Open thread - PayPal is back!

El Cielo de Avinyo by Ramon Lombarte

On this sunny Sunday afternoon, I would like to share a picture I have in my house. It's very peaceful, I like it very much. If you like Lombarte's style, clicking on his name will take you to a poster shop where you'll find more of his pictures.

Changing the subject, there are some good news. PayPal is back, yeah, yeah, yeah! They wanted a lot of information, from our blood types to the names of our pets (joking) and we were happy to send them everything they wanted, so all is well again.

Click here:

We're looking into the possibility of having a PO Box in the US for readers who dislike online transactions. We'll keep you posted.

The other bit of good news is that my sister is coming for a visit. We haven't seen each other since 2004, so I won't be able to blog for two weeks starting on Wednesday (April 14). Good job I can count on Patrick, Kathleen and our fantastic readers to keep things going... I'll be far too busy catching up on six years of all the family stuff, like weddings, births and general gossip!

That's all for now, folks. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

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We can't have an open thread without some Sarah Palin gossip.

GLOBAL WARMING? . . . A Juneau earwig reports Gov. Parnell is getting
the Governor's Mansion air-conditioned. It was apparently too hot last
summer. And in case you wondered what happened to Sarah's tanning bed,
the one the mansion had to be rewired to accommodate, Ear is told she
took it with her. Thank goodness.
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Maintaining our growth - The next step

Palingates started just over a year ago as a small, tentative blog. Over the past 14 months, we acquired two very commited researchers who also possess fine writing skills. And we grew, as a blog and as a community. Disqus, with all its temperamental episodes, contributed in making the discussion more open and interactions more immediate.

It's very rewarding for all of us to work together, digging up relevant information about Sarah Palin and her cronies. We can't thank you enough for all your valuable contributions.

But... all this free flowing information generates more research, more double-checking so the posts are accurate, backed-up by solid sources. This takes not only a lot of our time, but also eats into our meagre personal resources. The costs of phone bills, subscriptions to paid sites and other incidentals seem to be piling up at an alarming rate.

We want to continue to provide up-to-the-minute reliable news, commentary and information, but we can no longer afford to go it alone.

One of the alternatives would be to have advertisements, but they would clutter the layout of the blog and seem to be very hit-and-miss as far as generating some income goes... We prefer to have widgets to worthwhile causes rather than ads all over the place. Causes have a better purpose and we don't risk irritating our readers with relentless invitations to buy things, join whatever clubs or to take vacations in Patagonia.

Many readers urged us to install a PayPal button to help fund our efforts and we always resisted doing it.

We'll have to surrender to the lure of that button for the sake of practicality and results.

Contrary to what some people on the other side of the fence may think, we are not paid operatives for the Democratic Party and if George Soros is our friend, mentor and provider of funds, either he's been very remiss or we have mislaid the checks (highly unlikely, we are very, very thorough, as you know...).

So there you have it: We need some help.

Give a little, give a lot, it doesn't matter, just help us to keep digging so we'd be able share our findings with you without having to worry about making a phone call or subscribing to some expensive site that may have the answers to what we're looking for. It would also make the regular all-nighters seem less burdensome!

Thank you,

Patrick, Kathleen and Regina

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Donation button:

(The donation button can also be found on the sidebar)

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UPDATE:

Please note that we now changed the paypal account for technical reasons, because the first account was only a temporary solution. The button looks exactly the same. The new buttons are already included in this post and in the sidebar. All payments safely arrived, of course! Thank you again for your generous donations!
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