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Obama has a 13-point NH Lead. Its great to see so many believers flock to see Obama in the flesh I'm glad to see Obama ahead of Clinton in New Hampshire Primary with so many Americans finding a new champion in Obama including Bill Bradley and John Anderson backing Obama how can anyone stop him? It seems that the endorsements for Obama just keep on coming in. Barack Obama has won the backing from Will Smith Even as Clinton's emotions flow and new reports provide detail on the woman who elicited Hillary's cry baby act. Look out! Now the Clinton campaign says Obama is breaking state law.

http://aapoliticalpundit.blogspot.com/20 08/01/dailykos-mydd-firedoglake-openleft .html

Dear Chris:

As you can tell from my thread, I'm far from the only person who doesn't like the way you abuse your power with quick-trigger bannings of people who challenge you on substance. Nor am I the only one who is amused/disturbed by your non-endorsement endorsement of the probably the most conservative candidate in the race.

And here's the thread in which you decided to ban me, so people (if anyone cares) can judge for themselves what went down.

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?dia

ryId=1536

You were angry that I said this:

It's pretty amusing that you've put yourself in the positon of defending the occuption of Iraq

Yet when I first raised the question of the massive military base known as an embassy, here was your comment in its entirety:

The embassy line is a bogus line that has been thrown around for months to try and obfuscate the difference here. We have embassies in every country, and in every country they have military contingents gaurding them. Further, embassies are considered American soil. to try and pull that line again is, at best, utterly bogus and, at worst, intentionally misleading.

Every candidate will have troops gaurding our embassy in Iraq, on American soil, and just like every other embassy in the world. The issue is how many troops they will leave in Iraq on top of that. And yes, that is a bigger difference than permanent bases, because you can't have permanent basis if there are no troops in those bases.

To spell this out as simply for you as a I can, residual forces supercedes permanent bases because you can't have permanent bases if you don't have any residual forces. However, you can hae residual forces without permanent bases. Thus, the residual forces issue goes beyond all others.

Clear enough?

Last things first: Your "clear enough" comment was similar to my let-me-say-this-slowly line. It's a rhetorical device, and anyone who's hurt by the implication is strangely sensitive.

Now, for the substance: it's certainly reasonable to infer from this comment that you don't have a problem with the embassy. You dismissed the embassy as "American soil." (Yes, that's exactly the problem!) And you likened this embassy to other embassies in other countries, ignoring the fact that this one is massive, the biggest in the world, and that we just invaded and occupied Iraq. This embassy is not like other embassies--something you came to acknowledge later in the thread. Your opinion did, in fact, evolve during the course of the thread, and I suspect that it was my pointing this out to you caused you to snap. That, and my criticizing you position from the left. You don't like to be anyone's moderate, do you?

Nowhere in that comment or your second comment on the topic (which is below) did you say you opposed it; on the contrary, you said the embassy wasn't the issue. Even if I misunderstood or misrepresented your opinion, that's always done in debate. You did that to me several times, but you reserve the right to treat commenters in a way you don't allow commenters to treat you. That's hypocrisy, and it's one of the reasons you can't stumble onto a blog without finding someone making fun of you and Stoller. Your lack of self-awareness is striking.

As for this comment:

And unlike you, Chris, I don't care if Peter Daou gives me a mean look at Yearly Kos

That was nasty, and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. However, I made that comment after you said you would ban me, so it's immaterial in terms of debating what went down.

Now, as for how you acted (which I thought was basically fine: you were just debating, as I was) But just to demonstrate your hypocrisy and utter lack of self-awareness...

In response to my pointing what I saw as a logical weakness in your argument, you said:

What is your point? The embassy is still US soil, and thus not in Iraq.

To try and equivocate leaving  tens of thousands of troops in Iraq outside the embassy with having a large embassy that all Dems support is unbelievably intellectually dishonest. you are trying to blur a large embassy plus tens of thousands of troops with a large embassy. And that is just crap, right up there with your bullshit hit job on Stoller.

Obviously, as the Stoller reference shows, there was some pent up stuff here. Without provocation, you called me "intellectually dishonest" and called my argument "crap." Then, in response to another polite comment from me, you said:

You seem mainly concerned with attacking and sliming anyone who stands in the way of your shilling for John Edwards.

Chris, I challenged the merits of your argument, and you responded by calling me "intellectually dishonest" and charged me with "shilling." And guess what? I didn't mind at all. I enjoyed debating you, just as I'm enjoying this debate today. I hope you are too, but something tells me you're not.

As for you taking credit for keeping the peace at MyDD, maybe you did, I'm not sure, but I promise you, I'm not the problem around here, and if I had challenged Jerome on substance the way I challenged you, he wouldn't have banned me. He's more intellectually secure.

And of course, progressive values are undermined when you stifle people who disagree with you. I won't go into detail explaining why: it should be self-evident to anyone who considers himself progressive.

As for Iraq, I still think the give-the-massive-embassy-to-Iraq is the right antiwar position. End the occupation, not just the war.  I think Gravel has it right: you should have done an ad with him.

I wish Edwards would adopt my position but I don't think he will.

Peace,

David

It was just six little words to Matt Stoller that got me banned from OpenLeft today:

Stoller is very quickly becoming irrelevant.

This was my response to the first of Stoller's two-rant rant-fest today re Democrat Barack Obama's decision to
skip the vote on Republican John Cornyn's resolution condemning MoveOn for its own newsprint condemnation
of General David Petraeus.

Never mind that Stoller had titled his little bitch-whine, "Obama Betrays Us, Of Course." (That "Of Course" speaks
eternal volumes.)

Never mind that Stoller started by writing:

In Dante's Inferno, the Opportunists were "the people who refused to take sides on the whole
good vs. evil thing, but just looked after themselves. As a result, they're doomed to forever run
after a banner while being stung by wasps and hornets... These people aren't technically in hell.
They're not evil enough to be in hell, so they're in the vestibule of hell."

Never mind that, after observing immediately thereafter that "Obama didn't take a vote on the MoveOn condemnation,
but an hour earlier he voted for the Boxer amendment," Stoller simply declared -- as if it required no further explication --
that Obama was "a sad spectacle of a politician."

Never mind that, after two dismissive updates, Stoller couldn't possibly resist giving Obama one final self-righteous kick
to the curb: "What a putz."

And never mind that -- just in case there was any doubt -- Stoller added to rant number two the following salutation to
Obama'a advisors: "You suck!"

Never mind all that. Apparently, all the thin-skinned Stoller himself needed in order to ban me was that I merely suggest
that he was "quickly becoming irrelevant." Not that he was irrelevant, mind you. Just that he was on thin ice.

It helped, I'm sure, that I use -- or, I should say, used -- the same ID at OpenLeft that I use at MyDD and that I started posting
at MyDD in April, while Stoller was still here. I didn't even have to mention Obama's name. He knew.

But never mind that, too. Did Stoller respond to my seven-word comment? Did he engage me in any way? No. He. Just. Banned. Me.

Or so it seems. The lesson, it appears, is that dissent of any kind against Matt Stoller -- or perhaps just take-no-bullshit dissent from
supporters of Barack Obama -- is not tolerated at OpenLeft.

I'm tempted to argue that Stoller, in particular, is on his way to becoming the Eric Alterman of his generation -- pissing his way
to the top of a pinnacle that is all the more shaky, because of the very soggy crowd that is pushing from below to tip it over.
The Veruca Salt of the Netroots.

But that's another story. The point here is that, given the choice between Matt Stoller's apparent censor-tactics and
MyDD's free-wheeling free-for-all, I'll take MyDD any day.

In my experience, MyDD is more decentralized, more bottom-up, more democratic. It simply puts more power in
the hands of its diarists.

Is there more risk in this approach? Yes. Does it require more honesty and vigilance and mutual respect from
those who participate? Yes. (Democracy is hard.) But it also affords more freedom -- and, ultimately, a
better shot at the truth. And it's just more fun.

So: Long live unfettered free speech. And long live MyDD -- George and all.

If you're in the MyDD/Open Left Caucus at YearlyKos right now (4:30pm in 101A - originally was supposed to be 101B but now 101A) give us a shout.

I'm really pleased to see the great work being done by Todd Beeton, Jonathan Singer, and of course, Jerome.  I'm particularly excited for the anti-NRA campaign, as they are obviously a cornerstone of right-wing power and someone should take them on directly.  At my new home, OpenLeft, we've already had a bunch of significant discussions that are bearing on progressive power.  Here's a sampling:

• The most significant discussion on the site was with Chris Bowers and Maren Hesla of Emily's List, on why so many top-tier female House candidates lost last cycle while male candidates won.  Chris's intitial post is here, and Hesla responds here.

• The awesome-est conversation was Living Liberally's discussion of the Transformers, which I haven't yet seen to my eternal 7 year old boy shame.

• Chris Bowers has an analysis of momentum from Iowa, and a piece titled 'Democratic Nomination Campaign Dangerously Stable'.  He has also done some good reporting of where Presidential candidates stand on leaving troops in Iraq.

• I'm doing a series on the iPhone, and the net neutrality/internet freedom issues surrounding the release of the phone and the upcoming sale of a huge chunk of the public airwaves next week.  

• I also wrote a piece on the Sierra Club's new partnership with Moveon and Brave New Films taking on Fox News and Home Depot.  This is the first time a major non-internet advocacy group has taken on Fox News, and it's an important coalition to watch.

• Mike Lux has a good piece on how Democratic insiders failed in the 1970s titled 'The assumptions of taking for granted that you are a majority', and Living Liberally has jokes and stories from around the country.

• We're also looking at races in Washington's eighth and the special 'Actblue' election in Massachusetts fifth.

• Finally, David Sirota has a good column on prioritizing issue campaigns, and I've done two videos with lobbyist Ben Scott that clearly explain the upcoming public airwaves auction.  

We're trying a number of things on the site, including videoblogging with people in politics engaged in big fights, comedy, and a 'right to respond' feature where groups that are criticized have the official right to respond on the front page.

Come by, and let us know what you think.