September 11, 2009

Bloggingheads.tv: Is Obamacare a Secret Scheme for Euthanasia?

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Is Barack Obama’s health care plan nothing but an underhanded plot to bring European-style euthanasia to the United States? And have the American people caught on to this nefarious scheme and risen up in protest? That’s close to how my Bloggingheads.tv sparring partner James Pinkerton describes what’s been going on. Truly. And we discuss—firmly, but courteously—this view of reality in our latest diavlog face-off, as I offer a strong dissent.

Our trigger—so to speak—is Obama’s speech to Congress. Jim pans it; I praise it. Which is natural. But then the clash comes, as we explore the opposition to Obama’s initiative and whether it’s a serious popular uprising in response to a secret plan of social engineering (Pinkerton’s view) or the anger of right-wing wackos who would would denounce Obama as a socialist copycat even if he managed to feed thousands of people with one loaf of bread (my view). You can see it all below—and much more, including Pinkerton’s frightening encounter with a video camera gone wild:


You can follow David Corn’s postings and media appearances via Twitter.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist 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 need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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