Another year has come and almost gone. It's been a tough one for the entire country, but I think we're doing our best, and so has our entire Team Crooks. I've also been a volunteer for Blue America and the support you have shown our Campaign for Health Care Choice and the many great progressive candidates we've endorsed like Alan Grayson has been incredible.

We're reaching out to our readers again and asking for help so that the MSM doesn't overrun the blogosphere. They are pouring millions of dollars in to try and compete with bloggers. Their new twist to fool America is that they have the nerve to call themselves "bloggers." Paid journalists from corporations are trying to co-opt the term.

C&L has been expanding and improving the site and we need your help to continue to make improvements. We're almost finished with a new design that will also include a "diaries" function for people that are registered C&L users which will have a neat video format that will be open to you also. More shall be revealed when we unveil the new design. We hope to have it ready in January. This has taken a lot of time and a lot of dedication from many, many people. Please donate what you can.

In the coming year we're also trying to reach out into the blogosphere to hire more people to make C&L an even better site. We'll be looking for video bloggers, a researcher, site monitors an investigative journalist and interns as well, but we can't do it without your help. (You can email resumes at crooksandliars@gmail.com) I'll post more about that soon.

In 2009, TIME Magazine called us one of the Top 25 Blogs of the year.

In 2008, C&L won the Web Blog award for Best Political Blog on the net.

It's day three for the C&L Donation drive and so far it's going well. Almost 400 people have donated and I thank you.
I'd like to give a shout out to the grand poo bah of our website: Jamie Holly. He's been writing code like a man possessed this year to keep things progressing on C&L. He's one of the people that goes unnoticed on a website like this because he's doing all the back-end work. But he's the one who has crafted our own embed player, implemented the new sites and updated the comment section.

And I'd like to contribute more to his hard work. He's not finished yet and neither are we. Soon we are going to have diaries available for our readers and other very cool features so please, if you can--make a donation to C&L

You can also use snail mail to make your donation.

For Snail Mail:

Crooksandliars.com

P.O. Box 66310

Los Angeles, CA 90066

We're reaching out to our readers and asking for your help so that the MSM and Corporate media do not overrun the blogosphere with Villagers. They are funneling in millions of dollars to compete with and ultimately drive away independent bloggers so that they can rule the Internet. And the kind of cash they are pouring in is staggering.

It's hard to compete with that since the economy is way down, and I think what we've accomplished is in jeopardy if the Internet doesn't step up to help us all, including other blogs that you like. So please donate what you can.

As you've seen, C&L has been expanding and improving the site and we need your help to continue to make more improvements and add more bodies to keep it going. We've released a host of new sites, including our Supreme Court blog Third Branch, the excellent Video Cafe, an expanded LNMC that is breaking new music and bringing music stars to our pages and finallythe very cool Newstalgia--which is posting the most extensive historic audio and video content on the web today. We've also released our first embeddable video player that now lets you embed all videos you see on C&L. This has taken a lot of time, effort and money to do, but we're succeeding. The economy is way down and it's affecting the blogs as well.

Our initial goal is to reach at least 50,000 dollars and the target is to get up to and beyond 100,000. I know this will take time and energy. As you've seen we're also reaching into the blogosphere and hiring bloggers to make C&L an even better site and to reward some of our own. The workload is tremendous. David Neiwert is now the managing editor and Susy Madrak has become a valued front-pager. Max Bernstein is handing the Late Nite Music Club and Gordon Skene is digging into his amazing time vault to bring us historical content that is relevant to today's news and Heather is leading the charge at Video Cafe. Now we're looking to hire video bloggers, a researcher, extra site monitors and an investigative journalist, but we can't do it without your help.

The money is going to be poured right back into C&L and into the hands of our own. It's a daunting task to keep the content flowing, even the MSM has recognized our efforts:

It's wild knowing that we've had over 200 million visitors and growing, so won't you please help us? You can also use snail mail to make your donation.

For Snail Mail:

Crooksandliars.com

P.O. Box 66310

Los Angeles, CA 90066

Continue reading »

We've finally (Jamie) finished the code work on C&L's embed player. Every video you see in one of our flash players can be embedded on your own websites of forums.
Just click on the title of a post and look to the right.

You'll see the code you need. You will also be able to change the color and size of the player to match the site design that you use. Anyway, we've been upgrading the C&L as fast as we can.

We've just added "Third Branch," our new Supreme Court blog to go along with Video Cafe, Newstalgia, Blue America and the LNMC.
We have more changes coming out soon...
And we will need your help to continue to expand and grow C&L. Thanks...
JA

I just wanted to remind all C&L readers that we've really expanded our new "sister sites" and there is a ton of new stories, videos, historical events and excellent music to choose from while you visit the site. We do front page many posts that appear on them, but there just isn't enough room so make sure you check them out. Click on the graphic located on the top right hand column to easily connect with them.

Video Cafe

Newstalgia

Late Night Music Club or the LNMC

The Blue America site will be reloading new progressive choices for upcoming elections soon and we'll have live chats with candidates conducted there as well.

I'll be writing more about other improvements and new sites that I will be unveiling as soon as I can.

Thanks for all your help.

I'm glad to announce a new project at C&L. Gordon Skene will be able to reach back into his incredible historical collection and add new and vital audio and video never released before on the Internet which will bring the past into the present.

"Newstalgia" becomes C&L's newest site. There's a tab on the upper left of C&L's homepage that lists our many sites. Here's a bio on Gordon.

Two time Grammy Nominee Gordon Skene comes to Newstalgia with a lifelong passion of collecting and archiving news, historic events and popular culture.

Started on the morning of November 22, 1963, Skene has accumulated an archive of over 100,000 reels and 40,000 discs of broadcasts, airchecks and field recordings highlighting history from 1898 to the present.

He's been involved with several album and Internet projects such as "Great Speeches of The Twentieth Century", "The Beat Generation", 'Have A Nice Decade - The 70's Culture Box" "The Big Box of Baseball" and more recently "The 100 Greatest" CD/Boxset. He was actively involved with Microsoft on their Encarta and Bookshelf projects and has provided The History Channel with over 1,000 historic clips to be used as downloads on their website.

In addition to countless album and internet projects, The Gordon Skene Sound collection, in conjunction with Searchworks, has provided numerous historic recordings for such film/TV projects as "Brokeback Mountain" "The Miracle", "Angels In America" and "The Hoax". He has worked closely with the music Departments of 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros.

As well as collecting and archiving, Gordon has also been consultant for various record companies, including Deutsche Grammophon, JVC Japan, Specialty Records, Vee-Jay Records and many others.

When he's not knee-deep in tapes, mildew and coffee grounds, Gordon is also a novelist, having published his first novel "Over Under Sideways Down" in the UK to rave reviews and critical acclaim from Publishers Weekly.

Skene is very excited to be working and doing daily postings on Newstalgia. As he puts it - "If I had a tail it would wag!"

As you've seen, we made major improvements on C&L the last few months with more to come. The Video Cafe being run by Heather and David and all the rest of the team have posted a ton of videos for your enjoyment. We don't always front page them, but don't forget to check it out every day.

Video Cafe is growing at an incredible rate. We'll have our own embed player finished very shortly too...

I'll be in DC, hanging for the inauguration and I'll be co-hosting the Netroots Nation "Yes We Can" gala event. It should be a blast.

Netroots Nation Yes We Can Party
An evening of celebration, carousing, eating and drinking with fellow members of the progressive community, with music by Chopteeth Afrofunk Big Band

Monday, January 19, 2009
7 p.m. to midnight
The Clarendon Ballroom
3185 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington VA
Just 3 miles from downtown DC // Accessible by the Metro (Orange line)

Tickets are $90 (includes hors d'oeuvres and four drink tickets). Get yours at netrootsnation.com/yeswecanparty.

And I'll be joined by my pals too:

An evening of celebrating, carousing, eating and drinking with the progressive community, with live music by Chopteeth Afrofunk Big Band!

Blog co-hosts: AmericaBlog, Blue Commonwealth, Congress Matters, Crooks & Liars, Democratic GAIN, Firedoglake, Fivethirtyeight.com, Frameshop, The Great Schlep, Jack & Jill Politics, Living Liberally and myDD

A few quick notes.

As you've noticed I've used the donations from the last C&L fundraiser to help fund all the updates we've done to C&L so far. We're going to develop the new LNMC website into a full on music blog with music reviews, interviews, exclusive releases and more cool tunes after the election.

But I wanted to highlight that we've just gone live with our "Video Cafe." There is so much news breaking around us and so little time to write it all up that I decided to set up a new site to try and keep you on top of it as much as possible and add as much video as I could.

Everything is still a work in progress, but the massive importing of C&L to a new software platform and the many updates that we've done have gone tremendously well so far. Major kudos to Jamie, our webmaster and Klos, our computer engineer. There are plenty more thanks to go around...That's it for now.

UPDATE:

We have noticed people having problems with the YouTubes. There are actually a couple of problems contributing to this. The first one is YouTube has been having a lot of slow loading problems lately. Another problem, where the video plays then stops, is actually a problem with the Flash Player inside of Firefox. Adobe and Mozilla are working on this problem.

Susy Madrak was the first blogger that was kind enough to give me some much needed advice when I first started C&L. I had no idea what I was doing back in '04 and I was emailing every blog out there a few times a day---trying to get a little traction for my video style. She explained a few things to me. What not to do so to speak. We've been friends ever since.

If you can donate a few bucks for her surgery that would be very cool.

We're getting closer to going live with our new site. The test server is ready so we can finally start practicing. I'll slowly add some new web pages on as we go along too like a dedicated page for the LNMC and more videos for your viewing pleasure at the 'Video Cafe,' along with Murray Waas' blog. He's got a new piece called:

"President Bush asserts executive privilege rather than turn over Cheney's FBI interview regarding Valerie Plame."

It will probably have a few bumps along the way as the servers get used to the new software platform, but that's standard fare. And we'll be adding some very cool bells and whistles like diaries and polls after we make sure everything is stable. Thanks to all our readers that donated to help make this happen. People power, baby....

I hope you'll donate a few bucks to help C&L work on our upcoming improvements to the site. I'll run it just a few more days and see where we are. Thanks so much...

We're using paypal and CC through them...Snail Mail checks to: Crooksandliars.com, PO Box 66310, Los Angeles, CA 90066. I have received some very beautiful letters so far. You can also buy C&L hats and coffee mugs here. 

I hope you'll donate a few bucks to help C&L work on our upcoming improvements to the site. I'll run it just a few more days next week...

We're using paypal and CC through them...Snail Mail checks to: Crooksandliars.com, PO Box 66310, Los Angeles, CA 90066. You can also buy C&L hats and coffee mugs here.