June 16, 2015

Watch Me School Jeb In How To Play the Punctuation Game

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I see that Jeb Bush is now Jeb! So I wonder what I should be? I don’t really see myself as an exclamation point kind of guy, so that’s out. Maybe Kevin? is the ticket. But would that make me seem curious and questioning, or tentative and questionable?

Hmmm. Kevin@ is no good. It just seems like half an email address. Kevin# looks like a hashtag written by a confused oldster. Kevin% would remind a tiny number of people of an old BASIC variable. Kevin& just begs the question: Kevin & what? Kevin* would make people start looking around for the footnote. Kevin/ doesn’t even make sense.

But Kevin> has potential, doesn’t it? Forward looking! To the point! Greater than all the rest of you! Plus it sort of looks like an HTML tag, which gives it a faux Silicon Valley techie vibe. And best of all? It’s not an exclamation point! Jeb is going to be sorry he didn’t think of this first.

POSTSCRIPT: Seriously, is it something in the water, or what? Jeb and Hillary both have hideous logos. Who’s making design decisions in campaign-land these days?

WE CAME UP SHORT.

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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.

payment methods

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