The New American Image?: All Americans Carry Guns

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When musician and activist Michael Franti was in Iraq in 2004, he was the only American without a gun. He brought a wooden guitar instead. Hear Franti on Mother Jones Radio this weekend talking about his film and book I Know I’m Not Alone featuring laughing and singing Iraqis we never see on TV. And even though violence is spinning out of control, he’d go back now. Seriously. He wants all the troops to come home.

Journalist Sidney Blumenthal calls Bush radical in his new book How Bush Rules. It’s a collection of Blumenthal’s columns from The Guardian and Salon.com. Here is what he told us on the radio:

“Bush is not an idiot, he’s very shrewd and clever….he knows even now very little about the dynamics of foreign policy, he doesn’t have an analytical mind… He doesn’t know the degree to which he is manipulated in all sorts of ways by Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld. Cheney who controls a good deal of the information he sees and creates the reality around him. And Condi Rice who’s an enabler and flatterer who tells him what a great man he is constantly.”

Hear more from Blumenthal this weekend on Mother Jones Radio.

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ONLY HOURS LEFT—AND EVERYTHING RIDING ON IT

A full one-third of our annual fundraising comes in this month alone. That’s risky, because a strong December means our newsroom is on the beat and reporting at full strength—but a weak one means budget cuts and hard choices ahead.

With just hours left, we need a huge surge in reader support to get to our $400,000 year-end goal. Whether you've given before or this is your first time, your contribution right now matters. All gifts are 3X matched and tax-deductible.

Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do. That’s why we need you right now. Please chip in to help close the gap.

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