[UPDATE: We’re a little less than half-way our goal of having our server costs completely covered. So, if you can, here’s the secure link where you can become a sustaining contributor.) And those hamsters are the hamsters that spin the wheels that power this blog on its way through the intertubes to you, and if they don’t get fed…

OK, OK, bad joke. Not just because by alluding to the classic 1970s National Lampoon cover I’m showing my age, but because of all the great animal rescue work that MJS has done.

Seriously:

Can you name another C-list blog that, besides practicing animal rescue, channels Paul Krugman (according to Paul Krugman), has a DIY series called Winemaking 101, features the adventures of The Bad Magician, Google bombs Liberal Fascism to fuckwad, questions what it means to be a mulatto, gives a platform to original fiction, and features duke-it-out commentary on Michael Vick and nuclear submarines and the police? (And as far as the taser threads, and humankind’s ultimate permathread—MIAKA—No, I’m not going there. Either place. At least right now.)

Can you name another C-list blog that was paranoid and cynical realistic and thoughtful enough to get the scope of warrantless surveillance right long before our famously free press did? And that warns you when to clean tainted corporate meat out of your fridge? And that instigates Fudge Wars? And that explains how Mike Huckabee’s son killed that dog—before Newsweek did? And that offers progressives sharp-edged analytical tools like The Pincer Movement and The Overton Window? And that offers you the Lexicon of Liberal Invective? That tries to make sure that Democrats don’t take a Hello Kitty Pencil case to a gunfight? That calls Tim Russert a lying sack of shit, which is nothing but the truth?

And can you name another blog that not only has an open commenting policy, but an open posting* policy?

If you can, then I suggest you go to that blog and throw a few shekels their way, because they deserve it.

But if you can’t—if The Fellows of The Mighty Corrente Building have created the only blog you can think of that offers content so unique, so compelling, so diverse, so old school, and so hard-hitting (not to inject my own personal views into this matter) — then please, help us out with our server costs by clicking this secure link. We don’t have a cheap-ass shared site on a commodity box somewhere, but a dedicated server with real support—because we control our own content, and when we tried the cheap-ass route, the site went down at the first big usage spike, and it’s not good to be out of service just when people need us the most. And—if you can—please become a sustaining contributor. Please give a little each month, rather than more, in one shot. Knowing we have something coming in regularly really reduces our angst—and when we get angst, we tend to draw the blinds, go to bed, and sleep for days, and when we’re doing that, we aren’t posting. And that is bad.

I couldn’t be more proud of this blog or of The Fellows. Please help us to keep getting up and doing what needs to be done.

NOTE * I don’t know why we haven’t been overrun by wingers and trolls. My guess is that the, er, robust character of discourse maintained by the Fellows acts like an immune system to protect the blog. If we do get overrun, the policy will change, but for now the net seems very positive.