Desperate Republicans Try Sex

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They’ve got to know they’re in trouble when they’re scraping the bottom of barrel this hard to come up with muck to throw at Democrats. Trying to tip the scales in a tight New York House race, the Republican National Committee has been running an ad declaring that the Democratic candidate called a phone-sex line and left taxpayers with the bill. Strictly speaking, it’s true: there was a phone call placed from the hotel room of candidate Michael Arcuri, a county district attorney, to a 1-800 fantasy line. Billing records show it lasted all of one minute, cost $1.25 – and was followed immediately by a call to the state Department of Criminal Justice Services, which has nearly the identical number. It was so obviously a misdial that Arcuri is threatening a libel suit, and seven television stations have refused to run the ad.

But that’s minor-league mud-slinging compared to the efforts of several GOP candidates to link their opponents to pedophilia! Yep, you read that right: since Nancy Pelosi marched in a gay pride parade that included the icky North American Man/Boy Love Association, and California candidate Charlie Brown (no kidding) supports the ACLU who sometime, somewhere filed a suit on behalf of the same NAMBLA, they are ipso facto advocates of sodomizing teenage boys. I could have sworn that was some other politician…

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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.

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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.

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