October 6, 2008

McCain Has a Decision to Make on Jeremiah Wright

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In April, John McCain condemned a TV ad released by the North Carolina Republican Party that tied Barack Obama to his former pastor Jeremiah Wright.

The ad, which called Obama “too extreme for North Carolina” because of his long-time association with Wright, drew McCain’s ire. “It’s not the message of the Republican Party,” he said. “It’s not the message of my campaign. I’ve pledged to conduct a respectful campaign.” He added that he wanted to “disassociate myself from that kind of campaigning.”

Will McCain disassociate himself from his vice presidential choice? Sarah Palin brought up Obama’s connection to Wright in the New York Times yesterday. And is the McCain campaign, in its efforts to get nasty, going to run with this topic despite McCain’s earlier statements suggesting Wright is off-limits?

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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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