From Time (on newstands tomorrow);

The story of how three amateur journalists working in a homegrown online medium challenged a network news legend and won has many, many game-changing angles to it. One of the strangest and most radical is that the key information in “The 61st Minute” came from Power Line’s readers, not its ostensible writers. The Power Liners are quick, even eager, to point this out. “What this story shows more than anything is the power of the medium,” Hinderaker says. “The world is full of smart people who have information about every imaginable topic, and until the Internet came along, there wasn’t any practical way to put it together.”
Now there is.

Congratulations to Powerline!

Roger Simon hosted Mohammed and Omar of Iraq The Model last evening.

… I think I can speak for the others present when I say both brothers exuded a unique combination of calm, warmth and intelligence. They are also deep lovers of freedom in a way it is difficult to be for those of us who grow up with it. If many Iraqis are like these two young Baghdad dentists, I am quite anxious to go to Iraq.
I was relieved by what they were like on a deeper level as well. They don’t know this, but on the darkest days of the war, at the times the media were at their gloomiest and I was racked with guilt that I had so adamantly supported our actions, I almost always turned first to them. I didn’t look to them for unbiased opinions. There is no such thing. I looked to them to see how real Iraqis were reacting to a situation that affected them more directly than it could ever affect me or the prognosticators of doom in our media. They were the ones who bucked me up-not the other way around, as it should be. In a certain sense they helped my sanity. And I suspect I am not alone in that. Few writers in or out of the blogosphere can say as much.
After we ate and imbibed, Mohammed and Omar fielded our questions and told amusing anecdotes about their visit here, including to the White House. (Bush evidently joked about having his teeth examined.) Mickey Kaus asked if Sunnis would participate in the election. Omar and Mohammed, who are Sunnis themselves, said that many would, that the impression we get of the Sunni Triangle is skewed by reporting. I hope they’re right. These people are incredibly courageous. When you meet them it’s hard to understand why some of us could be rooting against them, but the not-so-sub subtext of many of the war’s opponents is just that. You see, they keep saying, look how bad it is-it’s our fault. I wish they could talk to Mohammed and Omar. I think even the Michael Moores of the world would have trouble saying it to them face-to- face. These men are the hope of democracy. I hope some day to meet their brother Ali… in Baghdad.

Previous post here. Go read brother Ali’s comments from Baghdad as well.

The full results are now up.
Major categories:
Best Overall – Powerline
Best New (Est.2004) – Kerry Spot
Best Group Blog – Volokh Conspiracy
Best Humor – Scrappleface
Best Liberal Blog – Matthew Yglesias
Best Conservative Blog – Captain’s Quarters
Best Media/Journalist Blog – Best Of The Web
Best Military Blog – Blackfive
Best Essayist – Victor Davis Hansen
Best Canadian Blog – small dead animals
Best UK Blog – Belgravia Dispatch
Best European (Non UK) – Dissident Frogman
Best Middle East /Africa – Iraq The Model
I wish to thank The Academy, the accounting company of Aylward & Associates and most of all my readers! It’s a pretty nice birthday present.
Update – Indispensible hints on building a “winning” blog. A must read.

First – thanks to everyone who has been voting for small dead in Best Canadian category. Thanks, also, to the other bloggers who’ve sent their endorsements this way.
Here are mine again;
Go JEFF! – in the tough Humor category, Protein Wisdom has finally moved into a narrow lead. (sorry, link fixed)
Fellow Canadian Ghost Of A Flea is currently in fifth in Best Culture, but in striking distance of 4th.
Bill at INDC may have to invite Jim Geraghty over for a tasty meal to claim the
Best New Blog prize, but let’s keep him within striking distance.
As much as I love and depend on Instapundit, my vote this year goes to Powerline for Best Overall. Strong daily writing, and the work they did on Rathergate tipped the balance for me.
And of course, Canadian ubercolumnist, Mark Steyn for the Media/Journalist category.
In best Conservative, I’ve been voting for James at Outside The Beltway. One tough category. Another favorite, is competing in the Ecosystem Top 100 – Politburo Diktat.
And don’t forget the Military bloggers who fought to make half of the entries in the Middle East category possible. I don’t think any of them care who you vote for. Just vote for somebody, and then go read ’em all.

I wonder what they would have said, if three years ago Iraqi bloggers Omar and Mohammed had been told they’d be standing one day in the Oval Office talking to the President of the United States?.

… without prior notice, Omar and Mohammed went to the Oval Office and met with President Bush! They said that the meeting lasted about a half hour, and the President was very interested in hearing the thoughts and opinions of Iraqi citizens first hand. He wasn’t aware until then of the good things that Spirit Of America has been doing over there to help the Iraqi people and assist in their obtaining democracy. Omar joked that he got to meet POTUS and they didn’t even search his pockets beforehand.

via LGF
Update More from Jeff Jarvis. Cool stuff.

The last time we heard from Zayed, there were “ten or so hooded men dressed in black carrying Ak-47’s and RPG’s” manning a checkpoint ouside his door.

Wednesday, December 08, 2004
I am quite fine. Thank you all for the concern.
I am finally done now with Basrah and will start working in Baghdad again. Trying to get a convenient post here in Baghdad close to where I live is what has been keeping me away. Well, that and a few other difficulties that seem to have become part of our daily life. Note that we are getting less than 6 hours of electricity per day.
I will try to start posting again very soon.

That’s a relief. Now, go over to the Weblog Awards and vote for Healing Iraq.

I know a lot of you have been having trouble commenting. It’s unintentional, as a result of some heavy spam blocking I was forced into a couple of months ago.
I’m going to experiment here – I’ve unblocked the vast majority of the ip blocks I had banned (was using wildcards, so that is why so many got caught up in it). We’ll see if I get a spamolanche again, and in the meantime, use the comments thread to this post to try any tests. It’ll be easier to delete them in one fell swoop later.

Laurie Hawn has a new blog Strong And Free up.
He brings great credentials to the Canadian blogosphere. Vitor Marciano writes, “He is a retired CF18 jockey and squadron commander (actually he was the first Canadian to qualify in a CF18), the former 2ic at CFB Cold Lake, and the Conservative candidate who came within 700 votes of defeating Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan in the last election.
Also, check out Vitor’s What It Takes To Win.
Welcome, guys. I’ll be updating the sidebar accordingly.

Cool! Didn’t even know I was “entered”.
And don’t forget – voting for the 2004 Weblog Awards continues until Dec. 12th – you may vote once very 24 hours.
Unfortunately, there have been some cheaters for Kevin and crew to contend with – they’ve had to tweak security as a result. The main objective of the awards competition is to introduce readers to a large collection of good blogs you might not have heard of before – so take the time to check them out!

And things are starting to get ugly.
Bill has 10 reasons why you shouldn’t vote forJim Geraghty, who has responded in kind.
Meanwhile, sources tell me that a certain 9 fingered former porn star is actively campaigning for my defeat.
Against this minor setback, another endorsement – from Dr. Rusty Shackleford. Maresee! And good luck with Project Fatwa.
If you haven’t voted today, click here! You can follow that link to the other categories.
update – In other developments, “gnotalex” at the Blog Quebecois is going P.Diddy on us.
More thanks to Sortapundit for the nod.

Kevin Aylward and crew at Wizbang have been sifting through thousands of nominations in a variety of categories, and the polls are now opening for the 2004 Weblog Awards. Main rule – one vote per day, per poll.
Yours truly is on the list for Best Canadian Blog.
Also nominated: the blog quebecois; Abject Learning; D’Arcy Norman; Being American in T.O.; All AgitProp, All The Time; Going Canuk; EclecticBlogs; A Journey Through Time; Daimnation!; Darren Barefoot; marmalade.ca; Michele; The Quipping Queen; Stageleft. You can access them all by going to the link.
Good company, and thanks to The Commissar nominated for Best of Top 100 and Jeff Goldstein (whose Protein Wisdom is nomated in the tough Best Humour category) for the nomination. Go vote for them. And me.
update – thanks to Bill at the popular INDC Journal for the endorsement – he was already my pick for Best New Blog. Canadian Mark Steyn is in second place behind the Wall Street Journal’s “Best of the Web” in the Media/Journalist division. Ghost of a Flea is in the tough Culture category.

After tense reporting from Baghdad followed by a two week absence, Alaa checks in to assure everyone he’s safe and well. Hopefully, there will be news soon from Zeyad.

Blogpulse has a comprehensive roundup on the rankings and “buzz” of blogs during the US election campaign. (It might be worth noting that links to Oliver Willis blogs for the purpose of ridicule will produce an equal “link value” to one intended for thoughtful reflection or endorsement.
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“A blog by career US Foreign Service officers. They are Republican (most of the time) in an institution (State Department) in which being a Republican can be bad for your career..”

Judging by the quality of posts like this, the Diplomad is going to become a popular stop.

Well, we know the secret of the UN bureaucracy machine. It exists to exist. To do that it has going one of the best scams imaginable. While most media and ordinary folks focus on the occasionally contentious UNSC resolutions and debates on Iraq or Iran, in fact, 99% of UN “work” has nothing to do with such high-visibility issues. No, it deals with scores, hundreds, in fact, of resolutions passed every year in the UN General Assembly, its main Committees, and in bodies such as the Human Rights Commission. It lives off those resolutions.
Slightly simplified, this is how it often works. A UN bureaucrat gets hold of a delegate from a sympathetic country and gets that country’s delegation to propose some often innocuous sounding resolution — let’s make up a typical one right here, “The Effect of Deforestation on the Development of Sub-Saharan Africa.” It will have a few bland paragraphs expressing concern about deforestation in Africa, note the impact it has on the livelihood of Africans especially the “most vulnerable sectors of the population,” and then will have a little paragraph at the end calling on the Secretary General to submit a report to the next General Assembly on the impact of deforestation in Africa.
[…]
So the resolution passes. The UN bureaucracy gets tasked with writing a report. Usually these reports are short, based on pre-existing information that in the age of the internet would take an intern a couple of hours to put together, but, nevertheless, for some odd reason seem to require lots of travel by UN bureaucrats. The report will conclude that there is need for further study of this critical topic and might perhaps recommend the holding of a special conference or meeting on the topic. It goes to the next UNGA which agrees that further work is needed and asks the UN Secretariat to go ahead and provide another report to the next UNGA, and so on and on. The topic is now firmly embedded in the UN agenda — almost impossible to remove — and highly paid bureaucrats now have sinecures producing endless reports calling for more reports and conferences that will call for more reports and conferences. The US and a handful of other major donors pay for all this.

The Canadian Conservative party should be grabbing up this political football and running with it. This rancid and corrupt body has too long been used by Liberal politicians as a default position for Canadian foreign policy. You want to see real “soft power”? Make temporary withdrawal of Canada’s financial support of the United Nations a formal part of Conservative Party policy. Make the Liberals debate and defend the institution.
The Oil-For-Food scandal provides the perfect opportunity to leverage this argument and bring the legitimacy of the UN into the public debate. Carpe diem.

Keyboard – (Dodd Harris circa 2004)

I have created a new category on the blogroll, as a warning to others. (Scroll down… way down…)
udate on the McCallum home vandalization – Regina City police spokesperson Elizabeth Popowich tells CKOM’s John Gormley this morning that “arrests are imminent”. Let’s hope so.

You’re such a prick, sometimes.
update

As I type this, my site just coming back up as are any others I’ve checked who are parked at Hosting Matters. That includes Instapundit, Vodkapundit, Command Post, Outside The Beltway…. the restoration may be temporary, though.
INDC Journal is speculating about a Denial Of Service attack, but it’s more likely to be the result of heavy traffic. Internet Health Report shows some networks slowing badly – with latency severe from time to time. So, when you go to a site, give it time to load. It’s transferring data as fast as it can….
National Review Online is still up and has some interesting info on the early exit polls skewing for Kerry – which they did for Gore in 2000 as well. Short form – ignore them.
Update – The Corner is more active and looks to be a better source than network news. Listening to ABC feed on Rawlco. Most amusing moment – Sam Donaldson reminding people of the 50-something electoral votes in California, so “don’t lose hope”!
Don’t forget Megapundit is charting the results. The page updates ever 6 minutes, so if you just keep a window open, it will do so automatically as results come in.

Several bloggers cite their most important event or moment of the campaign for the New York Times.
The question remaining unanswered is how overrated airheadAnna Marie Cox continues to be asked to participate in these things.

Just a short note to let readers know I’m still at the farm, visiting with family down for my mother’s funeral. Will be home and probably back to normal posting routine in a day or two.