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Ben Bernanke was confirmed for a second term as Fed chairman today by a vote of 70-30. Neil Irwin of the Washington Post answers the first question that popped into my mind:

Bernanke was confirmed by a narrower margin than any previous Fed chairman. The previous record for most “no” votes was Paul Volcker in 1983, when he was confirmed 84 to 16.

Bernanke has “more votes against him than any Fed chairman has ever had. And that’s a signal,” said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), in an interview. “The Fed is controversial with the American people. Bailouts. Lack of supervision over [bank] holding companies.”

I hope Shelby is right. But my guess is that this is mostly a manifestation of the fact that confirmations have become more contentious in recent years. Even during a bad recession I’ll bet Bernanke would have been confirmed easily a few decades ago. After all, Sonia Sotomayor was no more liberal then Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but she was confirmed for the Supreme Court 68-31 compared to Ginsburg’s 96-3.

Anyway, I certainly look forward to a chastened Ben Bernanke coming out strongly in favor of serious financial sector regulation. I’m not taking any bets on it, though.

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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.

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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.

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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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