A note to our readers

Hey --
Day from hell day. We're finally through.

Along with Dallas, here's who helped with the writing:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's 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,
Ann who's filling in for Mike of Mikey Likes It! (Mike's on vacation with Elaine, C.I.'s filling in for Elaine at Like Maria Said Paz),
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ
and Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends.

Thank you to all for their help. Last week, Ava, C.I. and Jess handled the edition and managed to finish on time and early. By contrast it is now past noon and we're only now finishing.

And Dona's about to fall over so we'll come back for the note later tonight.

And we're back. Let's talk new content and I (Jim) will talk about the mishaps of this edition.


Here's the content:

Dumbest statement of the week -- We had truest. We had several. But we were all agreed this dumb statement had to be noted. But we forgot until publishing. So we dropped truest this week and just went with dumbest. Congrats, NYT, you earned it.

Editorial: No excuse for Sotomayor's secrets --Tomorrow's the confirmation hearing. A Democrat nominated her. Why is we still don't know where she stands on abortion? Not the planned editorial but as everything fell apart, Betty advocated for this topic and everyone agreed.

TV: Cuting through the crap -- Ava and C.I. were writing long we knew so even when the edition was falling apart, we knew we'd have something to point to with pride. They did a great job here.

Voices of Honor -- We had to note this. This was the last thing we wrote and did so despite being tired and just wanting to go to sleep. This is something that needs to be covered and very few bothered to.

Iraq at a glance -- C.I. said we had to do this. And was right. We were doing a week without noting Iraq? We had two Iraq-related pieces and they were crap. No matter how many times we rewrote and how many times we adjusted, they were still crap. Most of what we did just didn't work this week and we hustled to find topics we could publish online.

Lady nO -- Rebecca, Marcia, Ruth and Ann wrote this and we thank them for it. Dona was asking, at six a.m. EST, when all we had was Ava and C.I.'s TV piece and little else worth posting, everyone to brainstorm new ideas.


The return of Times Select -- Jess brought this in. And no, subscribers to the paper participating in this edition were not e-mailed a survey on Thursday.

Why On A Clear Day failed -- When Dona put out her SOS, Betty reminded how she, Ava and C.I. had spoken a great deal about this film and how it just doesn't work as a whole. She suggested we write an article on it. Rebecca said, "Too many people are going to spoil it. You work on that with Ava and C.I. and we'll work on a fashion piece." Which is what happened.

NYT serving less than half the US population -- Dona brought this over from C.I. actually. C.I. had already noted it and it was easy to turn this into a short piece. Dona, Jess, Ty, Cedric, Stan and I worked on this.

Truth in a Senate committee hearing -- Kat pulled this together while we did that. This is a repost of testimony.

Congressional attention on East Timor -- ETAN.

Highlights -- Rebecca, Betty, Ruth, Marcia, Stan, Cedric and Wally and Kat (almost forgot Kat) worked on this. Not Mike and Elaine, they're on vacation in Hawaii.

Throughout the edition, everything fell apart. It was a nightmare and it was, as Rebecca pointed out, nothing like last week's edition "which was a breeze."

So that's what we had. Hopefully you found something to enjoy.

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