A Note to Our Readers

Hey --

First off, don't blame us for the delay. We finished hours ago. We should have all been in bed hours ago. (And except for those writing this note, people did get to bed by three a.m. ET -- a record for us.) What happened?

Explain it to us because we still can't figure it out. Repeatedly been knocked out of Blogger/Blogspot was only one of the new problems to surface.

(New for us, it happened to C.I. Saturday morning.)

We've got protests today and we were demonstrating yesterday, so no one wanted this up early more than us. (Okay, maybe Genie who sent three e-mails so far asking, "Where's the TV review?")

First up, highlights, we've got a few:

Estados Unidos lanza mayor ataque aereo desde invasion a Irak (Democracy Now!)
C.I. on the war pornography that encourages the war to drag on
Pacifica Spotlight: Ruth's Public Radio Report
Reality Check: War Pornographer Michael Gordon tries to shift the blame
Blog Spotlight: Cedric on Feingold and the Dems
Humor Spotlight: Bully Boy Press breaks the story of the frothing White House Lap Dog
Blog Spotlight: Rebecca provides lyrics and a report on kids in America
Blog Spotlight: Elaine wonders who is still suffering from "War Got Your Tongue?"
Humor Spotlight: Betinna crowns Thomas Friedman "First Among Fools"
Blog Spotlight: Mikey Likes It!
Do something spotlight
Cooking Spotlight: Charro Beans in the Kitchen

Thank you to everyone for their permission to repost. If you were online when they were going up, you noticed a huge time lag before anything else posted. That's when the problems started.

New content? We got some of that too. (Yes, Genie, we have a TV review for you.)

"Editorial: 3rd Anniversary and what have you done?" -- we actually hadn't planned to make demonstrating the topic of our editorial. We figured it would be covered pretty well. Then we heard a news break and thought, "Maybe Not" (to be Cat Power about it).

Yes, Genie, there is a TV review. It's "TV Review: Don't call her Elaine" and, as always, this is written by Ava and C.I. only. They have high hopes for the series. (Two of us don't but we bailed after the first episode. Apparently, the second episode aired last Monday was an improvement. And Ava and C.I. note, Wanda Sykes guest stars this Monday.)

"Why We March." See, we've all been assisting Gina and Krista with their round-robin all week. We've been busy all week. And we were thinking, "We don't have to do the protest edition. We can just go and participate and work on an easy edition to get some sleep and be ready for tomorrow." Tomorrow is today. (And no, we aren't being philosophical -- we're too tired for that.) Why We Fight is the name of the documentary out currently (worth seeing) and we decided on "Why We March" for a title. But unless we were going to present voices, what we were we going to do? (And since no one took notes, voices were out of the running.) So what we came up with was reasons we march and we've provided links to some items that you may have missed. If you did, check them out. If you didn't, they are worth a re-read. The links take you to various voices that we think are important. (Laura Flanders, Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein, Matthew Rothschild, Dahr Jamail, Norman Solomon, Amy & David Goodman, Howard Zinn, Tom Hayden . . . It's not all the voices that speak to us, but it is some of them.)

When we were trying to figure out why the same problem happened on everyone's computer, C.I. noted that Ruth wanted a highlight but there wasn't time to include it in her report yesterday. Dallas went to work on that and that's how we ended up with "Christian Parenti on KPFA's Sunday Salon this am and Air America's RadioNation with Laura Flanders this evening."
You have two chances to hear Parenti. The only excuse for missing him is that you're so busy demonstrating that you don't have time.

"One voice applauded, one not heard?" is just to note on record (as The Common Ills did) that Thursday a character spoke out for peace on network television. We're not sure how much attention that got because we honestly haven't seen any attention to that (other than The Common Ills.)

"The ones who go missing, missing from the coverage" is part of the war (and peace) edition because stories aren't being told. We don't know why. We hope it's because the thought of telling them hasn't occurred. We just know that they should be told and they need to be told. Not once in a blue moon, but regularly and repeatedly.

"Camilo Mejia spoke with Laura Flanders about the 241 mile march" spotlights Mejia and Flanders. A perfect combination. No skipping this unless you were listening -- in which case, you can write an essay on it and e-mail it in.

"Miles Cameron can't figure out what news is." Miles Cameron. Miles, you f-ed up our cabbage patch. Dona had already put out the call for short pieces. (Ava and C.I. feel like they complied.)
The point was to get everyone some rest before today's events. Didn't happen. Miles is the part of part of the reason for that. We were going to do an impressionistic edition. A little more artsy. Then Miles Cameron mistook Air America Radio for Fox "News." If you missed it, you were lucky. Read the feature to find out why.

"It should come in a brown wrapper" -- what? Pornography. Doesn't it already? Not war pornography.

"Who uses free speech?" is actually the sort of thing (space wise) that we were going for. Ty had a funny three line, impressionistic thing prepared for this. He ran it past us and we all laughed. Then came Miles. Ty hadn't written it down and the non-news of Cameron wiped out all that came before.


All new content for this edition was written by the following:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and Jim;
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;
and Wally of The Daily Jot

except the TV review which was done by Ava and C.I. (and the Parenti heads up, done predominately by Dallas). We thank Dallas for all the help (including hunting down links).
And we thank all who participated in this edition. We thank you for reading. We thank the Academy for . . .

Hopefully, something in this edition makes you think, makes you laugh or makes you mad. Even better if it made you speak out a little more today about the illegal war.

See you next week.

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