What brought you to Democratic Underground? For me it was Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

[SaveAmerica]

Al Franken's book was the beginning of my education, I don't remember why I had the book but I was floored by what I read. At some point in the book he recommended the reader to go to his web page for more information and updates. At that page, I found a link on the side to Democratic Underground.

Those first few months of hanging at DU were hard ones for my family - I stayed up late in the night reading everything and hardly any spare minutes were given to anything else. That's where I found pics of the fabulous people who protested W's 'inauguration' (I had no idea) and the anti-war protesters in New York in 2003 who filled the streets from side to side and as far as the eye could see (I had no idea, I thought with the war's approval numbers quoted on the news that I was the ONLY person in American against it.

Democratic Underground was and has been a breath of fresh air for me. I know it can't be easy to be 'parents' of so many dynamic and strong -willed people, so I do appreciate that Skinner and the Jets have kept at it through all the drama - THANK YOU!!

As I watch our choices for real news dwindle I remain thankful and hopeful that we are able to stay connected here at Democratic Underground.

[Solly Mack]

1. Selection 2000

[SaveAmerica]

5. You were in from the beginning? Awesome!

[Solly Mack]

10. Not the very beginning but not too much after

I got the heads-up from C-SPAN and an email alert.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

15. Selection 2004 was my entry point

People forget about the election being stolen in Ohio, if they were aware of it at all.

[ellenfl]

37. 2004 and google got me here.

i watched ohio become what florida was for the 2000 election and needed an outlet for my outrage. du was my second stop but the only one i have now. du is my primary news link . . . and outrage outlet. thanks du and duers.

ellen fl

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

41. That mirrors exactly my reaction to Ohio

[mod mom]

71. Me too. He is the one who inspired me to get active.

To draw attention to the CASE Ohio Fight for Democracy Rally! Still fighting!

[Left coast liberal]

21. Me too. :-)

[Ernesto]

22. Me too! nt

[calimary]

52. Yeah. That, and being just flat Bummed Out by Selection 2000. And I was sure nobody else felt like

that. Certainly you got NO TRACE of any solidarity from anywhere in the media. Everybody was "oh let's MOVE ON! Get Over It. You Lost, don't be a Sore Loserman, Now it's Time to Stand Behind OUR President..."

Until I went online and found a site called "Resident bush" (the name "bush" was capitalized. I still can't do it, myself). And I read around there and was SO relieved that - WOW, somebody else out there feels as bummed out and ripped off and violated as I do! Whooda thunkit? And browsing around Resident bush, I found Buzzflash. And browsing around there I found DU. And I've been a loyalist ever since. DU is literally what got me through the dubya years. I became far better informed about a LOT of issues I cared about and people about whom I learned much more - for the bad AND the good, and it made me a better, stronger, smarter - and DAMNED PROUD Liberal. With a Capital "L".

This really isn't a mere website. This is a frickin' THINK TANK.

:patriot: :thumbsup: :fistbump: :grouphug: :toast:


Oh yeah, and one other thing - whoever gave me the hearts (especially the new one!) THANK YOU!!!!!!! Good Heavens, I have SIX! More than ever before! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!

:yourock: :hug: :patriot: :grouphug: :loveya:

See how cool DU is?

[Solly Mack]

56. Well said!!

:)

[Native]

62. Me too.

[Cleita]

2. Along those same lines, it was the old Media Whores

website back when it was dawning on us that our MSM wasn't really reporting the news.

[Blecht]

67. That's how I got here -- Media Whores Online

The "Horse" and the run-up to the Iraq war. It was nice to see thousands of sane people posting here while the media were making the country look like it was turning into a bloodthirsty monster.

[JitterbugPerfume]

3. I came here when

I heard Skinner being interviewed on C-span Washington Journal years ago!

[xchrom]

12. Same with me. Nt

[chimpymustgo]

69. Hi Jitterbug!! I heard about DU on C-Span, also - not from Skinner, but a caller.

[walldude]

4. The Top Ten Conservative Idiots..

I used to read it every week and after a year or so I joined up.

[Release The Hounds]

16. Same here

I found a link to it at an anti-Bill O'Reily site in 2003.

[Maeve]

47. Didn't take me that long to register, but that's why I came here

Wit and liberalism--hard to beat!

[Hello_Kitty]

53. Same here. I loved the top 10!

I started lurking here in '03 and joined in '04.

[fortyfeetunder]

55. I saw the Top Ten on a newsgroup..

so I ventured to the website. Can't believe it's been 10 years ago!

[Neurotica]

61. Me too. It was always good for a laugh during some pretty

depressing times. Found it by accident one day, and lurked for a long time before I ever registered.

[Initech]

66. Yup, that's what did it for me too.

[Edweird]

6. The news. I was generally apolitical for the first 3/4's of my life.

I was reading the news online and was detecting a RW spin on things that didn't sit well with me. I kept searching for news sources that weren't RW and eventually landed here. I lurked for years before joining.

[NMDemDist2]

7. i was looking for a rebuttal to a lie about Kerry

google showed me the Top Ten and I was hooked....

[blondeatlast]

8. Google search: "democrat" "underground"--not joking. I was looking for a site for Democrats

that wasn't part of the DNC.

I found a little slice of heaven for respite in my depp red county, deep red state world.

[Iris]

14. Me, too! I was so depressed after an election, I went searching oline for like-minded folks!

[duhneece]

9. Run up to unjustifed war in Iraq nt

[Hydra]

65. Me too

The lies they told were simply too big and baseless. I gave up trying to read between the lines in the MSM and started looking for alternatives.

[Spirochete]

11. I found the link on Bartcop

back in early 2001. At that time, the only such sites I had been to were Rack Jite's page, Smirking Chimp, and Bartcop.

[givemebackmycountry]

36. Me too - same experience.

Found Bartcop in '04 through Media Whores Online (remember the horse?.
Bartcop had a link to DU.

When I hit DU, it was like I had stumbled into the really cool secret party that no one else knew about.
I took about 15 minutes before I had a star, and I have been here every since.
Every day, all day, DU is my destination of choice.

[BrklynLiberal]

13. Just before the re-selection of pres shit-for-brains....I knew I HAD to have someplace

to go and be understood.

I believe the direct link was thru the Conservative Idiots list.

[KittyWampus]

17. desperation after the stolen election in 2000

[customerserviceguy]

18. 2004 election campaign

I wanted to see what I could do to prevent the disaster of 2000 from happening again.

[CTyankee]

48. Me, too. I signed up in 2004 before the election and I was so hopeful.

I was downright depressed after Kerry lost and needed some place to go for solace. Thank god for DU. Also thank god for Stephanie Miller and Al Franken, whose shows were my lifelines to political sanity.

The idea that we were all in this together was comforting. DU was one of my little flames of hope...

[grilled onions]

19. I stumbled upon it and held onto it as an island of sanity in an insane world

At the time I had tv cable which yielded little but giggling news idiots or hateful talk shows with only one slant. I needed a place to find out facts. I wanted a place where others thought like me, where I didn't feel like an outcast.
This place is so much more then just politics. Here people care, about each other, about total strangers. They care about the world we live in,try to breathe in,find work in,retire in etc. It is the first place I go every time I turn on the computer.

[Greybnk48]

20. Selection 2004.

I came here in Nov. 2004 and joined in Dec. This place has helped me through so many rough times politically (and one personal health issue) I can't begin to name them.

[earth mom]

23. The stolen election of 04-not that it matters now that I finally know that most politicians are all

corporatists who don't give a damn about the middle class, working class, or poor.

[eleny]

24. I found it in August 2003 via a Dem Yahoo group

[L. Coyote]

25. Stolen Election in Ohio 2004 = Member since Dec 10th 2004

I was keeping an online Research Summary of Election 2004 Irregularites,
links to online articles, and that led me to discover DU via Google searching.

Download Election Fraud, Irregularity, and Reform Headlines archive.zip
http://www.jqjacobs.net/politics/archive.zip

Eventually, this work was replaced by the DU Election Reform Forum's Daily News.
I archived my work as a .zip because so many links go dead.

I noticed a lot of sock puppets placing disinformation on DU,
so I knew something was very wrong with Ohio's election.
I joined into the discussions to counter the disinformation.

================
Dec. 17, 2004
L. Coyote Donating Member --- Fri Dec-17-04 06:04 PM
The Non-Votes (undervoting) seem to be in strongest Kerry Precincts.
http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x166913#174281

Sorting Cuyahoga County precincts by standard deviation of percentage of non-votes, it is clear that the skewed precincts are in 85%-Kerry-voting precincts.



This is based on the raw data, certified (w/o the absentee votes).

This is not statistically normal.

Why is a separate question.

[SaveAmerica]

26. I have to tell the story of the German Lady at the Biergarten in EPCOT

We were seated 'family' style as they do in Munich during Oktoberfest. She was on the other side of my husband and we spent the majority of the meal talking over him about W. I apologized for W's need to shut down her country as he drove through it during his visit (can't remember the year). She tried to warn me of stuff that Americans didn't know about because our media wasn't reporting it. I told her I have access to a web page called 'Democratic Underground' where I find just about everything that's going on and try to get the word out. She said 'I have goosebumps, that reminds me of stories my Grandma told me about listening to radios turned down really low during WWII to get information that they were trying to keep suppressed'. Then *I* had goose bumps, isn't it sad that those two were even able to be compared?

[Chris_Texas]

27. The jackasses on the right brought me here

[annabanana]

70. Well HEY there Chris! Welcome to DU!

Here's hoping you find plently of like minded folk.

[cynatnite]

28. Yep, that book put me on the road to DU. n/t

[Exultant Democracy]

29. I was doing a google search on Al Franken and stumbled across the Top 10 conservative idiots.

[Sinistrous]

30. Bartcop

[Desertrose]

31. Saw the DU poster someone held up while watching "selection" coverage...

Think I signed up that day...took me awhile to post though.

[CrispyQ]

I had just discovered what a right wing nut my mother had become

& her disdain for all things liberal. I was stunned. This was a woman who adored JFK & RFK. I did a Google search, "When did liberal become a dirty word?" & this link was the first hit:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/11/23_liberal.html

That's how I stumbled upon DU. Within a few days I knew I had found my virtual home. :grouphug:

[DU GrovelBot]

32. ## PLEASE DONATE TO DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND! ##

This week is our first quarter 2011 fund drive. Democratic Underground is
a completely independent website. We depend on donations from our members
to cover our costs. Please take a moment to donate! Thank you!

Click here to donate

[LiberalEsto]

33. Buzzflash nt

[hfojvt]

34. Skinner and the Jets

where did that phrase come from, and who are the Jets? Elad and EarlG? The mods?

As I use the term, and the icon, the Jets are a gang, that fights the rival gang of the Sharks. It's not a paradigm I agree with, but one that seems to exist. I think we should strive to be less gang-like.


As for DU, well I was posting on a Yahoo message board (a place where a guy I was arguing poverty with offered to shoot me) and somebody mentioned the liberal site hated.com (in a negative way IIRC) so I went there and the flashing DU banner offering a listing of the "top ten conservative idiots" was impossible to resist (although I checked out many of the other sites too - the Wage Slave Journal, Media Whores Online, Liberal Oasis, and a couple others too whose names escape me, was the BillO site on hated?, and I can remember a dark website (by color, not by attitude) but not the name).

So I spent a few days/hours going through the archives of the top ten conservative idiots and reading articles from the front page. Then I discovered the discussion forum and read some of the threads there. Seemed to be some really neat people discussing there, so I decided to register and meet them, and see what we could do together to take our country back from the Bush regime and the Republican Congress.

[SaveAmerica]

75. Yep, Elad and EarlG, Just playing with Benny and the Jets,

[Populist_Prole]

35. In my metamorphisis from right/center to progressive I began to overhear

Around mid 2007...Conversations at work from these 2 people I work with and noticed how much their views were mirroring mine, and I sort of chimed in and had refreshing intelligent conversation. Prior to that any political conversation I heard was from peripherally informed ( at best ) apathetic types who would only spout paraphrased talking points from talking heads. That or of the "they're all crooks" variety, or all too often, christian fundies framin g every single issue within that context.

Anyway... A few days later those same 2 aforementioned people were sitting in front of one of their laptops and talking and laughing. I mosied over to have a look and they were reading "The top 10 Conservative Idiots" and some other stuff on DU. I asked what website it was, and they told me. Soon as I got home I immediately bookmarked DU and it became one of my regular sites during surfing. What great conversation and info, I thought. I lurked for a good 2 years however before joining and posting.

[QC]

38. I posted for years at Salon Table Talk, and someone there linked to DU

early in 2001, which is when I first came here.

[kath]

60. I also used to hang out at TT

mostly in the White House forum.
Didn't start there 'til around fall of 2000, IIRC. Met up with some TTers at VoterMarch in May 2001 in DC.

[w8liftinglady]

39. My son's pending second tour in Iraq.. and people thanking me for his service..

while their kids nestled comfortably in bed....
DU is the first place I met other military families who questioned the war.

[SaveAmerica]

76. Yep, it's very difficult to go into that war while knowing the truth about how we got there

[1monster]

40. A poster named DamYourEyes on an AOL message board called the Buzz Board

started posting a link to Democratic Undgerground's Top Ten Conservative Idiots (back when I was still able to laught at them) in 2001. I got seriously hooked on DU after reading a few threads.

[LWolf]

42. The Bush selection sent me looking, in frustration,

for someone, anyone, who didn't shrug and accept it. For people who didn't lay down at his feet and submit, accepting that "9/11 changed everything." I didn't find DU right away, though. I think I found Michael Moore first. I found DU late in '02, lurked awhile, and then joined in early '03.

[bluesmail]

43. The Theft of election 2000. I was lurking for about a year. eom

[EC]

44. Some of the posters at Bill Mahr's forum were members

here, so I started reading and posting back then. There were a lot of paid operatives on Mahr's site and none of us could sway them at all. It was like they were in automation, same answer, same reason over and over...never a true thought, drove me crazy. I found DU calming and hopeful, especially when the membership started to explode.

[AndyTiedye]

45. I Ran Periodic Google Searches for "Reichstag Fire" after 9/11

[frebrd]

46. After Bush's selection in 2000.....

I started looking around for Liberal websites. For some reason, it took me a while to find DU.

Registered in 2002.

[RandomKoolzip]

49. Run-up to the Iraq War in early 2003. I was living in Nashville and it was a very scary

time. Like living in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." I saw TV networks and major media suddenly become overtly pro-Republican overnight; saw people ostracized, villified, and even attacked physically for expressing anti-war viewpoints; felt helpless and alone and isolated. I felt like I was on a sinking ship. DU was a lifeline back then.

[cutlassmama]

50. Posting on another political message board kept referring to this site

so I Googled it and found this wonderful place. Been here ever since, I think 2004 or 2005.

[Zephie]

51. My husband! He used to be "conservative"...

I needed ammo to prove why he wasn't. He had spent his life and his votes because his parents were republicans and he did not take time to see if what he believed was truly in line with the conservative way of thinking. Once I truly got him to sit down and see why he wasn't what he thought he was, he realized his mistake.

My husband has done a lot of growing since we got together. I am proud of him for finally coming into his own instead of staying shackled to his parents ideal of what is proper. His mother told him the day after our wedding that I was going to "cause him to face the hellfire". I think that was the highest compliment anyone has ever given me.

[delightfulstar]

54. I needed a safe haven...

It was the era of "Mission Accomplished," and I was a Blue Girl stuck in a red state. It was great to find kindred spirits here at DU!

[mindwalker_i]

57. Bob Bouldelang

Pardon my splling

[PufPuf23]

58. I was googling the Anthrax attacks and bookmarked DU

but never joined and became a contributor until 2007 for the primaries.

My internet posting is maybe 300 posts to usenet in sports and science groups in the 1990s and maybe 3000 posts in forums, mostly private, for one special interest.

I went from Edwards to Obama and HRC was my #9 candidate of initial choices (yes, disappointed; neo-liberals can suck Mubarak's scrotum for the damage they have done to the Democratic Party, New Deal, USA, and Earth). The GOP, Neo-Cons and Baggers are worse.

Our Democratic Republic is compromised IMO.

[XanaDUer]

59. Smirking Chimp, if I remember right

nt.

[BlueIris]

63. The Presidential Non-Election of 2004.

Love for the candidate + faith in my country, its media and its government + massive election fraud = heartbreak. I was hurting pretty bad. I lurked for four months, then joined on the Ides of March. And the rest is history.

[YvonneCa]

64. Same here...

...BlueIris.

[Raine]

68. 2000 Selection ... I lurked for some time

then finally registered. :thumbsup:

[Lugnut]

72. I've been here so long I don't remember how I found DU.

I found DU because of the nightmare of the installation of GWB by the Supreme Court. I know I signed up during the early days of DU but that's about it.

[Blue_In_AK]

73. Trolling around on the internet

trying to figure out how George W. Bush managed to steal another election in 2004, I just sort of stumbled on to DU and found some good people here. I was very interested in the Election forum at the time but soon found my home in the Photo Group.

Sometimes this place pisses me off so bad I can't see straight, but I have too many friends here to leave. I've just learned to hold my tongue...or restrain my fingers, whatever.

:)

[upi402]

74. Trying to reason and debate with Republicans wore me out

It is absolutely futile.
You could show them a picture of the earth from space and they'd call you dirty names and insist it's flat.
So I gave up and came here thinking the Democratic party could be moved from a corporate direction.
Well that's futile too, as it turns out.