Somebody Needs to Put a Lid on McCain’s Straight Talk Express

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I know people seem to like John McCain’s candid manner of speaking, but come on, there needs to be some sort of filter on the Straight Talk Express, right? Last month, as I’m sure all of you remember, McCain took a fair amount of heat for claiming the Baghdad market was safe enough for a leisurely afternoon stroll. Sure, sure, everything is safe with a cadre of more than 100 soldiers. But, I think our aging Senator has really hit a new level of carelessness, er… candidness.

On Tuesday, McCain made a guest appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, during which Stewart asked about the aforementioned shopping excursion. McCain replied, “I had something picked out for you, too — a little IED to put on your desk.” Not really funny, right? Am I being too uptight? Well, I’m “sticking to my guns” and going with “end the war slowly” John Murtha on this one. The Rep. from PA was livid when he heard about McCain’s cracks about explosives. But there’s more, McCain’s response to Murtha was as straight-talking as one can get. On Good Morning America this morning, McCain sent this message to Murtha: Lighten up and get a life. The video is right here. Really? Lighten up about a war that costs this nation $1.9 billion a week and has taken more than 3,000 American lives? I think what upsets me the most is I can remember all too well a straight-talking presidential candidate that talked his way to the White House, twice.

Update: Apparently, McCain is too busy straight-talking to vote on the Iraq war spending bill that just passed in the Senate. This is the fourth Iraq-related vote the senator has missed.

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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.

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