The Real Message of Obama’s Birth Certificate

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A friend of mine reads National Review’s leading lights so I don’t have to:

The Corner is funny today. No, this is not an embarrassing day for the right. Quite the contrary. That speech was way, way too petulant. (Seriously. Go back and watch it again. Did you see it? …Okay, try watching it again. …Still no? Just trust me. He’s a ball of rage.) He was so unlikeable when he was releasing his birth certificate. And you know what the real question is: why did he wait so long to release it?

Also, you know why the media covered the Birther issue? It has nothing to do with the fact that the majority of the primary voters in our Party are Birthers, or that they have been kicking this story around for more than two years, or the fact that the presidential “candidate” who is now leading in many polls has made this his main issue. No. That would be embarrassing to admit. Which we don’t have to, because the real reason the media covers it is this: because Obama’s budget plan doesn’t add up!

Plus, you’ve got to give Trump credit for forcing the issue here. Am I right?

Finally putting the Birther thing to rest: a bad day for Obama.

This is great. And while we’re on the subject, I’d like to encourage the rest of my friends to write my blog posts for me too. It really makes my job a lot easier.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

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