Person of the Day: John McCain

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SENATOR JOHN McCAIN

When people finally wonder why McCain faded in the campaign they can start with this interview yesterday on CNN. McCain was claiming that there were neighborhoods in Baghdad that were so much improved you could go out for a walk in them.

“General Petraeus goes out there every day. The success we’re experiencing, (it’s now possible) for Americans…to go into 2 of the 5 neighborhoods in a secure fashion.”

Soon CNN’s Baghdad correspondent, Michael Ware, was live from Baghdad with a response. “No way on earth can a Westerner, particularly an American, stroll the streets of this capitol of 5 million people. If Al Qaeda doesn’t get wind of you or one of the Sunni insurgent groups don’t descend on you, if someone doesn’t tip off a Shia militia, then the nearest criminal gang is just going to see dollar signs and scoop you up. You’d barely last 20 minutes out there. I honestly don’t know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about when he says you can go strolling in Baghdad.”

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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