A note to our readers

Hey --

Another Sunday. And this time a stronger edition. 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,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.

And what did we come up with? We knew we needed some strong this week after last week. (As Ava and C.I. predicted, we got the most disappointed response from longterm readers. About the only thing they approved of was Ava and C.I.'s TV commentary.) And we worked really hard to do just that.

Truest statement of the week -- Cindy Sheehan. This is her first truest for 2010. She received the most in 2009 and, unless Dalia Hashad pops back up regularly on Law & Disorder, she'll probably have the most of anyone. (Dalia was in part why we started this feature. She usually had something to say on the radio program that we'd try to work into an editorial or another feature and didn't always manage to. At which point, we thought up truest.)

Truest statement of the week II -- We've given The New York Times intensely negative criticism (and we've given it positive criticism) so when we saw this refutation of a lie and when we realized that even ZNet had taken to running articles by a Chalabi pushing that lie, we knew we had to include it.

Editorial: Pull all US troops out of Iraq -- For five years now, we've been advocating for troops out now. It's not hard to do. It's not hard to write about. There's always a way to find a new angle for the story. If you care about the issue. Apparently, few outlets do.

TV: Doing the John Edwards -- From a throw away line in their commentary, I found the right title for Ava and C.I.'s commentary. This is really a great one and they've done a great job. This is also one of three pieces they do this week.

Roundtable -- I (Jim) was leery. I'd called for one last week (roundtable) and it was awful and I took the beating on it. So it was a great surprise that this one went a lot better. We cover race, the war, British politics and a few other topics. Betty's kids did the illustration.

Toxic Barry -- The illustration is from the video. We note that on Flickr as well. Why? A Jeffrey Mayes is apparently screaming at various websites that used his photos the Martha Coakley campaign posted. We did not use Mayes' photos, don't come whining to us. (Mayes was not working for the Coakley campaign.)

There is no such thing as rape (Ava and C.I.) -- The illustration is by Betty's kids. This was one of four ideas that Ava and C.I. brought to the edition. They noted they didn't mind working long or late provided the edition had something to say. If you haven't read the article, the point isn't Ava and C.I. don't believe in rape (they do believe in it), the point is NPR did a story on a rape but repeatedly called it sex. As they point out, when you drug a girl, that's your first indication that it was rape.

Iraq -- Our Iraq feature. We cover the Inquiry going on in London in this as well as a few other things.

The war on Social Security -- This was a topic we tried last week but failed at. We did a little better when we tried this week. It's not a great article but it is publishable.

Go Gidget! -- Juan Cole is an idiot and a War Hawk. Kat and Betty's kids worked on the illustration.

The Futility of Norman Solomon (Ava and C.I.) -- This is Ava and C.I.'s third piece. They wrote this at the last minute when Ann reminded them that she'd blogged at her site that they would cover it. In addition to what they wrote, they had two strong ideas that were written (with all of us) but there was enough strong stuff that those two things went into the discard pile. Mike's been pushing for a piece on Howard Zinn. We didn't try it this week. We hope to next week.

The Revolution will be streamed? -- Get the word out.

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

And that's what we ended up with. See you next week.

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