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Over at The Corner, Ilya Shapiro explains Barack Obama’s U-turn on offshore drilling in terms that the conservative faithful can understand:

Recall that on the campaign trail in June 2008, candidate Obama declared that, “when I’m president, I intend to keep in place the moratorium here in Florida and around the country that prevents oil companies from drilling off Florida’s coasts.” (See video of that speech here.)

Today, however, President Obama announced plans to lift a 20-year moratorium on oil exploration and development in Atlantic coastal waters running from Virginia to Florida, as well as further activity off Florida’s Gulf Coast.

….To paraphrase John Maynard Keynes […] the facts have been rammed down Obama’s throat and so he had the good sense to change his mind. Well done, Mr. President.

Jeez, are conservatives really this gullible? Yes, Obama opposed offshore drilling in the summer of 2008, but he then famously changed his tune just a few weeks later. I was there! I remember him doing it! I was even sort of annoyed at the time. In August he hinted at compromise and then, talking about energy strategy in September, he said, “And that means, yes, increasing domestic production and off-shore drilling.” This comes via NBC’s First Read, which also had to refresh its institutional memory on this subject.

Hey, we all cherry pick. I get it. But you can’t claim that the Montgomery bus boycott was caused by the Civil Rights Act without getting laughed at, and you can’t claim that “the facts have been rammed down Obama’s throat” when his position was set 18 months ago and his interior secretary has been busily working on regs for the past year. Better spin, please.

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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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