As our regular readers know, our staff members tend to get around the United States a bit. We have conferences, presentations, and other business to attend to and we usually take our work with us. From DC to Lincoln to Florida, and a whole host of other places, the three of us do a surprising bit of travel, and still deliver a solid media product to you each weekday.
Being a member of the media is demanding work, as many of you know - since many of you also work in that profession. We have more than a few cartoonists, writers, broadcasters and other members of the American national media who follow our work. Quite a few politicians and other politicos who interact with the media are also on our mailing list - and we know you too, see how hard we work.
Some of you even use our work to give you a starting point for the next 24-hour news cycle.
We know this, and don't mind. Frankly, people who toil in the media and communications fields know we sometimes borrow ideas from one another - or at least, appear to. When the facts all point in the same direction, and great minds all think alike, it's inevitable that some of us arrive at similar conclusions.
For the next week, though, you'll have to make those conclusions without our participation, as our entire staff is going on vacation.
We're taking some time away from the news because... we can.
As we noted earlier this week, the astroturf groups appear to have taken the month off, thank goodness. With the President taking a vacation, and Congress still in the middle of their five week recess, we weren't sure when we'd get another chance to take some R&R for ourselves.
When we get back, we know the coming months will be filled with long days, long nights, stacks of work, and tough decisions - and that's just in our day jobs, not just what we do for you here at The Daily Felltoon.
We know you might be feeling a bit lost while we're gone - so we hope you'll read the work of a few of our colleagues to keep yourself well-informed and occupied while we're away. As always, we hope you read at least two newspapers daily, including the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, and Wall Street Journal. For foreign news, keep up with the BBC and Aljazerra. We also hope you'll keep checking out the work of Nate Silver and the fine folks at FiveThirtyEight.com. Dave Weigel of Slate also usually has some good work, and Greg Sargent, Adam Sewer, and the gang the Plum Line are often spot on.
Make sure you read your local and regional newspapers too; not everything is a national issue, after all.
For your daily cartoon fix, we hope the fine work of Jeff Koterba, Wiley Miller, R.C. Harvey, and a host of other great cartoonists from the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists' website will keep you chuckling and thinking while we're away.
Take hope, though; while you won't be able to get your Daily Felltoon fix via the usual email channels, you can still access Paul's daily editorial cartoon view of the world at the website of his syndicator, www.artizans.com - or even easier at his page on the AAEC website.
It's always good for people to take some time for themselves, whenever that rare opportunity comes up.
We plan to make every moment count - and we look forward to being back with you on August 29th.
Somehow, we have a feeling there will be plenty to share with you upon our return.
