Quote of the Day: “We Had It Won….We Had It Won….We Had It Won.”

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From John McCain this morning, speaking about the resurgent civil war in Iraq:

We had it won. Thanks to the surge and thanks to Gen. David Petraeus, we had it won….The fact is we had the conflict won, and we had a stable government, and a residual force such as we have left behind … but the president wanted out and now we are paying a very heavy price.

John McCain is now the Donald Sterling of foreign affairs: old, angry, retrograde, and only barely in touch with the real world. This is the same guy who declared Iraq safe after taking a carefully staged stroll through a fruit market in Baghdad seven years ago, and he hasn’t been willing to engage with reality any more seriously ever since. He’s just sure that we had it won, that American troops had victory in their grasp, and now it’s all turned to ashes. And since the actual politics of the region seem to be beyond him, all he can do is rage at President Obama for somehow ruining his lovely pretend victory.

It’s a little sad in a way, and perhaps sadder still that the media continues to give him the means to keep embarrassing himself on national TV. It’s time to move on, guys.

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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.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

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.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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