A Note to Our Readers

Hey --

A faster Sunday than usual.

Here's who participated on this edition:

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

And always Dallas who hunts down links, provides feedback and more.

Truest statement of the week -- Mark this week down. We don't think a politican has ever had "Truest" before. "True" and "politican" do not naturally go together. More shocking for some may be the speaker, Hillary Clinton. But it was the truest statement. We wish we could grab a John Edwards as well but he spent the debate acting as if he was running for the office of vice-president or maybe just "wing man" for Barack Obama.

Truest statement of the week II -- Kat telling it like it is about Barack.

Editorial: 2008 already doesn't look good -- Is it too much to be worried about a new year based on a week? Maybe so if you ignore issues like precedents. Ourselves, we think 2008 got off to a sorry start and if independent media's planning to strut their stuff this year, they must be conserving their energy.

TV: The Dead and Missing Persons -- The epic. Ava and C.I. told us they'd work on it near the end, it would be long and it would cover a great deal. It does. There is a lot of humor there -- everyone was laughing while I (Jim) read it out loud -- but what stands out to me are the points they're making. I know they hate, HATE, doing these news and public affairs program. And I know they'd rather be back on the entertainment beat. But last a week an e-mail came in from long time reader Joni who wrote, "Yeah, I thought I'd be 'enduring' their pieces while the strike was going on. But they've really stuck to their usual style and I would rank these along side their best reviews of TV programs" -- meaning entertainment. I would as well.

Roundtable -- We're not the horse race site. We went back and forth on whether or not to note Iowa (Ava and C.I. had told us they'd be noting Kucinich in their TV commentary). But from the start of this site, we've called out Iowa's first out of the gate place each presidential election. It really seemed necessary to note it this week while everyone still had an impression of it. Had the problems with Iowa been noted elsewhere, we could have skipped this focus. (Although I think the last section of the roundtable is all anyone's going to comment on -- positive or negativel.)

Roundtable on the media -- More roundtables, you always ask. This week you get two because we didn't get to some of the planned topics. This one focuses on the media and specifically on the media and Barack Obama. Ty mentions a song in this roundtable. He and C.I. had discussed the issue. We ran out of time for it this edition but will be covering it next week.

Wack job of the week -- Elaine came up with the idea for this feature. It should be a regular one and we'll try to do it at least once every six weeks.

2007 Archives -- Yes, switching the template was a mistake. Yes, you all curse Ty, Dona and me for doing that in your e-mails. So we made a point to include a post with the 2007 archives while they were still up. (They are now not listed by week. The minute we posted anything here in 2008, the weeks would disappear and just a year is now listed.) We'll put this in our permalinks for easier access. C.I.'s on another laptop and says it's now added to the permalinks on the left (under the community sites).

Theft of the week -- Katrina vanden Heuvel 'finds' a topic. After Deliah Boyd has already found it.

Highlights -- Mike, Betty, Cedric, Wally, Kat and Elaine wrote this and selected the highlights unless otherwise noted. We thank them for this feature.

**When the circus leaves town** -- This was added Sunday evening when we were fixing some typos and C.I. noted Wally and Cedric's joint-post wasn't noted anywhere else in this edition. We've reposted it in full. They're taking a look at Iowa post-caucus.

And that's it. We're all going to sleep. The Common Ills will have entries this evening. See you next week.

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