Chart of the Day: Panicking About the Dollar

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You know how conservatives don’t really care much about the deficit when a Republican is president, but it becomes something close to Armageddon-in-waiting whenever a Democrat is in the White House? Yesterday Matt Yglesias pointed out that the same thing is true about conservative reaction to the value of the dollar: when it plummets for years at a time under Republicans, they don’t care. But when it so much as wobbles slightly for a few months under a Democrat, suddenly it’s a sign that we’ve lost our moral backbone and our place as leaders of the free world. This is illustrated in text form here and in handy chart form below. For some reason I felt the urge to redraw Matt’s version, but you can see the original here if you like.

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A full one-third of our annual fundraising comes in this month alone. That’s risky, because a strong December means our newsroom is on the beat and reporting at full strength—but a weak one means budget cuts and hard choices ahead.

With only days left until December 31, we've raised about half of our $400,000 goal—but we need a huge surge in reader support to close the remaining gap. Whether you've given before or this is your first time, your contribution right now matters.

Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do. That’s why we need you right now. Please chip in to help close the gap.

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