This diary series may be the most self-indulgent thing I've ever seen on this site, so I'm starting it at a quiet hour and asking that people do not recommend it. (I mean it. I don't want to spawn imitators.) Note that I'll soon be traveling, possibly without computer access, so my year here is over and I choose to mark it in this way.
When posters have complained about a lack of reader response, about never making the Rec List, and so on, I've sometimes suggested that they take the word "diary" literally. A traditional diary may one day be published, or may serve as grist for a memoir, but it is foremost written for ourselves, to memorialize our own thoughts. (We just happen to do so out here in the open.) If we're lucky and so disposed, a diary may also change others' thinking and perhaps the world. Regardless, it has value in its being written and being ours.
And so: here is part 1 of an easy-to-read annotated list, from latest to earliest (in proper blog form), of every diary I have written here at Daily Kos as Major Danby. Thanks to Markos, the CEs, and my friends and readers for helping me generate, publish, refine, defend, and now compile the work described below. Without you, there would have been nothing.
Like all of the others listed below, except where indicated with a "CA-42" designation, this diary is not affiliated with any candidate or campaign.
Update, 12/11, 1:51 a.m. Pacific Standard Time: evidently, it's going to be 220 diaries, not 222. I just tried to post part 2 and it was taken down. I'm not going to try to figure out why; the powers that be can do what they will. (Though I will note that I didn't get any complaints about this first one.) I'll just post the rest at docudharma and link to it from here. That may be better, now that I think of it.
Here is part 2, and here is part 3.
Diaries marked with a "+" after the number of comments are ones that I feel represent my best writing or are otherwise notable.
This was originally intended to be one huge diary, and indeed it turned out so huge that it would barely load. I've decided to break it up into three more manageable chunks. They're of unequal size; this one includes the first 78 of 222, from September 2005 to the day after Election Day 2006.
(78) Cherchez les femmes – a bit trifling, but I like this one; I figured out that Nancy Pelosi was the 110th woman to serve in Congress (46 comments) +
(77) Spin control action item: Election 2006 ideological scorecard – another bright idea that didn’t work. Limbaugh really said that conservatives won in 2006? Wow. (26 comments)
(76) "To restore checks and balances to the federal government" – passing on a bit of rap that seemed to be working for me on the campaign phone (18 comments)
(75) Republican cheaters: watch out, we will find you. – brave talk at Republican cheaters, though I think we are getting better at this (17 comments)
(74) Martial Law and FINGER: at rest, though not at ease – the Saturday before the election, having made a small splash but nothing more, we gave in (5 comments)
(73) Martial law & FINGER: Nov. 1 - got fax? – the struggle to get people to push candidates to take a pledge continued (23 comments)
(72) Martial law: Oct. 31, time running out to fax! (rev. 1) – diminishing returns started setting in quickly as we fought for oxygen (13 comments)
(71) Martial law, Section 1076, and FINGER: Oct. 30 rev 1 – second attempt to bring people into the cause, notable mostly for the fine logo (56 comments)
(70) Martial law, Section 1076, and FINGER: v1029.2 – I left the Carter campaign and with sheddhead’s help tried to make martial law the biggest issue in the election. It didn’t work, but it did start out with a bang (303 comments) +
(69) Rick Hazen: SCOTUS screwed up on Arizona voter law – one of an occasional series importing important and interesting articles from Slate (4 comments)
(68) HUGE! Bush Guts Posse Comitatus, Grabs National Guard! [ACTION UPDATE] – a DKos scoop on an important story that fell into my lap while I was working on Jack Carter’s campaign (526 comments) +
(67) Some stirring 2002 words from Joe Lieberman (plus cheeky poll) – using an old Joe Lieberman speech from 2002 against him (4 comments)
(66) SCOOP: Ask Jim Kolbe, Page Board head 1995-1999, about Foley (DATE CORRECTED) – I figured out almost immediately on hearing the info in the title where this story was going (40 comments)
(65) Afghanistan (updated, poll, not breaking, apparently broken) – snapped a string of decent diaries with this trifling end-of-day song parody (10 comments)
(64) FAKING! Congress votes Bush right to define "sexual predator" – I thought this was a pretty clever satire of how Bush’s redefinition of torture could save Mark Foley. A small number of people agreed (33 comments) +
(63) How many GOP pages had sex with Rep. Foley, R-FL? – pointing to the obvious: that a lot of GOP men must have had sex with gay party elders to advance their careers, and many pages will be suspected of it (100 comments) +
(62) BREAKING! My nation and my heart – awkwardly titled cri de couer marking the passage of the Military Commissions Act (29 comments) +
(61) Congress voting on making martial law easier to invoke – first on a theme that became the NDAA 1078 diaries (11 comments)
(60) I've figured out the model for Bush's Presidency – weird observation for Star Trek fans (38 comments)
(59) 'Seriousness' on Iraq: why scapegoating makes sense – arguing that blaming Bush & Cheney, or "firing the coach," is how to get a fresh start so that the world will like us again (13 comments) +
(58) DAILY KOS WELCOMES 1,000,000TH USER! – silliness attending DKos passing the 100K user threshold (61 comments)
(57) Meme: Lieberman the Oxygen Sucker – promoting notion that focus on Lieberman campaign would impede Democratic victories in Congress (15 comments)
(56) Two perspectives on Qana (with mega-poll) – piquant (or lightly snarky) photo essay on how people respond to attack (32 comments)
(55) If I am ever kidnapped by terrorists – snark promoting proportionality in responses (31 comments)
(54) Does immigration hurt the poor? (Intriguing NYT Mag story) – reviewing interesting NYT Mag story on economic effects of immigration (67 comments)
(53) Mexican election diary 5 - liveblogging and aftermath – last installment of the pre-organized-liveblog-era liveblog of the Mexican elections in which Calderon beat AMLO via what sure looked like fraud (131 comments)
(52) Just shut up about violent revolution – concern about agents provocateurs on Daily Kos. Prefiguring later community conflicts (84 comments) +
(51) Training animals and politicians: riffing on "Shamu" – on how we train politicians to follow our commands (20 comments)
(50) On Being Roiled By Criticism – on the blogosphere’s response to "Rabid Lambs" criticism. I still think this is worth reading (42 comments) +
(49) Supreme Court Gets One Right, But Activist Alito Blows It! – I just re-read it and it holds up. I probably should have made this a law review piece (94 comments) +
(48) 'Lieberman' -- new lyrics to the tune of 'Lover Man' – well, I thought it was funny ... (6 comments)
(47) Time to Fib! Saturday Night Fibonacci Poetry Slam – more fibbing. I’ve tried to give away this franchise more than once (32 comments)
(46) OK, then: how DO you make your money? – an interesting discussion of our occupations, although I messed up the poll (125 comments)
(45) Judge: W can target, jail Muslims in U.S. indefinitely – I miss the old rights regime (33 comments)
(44) I had never had a moment of religious ecstasy – Pastor Dan’s service at YKos 1.0 was great (46 comments)
(43) My draft letter to Kimberly Dozier, to be signed at YKos – and I hope she’s doing well (4 comments)
(42) DONE!] Identify lies about Ken Lay & Bill Clinton ties – it took a Koster just a few minutes to refute this e-mail being sent around (14 comments)
(41) Yearly Kos project: thank-you cards to Dozier and bereaved families – I did send the letters, which didn’t get all that many signatures (19 comments)
(40) A short photo essay on Gen. Michael Hayden's qualifications – oh, just go click the link for a cute "separated at birth?" pairing. Later found out someone had beaten me to it (6 comments)
(39) Gold, glacier water, and poisoning native Chileans: is this true? – snopesing a report of environmental injustice and finding it to be true (22 comments)
(38) META: mark titles of 'satire' diaries with a '$@' prefix – a very unpopular suggested solution to what was then a common problem (106 comments)
(37) Yearly Kos: I want a hootenanny, dammit! – it’s not so bad that I wanted to organize group singing in Vegas, it’s that I thought it might happen (33 comments)
(36) HEY! WP reporter is asking dKos questions NOW! – let’s respond to Tom Edsall’s diary so he gives us a fair shake in discussing Rahm v. Dean and 50-state strategy! (OK, so that didn’t work....) Led to Edsall making the Rec List after scrolling off (22 comments)
(35) Help me decide: Washington or Oregon? – this is not the only reason I took the Oregon bar exam, but it helped (57 comments)
(34) Yearly Kos ride board & roommate match, Part 2 – also pretty unsuccessful, though later some people wished they’d read it (14 comments)
(33) Stephen Colbert did not shit in the punch bowl – this diary pissed off people who wanted to believe that Colbert went to the WHCA dinner to agitate and not to amuse. You can see fault lines emerging here (160 comments) +
(32) Yearly Kos ride board & roommate match, Part 1 – self-explanatory but neither particularly successful nor welcome (10 comments)
(31) And what if Iraq HAD had WMDs? – I still think that this is a better and more important question than most commenters did, so I give it a plus (78 comments) +
(30) Is Amazon dissing Greenwald? And, if so, why? – mystery of why Amazon wasn’t featuring its #1 selling book in it’s "updated hourly" top 10 list. (33 comments)
(29) CANCEL your $12 Greenwald Amazon Order! – because Amazon lowered the price, of course. (66 comments)
(28) Another Fibonacci poetry diary – that’s two! Could be the start of a trend! (35 comments)
(27) UPDATED! Review of A. Whitney Brown's show at Rocky Sullivan's – the guy has talent! (27 comments)
(26) Fibonacci poetry diary - dKos open artistic forum – in response to that day’s NYT story, the first in a very irregular, in all senses, series (30 comments)
(25) Journalism: why the scum often rises (w/ poll) – how "selection effects" explain bad journalism: the wrong people get promoted. (35 comments) +
(24) If you could live anywhere in the world ... – I had a good reason for asking, too. My most comments up to that time. (168 comments)
(23) The Military Recruitment decision was WRONG! Here's why – the DKos legal squadron liked the Roberts decision; I thought it vitiated the "unconstitutional conditions" doctrine. Not much action here. (4 comments)
(22) Joe Nighthorse Lieberman and Senate Subpoena power – Prediction was wrong. Thanks, perhaps, to Jim Webb? (3 comments)
(21) Ask: If Bush flip-flops on UAE, will he be lying? – using a then-prospective Bush flip-flop on Dubai Ports World to drive home lessons about his Presidency (14 comments) +
(20) Ed Lazarus was wrong this time – disagreeing with columnist’s contention that Democrats err by refusing to explain how they’d trade off liberty versus security. My least successful diary ever (1 comment)
(19) The Challenger Disaster and the Alito Disaster – comparing the filibuster-trampling rush to include Alito confirmation in Bush’s SOTU address to the rush to launch a space shuttle so as to include it in Reagan’s (4 comments)
(18) A chart that even Tim Russert can understand – helping NBC understand why the Abramoff scandal was not a bipartisan one (11 comments)
(17) Korematsu redux – arguing that Korematsu is key to understanding Bush-Cheney view on executive war powers (5 comments) +
(16) State laws permitting abortion won't survive overturn of Roe – legal arguments about a post-Roe legal landscape in light of Oregon assisted-suicide case (164 comments) +
(15) UPDATED: 80K DeltaMiles needed to save a life – attempt to find donor of frequent flyer miles to help fly someone out on a derivative asylum claim (22 comments)
(14) Slate's economist calls out dKos over murder of poor woman – commenting on article on Texas law allowing hospital to pull indigent patient off of life support against her will (I think that this was my first diary on the Rec List) (144 responses) +
(13) Why should I live? – what is the meaning of life; what mark do we want to leave on the world? (70 comments)
(12) Korean researcher admits massive fraud (satire) – failed effort to rewrite NYT story about disgraced Korean cloning researcher as if it were about John Yoo (2 comments)
(11) A GOP Scandal Alphabet (a poem to remember them all by) – silly doggerel listing GOP scandals through end of 2005 (9 comments) +
(10) As J. Edgar knew: domestic spying is also about blackmail – asserting that the Bush Administration may be so interested in spying for blackmail purposes (9 comments) +
(9) A Pilgrim's guide to bringing it all home this Thanksgiving – thoughts on talking to non-progressive relatives over the holidays (2 comments)
(8) WMDs and the betrayal of the neocons in Iraq – arguing that the neocons believes that they would find at least non-nuclear WMDs in Iraq, which is why they didn’t plant any (37 comments) +
(7) The Turning of Judy Miller (with a nod to Juan Cole) – wondering if Judy Miller could be convinced to turn on the neocons (17 comments)
(6) My Yom Kippur Contemplation – taking my opportunity to be a wordier Tevye (20 comments)
(5) How will BushCo Spin Plame Indictments? (+ poll) – anticipating GOP strategy (28 comments)
(4) Here's the question to ask Bush on Miers – challenging Bush on his purported lack of knowledge of Miers’s views on abortion (8 comments)
(3) VEY IS MIERS! Collect your snark about Harriet here (+ poll) – snark contest about Miers nomination (7 comments)
(2) Bush's Most Outrageous Possible Pick (Poll) – contest to pick most outrageous possible replacement for Sandra Day O’Connor (32 comments)
(1) Bush's Bottle and Clinton's Cigar: Some Sympathy for Lady MacBush – how reports of Bush’s return to drinking after Katrina can help teach Republicans about politicians’ need for privacy (22 comments)
If anyone wonders whether it takes time to make one's mark as a diarist, part 1 of my list offers proof!