Photo of the Day: Cheat Sheet Edition

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Sarah Palin is a PR genius. The same way that Madonna is a PR genius or Al Sharpton is a PR genius. No matter how tired we get of them, somehow they always figure out a way to keep themselves in the public eye.

Yesterday Palin delivered a routine stemwinder to a medium sized crowd and managed to get a ton of publicity for it. But that’s not all! It turns out that last night’s speculation was right: she really did have a cheat sheet on the palm of her hand that she consulted during the softball Q&A after the speech. Just like your average seventh grader taking an algebra test. Has any politician in history ever done this before?

And even the notes themselves are fascinating. Here’s what she wrote down:

Energy

Budget Tax Cuts

Lift American Spirits

The most obvious question is: why would anyone need to write this stuff down? It’s not like she’s trying to remember the quadratic equation or anything. For someone who swims in the seas that Palin swims in, this is about the equivalent of writing down a note to remember your birthday.

But enough mockery. At this blog we prefer a more high-minded, policy-oriented critique of our major politicians. So here it is: it turns out that Sarah Palin doesn’t believe in budget cuts. In fact, she went to the trouble of deliberately crossing it out. Just like every other garden variety faux fiscally conservative Republican, she doesn’t really want to cut the budget because that runs the risk of annoying some interest group or another. She only wants to cut taxes. Normally, though, we don’t have graphological proof of this. With Palin, now we do.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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