January 13, 2012

Your Daily Newt: Pirates!

Newt Gingrich prepares to speak outside the state house in Columbia, South Carolina.Tim Dominick/The State/ZumaPress

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As a service to our readers, every day we are delivering a classic moment from the political life of Newt Gingrich—until he either clinches the nomination or bows out.

As we’ve documented previously, shortly before kicking off his presidential campaign last spring, Gingrich deleted much of his Twitter archive. Prior to that point, @NewtGingrich had offered a snapshot of his soul—a cornucopia of restaurant reviews, musings about dinosaurs, and condemnations of Sonia Sotomayor. And, for a week-long period in 2010, a space for Gingrich to vent about President Obama’s hand-off approach to the Somali pirate menace.

Obama, according to Gingrich, was guilty of appeasing the ruthless corsairs. As he put it: “The correct answer to piracy is to destroy it not negotiate with it Seals can retake the lifeboat Track every boat leaving somalia” (sic). Gingrich argued that Obama needed to outline “the rules of civilization” and make clear that the United States wouldn’t be pushed around. This sequence, flagged by Tommy Christopher, was typical:

And then this happened.

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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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