Thanks to Jane at Firedoglake for asking bloggers and their readers to go help Digby. Just do it. Jane tells you why she thinks it's important to give bloggers a financial assist. Digby has more. Here are my thoughts on it.

In addition to December being the nominations month for the Koufax Awards for liberal blogging excellence, it is also the month that many bloggers must balance the ledger sheet. How many hours were spent blogging, how much money did it cost in lost income from the day job and how much did the blog make from blogads and/or donations?

College students, wealthy retirees and the independently wealthy can blog for love of their topic. Very few others can, and not suprisingly, a lot of the best bloggers fall within this group. The first year, they don't expect to make money through blogging. The second year, some donations and a few ads come their way and they are thrilled. But when the end of the third year rolls around, and still only peanuts are coming in, bloggers have to do an accounting and re-assess.

Digby writes today:

Yes, this is TalkLeft. It's our new design. We hope you like it.

The new graphic is by Monk of Inflatable Dartboard. I designed the layout (colors, font styles and sizes, columns and content arrangement) based upon a Wordpress theme named Relaxation.

The indefatigable Mike Ditto did the lion's share of the work over the past week. He converted the Wordpress coding to Movable Type, writing approximations where there was no equivalent. He converted and created a total of 17 templates and modules, while I insta-messaged him every 15 seconds over the past 8 hours asking "Can we do this?" and "Can we change that?" Then he made everything work across IE, Firefox and Safari.

Now, there are going to be undocumented features ( "bugs" is a politically incorrect term.) Feel free to point them out in comments. The new design may take some getting used to. But I hope you like it and agree it's an improvement over our previous look.

Webmaster Mike Ditto and I are almost done with TalkLeft's redesign which we have spent dozens of hours on this past week. I'm hoping it will be finished tonight. It really looks good. But, as with any major site overhaul, and this one has turned out to be really major, there are tests and retests and kinks to iron out.

While I continue to work on that, here's an open thread for you.

Update: Webmaster Mike Ditto and I spent 8 hours implementing the new design today. We're not quite done. Hopefully, it will be finished tomorrow night. It's looking really good, but I don't want to republish the 13,000 entries and 180,000 comments until it's close to perfect. We expect that to be tomorrow night.

Update: The upgrade to MT 3.2 is mostly done. There are some kinks in the search results, comment preview layout and a few other pages, which we are working on. But you can go ahead and comment.

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Webmaster Mike Ditto is about to upgrade TalkLeft to MT 3.2. This means comments will not be available for an hour or so.

Sometime tonight, we will be converting to our first new design since June, 2002, with a new graphic by Monk. Every template of TalkLeft needs to be changed over, which Mike is handling.

I'll update here when comments are back and again when the new design is implemented.

If you don't have to go to court or the jail after that, then you can stay here and thread. There's lots going on. You can read the winners of the bipartisan Weblog Awards here, and nominate your favorite blogs for the just liberal blogs' Koufax Awards here.

Then there's torture, spying on Americans, the Patriot Act and the immigration acts now being considered by Congress to rant about.

On a lighter note, a hairstylist in Aspen has been accused of stealing Kevin Costner's laptop. So, whatever strikes your fancy is fine here.

The Koufax Award Nominations are now open. Go on over and nominate your favorite blogs.

The Koufax Awards are named for Sandy Koufax, one of the greatest left handed pitchers of all time. They are intended to honor the best blogs and bloggers of the left. At the core, the Koufax Awards are meant to be an opportunity to say nice things about your favorite bloggers and to provide a bit of recognition for the folks who provide us with daily information, insight, and entertainment. The awards are supposed to be fun for us and fun for you.

Here's how they work.

You can nominate blogs in more than one category. TalkLeft has had the most success in the "Best Single Issues" category.

TalkLeft hit 10 million visitors today. And welcome, Denver Post readers who are finding us for the first time through David Harsanyi's column today. (And thanks to Crooks and Liars for mentioning it.)

For radio listeners, I'll be talking with Rachel Maddow on Air America today at 11:30 a.m. (MT) about Karl Rove and PlameGate. Is an Indictment looming, or has Robert Luskin pulled yet another rabbit out of his hat? You can listen live online here.

Also, TalkLeft will be getting a bloglift (y.i.c.t.p. as Skippy would say)over the weekend, it's first since Markos of Daily Kos so graciuosly designed TalkLeft in June, 2002.

It's the last day for voting in the Weblog Awards. TalkLeft is in second place for best liberal blog, so please vote so we can keep our spot - and for your other favorite blogs. The Koufax award nominations (for liberal blogs) opened today.

What are you thinking about today? If you feel like talking about it, here's some space.

I'll be out for the afternoon so I may miss the Tookie clemency announcement. Here's a place to discuss it, or anything else you want.

Kevin Drum has an interesting post up about our secret laws. Arthur covers torture. Avedon Carol of Sideshow has her usual excellent roundup of the blogoshpere, as does Memeorandum.

I've got miles to go before I blog...here's a space for you.

Check out the holiday gift guide from Saturday Night Magazine. If you scroll down, you will see they feature the TalkLeft 4th Amendment Subway Tote and Wonkette's tee-shirt.

You can get your tote here. (Click here for larger version). Let the 4th Amendment speak for you as you hand your bag over for a search by a subway or airline security guard. It's a silent protest and reminder to authorities that you consider searches without reasonable suspicion or probable cause to be an infringement of your privacy rights. They make great gifts.

• Bin Laden appears, at least as of three months ago, to be alive and well.
• Saddam refused to attend his trial today, which is now adjourned until December 21.
• Tookie Williams' lawyers will be meeting with Gov. Arnold S. tomorrow.
• Patrick Fitzerald was back at the grand jury this week.
• It's the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.

I've got some work to do, so feel free to chat about these or your own topics.

And you can vote once a day in the weblogs awards. TalkLeft is coming in second to Americablog for now, so your votes really count.