Rick Perry: Obama is a Socialist

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Rick Perry has gotten plenty of pushback for his latest ad, which accuses President Obama of saying that “Americans are lazy.” Obama didn’t say that, of course, just like he’s never gone on an apology tour, he’s never bad-mouthed American exceptionalism, and he’s never said he hates Christians. It doesn’t matter, though. I suppose this one is bound to take its place in the great Republican pantheon of Obama’s imaginary rhetorical sins along with all the other stuff they’ve made up. It’s sort of remarkable how invested they are in this kind of thing.

But there’s more to this ad than just that! Michael Scherer chastises Perry for lying about what Obama said. Dan Amira mocks him for his inability to speak correctly even on a taped spot. (No teleprompter, I guess.) But so far I haven’t seen anyone even blink at the fact that Perry finishes up by telling us that “Obama’s socialist policies are bankrupting America.”

Has it come to that? Is calling Obama a socialist now so routine that it doesn’t even raise an eyebrow anymore? I guess I must have missed it when we passed that milestone.

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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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