A Note to Our Readers

Hey --
Another Sunday. We're actually doing pretty good since we're all on the West coast (again). So it's not very long after seven a.m. right now. (We're posting with our regular EST times.) This despite the fact that, by EST time, we started the highlights late, we paused to jot as quick of an e-mail as possible to someone who wrote about our commentary on their writing that appeared here awhile back, and despite the fact that Blogger/Blogspot has gone in and out for the last two hours.

We need to note that part of that was due to the fact that we've had no breaks in the last five hours. (So those waiting for the morning post at The Common Ills, blame us. C.I.'s stayed with us working on editorial that took two hours to complete.)

Highlights?

Humor Spotlight: Wally & Cedric on Gangsta Dick Cheney
Ruth's Report
Blog Spotlight: Mike on the issues that really matter
Humor Spotlight: Betinna's latest reflections on her husband Thomas Friedman
Humor Spotlight: Wally on Bully Boy's visit to the NAACP
Blog Spotlight: Elaine addressing "a bit of everything"
Humor Spotlight: Wally on Evan Blah
Blog Spotlight: Cedric, filling in for Kat, on losing it
Blog Spotlight: Reality calls Betty in the middle of a post

We thank everyone for their permission to repost and would have loved to have reposted more than that but some said "One and only one."

New content? We got it and the following worked on it:


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;
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix;
Mike of Mikey Likes It!;
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz;
and Wally of The Daily Jot

Flanders was in the house at the National Hip-Hop Political Convention in Chicago -- a rare look at activism from the non-White, non-fifty-plus group. Flanders provided a forum for a lot of voices to be heard.

Protest in Mexico over the election! Over the 2004 election. -- read it, it says it all. We discover that sometimes a link promises more than it delivers.

NYT triest to catch up with Third Estate Sunday Review? -- tip for the paper of record -- when reporting, try to remember the human interest angle. Especially when reporting on voting. Their headline writer seems more aware of that than their reporter.

Insanity: How Little Centrists Get Ahead and Destroy America -- if we were living a film directed by Roger Vadim, it would be called And Centrists Created Bully Boy . . .

What's being read? -- thanks to Trina and her husband for participating in this feature and thanks to Trina for suggesting the feature.

What's on Your Mind? Do the Pollsters really want to know? -- we do something very similar to this in the print edition and we usually go through a mountain of direct mail as well as Zogby. Due to a reader and community member writing about the print feature in the gina & krista round-robin, we got a load of e-mails asking why we never put it online? It's us at our most wicked, at our most smart ass. We did this feature two weeks ago in print and hadn't been saving anything yet because we had two more weeks to go (also, five of us are staying with C.I. so we're away from our own mailboxes) which reduced our usual selection. But this is basically how the print feature goes each month.

TV: 24 -- like 60 Minutes with less action -- Ava and C.I. wrote this. They do the TV commentary themselves. We loved it. We think it captures the padded out show (with repeated time slugs -- verbal and on screen) and also addresses the issues of why the show is so bad (slow, boring and a desire to trash the legal system).

Editorial: Bully Boy's Wars -- the idea was for a feature and an editorial then a friend of C.I.'s called and asked, "Did you see the paper?" (The New York Times.) Not yet. But C.I. was advised to write (one more time) about Ehren Watada at The Common Ills yesterday, about the paper's ignoring of Watada, by a friend at the paper. Looking at this morning's paper, we see why. There was no time to discuss that and no time for two separate features, so we took the larger ideas and put them into one editorial.

Hopefully, you've found something that made you laugh, something that made you angry. Something that made you think. We'll see you next week.



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