October 10, 2014

Kids, Obama Is Going to Close Gitmo And This Time He Means It.

"Don't make me pull this prison camp over. Because I will."<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/8228427950/in/photolist-77FTfF-dx7QXq-8f1kbP-73hfdc-87TmHp-87WrUh-8qVF4T-87TmHe-9KiCHW-eRGo1T-ny17zk-b4bpUP-8j7Qv4">The White House</a>

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Scene: President Obama, driving slowly toward the White House, announces yet again that he wants to shut down the Guantanamo prison camp. A clamor erupts in the back seat.

Kids, I’ve already told you a million times—I’m going to close Guantanamo.

This time I mean it. And no bellyaching.

Listen, I know you don’t like it, but it’s time we behaved like civilized human beings.

I don’t care who started it. That doesn’t make it right.

Will you please quiet down? I can’t even hear my own executive order over all that racket!

I’m serious now. End of discussion.

Because I am your president, that’s why!

Don’t make me pull this prison camp over. Because I will.

Just wait until your next president hears about this. Hoo boy is she gonna be mad.

Keep it up and you won’t be extralegally detaining anyone for a solid month, mister!

We’ve been over the drone thing. When you’re a president you can do whatever you want with a drone.

Don’t you “habeas schmabeas” me, young lady!

That’s it! I am so drafting a new, even stronger statement as soon as we get home.

And stop asking if we’re there yet! We’ll end this War on Terror when we get there!

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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.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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