When Posts Attack

We don’t like to admit breaking a sweat, but last night we spent a couple of hours working up a deliciously vituperative post about what appeared to be a soldier-exploiting scheme to sell books. It was so vituperative that we triple-checked facts to make sure our premise wasn’t wildly off the mark.

And wouldn’t you know, just as we were ready to click Publish — we finally found the crucial fact that undermined everything.

But while the post’s villain (hello, WND!) must await another opportunity, the post’s hero doesn’t deserve to be buried in our frustration.

That hero would be Give2TheTroops, a nonprofit organization that collects and mails care packages to soldiers overseas. From what we can tell, Give2TheTroops are good folks, starting out of a garage in 2002 and evolving into a proper 501(c)(3) by 2004. With only five part-time employees (and more than a thousand volunteers), they mailed 40,000 packages — about 65 pounds each — in 2008, spending $143,931 on shipping and $121,253 on storage.

Those numbers are important. They need stuff to mail. They also need the money to mail it.

The point of the Demon Post was that you should skip the book-buying scheme (which still doesn’t look totally kosher) and support Give2TheTroops directly. Their list of most-requested items from soldiers includes beef jerky, coffee, hand sanitizer, DVDs, batteries, video games, t-shirts, socks, phone cards — even dog treats.

But if you insist on spreading the joy with an autographed Chuck Norris book — well, his share of the profits are going to the Kickstart kids program, an important fact that took us forever to find. Whether WorldNetDaily and publisher Tyndale House are as generous with their cuts is something we still can’t determine.