For the New Media class I dropped yesterday.

In one post (referring to the “Big John” video), he commented:

“I personally believe Beckwith deserves a raise and/or a promotion for whatever role he had in that video . . .”

I want to see if recommending yourself for a raise on a blog works. So here goes:

Hey, TFN, I think I deserve a raise. How ’bout it?

Joe, same for you.

Pate got to get paid, son.

Boy, I hope it pans out well — or at least that I’m not forced to resign my positions in a few weeks when the media/blog heat has subsided.

(If this doesn’t work, I’ll try posting the request on a conservative Web site under a nom de plume.)

Next up:

An item entitled “Watch ‘Charlie Rose – An hour with General David Petraeus’” I sent myself through Google Reader on 10 SEP 2007 at 8:18 AM. I think the title is self-explanatory. The reason I want to watch it — and still save it? Because I love me some Petraeus. Link still works. Delete.

Next is a really old e-mail (17 OCT 2007 at 3:25 PM) with a link to The Blakes’ (a band) Myspace page. I’m deleting without looking further. Can’t remember why I saved it. If anyone knows if they’re any good, let me know and I’ll look into ‘em this time around.

22 OCT 2007 at 11:12 AM: Another Google Reader e-mail with a link to the Mother Jones’ issue focusing on leaving Iraq. The e-mail itself contains an interview with T.X. Hammes that was posted on the Kings of War blog, written by various faculty and research students of the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. The link still works.

Okay, I’m going to stop here again for a while. Maybe I’ll aim for getting rid of three old e-mails per post.

Does anyone else find random stuff on the Web, e-mail it to themselves and then let it sit there lingering forever?

Give it a shot.

I got 44 out of 50 correct. Post your score below.

Also, to my surprise, one of my friends, Krissi Trumeter, criticized my old college friend, Sofia Resnick’s, recent article in the Austin Chronicle. What’s surprising is that they don’t know one another. Austin is a small town.

To see Krissi’s critique of the article, click here and scroll down to “Only State Facts . . . Not Romantic Illusions.”

[musings: test]

You (Obama) lifted your finger to your face, and you, you know, “scratched.” Sure, it might have looked innocent enough. Faces itch sometimes, whatever. But we know what you were doing. We know why you used your middle finger to do it. Mr. Obama, you Flipped the Bird. And, on behalf of Hillary Clinton—obviously, the intended recipient of your crude gesture—we are Very Offended.

Please. Say it ain’t so.

[Columbia Journalism Review]

Our main opponent in the primary is five-term state Rep. Rick Noriega, who spends most of his time talking about how he serves in the National Guard.

Apparently, my entire family — including me — should run for Senate because we’ve all been active-duty.

Noriega has yet to show us his stances on issues. See if you can find them for yourself at his campaign Web site. You won’t. Trust me. I’ve looked, and listened to his speeches.

While you’re there, forget about donating. Donate to a real progressive candidate, my candidate, Ray McMurrey!

The first is Bill Moyers’ interview with The Yes Men, a group that gives the most absurd presentations at official functions — and get taken seriously — proving the gullibility and out-right stupidity of major government and industry leaders.

The second is a YouTube video from the Texas College Democrats about Senator John Cornyn, Texas’ own Grinch.

The story is all over the Web, but the Columbia Journalism Review blog has the best rundown so far:

The National Review’s W. Thomas Smith, a regular contributor and author of the magazine’s milblog The Tank, has been caught reporting fabrications fed to him by sources during a trip to Lebanon this fall. According to several critics—and Smith and the NRO themselves—Smith fell for the falsehoods his sources fed him completely, without ever bothering to try to corroborate or confirm them independently, while making it sound like he had witnessed more than he really had.

The CJR takes him to task (you should read the entire post), but I’d just like to remind him of a few of the things he wrote promoting his own reporting and fact-checking skills over my, admittedly lesser, blogging skills earlier this year:

In fact, my obsession with “verifying” often causes me [W. Thomas Smith, Jr.] to spend more time than I should checking with multiple sources on a single point before posting a comment at “The Tank.” And let’s face it, blogs are far less formal — and for most people, entries are often posted on a whim — than actual story writing.

. . .

Had this been for one of my articles and not a blog post, I can assure you my sources and verification would have gone even deeper. Not because I’m a good journalist, but because it is my responsibility as a professional journalist to do so.
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I understand there is a difference between a professional journalist and a blogger. And some — like me — actually get to do both. But it doesn’t mean that just because we’re blogging we should shoot from the hip (pardon the cliché).
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People – potentially millions — read what we write. That is a huge responsibility. And truth is truth whether we want it to be or not.

So, Smith, looks like we’re in the same boat. Except yours is filling with putrid water a helluvalot faster.

The LST, which I’m certain I’d never agree with otherwise, has been digging up information on the donations, the Web site owned by the contributor, Don Black, and a bunch of other facts that show Black’s current wife as being the ex-wife of David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan. Oh, what an incestuous world the white supremacy movement is.

I don’t know why a white supremacist would support Ron Paul. Maybe because he thinks a President Paul (or pee-pee) would vocally endorse first-cousin and brother-and-sister marriage? Or he’d be a-okay with cross burning as a First Amendment right? Or maybe Black just hates the troops.