A Note to Our Readers

Hey --
Another Sunday. When will we learn it's never going to be a brief evening?

Not this weekend.

This edition we highlight the following:

Cinco localidades de Vermont apoyaron juicio politico a Bush (Democracy Now!)
Public Radio Spotlight: Ruth's latest report
Spotlight on the warrentless spying
Blog Spotlight: "When the FBI Spied on Laugh-In" (Rebecca)
Humor Spotlight: Wally on the Oscar snub that led to Cheney's Oscar Night Rampage
Humor Spotlight: The Chicken (Thomas Friedman) Lays An Egg
Blog Spotlight: Mike on the importance of supporting left voices
Blog Spotlight: Mike on the importance of crediting
Blog Spotlight: Kat gives a magazine report
Blog Spotlight: Cedric on cultural heroes
Food spotlight: Seven Layer Dip in the Kitchen

New content? Is that what you're asking?

How about "Editorial: Hey Bully Boy, what's that smell?"? We think our regular readers will enjoy this and we hope that it will spur them to get and be active in speaking out against the invasion/occupation and against the Bully Boy.

Not all Bully Boys are in the oval office, of course. That's our lead up to Ava and C.I.'s latest
"TV Review: Dick Wolf's Conviction." If there's one thing our readers enjoy it's the TV reviews. And if there are favorite topics, among them would be the franchise merchants Jerry Bruckheimer and Dick Wolf. This week it's Dick Wolf's turn again. (Last month, Jerry Bruckheimer got another turn.) Ava and C.I. had planned another review until they learned late in the week (Thursday -- "We really don't watch TV except for the reviews," says Ava) that Conviction would debut Friday. Did they have it in them for another prolonged exposure to the radioactive waste of Wolf? Yes, they did. And they note that this review practically wrote itself. We'll note that the delays weren't because of them. They finished their review before midnight. (They did spend ten minutes reading over it right before it posted after they decided that a Demi Moore line needed to be added somewhere in it.)

"Book review: The Center for Constitutional Rights' Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush" may surprise a few people. It surprised us. We intended this to be a book discussion. That effort failed as everyone talked over one another (we're very excited about this book). Though Ava and C.I. maintained that they were getting most of the comments down (they took notes), Dona rightly pointed out that despite this, most people participating had no idea what anyone else was saying because everyone kept talking over each other. So we attempted to start over and the same thing happened. At which point Elaine suggested that instead of a book discussion, we just do a review. (This piece consumed more time than any other. Even if you don't count the two aborted attempts at a book discussion.)

"A woman was sexually abused by a priest when she was underage -- must have been one of those 'gay' priests, right?" is an effort to discuss a recent "trend" story/narrative that left out key points and degraded the nation as a result.

"Dear Eileen, we're concerned about your husband" is an attempt at another quick item like last week which a number of you e-mailed to say you enjoyed.

We had big hopes for "Garbo Speaks? Nah, it's just the Bully Boy." We interrupted it three times to pick highlights. At one point in the writing of it, Jess made the comment, "You know we're covering ground that C.I. already covered?" We weren't aware of that. Nor was C.I. until Jess said "Ga Ga Goo Goo, Bully Boy Speaks." Due to the fact that the hour was very late, we quickly swiped from that post to tack on an ending and move on.

"Laura Flanders takes the America is Purple tour to Montana" is part of our continued attempt to spotlight RadioNation with Laura Flanders.

All new content for this edition was written by the following:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and Jim;
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude;
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man;
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review;
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills);
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix;
Mike of Mikey Likes It!;
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz;
and Wally of The Daily Jot

The TV commentaries are written by Ava and C.I. only.

We thank everyone for their hard work. And we thank Dallas for his hard work in hunting down the links from the easiest (C.I.'s which C.I. can identify by author, date and title, time after time) to the hardest (which includes an unnamed person's needed link this edition: "It's about impeachment . . . It's got signatures . . ."). We keep telling Dallas thank you and we mean it. Next time we're in the template, we'll add him to the list of The Third Estaters because week after week he's contributed in that role. (He's also contributed to the news reviews by offering commentary. He says only C.I. could have forced him into that participation.)


And that's it for this week. These entries are typed by Jim, to note a question in the e-mails. (I reversed "to" as "ot" in the title of the note last week causing some readers to wonder if dyslexic C.I. had done the typing.) To note a beef from the e-mails, what does it take for "no" to resonate? We've got three people I've again replied to with "Ava and C.I. are not interested in speaking to you for an interview" and despite that response going out early last week, all three have e-mailed two more times. (And people wonder why I don't see the point in replying to most e-mails?) It'll be noted one more time: they aren't interested in doing interviews. This has been covered repeatedly at this site. To our readers (we don't assume those people are our readers -- our readers have heard this topic repeatedly), we hope we've given you something that made you laugh, made you think, or made you angry. See you next week.



-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.