"...but having the dog helps. Not just in what he will do for me, but in the companionship that touches me in the heart."

    -Quote from a U.S. Army veteran who was caught in an IED explosion during his second tour of duty in Iraq, losing his left arm and left leg.



America's VetDogs helps veterans who have served our country honorably to live with dignity and independence whether they are visually impaired or have other special needs, by providing them with guide dogs, service dogs, and innovative technologies. A project of the Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind. vetdogs.org

If you donate to Democratic Underground today, we'll give 10% of your contribution to help America's VetDogs.

And you're also helping Democratic Underground during our 4th quarter fund drive.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/donat...

Thank you to all of our monthly subscribers, and to everyone who has donated to this week's fund drive. Your support is vital to keeping Democratic Underground online.

Please kick and recommend this thread so more DUers can see it.

David Allen
DU Administrator

It's the REMOTE AREA MEDICAL FOUNDATION.

The Remote Area Medical® (RAM) Volunteer Corps is a non-profit, volunteer, airborne relief corps dedicated to serving mankind by providing free health care, dental care, eye care, veterinary services, and technical and educational assistance to people in remote areas of the United States and the world.

Founded in 1985, Remote Area Medical® is a publicly supported all-volunteer charitable organization. Volunteer doctors, nurses, pilots, veterinarians and support workers participate in expeditions (at their own expense) in some of the world's most exciting places. Medical supplies, medicines, facilities and vehicles are donated.


If you donate to Democratic Underground today, we'll give 10% of your contribution to help the Remote Area Medical Foundation perform these vital services.

And you're also helping Democratic Underground during our 4th quarter fund drive.

It only takes a moment.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/donat...

Thank you to all of our monthly subscribers, and to everyone who has donated to this week's fund drive. Your support is vital to keeping Democratic Underground online.

David Allen
DU Administrator

Please kick and recommend this thread so more DUers can see it.

As you probably know, this week is Democratic Underground's Fourth Quarter 2009 fund drive. This is a completely independent website, and we depend on the generous contributions of our visitors to help cover our costs. We receive no funds from any other organizations. Other than advertising, our main source of income is small donations -- about $20 per donor.

With Thanksgiving next week, we decided to try something new this year to give back to the community. If you donate this week, we will give 10% of your donation to charity. A different charity has been assigned to each day. If you donate before 12 midnight Pacific Time (3am Eastern Time), we'll give 10% to help foster children:

 

Treehouse for Kids offers kids in foster care what all children so desperately need: a safe place to dream. Their core programs – Tutoring, Educational Advocacy, College and Career Planning, Little Wishes, Summer Camp and the Wearhouse – give foster children a real childhood as well as hope for the future. http://www.treehouse4kids.org

Please take a moment right now to donate. It's quick and easy and totally secure. Just click here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/donat...

Thank you so much for your support.

Please kick and recommend this thread so more DUers can see it. Thanks.

David Allen
DU Administrator

I just recevied this email about 45 minutes ago. Had to share...



C'mon you miserable, baby-killing, misguided and unhappy people: You have until 12 midnight Pacific Time (3am Eastern) Tuesday to donate to DU and have 10% of your donation go to Modest Needs. More 'charities' throughout the week...

For more information, or to donate, click here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/donat...

In the Spirit of Thanksgiving, DU is giving 10% to Charity!

This week is Democratic Underground's Fourth Quarter 2009 Fund Drive. If you donate to DU this week, we will give 10% of your donation to charity. Each day of the fund drive has been assigned a different charity -- your 10% will be given to the charity assigned to the day you donate. To help plan your giving, and to learn more about the selected charities, here is the schedule for the week. Thank you so much for your help, and Happy Thanksgiving!

DUers offered many great suggestions for charities. It was very difficult to narrow the list down to just six. We decided to go with a mix of well-known national charities, and smaller, more targeted charities. We hope there is something here that everyone can support!

Sunday-Monday
PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA
Planned Parenthood is the nation’s leading sexual and reproductive health care provider and advocate. For more than 90 years, Planned Parenthood has worked to improve women's health and safety, prevent unintended pregnancies, and advance the right and ability of individuals and families to make informed and responsible choices. http://www.plannedparenthood.org

Tuesday
MODEST NEEDS
Modest Needs is an award-winning public charity with a simple but critical mission: we work to stop the cycle of poverty BEFORE it starts for the low-income workers whom conventional philanthropy has forgotten. They do this by empowering compassionate members of the general public to safely and securely help hard-working, low-income households to afford the kinds of short-term emergency expenses that we've all encountered before: the unexpected car repair, the unanticipated visit to the doctor, or the unusually large heating bill, for example. http://www.modestneeds.org

Wednesday
TREEHOUSE FOR KIDS
Treehouse for Kids offers kids in foster care what all children so desperately need: a safe place to dream. Their core programs – Tutoring, Educational Advocacy, College and Career Planning, Little Wishes, Summer Camp and the Wearhouse – give foster children a real childhood as well as hope for the future. http://www.treehouse4kids.org

Thursday
REMOTE AREA MEDICAL FOUNDATION
The Remote Area Medical (RAM) Volunteer Corps is a non-profit, volunteer, airborne relief corps dedicated to serving mankind by providing free health care, dental care, eye care, veterinary services, and technical and educational assistance to people in remote areas of the United States and the world. http://www.ramusa.org

Friday
AMERICA'S VET DOGS
America's VetDogs helps veterans who have served our country honorably to live with dignity and independence whether they are visually impaired or have other special needs, by providing them with guide dogs, service dogs, and innovative technologies. A project of the Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind. http://www.vetdogs.org

Saturday-Sunday
PARENTS, FAMILIES, AND FRIENDS OF LESBIANS AND GAYS (PFLAG)
PFLAG promotes the health and well-being of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons, their families and friends through: support, to cope with an adverse society; education, to enlighten an ill-informed public; and advocacy, to end discrimination and to secure equal civil rights. Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays provides opportunity for dialogue about sexual orientation and gender identity, and acts to create a society that is healthy and respectful of human diversity. http://www.pflag.org

Please kick and recommend this thread so more DUers will see it! Thank you!

As I explained in two earlier posts, next week is Democratic Underground's Fourth Quarter Donation Drive. In the spirit of "giving back" for Thanksgiving, the DU Admins thought it might be worthwhile to select a charity each day to receive 10% of the funds donated to Democratic Underground that day.

Earlier this week, DUers suggested a number of great charites to benefit from the 10% promotion. I encourage everyone to take a look at all the suggested charities -- it is a fantastic list, with a number of well-known national charities, as well as smaller, more targeted (sometimes local) charities.

With so many charities to choose from, the DU Admins are having a difficult time coming up with a final list of six. One thing we are trying to decide is whether to pick large charities, smaller charities, or a mix of both. Here's our thinking:

Large, national charities - The benefit of choosing large, national charities, is that we would have a wide list of general themes which should appeal to the broadest range of DUers. We think almost everyone here would be able to find at least one charity (and probably many) that they support. The downside, I think, is that our total contribution to all the charities (probably totaling between $2,000 and $3,000) will be a tiny drop in a very large bucket.

Smaller, more targeted (and local) charities - The benefit of choosing smaller charities is that our small contributions would have a bigger impact. Also, we would be giving some visibility to organizations that are doing good work, but are not well known. Our contribution would likely be going to a specific project, rather than a very broad range of different things.

A mix of large and small charities - Perhaps we should get the "best of both worlds" and pick a few large charities and a few small charities. (This is the option that the DU Admins are leaning toward right now.)

So, what do you think?

(Please kick and recommend so more DUers get a chance to vote.)

On Tuesday I posted a request for DUers to suggest charities. For those of you who missed it, here is the text of my post:



DUers suggested a number of very interesting and deserving charities. It is going to be difficult to narrow the list down to only six. I think we probably need to decide whether we should go with large, well-known, national charities so everyone is familiar with their work, or if we should go with smaller, more local charities so our (admittedly small) contribution will have a larger impact.

In case it was not clear in my earlier post: This is being done in conjunction with the Fourth Quarter Fund Drive to raise money for Democratic Underground. The DU admins put our heads together about a month ago to try to come up with a fun idea that ties in with Thanksgiving. We thought the idea of donating a percentage to charity fit with the spirit of Thanksgiving. A number of our members have suggested this in the past. So the 10% donation is not going to be a huge amount of money, but hopefully it will make your donation to DU a little more satisfying.

Here's a list of all the charities that DUers suggested. I included a link to the website if it was included in the post. Some of them you have certainly heard of, and some others are smaller but no less deserving. Hopefully this is an opportunity for all of these charities to get a little exposure, even if we don't pick them for our fund drive. If you would like to express your support for any of these charities, please post to let us know. And you are welcome to suggest any charity that isn't on the list.

A Wish With Wings
Ali Forney Center (LGBT homeless youths)
American Cancer Society
American Friends Service Committee http://www.afsc.org /
American Heart Association
American Indian College Fund http://www.collegefund.org
Amnesty International
Animal Umbrella http://www.animalumbrella.org
Appleseed: a network of public interest justice centers. http://www.appleseeds.net
ASPCA
Autism Society http://www.autism-society.org
Big Apple Bull Terrier Rescue http://www.bigapplebullies.com /
Bread for the World
Charity: Water http://www.charitywater.org
childfund http://www.childfund.org
Chilren's Make-A-Wish Foundation
Cosmetic and Reconstructive Support Program from the Nat'l Coalition against Domestic Violence http://www.ncadv.org/programs/CosmeticandR...
Doctors Without Borders http://doctorswithoutborders.org
Environmental Defense fund
Equal Justice Initiative http://www.eji.org
Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, NY http://farmsanctuary.org
Feeding America (formerly America's Second Harvest)
Fisher House Foundation (Veterans) www.fisherhouse.org
Food & Friends http://www.foodandfriends.org
Fresh Start http://www.freshstartwc.org/WelcometoFresh...
Friends of Pine Ridge (Lakota Nation) http://www.friendsofpineridgereservation.o...
Gesundheit Institute (Dr. Hunter Campbell "Patch" Adams) http://www.patchadams.org
Habitat for Humanity
Heifer Project http://heifer.org
Holt International Children's Services http://www.holtintl.org
Homes for Vets http://www.homesforvets.com /
Hospice
Humane Society of the United States
I Love Mountains http://ilovemountains.org
Iraq Veterans Against the War http://www.ivaw.org
Justice for Murdered Children http://www.jfmc.org
Kiva
Lake Claire Community Land Trust http://www.lcclt.org
Mazon http://www.mazon.org
Mercy Corps http://www.mercycorps.org
Mind Freedom http://www.mindfreedom.org /
Modest Needs http://www.modestneeds.org
NARAL
National Aids Foundation www.aidsfund.org
National Association of Free Clinics http://www.freeclinics.us /
National Resources Defense Council http://www.nrdc.org /
Near East Foundation http://www.neareast.org/main/default.aspx
On Our Own http://www.onourownmd.org/asp.html
Operation Smile
OXFAM www.oxfam.org
PFLAG
Pink Ribbon http://www.pinkribbon.org
Planned Parenthood
Red Cross
Remote Area Medical
Remote Area Medical Foundation http://www.ramusa.org/index.html
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
St. Jude's
Treehouse (foster children) http://www.treehouse4kids.org
USO
VetDogs (pair injured Vets with service dogs)
Wilderness Society http://wilderness.org
Wine to Water http://www.winetowater.org

As usual, we had a good response to our call for moderators, and it was extremely difficult to narrow the field down. We had to turn down a number of very qualified people. We hope that everyone who applied to serve as a moderator this turn will consider applying again next term.

A moderator switch is always a little chaotic, so I want to apologize in advance for any problems that may arise over the next few days. Thank you for your understanding.

Please take a moment to say hello to our new moderators, and to express your gratitude to our retiring moderators.

HERE ARE YOUR MODERATORS FOR THIS TERM:

CatWoman
cbayer
charlie and algernon
CrownPrinceBandar
Danger Mouse
dogday
gabby garcia
Grateful For Hope
greatauntoftriplets
Heddi
Kerrytravelers
krispos42
Lithos
madaboutharry
maddezmom
mvd
New Earth
petersond
pinto
proud patriot
rasputin1952
RFKHumphreyObama
Sirveri
The empressof all
TygrBright
undergroundrailroad
unhappycamper
WePurrsevere
Wickerman
wryter2000

And I would like to express my gratitude to the retiring moderators, who did an amazing job during the previous term.

SAY THANK YOU TO THE RETIRING MODS:

awoke_in_2003
Goblinmonger
lostnfound
muriel_volestrangler
ncrainbowgrrl
Puglover
Redbear
RubyDuby in GA
wakemeupwhenitsover

NEW MODERATORS: Please log into the private Moderator Forum and introduce yourselves. The moderator forum is in the "My Forums" section at the top of the Latest page. You may have to log out and log back in again to reset your account and access the forum. If you have difficulty finding the Moderator forum, please send a private message to Elad.

RETIRING MODERATORS: Please log out and login again to reset your account to regular member status.

Thank you, moderators! We wouldn't be able to run this place without your help!

Skinner
DU Admin

As you may know, next week is the Democratic Underground fourth quarter 2009 fund drive. With Thanksgiving coming up soon, we have decided to do something different for the DU fund drive this year -- in the spirit of giving thanks and giving back.

During next week's fund drive Democratic Underground is going to donate 10% of the funds we receive to a selected group of charities. Here's how it's going to work:

This week, with the help of the DU membership, we are going to select six charities to support. Each of the charities will be assigned a day: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday/Sunday. Each day of the fund drive, 10% of funds donated to Democratic Underground will be donated to that day's assigned charity. A list of charities will be made available to DU members who wish to donate so you can plan your donation to benefit the charity of your choice.

The process to select the six charities is going to be fairly casual. If you are interested in suggesting a charity, you should do so in this thread. If you like someone else's suggestion in this thread, please feel free to reply to their post to say so. If necessary, we will open additional threads throughout the week in order to solicit more suggestions and narrow down the choices to the final six.

Our intent is to come up with a list of six charities that, taken together, broadly represent this community and its values. Obviously, we will not be able to accommodate everyone's favorite charity. But we hope that everyone will find at least one charity that you want to help support (while you support DU). With this in mind, we intend to select the charities so their missions do not overlap. In other words: We're not going to select multiple charities that do basically the same thing. So, for example, if we have an environmental charity on the list, we're not going to select two or three of them -- there will just be one.

One more thing: The charity CANNOT be political. No political parties or candidates or PACs or other organizations intended to influence campaigns. It is against the law for Democratic Underground (a corporation) to donate money to political organizations.

So, let's get started... Tell us your favorite charities!

When we unveiled the unrecommend function a few months back, the primary goal was to change the content of the Greatest Page. But many DUers suggested that it would be cool to be able to crunch the numbers to get different lists of discussion threads on DU. With that in mind, EarlG and Elad have put together a new function that highlights different types of threads.

We call it the "Top Tens Page":

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

Currently there are four Top Ten lists on the page:

New And Hot
Recommendations + unrecommendations + replies = points (4 hours)
This is a list of the ten threads, started in the last four hours, that seem to be getting the most attention (both positive and negative). We create this list by adding the total number of recommendations, unrecommendations, and replies that a thread has received.

On The Fence
A close percentage of recommendations and unrecommendations (24 hours)
This is a list of the ten threads started in the last 24 hours that have received a similar number of recommendations and unrecommendations. Often, these are contentious issues where the DU membership are somewhat split. Threads must have a minimum of 10 replies and six total recs and unrecs to make it onto the list.

Most Discussed
The discussion threads with the most replies (24 hours)
This is a list of the ten threads started in the last 24 hours that have the most replies.

Just Recs
Recommendations only -- unrecommendations are not counted (24 hours)
This is a list of the ten threads started in the last 24 hours that have received the most positive recommendations. This is a nod to those of you who miss the old Greatest Page, from the days when there was no unrecommend function.

We have added a link to the top of the DU Greatest Page which leads to the new Top Tens Page. You can always access the page from there.

We think this adds a fun new dimension to DU, and gives all of our visitors a new way to experience the site.

If you have any questions or comments, please post them in this thread.

Skinner, EarlG, and Elad
DU Administrators.

We have less than 75 donations to go to reach 1000. We can make it, but we need to pull out all the stops!

You've been thinking about donating... You've been putting it off all week... The time has come to donate to DU! The fund drive ends Sunday at midnight ET (9 PM PT)!

We know that times are tough right now -- if you cannot afford to donate, please do not. But if you have a little extra to spare, we hope you will take a moment to donate to DU. THERE IS NO MINIUMUM DONATION. Whether you can spare $50 or $5, you can help us reach our goal. You'll get a cool gold star next to your username, and you'll enjoy donor privileges for one full year.

A $20 donation is a little more than a nickel per day over the next year!

A $5 donation is a little more than a penny per day over the next year!

Can you spare a nickel per day? Can you spare a penny per day? If so, please donate to DU right now. Surely you will read *something* on DU today that is worth a penny. (Or even a nickel!) You probably already did.

You know how much this community means to you. You know how much time you spend here. There really isn't any other community like Democratic Underground, either online or off. This is your opportunity to give something back.



Even if you can't donate, you can help us by giving this thread a kick and a rec!

Thank you to everyone who donated this quarter, and thank you to all of our monthly subscribers!

David Allen
Democratic Underground

Tired of all those annoying ads on Democratic Underground? Did you know that you can make them go away? Just Donate to Democratic Underground and almost all of the ads will disappear. (Make sure you are logged in to your DU account when you donate.) You'll be able to surf your favorite progressive website ad-free for a full year!

Here are just a few of the perks you'll enjoy as a DU donor:

• Participate in our 100+ DU Groups.
• Post polls for DUers to vote in.
• Use the DU search function.
• Upload your own custom avatar image, which will appear next to all your posts.
• Get a cool gold star next to your username when you post.
• Experience the thrill of helping support this amazing progressive community.
• Gain all-important DU "street cred."
• Post a cool sticky note on GrovelBot's Big Board.
• Oh, and did I mention... Almost all of the ads will disappear!

So, what are you waiting for? Donate to DU today!

Thank you for your support.

Skinner
DU Admin

I'm not kidding. There are only 12 months in a year, and Free Republic spends eight of them asking for money. Their current fund drive started on July 1. It's still going on today -- six and a half weeks later -- and they are 20% below their goal. Can you imagine if DU fund drives lasted for two months out of every three month quarter?

Here on DU, we have never held a fund drive that lasted longer than a week.

Even the one time when we didn't reach our goal, we ended the fund drive after a week. Because people don't come to DU for the fund drives -- you come for the discussion. And the discussions are much more satisfying when you don't have to watch the admins begging for money all the time. I wish we didn't have to hold fund drives at all. But we do.

I know that times are tough right now. If you don't have any money to spare, please do not donate to Democratic Underground. For your sake, I hope that the economy starts to get better soon.

But if you have a few extra bucks, we would really appreciate it if you could donate to DU. It only takes a minute, and you'll feel good about supporting this amazing community of progressives. Plus, if you donate at least $10, you'll get to post a sticky note GrovelBot's Big Board.

And you can take comfort knowing that a week from now, this fund drive will be history.

Thank you to everyone who has donated. And thank you for being part of this community.

David Allen
"Skinner"
DU Administrator

As usual, we had a good response to our call for moderators, and it was extremely difficult to narrow the field down. We had to turn down a number of very qualified people. We hope that everyone who applied to serve as a moderator this turn will consider applying again next term.

A moderator switch is always a little chaotic, so I want to apologize in advance for any problems that may arise over the next few days. Thank you for your understanding.

Please take a moment to say hello to our new moderators, and to express your gratitude to our retiring moderators.

HERE ARE YOUR MODERATORS FOR THIS TERM:

awoke_in_2003
canetoad
CatWoman
cbayer
CrownPrinceBandar
Danger Mouse
dogday
gabby garcia
Goblinmonger
Grateful for Hope
greatauntoftriplets
Kerrytravelers
krispos42
Lithos
lostnfound
madaboutharry
maddezmom
Mimosa
muriel_volestrangler
mvd
ncrainbowgrrl
New Earth
petersond
pinto
proud patriot
Puglover
rasputin1952
Redbear
RFKHumphreyObama
RubyDuby in GA
Soylent Brice
The empressof all
TygrBright
undergroundrailroad
wakemeupwhenitsover
WePurrsevere
Wickerman
wryter2000

And I would like to express my gratitude to the retiring moderators, who did an amazing job during the previous term.

SAY THANK YOU TO THE RETIRING MODS:

Call Me Wesley

NEW MODERATORS: Please log into the private Moderator Forum and introduce yourselves. The moderator forum is in the "My Forums" section at the top of the Latest page. You may have to log out and log back in again to reset your account and access the forum. If you have difficulty finding the Moderator forum, please send a private message to Elad.

RETIRING MODERATORS: Please log out and login again to reset your account to regular member status.

Thank you, moderators! We wouldn't be able to run this place without your help!

Skinner
DU Admin

By now, I think most of you have probably heard that we upgraded the DU Recommend function to allow people to "Unrecommend" as well. For those of you who missed it, here is my thread from last week announcing the change.

The DU admins have been monitoring the new feature, and we are pleased to see that it is working more-or-less how we intended it to work. In fact, I think it is working better than I expected. Our motivation for giving you the ability to unrecommend was to improve the overall quality of the threads that make it to the DU Greatest Page, while giving a boost to topics that have broad appeal to our members, and it seems to be doing just that. We believe the unrecommend function has been a success, and it is a net positive for our community.

Obviously, there are many people who are not happy about this change, and have said so. After trying the new system for five days, we believe that the most dire predictions have not come to pass. However, we do believe some of your concerns are legitimate. We have been closely monitoring the system to see how it is being used and abused, and will continue to do so. So far, it is our impression that the vast majority of DUers are trying to use the system in a fair and responsible manner. A small number of people have used it in a manner we would consider irresponsible, and an even smaller number have been grossly abusive in their use of the system. We have the ability to bar members from using the system if they abuse it, and we have taken advantage of that ability in a few extreme cases. But we believe it is very difficult for the small number of abusive users to have much impact because there are so many people using it in a responsible manner. For the most part, the ratings seem fair. Obviously, there are exceptions -- but I don't think it makes sense to throw out the entire system because a few deserving threads did not make it to the greatest page, or because a few undeserving threads did. Overall, I think that happens a lot less under our new system compared to the system we had before.

We are going to continue to monitor the system to see how it is working, and how it is not. We are committed to making any changes that we deem necessary and appropriate so that the system is relatively fair and free from abuse. One change that we are considering -- which has been suggested by many of you -- is to get rid of the "<0" designation so threads will never display a rating lower than 0. We believe this change would take away one incentive for people to abuse the system, and it would not affect our goal of improving the content of the Greatest Page.

Also, now that we have the system in place, there are a lot of cool things we can do with it. Many of you have suggested that we could crunch the recs and unrecs in new ways in order to create lists of highly controversial threads, or popular threads, or threads with the most positive recommendations, or whatever. We think it would be cool to do this. If we can provide you with more different ways to experience DU, that's a good thing.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we improve DU. And thank you for all of your feedback.

Skinner, EarlG, and Elad
DU Administrators