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JOHN McCAIN, POLICY GENIUS….Jon Cohn runs down the McCain campaign’s meanderings on healthcare policy today. It goes something like this:

  1. We’re going to eliminate the tax deduction of healthcare insurance and replace it with a $5,000 tax credit for families.

  2. Oops, that means a lot of families will end up paying more in taxes. Can’t have that. So what we’re really going to do is eliminate the income tax deduction, but not the payroll tax deduction. All better now.

  3. Oops again. The new plan saves middle class families from a tax increase, but by doing so it blows a huge hole in the budget. $1.3 trillion over ten years, to be exact.

  4. What do do? Cut Medicare! Hooray!

The McCain campaign, of course, says it’s not really “cutting” Medicare. It’s going to save $1.3 trillion by “eliminating fraud” and “reforming payment policies” in addition to a bit of other handwaving. You betcha.

I think the lesson here is not so much that McCain is being especially mendacious, but that he was never serious about this plan in the first place. He’s never really cared one way or the other about healthcare reform, but Obama had a plan so he needed one too, and this is what his advisors cooked up. If the sums don’t work out right — well, tell the numbers guys to jiggle a few things around and then jabber about earmarks or something. And then get back to accusing Obama of palling around with terrorists. Mission accomplished!

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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