Lucky 13

          I almost forgot. In fact, not only did I not write anything here yesterday, I screwed myself out of the chance to use this space to commemorate my 13th anniversary as a blogger. 13 years in this business makes one the IF Stone or Helen Thomas of this form of media. In 2005, many of us had put out our shingles, including d r i f t g l a s s, Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake (Now Shadowproof) and America's most beloved plantation owner, Arianna Huffington.
     And in July, it'll be a decade since I started this, my third political blog. My, my, how the time flies while Republicans and Democrats hollow out this once great nation like a school  of piranha tearing through a water buffalo carcass.
     I can't even tell you how many articles I've written these past 13 years (It must be well over 4000) since penning my first one. But I've survived three presidents, two of them fake, and nearly four general elections, coming up on four midterms and, tomorrow, 13 States of the Union.

     ...or "uniom", depending on which party you belong to.
     So I might as well take this opportunity to tell you in this belated anniversary message that we need a bit of help until we get our benefits back from the Office of Transitional Assistance. Many of you don't know that our rent was raised by $100 last April to $750 a month. This happened when our piece of shit landlord decided to let our lease expire last February without renewing it. Now he'd artificially made us tenants-at-will, as despicable a designation as "employee-at-will", our landlord gave us no leverage as he presented us with a termination of tenancy notice informing us if we didn't agree to pay an extra $100 a month starting in May, sign the form and get it back to him by April 13th, we had to vacate the premises by the end of the month.
     That $750 comes out to literally half of our income for as long as it lasts. So if you're reading this and if you haven't done so lately, please consider donating to Pottersville (or Gotham City, which it will remain until the end of this shitshow of an administration). It's not for bandwidth or operating costs, obviously, but as a way of keeping our heads above water in the real world. There's a Paypal button at the top right of this page and at the end of every single post on this blog.
     I'm not the first blogger who ever resorted to crowdsourcing to keep the lights on and I doubt I'll be the last. And considering I've taken so many hits for the team by suffering through countless right wing articles, crawling through the sewage of right wing comment sections and thousands of hours of watching Fox and other right wing videos, and have done it for 13 years, I think that deserves a little monetary recognition.
     I'm not doing this for the money, people, because the donations have dried up to almost nothing as my readers and past contributors have died, retired or just faded away for unknown reasons. Maybe we're already irrelevant, even though when I made my inauspicious debut in January 2005, blogging was still a new and exciting medium that forever democratized how political news and commentary was disseminated.
     Although that new car smell has long since faded from bloggerdom, I still believe in it and the power it theoretically puts in our hands. And I still believe that the time is always right for good-hearted people to do the right thing and speak out against injustice, cruelty and stupidity. It just so happens that behind the pages, bills have to be met, corporations, bureaucracies and other creditors have to be satisfied.
     So please give whatever you can either one time or as a recurring gesture.