I lost everything about ten years ago. And then, I lost everything...only this time it was everything. That was five years ago. Ha

I went from web site to web site attempting to be heard. When you are the lowliest of the low, you have no confidence. You begin to think you have nothing to say.

It turns out that it has been one year since I was finally heard. That is, it was December 7, 2008 that I received a real tangible response to a blog I wrote. I have discussed this before, but I get to do it again because there are no laws against it. http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/dikkday48yahoocom/2008/12/nothingness.php#comments

A couple of years before, before I ever had a net, I wondered about nothingness. I never wrote anything down. I just had phrased this argument in my mind; just like I had framed so many arguments against the Bush Administration. I HAD NO ONE TO TALK TO. No kidding. If you have no one to talk to, you begin to believe that you have nothing to say. My real success did not come until http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/dikkday48yahoocom/2009/01/a-president-drunk-with-power.php#comments I mean I had eighty comments and almost 30 rec's. But as ecstatic as I was, it still was no comparison to my first reaction from Nothingness.

I wrote that NOTHINGNESS blog after writing several other posts on different sites and this time, I awoke and there was a response. It was magic. Oh it was just seven or eight recommendations and fifteen comments, but I was soooooooooooo ecstatic I cannot even explain it. And there were so many corrections from my readers. Ha. I did not care. Someone read my thoughts and understood them. And now my best friend on the web has her own blog called NOTHINGNESS, after my post. Ha.

As I write this, I am thinking of Mr. Seaton who wonders if I become overly sentimental at times. I have responded directly to him that I do become too sentimental. Ha  But that is what keeps me alive. I become so morose at times. If I did not have this outlet I do not know what would become of me.

I was reading one of my favorite sites about ten months ago and it struck me funny. I had been watching Craig Crawford for years on MSM. And he had his own little blog: Trail Mix. And he was pissed about comments and such on his blog. There were some trolls making the discussion so combative and so chaotic. And so he set up ten rules for bloggers. And it tickled my funny bone.

Now I want to go back a little. I used to hit Mediamatters all the time. I still do, but back then it was so much about Rush Limbaugh. So I would simply quote mm and then go on some diatribe about Rush. You all know I still do this from time to time, just with less frequency. Well, one time I did this, Rush followers actually came to my post and threatened me. They were not going to kill me or anything, they just were claiming that I had bent the truth or some such. Well, no. I did not bend the truth at all and after arguing with them, I finally told them to eat my shorts and I never heard from them again.

Anyway, back to Mr. Crawford. He had these ten commandments to blogging. And so, without his permission, I thought they could become good fodder for a blog site. Well, it was fun.

And then one day, Mr. Crawford showed up on my blog and I have related this before. My old pc crashed and while I rebooted my favorite Café interloper showed up and said to Mr. Crawford:

The peasants are revolting.

The end.

Hahahahaahaha. So I approach Mr. Crawford and I am sure it is some joke. I mean why would Mr. Crawford sign into TPMCafe and then bother to comment on my post. It made no sense.

He came back for a couple more of my rendition of his rules and he made a comment to me that actually broke me. I mean I wept. He said:

I like to read your writing.

I was transported.

I have written for more than of a year. I have written more than 1500 pages.I never made one dime. But I think sometimes, I keep blogging because someone likes my writing.

So, I thought, why not bring back the ten rules for bloggers? As I write this I must point out that things have changed.

I mean, I used to be able to link up my own blogs on the front page of TPM. Those days appear to be gone.

I used to actually read a summary of Café bloggers at the end of a week and actually see me mentioned. Ha

And now the entire site is screwed up. I cannot even see my own blog mentioned on any site at TPM which I assume is because there is some sort of maintenance occurring..

I have suspended my novel till next week when this matter will be taken care of, hopefully.

But right now I have nothing to lose.

Besides, I still get great responses from people like Q and LisB and bwak and Miguel and all my friends here...although limited because of the tech probs-- hopefully.

At any rate, I decided that I should begin a new publication of my ten rules for bloggers, stolen with the implicit permission of Craig Crawford.  So here is a republication of my first Crawford Blog for fun and to see what reaction we get the second time around.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBgqwexvPM4&feature=related

MESSAGE OR A MASSAGE?

Craig Crawford is a fine reporter. I have almost always enjoyed his appearances on cable news. He is mostly liberal although it became clear that he is one of those Texas Dems who has been slighted too many times and therefore ends up as more of a moderate.  Too much of a moderate for my tastes. But, he presents a clarity sometimes. I will not waste my time on rush or sean or savage or others who are so vitriolic that I have thoughts of suicide after reviewing their work. I believe I need to hear 'other' views from time to time.

The reason for my recent  interest in his blog is that he is clearly upset with the comments he receives from readers at his Trail Mix blog associated with CQ. I would assume that if I had been published for over thirty years and was known by hundreds of powerful people over that time period, that I would be more immune to criticism.

Just last week he noted that his usually short blog is just a hobby of sorts, that he does not need it nor evidently make much money from it.  He does it out of sheer pleasure. The pleasure to write and to be read.

There was a fine post awhile ago at TPMC from a conservative blogger.  He wrote a simple essay about how to write a letter to a member of Congress. It really was well done.

But Crawford has come up with his own rules for writing a comment on a blog.  Or at least an important person's blog.  As I read through it, I see important points and less important points. Many of his points touch on problems we have at TPMC. Other points underline why I would rather be writing post-em notes to my refrigerator than wasting my commentary on Craig Crawford.

The ten points are too many to handle in one post, so I would like to handle them on a daily basis.

INTRODUCTION

Pardon the interruption in daily political posts for an important housekeeping message.

The pressures of rising participation -- and passions -- in our Comment sections necessitates our first-ever Commenting Guide. Please review carefully before posting comments.

TOP TEN WAYS TO BE A BETTER COMMENTER

 1.   Contribute new information to the discussion. At least scan the entire thread to see if what you are writing has already been said. Repeating yourself is also unhelpful. Relentlessly pressing the same argument with multiple posts, in a single thread or over a period of days, is another form of spam and subject to deletion. Persistent violators are subject to blocked access.

Now there is a lot here to digest.  And there are many problems with taking this point too literally. For instance, if a commenter (ever notice that MS wishes you to say commentator instead of commenter. But when I make a comment to a blog, I am not really a commentator. That seems too much of an esteemed position for an old man in his pajamas) writes:

I disagree with your post Mr. Crawford.

And another writes:

I agree with your post Mr. Crawford

I would appear to be stymied as to how to create a comment.  

I mean, if I were to say:

I disagree with your post most vehemently, is that being repetitive? I understand that to make a comment like:

F*&k you Craig Crawford-- and I repeat that comment fifteen times on the same post, I have violated his prime directive.

But, what if 14 other commenters have basically said:

F*&k you Craig Crawford --then it appears that I should refrain from writing that comment. Especially if it has been stated by so many other people.

But, taking that case from a different angle, what if I said:

F*&k you Craig Crawford and your mother.

Would this add more to the conversation?

And if commenters do not add a comment because it would amount to repetition, would the poster, in this case CC, get the wrong idea and not fully grasp the sentiments of his readers?

But what if I commented in increments like:

#235:   F*&k you Craig Crawford

#322:  And your mother

It seems to me that I have just expressed two different sentiments in two different comments.

But let us look at a more complicated example, one I take from Dr. Reich from our site:

All told, according to the new data, the nation's economy shrank at an annual rate of 6.2 percent. Last month, the government's preliminary estimate of the drop in fourth-quarter GDP was only 3.8 percent. Roughly half the Commerce Department's revision was due to a sharper drop in business spending than had been anticipated. As a result, business inventories -- the amount of stuff they they have on hand to sell -- have dropped. That's good news because eventually businesses will have to replace their inventories, in anticipation of at least some consumer buying, and such replacement spending will spur the economy. But here's the bad news: Inventories still aren't dropping as fast as sales are dropping, suggesting even less business spending and investing coming up.

And then I decide to comment as follows:

#121 But an additional 1.4 million people were receiving benefits under an extended unemployment compensation program that Congress approved last year. That tally was as of Feb. 14, the latest data available, and brings the total jobless benefit rolls to about 6.5 million. That was up from 2.8 million a year ago.The four-week average of new claims, which smoothes out fluctuations, increased 2,000 to 641,750, the highest since October 1982. (APNYT 3/6)

Is it all right for me to amend this comment as follows:

#317 Please disregard my comment posted as #121, because I meant to post it under a blog by Professor Krugman at an entirely different site.(embedded: Buy Insurance Here)

And

#647 I would ask you to reinstate #121 and disregard #317, because it appears that lower unemployment rates of decline might indeed have an effect upon the inventories, or at least the rate of decline of those inventories.(Embedded: Buy Viagra Here)

#932 I would amend #647 to reflect the fact that I meant to include EXPECTATIONS of declines in the drop of the unemployment rate from a standpoint of EXPECTATIONS of declines in total business inventories.  Thank you.(Embedded: Buy Real Estate Here)

You see the basic problem we have here.  I have kind of broken CC's first rule by commenting too many times in the same blog and repeating myself and, no doubt others who assert a direct relationship between falling rates and discussions by pundits on cable news.

In the end, I believe that Mr. Crawford's First Law of Blogging has an underlying message, a feel to it so to speak. The real message is:

THE PEASANTS ARE REVOLTING.

Thank you for your support. Only nine more rules to become the perfect commenter.

THE END

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/dikkday48yahoocom/2009/03/craig-crawford-how-to-properly.php#comments