A note to our readers

Hey --
Another Sunday. Along with Dallas, the following helped with this edition:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, and Ava,
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.

We thank everyone. So what do we got?

Truest statement of the week -- We could probably grab five truests from Adolph Reed Jr.'s column alone. We came up with eight different passages and this is the one that won the majority of votes. The entire column is a truest as far as we're concerned and one of the highlights in independent media (real or pretend) last week.

Truest statement of the week II -- Howard Zinn speaks, the country would be better off listening.

Editorial: Faux outrage drowns out actual news -- This delayed us somewhat. Isaiah had decided to not take the day off he was supposed to when Ava and C.I. passed on news. We waited for him to finish his comic -- which turned out to be three -- before writing this editorial because we wanted to include his comments (comics are commentary) and to weigh in as well.

TV: Gossip Girls and Barack's Bitches -- I don't know if we're just too depressed or what. But these editions are going so slow and we're so tired. Actually, the editions go fast because we're talking about everything else. C.I. brought one idea to the table for an article here and we were all on board with it. And we had nothing else. I asked Ava and C.I. to write their TV commentary (and asked them to go as long as possible) intending to really brainstorm with everyone else while Ava and C.I. wrote their commentary. Ava and C.I. did their job. They spent three hours on this. A record for them and one they do not plan to repeat. I read it outloud and we were all jazzed. It's their usual blend of insight, humor and hard hitting criticism.
But we still had nothing but the article C.I. had suggested. We finally broke for everyone to get some sleep and regrouped.

Extradition passed off as 'deportation' -- This is about Robin Long and we toyed with making war resisters our editorial. Rebecca was the one who suggested we do a story on Robin and on James Burmeister. Kat was the one who said, "Let's do one article for each of them." Thankfully, that gave the edition some traction.

Punishing the wounded whistle-blower -- This is the James Burmeister article. He was court-martialed Wednesday.

No, you're not safe -- C.I. brought this to the table. Mike was all for it immediately and started reminding us about when Ava and C.I. covered food safety back in 2006 for the gina & krista round-robin. With no other idea that interested us (even people pitching ideas), this was the only one we could agree to. We think it came out really strong.

Mailbag -- Dona said, "We need one more feature. Something short." Ty had been on me about a mailbag. This is the second to last piece we did.

Robin Long and James Burmeister coverage -- We rightly take people to task for their silence on war resisters last week. Elaine suggested we highlight some of the coverage. Wally pointed out that some coverage we could highlight in full.

Nader-Gonzalez goes for 15 states -- We wanted a Nader feature. We couldn't think of one. Credit to Betty who suggested -- after much discussion -- that we just post a press release. We'd still be debating it otherwise.

Highlights -- Mike, Kat, Rebecca, Betty, Ruth, Marcia, Cedric, Wally and Elaine wrote this and picked the highlights except where noted. This differes from their usual article in that Elaine has a big commentary in this. When I saw it, I begged her to let me break it off into its own piece. She said if that happened, she was pulling her comments. She also stated she didn't realize she had spoken at such length but she was speaking for Highlights ("and I prefer it be a surprise to those who read 'Highlights' instead of people being steered to my so-called commentary").

So that's what we have. Ava and C.I. say no more on the long commentaries. C.I.'s so tired that there's talk (it's 4:49 p.m. right now) that "And the war drags on" might go up on Monday. We're all tired. It was a long edition.

If you're late to the party, I would identify the current issues as (a) the heat which has everyone distracted; (b) Hillary and (c) war resisters. A explains itself. Hillary? I think there is a lot of depression there over the supension of her race. What we've done is focus on the Nader campaign (all except C.I. are on record as to who they will be voting for in the fall and it's Nader -- C.I. is on record stating no vote on Barack or McCain so most of us assume C.I.'s voting for Nader and Rebecca says if Elaine's voting for Ralph, C.I.'s voting for Nader). And that's great and it's needed. But Betty was talk about how she still is so upset about the way that nonsense went. So maybe next week or sometime soon we'll address that. (C) Wally is convinced (and Cedric agrees) that the piece of crap, abusive e-mail expressing ignorance has soured everyone. I think that's very likely. You'll remember we almost didn't do an edition that week. Kat told me (and I believe she blogged this at her site as well) that if C.I. ended up so mad that The Common Ills stopped (there was a chance of that), she'd be able to stop blogging and "have some fun again." Dona is at work on ways to make an edition fun (her own assigned task) and next week, we'll all be together physically so that should make it easier as well. Almost forgot, thank you to Isaiah for allowing us to use his comics here.

See you next week,

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