Just to prove that I've got control of my envy about all those who are heading off to Austin tomorrow to party without moi, I figured, why not have a Bon NNoyage party and send you all off with style!

So be nice, ye fortunate ones, no gloating! And if, like me, you're not heading for Austin, do let us know in comments below so we can plot out some revenge fun stuff during their absence!

(FWIW Note: Crashing Vor has a roll-call diary going for non-attendees.)

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 more importantly through nominations made by YOU! Remember, if you see a comment worthy of wider notice, send it to TopComments at gmail.com by 9:45 Eastern. Please include your user name, links to the comment and diary in which it appears, and a few words about your choice.

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...

Well, our friends sardonyx AND BeninSC went out of town and the rest of the team got our signals crossed.

No masterpiece TC tonight but a true masterpiece of quick thinking and teamwork.

Possibly the last, best advice from the esteemed white-haired gentleman from West Virginia is being released tomorrow. Robert Byrd's latest book, with co-author Steve Kettmann, Letter to a New President: Commonsense Lessons for Our Next Leader, is "a plea to the next occupant of the White House, and to all of us, to care more about the future of our country, world and future generations." Most wisely, Byrd is encouraging him to "avoid the disastrous missteps of the current administration":

Bush is a man who seems to be the center of his own universe. He seems to have learned little of human nature and even less of human history over his lifetime.
...
The American people and, yes, all too many of their political leaders have been manipulated and controlled in recent years through the most shameless use of fear this country has ever seen.

Welcome to Top Comments - a nightly diary that aims to call attention to outstanding commentary at DKos. Your nominations are always welcomed - send the link and, even better, your reasoning for doing so - to TopComments AT gmail.com each evening before 9:45 Eastern.

When it's my day for TC duty, I tend to look around offsite for something that hasn't been diaried to death. Today, I found this profile of Dave 'Mudcat' Saunders from the upcoming issue of the Weekly Standard. At the end of the Democratic primary season, Author Matt Labash is sent by his editors on a journey to Appalachian Virginia. It's an auspicious time:  

When I contacted Mudcat, he was in a state of blood-spitting agitation at all the ... reporters trafficking in stereotypes, depicting mountain people as racist mouth-breathers, while explaining Obama's "Appalachian problem" as if they were anthropologists dropping in on the lip-plated savages of America's last exotic tribe. He agreed to host me, insisting I stay at his house instead of a hotel. "Be sure to bring your gun and plenty of ammo," he wrote me ...:

read the rest of Mudcat's e-mail below

Let's start with a bit of meta. Ever check your 'rec-roll'? No, not rick-roll! The list of diaries that you've recommended? You can view it by clicking on 'Recs' on your personal DKos page.

I clicked on mine a few days ago for the first time and almost fell out of my chair. The number blew me away (I even mentioned it in an e-mail to a fellow TC-er). With some trepidation, I clicked again today.
According to my personal rec-roll, I've now recommended 20,368 diaries.  

I have no idea how far this goes back - with 50 listed per page it would take ... what? about 2,000 clicks to get back to the first page? Shudder! But I can't quit thinking about it... when does that list begin? From the first day I was 'eligible' to recommend a diary? Sometime in the Spring of '06?

Egads! That's still something like an average of 200 per week. And doesn't include the diaries I read and DON'T recommend (like this type of crapola).

Does this mean that I REALLY need to get a(nother) life?

Just in case you've been under a rock or distracted by yellow teeth today, you may have missed the news that Barack Obama launched his formal campaign for the general election today in my backyard of southwest Virginia. I didn't get to attend the events as I found out too late to get tickets (they were gone in a few short hours) but I've spent the day following the news, watching it live on a local TV station, reading numerous blogs, and receiving photos from people who were there.

As I'd expected, Appalachian Virginia proved that it's populated by gracious people who were as excited as those in any other region to be in the presence of '44.'

Proud of my people? You bet!
Photo credit to Ed Stout - and Jack for sending it to me!

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...

Ever feel this way? Especially on the night before all-important primary contests?

I do and I think I'm not alone. So come on in and rest your feet, pour a glass of your favorite poison, smoke 'em if you got 'em.

Say hello, losers, to a new guest-host for Saturday Night Losers Club.

Say what?? What is this?

"Saturday Night Loser's Club by chingchongchinaman. Blogging on Saturday night? What a loser! Come join the Loser's Club and tell us how pathetic your life is, loser (note - not for the snark impaired)."

Image Source

Tip for today: When you put a couple of beers in the freezer to chill while you eat dinner, try to remember to take them out before THREE HOURS have passed.

Another Tip for today: Do not do as I did - I mean, do 'save' your diary-draft often - either use the diary-editor or a program that auto-saves when you're too dumb to do it. My computer crashed a little while ago and I lost a very fine diary. Unfortunately, I didn't recover in time to re-create it so you're going to get quickie potluck tonight.

Good evening! Springtime has come to the mountains and I didn't want to stay inside all day. So I didn't and I have this very minimalist diary to show for it.

For the last week, we've been blessed with an extended history lesson, much of it in stark black-in-white imagery. I found many comments this week that suggest that I'm a rarity - a bona fide DKos Senior Citizen. I lived through that time. I remember 1968 very well, indeed all too well.

During the previous summer of '67, my father had died suddenly - we were on a family vacation to California so I always incongruously associated his death with the Summer of Love and Jim Morrison's Light My Fire. Despite my shell-shocked psyche, I'd felt compelled to continue with his grand plan that I leave high school early as one alleged to have 'great potential.' The original plan (birthed from several rounds of IQ testing that always resulted in whispered conferencing between my parents and teachers) was that I'd go on to college at age 14 but I'd balked and he'd agreed to delaying that for one more year. After his sudden death, I went into my senior year of high school far too emotionally fragile to deal with what was to come.

Good evening! A quickie diary tonight - got a sick sibling and wasn't able to get as much done earlier as I'd hoped.

To begin, let's recall why we're here - quoting from brillig's diary last night:

   If you find a notable comment during the day click the date/time stamp to get a direct link, copy it, then send to topcomments at gmail dot com by 9:30PM Eastern! Don't forget to include your screen name so we can credit you! Anyone can submit comments- if you didn't do so today, please give it a try tomorrow!

   Mining for comments is patriotic! Even more so than slapping a magnet on your car! Don't worry- you can mine for comments when you are sleep-deprived! Please demonstrate that you are a patriotic Kossack and send those comments in!

I like that...

I'm going to create a different kind of diary tonight. Top comment nominations at the beginning, an essay in the middle, then, at the end, Top Mojo by the numbers. I'm doing it this way because some folks may not want to read what I have to say about racism and electoral politics in Appalachia.

It's not a pretty tale - indeed, as some have already noted here, primaries held in Appalachian counties of several states have shown that Barack Obama's chances for victory there are slim to none. In the primary last month at my own precinct of VA-09, HRC rec'd 164 votes to Obama's 32 and I had to listen to numerous overt and ugly expressions of racism. E.g., 'they don't call it the WHITE House for nothing.' I heard that one several times, in fact, which suggests to me that it was a well-circulated joke on local strip mines.

I had a half-dozen good ideas for a theme tonight. Really I did.

Unfortunately, instead of developing one of them, I took a late-afternoon nap that seriously ate into my diary-composing time.

Yesterday I had to go to yet ANOTHER funeral for someone who died too young from cancer. Two funerals in three weeks. Both young - 35 and 43. Attending this one required a five-hour round-trip.

Instead of sleeping last night, I started reading comments. By noon, I fallen deep into a bunch of candidate diaries, then to Hidden Comments, and so of course, I had to take a shower. Shampooing and conditioning flat wore me out.

Then I took a DKos-break to read up about Patrick Swayze's fight with pancreatic cancer. Since he is up there on my longheld list of guilty pleasures, I shed a tear. Crying always makes me sleepy.

So I headed to bed at 3:30 pm or so and am almost wide-awake now. Bear with me, okay?

February 29 only comes around every four years so it seems like an appropriate time for this theme.

Let's talk about guilty pleasures.

Rec-list. Some here are truly obsessed with making the recommended diary list. We strategize over it, experiment with varying times to post. Is this you? And TU-status? Who among us wasn't thrilled to see the Troll / Hide option when it first appeared? Or chagrinned to see it disappear? And don't forget snark and pootie pics!

But those are Daily Kos specific. Let's get more personal, okay?

Not pleasurable vices like smoking pot or drinking fine wine that you really can't afford. Or even cigarettes - have you noticed that cigarette smokers now sneak to smoke, not unlike my generation did to smoke pot?

I'm talking about lifestyle guilty pleasures, a catch-all for those little addictions by which we're just a bit embarrassed. Some of us have disclosed a few of these in the past, when the TC-lights go down low and it's just a few of us left here. But it's time for full-disclosure!

Tonight's diary theme was selected by kath25 who asked for a volunteer to take her place so she could attend a political rally (on the rec-list, as I'm pulling this together). Since I'm among the walking wounded - I accidentally whacked off the tip of my left middle finger - and filling in for her promised minimal typing for me, I agreed to post for her tonight. Come on below and then follow her instructions! Let's see how savvy the TC crowd is re: this year's celebrated films and actors...