October 9, 2019

Wednesday Update

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

So where have I been all day? Sort of semi-asleep, it turns out.

The effect of the dex is getting more unpredictable lately. This week, the dex crash came Wednesday morning, so I woke up, ate breakfast, and then went back to sleep until about lunchtime. I’ve been awake but drowsy ever since.

This is probably why the news seems even more dispiriting than usual. The Turks are rolling into Kurdish Syria and all Donald Trump has to say is, hey, the Kurds weren’t with us on the beaches of Normandy, so what kind of ally are they anyway? This has apparently finally gotten a rise from his evangelical fans, not because they care about the Kurds but because the Turks might end up killing some Christians too. I guess Trump forgot that the fate of Christians in the Middle East is a big deal to American evangelicals.

Here in California, the winds are picking up and PG&E is afraid that sparks from their electric lines might start a wildfire. You’d think the answer to this problem, in the greatest nation on earth, would be to install safer transformers and so forth, but I guess that’s beyond us. So instead they’re just shutting off electricity to a million people or so. Boo yah.

In other news, Ronan Farrow says Matt Lauer raped someone but NBC didn’t care. On the campaign trail, the yahoos are out in force, declaring their learned skepticism that any school in the 70s would decline to allow a pregnant woman to teach classes. And Republicans are still circling the wagons around their cult leader.

I think I’ll go back to bed now.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate