Sunday, June 26, 2011

A note to our readers

Hey --

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.

It was a long edition. A Green piece and two Iraq pieces bit the dust along with a music piece and one on Barack's speech.

What did we come up with?

This is Aaron Hughes and we all agreed on this. We had a problem with three we wanted to note on Barack's speech last week. We had planned to fold those into a piece on the speech. The mistake we made was in doing it as a group effort. We should have let Ava and C.I. tackle it by themselves. Instead we had a mishmash that was unreadable.
But we all agreed Stevie Nicks had a truest and we are supposed to be following the arts as well as politics.

But we ended up going with three statements because we really needed something on the speech. So this is Justin Raimondo who did one of the strongest commentaries on Barack's bad speech.


We were doing a piece on marriage equality that didn't work and we were taking a break. I grabbed Isaiah's sketch pad just because it was there (Isaiah was visiting this week at C.I.'s place) and saw this.

for jim's note

It really turned the idea that wasn't working into an editorial with several more points to make. C.I. was adament that it go up first at The Common Ills so that Isaiah didn't have to do a second comic. We were all in agreement with that.

Ava and C.I. love Fran and when everyone wanted to take a sleep break, they had just finished this piece. They agreed. Which is surprising. Or was until I read it. I want to note that Ava and C.I. don't play favorites. They critiqued Fran's new show strongly despite their feelings for Fran. That's what real critics do. Even if it depresses them to do so. Ava and C.I. also edited my title. I had titled their piece "She got custody of all the laughs." They argued it should be "She got custody of the laughs" because that's how you talk -- not "all." They were right.

If you're on a data plan on your cell phone or laptop (and there is talk of putting those into effect for all internet traffic), you can't afford to be streaming things you didn't want to stream. ABC News' pages are automatically starting to stream a commercial and then a news video. They need to stop that or they need to start picking up your data plan fee.

Michael Ratner's powerful commentary would have stood out as a radio moment any week.

Katty Kay. Erasing Iraq and all the destruction she helped foster.

Andrew Cuomo's statement about New York's marriage equality.

A repost from Great Britain's Socialist Worker.

A repost from Workers World.

As I noted at the top, we lost two Iraq pieces we had planned. That left us with only one so I was able to badger C.I. into letting us use this.
Mike and the gang wrote this and we thank them for it.



Peace.

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