A note to our readers

Hey --
8:00 a.m. our time? For us this is finishing an edition early!

First, let's note who helped:

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.


and Dallas who locates links, offers advice and does more than we can ever thank him for. (I am tired -- "I" is Jim -- I pulled a C.I. and typed "thank for him" -- we need to wrap this note up quickly.)

Let's move to what we have.

Truest statement of the Week -- Tim Richard is an Iraq War Resister in Canada. Check out the interview Courage to Resist did with him.

Truest statement of the week -- We do so love noting all the 'raves' Katrina vanden Heuvel gets. We should print them all up and paste them in a scrapbook.

Editorial: Support War Resisters -- This wasn't the planned editorial. This isn't the planned edition. What happened was Dona pointed out at 5:30 this morning that we were running out of time. When that happened, this article became the editorial. It may or may not work as such (we're too tired to know) but being dubbed the 'editorial' does allow Robin's story to be the first article to show up.

TV: Cyborgs or gasbags, which is worse? -- Ava and C.I. wrote this and when they came back with it, we were already on fumes with several floating the idea that we bail. That's because two different features we had worked on tanked completely. (So, of course, we put them in our print edition.) I asked Ava and C.I. how good this was? I knew they were tired and didn't want to go straight to reading this out loud if it wasn't great. Their call was "It sucks" which is how I knew it would be incredible. (They are always the worst judges of their own work.) Reading this out loud rallied everyone's spirit and gave us a good four hours of motivation. Knowing how hard they'd worked (covering all the issues we didn't think we could get to elsewhere) in the past weeks, I made no last minute requests that they include a topic or two (or "Four!" Ava yells). And I had no idea what they were going to write about. As I started reading it out loud, I thought it was going to be one thing and then they flip it. And then they flip it again. The last sentence, by the way, is a modification of Linda Hamilton's last line in the voice over at the end of Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Denver Super Rally: Putting the issues on the table -- As we were trashing various ideas for features because time was gone, we were looking for a short feature. I'd seen (but not read) the latest Spin and knew Patti Smith was interviewed in it. I suggested it thinking we could maybe have something from that. In line with Dona ("short features!"), Ava and C.I. agreed thinking it might contain a "truest" or maybe we could just plug a documentary. I was reading this out loud (so those participating by phone could hear) and at first thought Ava and C.I. were laughing at me. Then we all realized they were laughing about Patti. When I got to her comments on the 2008 election . . . It wasn't pretty. As that went on, Ty and Jess pointed out that we had to do a Ralph article of some kind. (We'd forgotten to include it on our list.) Dona had been recording the whole thing because everyone was too tired to take notes. She suggested we make it a Ralph thing and open with Patti's ridiculous statements and then go to the response Ava and C.I. offered. They agreed if the 1978 quotes by Patti that they referenced could be pulled. Longterm Patti watchers will know what the quotes were about. Others can research on their own.

Stephanie Tubbs Jones (1949 - 2008) -- It was 8:00 p.m. here Saturday when Jess decided to help out by downloading a photo from Stephanie Tubbs Jones' Congressional website. Problem was, it's gone. The whole website. You're redirected to a new website. Ava and C.I. got on the phone to friends to find out exactly what was going on. Nancy Pelosi was going on. C.I. wants it noted that while Amy Goodman couldn't mention Stephanie Tubbs Jones' support for Hillary, Aileen Alfandary did on KPFA Thursday morning.

vanden Heuvel doesn't do corrections -- Katrina, Katrina, have you no shame? Katrina gets caught out being wrong at least twice in one article and she can't offer a legitimate "clarification," let alone a "correction." Pay attention to what amounts to research for The Peace Resister.

Barack's Running Bud -- We were somewhat limited in what we could say here. We could have addressed it in a roundtable. When Dona noted how late it was (at five this morning), we crossed off doing a roundtable. Maybe next weekend.

Barack, the little s**t -- We had to cross off a lot of things that would take more time than we had. While we were writing the Tubbs Jones article, Dallas was asked to see if Barack issued any statement on the passing? It's there somewhere on the site but he found a release of Barack speaking about the Family Medical Leave Act that he wanted to tell us about. Dona and Betty compete each week to see who can quote the soap opera producer in Tootsie first: "It's okay. The girls saved it." They usually say that over Ava and C.I. And Betty was the first out of the gate with it this week. How did Ava and C.I. save it? This wasn't even a planned feature. Ava and C.I. explained to us who signed the act into law (a detail not in Barack's press release) and how Poppy Bush had refused to sign it. C.I. dispatched Jess to the bookcases with instructions on what books to pull while we quickly started this piece. Jess returned with the books just as we were finishing it. It went faster than anything else this edition. And it was completely unplanned ahead of time.

Highlights -- Mike, Elaine, Betty, Kat, Cedric, Rebecca, Ruth, Marcia and Wally wrote this and picked all highlights unless noted otherwise. We thank them for this.

And that's what we have. We'll see you next week.

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