Friday Cat Blogging – 15 May 2009

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I sure have been feeling cranky this week.  I’m not sure whether it showed on the blog, but I have been.  Too much torture blogging, too much healthcare mendacity, too much gutting of carbon policy, too much credit card venality, too much wingnuttery — just too much of everything.

In other words, pretty much like every other week.  So why did it seem worse?  Hard to say.  But I’m sure looking forward to being able to hit the reset button in a couple of days.

In the meantime, though, here are the Friday cats!  Yesterday Inkblot suddenly went crazy and started tearing around the house for no reason, the way cats do, and after finishing up with all the ground level rooms he decided to tear up the stairs and — kaboom!  There was Domino, sacked out in a sunny patch at the top of the stairway.  Stopped him cold.  Domino gave him the evil eye, he stood around for a minute looking confused, and finally turned around and slunk back downstairs.  And who can blame him?  After all, what would you have done?

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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