Snakes on Obama’s Plane?

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Why did Obama boot reporters from the New York Post, the Washington Times, and the Dallas Morning News last week? It’s not quite the uniting move, but at this stage the demand for seats is at a premium so some folks just had to go. All of these papers’ editorial boards have endorsed John McCain, so it may or may not be a coincidence, but either way, Drudge pounced on the move to swap reporters out for “network bigwigs,” instead of adding a second plane. The Obama campaign insists that the move was strategic, to “reach as many swing voters as we can.”

It may not matter a lick in the long run, but Fox et al are outraged. At this point the angry right is grasping at everything, like Obama’s press conference comment that inspired the RNC’s Audacity Watch this morning. Is this not the same “arrogance” shown when the candidates are introduced as the “next president of the United States” at their conventions and rallies? What voter wants to support a candidate who doesn’t think he’ll win?

It’s true that the papers-off-the-plane move might alienate reporters who have been following Obama for the past year, and who will continue to cover him throughout his administration should he win. And while the rationale is legitimate, bad memories, like Cheney kicking the Times off of his plane, mean that no one wants to see newshounds pushed out. And no matter who wins, there will surely be a lot of these moments, moves that whisper ever so slightly of a Bush disaster, where we will all need to take a breath and remind ourselves that this is not the same guy (unless it sorta is).

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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 canā€™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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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 wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

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