October 22, 2015

The Hillary Show Now Playing on Capitol Hill

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We have a minor technical problem here at Command Central. My cable company recently switched to all-digital signals, and warned me that this meant I needed a mini-cable box for every TV in the house. I got one for the bedroom TV, but never bothered getting one for the teensy little TV I keep next to my desk.

So instead of getting CNN, I just get some soothing guitar music and a message telling me that my TV doesn’t work. Still, I have Twitter. And online feeds. And transcripts. For example, here’s a piece of Trey Gowdy’s endless opening statement:

Madam Secretary, I understand there are people frankly in both parties who have suggested that this investigation is about you. Let me assure you it is not.

Um, OK. Please continue:

Your e-mails are no less or no more important than the e-mails of anyone else. It just took us a little bit longer to get them and it garnered a little more attention in the process….Our country is strong enough to handle the truth and our fellow citizens expect us to pursue the truth wherever the facts take us….They deserve the truth. They deserve the whole truth. They deserve nothing but the truth. The people we work for deserve the truth. The friends and family of the four who lost their lives deserve the truth. We’re going to find the truth because there is no statute of limitations on the truth.

Roger that. Just the facts, ma’am. The thought of making this committee a political witch hunt has never crossed anyone’s mind.

Anyway, so far there appears to be nothing new to come out of the hearing—though a few joke memes have been spawned by the news that Hillary Clinton didn’t have a computer in her office and claims to have transacted very little business via email. And that actually seems to be true. She sent and received about 20 emails a day, which is pretty minuscule for a secretary of state. I’m a B-list blogger and I get considerably more than that.

Also, I gather that Rep. Susan Brooks tried to imply that Hillary erased incriminating emails from around the time of the Benghazi attacks. Needless to say, she had zero evidence for this, so she didn’t really land any blows.

If anything interesting happens, I’ll try to keep you updated.

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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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