Want to know what the next big thing in ads will be.  Doug Bedell directs you to the Boneless Pig Farmers of America web site.  Oh, and will Gary Moody please drop Doug an email - there is money waiting for you.

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A new Democrat stepped into the ring today intent on taking a swing at incumbent Republican Rick Perry. You may have heard of him. His name is Bob Gammage and he has been a state house member, a state senator, a US congressman, and a Texas Supreme Court Justice. You haven’t heard of him? Ok, he was a member of the Dirty 30. You haven’t heard of the Dirty 30? To bad – those were fun days.

In effect Gammage will is a 67 year old Democrat with a long resume challenging a 47 year old Democrat with a brief resume. Gammage is certainly familiar with state government and politics, and has some old fashioned charisma. He is likely to treat Texas Democrats and maybe later Rick Perry to some pretty blustery rhetoric. The general reaction from around the state seemed to be that Gammage was a man of the past who would be more entertaining than Bell.

The “Dirty 30?” They were a bi-partisan group of ethics reformers from the 1970s who challenged the power of a House Speaker named Gus Mutscher. Who was Gus Mutscher? Well, …

Kenny RogersNorm thought that he knew Kenny Rogers.  He met Kenny more than 15 years ago.   But, Ihe won't to know Kenny Rogers right now.  Norm has a lament for what could and should have been a very happy ending for both the player and his team.

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Will democracy succeed in Iraq, or is civil war there all but inevitable?

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Southwest Airlines announced today that it would expand it code sharing arrangement with discount airline ATA. The purpose will be to allow travelers in North Texas to fly ATA from DFW to Midway in Chicago and then transfer to a Southwest flight to another destination. Code share simply means that a consumer can by a ticket on either Southwest or ATA for the full ticket and check baggage through to a final destination. Southwest currently flies to 47 destinations from Midway.

ATA is currently in bankruptcy court and offers only four round trips per day from DFW to Midway. That factor limits the amount of traffic ATA can feed into the Southwest route structure through Chicago. However, ATA is expected to increase its schedule when it emerges from bankruptcy next year. Analysts see the ATA move as something of a counter move to American Airlines decision to offer limited service from Love Field. American and American Eagle currently offer five flights a day between Midway and DFW.

Terry Neal, a Washington Post Web site columnist, writes his farewell column today because he’s returning to a newspaper reporting job. He makes some interesting comments that may add to our continuing discussion of blogs and journalism. Neal, who usually writes about politics, says:

If journalism were Congress, the Internet would be the House, the newspaper the Senate. The former is faster, younger, less stodgy, less arrogant and less beholden to tradition. The former is slower, more deliberative, older, perhaps a bit wiser, less emotional, and resistant to the fads, whims and follies of the masses -- as James Madison put it, "a necessary fence against...fickleness and passion" of the lower chamber, or in this case, of the Internet and blogosphere.

I've learned a lot in the three-and-a-half years since I took this job. I've learned that a lot of intelligent, thought-provoking dialogue and content is produced online.

I've also learned that there are a lot of nasty, intemperate, judgmental people out there seeking to co-opt cyberspace for partisan and ideological purposes. There are some great, whip-smart and entertaining bloggers out there. And then there are a lot of hacks claiming to be independent, who have turned out to be nothing more than extensions of the public relations arms of the two major political parties.

I like Neal's House-Senate comparison to Internet/newspapers. As for his other comments, blogs do put more responsibility on the reader to sort out what voices are truly independent and which ones are simply spouting the party line.

Comments?

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