Who’s the Real Barack Obama?

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WHO’S THE REAL BARACK OBAMA?….Here’s a little Friday morning game for everyone to play. Below are half a dozen desperate right wing luminaries calling Barack Obama half a dozen preposterous names:

McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb: “Barack Obama has a long track record of being around anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American rhetoric.”

Former Republican House leader Tom DeLay: “I tagged him as a Marxist months ago.”

Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann: “I’m very concerned that he may have anti-American views. That’s what the American people are concerned about.”

Republican presidential candidate John McCain: “I think his plans are redistribution of the wealth. He said it himself: ‘We need to spread the wealth around’….That’s one of the tenets of socialism.”

National Review contributing editor Stanley Kurtz: “The fact that Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Wright’s anti-Americanism means that this is now a matter of public policy, and therefore an entirely legitimate issue in this campaign.”

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin: “Our opponent though, is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

So Obama is anti-Semitic, Marxist, anti-American, a socialist, an extremist Afrocentrist, and a terrorist sympathizer. And that’s just off the top of my head.

So here’s the game: what else has the McCain campaign and its surrogates called Obama? The only rule is that the name caller has to be someone with credentials: a campaign aide, a national politician, a major league pundit, etc. No obscure bloggers or commenters from Free Republic. What have you got for me?

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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