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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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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