Wanna Work for Obama? Prepare for a Strip Search

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CNN has the scoop on the background check it takes even to be considered for a ‘Bama job:

The Obama transition team is sending a seven-page, 63-item questionnaire to every candidate for Cabinet and other high-ranking positions in the incoming administration.

The questions cover everything from information on family members, Facebook pages, blogs and hired help to links to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, American International Group and troubled banks as well as lawsuits, gifts, resumes, loans and more.

…It also asks about writings, speeches, testimony, online communications and even personal diaries.

An entire section requests details on any criminal or civil legal action in which the applicant may have been involved. The last question in that 11-item section asks for details on any child support or alimony orders.

In an apparent effort to avoid the problems faced by several nominees in the last two administrations, a block of four questions is devoted to ferreting out details—including the immigration status—of any domestic help the applicant may have hired….

I include these details (follow the link for the full Monty) just to camouflage which, of many, would disqualify me. But I think this one is enough without his henchmen ever getting to that pesky marijuana farm I, or someone who bore a striking resemblance to ‘me,’ ran. Allegedly.

Or the ‘toy boys’ I’ve cougar-ed, er…’mentored’ post-divorce. Again… allegedly. Then there was that ‘freedom ride’ to Canada for black market estrogen and arch supports… as the rumor mill has it. Why, oh why, did I twitter that trip?

But let me just say this about that piece so infamous and misunderstood as to have landed me on the Colbert Report: Grow up. Grapple with what I actually wrote, not what your jerking knees translated it to.

Not having a shot at working for Obama doesn’t bother me anywhere near as much as being so pathetically misunderstood by a nation of kneejerks.

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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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