Who’s the Real Barack Obama?

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WHO’S THE REAL BARACK OBAMA?….Here’s a little Friday morning game for everyone to play. Below are half a dozen desperate right wing luminaries calling Barack Obama half a dozen preposterous names:

McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb: “Barack Obama has a long track record of being around anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American rhetoric.”

Former Republican House leader Tom DeLay: “I tagged him as a Marxist months ago.”

Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann: “I’m very concerned that he may have anti-American views. That’s what the American people are concerned about.”

Republican presidential candidate John McCain: “I think his plans are redistribution of the wealth. He said it himself: ‘We need to spread the wealth around’….That’s one of the tenets of socialism.”

National Review contributing editor Stanley Kurtz: “The fact that Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Wright’s anti-Americanism means that this is now a matter of public policy, and therefore an entirely legitimate issue in this campaign.”

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin: “Our opponent though, is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

So Obama is anti-Semitic, Marxist, anti-American, a socialist, an extremist Afrocentrist, and a terrorist sympathizer. And that’s just off the top of my head.

So here’s the game: what else has the McCain campaign and its surrogates called Obama? The only rule is that the name caller has to be someone with credentials: a campaign aide, a national politician, a major league pundit, etc. No obscure bloggers or commenters from Free Republic. What have you got for me?

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This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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