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AN INCH DEEP….I imagine this point has already been made — in fact, I made it myself after last week’s debate — but this is the blogosphere, so I’ll make it again anyway. It’s this: I’m not surprised that the insta-polls suggest that Joe Biden won his debate against Sarah Palin. (I’m also not sure it matters, but that’s a different issue.) Basically, I think the debate-watching public really does appreciate a command of facts and issues. This doesn’t mean they want to hear dry recitations and pedantic inside baseball, but as long as it’s expressed in an approachable way, they really do want to hear about actual policy. Biden provided that.

At the same time, I’m a little surprised (I know, I know….) that Palin is getting such generous marks for her performance. No, she didn’t propose invading Denmark or eliminating the Supreme Court, but she was still painfully out of her depth. She had all the usual Reaganesque phrases and prepackaged zingers at the ready, but she didn’t seem to understand that these are meant to be hauled out occasionally as applause lines, not simply strung together over and over and over. By the time she was finished, she had repeated these stock phrases so often that even a dullard could tell that she was just reading off notes.

At least, that’s my take. Yes, she’s got a thousand-watt smile and a folksy charm, but even people who are attracted to that kind of thing want to sense some depth as well. Palin didn’t provide it, and I think the press underestimates Joe and Jane Sixpack when they act as if that doesn’t matter.

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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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