Uh-oh. Looks like The Republican Who Isn't Crazy™ has made another remark that questions Bush's sovereignty :

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is launching perhaps his harshest attack yet on his own party and his gushiest praise of Democrats.

"I believe my party has gone astray," McCain said yesterday, singling out GOP stands on environmental issues and racial set-asides.

"I think the Democratic Party is a fine party, and I have no problems with it, in their views and their philosophy," he said. "But I also feel the Republican Party can be brought back to the principles I articulated before."

And he took another shot at President Bush. "You can't fly in on an aircraft carrier and declare victory and have the deaths continue. You can't do that."

Where did McCain make his remarks? As the Boston Herald reported today, at a "legislative seminar" hosted by U.S. Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass., who just happens to be one of the biggest Bush bashers in Congress.

"Many people in this room question, legitimately, whether we should have gone in or not," McCain said, adding that Iraq "will be part of this presidential campaign."

Before we get too impressed, lemme reiterate my stand that McCain should not be Kerry's veep choice. Here's why.

While I only caught the last part of the episode, it seems that the second season of Penn & Teller's Bullshit! started with a bang :

One of the unwritten rules for winning an argument against an inflammatory, irrational opponent is to calmly adhere to a loftier set of rhetorical standards. Penn and Teller showily throw this notion out the window. On tonight's episode, they compare PETA co-founder and president Ingrid Newkirk to Adolf Hitler, cutting from shots of Newkirk at an animal rights conference to stock footage of Hitler's youth. "Cheap shot?" says Penn in the narration. "Well, you bet it is. It's beneath us, but we're not the first to use the Nazi analogy." The show then takes PETA to task for its 2003 "Holocaust on Your Plate" action campaign, which juxtaposed images from concentration camps with images of industrial meat processing. I'm not sure which makes me more uncomfortable, PETA's manipulation of a genocide or Penn and Teller's breezy character assassination, but the moment made me pine for a less sensational approach. I'm more accustomed to professional doubting Thomases like Skeptic Society director Michael Shermer, whose wonderful book Why People Believe Weird Things manages to debunk all kinds of bad thinking—including that of Holocaust deniers—without resorting to calling anyone a Nazi.

But as P&T;: B! wore on, I began to appreciate the show's street-fighting style. Measured rationality is a powerful tool, but sometimes a well-placed "you've got to be fucking kidding me!" works even better. When Newkirk compares animals in the Western world to slaves, Penn can barely contain his incredulity. After noting that there are still millions of human slaves in the world today and invoking the legacy of slavery in our country, he says, "Do you really want to equate that worldwide shame ... to chickens?"

If Penn & Teller: Bullshit! were all bluster, it wouldn't be as effective or as entertaining. Thankfully, the show is surprisingly good at balancing its histrionics with facts. Using PETA's public tax records, tonight's show links the organization to Rodney Coronado, who admitted to firebombing a Michigan State University lab that used animals in its research. Penn and Teller also do a nice number on a PETA vice president whose treatments for Type II diabetes were developed using research on dogs.

For a group that specializes in hyperbole and emotional appeals, it's funny to see PETA getting a taste of their own medicine. PETA's tactics are pretty much the same as those of the pro-life movement : emotional appeals and propaganda while eschewing a sensible middle ground. For a good example of this, see this part of PETA's animal testing FAQ :

“If we didn't use animals, wouldn't we have to test new drugs on people?”

The choice isn't between animals and people. There is no guarantee that drugs are safe—even if they have been tested on animals—because the physiological differences between humans and other animals prevent the results of animal tests from being accurately extrapolated to humans. Some drugs that have been approved through animal tests can cause serious and unexpected side effects for humans. A 2002 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that in the last 25 years, more than 50 FDA-approved drugs had to be taken off the market or relabeled because they caused “adverse reactions.”

Based on that, you'd almost think that the AMA was against testing on animals, huh? Well, not quite :

H-460.979 Use of Animals in Research.
(1) Researchers should include in their protocols a commitment to ethical principles that promote high standards of care and humane treatment of all animals used in research. Further, they should provide animal review committees with sufficient information so that effective review can occur. For their part, institutions should strengthen their animal review committees to provide effective review of all research protocols involving animals.

(2) The appropriate and humane use of animals in biomedical research should not be unduly restricted. Local and national efforts to inform the public about the importance of the use of animals in research should be supported.

(3) The development of suitable alternatives to the use of animals in research should be encouraged among investigators and supported by government and private organizations. The selection of alternatives ultimately must reside with the research investigator.

H-460.953 Biomedical Research and Animal Activism.

Our AMA: (1) Our AMA opposes the addition of new United States Department of Agriculture regulatory requirements concerning the care, treatment and reporting of laboratory rats, mice and birds;

(2) supports working with Congress to establish a uniform method to assure a prompt, unbiased review by scientific peers of federally funded research projects before grant or contract monies can be withheld from any investigator or institution;

(3) supports working through Congress to oppose legislation which inappropriately restricts the choice of scientific animal models used in research;

H-460.985 Support for Use of Animals in Teaching, Product Safety Testing and Research.

The AMA: (1) reaffirms its unequivocal endorsement for the humane care, treatment and proper stewardship of animals in research as reflected in current laws and regulations;

(2) supports continued work with other organizations to develop programs to educate physicians and the public regarding the benefits of the use of animals in research;

(3) supports continued efforts to defend and promote the use of animals in meaningful research, product safety testing, and teaching programs;

(4) condemns illegal acts by the so-called "animal liberationists";

(5) supports the policy of obtaining animals for medical research and education from animal control units, and the studying of ways to ensure that the animals used are indeed unwanted and abandoned;

(6) affirms its commitment to the pursuit of alternative models for research where appropriate; and

(7) encourages physician involvement in public policy issues concerned with the use of animals in research in order to insure the optimum environment for the creation of new knowledge to better diagnose, treat, and prevent disease.

Even if PETA didn't mean to imply that the AMA is on their side, I'm gonna stick with the experts on this one. The fact is, animal testing is an unfortunate, but necessary evil. Most people are have made their peace with this, but for PETA, even the death of one animal for the greater good is too much :

“Would you support an experiment that would sacrifice 10 animals to save 10,000 people?”

No. Look at it another way: Suppose that the only way to save 10,000 people was to experiment on one mentally challenged orphan. If saving people is the goal, wouldn't that be worth it? Most people would agree that it would be wrong to sacrifice one human for the “greater good” of others because it would violate that individual's rights, but when it comes to sacrificing animals, the assumption is that human beings have rights and animals do not. Yet there is no logical reason to deny animals the same rights that protect individual humans from being sacrificed for the common good.

By the way, humans are sacrificed for the "greater good" every day. It's called "war", and sometimes it's necessary.

Now I don't want to create the impression that I'm against animal rights organizations. I'm just against the views and tactics of PETA, which as far as I'm concerned are extremist in nature. If animal rights was one of my pet (no pun intended) issues, I'd support an organization like The Humane Society. For the record, here's their view on animal testing :

Safety tests are conducted on a wide range of chemicals and products, including drugs, vaccines, cosmetics, household cleaners, pesticides, foodstuffs, and packing materials. The safety testing of chemicals and consumer products probably accounts for only about 10% to 20% of the use of animals in laboratories, or approximately two to four million animals in the United States. Yet the use of animals in safety testing figures prominently in the animal research controversy. It raises issues such as the ethics and humaneness of deliberately poisoning animals, the propriety of harming animals for the sake of marketing a new cosmetic or household product, the applicability of animal data to humans, and the possibility of sparing millions of animals by developing alternatives to a handful of widely used procedures.

The Animals in Research section is committed to promoting alternatives to the use of animals in product testing as well as in biomedical research and education. Alternatives are scientific methods that accomplish one or more of the "Three Rs": They replace the use of animals in a scientific procedure, they reduce the number of animals used in a procedure, and/or they refine a procedure so the animals experience less pain, suffering, or discomfort.

That's the "sensible middle ground" I was talking about.

Okay, I usually avoid commenting on conservative blogs because it's just too easy. I'm liberal, they're not. Of course I'll find something I disagree with. Nevertheless, there's an obsession on some of the conservative sites that just may be the dumbest meme I've ever seen.

First, take a look at this picture :

Y'see that daisy attached to the zipper of his jacket? That's what the conservatives are freaking out about. Seriously.

This Instapundit post has seven updates with observations about how the daisy is "unlikely to strike fear into the hearts of our enemies", whether or not it's an obscure Wu Tang Clan reference, links to discussion threads, and even a link to a guy who posted two obviously different photos and claimed that the New York Times photoshopped the flower out of one of them.

Why the fixation on something so trivial? Because something as minor as a flower backs up a frequent criticism by conservatives : Democrats are too wimpy to be president. Here's a sampling of what I'm talking about from the sites Instapundit is linking :

"I think I shall be ill. My niece has a flower just like that one. She's seven."

"Is it some kind of secret sign? A gift from his wife? An anachronistically girlish symbol of support for homosexual unions? An apparel-based reference to his days among the flower children?"

"Further evidence that John F'ing Kerry is a feckless crapweasel."

"He still looks like a dork on that snowboard. Will the real John Kerry please GROW up?"

"The whole look, of course, is appalling: the vest, the gloves, the botox. It is Mrs. Rocket's opinion that the American people will not elect as President a man who wears a vest with a flower power zipper pull."

"Clearly this man is the true Alpha Weenie."

All this coming from the supporters of a president who was almost assassinated by a pretzel.

The most amusing aspect of all this is that John Kerry's ski trip actually could be used to boost another common complaint about liberals. With Kerry's multiple houses and posh lifestyle, they could easily paint the picture of him being an out-of-touch elitist who's vacationing while the country needs him. Of course, if they wanna do that, they'd probably need to explain why Bush spent all of August 2001 hanging out in his ranch and ignoring memos.

I'm with Ezra on this one. This post by Amy Sullivan is really striking a nerve with me :

Earlier this week, Senate Democrats -- and a handful of Republican moderates (or, as I like to call them, soon-to-be-independents) -- managed to insert $6 billion in child care subsidies into the welfare reauthorization bill. And now they're fighting the good fight again, holding up the welfare measure until they get a vote on increasing the minimum wage.

Do you know what the federal minimum wage is? $5.15 per hour. And do you know how long the minimum wage has been at that level? Since 1997. Yes, that's right -- for the past SEVEN years. I thought $5.15 was a typo when I read today's news stories because that's what we bumped the minimum wage up to when I was still working in the Senate and that was a really long time ago.

A worker making $5.15 per hour in a full-time job, working every single week of the year, makes about $10,000 each year. And that's without paying for health care, which doesn't often come standard with low-wage jobs. And it's definitely without paying for child care, which is the number one reason for workplace instability among low-income women. Other western nations solved this problem a long time ago by instituting state-subsidized child care for everyone. We're not even asking for that. We're asking for a puny $6 billion to help out the poorest of the poor working mothers.

And the response from across the aisle? Fine. But you can't have that and a higher minimum wage. Because that would be greedy.

Ten thousands dollars per year doesn't buy much. But it buys even less now than it did seven years ago. Our total lack of support for low-wage workers in this country is a travesty. So when it comes to deciding to support the party that stands up for low-wage workers or the party that makes them choose between feeding their kids and providing safe care for their kids, the answer is easy.

The indifference that the Republican party shows toward the working poor makes me sick. I'd love to see Bush, Cheney, DeLay and the rest try to live for a year on minimum wage. I doubt Junior would last a week.

Good economic news for Bush today :

The nation's employers added 308,000 new jobs in March, hiring at the fastest pace in four years and providing long-awaited evidence the weak jobs market may be gaining steam.

At the same time, the civilian unemployment rate bumped up to 5.7 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday.

In a separate survey of companies, the figures showed widespread hiring in industries across the economy at a time when President Bush's re-election campaign, counting heavily on a pickup in the jobs market, jumped into high gear.

For the first time in 44 months, the nation's factories did not shed jobs. But they weren't hiring either. March's figures show zero gains and losses for manufacturers hammered by the economic downturn that began three years ago. The only sector losing jobs last month was information services, where companies cut about 1,000 jobs.

Okay, so it's not all good news, but it's still (for once) keeping pace with Bush's economic forecasts. As Atrios points out, this is definitely a success :

The next point of comparison is the administration's own predictions. They've made so many different ones that it's hard to know which one to use at the point of comparison. Probably the approprate one to use is the one they used to justify their last tax cut, which was sold as a jobs program, proving that we are indeed "all Keynesians now."

They promised an average of 306,000 jobs per month through the end of 2004. They haven't actually achieved anything close to that in a single month, let alone on average.

So, let's choose our criteria in advance. Anything under 140K is seriously bad. A number between 140K and 240K isn't particularly good, but at least a sign that things could be picking up. And, anything under 306K is proof that the tax cuts are not working as promised.

But lets go back to the end of that first article and check out this revealing tidbit :

Retailers added 47,000 jobs last month, led by the striking California grocery workers agreeing to a new contract and returning to work.

Is this really fair to add to these numbers? These weren't new jobs. The grocery workers were just returning to the jobs which they already had. Even if adding the returning workers is standard for this kinda thing, it still means that these numbers are being inflated by a one time occurrence. Take those away and you'll see jobs growth that's inconsistent with the president's own predictions.

Calm down people. Nader probably isn't gonna even get on the ballots, much less throw the election. Besides, third-parties are complete shit. The Democratic party always has the best intentions and for anyone who works outside the two-party system clearly hates democracy and loves terrorists.

Okay, the last half of that was just an obligatory April Fool's joke.

In the middle of her shrill freak-out yesterday with Nader, Randi Rhodes brought up a damn good point. Third-party candidates, while bucking the system during the election, eventually have to pick sides when it comes time to caucus. Granted, this usually isn't a big deal since the views of third parties don't usually fall between the GOP and Dems (and the big one that does completely sells out). But if Nader ever did get elected, he'd eventually have to pick somebody to work with, which would point out the big flaw in his argument. There are major differences between the major parties and Nader knows it.

Which brings me to this post by my friend Ross about the wishful thinking of many third-party supporters :

Nader supporters so often seem, willfully I might add, to forget something very crucial to elections in the US: We Simply Don't Have Proportional Representation or Runoff Voting. Period. I'm sorry to have to tell you all this, but seriously, neither option actually, in any sense of the word, exists here in the States. Nothing will change this. No-Thing. No amount of complaining and wishful thinking will have any tangible effect on the fact that we do not have parliamentary democracy in any form, nor do we have instant runoff voting. When dealing with elections in the good ol US of A, try rememebring that we elect our politicians differently than in Europe and Canada, and most of the world.

Perhaps this isn't right, and I agree with my friends on the left who want this sort of system that we definitely ought to be discussing this. I certainly agree that instant Runoff voting is a seriously great idea. That said, I'd like to digress for a moment and explain why I fear Proportional representation, at least as it applies to American politics.

Israel, in case you didn't know, happens to have a proportional elective system, and it's crippled the ability of Israel to ever find a solution to the problems they're having. Have you ever wondered why they can't seem to just come to an agreement regarding the palestinian problem, and deal with it in a way that doesn't instantly result in hundreds of innocent palestinians and israelis dying? It's because anytime someone remotely sane comes up with something, the Knesset gets blackmailed by some obscure religious fundamentalist party with just enough votes to keep the major parties from a true majority. (For instance, ultra orthodox fucktards willing to force WWIII so their little fundamentalist schools will be paid for by the government while they STILL won't be eligible for the israeli draft).

I know this system works very well in most of Europe, but do Greens really think we'd end up with sane, normal political parties from all across the spectrum working together, marginalizing the bastards on the extreme right and left? I don't. I haven't forgotten that the US is most decidedly not like Europe in some pretty stark ways, chief among them being our powerful constituency of religious bigoted assholes.

I'm pretty sure that seconds after adopting the Naderite's beloved proportional representation, we'd be working full time just to stave off electoral anarchy. For instance, the republican party might fall apart, which I would really like, but that's only because 25 different Jesus-is-coming-soon parties would spring up overnight. All of them would have far greater profiles and mass support than the Naderites ever will, and I guaran-fucking-tee you that they'd blackmail the entire country into submission, while we on the left are trying to be all normal and sophisticated just like in Canada and Europe.

Personally, I don't necessarily believe in the doomsday scenario outlined above. If anything, I think a split in the GOP would likely marginalize religious extremists. Actually, I think conservatives would probably be smart enough to avoid the pitfalls of splitting into multiple parties. Working together despite their differences seems to have worked out pretty well for them so far.

There is one point that Ross raised that needs to be stressed here : the way we choose our representatives naturally leads us in the direction of a two-party system. This is known as Duverger's Law. As long as we stick with our current electoral system, we're pretty much stuck in a two-party state (which, to be fair, has good and bad points).

If we ever want to move towards proportional representation, I think the emphasis on electing third-party candidates could prove to be counter-productive. I can't help but think grassroots organization would be much more effective trying to raise awareness of alternative voting systems among mainstream voters than trying to elect candidates who are just as likely to get swallowed up and/or ignored by the system they're trying to single-handedly change.

I've got two very different points to make about this article :

It's just a little bit of wording on a condom packet - so small that Justin Kleinman hadn't noticed it until he squinted to read it recently.

"This is completely pointless," the 24-year-old Chicagoan said of the warning telling him that, while condoms can help prevent the spread of some sexually transmitted diseases, there are no guarantees.

Even so, that tiny bit of print is at the center of a raging debate now that President Bush has asked the Food and Drug Administration to modify the current warning to include information about human papillomavirus, commonly called HPV or genital warts.

On one side are scientists who believe that condoms should be promoted as a crucial line of defense against several STDs and cervical cancer. On the other are groups that advocate waiting for sex until marriage, and who see the dangers of HPV as an argument for their cause.

"The lack of information getting to the American public regarding this disease is beyond comprehension," said Linda Klepacki, manager of the abstinence policy department at Focus on the Family, a Colorado-based organization.

She and others point to research showing that condoms don't necessarily prevent the spread of HPV, in part because it may be found on parts of the body the latex devices don't cover. Abstinence is the best way to prevent the disease, she argues.

Adding that information to a condom label would be "truth in advertising," said Libby Gray. She's the director of Project Reality, an Illinois-based group that teaches public school students about abstinence - and notes that most students she speaks with have no idea what HPV is.

But scientists who study HPV worry that abstinence groups are dismissing important information to promote their own values.

Point One : What the hell is written on the label? This article is the only one I've seen about this and it doesn't include the actual text of the warning. Didn't anyone at the Associated Press think someone reading this article would at least like a quote from the warning??

Point Two : Since I can't comment on this specific case, lemme just point out that abstinence education is completely worthless and this is just part of a larger pattern of Bush and co. dismantling sex education :

Over the past three years, Congress has appropriated over $100 million in grants to organizations that sponsor abstinence-only education. In November 2000, under the Clinton Administration, HHS developed meaningful, scientifically sound outcome measures to assess whether these programs achieved their intended purposes, including the “proportion of program participants who have engaged in sexual intercourse” and the birth rate of female program participants.

In late 2001, however, the Bush Administration dropped these measures and replaced them with a set of standards that does not include any real outcomes. Rather than tracking pregnancy or sexual activity, these measures assess attendance and the attitudes of teens at the end of the education program, including the “proportion of participants who indicate understanding of the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from premarital sexual activity.”

Such standards are not scientifically valid. A 2001 review of scientific evidence concluded that “adolescents’ sexual beliefs, attitudes, and even intentions are . . . weak proxies for actual behaviors.” That is, even if teens pledge to remain abstinent, they may not actually do so. According to a major HHS-funded report, two “hallmarks of good evaluation” in programs designed to reduce teen pregnancy rates are evaluations that “[m]easure behaviors, not just attitudes and beliefs” and “[c]onduct long-term follow-up (of at least one year).” However, the Bush Administration’s standards for measuring the success of abstinence-only programs contain no reports or assessments of actual behavior or health outcomes and do not require any minimum followup period.

The result is that the performance measures appear constructed to produce the appearance that scientific evidence supports abstinence-only programs when, in fact, the best evidence does not.

What's next? Rolling back FDA standards and replacing them with the warning "the only guaranteed way to avoid food poisoning is to never, ever eat"? (Yes, I know this is very hyperbolic. There's no need to point it out in comments)

But the obsession with abstinence education seems to point to an odd trend among conservatives : trying to fight complex problems with ideas that are so simple that they shouldn't even be mentioned. Are people really stupid enough to believe that saying "don't have sex" will really make people stop having sex?? Apparently so, since these are some of the same people that thought the Columbine shootings could have been prevented by writing the words "thou shalt not kill" on the wall and that kids will stop being curious about drugs if they're told to "Just Say No."

First of all, lemme just say that this headline kinda cracked me up :

Bush Signs Fetus Rights Legislation

Are fetuses allowed to vote now or bring lawsuits? (which is especially ironic coming from the guy who stole an election and keeps advocating "tort reform") The way things are going in this administration, eventually people are gonna have more rights in the womb than out of it.

Okay, joking aside, the article has a good rundown of Bush's abortion record :

Bush has taken several actions that have pleased anti-abortion advocates.

As one of the first acts of his presidency, he reinstated the "Mexico City policy" that bars U.S. money from international groups that support abortion, even with their own money, through direct services, counseling or lobbying activities.

He has signed legislation that bans certain late-term abortions and that amends legal definitions of "person," "human being," "child" and "individual" to include any fetus that survives an abortion.

He has increased federal support for abstinence education, adoption and crisis pregnancy programs, placed severe restrictions on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research to only a few existing cell lines and extended state health coverage to "unborn children."

The measure Bush signed Thursday is limited in scope, applying only to harm to a fetus while a federal crime, such as a terrorist attack or drug-related shooting, is being committed against the pregnant mother. The legislation defines a potential victim as "a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb."

But the most telling part of the article is this :

Bush has said he doesn't believe the country is ready to completely ban abortions; he opposes them except in cases of rape or incest or when pregnancy endangers a woman's life. That position has become a standard line in most of his speeches.

Granted, this isn't a direct quote and it's got the requisite "rape or incest" line, but let's not lose sight of the fact that banning all forms of abortion is the eventual goal of the right wing. Y'see? The country isn't ready to ban abortion yet.

Time Magazine, Jun. 26, 2003

For obvious domestic political reasons, the Bush Administration going into the war had downplayed the scale and duration of a post-war occupation mission. When then-Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told legislators that such a mission would require several hundred thousand U.S. troops, his assessment had been immediately dismissed by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as "wildly off the mark." Wolfowitz explained that "I am reasonably certain that (the Iraqi people) will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down."

The New York Times, Mar. 31, 2004

An enraged mob attacked four American contractors here today, shooting them to death, burning their vehicles, dragging their bodies through the downtown streets and then hanging the charred corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River...The steadily deteriorating security situation in the Falluja area, west of Baghdad, has become so dangerous that no American soldiers or Iraqi security staff responded to the attack against the contractors.

Okay, like some of the other blogs, I've decided that I'm gonna start bugging you guys every week to donate to the Kerry campaign. Bush's ability to outspend Kerry is already starting to show its effect :

If Massachusetts Senator John Kerry were the Democratic Party's candidate and George W. Bush were the Republican Party's candidate, who would you be more likely to vote for?

	Kerry	Bush	Neither	Other	No opinion
Likely Voters
2004 Mar. 26-28	47	51	1	*	1
2004 Mar 5-7	52	44	2	1	1
2004 Feb 16-17	55	43	1	*	1
2004 Feb 6-8	48	49	1	*	2
2004 Jan 9-11	43	55	1	*	1
Registered Voters
2004 Mar 26-28	46	49	2	*	3
2004 Mar 5-7	50	45	2	1	2
2004 Feb 16-17	51	46	2	*	1
2004 Feb 6-8	49	48	1	*	2
2004 Jan 9-11	40	57	2	--	1
National Adults
2004 Mar 26-28	46	48	3	*	3
2004 Mar 5-7	50	45	3	*	2
2004 Feb 16-17	51	44	3	*	2
2004 Feb 6-8	48	48	2	*	2
2004 Jan 9-11	40	57	2	--	1

Ruy Teixeira has a good post about the silver linings to be found in this poll, but the results of the question above are clear : Bush's ability to outspend Kerry can change public opinion.

Look at the ad to the right. With Bush ahead by more than $100 million, he's got the funds to define Kerry in the eyes of the public in a way that could cripple our chances of winning back the White House. The one-two punch of Bush's bully pulpit and his near-endless supply of cash could prove to be a knockout if Kerry doesn't have enough money to even respond to the charges leveled by Bush.

The facts are already on our side, but the money isn't. I know the economy is shitty right now, but if you can spare any money it would help. If you can, please click here (or on the ad) to donate.