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The day is young, but I think we already have a winner in the least useful poll category. The latest from the ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that most people are in favor of the sequester but opposed to its specific cuts in the military.

Well, of course they are. But phrasing it this way is deeply misleading. People are always in favor of “budget cuts,” and they’re always opposed to cuts in actual programs when they’re mentioned by name. This poll is deliberately phrased to make it seem as if the public supports domestic cuts but not military cuts, and that simply isn’t true. The second question could have been about Social Security or road building or the FBI or education or anything else, and it would have gotten about 60 percent opposed. This has been true for approximately as long as polls have been conducted.

The ABC News report that passes along these poll results makes a teensy little nod to this well-known fact at the tail end of the story, noting that “support for budget cuts in general may be easier to express than support for cuts in particular programs.” This is about as opaque a reference as you could imagine. What’s the point of all this? It’s so deliberately deceptive that it’s hard to make sense of.

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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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