A note to our readers

Hey --

Another Sunday. We're done way earlier than usual. Give credit to Dona, Ava and C.I. Dona for insisting on short features. Ava and C.I. for saying "F**k this, we're done." The two of them had a huge headache all night (from no sleep) and they have to repeat the same day today so when they said they weren't in the mood, we listened.

Along with Dallas, the following helped on 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),
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.

In previous notes, it's been pointed out that I left out Dona and Ty. That was an accident, my apologies. I just copy and paste the credits. (Dona and Ty were off on Thanksgiving and that's probably when I started leaving them out, the week after.) Also, thank you to Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts who participated last week and didn't get a thanks (and didn't even get called on in our roundtable). We thank everyone who worked on this edition.

Let's talk about what we came up with.

Truest statement of the week -- Lee Sustar of Socialist Worker (US). On health care. Which reminds me of a note I'll include on another item. But first, check Mike's site each Monday for a rundown of the latest Third edition. Mike not only writes about what he noticed happening, he also tends to call Dona, Ty, Jess and me to ask questions. So he's got a solid take each week and usually catches the things I forget (or didn't even know).

Truest statement of the week II -- Cindy Sheehan. Cindy had two in competition for "truest." The other was the paragraph that falls the one we chose. It became a toss up and the next paragraph might have been the better choice. (However, I always pushed for this one.)

Editorial: Women's rights thrown under the bus -- Trina wanted to work on this editorial. We were thrilled to have her input. But I (Jim) was surprised by her eagerness. Ava, C.I. and Cedric came in wanting the editorial to be about the Senate stab in the back. They were firm on that. So that became the editorial topic and I told myself that if it was weak, we'd replace at the last minute. I didn't know that they'd already had a conversation with Trina about it. During the conversation a number of topics were touched on including Cedric stating of certain left White-Anglo men, "They like Black dick." At which point, Trina couldn't stop laughing and she said, "If you are really doing that for the editorial, count me in." They discussed other things as well. In the editorial it's "cock." Why? Elaine and C.I. don't say "dick" except as an insult. This is a hard hitting editorial and so much more than I ever expected when I penciled this in Saturday night as our topic for the editorial. When we started writing, Cedric, Trina, Ava and C.I. were boom, boom, boom! And we had to say, "Hold on! Hold on!" Everyone wanted to get in on this. It was the most passionate editorial we've done in some time in terms of the writing and the energy level.

TV: No way -- Could Ava and C.I. write two pieces? No, they would not. They were very firm on that. What were they covering? They already knew what they were covering "so leave us alone." Again, they had nasty headaches throughout (Ava says, "Still do, wrap it up, Mr. Wordy!"). This is wonderful. They want it noted that they may need to come back and do a link. They're so tired their vision's blurry and they're not sure if they referenced another TV commentary? If they did, they'll fix it Monday or Tuesday by adding a link to their past article. Second, they've included A.N.S.W.E.R.'s. You'll see that a lot between now and March 20th. This is Ava and C.I.'s space and they are always trying to think of ways to better utilize it. They're planning to continue to include this in their effort to help get word out on the action.

Thank you, Bernie Sanders -- Truth? Politico got a lot of links because a friend of C.I.'s (with Politico) bugged C.I. and me for them. So when we could, we did link. We didn't link for no reason. There story on the sell-outs is a must read. From that, we did "Thank you, Bernie Sanders."

CODESTINK -- Ty and Dona brought the idea for this to the edition. Dona said, "Short, Jim, short."

Biggest Lie of the Week -- Another link to Politico. Guys, don't re-write history. It's neither honest nor amusing.

Iraq -- Our Iraq piece. We almost didn't have it. We were going to just do the count of the dead and the wounded because everyone was so tired. Then C.I. looked at it and said, "Well, add Chilcot from the inquiry." Then, "Well, we should include this new organization to get the word out on them . . ." So it ended up much meatier than the scrap it almost was.

Come And Get These Memories -- Jess found Missy's comment during research. We agreed we need to relive these moments. I had what I thought was a cute headline for this. Jess and Dona both hated it. I said, "It's too late to think of anything else, let's just post it." Ava and C.I. began singing the Motown hit "Come And Get These Memories." Proving me wrong.

The Attack of the Drones -- A repost.

The murder of Kelly Kwalik -- ETAN raises awareness.

Highlights -- Mike, Elaine, Rebecca, Betty, Kat, Ruth, Marcia, Stan, Ann, Cedric and Wally wrote this and we thank them for it.

And that's all we got. We'll see you next weekend.

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