (who I miss, probably because I am a bad person). mclaren tries hard, seems like, but srv is just a lame and tiresome little shit of a troll who I’m surprised anyone bothers to respond to.
Oh yeah, and fuck the firebaggers.