This comes from a recent Redstate email on the topic:

The good news first: RedState.com is about to embark on a major upgrade of our website that will make it easier, more informative, and just plain more fun for you to visit.

The bad news: our liberal “friends” – you know, the ones who believe so strongly in free speech and open debate – have done what they can to prevent us from making these improvements, so that our influence will be minimized just as we head into the 2008 presidential primary season.

No, our Blue State buddies haven’t succeeded in stopping us from improving our website. But they’ve made it more difficult and more expensive – which is why I’m coming to you for help.

Let me explain …

You see, when we started RedState in May of 2004, we used a website program called Scoop — the same program a lot of similar sites on the left used. But, as the number of visitors to our site grew, Scoop kept crashing on us.

If we’d been a liberal website, we would have been able to fix the problem quickly and relatively cheaply. The online left loves Scoop. Unfortunately, there weren’t really any conservative Scoop developers out there to help us. We kept crashing and were out of money. We had to close down or take drastic action.

Well, we didn’t close down. We ditched Scoop and moved to the best alternative at the time, a program called Drupal. But, in accomplishing the switch, budget constraints forced us to sacrifice some popular site features in order to alleviate the strain on our overused servers.

Needless to say, we always regarded those “downgrades” as temporary, and we hoped to restore the eliminated features – and to add new and even better ones – as soon as we could afford to.

Unfortunately, we still can’t afford to. But we’re convinced that America can afford even less to have us operating at anything less than our absolute peak potential during the coming presidential election season.

So we’ve decided to move ahead with our upgrades without delay, and despite not having the cash on hand – hoping and praying that RedState.com readers like you will help us make up the shortfall with a generous donation...

(yadda yadda yadda)

This was a four-snort email.

Oh those evil lefties! They won't volunteer to help a website that routinely calls them traitors. The bastards!

And Redstate really wants to pay for their own upgrade... they really really do... but they just can't because the lefties made everything so expensive. I mean it's not like they changed to a for profit model with paid advertising and are owned by a media publishing outfit... oh... wait.

So fork over the cash, suckers, because Redstate will really make the difference in the coming election; "we’re convinced that America can afford even less to have us operating at anything less than our absolute peak potential during the coming presidential election season"!!!!1!11!!!!

Erick should be ashamed of such pathetic pandering.

When they first launched Drupal, I sent them an email offering to help with at least one feature or more (like implementing the "parent comment" link) and woulda helped more to change their atrocious design, but never received a reply.

$25,000 seems like a lot... But to design it from scratch it would cost more than $25,000.

Maybe if they hadn't banned all the Ron Paul fans they'd find a few resident libertarian hackers to give them a hand.

Which reminds me of this ... sorry John ;-)

Batman Begins was excellent too. I liked the old Batman, with Jack Nicholson, but the new films seem to have more depth (as well as better action sequences).

Using GDP per capita versus GDP per capita adjusted for cost of living. As your link puts it,

But the average Briton does not actually feel more wealthy than his or her American counterpart. Goods and services are cheaper in the U.S., meaning that even if they are earning less, they can afford to buy more.

Something for the conservatives to hang on to =P Still very interesting news, and indicative of just how crappy the dollar is these days.

Don't send your spare cash to us, we wouldn't know what to do with it =)

that Britain is less socialized than its continental counterparts. In fact, it's the most "liberalised" G-8 economy in Europe.

Plus, the Pound has been very strong these last 10 years or so since Europe went on the Euro. One effect of this is lots of stability for foreign investors and lower prices on imports for Brits.

The complexity of Sarbanes Oaxley (sp?) also sent a lot of IPOs to London from NYC. Britain has actually been loosening up quite a bit and tax competition and pro-growth policies from up and coming economies in Eastern Europe are forcing the Continental Powers to adapt or stagnate and Britain started before the others. Markets within Europe are expanding and becoming more competitive. Ireland started even earlier and has been a major success story.

Does this this all tell the whole tale? No. But it is part of the mix. There's a lot happening.

Here is an overview of Obama's Senate record, here is Edward's , and here is Clinton's .

Once you look at what they've actually done, Obama comes out pretty well, I would say, especially for his admittedly short term in national office. I'm not the only one who thinks so , either.

because she's a woman, but a much bigger double standard because she's a clinton.

Ah well. She's hardly my favorite candidate but it would be nice to see her get a fair shake, instead of having the conservative framing get so routinely accepted.

This should give your debate with Tlaloc Thursday some added spark.

I don't like either team, but a convincing win either way would be good for college football since the year has been so roller-coaster with no clear consensus #1. I was really hoping for Hawaii to somehow win their bowl game to make things even more murky =(

Probably real, but then a nice attack in the next sentence. Probably worth a gain of one and a half polling points.

Her mistake was using W's campaign tactics, not letting herself be herself, and using her husband as a bridge to the future. Her message, I will fight to bring the past into the future????

Her campaign seems to be letting her rip off that mask today. The question is how many of the 'bankers' for her campaign will stay with after tomorrow.

I can't even imagine how exhausted the frontrunners are.