March 30, 2009

My Super Awesome Maddow Pre-Show Playlist

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If you missed it, then I hate to rub it in, but Yerba Buena Center for the Arts was totally the place to be here in San Francisco on Saturday night, as Mother Jones‘ dynamic editorial duo of Clara Jeffrey and Monika Bauerlein shared the stage with everybody’s favorite MSNBC host Rachel Maddow at an event packed with enthusiastic supporters of good journalism. In addition to having the most enviable cowboy shirt this side of Jack White, Maddow was also charming and informative, although I’m still troubled that this TV star doesn’t actually watch any TV. Not even Aqua Teen?! Anyhoo, those of you who showed up early to get a good seat may have noticed a delightful little music mix playing over the loudspeakers. And who, pray tell, could have put together such an awe-inspiring CD? Why, your idiotically-named DJ and contributor, of course. Organizers asked me to come up with an hour of tunes to entertain the early arrivals, so I took it upon myself to find tracks that were not only diverse and entertaining, but also had (perhaps wryly) appropriate lyrics. Unfortunately, when I showed up at 7:45, the CD was just starting, so I don’t know if the whole thing got played or not. But if you’re curious about what you heard (or what you were supposed to hear), look after the jump for the full list of tunes. And yes, I totally included “The Bleeding Heart Show.”Party Ben’s Mother Jones Rachel Maddow Pre-Show Playlist

Nicole Willis – Feelin’ Free
ABBA – Take a Chance On Me
The Streets – Let’s Push Things Forward
The New Pornographers – The Bleeding Heart Show
Bjork – Army of Me
Erykah Badu – The Healer
Beck – Gamma Ray
Marvin Gaye – What’s Goin On
Jose Gonzalez – Down the Line
The B-52’s – Channel Z
Johnny Cash – The One on the Right is On the Left
Amadou & Mariam – Ce N’est Pas Bon
Bob Mould – If I Can’t Change Your Mind
Stereolab – Ping Pong
Public Enemy – Fight the Power
TV On the Radio – Golden Age
M.I.A. – Pull Up the People
Faithless – Mass Destruction
Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings – Got a Thing On My Mind
Tom Petty – I Won’t Back Down

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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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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.

payment methods

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