July 6th, 2009 Standoff between Marines and Afghan insurgents Posted: 09:23 AM ET

(CNN) -- U.S. forces faced off against Afghan insurgents in a standoff Monday that caught women and children between the armed groups, a U.S. military official told CNN.

The Marines' restrained approach differs from previous hits on compounds when airstrikes were readily called in, the official said.

The standoff in the town of Khan Neshin is especially significant because the U.S. military earlier reported that the Afghan government regained control of the town Monday, which was a Taliban stronghold for several years.

Coalition forces began talks with local leaders several days ago, and have moved about 500 Marines into Khan Neshin, a U.S. military news release said. With the government takeover of Khan Neshin, it is the first time coalition forces have a sustained presence so far south in the Helmand River valley, the release said.

The mission to secure Khan Neshin coincides with "establishing secure conditions" for August elections in Afghanistan, according to the release.

As per usual the insurgents fired on the marines and then withdrew to a compound with several buildings. The marines surrounded the place and through an intepreter called on the insurgents to let any women and chldren in the compound go. They let some out and after further negotiations more followed. Now it remains to be seen if the marines and the insurgents can come to some kind of agreement  to end this skirmish without more bloodshed.  

I'd have the interpreter tell 'em that drone up there has 4 hours of fuel left and there'll be another on station before it has to go back to base. They can hang around for weeks, long after your water and food is gone. If you so much as tippietoe four feet outside the compound, day or night, one of those things can plant a hellfire missile within a yard of you and blow you to bits. That's a pretty fultile way to make your point and I can't imagine Allah wants you to die in vain. So drop your weapons, come on out and let's talk. 

It ain't much, but it's a start.

Grassroots action works! Now keep phoning Landrieu, Snowe and Blanche Lincoln.

http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/07/02/hagan-to-support-help-committee-bill-activism-works/

I said I'd put this up weeks ago but have been busy organizing locally. The tide on health care is turning in our favor but we must keep up the pressure to get the strongest public option we can. With that in mind I've created some pages at my local Downers Grove Township Democratic Organization website that you can use.

Start here: http://www.dgdemocrats.com/

If you'd like to fax or phone senators on Baucus's Finance Committee, Kennedy's HELP Committee or House Reps on Rangel's Ways and Means Committee click on the "Healthcare Contact Info" button.

If you'd like to download the petition we're circulating click on "Healthcare Petition". You're welcome to modify it by taking our party name & address off the bottom to substitute your own if you like or just leave it blank. A Republican at the last Downers Grove Township Board Meeting did just that by folding the bottom inch under to run off copies on the copying machine. His wife's a  nurse so he knows we need to change this system.Take 'em to your local town fair or any gatherings you attend. Ask family, friends, co-workers to sign. Stand on street corner or go door to door. I keep a stack in my car and mention it to anyone I meet. You can sign up every waitress in a restaurant and the owner too that way. I'm gonna make copies of these and hand them to Biggert (more on that below) and fax them to Baucus, Kennedy and Rangel. If you have any other committee chairs or wavering Dems you think I should send them to please leave the info in comments. If enough people do this kind of stuff we'll win this fight. Just ask President McCain what an army of volunteers can do.

There's also a lot of links to articles about polling, sleazy insurance company tactics, and the competitive disadvantage American workers and business suffer from under the "Healthcare Reform Information" button. Some of them you've probably seen, some not.  

If you live in the Chicago area Campaign for Better Health Care is organizing a meeting and rally at House Rep Judy Biggert's (IL-13) Willowbrook office at Rt 83 and 63rd St. next Monday June 29th at 4:30 pm. We want to get as many people as we can there as a show of support for a strong public option in the health care bill. We're going to have media covering it.

Biggert has also tentatively agreed to come to a townhall in a bigger hall about health care on a Saturday to be determined in July. I know 4:30 is too early for a lot of people but it's the only time she would agree to next week.

I doubt we'll sway Biggert - her daughter is pharma lobbyist - but If we get a good crowd the resulting media coverage might shut her, Mark Kirk (IL-10) and Peter Roskam (IL-06) up for awhile and inspire Bill Foster (IL-14) and Melissa Bean (IL-08) to do the right thing. We're gonna get a good House bill, but the stronger it is, the better the negotiations with the Senate will go and the final bill will be.  

Please recommend this post. There's lots of useful information at the website and now is the time to get cranking on this. Both Houses say they intend to have the bill ready by August 1st. This is make or break time.  We elected Obama so we'd have a president who'd sign this kind of legislation into law. We don't have brigades of lobbyists with tons of campaign cash on our side. What we do have is an army of volunteers who have what they raise all that campaign cash for, to get the votes of hundreds of millions people. Let's remind those Senators and House Reps it's government of the people, by the people, for the people, not the profits of special interests.

His first name isn't "Bobby", it's "Piyush". It means "nectar" in Sanskrit, a delicious drink.

Why not use his real name as Republicans always like to say about Barack Hussein Obama? Piyush is a perfectly good name even if it's not very common in America. Hell "Rush" isn't very common either and it even rhymes with "Piyush" if I have the pronunciation right. A wingnut can't go wrong reminding people of Limbaugh. So he should be proud of his heritage, the voters of Louisiana are a diverse group, they'll still accept him, won't they?. Especially if he steals Obama's line about being a skinny kid with a funny name.

But maybe I'm wrong and his polling shows him that Piyush just won't fly. In that case he should try an Americanized version of "delicious drink" as a sobriquet. I suggest he call himself "OJ" or "Whiskey" Jindal. Both have a certain panache. 

When I think of "Bobby" I think of RFK, not Piyush Jindal. That nickname just doesn't fit him. It's like calling your daughter "Spike" or "Rocky". So let's have a little contest, let's see who can come up with the best new handle for the governor of Louisiana.  Any ideas?

I had no choice. As George Bush would say this candidating thing is haarrrd! Well, not so much hard as time consuming.

I had to go to a wine fundraiser at a restaurant in Naperville for township candidates. My township got half the take from any of our folks who showed up. It was an opportunity to network with volunteers and other candidates I couldn't in good conscience pass up for the sake of the ticket.

But talk about worthwhile. Within five minutes of walking in the door I talked to the local electrical union head who said he'd get us some money and boots on the ground. Then I met another guy who is a candidate for trustee in Naperville who has a skill set we need that's gonna come in very handy very soon. I'll talk about that in a future post, gotta keep that under wraps for the right time cuz you never know who's reading this.

Then I walked around schmoozing with people, listening to mini speeches from their candidates and trying to poach any likely volunteers I could. Karol, our highway commissioner candidate said she's heard from other union guys they're looking for us to pay their canvassers cuz they have a lot of people out of work in the construction trades.

Chatted with a nattily attired young man named Tom Castillo who is running for Lt. Governor. Don't know too much about Tom yet but he does have some impressive people I know around him and he isn't shy.

Saying my good nights I was buttonholed by another township chair who asked me if I'd be willing to join a little vocal ensemble she wants to organize. She likes my voice and I hope maybe more. I've been kind of sweet on her since the state convention down in Springfield last summer. But if we're gonna make sweet harmonies of any kind together it's gonna have to wait til after the election. *sigh*

On the ride home I heard the last half of Jindal's response on the radio. His delivery is pretty good. Hits his marks, doesn't stumble over words, emphasizes what he's saying like he means it and sounds like he knows what he's talking about. And if I didn't know better I'd think anthrax and tire rims are just what this country needs for dinner. 

So I got home and turned on MSNBC. Looked like Barbara Boxer was gonna start crying tears of happiness. Then KO introduced Howard Fineman and asked him what he thought of Obama's speech. Fineman said it was the best financial speech he'd ever heard. Check that, he didn't just say that, he said it with that stunned, "I'm supposed to be too jaded for this kinda stuff, but goddam that was the best financial speech I've ever heard and to hell with the years I've spent crafting an image as a professional skeptic"  kind of wonder in his voice that I recognize all too well in myself. Reminded me of my own reaction to Obama's speech the night he lost New Hampshire. There was no quit in the man. Not an ounce of sheepishness, no defeat, no surrender, just an unrelenting determination to rally supporters, pick us up and move us forward. I stood up and with the hair rising on the back of my neck and pointed to the tv and yelled to no one in particular, "That man is going to be the next President of the United States!" He knew it, I knew it and I was damn well gonna make everyone I talked to for the next 10 months know it and believe it too.

And with that I'm really sorry I missed the speech tonight. I like it when the hair stands up on the back of my neck. That's also why I haven't been commenting  much lately at TPM. Haven't even had time to catch up on my daily fix of DickDay's Camelot saga.

But I gotta do what I gotta do and what I've been doing lately is putting together a campaign budget, begging for campaign cash, staying up late pouring over township financial docs, figuring out how to answer open ended newspaper questions like "Why are you running? What will you do if elected? and Why are you the best person for the job?" in 200 words or less, recruiting volunteers, knocking on doors and writing press releases and what I hope are inspiring emails to the rest of the ticket and local newspaper writers hoping they'll cover our race. 

I'll have more, much more on the race later. But in the meantime I have to sleep. Tomorrow I'm writing a skinny kid with a funny name who says he has 351 high school kids at his school who might canvass for us. And all I have to do is write an email as inspiring as an Obama speech. No sweat!

So once again, if you have any cash to spare please hit the website (http://dgdemocrats.synthasite.com/2009twpbrochure.php) and scroll down to the Actblue link and contribute if you can.

I'm Mark Garrity, I'm running for Township Supervisor and I'm here to recruit you.   

 

Some of you asked me last week to keep you updated on how my campaign  for Township Supervisor is going. I'm on a slate with 6 other candidates: Clerk, Highway Commissioner and 4 Trustees. Here is the first Press Release of our campaign. We sent it out over the last few days to every local media outlet around. But first a little background.

Here in Downers Grove Township we have a tiny government, sort of a vestigial appendage left over from the days when Illinois was one of the Northwest Territories and there were few villages, towns or counties let alone cities to provide services. DGT government has less than a $5 million dollar budget and by statute, we have to provide three services, a general assistance program to qualifying residents, property assessment, and maintenance of township roads and bridges. Beyond these mandated functions, the township offers a variety of social services for township residents, including senior citizen and youth programs, transportation, and cemetery maintenance. To give you an idea of how small it is the Village of Downers Grove itself has over ten times the number of employees and is only one of 9 towns within the Township.

If elected, as Supervisor I'll be the top official on the board, I will sign the checks and make out the annual budget and financial reports. Our slate has FOIA'd records from the township and attended some of the meetings.

Republicans, as far as anyone knows, have held every position in DGT township government since there's been one, or at least since the Whig party died. They run a very sloppy ship.

Lately they screwed up appointing board members and don't have a legally constituted board anymore as you'll see below. Their own handpicked auditor issued an "adverse" opinion on their year end financial statement last year. In accountant speak that's an F. I'll have more on that in the future. The Highway Commission uses half the budget and is a microcosm of Chicago's Dept. of Streets and Sanitation with all the nepotism there. That's particualrly funny because all we hear out of Republicans around here is if Democrats get elected "they'll make it just like Chicago". This careless compliance, slipshod accounting, and cronyism are hallmarks of bad government and ought to raise red flags. If I have anything to say about it we'll be hoisting ones as big as Old Glory in the coming weeks.

So without further ado here is our first press release:

Republicans Botch Appointments to Downers Grove Township Government

Recently several members of the Downers Grove Township Government chose to retire. Edward P. Smith, the Highway Commissioner left office on December 31, 2008. Supervisor Barbara Wheat proffered her resignation letter effective January 16th. It appears rather than serve out the last few months of their elected terms they left early so their appointed successors could run as incumbents with the attendant advantages.

Illinois statutes (60 ILCS 1/60-5) say that's a legal maneuver, the Board is charged with filling vacancies by appointment, but let's look at the way they did it.

Those same Illinois statutes (60 ILCS 1/60-20) also say "Whenever they (the Board) accept a resignation, the township clerk shall make a minute of the acceptance upon the township records."  Nowhere in the minutes published over the last 6 months does it show the Board made a motion to accept the resignations of either Smith or Wheat. There was no motion made to accept the resignation of Frank Wurster as Trustee. The December 4th minutes show the clerk did read a resolution  honoring Highway Commissioner Smith for his many years of service  which was passed by vote along with a mention that his successor, Lawrence Anderson would be appointed in January. A resolution honoring someone is not the same as a motion to accept a resignation.

During the January 22 meeting Clerk Diane Konicek acknowledged receiving Barbara Wheat's resignation letter on January 16, 2009. Clerk Konicek slso informed the Board Trustee Frank Wurster had tendered his resignation effective January 22, 2009. Trustee Rita Carlson then made a motion to appoint Kathleen Abbate as Trustee to fill the remaining term of Mr. Wurster which was seconded by Trustee Robert Del Sarto with "all" voting aye.

The next order of business was the appointment of Frank Wurster as Supervisor. Trustee Carlson then made a motion to appoint Frank Wurster as Supervisor for the remainder of Wheat's term, seconded by Trustee Del Sarto, again with "all" voting aye.

In order for Wurster to be appointed Supervisor he first had to resign his Trustee position (as he did), he's not allowed to hold two voting positions on the Board simultaneously, however briefly. In order for Abbate to be appointed Trustee Wurster also could not remain in that position, the seat had to be vacant.

There are five voting positions on the Board, the Supervisor and the 4 Trustees. Neither the recently retired Supervisor Barbara Wheat or Trustee William Swanston  were present at that meeting. That left three voting members, one of whom was Wurster who had resigned his position to be appointed to Supervisor,  thus leaving only two qualified voting members.

Two qualified voting members of the Board do not constitute a quorum. According to the Illinois State Open Meetings Act (5 ILCS 120/1.02) (from Ch. 102, par. 41.02)  "for a 5-member public body, 3 members of the body constitute a quorum and the affirmative vote of 3 members is necessary to adopt any motion, resolution, or ordinance".  Thus the appointment of Frank Wurster to DGT Supervisor and  Kathleen Abbate to succeed him as Trustee were not legally done under Illinois law. Neither is any action the Board has taken during or since that meeting as they don't have a legally constituted Board.

Now this might seem like nitpicking to some. But appointing successors for elected officers is a pretty rare occurrence and serious business, especially right before an election. The law is very specific but also flexible, there were any number of ways they could have done this correctly and stayed within the law. But the all Republican Board, many of whom have been there for years if not decades, and really ought to know better ignored the statutes and instead made sloppy and ultimately illegal appointments. If that's how they conduct very rare business like this in open meetings when it's bound to attract attention, how are they conducting the people's business when nobody is watching their everyday activities?

The rest is contact info for local reporters which I won't include here. But I will include the campaign website where you can see the handbill we're having printed with our smiling faces on it and a link to the Actblue page where anyone who has a mind to can make me and TPM look good by ponying up a few bucks for the cause.

We start canvassing on Saturday and will be tromping through whatever weather Mother Nature throws at us all 7 weekends until election day on April 7th. There's no way we can reach all the voters we need to on foot so anything you give will go toward postage for mailing out these press releases (in modified form) to voters. Needless to say every little bit helps and will be greatly appreciated. If you're going to donate I ask that you tack a penny on the end so we can tell how many contributions we get from TPM. It's an old Kos trick. 

Thanks in advance for reading and contributing. Please recommend.

The website

If you've watched CSPAN today you saw a lot of talk about what works and what doesn't in the stimulus bill. As expected Republicans favor tax cuts of all kinds to solve the problem. Dems favor direct government spending. In a minute I'd like you to look at some numbers and compare, but first let's keep the following in mind. As the recession deepens, states' deficits are rising and could total $350 billion to $370 billion over the next 2 1/2 years. That translates into huge budget cuts as well as tax and fee increases, and these things will reduce overall demand, which removes even more money from the economy.

A lot of these states are mandated by law to balance their budgets each year. Foolishly they passed balanced budget amendments that thankfully Republicans were never able to ram through congress in the 1980s. Other states like California are so deeply in debt with no way to raise or borrow funds after years of mismanagement they are essentially bankrupt.

Now let's look at those figures. They come courtesy of the Int'l. Labor Communications Association. Now that sounds like a lefty organization (it is) and for some that would automatically make their data suspect. Well here's what the ICLA has to say about that:

Right about now somebody will be asking: "Did some wacky liberal (from Neptune) come up with this research and how much credibility does it have?" Sure, this is the sort of policy position you'd expect to come from Barack Obama or some sort of  "progressive" think tank. But it comes from Moody's Economy.com, which is an entirely different animal. It is a leading independent provider of economic analysis, data, and forecasting and credit risk services. And its chief economist, Mark Zandi, is a former advisor to presidential candidate John McCain.

Fiscal Economic Bang for the Buck

One year $ change in real GDP for a given $ reduction
in federal tax revenue or increase in spending

Tax Cuts
Non-refundable lump-sum tax rebate     1.02
Refundable lump-sum tax rebate     1.26

Temporary tax cuts
Accelerated depreciation      0.27
Across the board tax cut      1.03
Payroll tax holiday       1.29

Permanent tax cuts
Make Bush income tax cuts permanent    0.29
Cut in corporate tax rate      0.30
Make dividend and capital gains tax cuts permanent  0.37
Extend alternative minimum tax patch    0.48

Spending Increases
General aid to state governments     1.36
Increased infrastructure spending     1.59
Extending UI benefits       1.64
Temporary increase in food stamps     1.73

Source: Moody's Economy.com
http://www.ilcaonline.org/ht/display/ArticleDetails/i/75963

Feel free to send this to your crazy Uncle Spric or Niece Renaye. They need to know the facts. While you're at it send it your local congressman. Like what's his name says fax it to him or her. Send it to as many US senators as you'd like. John McCain might like to know at least one of his economic advisors isn't insane.

I wrote some of these thoughts earlier as comments in various other posts here at TPM and elsewhere in the past and I'd like to expand on them a bit.

As we all know Judge Roberts blew the oath of office on Tuesday. It looked like he froze on such a momentous occasion, maybe he was taken aback by the size of the crowd. The Chief Justice's job doesn't require him to be on such a large stage very often. And thankfully in the end the flub was no big deal.

But I think this points to a valuable lesson about diversity. George Bush selected Roberts from a limited pool of judicial talent. He only considered like minded strict conservatives for the highest post on the highest court we have. Most if not all of the candidates Bush chose from for the job rose through the ranks of the Federalist Society. These guys have been groomed for high courts from the time they leave law school. They've proved themselves time and time again through rulings from the bench and in their written opinions over the years. When given the chance to nominate SC justices Republicans are no longer willing to risk taking a flyer on a O'Conner or a Kennedy who proved too independent and were such big disappointments to them.

Roberts was the best they had to offer but coming from such a small pool of talent doesn't necessarily mean he was the best Bush could have done, even from their side of the aisle. Roberts was a very big fish from a very small pond. And as such he apparently suffers from the delusion that he's not only the best of the best, but like the man who put him on the court he thinks he's better than he really is. The egotistical exercise of trying to recite the oath from memory without back up notes speaks loud and clear to that delusion. 

We have a very big pond here in the US. We don't have to select Supreme Court justices or anyone else only from Ivy league schools or closed incestuous professional societies where they are stunted by adhering to a particular set of beliefs considered sacrosanct and beyond challenge or even open minded debate. We'd certainly be much better off with people in the highest offices in the land who have learned a little humility through out their lives instead of only those who see their rise to the top foreordained by a series of positions taken, rulings uttered, all predictably checked off the list that keeps them rising to the top of the pyramid. .  

In a different field my dad was an example of why diversity works. He was an all state high school halfback in the fall of 1941 on the undefeated Rock Island High School football team. He earned a football scholarship to the University of Illinois, the first in his family to go to college. WW11 intervened and he spent 3 years as a flight engineer on a B-24 flying around the South Pacific hunting for Japanese submarines. When he came back he joined a class of about 180 other scholarship players on the bulging squad, most returning war veterans like himself. Typically there was less than a third that number of incoming freshman football players in any given year but obviously 1946 wasn't a typical year. My dad was an excellent athelete. Tall, strong and fast for the time he had a knack for the game, he was the archetype of a college football player in 1946. But at his position was a guy a couple years younger by the name of Buddy Young, a little black kid from Phillips High School in Chicago. While short and stocky - listed anywhere from 5'3" to 5'7" - Buddy Young was nothing short of sensational. He set national track records at Illinois. He was built low to the ground and was as shifty as he was fast, sort of the Barry Sanders of his time. Opposing teams couldn't see him behind the big linemen when the play started and if he didn't make them miss he'd stick his helmut in their gut and bowl them over. When he got by them he was gone. Nobody could catch him.

My dad was never going to crack the starting lineup with Young in front of him. 
He tried to transfer to Northwestern but the Big Ten had an agreement not to raid each other's scholarship players. NW's coach reluctantly turned him down. He was stuck.

So my dad accepted his fate. He went on to get his master's degree in education. It's not like the NFL back then was a road to riches like it can be today anyway. Well into the 1960s most professional football players had to hold off season jobs to make ends meet. A whole lot of them wound up (and still do today) suffering from crippling injuries the rest of their lives. My dad went on to teach and coach for awhile but as our family grew he moved on to the more lucrative field of selling trucks and he spent most of his adult life earning a very good living. He excelled at it. More than once he earned Ford Motor Company awards for truck salesman of the year complete with rings, plaques and trips to Vegas. His knees were still good enough to play tennis twice a week into his 80s. Buddy Young went on to be a football star in the NFL and was one of the first union organizers of the sport. It worked out for the best for everybody. Illinois put the best football team they had on the field, my dad got the education he wanted and Young went on to not only earn the stardom professionally he so richly deserved as a player but helped make the business side of the NFL fairer to it's employees after his playing days were over. 

Here's probably the most extreme example of the downside of lack of diversity. In the early 1940s the USA and Nazi Gerrmany were competing to build the first atom bomb. Hitler had driven Jews from his country in the 1930s before he got around to gassing those who remained. With his racism he not only gutted his own pool of nuclear physicists but he drove many of the refugees who happened to be Jewish into the willing arms of the USA with a determination to win that race at all costs. His "pure aryan" scientists were no competition for the much wider talent pool from which the allies had to draw many of whom trained in Germnay's own universities.

Another example: Babe Ruth is considered the best baseball player of all time. He was the MIchael Jordan of the game. He won two World Series games as a pitcher for the 1918 Red Sox. He hit 54 homeruns to set a new record one year surpassing Homerun Baker's previous record of 21 in a season. But Ruth never faced some of the best baseball players of his generation because of racism. We'll never know just how good he was because instead facing a Satchel Paige in his prime he faced a pitcher of lesser skill because Paige wasn't allowed to play major league baseball for most of his career. Conversely would Ruth have been driven to even bigger heights if some of the best homerun hitters of the time were allowed to compete against him? Would there have been a Mantle/Maris McGwire/Sosa season long homerun contest between Ruth and a black player in the 1930s? Like I said we'll never know.

And we'll never know if Roberts is the best justice Republicans have because unless their candidates for the court have to fit a very specific profile they'll never rise to the top. Roberts may be the best the Federalist Society had to offer but that's like saying Paul Wolfowitz is the smartest foreign policy expert the neocons produced. That's not saying much.

 

   



 

 

...and nobody is there to hear it did it actually make a noise?

Well if a $3000 tax cut to an employer to hire or retain an employee doesn't immediately inspire a lot of hiring so what? A tax cut that isn't used doesn't cost the government anything. But once hiring does pick up it'll make the job recovery that much faster. 

Remember Bush's jobless recovery of 2002-2005? Want a repeat of that? I don't. So why wouldn't a Democratic president want to promote hiring? We have an $11 trillion dollar debt as it is. We can't afford half a decade of double digit unemployment. Maybe this isn't the best way to do it. But if not then let's hear some better ideas.



 

Do you find yourself yawning at pundits speculating about who is going to be in Obama's cabinet? Have you caught up on all the mundane chores and recreational activities you promised yourself you'd get to as soon as the election was over? Are you still jonesing to put Republicans out to pasture? We'll you're in luck!

Read more »

Sage advice from Sean Quinn at Nate Silver's site Five Thirty Eight:

"Because they already do. That ship has sailed. When facts are used to discredit Sarah Palin, emotion trumps facts. The instinct is to defend against the facts. Consider: you meet someone and like him or her on a gut level. A stranger – someone who doesn’t have built-up personal credibility with you – gives you a list of reasons not to like that person. How do you react?

On an emotional level, you want them to be wrong, and you will take every possible favorable inference on the likable person’s behalf. Using facts is pushing a big rock uphill. You might get it to the top with a few voters, but you’re going to expend a lot of energy for only a little return."

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/dems-must-give-voters-explicit.html

Read the whole thing for how to counter this, it applies to McCain too.

Second try at posting. DFA is looking for ad ideas and dollars to air them.
  Mark -

Thanks to your support, our ad featuring former POW Dr. Phillip Butler is already making a splash and exposing John McCain as "unfit to lead."

This is just the beginning of our aggressive, hard-hitting ad campaign to expose the real McCain. It's time to take it to the next level.

For our next ad, we want to hear your ideas. DFA has always believed in the power of the grassroots over Beltway consultants. We need to continue unmasking the real McCain. The ad should be aggressive, creative and truthful.

Submit your idea for our next ad and contribute $50 to get it on the air.

SEND US YOUR IDEA FOR AD #2 AND CHIP IN TODAY!

Wall Street is collapsing, our troops are still fighting an endless war and yet the polls are showing that the race for the White House is closer than ever. McCain's campaign of lies is working and we have to fight back fast.

Let's get the message out: If we can't trust McCain to tell the truth, how can we trust him to lead?

This is our moment to make a difference and together we can step up to the challenge. The time to act is now. You can help us put our campaign over the top. Submit your idea for DFA's next ad and chip in $50 to make it a reality.

ACT NOW! CONTRIBUTE $50 TO GET THE NEXT AD ON THE AIR.

Thank you for taking action,

- Rachel

Rachel Moss, Finance Director
Democracy for America

P.S. Our ad "McCain: Unfit to Lead" started running nationally on CNN yesterday and today we're ramping it up -- adding MSNBC and ESPN. The campaign with our partners at Brave New PAC has already been covered in everything from the Politico to the Boston Globe from the National Journal to NPR.  CONTRIBTUE NOW TO KEEP THE PRESSURE ON JOHN McCAIN

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This week Scott Harper's campaign in IL-13 was one of only five races nationally and the only one in Illinois to be upgraded to the Red to Blue Emerging Races list by the DCCC.

On top of that this week Harper was also endorsed by DAPAC (Democratic Advancement Political Action Committee). From their website: "DAPAC is a unique progressive political action committee that targets Republican held seats in the U.S. House and helps "new progressive" Democratic candidates run and win in those districts." They only support progressives: "All of our elected members of Congress from the last cycle have voted progressively on the issues. No other Democratic organization comes close to having a record as progressive as ours."

All the smart, hard work Scott, his campaign manager Sarah Topy, her staff and the volunteers flocking to the campaign are putting in to elect this great candidate to the House is really paying off.

Scott is the first serious candidate Bush loving, do nothing, 10 year incumbent Judy Biggert has ever faced. On primary day, Super Tuesday he got 25,000 more votes in the district than Biggert and her wingnut primary challenger combined.

We're seeing a sea change folks, in formerly Republican stronghold DuPage County which makes up about a third of the district, where Markos Moulitos cut his eye teeth canvassing in his misspent youth, almost 133,000 voters took Democratic ballots to 109,000 Republicant. I've been here for most of my life and I can tell you that's never happened before.

And it's not like Repubs had nothing to vote for, this was long before Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos", Biggert had her challenger, and there were several other contested primary races on their ballot. And let's remember it was the last chance they had to vote for anyone but McCain to be their nominee. Romney dropped out two days later. I'm a precinct committeeman here and spent all day at my polling place. I know my voters and I know the Repubs. There were a lot of angry, fed up Republicans who felt betrayed crossing over. My Repub counterpart was a convention delegate for Romney and desperately tried to get them to vote for Mittens but he didn't come close.

Keep in mind back in February hardly anyone knew who Scott was. He's not a longtime politico, he's never run for office before and if you googled his name last year chances are you'd come up with a reporter in Georgetown or a swimmer from Australia. I never heard of him before I met him at Yearly Kos in Chicago last year. On Super Tuesday he was just a name on the ballot with a "D" next to it. Now, thanks to Scott's hard work, a lot of nights and weekends spent by volunteers, the grueling hours his staff puts in, and the money supporters have dug deep to contribute, a whole lot more voters not only know him but are excited about his candidacy.

The same can't be said of Judy Biggert. Scott's forced her to open a campaign HQ and for the first time ever she's mounting a field campaign. She had to skip the Republican convention and the opportunity to hobnob with all those big money donors to march in Labor Day parades where Scott's contingent more than doubled hers in all but one parade thanks to the Giant Ice Cream Cone disaster of 2008 in Naperville that kept many supporters from getting to Lemont in time.

By the end of the 2nd quarter on June 30 Harper outraised all four of Biggert's previous challengers combined for their entire races. As a matter of fact he's outraised her since the beginning of the year. But unfortunately that's not enough.

Biggert has had a 10 year head start. She started with a huge warchest and can count on big banks she "oversees" (I use that term loosely) as the ranking member of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit. BTW she got that plum assignment, the only subcommittee or committee she's ever risen to chair or been ranking member of in her illustrious career in the House when her Republican predecessor dropped dead. You'd think with her district being right next door to Denny Hastert's all those years she'd be a brighter star in the wingnut firmament by now, but not Judy Biggert.

But I digress, She not only has big bank bucks backing her, (say that 5 times fast), she joined the rest of those fools on the House floor this summer spouting "drill baby drill!". Hilariously the only wingnut I found that wrote anything on the net about her speech into the darkness said without a mic she couldn't hear a word she said even though the writer was in the third row! It'll come as no surprise that while she gives lip service to alternative energy and actually votes sometimes for it's R&D funding she fights tooth and nail to make sure the fossil fuel industry stays on top. And why wouldn't she? She's got hundreds of thousands invested in them and has taken almost $88,000 of their campaign cash at last count, and probably a lot more since her grandstand play in the darkened House last month.

Her daughter is a pharmaceutical lobbyist in DC so what's her take from healthcare interests? A cool $230,000.

I could go on and on but you get the picture. Scott Harper is up against an old fashioned money con backed by the fattest of cats who want her to keep fighting for their privileged position, the future be damned.

We're on the verge of winning this race but we need people like you and me and our small donations to help make up that cash difference. The money will go toward the advertising blitz in the last few weeks that'll help us reach those who don't know enough about Harper yet and put us over the top.

Please give what you can to Scott's campaign through this page: www.actblue.com/page/emerging  $50, $100 bucks, even $5 would be a big help. Thanks.

This week <a href="http://www.scottharperforcongress.com/">Scott Harpers</a>'s campaign in IL-13 was one of only five races nationally and the only one in Illinois to be upgraded to the <b>Red to Blue Emerging Races list by the DCCC</b>.

On top of that this week Harper was also endorsed by <b>DAPAC (Democratic Advancement Political Action Committee)</b>. From their website: <i>"DAPAC is a unique progressive political action committee that targets Republican held seats in the U.S. House and helps "new progressive" Democratic candidates run and win in those districts." They only support progressives: &nbsp;"All of our elected members of Congress from the last cycle have voted progressively on the issues. No other Democratic organization comes close to having a record as progressive as ours."</i>

All the smart, hard work Scott, his campaign manager Sarah Topy, her staff and the &nbsp;volunteers flocking to the campaign are putting in to elect this great candidate to the House is really paying off.

Read on for how this race is shaping up to be one of our biggest House wins this cycle.

Scott is the first serious candidate Bush loving, do nothing, 10 year incumbent Judy Biggert has ever faced. On primary day, Super Tuesday he got 25,000 more votes in the district than Biggert and her wingnut primary challenger combined.

We're seeing a sea change folks, in formerly Republican stronghold DuPage County which makes up about a third of the district, where Markos cut his eye teeth canvassing in his misspent youth, almost 133,000 voters took Democratic ballots to 109,000 Republicant. I've been here for most of my life and I can tell you that's never happened before. And it's not like Repubs had nothing to vote for, this was long before Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos", Biggert had her challenger, and there were several other contested primary races on their ballot. And let's remember it was the last chance they had to vote for anyone but McCain to be their nominee. Romney dropped out two days later. I'm a precinct committeeman here and spent all day at my polling place. I know my voters and I know the Repubs. There were a lot of angry, fed up Republicans who felt betrayed crossing over. My Repub counterpart was a convention delegate for Romney and desperately tried to get them to vote for Mittens but he didn't come close.

Keep in mind back in February hardly anyone knew who Scott was. He's not a longtime politico, he's never run for office before and if you googled his name last year chances are you'd come up with a reporter in Georgetown or a swimmer from Australia. I never heard of him before I met him at Yearly Kos in Chicago last year. On Super Tuesday he was just a name on the ballot with a "D" next to it. Now, thanks to Scott's hard work, a lot of nights and weekends spent by volunteers, the grueling hours his staff puts in, and the money supporters have dug deep to contribute, a whole lot more voters not only know him but are excited about his candidacy.

The same can't be said of Judy Biggert. Scott's forced her to open a campaign HQ and for the first time ever she's mounting a field campaign. She had to skip the Republican convention and the opportunity to hobnob with all those big money donors to march in Labor Day parades where Scott's contingent more than doubled hers in all but one parade thanks to the Giant Ice Cream Cone disaster of 2008 in Naperville that kept many supporters from getting to Lemont in time.

By the end of the 2nd quarter on June 30 Harper outraised all four of Biggert's previous challengers combined for their entire races. As a matter of fact he's outraised <i>her</i> since the beginning of the year. But unfortunately that's not enough.

Biggert has had a 10 year head start. She started with a huge warchest and can count on big banks she "oversees" (I use that term loosely) as the ranking member of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit. BTW she got that plum assignment, the only subcommittee or committee she's ever risen to chair or been ranking member of in her illustrious career in the House when her Republican predecessor dropped dead. You'd think with her district being right next door to Denny Hastert's all those years she'd be a brighter star in the wingnut firmament by now, but not Judy Biggert.

But I digress, She not only has big bank bucks backing her, (say that 5 times fast), she joined the rest of those fools on the House floor this summer spouting "drill baby drill!". Hilariously the only wingnut I found that wrote anything on the net about her speech into the darkness said without a mic she couldn't hear a word she said even though the writer was in the third row! It'll come as no surprise that while she gives lip service to alternative energy and actually votes sometimes for it's R&amp;D funding she fights tooth and nail to make sure the fossil fuel industry stays on top. And why wouldn't she? She's got hundreds of thousands invested in them and has taken almost $88,000 of their campaign cash at last count, and probably a lot more since her grandstand play in the darkened House last month.

Her daughter is a pharmaceutical lobbyist in DC so what's her take from healthcare interests? A cool $230,000.

I could go on and on but you get the picture. Scott Harper is up against an old fashioned money con backed by the fattest of cats who want her to keep fighting for their privileged position, the future be damned.

We're on the verge of winning this race but we need people like you and me and our small donations to help make up that cash difference. The money will go toward the advertising blitz in the last few weeks that'll help us reach those who don't know enough about Harper yet and put us over the top.

Please give what you can to Scott's campaign through the <a href="http://www.actblue.com/page/emerging">Emerging Races ActBlue page,</a> $50, $100 bucks, even $5 would be a big help. &nbsp; <br>

There's little doubt Sarah Palin and her family have had a personal vendetta against her ex brother in law Mike Wooten since his marriage to her sister Molly started going sour.

They hired a private investigator to follow him around. A judge in the couple’s custody case  on Oct. 27, 2005, expressed puzzlement about why the family was trying to get Wooten fired, since depriving the trooper of a job would harm his ability to pay family support to Palin's sister. "It appears for the world that Ms. McCann and her family have decided to take off for the guy's livelihood -- that the bitterness of whatever who did what to whom has overridden good judgment," Suddock said in an audio recording from the trial on TV station KTUU's Web site. "

They lodged 36 accusations against Wooten in 2005 alone. Sarah Palin seemed personally obsessed with ending his career.

As we all know by now Palin also alleged that Wooten illegally shot a cow moose, but added that her father butchered the carcass and that she and her family cooked and ate the meat. I wonder if illegally killed mooseburgers are tastier than legally killed ones?

She also claimed that he used a taser on his stepson. The Alaska State Trooper suspension notice for Wooten says he tasered his 10 year old stepson Payton for "training purposes" whatever that means. 

Of all those complaints 11 stuck and Wooten was suspended for 10 days by the Alaska State Troopers which was negotiated down to 5 days by his union. 

Now Mike Wooten sounds like a real creep. He's been married 5 times and is evidently a drunk. Everything I've read about the guy makes him out to be ther kind of loser who enjoys life on the force as a power trip. He also thinks laws are for other people to obey, not him.

But here's what Sarah Palin said about him in writing when as mayor she wrote a letter of recommendation for him when he was looking for work in law enforcement. 

<b>In a Jan. 1, 2000, letter of reference, Palin wrote that if “America had more people with the grace and sincerity that mirrors the character of Mike Wooten...we would have a much kinder, gentler, trustworthy nation as a result. … </b>

<b>“I have witnessed Mike’s gift of calm and kindness toward many young kids here in Wasilla,” said Palin’s Jan. 1, 2000 letter written on City of Wasilla letterhead. “I have never seen him raise his voice, nor lose patience nor become aggitated [sic] in the presence of any child. Instead, Mike consistently remains a fine role model for my own children, and other young people in Wasilla.”</b>

So the question is who ya gonna believe about Mike Wooten? Sarah Palin or Sarah Palin? Because she'll pretty much say anything about anybody depending on whose side she's on at the moment.

<A HREF="http://www.pubrecord.org/nationworld/299-documents-suggest-palin-obsessed-over-retaliating-against-ex-brother-in-law.html">Read the whole thing,</A>

There's links to all the docs and  much, much more like how she's apparently slashing the State Police budget in retaliation against her percieved enemies who wouldn't do the Alaska welfare queen's bidding.