A Note to Our Readers

Hey --
Sunday and it feels like we're finishing at a reasonable time. (Though Dona points out we're in a different time zone so we probably feel like we've gained three hours for that reason alone.)

This edition's a little different. We knew we'd have a lot to deal with personally when we all got together after Mike's column last Sunday (on who refused to note that the US government does keep a body count for Iraq civilians -- listing who was notified, who replied and who still took a pass). Some illusions die hard, but eventually, they all die.

The rebirth is the exciting part of the learning process.

We'd love to tell you that all being in a central location, together, for basically an entire week meant that we spent a great deal time of thinking about this edition. It didn't. The feature we talked about the most we dropped four hours ago when it was obvious that we wouldn't have time to do it justice. We hope to pick it up next week.

What we did do was a lot of meet ups, a lot of political discussions, a lot of music. And some of us fasted past the Fourth. (We'd hoped to do a story on that but decided to hold that as well since Rebecca and Elaine fasted on the Fourth but are on vacation and not participating on this edition.) Mike noted how lonely he felt on the East Coast even though five of us and he are in two different states. The distance felt very real this week.

I, Jim, did not state that Ava and C.I.'s brains might have gone to mush out in La-La Land. (But it made for a nice joke in their TESR Investigates commentary last week.) But there is a different rhythm and this edition may benefit from it or it may suffer as a result.

First, we do have highlights. We were really surprised to get e-mails complaining that there were no highlights. Marci wrote that she could understand if we had eliminated it in the print edition but to have it in one and not the other didn't seem fair. So highlights are back:

Ruth's Public Radio Report Pt. 1
Ruth's Public Radio Report Pt. II
C.I. critiques Dexy
Blog Spotlight: Substituting for Elaine, Sunny introduces herself (*** note please check out Sunny's writing, we think she's doing a wonderful job)
Blog Spotlight: Cedric covering Law and Disorder
Blog Spotlight: Ask Blog Betty (*** ditto for Betty)
Blog Spotlight: Kat subbing for the substitute
Blog Spotlight: Mike on the importance of being your own media
Humor Spotllight: Bully Boy Press notes Bully Boy Turned 60
Ex soldado se declara inocente de violacion y asesinato de iraquies
Blog Spotlight: Kat on how Bono "makes even Sonny look cool"


The new content was written by the following:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and me, Jim;
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!;
and Wally of The Daily Jot

The new content:

Editorial: American wants the war over now -- an obvious editorial but apparently not an obvious to most Democrats.

TV: Supernatural -- a tale of bad TV -- Ava and C.I.'s latest. As always, they write the TV commentary themselves. We actually requested this when Dona and Jim saw a commercial for it and couldn't belive how bad it looked.

Things to Ponder This Summer -- a 'think' piece -- with about as much depth as any thought piece you'll find. (Meaning, not much. But we don't pretend otherwise.)

Ehren Watada -- the story that wasn't . . . covered. The one that should have been. By all outlets and all media.

Ehren Watada in song form -- for weeks now, we've all suffered through multiple versions of lyrics set to the Beatles' "Lady Madonna." Since Jess and C.I. heard the name pronouced (they belive on Democracy Now!), they've seized on the natural rhyme with "Lady Madonna" and composed various versions. This weekend, we all sat down and had some fun with it as a group.

Thoughts on a Saturday Times column -- we had some positive and negative response to last week's book discussion. Some felt too much time was spent on "special interest issues" (we wonder if they'd ever read us before?) and others loved it. When we read the column by Dowd on Saturday, we passed it around the table and felt it never weighed in one way or the other. Call it "special interest issue" if you're a hater but we wanted to weigh in.

Little Liars Lie Dirt Cheap -- just because Woody publishes it doesn't make so. (Also a way to note Robert Parry who we don't note enough of.)

The Damage Done? -- some of us are pleased with the way this turned out and some of us aren't. We are agreed that since a number of parents have taken to saying (we hope not bragging -- people would look at them like, "You poor souls") that their kids take part in this. To avoid anyone having to say, "Yeah, that was me!" if they don't want to, we kept an identity hidden online. (Although we will note that we had the father's permission to name him.) That's really not the issue. Ava and C.I. are happy to go on the record saying that they think it turned out very well. They say that they like the fact that there's no pretense at "knowing." Ava: "It's just out there. Take it for what it is and if you can build on it, great." (Okay, maybe I will say the California sun is effecting brains.)

Iraq coverage for today through last Monday -- we know C.I. works hard on the Iraq snapshots and we know if we can note some of the coverage over the weekend, it can get a link or an excerpt in the Sunday evening post and cut down on the time required for C.I. to do that. So we've started doing adding this recently. That's our personal reason for it. Our other reason? There's still not enough Iraq coverage.

So that's what we've got and for Will who has complained that we've dropped the note to the readers, look, we did it. And we did it before evening! Actually, we always plan to do one. But there are times when we are exhausted and if C.I.'s got four or five hours Sunday evening that are used going through e-mails and then posting the "And the war drags on" entry, we really aren't comfortable saying, "Hey, drop everything so we can do the note!" It's also true that on especially long sessions, Ava's attitude is, "I gave 18 hours plus, leave me alone. Don't mention that site. Don't talk to me if you're going to."

Hopefully you found something here that made you think, made you laugh or made you angry.
See you next week.


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