Yesterday, when posting Reviews on the front page, kos wrote:

Steve Gilliard:

Sniff. I miss him.

Steve Gilliard was the third guest poster kos asked to blog for him when travelling and unable to post, and that first guest blog post was almost five years ago, on April 3, 2003. I won't be able to post on the five-year anniversary of that date, so with that date less than two weeks away, and such a recent reminder of his excellent work, I'm going to ask you to join me on the flip with a vast array of links to his work here on Daily Kos.

I've just now gotten a deep whiff of one of the sweetest smells I know: tazetta narcissus "Falconet", which is in the first full flush of bloom in my kitchen: three small yellow flowers per stalk with orange cups that show a green center if you look very closely, but if you don't are a lovely picture of orange and yellow. Daffodil or narcissus, it's the same flower.

There is still plenty of snow outside, and outside color is a couple of weeks away at least, if not likely to wait until April. Inside, however, I've had a riot of color to chase away the winter blues since late December: iridescent orange-reds from Amaryllis and paperwhites, both of which can be planted in soil or on water (I prefer soil) and sprout with minimal fuss or bother. But there are other bulbs that require a period of cool temperatures, and those are now making the end of winter a more colorful, sweetly scented time.

When I was a kid, my parents had classical music playing from the family stereo. So we heard all the usual composers: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin: plenty of music from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, plus some 20th century works.

I liked the earlier music: for me, it was the harmony. Bach was fun, especially when he tossed in a fugue or complicated counterpoint. The later Romantics and 20th century music, not so much: the harmonies were getting a bit weird for my ear. Heck, I liked the Beatles, too: I preferred singing the harmony line rather than the melody line, and sometimes added my own harmony line.

What I didn't know then, and didn't discover until college, is that there was a heck of a lot of music written before 1685, the year that Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti was born. (That's Johann Sebastian Bach and Domenico Scarlatti; I didn't know about earlier or later Bachs, or Domenico's arguably more famous father, Alessandro.) And that music is even better, though most people don't even know it exists.

This is a continuation of plf515's series of diaries listing the people who post at least 1000 comments in a month. I've found all the users I could—47—with at least 1000 comments for February. If you think I've omitted anyone who should be on this list—Daily Kos is a big place, and it's too easy to miss even frequent posters—please let me know in comments below. Last month, I missed several, a couple of whom were brought to my attention at the time.

For those who want to check your own results, just substitute your own username for mine in the URL to check your February comments.

The actual data can be found over the jump.

John McCain is Mister Straight Talk is one of the most pervasive and pernicious ones. That he'll say what he means and hang on to positions, no matter how unpopular, because he'll always play it straight, which is what a noble and upright person who cares more about truth than being popular. Mr. George-Bush-hugging, campaign-finance-reform-pushing (only until it hurts his candidacy), his self-confessed ignorance of economic matters only he's not ignorant any more because he's just read Adam Smith (and implies that he understood everything!), and we shouldn't need to stay in Iraq long once we "win," although it could be a hundred years. I suppose if the shortest distance between two opposite points is a straight line, he's talking straight from one position to its antithesis. Look at his voting record: there's the straight facts. A little media spotlight on the nitty-gritty would be nice...but it'll never happen. That requires bucking the narrative. That takes true journalism. That requires...a miracle. In short: not bloody likely.

This is a continuation of plf515's series of diaries listing the people who post at least 1000 comments in a month. This was called "The Big Commenters" last time, but there are so many who write so much that I'm going with "prolific" this year. I've found all the users I could—65—with at least 1000 comments for January. If you think I've omitted anyone who should be on this list—Daily Kos is a big place, and it's too easy to miss even frequent posters—please let me know in comments below.

For those who want to check your own results, just substitute your own username for mine in the URL to check your January comments and, if you're curious about last year, your 2007 comments. You can find the table over the jump.

On May 26, 2002 at 12:57 PM, the first post at new website, Daily Kos, was published, entitled Day 1:

I am progressive. I am liberal. I make no apologies. I believe government has an obligation to create an even playing field for all of this country's citizens and immigrants alike. I am not a socialist. I do not seek enforced equality. However, there has to be equality of opportunity, and the private sector, left to its own devices, will never achieve this goal.

Thus was born Daily Kos, written by Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, aka kos or sometimes Kos. There had been a two-week blogspot run the month before, later referred to as

0.1 beta. April 2002: My blogspot site. It survived all of two weeks.

Tonight, though, we're not concerned with the beta, but the start of the real 1.0 version of Daily Kos on Movable Type: all Markos, all the time. A blog, as I wrote last month, that would crash gates and make national politics jump. More on those first posts over our own jump.

On October 13, 2003, Markos announced that the new Scoop-based Daily Kos web site was ready to be checked out; those existing Daily Kos users on the Movable Type site should come over, sign up for an account, give it a spin, kick the tires, and see what breaks do some beta testing.

The journey to this day was long, as chronicled last week in Top Comments: The Road to Scoop Edition. So was the first day: Markos worked late into the night before being told it was way past the family bedtime. But the internet never sleeps, so as the Moulitsas family was grabbing Zs, Daily Kos readers were grabbing accounts. And posting comments. Of which more anon, over the flip.

Once upon a time, Daily Kos was an ordinary Movable Type blog: stories written by Markos (with front-page help), and comments attached to each story, popping up when clicked on. Comments were signed, or not, depending on the whim of the person posting. Trolls sullied the comments with a fair amount of impunity. The more popular Daily Kos got, the more the web site creaked, and the more cracks appeared.

All this changed on October 13, 2003, when the new Scoop-based site was opened for business. Suddenly, everyone could write their own blog entries, called diaries, and comments were no longer popped up in a separate window, but were attached to each post. And suddenly, you had to sign up for an account, you had to stick with a screen name, and this was your name going forward. It was a brave new world.

The debates are front and center tonight: Republicans first, so grandpas Fred and John can get their beauty sleep, and Democrats second, because they're already beautiful and not at all decrepit. Here on Daily Kos we're ready: there are front page open threads, liveblogs, new diaries popping up about the day's events—the latest polls, New Hampshire canvassing, the failures of the media (because they rarely fail to fail, and rarely fail more definitively than when running a debate), etc.

Various candidates are up, down, sideways, with or without various sorts of momentum, right, wrong, right yet oh so wrong, and, dammit, refusing to talk about This!

Various Kossacks are up, down, sideways, harping on This or That or both or neither, passionate, learned, didactic, urgent, unfortunate, informative, silly, inspired, and everything in between.

If you're watching or listening to the debates, you're probably talking back: yelling at the idiotic talking point, groaning at the moronic press questions, cheering a telling remark, urging on the candidate who's saying exactly what you would say on your chief issue, or wishing desperately to hear more than bits from stump speeches.

But you're also here...and about to make the jump. Or jump the flip. Watch your step—it's a doozy.

Each month, plf515 does a diary on all Daily Kos users he can find that have made at least 1000 comments in the previous month. Right now, he's working on the full-year results for 2007, so he's let me play in his sandbox for the month of December.

For those who want to check your own results, just substitute your own username for mine in the URL to check your December comments and your 2007 comments. You can find the table over the jump. If you think I've omitted anyone who made more than 1000 comments in December, please let me know in comments below.

The last day of the year is ticking away, so it's past time for reflection and questions and time to get down to brass tacks: what is the answer to life, the universe, and everything? It's one of those hugely philosophical questions that takes years of typing to write and reams of paper to print out.

Given the time remaining, it's far better to ask simple, concrete questions with short, easily determined answers, like one that seems to be hovering in the Top Comments aether: "Another sardonyx diary? Haven't we had enough of them already? How many is this, anyway?"

The plain answer: 42.

What? Oh. Um... oh look! It's the Winged Victory of Samothrace time to make the jump!  *whew*

On December 4, I wrote a Top Comments diary on the first front-page posts for the contributing editors from the classes of 2006, 2007, and 2008. I didn't have time to go back any further, given that this was a last-minute inspiration, and the diary was getting quite long. But I was curious, and wanted to go back and read all the earlier first posts, even though it meant going back past my own discovery of Daily Kos and into the pre-Scoop era.

This means going back to the very first Daily Kos post by kos, Day 1:

I am progressive. I am liberal. I make no apologies. I believe government has an obligation to create an even playing field for all of this country's citizens and immigrants alike. I am not a socialist. I do not seek enforced equality. However, there has to be equality of opportunity, and the private sector, left to its own devices, will never achieve this goal.

Posted May 26, 2002 12:57 PM

That was the beginning of a blog that would crash gates and make national politics jump. Just like you're about to do. Right now.

The first night of Chanukah began at sundown this evening, and since I already covered beginnings last night, I started thinking instead about other firsts. Seeing Scout Finch's first post as a front-pager sent me on a hunt to see what such first posts have looked like.

The only problem with this idea is that it didn't come to me until an hour before publication time. You can see how far I ran with it over the flip.

The annual announcement of the new Front Pagers has me thinking of new beginnings, but it also has me hearkening back a year, since I had similar thoughts last year, and diaried about them in a Top Comments diary on this very day in 2006. It's beginning to make me wonder whether I should have called tonight's diary "Continuity Edition" rather than "New Beginnings Redux".

Because, really, this year's excellent trio is an addition to the Front Page crew: there's more of a feeling of "onward and upward" than "a changing of the guard". Even more so that last year, when two of the 2006 crew were sticking around as Daily Kos Fellows to post alongside the four new 2007 front pagers. Earlier this year, Markos made it official: Daily Kos became a group blog (albeit one with a Fearless Leader), and front pagers could post seven days a week, instead of Friday through Sunday or when Markos was out of town. We're reading more from the earlier contributing editors: there's a large team keeping us informed and enlightened, and keeping the administrivia of the site under control.

The news is full of record travel tonight, people driving and flying (and, presumably, training and busing) to a Thanksgiving feast tomorrow, and being subject to record delays en route. And that's the people with far to go who want to arrive in time to rest up before gorging. There will be more of them hitting the roads tomorrow, encountering traffic that will start bad and improve as more people arrive at their destination in time for the feast.

Thanksgiving dinner does not begin at the same time for everyone. I was nonplussed when I first discovered this fact; I thought it was always at dinnertime, which is to say six in the evening, plus or minus an hour depending on which family members were going to be there and when. But "dinner" has meant many things over the years, and moved gradually from a second meal at midday a third meal after the workday is over. So you might start Thanksgiving dinner any time from early afternoon to early evening. The later the start, the more likely the traffic will be gone by the time you arrive.

More on this night before over the flip.

Today is the second day of extended Daylight Savings Time: the sun sets a little earlier, but is still setting during the evening commute or even afterward. Eddie C still has time to take pictures of the sun before it vanishes behind New Jersey. For an extra week, taking us past Halloween and October and into November, we save daylight for later in the day, when we're presumably awake to appreciate it more, and kids can still see to trick-or-treat, or play outside.

I think I have a better idea for the daylight, but you'll have to follow me over the flip to see it.

I was listening to All Things Considered late this afternoon, and heard the segment where Melissa Block interviewed Valerie Plame, and Plame used the word treason in referring to the Bush Administration.

I cheered when I heard that blunt—and highly accurate—term. More on treason, including a transcription of that portion of the interview, after the flip.