Sunset

Sunset

Here she is..our world.
She belongs to all mankind.
Think of the empowering relief and joy that will enter into the hearts of all good men and women when hope and sanity return to the foreign policies of the nations.
It isn't too late to turn things around.

There is great power is in your hands, citizens of America.

The world is waiting and hoping that you will vote for hope and decency this November. Not for yourselves alone, but for the good of this world.

The sun is going down. We live, not with the arrogant expectation that the sun will rise again for us tomorrow, but only with the hope and faith that it will.

Voting G.W. Bush out of office in November, for me, represents every hope the world has ever had to avoid the coming hopelessness, holocaust and destruction brought about by his foreign policies.


Jude

This photo was taken by the crew on board the Columbia
during its last mission. You're seeing Europe and Africa when the sun is setting. Half of the picture is in night. The bright dots you see are the cities lights. The top part of Africa is the Sahara Desert. Note that the lights are already on in Holland, Paris, and Barcelona, and that's it's still daylight in Dublin, London, Lisbon, and Madrid.

Dan Bartlett:"Great to be here today"

Dan Bartlett: "Great to be here today"

How great do you think Dan Bartlett really thought it was to be facing the fire at the "Ask the White House" web event yesterday?

*Tip of the hat to Matthew Gross on this one.

Meet Buckhead

Meet Buckhead

"You can ask the questions but I'm not going to answer them. I'm just going to stick to doing no interviews...Freepers collectively possess more analytical horsepower than the entire news division at CBS."

--Harry W. MacDougald

McDouglad aka "Buckhead"

Harry MacDougald is a lawyer in the Atlanta office of the Winston-Salem, N.C.-based firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice and is affiliated with two prominent conservative legal groups, the Federalist Society and the Southeastern Legal Foundation.

From the LA Times:

Until The Times identified him by piecing together information from his postings over the past two years, MacDougald had taken pains to remain in the shadows — saying the credit for challenging CBS should remain with the blogosphere as a whole and not one individual.

While some bloggers and some conservative activists hail "Buckhead" as a hero in their efforts to paint the mainstream media as politically biased, I would just as seriously question the motives of the nexus of activists that are working in the shadows to get Bush re-elected.

Let's admit it, "Buckhead" is no Edward R. Murrow. Rather than fearlessly inspiring courage and loyalty among fellow journalists, "Buckhead" lurked in the conservative shadows and let bloggers do his partisan bidding for him.

I appreciate collegiality among the blogging crowd, and I have consistently supported the blogging community overall.

I do sense some blogs are not at all independent, and that some are just another part of the right wing machine. I read a recent Weekly Standard article, where writer John Last serves only to divide the blogging community into right and left by pretending that Buckhead was just some coincidental "find" by a random blogger in pajamas. The entire piece is a polarizing effort on Mr. Last and the Weekly Standard's part and I hate to see this disease come to the fine and trusted community that bloggers have created. This "Buckhead" development doesn't bode well for bloggers' trust in fellow bloggers, and that's a shame.

The Dan Rather incident has left scars upon the blogging community as well as deserved scars on CBS' inept journalism in the case of those documents. (CBS was just as guilty for consorting with the likes of the partisan shadow-lurker Bill Burkett).

I'm not a woman who jumps to conclusions easily. Although I previously did not seriously entertain this whole thing might be a Republican conspiracy, now it seems entirely plausible. It's only natural people will think this way. The incident may have garnered new attention toward the blogging community, but those of us who've been blogging a long time (with independence) do not take collaboration with the rightwing nexus lightly.

Their sorrow and advice will not be televised

Once upon a time we trusted....

Their sorrow and advice will probably not be televised

Two mothers speak out about their children, now dead, and about the upcoming election.

Vanessa Lang Langer was killed in the 9/11 attack.

Truth might have saved Donna Marsh O'Connor's daughter. The truth is desparately needed in a presidential campaign.

There is a need this mother feels she has as a citizen to move this quagmire into a productive discussion. She believes the lives of future generations, especially our children, are at stake.

She says:

You in the media have the power to continue to dig for what may indeed be important details about the past. You can and will certainly do this.

But you can also take as solemn, as your No. 1 responsibility, the hunt for opportunities to ask right now, in this time and this place, the questions that we American citizens need to have answered so that no individual feels after the election when it is too late: I have not been provided the right information.

We must all agree that it has never been so pressing, so serious and somber a time for choosing the right candidate. Never in our lifetimes.....

....See me as the canary in the mine: I will not let my family diminish further in number without first begging for and demanding answers to questions that may determine this outcome. Yes, I care about the past and future integrity of the candidates. Yes, I care whether data is genuine or rumor. Yes, I care about bias in the media.

1st Lt. Neil Anthony Santoriello Jr. was a soldier killed in the Iraq war:

Diane Davis Santoriello wants to know the answer to this question: "For whom did my son die in Iraq?"

My son compulsively planned everything. For every Boy Scout outing, every ski trip, he was prepared for any eventuality.

This presidential administration ignored experts who told them that they could win the war, but winning the peace presented the challenge. Did they prepare for that? Of course not -- they were too arrogant to change their direction even as the insurgency increased.

It's hard to get by just upon a smile

It's hard to get by just upon a smile.

Dear Cat:

Ride on the peace train?
This ain't the peace train.
Oo ah eee ah ooo ah.
Just do it somewhere else.
Get off the plane.
Thank you.

Sincerely,
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency