Three Things I Don’t Care About

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There are lots of topics I don’t write about (or write very little about), and normally nobody notices. Or, if they do, they don’t know why I haven’t written about any particular one of them. Maybe it’s just uninteresting to me. Maybe I’ve gotten temporarily bored by it. Maybe I don’t know enough about it. Maybe I can’t think of anything interesting to say that hasn’t already been said. Could be lots of reasons.

That said, here are three things I haven’t written about, and probably won’t:

Should we call Dylann Roof a terrorist? In the dim past, back when we used to blog earnestly about such things, I always argued that this was a silly distraction. You can call members of Al-Qaeda terrorists or extremists or militants or whatever. For Republicans, this eventually became some kind of weird litmus test designed to show that Democrats were appeasers, and it was ridiculous. Ditto today, coming from the Democratic side. Call Roof a terrorist if you want, or call him a madman or a racist psychopath. I don’t care.

The pope on climate change. I’m not Catholic. I’m not even Christian. Pope Francis seems like a relatively good guy as popes go, but I don’t care what he thinks about much of anything. I’m certainly not going to opportunistically start now just because he happens to be saying something I agree with.

Donald Trump. Oh please.

That’s it. We’ll soon be back to our regularly scheduled program of stuff I do write about.

IMPORTANT NOTE! I almost forget to add a caveat that’s critical in the blogosphere: this is just me. Everyone else should feel free to write about all these things. This post should not be taken as a personal condemnation of anyone who chooses to do so. First Amendment. De gustibus. Etc.

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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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