December 18, 2015

We Are Being Tested By God. We’re Failing.

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Oh come on, now he’s just trolling us for sure:

Brzezinski: Do you like Vladimir Putin’s comments about you?

Trump: Sure. When people call you brilliant, it’s always good, especially when the person heads up Russia.

Scarborough: Well, I mean, also, it’s a person that kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries. Obviously, that would be a concern, would it not?

Trump: He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, you know, unlike what we have in this country.

Scarborough: Yeah. But, again, he kills journalists that don’t agree with him.

Trump: Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe, you know.

Scarborough: What do you mean by that?

Trump: There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on. A lot of stupidity. And that’s the way it is. But you didn’t ask me the question. You asked me a different question. So that’s fine.

“Joseph Kony? Bad guy, no doubt about it. But at least he’s a Christian, unlike what we have now. And a tough guy too, a leader. He knows what he wants and he’s willing to fight for it.”

This is turning into a bad Mel Brooks film.

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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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