Brodner’s Person of the Day: Troy and Michelle Turner

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Iraq vet Troy Turner and his wife, Michelle Turner. This very moving story in Sunday’s Washington Post described the life of Mrs. Turner, watching the slow decline of her husband from PTSD, after his return from the war. She has had to quit her job to look after him and shuttle him in and out of hospitals (all far away from home in Virginia). This has come at the cost of her health, the ability to parent their two kids and, worst of all, any hope of ending the nightmare that has become her life. PTSD, unlike physical injuries, is denigrated in the service. Sufferers do so silently, until the toll on themselves and their families makes it unavoidable. In treatment for what they did to these men and women and their families, the Pentagon is once again AWOL. Troy is low functioning, delusional at times, extremely violent, and depressed. Riding to the hospital, his mind returns to Baghdad, imagining cars as loaded with explosives about to detonate.

That we support these troops is more baloney from the meat-packer-in-chief.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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