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Mitch McConnell blasted President Obama’s plan to extend unemployment insurance yesterday by claiming that his trillion dollar stimulus had failed and pointing to the “three chronically unemployed Americans” who stood next to Obama at a press conference on Monday as evidence. Greg Sargent:

The GOP game plan: Amid the debate over benefits, point to “chronic” joblessness — that’s a word you’ll be hearing more often — in order to illustrate that Dem economic policies are failing.

And later: While it’s unanimously assumed that Dems hold all the political cards in this standoff, Republicans have their own strategy here. They believe that while Dems can milk this for short term advantage, over time any discussion of “chronic” joblessness — a term you’ll hear more often — draws attention to the failure of Dem economic policies and feeds the GOP’s larger critique of the inefficacy of the Dems’ big spending ways.

True — but I think there’s something more to it: talking about “chronic” joblessness is also a way of suggesting that some of the unemployed are shiftless and lazy. Someone who’s “chronically unemployed” isn’t your unlucky next door neighbor, it’s those guys in the ghetto or down in the hollow who just hang around all day and have never held an honest job in their lives for more than a few weeks at a time. Are these the kind of people you want to run up the national debt for?

I didn’t think so. But guess what? Democrats do!

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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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