January 30, 2009

Obama Weighs In On Super Bowl

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superbowl-43-logo.jpg To follow up on my post arguing that all good liberals ought to support the Steelers this Sunday, I thought I’d bring you the President’s thoughts. From a press appearance Thursday:

Q: The Steelers or Cardinals, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: I have to say, you know, I wish the Cardinals the best. Kurt Warner is a great story and he’s closer to my age than anybody else on the field, but I am a long-time Steelers fan. Mr. Rooney, the owner, was just an extraordinary supporter during the course of the campaign. Franco Harris was campaigning for me in Pittsburgh. So —

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Coach signed up with you, too.

THE PRESIDENT: Right, Coach Tomlin was a supporter. So I — you know, I wish the best to the Cardinals. They’ve been long-suffering; it’s a great Cinderella story. But other than the Bears, the Steelers are probably the team that’s closest to my heart.

Our President, by his own admission, doesn’t get too high for things. But from what I can tell, the man has Steelers fever. My prediction: Steelers 20, Cardinals 13. (This is your final Super Bowl-related post, I promise. Unless they win, in which case the blog will be covered in drunken exultations. Stillllers Win!!!!1!11)

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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.

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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.

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