Hey --
Another Sunday. And we're almost early for us and would have been early had Blogger not gone crazy with "service error" messages.
First up, we thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:
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,
Trina of
Trina's Kitchen,Marcia of
SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of
Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of
The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of
Ann's Mega Dub.
This was a long edition. And we had some problems with features that threatened to make it even longer. At which point, I told everyone that we could work for an additional three to four hours or Ava could write a piece on Scott Brown (which she did) and C.I. and I could do a piece on Bradley Manning (which we did). Elaine made a comment as Ava and C.I. sighed (they did what was needed, they weren't pleased about it) that I thought was sarcasm. When C.I. and I were done, Elaine told me she wasn't. She hadn't been sarcastic when she said she'd write a piece if it meant we could all go to sleep finally. It isn't done. If she wants to work on it and have it here next week, I'm more than fine with it. I loved what she did finish.
So let's talk the content that made it in:
- Gary Ackerman got this one.
- And US House Rep. Gary Ackerman, Democrat from New York, got this one as well.
- US House Rep. Bob Filner, Democrat from California, got this one. It is very rare for any politician to get a "truest." Truest, by its nature, goes against politicians' basic speech. So we're surprised (but happily so) to be able to note three of the truest remarks of last week and note that they're from politicians. (Isaiah did the Bob Filner illustration back in 2010. We thank him for it.)
- What's this like? I have no idea. We all worked on this. But we were all tired and trying to get done. So I honestly remember very little of it and I didn't type it up so I didn't read it then. ("I" being Jim.)
I did read this. Aloud to everyone as usual. Ava and C.I.'s piece this week is a strong one. The original plan was they were going to do Bill Scher's Liberal Oasis audio show and Adam Kokesh's TV show and Cindy Sheehan's radio program. They also thought that Bill Scher was doing an audio and video program and were going to going to work in a suggestion for another outlet to do the same. But they got stuck in the suckage that was the episode and Traci Olsen. This is a great piece by them. I applaud it. (Disclosure, Bill Scher will not remember this but years ago we exchanged e-mails. It was before this site was started. But that's why we link to him here on our website roll and why he's linked to at The Common Ills.)
- If anything suffered more than the editorial it was Adam Kokesh's actions. Were Ava and C.I.'s eyes not watering from being so tired, they would have written piece on Adam all by themselves. They'd planned to include his show in their commentary and were only able to work it in at the very end. They were okay with that because we were doing a feature on Adam that everyone was going to work on. But we wrote this after, AFTER, the editorial (which I already told you I'm too tired to even remember).
- Stan, Dona and Ty suggested this and insisted it be a short feature. They were correct on both counts.
- "Oh my --" exclaimed Ava when I told her the headline I was giving her piece. She complained about a number of things including that her copy made it appear that she wasn't even "in on the joke." C.I. grabbed her copy and rewrote Ava's last sentence, handed it back to her and asked, "Does that work?" Ava agreed it did and we were able to finally feel like we were almost done.
- While Ava was writing the Brown piece, I grabbed C.I. to work on this one. This could have been a group piece. But it would have gone all over the place. If I'd thought she wouldn't fall asleep at the keyboard, I would've asked C.I. to write it all by herself. But I knew how tired she was. So I asked her to write it with me. "Okay, but there aren't going to be any jokes. Just get that through your head right now. This isn't a 'jokey' subject." As I was 'getting that through my head,' she nodded off and I had to ask, "Are you awake?" "I am now," came the reply. And we quickly went to work on this. It hit all the notes I had hoped it would and more. If one more person had worked on it with us, I would've insisted it be the editorial and that would have allowed us to have gone to bed a lot sooner. This also has a 2006 illustration. By whom, I have no idea. It could be us, it could be Betty's kids. I don't know. But we were short on illustrations and Dona had the idea to go through the 2006 pieces and look. She found two we used.
- Short feature. And this one was worth posting. Unlike the much longer piece we worked two hours on and could not make it come together. (It was also on Robert Gates. We may try it again next week.)
- The illustration for this is also from 2006. Dona found it and said we should use it in something. This piece didn't have an illustration so it went here.
A repost from Great Britian's Socialist Worker.
A repost from Workers World.
Mike and the gang wrote this and we thank them for it.
And that's what we managed to come up with. See you next week.
Peace.
-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and
C.I.
