Need To Read: October 12, 2009

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Today’s must-reads are at work on Columbus Day:

  • “Is Columbus Day Sailing Off the Calendar?” [WSJ]
  • Obama’s speech on gay equality was “highfalutin bullshit” [Sullivan/The Atlantic]
  • Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell protects bigots [WaPo op ed]
  • Great Recession Landmark: 100 failed US banks [NYTimes]
  • Nobel Prize in economics goes to Americans Oliver Williamson and Elinor Ostrom, the first woman win the award [BBC]
  • George Soros invests a cool billion in clean tech [FT]
  • “Yes We Can (Get Republicans to Support Climate Bill)” [NYTimes op ed]
  • Obama should earn that Nobel at the Copenhagen Climate Conference [MoJo]
  • The White House goes on the offensive against Fox News [TPM]
  • Iran sentences three post-election protesters to death [AP]
  • Armenia and Turkey sign a peace deal and reopen their border for the first time since 1993 [Reuters]
  • The dangers of drudgery: bad jobs are killing people [The Economist]
  • Google co-founder Sergey Brin defends the controversial Google Books project [NYTimes op ed]
  • Listen to Michael Jackson’s final single, the appropriately titled “This Is It” [Bitten and Bound]

Nick Baumann posts pieces like these throughout the day on twitter. You should follow him for more must-reads. David Corn, Mother Jones’ DC bureau chief, also tweets. So do my colleagues Daniel Schulman, Rachel Morris, Kate Sheppard and our editors-in-chief, Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein. Follow them too! (The magazine’s main account is @motherjones.)

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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