Highlights

This piece is written by Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix, Kat of Kat's Korner, Betty of Thomas Friedman is a Great Man, Mike of Mikey Likes It!, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, Marcia of SICKOFITRADLZ and Wally of The Daily Jot. Unless otherwise noted, we picked all highlights.

"How 'we' lose" -- Betty's latest chapter which is both (a) a classic and (b) a source of tension for some readers. On the latter, Wally and Cedric did not include this Saturday chapter under "Recommended" in their Saturday post and some are offended. It was an oversight and an accident and if you read their Saturday post, you will see "" and that's where Betty's chapter was supposed to go. They will recommend it on Monday. They were waiting Saturday to highlight it and had Mike on the phone asking, "Are you up yet?" (Meaning was their joint-post up yet.) That's due to the fact that Mike posts C.I.'s entries at The Common Ills on Saturday. C.I. does the entries early in the morning, saves to draft, Ava, Kat and C.I. fly home and, after Mike gets back from dropping them off at the airport, he waits for Wally and Cedric who are the last to post on Saturday. With Mike calling them over and over (C.I.'s last post on Saturday includes "The following community sites have updated since Friday morning" which is C.I.'s way of making sure every community site gets at least one link), they get rushed. They thought they were done and e-mailed the posts to their sites only to find out later that day that they forgot Betty. It was an oversight. Yes, this is the second time that happened and when it happened last time, they picked it up on Monday. They will this week as well. Betty says, "I never knew so many people read my site!" :D They do. And they love Betty and her character Betinna. But, honest folks, it was an oversight on Wally and Cedric's part, not intentional.

"Dried Tomatoes with Pasta in the Kitchen" -- Trina's latest and she explains how, around the country, Jeremiah Wright's damning of the United States is not being as easily dismissed as the groupies (in and out of the media) hoped.

"I Hate The War" -- Jim asked us to highlight this prominently. It was the most requested highlight request to Third. But Jim wanted it highlighted so Kat should share her story. C.I. wrote it and for those who don't know, in addition to what goes up at The Common Ills and writing here, C.I. also writes a column for all the community newsletters except the UK Computer Gurus' newsletter. So Thursday, three entries at The Common Ills during the day and one topic declared on hold by Jim (covered in Wednesday's snapshot and the editorial here this week). Then Thursday evening, participating in the roundtable for the gina & krista round-robin, Ava and C.I. speaking to another group right after (Kat skipped it because she was tired). Coming back to the hotel, writing the column for the gina & krista round-robin and the column for Polly's Brew. And then doing this Thursday night entry for The Common Ills. Kat picks up here. "I always say, if there's a problem, wake me. If we're not in a suite, call me, I'll come over right away. So C.I. calls and asks me to come over and read this. I do and don't see any problem with it. I loved it. I thought it was great. But C.I. really felt like it wasn't up to standard and one of the reasons was that Jim had already placed a hold on one topic and another topic got placed on hold Thursday evening. So two of the biggest topics were off limits and C.I. had covered just about everything else except for a magazine article that will be worked into the snapshots next week. Jim wanted me to tell that story because he agrees placing a hold on things so that Third can grab them can leave people without anything to write."


"Not that into Ms. these days" -- Jim placed a hold on this topic as well. It was Kat's topic and she brought it up in the roundtable for the gina & krista round-robin. Kat had to blog early Saturday morning and "I didn't have anything else to write about it. Jim asked for a hold. Is Jim going to blog for me? No. Okay, then I have to write about what ever comes to mind. And, as Jim will tell you, we've got one more piece to do here and then we're done. And this placed on hold topic won't even come up unless I mention it in our quick piece we're about to do. So if I had held this, it wouldn't have been covered." None of that is said to slam or pick on Jim and, again, Jim wanted it noted and noted prominently.

"Quiz " -- Ruth's blogging about a topic that two members participating in the roundtable brought up. After the roundtable, Ruth called Mike who could grab the topic and blog about it with no fallout. Ruth said she'd grab it. (Fallout from C.I. Mike's like "a puppy" and C.I. holds nothing against him; however, C.I. wouldn't hold anything against any of us. As Ruth noted, there was nothing said about the post but Elaine says her guess is that "you" in critics referred not just to C.I. but to this site.) Bambi stole. Last week Jim included it in an article he wrote for this site ("Theft, C.I.'s not Bambi's speechwriter"). C.I. didn't want the article written and when Jim read his piece to all of us, C.I. asked that the section on a friend with the Bambi campaign confirming/acknowledging be pulled. Jim pulled it because we were all tired and it was going to be a long back and forth. The theft was such an issue that C.I. tried to calm the community on Wednesday by noting it in the snapshot in passing. It flared up in the roundtable for the roundrobin. Ruth grabbed it here. She included what Jim had been told (with Jim's permission.) It figures that the best section of Bambi's lousy speech was ripped off from someone else.

"Jeremiah Wright's words are offensive!" -- Marcia's wonderful post which led Jim requesting (after it was up) that we hold off on this as well. We would do a roundtable. It didn't happen. (We have a quickie roundtable of some sort to do and then the edition is over. It may get noted there.) Betty was going to guest blog for Rebecca and address this topic on Friday but Jim had placed a hold on it. For those wondering about Jim's hold, Rebecca points out that one week -- only one -- we had nothing. Ava and C.I. went off to write their TV commentary. Came back and we ended up inspired by their topic and doing features that basically raided Ava and C.I.'s commentary. Due to that happening, Jim has been in panic mode and afraid that we might hit a wall one week and have nothing. That edition lasted until four p.m. Sunday our time (for those who continued participating -- Mike and Wally plus the core six of Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.) and had started at ten p.m. on Saturday (EST on all times). It was a nightmare. After that, Jim began saying "let's put a hold on" this or that to make sure some topics would be in the ready should we end up hitting a wall again. Kat says, "As Maria McKee sings, 'Only once, only once'." So we do understand Jim's holds (although Elaine points out that for C.I. they pile up more than the rest of us and it's not uncommon for Jim to have placed a hold on six different topics that C.I.'s started covering at The Common Ills). But the other side of the holds is that those of us with other websites end up wondering what to write about. On Wednesday, Mike really wanted to write about Jeremiah Wright and follow up on C.I.'s "Damn or defend" issue but that was claimed already by Jim for this week's editorial (already written and it's the title). So it does have an impact and Dona's imposed a new rule this writing edition which is Jim can hold only five topics per week "and anyone can do like Kat and just ignore him. It's not the end of the world."

"Barack Obama loses a delegate" & "Super! Barack Obama loses a delegate!" -- which is exactly what Elaine and Mike did here. This was going to be a big feature. It's still not written and won't be. C.I. caught it and included it in the snapshot. Mike and Elaine avoided writing about it but they pulled it from the snapshot and led their Friday posts with it and then followed up with a single paragraph of their own. If you missed it, a delegate in Texas for Obama called in to The Diane Rehm Show Friday morning and announced that, due to Jeremiah Wright, he was not going to be a delegate for Obama.

"no, it's not over" -- Ava and C.I. have been very upfront about the fact that they are lobbying super delegates (that they know) for Hillary. Last week, Elaine joined them in that action. There are many big donors doing that. Rebecca wrote about it here and noted one of the actions the "brain trust" was doing (Rebecca's term for big DNC donors supporting Hillary and thinking outside the box). It's the action that had MoveOn in an uproar. Grow up, WalkOn, you useless piece of crap.

"This is how Pretty Boys 'work'" & "THIS JUST IN! BAMBI WORKING FOR HIMSELF!" --
Bambi went to vacation in the Virign Islands and Bully Boy Press and Cedric's Big Mix were there! In this installment, Bambi's getting 'drunk' on Shirley Temples. By the way, there was a joint-post they did with C.I. this week that never went up because Cedric made the mistake of mentioning it to Jim who said, "No, no, no! Ava and C.I. are tackling that in their upcoming book review!" :D Dictating Thursday's snapshot, C.I. mentioned the book review as an aside. It wasn't supposed to make it into the snapshot but the friend taking the dictation misunderstood and it did. Since then, it's a huge topic in e-mails to this site. They may or may not break street date on the review. They aren't writing it yet. They've read the 'book.' Sometime ago, in fact. They're tossing lines back and forth. This week, they ended up with two paragraphs which they've condensed to the two opening lines. It will be something to read.

"A really bad restaurant" -- Kat is on the road with Ava and C.I. speaking out against the war almost every week and it can be very hard to do that all day and then try to find a topic to write about. Kat also says she's the laziest of all of us (we disagree). This post had nothing to do with the illegal war or with politics. We all enjoyed it (especially Trina who asked that we note her enjoyment). Kat wrote about a food establishment she'd visited that night and how disappointing it was.

"Hillary and Ireland" -- Kat flies her Irish-American flag and says back off with your crap about Hillary not doing anything on Ireland. Kat visits her relatives there very often and spent at least five weeks in a row there in 2006 when a sick relative was dying. Don't tell Kat about Ireland, she knows all about it.

"The race continues" -- Elaine is a longtime and big donor to the DNC. She wasn't lobbying on behalf of Hillary. Then CounterPunch published their latest attack and smear job on Hillary. Elaine had enough. She explains in this post. You'll notice that CounterPunch has been delinked by all community sites. Bye-bye, losers. Note, Kat just went to check on the others. She's there, the rest of us are participating by phone. Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava are editing features and proofing them. Ava and C.I. apologize to Rebecca because they included her in the TV commentary and then used spell check. Spell check destroyed the last half of their TV commentary. "Obama" became "Obama.ns.amp" and there were other problems. They can't link to Rebecca but will do so next week. (They just wanted to fix the entry.) But an Isaiah update. Isaiah did a comic for this Sunday morning. C.I.'s been uploading it over and over at Flickr with no luck for one hour and twenty-three minutes and is now trying again. It's called "Struggling for Maturity." It will go up if there's any way at all and C.I. was using this period of time to focus on that and proofing the commentary with Ava. Kat notes, no spell check on any feature due to the problem Ava and C.I. had. No one has time to go through and fix a third of the article if spell check messes up so just live with typos.

"4,000 dead and the war drags on . . .," "u.s. death toll in iraq reaches 4,000," "4,000 US service members dead from an illegal war," "The 4,000 mark," "Recipe for disaster," "4,000 is the US death toll in Iraq," "Wake up, 4,000 are dead," "4,000 dead," "4,000 US service members dead in a never-ending, illegal war," "The 4,000 mark," "THIS JUST IN! 'COOKIES' SAYS RUMSFLED!" and "Still a cakewalk?" -- every community site (including this one) got back online Sunday night to note that the 4,000 mark had been reached. It was important, it was news. Even if others didn't treat it as such.

"Delegates and letting the race continue" -- we all take the issue of the delegates from Florida and Michigan being seated at the DNC convention very seriously (and seated for Hillary in Michigan because Barack Obama wasn't on the ballot by his own choice and seated with more for Hillary in Florida because she won that primary) but Wally especially takes it seriously. He was born in Florida, he was raised in Florida, he lives in Florida and he voted in that primary. Only one show has shown concern about the two states primaries before they took place, when they took place and after they took place. Ruth's writing about Diane Rehm here and Wally notes that there's not an NPR listener in his region of Florida that's not aware Diane Rehm has repeatedly covered this issue while the bulk of the media has repeatedly ignored it. And, of course, LIAR Amy Goodman tried to show up this month and act all concerned after ridiculing Florida's primary in her only 'coverage' of it previously. Amy Goodman, don't go to Florida. It's not just the gators you have to fear there now.

"Why the general smeared Bill Clinton" -- The Bambi campaign decided to smear Bill Clinton. He wasn't their target. Just like they used racism as a club to try to silence everyone, they went after Bill last weekend to try to silence everyone. Thing is, without the support of a lot of closeted Communists in Panhandle Media, Bambi wouldn't have a lot of praise. As Big Media catches onto that and starts asking questions, the Bambi campaign gets real nervous. Repeating, there's nothing wrong with being a Communist. But there is something wrong about being a Communist and trying to pass yourself off as a Democrat. C.I. explains the attack on Bill and how they went after the Big Dog only to attempt to fend off questions from the press. (Bill Clinton did not raise the issue of communism or refer to it. Bambi's spokesperson raised the issue to try to defuse it.) If Bambi doesn't want the support of closeted Communists, he could certainly tell them to shut up. It would probably silence half the web reposting Panhandle Media, but he could do so if he wanted to. Until then, don't blame others for the fact that closeted Communists continue pimping you and are your biggest supporters in Panhandle Media. Update from Kat re: Isaiah's latest comic. C.I. says it's stuck uploading at Flickr at "99% complete" -- where it's gone to every other time and then frozen. C.I.'s going to continue trying. We're posting this and all regrouping for the final piece (other than Jim's note and selecting truest which will probably be -- hold your astonishment -- Joe Scarborough).