Crafty Obama Plans to Give Undocumented Immigrants the Right to Vote in 2014

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Courtesy of Steve Benen, here is Michele Bachmann explaining why immigration reform is a bad idea for Republicans:

I think the president, even by executive order, can again wave his magic wand before 2014 and he’d say now all of the new, legal Americans are going to have voting rights.

Why do I say that? He did it in 2012. Do you remember? Anyone who was here as a Latina under age 30, he said, “You get to vote.”

What? He decides you get to vote? If he did it 2012, know — take it to the bank — he’ll do in 2014.

Does anyone have any idea what Bachmann is talking about? This is obviously a reference to the mini-DREAM executive order that Obama signed in 2012, but all that did was grant work permits and end deportations of undocumented immigrants who had come to the country before the age of 15. It wasn’t just for Latinas and it had nothing to do with voting.

I know, I know: it’s just Bachmann being Bachmann. But I’ll bet that this becomes yet another an underground tea party “fact” within days. You’ll be hearing it from your crazy uncle this Thanksgiving.

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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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