Washington Post Fact Checks Fred Thompson, Two Weeks After MoJoBlog Did the Same

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A while back on this blog, I pointed out the ridiculousness of this statement by Fred Thompson: “Our people have shed more blood for the liberty and freedom of other peoples in this country than all the other countries put together.” I cited some figures on American dead in various wars, then pointed out that among other massive casualty figures, tens of millions of Russians died in WWII. That dwarfs anything America has experienced. Not to belittle the sacrifices our country has paid, but Thompson’s statement was wayyy off base.

As a result, the comments section lit up. The highlights:

– “Stein’s unambiguous dislike for the Tennessean has cluttered his mind.”

– “Johnathan [sic] Stein hearts Stalin.”

– “Mr. Stein is- and has always been- free to relocate to any of the few remaining Stalinist ‘paradises’ left on Earth.”

Well, I’m still here. And it turns out that, empowered by the shouting of our commentors, Fred Thompson decided to ignore my debunking and continued using the statement in his campaign. And so, the new truth-rooting wing of the Washington Post, called Fact Checker, had to take Thompson to task.

It’s conclusion?

While heavy, U.S. military casualties are still relatively low in comparison to the military casualties of its World War II and World War I allies. In World War II alone, the Soviet Union suffered at least eight million military deaths, or ten times the number of U.S. deaths in all wars combined….

Even if we exclude the Soviet Union from the calculation, U.S. military deaths in all wars combined remain lower than those of the British Commonwealth (“a combination of nations,” in Thompson’s phrase) in World War I and World War II.

So please, folks, click over to the Post and tell them to move to the Stalinist ‘paradises.’ I don’t deserve your scorn.

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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.

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