An interview here with Jay Rosen, chair of the New York University Department of Journalism and author of the Pressthink weblog, links to b!X’s blog in this statement:
….blogging doesn’t have to be journalism to be good. Sometimes it is journalism, of a kind, which often depends on the daily output of the professional and commercial press, in the way that a second wave depends on the first. Sometimes it’s just good information about a place– and that’s journalism.
b!X’s experiment in “citizen journalism” is a success in every way but financially. One of his Portland “participatory journalist” blogger colleagues had to quit, at least for a while, because the rest of his life wasn’t getting enough attention. b!X’s life is pretty much his weblog and all the work that goes along with being a full-time citizen journalist. But that doesn’t put food on the table and pay the rent. I’ve got my fingers crossed that some organization or individual in Oregon will recognize the value of what he’s doing (both in substance and as a civic experiment) and pay him to do it. Hope springs, all seasons.
UPDATE: b!X also got linked:
(“Sneak and peak” warrants have come under scrutiny following recent cases where US citizens were wrongly charged by the FBI with terrorist offenses.)
from an article in the Christian Science Monitor on the Patriot Act.
OK. Now isn’t there some way for him to get paid for providing such “good information?”

It’s a puzzlement why the NY Times won’t accept an online subscription from me. It’s a good thing I have a friend who sends me all the good stuff, like the op ed piece from Paul Krugman today that includes this:
A little background: at the Republican convention, most featured speakers will be social moderates like Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger. A moderate facade is necessary to win elections in a generally tolerant nation. But real power in the party rests with hard-line social conservatives like Mr. DeLay, who, in the debate over gun control after the Columbine shootings, insisted that juvenile violence is the result of day care, birth control and the teaching of evolution.
Here’s the puzzle: if Mr. DeLay’s brand of conservatism is so unpopular that it must be kept in the closet during the convention, how can people like him really run the party?
What we see isn’t what we get.

So now they’re trying to find ways and reasons to scare us into accepting that it might be necessary to postpone the presidential election. Add to that the fact that computerized voting can result in an even greater debacle than we saw in the Florida chad disaster last time, and it might well be time for some major intervention.
And my eloquent blogger pal Frank Paynter has posted an open letter to the United Nations that begins:
I am a citizen of the United States of America and I grieve for democracy in my country. Since the unfortunate circumstances surrounding the appointment of George W. Bush to the Chief Executive’s Office in January, 2001 I have considered requesting United Nations supervision of elections in my country until such time as democracy may be restored. The time has come for me to put thoughts into action and write to you for your guidance and support in helping the people of the United States to extricate themselves from a complex situation involving compromised leadership.
If you think Frank is making a valid point, go on over, read the whole letter, and leave a comment. You might even want to ask to be a co-signer. Outrageous acts require outraged reactions.
I’m in.

Molly Ivins is a Wise Woman. The following excerpted from here.
Luntz described his methods with appealing pride. His job is to “set the context” and “frame the debate,” which he learns how to do through focus groups, polls and dial sessions. But he kept drawing the line at the word “manipulation.” No, no, he doesn’t manipulate people, he insisted, he merely gives them a context for the message, he merely discovers what it is they want to hear and how best to say it to them.
I’m listening to all this because this is what the shrewdies in Washington pay attention to – you can’t hardly be a political writer anymore without sources on linguistics, semiotics, message control and all this good business. It dates you something awful if you do old-fashioned stuff, like call politicos to find out how it’s going.
Luntz has discovered that the 4 percent of Americans who still have not made up their minds about this election to tend to be working women, younger, new mothers and fairly low-wage earners. I was pleased to hear Luntz explain how he’d uncovered the most interesting thing about these women.
[snip]
“You have to empathize,” he said. “The very first thing you have to do, it’s not about issues, it’s about empathy. They have to know that you care, that you understand them, that you understand the frustrations.” Say a candidate of his – say George W. Bush – is at a town hall meeting. He’d say, “‘Now I want to talk to the ladies in the room’ … ‘the women in the room’ is how I would put it … and you say: ‘Well, I’m gonna throw this out. I want you tell me if I’m right or not. Ladies here, I’d say that your lack of free time is one of the greatest challenges.’ And they’ll all sit there, and they’ll raise their hands, and they’ll all nod yes. At that moment, you have bonded with those women.”
Which is all well and good, except then I’m trying to envision what George W. Bush says to them next. The National Women’s Law Center released a study in April, called “Slip Sliding Away,” on the erosion of women’s rights.
[snip]
All in all, it’s kind of hard to see how Bush could convince “the ladies” that he has helped take stress out of their lives. Unless, of course, the lady is married to a guy who makes $1 million a year – then she’d have $92,000 extra a year to spend from the Bush tax cuts.
Go and read about how the quality of life for women is “Slip Sliding Away,” thanks to the manipulation of the Bush administration.
UPDATE:
Maybe we need to start a list of “BlogWomen Against Women” and put Andrea Mitchell, aka Mrs. Allen Greenspan, with her BusyBusyBusy at the top of the list. (Thanks to the Busy reference from Mr. Bill in the Comments at Brooke Biggs’ site.)

While I’m on the subject of women, a bunch of Stitchin’ Sedition knitters in Portland Oregon got really pissed off and put together this website to counteract the effort of the Bushites to try to claim that “W is for Women.”
Hee. Hee. They have a whole lot of pointy sticks and they’re not going to take it anymore, they say. They’re compiling a list of all the things that “W” really stands for in Bush country. If you’ve got some good ones, let them know.
(Got this from b!X. Now there’s a son a feminist mom can be proud of!)

Over at Blog Sisters Brooke Biggs asks for input about what we women have been doing wrong in trying to change our country’s policies — 200 words or less. Well, I couldn’t do it in even twice that many. But here it is, anyway:
It was 1975 and the first Stepford Wives movie had just come out, Ms Magazine was three years old, the book Fascinating Womanhood was getting big play, and the Vietnam War had just ended. I was a vocal feminist, a disgruntled housewife, a struggling mother, a war-protestor, and I thought that Gloria Steinham should rule the world.
Along with thousands of other women, I marched and argued for women

For me, the overwhelming complexity of what it means to be human is to let things be simple, to perceive as deep what seems so very uncomplicated.
My challenge is to be still of mind and heart long enough to notice.
Some things are taken care of before we even get there.
Sometimes we just walk in, laugh for a while, and kiss a baby hello.
My Blog Sister Jeneane writes (excerpted above) about watching her friend deliver her third child. Jeneane’s clear notice of life’s deepest moments is legendblogdary.
If only it were really that easy to “let things be simple.” It seems that they are for some and for others, well, not so.
I really do wish I believed in Karma, in some divine purpose. But every day is a crapshoot. We are at the mercy of those little steel balls in some quantum pin ball game.
Taking a deep breath helps. (Even though doing so also makes me cough these days.) Going with the flow; trying to enjoy what there is of the ride when it’s not being trying. Letting the things that take care of themselves take care of themselves. And then taking care with the rest. Escaping into another realily every once in a while. You know — headology.
My mother’s shingles seem to be coming back. She is 88 and tired of those random little steel balls. Everything hurts. I try to take care. I want to laugh and kiss a baby hello.

I used to be able to get to the NY Times online. All of a sudden, I can’t. I’ve make sure my cookies are enabled. I tried to register again, using another ID. Nope. So while I can’t get to this piece about the presidential candidates’ clash over values, I can link to it. I know it exists because it’s reprinted in my local newspaper today. The final paragraph of the article slips in this little bit of, it seems to me, important information:
On another front, the Pentagon said military payroll records that could more full document President bush’s whereabouts during his service in the Texas Air Natoinal Guard were inadvertently destroyed.
A further search leads to this AP article, which I can’t get to on the Times but I can on my local paper online. Included is this important reminder:
Bush was in the Texas Air National Guard from 1968 to 1973, much of the time as a pilot, but never went to Vietnam or flew in combat. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential candidate, is a decorated Vietnam veteran, and some Democrats have questioned whether Bush showed up for temporary Guard duty in Alabama while working on a political campaign during a one-year period from May 1972 to May 1973.
I can’t wait for a movie of Bush’s devious life path to come out after he loses the electons. Down in flames.