June 1, 2009

Larry Summers is Tired of All These Meetings

White House photo.

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Is Larry Summers spending too much time out at the clubs on work nights? It certainly seems that way. Back in April Summers, President Barack Obama’s top economic adviser, was caught napping during a meeting on regulating the credit card industry. Last week, Summers was at it again, refusing to lose his right to snooze during a hurricane preparedness meeting. In a true stroke of genius, the White House has posted the latest photo of sleepy Larry on its website, so we can reproduce it for you here. (That’s him to the right of the big chair that takes up most of the foreground.) Maybe the publicity is Obama’s way of giving Summers a bit of a nudge?

(h/t Dealbreaker)

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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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