Gee, I Wonder Why People Think Obama Is a Muslim?

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A tweet from the editor of National Review:

Wait a second. This can’t possibly come as a surprise, can it? Has Lowry watched Fox or listened to some of his, um, less inhibited fellow righties at all lately? Hell, it’s a miracle there are still a few conservatives left who don’t believe Obama is a Muslim.

Both Lowry and Bill Kristol1 have gone after Glenn Beck for his nutball conspiracy theorizing over the past week about caliphates and the Muslim Brotherhood. That’s good news, because someone on the right needs to do this. Now it’s time for them to do the same to anyone who helps prolong the maybe-Obama-is-a-Muslim-maybe-he’s-not-it’s-kinda-hard-to-know meme. Then they can work up to disowning Sarah Palin.

1It was sort of amusing this afternoon to watch Beck take shots at Kristol on his show, immediately followed by a commercial break extolling the virtues of the Weekly Standard.

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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.

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