October 9, 2009

Mystery Guest Cat: Turkish

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It’s Laura again. We’re running a little late getting you Kevin and David’s regular week-in-review podcast today, but don’t worry, it’s coming. In the meantime, a little light reading from the rest of the MoJo crew:

1) Conservative Muslims don’t think so, but the technology behind synthetic hymens really is kind of cool.

2) Too bad virginity isn’t the only thing being reclaimed these days: Medicare’s repo men could be coming soon to a nursing home near you.

3) And speaking of shameless commerce: Did the Chamber break its own rules when it adopted a hard-line climate policy that scared off Nike?

Last, congrats to Turkish, a.k.a. Mystery Guest Cat #2, appearing naked as Levi Johnston in Kevin’s Drum Beat newsletter today. [For Kevin’s newsletter-exclusive weekly bonus post and mystery cat news, sign up here.]

From reader Patrick O’Grady: Turkish is two-and-a-half years old, unemployed, and fears losing his litter box to bankruptcy should that black spot on his nose turn out to be more than a simple beauty mark. Miss Mia Sopaipilla, being some six months younger, is certain that she will live forever and spends her days peering out the window, keeping a lookout for socialists bent on killing her granny. Turkish and Mia live in a tiny blue carbuncle on the fat red ass of Colorado Springs, Colorado, with their staffers Patrick and Shannon O’Grady. When not serving their feline overlords, Patrick dabbles in freelance cycling journalism; Shannon works for the Colorado Library Consortium.

Laura McClure hosts weekly podcasts and is a writer, editor, and sometime geek for Mother Jones. Read her recent investigative feature on lifehacking gurus here.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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