The space is expanding and its expansion rate is accelerating. Dark energy is not pushing objects apart, it is causing the acceleration of expansion of space.
What you said isn't even pop science, it is blatantly wrong.
What I said was an attempt to explain how the basic model cosmologists use works in layman's terms. It wasn't intended to be "pop science" or even "real science"; that would be building the model, not trying to explain how it works.
The references you give are not "real science" either. Try looking in a cosmology textbook or a peer-reviewed paper. Or, even better, work out the science for yourself instead of arguing from authority.
What you said isn't even pop science, it is blatantly wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy
And the money quote:
It is called "dark" because it is not interacting with normal matter, but only with the space time structure.
from http://physics.stackexchange.com/a/206217