A Note to Our Readers

Hey --
A little bit early and if Flickr hadn't switched over to a new format, we'd have posted everything an hour and a half earlier. (Dona says, "We are three hours earlier than the norm, not 'a little bit early'.") A long edition but hopefully one that produced a few things worth reading.

Here's who participated on this edition as well as Dallas who locates links, acts as a soundboard and much more::

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,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
and Marcia SICKOFITRDLZ.


Truest statement of the week -- Dolores Huerta stating the obvious to all but Goody.

Truest statement of the week II -- Bill Moyers. Ty and I (Jim) looked for this last Sunday at the website and couldn't find it. Ruth transcribed it last Monday and we're including it this week.

Editorial: Florida, Florida, Florida! -- Florida and Michigan. We actually had another piece either as a stand-alone or merged with this but everyone was tired (is tired) and wants to go to bed. (C.I.'s falling asleep sitting straight up as I type. Dona says I've got three minutes or she's opening a pack of cigarettes -- another pack.) This is important and, if you're a long term reader, you know we've covered this all along. All listed above worked on this.

TV: Nah-nah-nah, Hey-hey-hey, Goodbye -- The title was killing me, coming up with one for Ava and C.I.'s latest. I hope that will work, not sure. But what did work was their review of the State of Union address and the 'Democratic' response. It's funny. Prepare to laugh your asses off. And Mike can talk more about this on Monday, I'm trying to get done before everyone's asleep. Now C.I.'s back up but Jess has nodded out.

Roundtable -- Marcia's blogging now. We wanted to do an interview with her but Dona pointed out we couldn't do an interview with her and a roundtable and a book discussion. The last two take a long time -- and are edited -- this week more so and more based on the fact that we were all tired of typing. So we went with the roundtable. We're addressing a number of topics. We would have liked to have had Florida in there. We would have liked more on the illegal war (Ava addresses it once) but we were trying to stick to a reasonable time frame.

1 Book, 5 Minutes -- Long promised, book discussion on Naomi Wolf's amazing The End of America. That's how tired we all are -- I typed "The End of" and stopped. What's the name of the book? Huh? Was the reply from the sleepy gang. C.I. said, "America! Aren't you done yet?" No. Because there are some who see the book as 'controversial' (we got e-mails when we announced we'd be discussing it), we tried to deal with issues coming up in the e-mails pre-the usual discussion. We did that by assigning those issues a number and having people guess a number. The ones who guessed the number of an assigned issue got it. We really thought we needed to touch on the conclusion near the start. So it's different than our usual format.

Which endorsements matter? -- Which do? Because Amy Goodman's happy to note this politician and that politican -- if they're endorsing Obama -- but she doesn't seem to give a damn about the unions.

Thanks, Amy Goodman???? -- You know what, if that's what you're going to offer, after months of silence, maybe you shouldn't even bother. If you're offering something so brief and can't even get your facts right, maybe you shouldn't even bother.

A contest, Super Duper Tuesday -- The Green Party of Suffolk is holding their yearly contest and Super Duper Tuesday includes Green candidates running for office.

Ralph DiGia (1914-2008) -- Press release sent in to the public account of The Common Ills. We noted it in full because we think it was a life not wasted where every action counted. There should be more like Ralph DiGia in the world.

Highlights -- Kat, Cedric, Elaine, Betty, Wally, Rebecca and Mike wrote this and picked the selections unless otherwise noted.

And that's it, we'll see you next week.


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