March 18, 2013

Chart of the Day: Still Plenty of Love for the Iraq War

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It looks like perhaps age brings wisdom after all. According to a Gallup poll released today, nearly 60 percent of those age 50 and older agree that it was a mistake to invade Iraq. Among those younger than 50, only 50 percent think it was a mistake.

That’s small potatoes, though, compared to the overall result. How is it, ten years after the fact and with the benefit of hindsight, that 42 percent of the country still believes that invading Iraq wasn’t a mistake? What would it take to convince these people? World War I on the Tigris? This bodes ill for the prospect that we might be a wee bit more skeptical the next time our government tries to scare us all into a war.

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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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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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