Your Weekly Joe Lieberman Outrage

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Is Obama a Marxist? Good question, says Joe Lieberman.

Here’s the context. In Bill Kristol’s newest column in the NY Times (no link; warmongers don’t get links), he says that Obama’s “bitter” comments are like Karl Marx’s statement that religion is the “opium of the people.”

On a radio show yesterday, Fox News’ senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano sat down with Joe Lieberman, and the following transpired:

NAPOLITANO: Hey Sen. Lieberman, you know Barack Obama, is he a Marxist as Bill Kristol says might be the case in today’s New York Times? Is he an elitist like your colleague Hillary Clinton says he is?

LIEBERMAN: Well, you know, I must say that’s a good question. I know him now for a little more than three years since he came into the Senate and he’s obviously very smart and he’s a good guy. I will tell ya that during this campaign, I’ve learned some things about him, about the kind of environment from which he came ideologically. And I wouldn’t…I’d hesitate to say he’s a Marxist, but he’s got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.

Really, Joe? You may be in or close to mainstream America on a lot of issues, but the reason you’re supporting John McCain is his position on the war, which is 100 years of occupation. I don’t think that’s anywhere near the mainstream.

The media and the blogosphere (I include myself here) are going to have to stop getting worked up every time Lieberman plays attack dog on Obama. There are tons of McCain surrogates who, in the course of any week in this campaign, will take shots at the Democratic nominee; we can’t continue to treat Lieberman differently just because he’s supposedly a member of the Democratic Party (he’s technically an Independent, but whatever). He’s a McCain operative now, and will say/do what McCain operatives say/do.

This may well be your last edition of the Weekly Joe Lieberman Outrage.

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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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