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From Fox News chief Roger Ailes, talking about Barack Obama’s efforts to turn America into a socialist hellhole:

“I see this as the Alamo.  If I just had somebody who was willing to sit on the other side of the camera until the last shot is fired, we’d be fine.”

Last night I was channel surfing and happened to land on Sean Hannity’s show for a few minutes.  Marian walked in and wondered why I was watching it.  “Doesn’t he just increase your blood pressure?” she asked.

I’d never really thought about it, but I realized right then that he doesn’t.  Lou Dobbs increases my blood pressure.  Chris Matthews increases my blood pressure.  Maureen Dowd increases my blood pressure.  But Hannity?  Rush Limbaugh?  Glenn Beck?  Nah.  They seem so frankly clownish, and so completely insulated in their little cocoon of viewers who already agree with them anyway, that they just don’t bother me much.  That’s probably a little too lackadaisical on my part — they can still drive cards and letters into congressional offices, after all — but the fact is that they’ve lost their ability to push my buttons.  Their particular brand of freak-showism just doesn’t seem so scary these days.

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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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Urgent, for sure. But it's not all doom and gloom!

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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