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CONVENTION ROUNDUP….During John McCain’s speech on Thursday, he inexplicably spoke for part of the time in front of an image of Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood. Obviously this was meant to be Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and after radio silence for over 24 hours on how this screwup happened, hapless McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds offered up this howler:

“The changing image-screen was linked to the American thematics of the speech and the public school was simply part of it,” Mr. Bounds said, adding that during the speech, Mr. McCain “called for public education reforms that empower parents and students before bureaucrats and labor unions.”

Uh huh. These guys are just congenitally incapable of admitting a mistake, aren’t they?

And speaking of screwups during the GOP convention, here’s another one. The Navy gave permission for two SEALs to attend the convention on the condition that the Republican National Committee not try to exploit them politically (active duty members of the military aren’t allowed to engage in partisan activity). So what happened? They wrote a speech exploiting them, and when they were called on it they made up a lie about it being an inadvertant ad-lib. Notice a pattern here?

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists 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 hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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