Part II of our year end donation drive begins today. Thanks so much for everyone that has donated so far. We've had over 200 donations already so please don't stop now.
It's been a tough year for the entire country, but I think we're doing our best to represent and so has our entire Team Crooks. I've also been a volunteer for Blue America and the support you have shown our Campaign for Health Care Choice and the many great progressive candidates we've endorsed like Alan Grayson has been incredible.

Corporations are pouring millions of dollars into the blogosphere trying to compete with bloggers and this new article shows you what's been happening lately. Their new twist to fool America is that they have the nerve to call themselves "bloggers." Paid journalists from corporations are trying to co-opt the term. Nice try, ass-wipes.

C&L has been fighting the good fight ever since it started and as our activism has grown so has the help that is needed from our readers.

Have you given to C&L's Donation Drive? Here's a friendly reminder from David, Nigel, Derek and Ed Begley Jr., guesting on the drums.

I've been racking my brain to see if I could come up with a Donation Drive playlist of the top 5 songs asking for financial assistance. It wasn't easy:

1. Spinal Tap - Gimme Some Money
2. Barrett Strong - Money (That's What I Want)
3. Bing Crosby - Brother, Can You Spare a Dime
4. Destiny's Child - Bills
5. Tommy James and the Shondells - Mony Mony (This one's a stretch.)

Honorable mention: The Network (Green Day's alter ego) - Spike

What else?

You know you've been meaning to kick in five bucks (or more) to C&L's donation drive. Now is a great time to do that.

Open thread below....

It's day three for the C&L Donation drive and so far it's going well. Almost 400 people have donated and I thank you.
I'd like to give a shout out to the grand poo bah of our website: Jamie Holly. He's been writing code like a man possessed this year to keep things progressing on C&L. He's one of the people that goes unnoticed on a website like this because he's doing all the back-end work. But he's the one who has crafted our own embed player, implemented the new sites and updated the comment section.

And I'd like to contribute more to his hard work. He's not finished yet and neither are we. Soon we are going to have diaries available for our readers and other very cool features so please, if you can--make a donation to C&L

You can also use snail mail to make your donation.

For Snail Mail:

Crooksandliars.com

P.O. Box 66310

Los Angeles, CA 90066

"Some people say" Crooks and Liars is funded with something called "Soros money." We're not. We're funded by you. And every little bit helps. Thanks.

It's day two of our C&L '09 fundraiser. We're reaching out to our readers and asking for your help so that the MSM and Corporate media do not overrun the blogosphere with Villagers. With ad revenues way down and the corporate elites funneling in millions of dollars to compete with us, it's going to be hard for all blogs to thrive and survive.

David Neiwert, who is the best expert we have today on right wing hate talk radio and hate groups, has become the managing editor of C&L.

Jane Hamsher writes:

There are lot of people on TV saying irresponsible things about the shooting at the Holocaust museum (one mentioned the "Obama effect," as if this was something that Obama's election precipitated).

If any TV bookers are looking for someone knowledgeable to speak on the subject, they should call David Neiwert. David blogs at Orcinus, he's the managing editor of Crooks & Liars, he's an expert on the subject and the author the new book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right.

David actually predicted something like this in the book. You can find more on the book here on David's book salon, which was hosted by Digby.

If any media folks need contact info for David, drop me a line.

Thanks, Jane, for your kind words about David. He'll be on the air this morning on MSNBC and has been a great addition to the site. Our initial goal is to reach at least $50,000, and the target is to get up to and beyond $100,000. Day I of the donation drive: C&L's Donation Drive '09: Please help save blogs before we're overrun by the corporate media was awesome. Yesterday we had over 200 people donate and hit the six thousand dollar mark, which was really a great start. I know this will take time and energy. I'd like to pay more money to the people that help make C&L a good blog and I do need to hire a few more bloggers and staffers because the workload is so tremendous.

I'll write more about this in the next posts, so please, donate if you can. You can also use snail mail to make your donation.

For Snail Mail:

Crooksandliars.com

P.O. Box 66310

Los Angeles, CA 90066

We're reaching out to our readers and asking for your help so that the MSM and Corporate media do not overrun the blogosphere with Villagers. They are funneling in millions of dollars to compete with and ultimately drive away independent bloggers so that they can rule the Internet. And the kind of cash they are pouring in is staggering.

It's hard to compete with that since the economy is way down, and I think what we've accomplished is in jeopardy if the Internet doesn't step up to help us all, including other blogs that you like. So please donate what you can.

As you've seen, C&L has been expanding and improving the site and we need your help to continue to make more improvements and add more bodies to keep it going. We've released a host of new sites, including our Supreme Court blog Third Branch, the excellent Video Cafe, an expanded LNMC that is breaking new music and bringing music stars to our pages and finallythe very cool Newstalgia--which is posting the most extensive historic audio and video content on the web today. We've also released our first embeddable video player that now lets you embed all videos you see on C&L. This has taken a lot of time, effort and money to do, but we're succeeding. The economy is way down and it's affecting the blogs as well.

Our initial goal is to reach at least 50,000 dollars and the target is to get up to and beyond 100,000. I know this will take time and energy. As you've seen we're also reaching into the blogosphere and hiring bloggers to make C&L an even better site and to reward some of our own. The workload is tremendous. David Neiwert is now the managing editor and Susy Madrak has become a valued front-pager. Max Bernstein is handing the Late Nite Music Club and Gordon Skene is digging into his amazing time vault to bring us historical content that is relevant to today's news and Heather is leading the charge at Video Cafe. Now we're looking to hire video bloggers, a researcher, extra site monitors and an investigative journalist, but we can't do it without your help.

The money is going to be poured right back into C&L and into the hands of our own. It's a daunting task to keep the content flowing, even the MSM has recognized our efforts:

It's wild knowing that we've had over 200 million visitors and growing, so won't you please help us? You can also use snail mail to make your donation.

For Snail Mail:

Crooksandliars.com

P.O. Box 66310

Los Angeles, CA 90066

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