“I Don’t Think Anybody’s Going To Be Missing a Hill or Two Here and There”

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The Sierra Club is out with a new web ad today targeting what the group calls “extreme” views from Kentucky’s Republican Senate candidate, Rand Paul.

The ad focuses mostly on his environmental views, which include statements like calling the administration’s threat to hold BP accountable for the Gulf spill “really un-American.” Paul also complained that President Obama’s trip to Copenhagen to last year for the United Nations climate conference was just a meeting with socialist leaders “to apologize for the industrial revolution.” And he made light of the environmental disaster of mountaintop-removal coal mining: “You got quite a few hills. I don’t think anybody’s going to be missing a hill or two here and there.”

The video also throws in some of Paul’s questionable remarks on civil rights and immigration and the 14th amendment for good measure. Sierra Club Independent Action is using the ads to raise funds for their efforts to keep Paul and other GOP candidates they have say are “extremists” when it comes to the environment. There’s justifiable concern in the Kentucky race; Paul leads Democrat Jack Conway by 15 points, according to the latest polls.

“Tea Party Candidates like Rand Paul, Sharon Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Ken Buck, and Pat Toomey are trying to make Americans scared of even what little progress our country has made on clean energy, and global warming,” said Cathy Duvall, Sierra Club’s political director. “We are working to get the word out that we can’t let these extremists run our government.”

Here’s the ad:

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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