It’s Saturday morning, and I know the thread is dead. But if you read this, please try to respond.

The Other Endless War: I’m still crying. The father of a close friend of my son went to jail after his third DUI. His first two happened when he was young. Years later, the kids are eighteen in their first year of college, the father was convicted of the third DUI.

Weekends went by where the kid spent time with his dad instead of hanging out with his friends. Well it’s a good thing they hung out together before jail.

When he got out six months later, he died.

Reading the article you linked to has made me so sad.

I live in a small town where police catch kids with pot for sport. I have been sickened by this. Please tell me who is doing the best work on this issue. The idea that our kids are supplying the military while being raped is more than I can stand.

I am going to send this article to all the kids at college I know. I can’t tell you how frightening it is to have kids who can and do get caught up in this.

Thanks. Please write back.

http://www.emusic.com/album/10882/10882667.html

Emusic is good — it works by monthly subscription and works out to about 25-40 cents a song. It doesn’t have the big names though. Easy to use, easy to start and cancel subscriptions.

p.s. that cd is not available on amazon. Is it way way techno?

All power to the people!

And let the ReThugs fuck each other…that being the worst punishment I can imagine for their pasty-assed, limp dicked selves.

See ya at Corrente!

What I wonder about though is sustainability

there are several ways to go with this, and we’ll see which one wins out.

1. a foundation that pays top bloggers to report, just like foundations pay talentless wingnut hacks at places like AEI to spout propaganda. this route requires a billionaire or two to get the ball rolling, or a blogosphere wide fundraising effort, lead by professionals who can be trusted with the money.

2. subscriptions. this is already happening at some blogs, like americablog, where the paypal button is set up and bloggers regularly remind readers it’s there. this only works if your community is big and/or rich, but it could sustain real reporting for a handful of blogs.

3. getting the democratic party to pay us what they currently spend on “9 time looser” consultants. it would make most people here sick to know how much of the money we cut them in checks goes to pay for posh cocktail parties and “building” strategy sessions for expensive consultants. shift that money to honest, hard working bloggers who work for decent wages and not for excess, and voila! reporting on dem issues all over the place.

i’m not sure if any of these models will develop very soon, tho.

I think that a model something like that of public radio might work.

The bottleneck is investigative reporting. Other types of reporting are easier to do (quick question, quick written answer and on to something else,) but investigative reporting requires experience and long periods of investigation, much of it unproductive, leading to the final product. The difficulty is selecting, training and supporting those investigators while they are doing the investigations.

It’s not done by amateurs and it requires a steady stream of adequate funds to keep it operating. It is also unlikely to be a profitable venture. So I see that as a few small investigative units set up by grants (no, I don’t yet know where from) and operated on subscriptions from group blogs.

Foreign news would be similar, but probably less expensive. Someone living in a foreign location might do it for living costs, the phone bill, and a free computer and digatal camera and video camera, with paid-for internet. In some cases they would also operate as stringers who also sell to newspapers. [I’d happily do that in Thailand or Peru. Or China.]

The expenses would by primarily salaries, travel, computers and connections. The office would be no more than a spare bedroom or even corner somewhere. The people doing the foreign bureaus would be from the same pool of people who currently support themselves by teaching English as a foreign language. A lot of what they would do would be just to read the local papers and write to the rest of us about what was important, but they could also interview people.

Somewhere in here is room for a distribution organization like Creators Syndicate.

This all addresses your options 1 and 2. I don’t see how option 3 can work at the moment. Remember, there has to be an initial capital investment, followed by a reliable stream of income. As any accountant will tell you, you can’t plan on large windfalls without a really large sum of money to carry you through long dry periods. The key is reliable income (as, for instance, subscriptions) that can be planned on.

A grant organization that could cover investigative work that would not pay off for a while would really be a major player in such a system. You would apply based on your idea, your evidence that there is a story, and your reputation. The grant committee would have to be really hard-nosed, and take an equity position in the final product to get the money back with enough to cover the bad projects.

Just some thoughts from a guy with too much time in Corporate strategy, accounting, Finance and Economics classes.

Hyde Park! Jimmy’s! Thai 55!

As a grad of the seminary across 55th St. from your eight-year div school, let me offer my welcome to the ‘Lake.

As a grad from the Universal Life Church with my Doctor of Divinity [DD], let me welcome you all. I wasn’t going to get it, but they offered it to me at 1/3rd off its normal price of $18 shortly after I was ordained. Who can resist a bargain?

[Anyone who escaped from the University of Chicago can’t be all bad. Any of you know Ahmed Chalabi?]

GSD @ 124

Hummanah.

I just watched C-Span long enough to see the funniest named politician/leader ever.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Graham Eric Stirrup, GCB, AFC, DSc, FRAeS FCMI RAF (born 4 December 1949), commonly known as Sir Jock Stirrup, is a senior Royal Air Force commander and the current British Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS).

Can’t get any better than that.

-GSD

Are the Pythons back?

I am still totally blown away by Cardinal Jaime Sin, ArchBishop of Manila a few years ago.

But Sir Jock is right up there close. {G}

I notice that I can’t comment or write to you at your blog [not that I’m surprised.]

But to understand the way these homophobes operate, and more importanlty, why, go read Bob Altemeyer’s new book online at The Authoritarians.

What the Authoritarian conservatives who now own the Republican Party are doing makes complete, if sad, sense.

John Dean, writing from Altemeyer’s earlier writings and others studying Authoritarians, wrote “Conservatives without conscience.” It covers much the same set of ideas from a slightly different point of view.

We have to understand the Authoritarins and their Social Dominating leaders to stop them. If we don’t then the American experiment in democracy is due to end quite soon. It already has taken a number of major blows, the appointment of Bush in 2000 being one of the most obvious but neither the first nor last really important events.
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OT

How about Pond-dwelling PyroPups? Or Pond-watching PyroPups? Closer to Jane’s original idea, I think?