It shames me deeply, but I agree with Michelle Malkin on one thing: Andrew Sullivan is kind of a whore. Sullivan has raised nearly $200,000 in his last two pledge drives to cover "bandwidth costs". Now he's just signed up with blogads, explaining that doing so "will soon provide a real revenue stream for this site". Sure, the guy deserves to earn a living -- which he does through his various print journalism gigs, too. But pretending these drives are for bandwidth is disingenuous. Kos says his site costs him $6000 a year -- and dailykos, being more of a community site, has significantly greater needs in terms of bandwidth and hardware than andrewsullivan.com.

Like I said, I don't begrudge Sullivan his ability to earn a living, but it seems like he's making a very good one while only slightly-smaller bloggers like Atrios or Kos can't make one at all -- which makes me think people are responding to his lame complaints about hosting costs rather than intentionally giving money to provide him with a salary. Misleading people with geekspeak in order to maintain such an arrangement is a little shady -- although I wouldn't hold my breath for Sullivan to see a problem with this or any other income disparity.

ciao tutti. i know you are just salivating to hear about our weekend adventures on ass island, so i'll cut to the chase.

the weekend was fantastic. well, except for getting to the island and back. it took us six hours on friday evening to get up there, due to terrible bay bridge traffic. jon, tommy, and i arrived around 12:30am; julie, matt, jess and robin were already there, fending off pygmy deer and roasting marshmallows. let me tell you about these pygmy deer: they are terrifying. more terrifying than ponies. friday night as i was walking to the bathrooms to brush my teeth, i saw a small group of them on the side of the road, just munching grass and being cute and tiny. "oh, how adorable," i thought to myself. "tiny deer." then i caught the eye of the male deer (who is about three feet tall). he stared me down, and all of a sudden i noticed that he had ENORMOUS horns. he kept staring, and edged closer, and then i decided that was a good time to break into a run. thankfully he did not challenge me to a head-butting duel, as these deer are apparently wont to do, so all was good.

pictures are behind the cut. be prepared for excessive wildlife photos.