WT sed: No one else -- at least not anyone with any sense -- will give you the time of day.

WT, hate to say this, but you just did.

Around here we have these automated deer feeders, they spread corn on a timer, and the deer and turkey collect around them at regular intervals. When hunting season comes, the deer blinds are placed where hunters can shoot the deer at, or going to and from the feeders.

The only reason I can see for feeding trolls is that folks enjoy bagging them on occassion, skinning them or mounting the horns/antlers. This is all well and good, but these trolls just aren't worth your attention. They have no arguments, and they are tiresome. There is no sport in bagging them.

Well, if you're going to go all Whitman on me, have it your way. But don't be showing off that scrawny little rack to me. I'll just laugh and point.

Susan said: "Since polls also show an overwhelming majority of Americans are opposed to the war, maybe Saddam's non-involvement is irrelevant to these 41% now that he's dead? And maybe that's another reason the Administration is pushing the "Al Qaeda in Iraq" meme-- their former supporters are deserting the cause since the "reason" for the war is moot?"

By re-branding the "main enemy" as al Qaeda, the admin. is also being more consistent with the ludicrous but widely believed--

"We're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here"

explanation. This sentiment has been voiced consistently by the admin, by all the presidential hopefuls on the GOP side, and is widely held by the public. Of course it's a lie, and they know it's a lie.

The "them" above can't possibly refer to any of the Iraqi-based insurgents, Shia or Sunni. Logically, it can only be applied to al Qaeda, and then only when aQ-Mesopotamia is equated with aQ--bin Laden.

I've read some of the conversation over at FDL, and one thing that strikes me is the "feel" of that blog. Every blog has its own personality, and FDL's strikes me as upbeat, and almost playful. It's a fun blog, even though the topics are absolutely serious.

UT, by contrast, impresses me as being more distant, perhaps more abstract, and has an academic flavor to it.

One recurring thought brought on by Gitmo, Abu Graihb, Renditions, and like behavior is that our intelligence and military folk are learning a new, pathological, and dangerous set of skills that will come back home with them. Legal, physical, and psychological skills. Along with ethical numbing.

It is hard to see good things coming from this learning, easy to see bad ones.

The topic of blog and media evolution is highly interesting GG, and I hope you will write more about it. Focusing on just one aspect of what you wrote, it does seem clear that blogs are beginning to have a better capacity to generate their own content. TPM and FDL come to mind immediately--and things will continue to evolve in that direction, because they simply must.

Should the big media and/or telecom players become sufficiently annoyed at bloggers, I wonder if perhaps the biggest threat to "citizen-journalism" will be to reignite the attack on Net Neutrality. By stratifying the WWW in terms of speed and access, big players would not only produce tons of cash, they also have an effective tool to bash citizen journalism while it is still in its infancy, and highly vulnerable.

Mr. Tiburon,

I tend to agree that TV journalism is mostly a wasteland, but disagree on the print media front. A very few newspapers and print news services now prop up the entire field in terms of content. Content drives the news--everything else is just opinion.

And newspapers are not dying--they have wonderful profit margins still, and I believe they will continue to do so long into the future--as long as ownership doesn't expect 25% net profit (like Tribune Corp, for example). But if an owner is satisfied with 7-10% profit, newspapers may be pretty much immortal.

And that's not a bad thing at all. I think there is plenty of room for blogs and papers, and also the potential for very interesting hybrids of the two.

oh jeez, now you've stepped in it...