FReepathon: Our new Donation System is Ready to Roll! -- Thread Two

Free Republic Donation System ^ | Originally Published 9/28/02 | Jim Robinson

[Auntie Mame]

Welcome to the New Free Republic Donation System!

John has programmed a great new donation system for us. It can accept credit cards or PayPal donations and will eventually also accept electronic checks. We have installed a new secure server system and have contracted with Authorize.net to do the actual credit card processing, and, of course, PayPal will process the PayPal donations through their system.

I've changed the links on our front page to link to the new program:

https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/

If you have bookmarks to the old system, please update to the new. The old system will be discontinued.

Take a test drive through the new system if you haven't already, and notice that it has several new features and reports available, including scoreboard, current stats, our budget and a faq. It's live now, so if you enter a donation it's for real (and thank you very much if you do).

John will continue making enhancements to the new system as we go, but the basic program is ready to go, and is live, and on the air.

We've decided to roll out our 4th quarter fundraiser with the new system on a late Saturday afternoon, as Saturday's are slow days and we might as well be gentle while breaking in the new system.

Thank you John for the new system! Great work!

Thank you BadJoe, WillaJohns, WIMom and all of the dedicated hardworking volunteers on the fundraising team who have helped us so much with these FReepathons in the past.

And thank you all for your continuing efforts! Without your dedication and hard work, FR could not stay on the air.

And thank you FReepers! Without your continued participation and financial support there would be no Free Republic!

A note to current monthly donors: We will need you to re-enter your recurring monthly donation to the new system, but please do not do it yet. Joe just processed your September donations on the 20th of September. The new system processes your donation on the day it is entered, so please wait until later in October to start your monthly on the new system. Also, please let BadJoe know via FReepmail (and please include your real name so he can match it with your credit card info in his file) after you re-enter your monthly donation so he can take you off his list. At the end of October, he will email all of those on his list who have not contacted him to remind them of the new system. Thank you very much for your continued support.

A note to prospective new monthly donors: We have included a list of our fixed monthly expenses as well as an estimate of our non-recurring expenses on our budget page of the donation system. We've also included an estimate of our current recurring monthly donations from our monthly donors. If and when the total of the recurring monthly donations ever meets our monthly expenses, there will no longer be a need for these FReepathons. It can happen someday. Thank you for considering a regular monthly contribution.

Note to all: We are looking forward to an exciting and rewarding election cycle. I know that we are not all in full agreement on this, but I sincerely believe that we have an excellent opportunity with this election to set the liberals back many years. And I also believe that winning this election in a big way for the conservatives will be the spark that allows our fight to return the Constitution to its rightful place as the Supreme Law of the Land to really get off the ground. I sincerely believe this is essential in our fight to secure our Liberty!

We hold the White House and the House of Representatives. If we re-take the majority in the Senate, it will be one of the very rare times in our history that the conservatives have held the majority control in all departments.

I see this as a gift from God. A majority means that the conservatives will chair the various committees of Congress and can set the legislative agenda. And, perhaps more importantly, a majority in the Senate will make it much more likely that President Bush's appointments will be confirmed.

This means we will be able to start replacing some of the liberal judicial activists on the bench with conservatives (don't tell Daschle & Co. that) and perhaps we will finally have a real shot at actually overturning some of the liberal bunk that has been foisted on us over the last century or so. How about overturning Roe vs Wade? With the current mood of the populace and with a conservative Senate, I think it can be done!

Remember, the liberals have controlled all or most of our government for at least 80 of the last 100 years. No wonder we are in such a mess today. This is the best opportunity we've ever had to reverse it in a big way. Kick the liberals out! Take control of the Senate and replace the liberal judiciary. This alone will set liberalism back thirty to forty years!

We must not fail to take advantage of this opportunity. Daschle and Company sense their days are numbered and are in a panic. Now is the time to redouble our efforts and throw these bums out!

I expect the volume on Free Republic to pick-up substantially as we head into the final weeks and days of the campaign season. And I expect exciting things will be happening for for all of us!

Thank you all very much!

God bless you all and may God continue to bless America!

[Grampa Dave]

You sound like my 3 year grand daughter. Whenever there is a mess, she says, "PaPa made the mess!". Even if I'm outside and 150 feet from the mess.

[lodwick]

Thanks for all the roastie hints - all this fowl talk has me drooling here. ;-)

[Grampa Dave]

Yeah, when you combine fatty chickens, Coors lite, limes and try to roast them over that grill of yours in your picture. You can end up with something along the lines of a Weapon of Mass Destruction.

[lodwick]

The peppered bacon hint is way high on my list - plus it's the only variety I purchase.

[glock rocks]

Pete-R-Bilt and i, and our families went camping next to a southern utah lake a couple years back.
while we were there, the remains of a hurricane blew through. it certainly cleaned up the beaches.

the next morning was free fishing day for kids (it's a state holiday in a way)...
so while i was down helping the kids put night crawlers on their hooks, Pete was up
the beach watching the wives prepare lunch, and warming up my propane BBQ.
well, the wind from the hurricane hadn't thoroughly gone away...

after i heard my wife screaming fire, Pete and i passed each other on the beach...
he running for the extinguisher in his boat, me running for mine in my truck.
what we saw was a five gallon propane bottle with a short rubber hose sticking above it
spewing a thirty foot flame above our serene camp.

we both stopped mid stride, and i told him - "there's halon in the truck!"
he ran back the ten yards to my truck while i reached down below the BBQ to turn off the propane.

Pete hit me and the BBQ with halon at about the exact time i had turned the gas off.

trust me, there is nowhere in southern utah to replace a BBQ hose on Sunday.

we went the open fire route. i cooked a huge chuck roast with a couple sticks. the kids loved it. there were no leftovers.

[Jim Robinson]

Just in:

$50 from Ohio
$10 from Canada
$50 from Florida
$20 from Nevada (with an extra $35 via mail - thanks)
$20 from California
$30 from Washington

Thank you FReepers!

[Grampa Dave]

When we entered the age of darkness here in Kali due to Grayout Davis two winters ago, we had to really change a lot of cooking habits.

If the weather was halfway decent I did a lot more cooking on the Weber even in the winter months of the first black outs.

The cost of electricity got a little high. So we bought these telfon keister pushers to speed up cooking the chickens in our electric oven. They speeded up the cooking and with the hot water in the can below the chicken and the insert in the chicken and the moisture really enhances the chicken. Like putting metal skewers in and through baking potatoes cuts the baking time down by about 30%, and the inside of the potato is done.

[Grampa Dave]

You are lucky that Pete got the Halon for you and your tank!

[glock rocks]

the BBQ in post #162 looks good compared to mine at yuba lake... huh, Pete?

[glock rocks]

thank you Ohio

thank you Canada

thank you Florida

thank you Nevada

thank you California

thank you Washington

[lodwick]

Men and their fires - it's amazing how quickly things can go badly with unattended fire. bbl

[grannie9]

LOL LOL.. never...

[lodwick]

$50 from Ohio
$10 from Canada
$50 from Florida
$20 from Nevada (with an extra $35 via mail - thanks)
$20 from California
$30 from Washington

Thanks everyone - super job and bttt

[glock rocks]

the most amusing thing about our little adventure is that i had turned the propane off
and the fire was completely out within microseconds of my being covered in a fog of halon.
the propane tank never got hot, just the BBQ and the hose, which burned off in the wind blowing
burning grease through the bottom of the BBQ... and the physics told me the tank wouldn't
burn due to lack of oxygen inside... but tell that to Pete with his tank of halon. no way, dude.
my reaction to him (as a trained petroleun engineer) was "what the **** are you going to.....?"

his response (as a skilled redneck with a halon fire extinguisher) was pffffffffffffffffffffffftsssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

we laughed quite a while before opening the first beer.

[lodwick]

OOps - you mean YOU did that? Dang - I thought you'd searched the net for that grilling moment.

Let's be careful out there guys. ;-)

[lodwick]

Another benefit of grilling is keeping the heat out of our homes - of course we are mostly trying to stay cool here in CenTex having no real winter at all.

[glock rocks]

no, wait - the pic i posted was from the net.

mine looked much worse (except for the propane tank).

:o)

[Grampa Dave]

Our son who used to be a chef introduced us to Pepper Slab Bacon. That was five years ago, and we have never bought any other bacon since then. We use it for BLT's, seasoning and for fowl to keep the skin and breast meat from getting dry.

If the chicken comes with giblets, I will wrap the giblets with pepper bacon slices and run a wet beer soaked wooden skewer into them and make a shiskabob. I will start them at the same time as the chickens and turn them every 5 minutes. In about 15 minutes, your appetizers are ready with no fuss or bother.

[Grampa Dave]

That also works in N. Kali during Aug and our Indian summers.

[Angelwood]

Bumping through on my way home.