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From Newt Gingrich, after two days spent furiously rowing back his Meet the Press attack on Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan:

Any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood.

You have to give the guy credit for stones, I guess. On Sunday, he called Ryan’s plan “right-wing social engineering” and said he was opposed to it. Within hours he was getting hammered by just about every conservative luminary in the country and watching his presidential campaign go up in smoke. So first he tried to pretend that NBC host David Gregory had somehow tricked him, even though Gregory’s question was a pretty straightforward softball, and Gingrich’s answer was obviously a considered one. Then Gingrich explained that his language had probably been a wee bit “too strong.” Then he blamed the liberal media for taking his comments “out of context.” Then he suggested that his views were “evolving,” and the press really needed to keep up. Then he “clarified” that what he really supported was a voluntary version of the Ryan plan that could be implemented right now, instead of 10 years from now. Then he called Paul Ryan to apologize. Finally, tonight, having apparently convinced himself that 48 hours of abject abasement had literally erased what he said on Sunday, he declared that anyone who accurately quotes his Sunday statement in the future is a liar.

That’s impressive, even for Newt. But you know what’s really impressive? He’s demanding that his Sunday comments be officially declared oldthink even though he still doesn’t support Ryan’s plan. Chutzpah, baby!

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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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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.

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