Well, it’s that time of the year again over at Andrew’s house: time for a good old circle jerk over a pile of Talking Bush Dolls. No, wait, that’s our house. At Andrew’s it’s time for beg pledge week. The first report is that the theft pledge is going very well. Which makes us wonder why Mr. Sullivan finds it necessary to lie about the success of the Daily Dish or the work needed to keep it going. Item 1 is this bit of nonsense:

The very success of the site – doubling in traffic roughly every twelve months – has also meant ever-expanding expenses, bandwidth and workload.

Not so fast. You can see the stats here. January 2002 shows 198,993 visitors, a year later there were 311,518 visitors. October 2003 (that’s 21 months later if you’re keeping track) clocks in at 380,099 visitors, i.e. nearly the double. But not quite. And not in a year. We’ll see what November had in store for us, but if Alexa is any guide Sullivan’s traffic (like InstaPundit’s) is heading down, not up.

But the begging is not done:

From filtering through over 700 emails a day to scanning the Internet for stories and ideas to writing tens of thousands of words a month, this blog is a full-time job.

Oh no no no no — no no no! We shall limit our research to a single week of the Daily Dish (last week for no reason in particular.) Microsoft Word reports that it contained 7,603 words. A rough count shows that about half of that consists of quotes from articles, poseur alerts, and emails from Sullivan’s other personalities readers. Once you count the part of the DailyDish Sullivan recycles into the WeeklyDish for the Washington Times, one is left with a couple of long posts on Reagan and AIDS or gay marriage, and a whole lot of linking to articles that argue the opposite of what Sullivan pretends they do. (i.e. sullivan, v. To base your argument on a source that actually argues the opposite of what you claim it does. And yes, we coined that verb!)

All of which is our way of saying that there are bloggers out there who: a) actually invest a lot of time into their work, and b) do so without the benefit of full time writing jobs that pay the bills. And without (allegedly) collecting $75,000 a year to do it. And on top of our list is SullyWatch, who has decided to run a competing (and much more deserving) pledge week to keep its work going, and free it from the mediocrity that is blogger. Really, how often do the blogspot sites need to be down in a single week. (And besides, who collects $75,000 in a single year and then chooses to stay on blogger?)

So stop by for SullyWatch’s pledge week — because frankly if there’s one full time (and underpaid) job out there it’s keeping track of Sullivan’s bullshit, lies and distortions.

The same point we make about CTRL-C/CTRL-V, only much funnier, over at World O’Crap.