March 12, 2010

Congress Ruins Obama Girls’ Vacation

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TPM relays the news that President Barack Obama is delaying his trip to Indonesia and Australia because the House may vote on health care reform next weekend:

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who for days has insisted the schedule would not change, detailed the news on his Twitter feed this morning. “The President will delay leaving for Indonesia and Australia—will now leave Sunday—the First Lady and the girls will not be on the trip,” Gibbs wrote.

According to the AP, “the trip was scheduled to coincide with his daughters’ spring vacation from school.” Now, thanks to recalcitrant Dems, Sasha and Malia won’t get to spend their vacation with their dad. It’s clear there are plenty of lawmakers who don’t particularly care about making sure all Americans have access to affordable health care. But do they really want to make the Obama girls cry?

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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.

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