I sent $100, though it is shameless to use your mother as a tool for fundraising.

Sorry to nitpick, but on this post
YOU FORGOT THE YELLING.

I gave $15. I've also been inspired by $5 Friday to give $5 here and there.

$50. I don't know why you're offering a copy of Our Kampf, since no one is supposed to be reading this site who hasn't already bought a copy. I guess you assume we're a bunch of deadbeats who never bought the book but read the site anyway. Well, you're right.

OK. I just gave $50.

But I'd like to enter the following caveat which is that I usually give money to independent, third party organizing, in particular, those groups or individuals which show some promise of becoming effective in competing for and eventually achieving political power (preferably-though not exclusively-through elections).

Jonathan has, in the past, expressed rather negative views on this strategy-one of the few areas where I have disagreed with him (and even more so his pal Michael Moore).

So to be clear, in general I'm not interested in supporting authors of books with titles such as "Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush". What I'm interested in is developing a politics where far right policies enacted by either of the two parties serving the elite consensus are seriously challenged.

So my support for Consortium News should be seen more as support for Jonathan's making use of this site for getting readers of ATR off their asses and actively involved in politics which goes beyond issuing this or that "devastating critique," or "blistering exposé".

I'm all for supporting worthy organizations but also for seriously considering what long term strategy gets advanced by doing so.

Hope that's not too weird, off-topic or crotchety for this thread.

Shameless? Maybe not shameless enough.;

Several decades ago I did door-to-door fundraising for a while, but coming from a cash-poor background, I could never get myself to ask for large enough contributions from those I solicited. That was outside my comfort zone. I just couldn't fathom that some people could easily write a check for five hundred or a thousand bucks if they really felt like it, and sometimes nearly as easily as they could write a check for ten or twenty bucks. Not many people, but way more than I realized. And since then, by and large, the folks with money like that have only gotten richer.

The lesson I took from that at the time is that if you plan on getting small donations, that's what you will get. And when you expect more, sometimes you'll get it. I was surprised how consistently those who expected to receive larger contributions brought in more large contributions. All they did was ask.

So if anyone sitting on a large pile of cash passes through, remember that Robert Parry's staff is getting crappy health care so that they can try to get a little bit of the truth to the public, and keeping them alive and kicking to do that will probably help everybody. Like john halle, i'd be glad if public activism and participation will emerge from that and either supplants the Democratic party or pushes it and the GOP left again. (It's hard to remember that their used to be left-leaning voices in the GOP.) But whatever flows from it, it's important to keep as much real investigative journalism alive as possible.

OK, Jonathan, you can put me down for $29 - the amount necessary to clear a set of their books out of their warehouse, which is a nice bonus.

Any money I can scrape together for this sort of thing (my blogroll?) goes to Arthur Silber @ http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/
I do however appreciate Consortium News.

Sorry. Those insane libertarians at Antiwar.com need what little I can scrape together.

Gave a bit.

$25

Bought Our Kampf last spring... after having read the site since 2005.