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LOVELY SARAH….Tyler Cowen says lots of peculiar but interesting things. That’s why I like reading him. Today he suggests that, Cleopatra-like, Sarah Palin has a lot of conservative men thinking with their gonads instead of their brains:

Andrew Sullivan is calling Sarah Palin “Rovian.” Maybe, but her first order of business has been to fool the Republican establishment, not the American people….Which narrative do you find more plausible?:

“Lovely Sarah, she’s saying and doing everything we want her to. What a quick learner. How pliable she is. Remember Descartes on tabula rasa?”

“Once John and I are elected, they’ll need me more than I need them.”

The people who are right now the happiest may end up the most concerned. For better or worse, they’re about to lose control of their movement.

This is both peculiar and interesting. But is it right? My own guess is that McCain doesn’t need her at all once the election is over. If he wins in November, Palin will be sent overseas to funerals and into the heartland for occasional speeches to the moral values crowd, and that’s about it. She’ll beaver away on a “special needs portfolio” or some such, while the big boys worry about which country to yell at next.

On the other hand, if John McCain loses, Palin might well be in line to be the GOP’s next star. (Assuming she avoids some kind of career ending catastrophe on the trail, of course.) In other words, if she were really smart and devious, maybe she’d be slyly working to ensure McCain’s defeat, not his victory. So maybe Tyler is right, but just has the wrong timeframe.

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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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