We have so many insightful and powerful diaries written here at Daily Kos. Our diaries inform, inflame, impassion, and even entertain. We Kossacks have strong voices and an even stronger will to be the change we wish to see in this country.
One of the richest, and perhaps most under-appreciated, areas of thought come in the form of comments attached to these diaries.
Here at Top Comments we strive to recognize and promote the talent of this community by highlighting outstanding comments found throughout the day by the diarist, and through nominations at made at TopComments at gmail dot com by your fellow Kossacks.
These nominations are subjective, and certainly not complete (as no one can read the complete site on a daily basis!). But we hope they will serve to shine a light where deserved, and to give the reader a good starting point in finding conversation on the site.
Please come in and make yourself at home! Join us beneath the fold...
I'm still not sure how it got to be August already, but given that I was on the road for most of the past six weeks, it's good to have a month ahead of me where I'm mostly at home, sleeping in my own bed, and eating food that I've prepared for myself.
I also won't have to miss things like Cheers and Jeers meetups with Kossacks I'm fond of (as I did on Saturday, foregoing an opportunity to travel "to infinity and beyond", if I'm reading Bill right, though I expect that might have extended my time away from home to excessive dimensions), and other enjoyable summertime events around New England.
It would appear that I left my creativity on the road, too, for although "August Edition" allows for all sorts of puns on such an august occasion (okay, a tiny one slipped into the nominations section), I find myself completely uninterested in the prospect of discussing the first Roman Emperor of two millenia ago, Caesar Augustus, from whom the capitalized and lowercase versions of the word "August" are derived. After his decease, he was declared a God by a vote of the Roman Senate, which goes to show you that Senates have been getting it wrong for a very long time.
After today, we do have another thirty days before September is upon us, and doubtless many of these days will be hot ones, as today was when it wasn't thinking about inflicting rain on us. (It thought about it, but where I was, it failed to deliver.) The day turned soupy thereafter, which struck me as unnecessary, but typical of the past month. I was hoping for a change...
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We did have a nice change with the new month; the Top Comments mailbox received half dozen submissions, all arriving before dinnertime and nicely in advance of the 9:30pm Eastern Time deadline. The address of our mailbox for top comments submissions remains:
TopComments AT gmail DOT com
(change " AT " to "@" and " DOT " to ".")
Anyone can send great comments to our address. Be sure to include the direct link to a comment—the URL—which is available from that comment's date/time; we need that to find your choice. Please always include your Daily Kos user name in the body of your message, so we can credit you properly. If you send a writeup with the link, we are able to include that, too, though we reserve the right to edit.
From expatjourno:
In yesterday evening's diary from Laurence Lewis, Krugman: "Complete intellectual surrender", Jim P writes that of the three fields of politics, the economy and foreign affairs are off the table, leaving us with only social issues to fight over.
From trashablanca:
In today's J Town diary, bubbanomics laments that he picked the wrong week to return from a business trip.
From bubbanomics:
In the forbidden pleasures of the hidden threads, Meteor Blades suggests an excellent upgrade for DK4.1.
From smileycreek:
In Hunter's front-page diary, Pelosi a Yes on Debt Deal, in which Pelosi calls the deal a "satan sandwich with satan fries on the side", blue aardvark speculates on the ultimate price in the White House cafeteria for the combo, and the food metaphors keep flying until RadGal70 lands the final punch.
From brillig:
The description Rumi68 paints President Obama's negotiation style is not quite the one I use. Just sayin'.
In Dreaming of Better Days' poignant I'm Done, KelleyRN2 shares a pipe dream I wholeheartedly would love to see.
From Puddytat:
This comment by TribeApologist says it all for me. I needed to share this with others.
From sardonyx (your august August diarist):
In Keith Olbermann's excellent diary Special Comment: The Four Great Hypocrisies, litigatormom makes a telling point about the word compromise.
Brit's diary on U.K. investigative journalist Nick Davies arriving in the U.S. to dig up more dirt on Newscorp and the Murdochs prompts Mnemosyne to give Davies some advice.
In the Laurence Lewis diary cited above, Krugman: "Complete intellectual surrender", MindRayge explains why the debt ceiling vote negotiations were all about the vote count, and in reply, Jackson L Haveck has a one-liner about what the GOP wants.
Please add your own comment finds below!
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A reminder: We still hope that sometime in this new month top mojo will return once we figure out how to strongarm convince Comment Search to give us exactly what we need in a form that we can use. Which is more difficult and requires more hand-editing than it should be (or used to be).