Another Sunday. We're publishing at what's becoming our usual time.
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.
And what did we come up with:
- A Libya piece did not work out so among the truest choices was Michael Ratner talking about the Libyan War. The illegal Libyan War.
- This was a new truest source for us but an observant and deserving citation.
- This is an editorial we tried last week and C.I. called an end to it last week. She noted it was too late and we'd end up missing someone. I brought it up this weekend as we were wrapping up and she nearly hit the roof. As Elaine said, "C.I. leaves her place and she never thinks twice about whether or not the gas stove was on. You ask her to drop by and water your plants and feed your dogs, she's out in the drive way, then turning around and coming back in a minimum of three times to make sure your gas oven isn't on." In other words, we had to count and recount and count again over and over to make sure we were all getting 15. 15 US soldiers died in the Iraq War in June and the editorial notes them. If you're wondering about the wording. One died in the US. He was injured in the June 6th attack, medi-vaced out to the US and died. So we have worded it "in the Iraq War" and not "in Iraq" when referring to all 15. We include only one politician's statement. Why did we include it? The fallen had very little in the press about him. That's in part due to his being adopted and his adopted parents telling the press they were private and had nothing to say. So we went with his biological father and with Governor Jerry Brown's statement on his passing. Some may look at what's there and say, "X got less." In at least one case, X could have had more. But in the case I (Jim) am thinking of, we all agreed that a widow at her husband's casket conveyed both loss and love and that having established that the fallen was so loved, there wasn't a need to address other issues. Christopher Fishbeck probably got more than anyone else. That's fine. The Third gang (Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava, C.I. and myself) live in California so we can justify that since Fishbeck was from our state. He also got a picture and that's mainly because that's the one C.I. went with from Fishbeck's MySpace page and after she used it at The Common Ills it resulted in a ton of e-mails. Elaine understands that because she used it as well. She says there's something about the picture, including Fishbeck's happiness and innocence and that expressive dog that makes for a memorable and touching photo.
Did I do right by Ava and C.I. when I titled this piece they wrote? I hope so. They read this and we loved it. But thinking about the title was a toughie. In this piece, Ava and C.I. are covering the USA series Suits, Barack Obama's speech last week and they're covering MSNBC. By the way, if we'd managed the Libya piece, we would have worked Michael Ratner's quote into that and Mark Halperin would have gotten a truest for "kind of a dick."- In the Libya piece that wouldn't come together, we pointed out that Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich were in agreement -- an agreement that doesn't fit with Barack's claims.
We're probably done with magazine round ups. We can't stand to read the so-called left magazines like The Nation, Mother Jones, etc. They're such liars and we feel dirty just glancing at them. But that doesn't mean we have to give up comic books, as several e-mailers noted. So since we're all together this weekend, for a change, we decided to do two comic book pieces.
This group piece was really supposed to be an Isaiah and Jess piece. They visited two comic book stores last week (in Oregon and in Texas) just for this article more or less. (Okay, they were doing other things as well.) But we folded this into observations that we saw at two here in California to make for one piece.
This is being called the signature piece of the edition by reader Joyce. We thank you, Joyce. We didn't even intend to write it. We were working on something else. What happened was a side note, a diversion, arrived. Who was Dan White? Someone asked that and C.I. explained White was a killer and what he'd done. Could we work him in? A number of us hit our laptops and began searching and Ty found A&E's page and starts reading from it and that's when we all sort of look at each other like WTF??????????? At which point, we went to work on this. And we've included the Board minutes because only one site tries to give a date for Harvey Milk's ordinance that passed -- and not only is it the wrong date, it's a site that argues that the ordinance is illegal. We found website after website noting this accomplishment by Harvey but no one knows when it happened. Fortunately we have C.I. (are you getting now why Rebecca and Elaine used to call her "Memorac" in college?). She told us the date and then said, "Hold on, I'll go get that year's minutes." And she rushed off into her library and came back with the minutes for 1978. For historic reasons, we also included the whole thing on the wording. What Harvey Milk did was groundbreaking and should be known and remembered.
Sunday in the Park with George. Get it? No?
A Workers World repost.
A Feminist Majority Foundation repost.
A Great Britian's Socialist Worker repost.
Mike and the gang wrote this and we thank them for it.
Peace.
-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.
