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FINAL NUMBERS….Apropos of nothing in particular, here are the final pre-election approval ratings for George Bush from the Fox News poll. Hard to believe, eh? Even after the almost unimaginable incompetence and calamity of the Bush presidency, topped off by the biggest global financial crisis since the Great Depression, 63% of Republicans still think Bush has done a fine job. If he hadn’t sold them down the river on immigration hardassery, I’ll bet that number would be more like 80%. I don’t really know what that means, but it can’t be good for the immediate future of the party. Apparently you have to be even worse than George Bush to lose more than half the GOP rank and file. That’s just plain scary.

Anyway, I feel like today, now that it’s finally in its death throes, I should have some kind of summing up of the catastrophe that has been the recent Republican era in American politics. As always, though, I just can’t do it. It’s too big for me to get my hands around. For now, then, I’ll satisfy myself with merely documenting those final throes as they happen. They start in just a few minutes.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE ON MOTHER JONES' FINANCES

We need to start being more upfront about how hard it is keeping a newsroom like Mother Jones afloat these days.

Because it is, and because we're fresh off finishing a fiscal year, on June 30, that came up a bit short of where we needed to be. And this next one simply has to be a year of growth—particularly for donations from online readers to help counter the brutal economics of journalism right now.

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Because over the challenging last year, and thanks to feedback from readers, we've started to see a better way to go about asking you to support our work: Level-headedly communicating the urgency of hitting our fundraising goals, being transparent about our finances, challenges, and opportunities, and explaining how being funded primarily by donations big and small, from ordinary (and extraordinary!) people like you, is the thing that lets us do the type of journalism you look to Mother Jones for—that is so very much needed right now.

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