My father is buried and missed.
I want to thank the many in the real world who have been and, I am quite certain, will continue to be so supportive. I would also want to send a special thanks to three bloggers for their kind words: Scott at The Fat Guy, Ben at Ben’s World (who will be on my blogroll with my next update), and especially Phil at Shades of Gray (Umbrae Canarum).
I am humbled.
The first blog that made me consider the life of the blogosphere is back from hiatus.
Go. Read.
Thanks to Scott for catching the resurrection.
Any suggestions? Leave a comment.
Just back from a day spent away from reality, gorging myself on junkfood at the State Fair of Texas.
Before I go surfing around for news, I wanted to point out that I’ve found a new talk radio station has launched in the Dallas area, KSKY 660 AM. To my surprise, the station is carrying the Hugh Hewitt show. Not the greatest time slot (8-11 p.m.), but a big plus for the DFW airwaves.
Greyhawk has gone to war. Now, Mrs. Greyhawk has asked a favor
I call to my fellow bloggers to do what the mainstream media refuse to do, and that is to report the truth about the success of rebuiling Iraq.
….
You know, my husband is over there and seeing that he may be limited to what he can read, I sure don’t want him to read something that makes him feel his efforts are in vain.
And what of the Iraqi People? If all they see and read focuses almost exclusively on the violence without reports of the monumental progresses being made, what will they think? How will they have the courage to fight the insurgents (terrorist) if they have no hope. If you watch the satellite channels from Arab countries you would imagine there’s no rebuilding going on at all. This is encouraging terrorists and demoralizing those who supported democracy.
Where does the Blogshere come in? A place to start would be this blog “Chrenkoff“, a Polish Australian blogger who compiles a periodic roundup of “good news from Iraq.”
Link him, better yet post good news you find on your blog as often as possible, photos a plus. Our soldiers lives and the state of Iraq could depend on it.
Target Centermass is young and barely visited, but I will do what I can for this good cause. At least I’ll try, which is what our country has asked of Greyhawk (on a vastly different scale, of course). I plan on revising my blogroll in the next day or two, and Chrenkoff is among those to be added.
Maybe it’s happened before, but this is the first time I’ve seen it. Currently, the lead story about the confirmation of Porter Goss as CIA chief on Google News’ U.S. page is this.
Okay, I’m not a fan of the Daily Kos. Sure, it’s the top liberal blog in terms of traffic, but I have not been impressed during my handful of visits. He’s well written, but strikes me as trapped in his Berkeley mindset and his commenters make the site Kool-Aid Central. Definitely behind the curve, actually way late in hitting the road while chilling in Denialville, on the Rathergate story.
Despite this, I wonder how long until including established blogs side-by-side with MSM outlets becomes a regular practice at Google News. The times, they are a-changing.
Happy dragon hunting, and best wishes to those you’re leaving.
The first victim of RatherGate has been clearly identified.
Mary Mapes, the Dallas-based producer of Dan Rather’s controversial Sept. 8 60 Minutes segment questioning President Bush’s military record, is the focus of attention following published reports that she arranged for her Texas source on the story to talk to a top aide to Democratic hopeful John Kerry.
CBS News executives want to know why Mapes, one of Rather’s most trusted producers, repeatedly assured them that both Bill Burkett and the documents he gave her could be trusted — only to have both widely called into question by Internet bloggers and rival news organizations soon after 60 Minutes aired the story. On Monday, CBS said the story should have never run, and Rather apologized to viewers.
On Tuesday, it was revealed that Mapes arranged for Burkett to talk to a top aide to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
Standard journalistic ethical practices forbid reporters from doing anything that could be perceived as helping a political campaign.
Congrats, Mary, you’re deservedly the first sacrificial lamb. G’bye.
The defenses around CBS’s Dien Bien Phu have collapsed.
From Drudge, Rather has finally admitted what most of us already knew:
EXCLUSIVE // Mon Sep 20 2004 11:58:02 ET
STATEMENT FROM DAN RATHER:Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY story about President Bush’s time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question—and their source—vigorously. And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.
Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where—if I knew then what I know now—I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.
But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.
Please know that nothing is more important to us than people’s trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.
Now, CBS is saying they “regret” running the story:
“Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report,” said the statement by CBS News President Andrew Heyward. “We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret.
“Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting,” Heyward continued. “We will continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust.”
For now, I’ll wait a bit to see the scope of the fallout on this journalistic debacle.
Finally addressing the documents presented as part of Dan Rather’s partisan attack, President Bush has said that the core issue of the controversy should be the veracity of the documents.
President George W. Bush has for the first time raised questions about documents used to bolster a report that he received preferential treatment during his Vietnam era military service.
And amid mounting Republican attacks, the CBS network, which broadcast the allegations against Bush, has stepped up its inquiry into the authenticity of the documents.
“There are a lot of questions about the documents and they need to be answered,” Bush told the Union Leader newspaper based in Manchester, New Hampshire in an interview on Saturday. “Let the truth come out.”
“I think what needs to happen is people need to take a look at the documents, how they were created, and let the truth come out,” he told the newspaper.
As Rather continues his Dien Bien Phu defense of his story, ridiculously demanding the content of forged documents is the actual issue, CBS seems to hope the story will just blow over and leave the public consciousness. Will the storm pass? Today’s Sunday Reader section of the print version of the Dallas Morning News printed 24 letters from the public, a plurality of nine (mostly negative to CBS and Rather) dealt with the issue. This issue is not going away fast enough, andCBS’s stance behind a story based on four faked (I know it, you know it) documents and the testimony of a man, previously shown to be a liar on this same topic, cannot withstand the seige.
The sooner the capitulation, the more integrity CBS can salvage.