A note to our readers

Hey --

The long edition. The one we almost didn't do. If you're not a regular reader, this is our second "F.U." edition and it's not aimed at regular readers.

Let me (Jim) note who helped:


The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, 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,
and Marcia SICKOFITRDLZ.

Along with Dallas! We thank everyone. I'm going to talk about the edition as I go through. There was a note I almost posted Sunday morning. I'm glad I did not. Dona stopped me asking, "Have you looked at Ava and C.I.?"

What did she mean? Ava, C.I. and I stayed up all night Saturday working on the edition. Of course I'd looked at them. Then I looked over. They were tired. The note was saying (and I may publish it and comment on it next week) basically, "Hang in there! Ava and C.I. are working on their TV piece. We're getting input from everyone on what we've written and it needs to be typed. Two hours tops, the whole edition will be up." Didn't happen.

And Dona rightly stopped me from posting that. Ironically, the edition came to a halt when one of us fell asleep. Not Ava. Not C.I. Me. I was typing up one of the 'letters' and fell asleep. When everyone noticed, it was decided to come back this evening.

Truest statement of the week -- we weren't going to have one. Ava, C.I. and I had decided that. When we invited everyone back in, Mike, Wally, Cedric and Betty agreed with Rebecca and said that's insane and that it had to be C.I. (over C.I.'s objections but the towel was tossed in in order to get "the damn edition done").

Editorial: The real change choice -- The bulk of the drafts were written Saturday night, Sunday morning by Ava, C.I. and I. I'll go into that throughout the note. We'd called off the edition and sent everyone on to a fun Saturday. In the form we wrote, it was a feature article. When we brought everyone in late Sunday morning, it was said this was the editorial. So some things were stripped out and some things added. Things dropped will be picked up in future coverage.

TV: Nonreality programming -- Ava and C.I. wrote this. When I fell asleep they were almost done with this. When I fell asleep, they decided that the edition was over and they'd finish when we all woke up. Normally, I read their piece outloud. I still haven't read it. I'm sure it's wonderful. I did hear them composing some lines as they pitched jokes at one another and they had me laughing then. Mike will do a breakdown and, I'm sure, capture this perfectly at his site.

Judge Robert Barnes rules in Joshua Key's appeal -- This is where we had the slowdown in the evening Sunday. Dona argued, "We're not doing our edition, going on to sleep or fun and letting C.I. stay up forever doing 'And the war drags on . . .'." We all agreed with that. How long would it take? C.I. said it shouldn't take long. Joshua Key needed to be noted and McClatchy would be noted because they would be covering Iraq. Add in Pru and that was that. Didn't work out that way. We'd heard about Joshua Key all weekend and knew the end result of the finding. C.I. was just going to note the coverage. Then C.I. started reading the coverage. That's not what the decision said in many cases. C.I. bummed a cigarette from Dona (noting that with C.I.'s permission -- the only cigarette C.I.'s had in 2008 for those freaking out -- relax), pulled the hair up on top of the head and read over the entire decision of Judge Robert Barnes while making notes. C.I. then wrote the entry. We'd heard the comments throughout while C.I. was reading over it. When we saw the write-up, Jess said, "Could we post it here?" There was no time to write another article. Jess wasn't asking C.I. to give it up (and do another entry for TCI), he was asking if we could also post it here. C.I. wants it noted that, "I focused on what interested me. It is not all good for Key but that's for those who oppose war resisters to argue. I don't make that case and I'm not going to."

The missing editorial -- This goes with truest and with a number of things. It's why we didn't want to do an edition. A 'helper' in Canada decided to attack C.I. in an e-mail. And invented things that were not said. We're really not in the mood for it. And we will be less likely to hold our tongue about the 'movement' in Canada as a result. Except for Elaine, everyone was. Until now. A 'movement' that can't even get it right that deserters were welcomed in Canada during Vietnam isn't much of a movement. C.I.'s "ABC's in the tank with the Pentagon! (Or so a crackpot e-mails)" on Friday morning (a public reply to the 'helper') outlines that perfectly.

Letters to An Old Sell Out: Iraq -- Tom Hayden. He wrote Cedric. We should probably mention that. He wrote Cedric to whine. (Link to Cedric and Wally's reply in this and the other 'letters.') Like the 'helper' in Canada, Tom-Tom can't read. Cedric had not written about Hayden at his site. (Nor had Wally. They do joint-posts.) They'd searched for weeks trying to find out what he was writing about (he did not include the date or title of the post that upset him). They brought C.I. into it Wednesday. C.I. asked, "What's the date of his e-mail?" "Oh, then he's complaining about Linda's comments about him being a sexist pig. It's a Slate article I linked to in the snapshot and quoted from. You ran it in the joint-post the day before he e-mailed." Since it clearly identifies the author, that it's from Slate and that it's a quote, Tom-Tom might try going to a remedial reading course. He might meet Canadian 'helper' there and form a friendship. July 4th Barack didn't say anything he hadn't already been saying. But it became an issue and suddenly Tom-Tom took to blog to play like he'd always been right about Barack. He cited a 2007 piece he wrote and ignored what he wrote in 2008. He complained that the MSM and Hillary's campaign hadn't called out Barack for the Samantha Power BBC interview. That would be the one he never wrote about (until July 4th) that took place back in March. That would be the one we wrote an editorial in March calling out Panhandle Media for not publicizing. MSM and the Hillary campaign responded to that interview. It was the losers like Tom-Tom that didn't cover it. But then it would have hurt the Christ-child and truth took a backseat so that they could . . . hop into the backseat with Barack. Hot and heavy make out session passed off as 'analysis' is all they offered.

Letters to An Old Sell Out: About Latin America -- If there was any reason left to listen to Tom Hayden today it was his recent work on Latin America. On Iraq, he's become nothing but a justifier for the Democratic Party (as most book reviews of his Iraq book noted). Barack was never the candidate for Latin America. Tom-Tom got honest on July 4th (a little honest) about Barack and Iraq, he's still lying about Barack and Latin America.

Letters to An Old Sell Out: Where's the honesty? -- The two letters above originated with Ava, C.I. and myself. When we brought everyone in, Elaine said, "Well let's raise the issue of 1969." So we do. Isn't it time Tom-Tom got honest about his speech inciting violence in Chicago in 1969? We think it is and we think people should know about it when Tom-Tom's blathering on about the 'movement' behind Barack. From start to finish, this was a piece everyone worked on.

Stop the racism -- This is why Ava, C.I. and I stayed up. What happened was Maria asked if we would do a roundtable. It was already Sunday night. We never do roundtables for El Espirito (Maria, Miguel and Francisco's newsletter). Not because we don't like their newletter (we do, we all do, Isaiah does comics for it, Rebecca does a column, Ava and C.I. do two TV pieces on Spanish language TV programming). We don't do a roundtable for them because we're working on the latest edition while they're assembling the newsletter. But the community wanted to know more about the e-mail that came in to C.I. Friday and though everyone had written about it at their sites, Maria wanted to have everyone together for the roundtable. We were already toying with not doing an edition. We agreed to the roundtable (which went quickly, just under two hours). Then we decided, "Screw it. We're not busting our asses this weekend." So everyone was told, "Go have fun, go to sleep, whatever. We're taking the weekend off." I don't know what people did elsewhere. Kat saw it as a chance to go out and quickly organized a night's event. She took Jess, Wally, Mike, Elaine and Dona along. Ava and C.I. were of the opinion that they'd get some sleep and I wanted to get the pictures from France (Dona and I were in France and that's why we didn't participate last edition) in order. I'd picked up the pictures Saturday afternoon and not even had time to look at them. Ava and C.I. opened a bottle of wine and moved to a sofa. I took the pictures in there and bored them (I'm saying that) with them. As we were looking, C.I. noted that at some point "I'm going to have to get online." Why? Asian-Americans in the community were angry and offended by the stunt Amy Goodman pulled. C.I. called it the day it aired. But it needed to be addressed further because so many Asian-Americans were angry and to not write something on it would be, in effect, pulling a Goodman. Ava, C.I. and I talked about that and then I said, "Let's write it together. Let's do it and we'll post it at Third. It'll be the only thing we post there. But it is important." So C.I. gathered up the e-mails on it and we started writing it. A little after three in the morning, we heard everyone come in. A few came in to say goodnight and asked what we were doing. We explained it was just one article and to go on to sleep. At six, Mike woke up and came downstairs. He was surprised to find us still working. We'd done two of the letters and Ava and C.I. said they could do a TV commentary. We'd also worked out the editorial that became the missing editorial. Mike picked up all the pages (written in longhand) that we'd produced and whistled. He said, "I think we need an edition." Before anyone could stop him, he was upstairs waking everyone and telling them we were doing an edition. Ava and C.I. wrote the TV commentary and it is exclusively their own. This piece is by Ava, C.I. and myself. C.I. says Betty added something, so add Betty too. Everything else went through further drafts with others adding things. And that's how we ended up with an edition.

Highlights -- Mike, Wally, Betty, Cedric, Kat, Ruth, Marcia, Rebecca and Elaine wrote this and selected the highlights except where noted otherwise.

And that's it. Ty rejoins us next edition. He's on vacation and (we hope) having a great time!

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