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I want to thank Ezra Klein for reminding me about this passage in Politico’s postmortem on the failure of the supercommittee to reach an agreement. It’s a description of the “wish lists” from each side:

House Republicans wanted to repeal Obama’s health care law, implement the controversial House GOP budget drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), save $700 billion by block granting Medicaid, cut $400 billion in mandatory spending, slash another $1.4 trillion in other health care mandatory spending, save $150 billion by slicing the federal workforce and put a $60 billion cap on tort reform.

Republicans were no more pleased to see what Democrats wanted: the president’s $447 billion jobs bill plus well over $1 trillion in new taxes.

Right. Toss in the extension of the Bush tax cuts, which Politico leaves out for some reason, and you’ve got $3.7 trillion in tax cuts in addition to repealing Obamacare, making massive cuts in domestic spending, and adopting Paul Ryan’s scorched earth budget blueprint.

Democrats, by contrast, agreed up front to a $3 trillion deficit reduction package but wanted it divided into roughly two-thirds spending cuts and one-third tax increases. Plus a jobs bill since, you know, unemployment remains sky high.

Do these two lists sound roughly similar to you? Of course not. They aren’t even from the same galaxy. The Republican list is a conservative wet dream. It’s not even remotely a starting point for negotiation. By contrast, the Democratic list is a bog ordinary opening bid.

Ezra calls this an example of “asymmetrical polarization.” That’s a new term for me. I call it “negotiating with fanatics.”

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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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