Be honest, that IS what some of you really want.
]]>One of the reasons my respect for him has grown is because he suffers your slings and arrows with such class and dignity.
Call me naive, but I think he's done remarkably well under the circumstances.
Call me paranoid, but I think some of you are just fake progressives.
Call me anything you want, I think you know who you are.
]]>ANY protective restrictions literally put a sphincter pinch on their profits.
Is it any wonder they are willing to spend a small fraction of their total wealth to develop what can only be called institutional political power?
The CATO Institute is proof alone.
When corporations grow so powerful they literally create political institutions to promote their pre-eminence over public interests, they represent to our supposed "free" society, in many ways, the sum of our fears.
]]>People listened, and discussed, they didn't just talk to be heard, and they considered other ideas, instead of dismissing them outright.
I admit, when the far right and farther left started their pincer movement to de-Obamify the place, I baited them gamefully, and tried to draw out some who would casually identify themselves, so I was playing their game a bit. I didn't realize at the time how well organized it might have been.
But the "off site" chicanery grew, the sock puppets proliferated, and the threads all went south, and lots of folks went to greener pastures (literally.)
Then as if on cue, the recent wave of constant harping and email harassment from site-trashing techies amped up.
And as a result, after a great, intimate run on EBroadway, the Cafe is suddenly a liability instead of a pertinent political blog?
Seems to me like a series of bad events, perpetrated by obsessed people bent on obstruction, has culminated in the ultimate obstruction, if free-form forums like these fold so easily to a team of determined bullies.
]]>If it wasn't for the Truth the Blogs purvey, the right would ignore them completely. But for the right to survive future progress and stifle it, that truth thing has GOT to be nipped in the bud, whenever it starts to grow.
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Not that I ever garnered the kind of following and comments many of you enjoy, but it was always enough to encourage me and make me think at least SOME intelligent people were reading my words. I tend to make the egghead athiests roll their eyes a bit too often, I know, but think I managed to accomplish my one goal in life; to provoke DEEP intelligent thought in others. Even if my own words don't portray the profound, I always hope I can inspire it in others.
So, staying on your thread(which I am usually very bad about) that is what TPM has done for me. It gave me a place to provoke thought in others.
Maybe that's not enough for most people, but for me, that was all I ever wanted.
I will admit, I eventually reached a point where I didn't care who commented, and I knew my provocations would draw the usual flies of ideology. But I have always appreciated what others offered, and only wish I had the time to comment and post on their blogs enough to let them know I'm watching and appreciate their work.
I've rec'd ten times more than I commented, it is something you can't see up front, but many bloggers I read and rec'd I never commented on, so that support may not have been obvious to some of them.
But is has always been there.
And, in parting, I will add, I am absolutely serious that TPM should be "booked" as a history lesson, what we have written and read here, especially since the sites original inception, is a very good example of what "the blogs" are all about.
Call me naive, but doesn't a sock puppet represent a pernicious deception? Maybe some folks enjoyed gaming the rest of us, but in the end, what does it say about honest dialog and an attempt to find real answers? If people need fake ID's to make their point, or to fake support for and false agreement with their point, their point must not have been valid in the first place.
I realize it is nearly impossible to control, but to me, using the anonymity of the blogs deceitfully only profanes the medium. There are simply no virtues left for them to abdicate.
But, we have known for so long, all those virtues are abandoned by the right as they attempt to impose some higher virtue of their own making. To hell with real integrity, they want their own version of it, and the rest of us be damned.
Sock puppets and posers are the bad apples that spoil the whole bushel. And it looks as if they may have spoiled this bushel.
Hope they are proud of it.
]]>I've always speculated that online books, with their inherent link-ability, would surpass print versions just in terms of functionality, but the fact we save some trees is enough reason for Ipads and Ebooks etc.
I still think Josh (maybe with some help from his friends) has the makings of a really great hardcover, just by editing through the history and development of this site and choosing seminal moments and events, that illustrate just how TPM unfolded.
If he hired a team like LisB and Genghis to sift through the years, and pick out the gems, it wold be a best seller. And they know this blog well enough to do a lot of that research from at least some memory.
Call it "TPM and the Birth of the Blogs."
Or something like that...
But they need to do it soon, someone else will if Josh doesn't.
We are still in the infancy of this incredible medium, and a primer like the one I speak of would be a great tool for anyone studying the toobz as history.
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