Crossposted at MY DD and Kos

Last night was the live debate between Tammy Duckworth and Peter Roskam at College of DuPage. How big is this race? There were camera crews there from as far away as Japan and Norway. Apparently the rest of the world thinks this is THE prime example of the divide in American politics today. And after tonight I have to say they're right. Read on for just how far out there in Wingnutville Roskam is, farther than I knew and some great ideas from Tammy I hadn't heard before.

Duckworth for Congress

First of all you'll be able to watch the debate on CSPAN soon. Check their website for listings.

I won't keep you in suspense, I think I can safely say Tammy won the debate. She knows her stuff, she knows his stuff and frankly I have a big mouth and am a sexual intellectual (as Jimmy Buffett would say) and I wouldn't want to debate her. I also wouldn't want to get on her bad side. She reminds me of my Uncle Harry who survived the Battle of the Bulge and the Tet Offensive. Tough as nails and commands the room when she wants or needs to.

Roskam is a marginal candidate better suited to the far reaches of wingnuttery than the suburbs of Chicago. He's got cute kids though. They all shouted in unison "We love you daddy!" at the introduction. Isn't that cute? When he talks about school issues he brings them up. He's smarter than Santorum, he switched them into public school last year.

His act is geared toward appealing to a coalition of the worst our country has to offer. He's got the no abortion for any reason cuz Jesus might come back as a product of rape or incest crowd, the NRA says the 2nd amendment allows me to mount a .50 caliber machine on my roof militia, and tonight he actually said global warming was junk science! His position on the environment despite Bush's own commission telling us that the..uh..SCIENTIFIC research has it right is the same as Bush's was 5 long years ago. This man is shoveling Michael Crichton crap to people who think the planet can sustain a standard internal combustion gasoline powered car in every garage from here to Timbuktu.

At this point I'd like to mention that it snowed today. In Downers Grove Illinois. On October 12th. Though NPR said it's happened in recorded history before I've lived in Chicagoland most of my life and I've never seen that. My sweetheart Pam, up near Kalamazoo says the snow stuck up there. Yeah maybe we're just entering another mini ice-age. But tell that to the Norwegians who will all be moving to Florida in a couple of decades, if they can get in, when the Atlantic conveyor collapses and Oslo is snowed in 365 days a year. Oh wait, I forgot Florida is gonna be mostly underwater and Roskam's immigration position.

Roskam's position on immigration is the same as Sensenbrenner's. We're gonna ethnically cleanse our country of 12 million illegal immigrants. Never mind how racist that is. Never mind the $5/lb. we'll be paying for peppers and peaches. Think about how practical it is. We don't have the soldiers to pacify Iraq or Afghanistan. Roskam proposes to keep National Guard troops on the border forever. Says they work desk jobs while freeing up border guards to make arrests. Tammy's response? Her old unit just deployed to the border in helicopters. You damn sure don't need helicopters to do desk jobs. Raise your hands if you thought joining the National Guard would be a full time job for lousy wages and benefits making the country safe for psychotic racist economic illiterates. After 3-1/2 years of Iraq and Afghanistan if these Guard soldiers had lives and their units had equipment they're pretty much gone now. What kind of idiots think that's a workable solution?

For energy solutons he sides with Cheney. The same old crap about subsidies for new refineries, never mind that the oil companies shut down refinery capacity in the 90's to squeeze up prices. Never mind that even the oil companies don't want to expand into greenfields. It's a mature industry and they like being in the towns near ports and oil fields where they're already welcome. They wouldn't build new refineries if they could. They'd add on where they are.

Tammy on the other hand proposes that we use our advantages here, our great schools, industry and Argonne Lab to become the Silicon Valley of energy independence.

We had an overflow crowd last night in a big hall about the size of a big highschool gym. About 20% of the attendees had to listen outside in the foyer. Inside I'd say we had about 60-40 Tammy supporters at the end judging by the applause. One of our people outside said she was talking to a woman and her son, about 19, during the debate. That woman didn't know anything about the candidates, wanted to come down and see them. About halfway through she said she'd had it, couldn't take him anymore. Tammy had her vote.

Objectively I can see her point, he speaks like a smarmy lawyer/politician. Brags about the obviously inconsequential stuff he's done or advocated to pad his resume. Tries to cloak his far right positions in slick mumbo jumbo that leaves even his supporters wondering what he's talking about. Uses his kids as some weird cheerleader squad. From where I stood even his 5 o'clock shadow looked Nixonesque.

So anyway to wrap it up Tammy kicked butt. She effectively reiterated her positions and neutralized his lies which have also been getting a lot of pretty honest play in the local press. In response he held up copies of her mailers which nobody could see and said she was being mean after saying in her great TV ads and the killer radio address we needed to stop the partisanship. You don't know how silly a politician can sound until you've heard a DeLay disciple who's spent $1.4 million of the NRCC's money on negative ads complain about his opponent attacking him.

His summation was an odd homage to Henry Hyde's bipartisanship (Henry Hyde? the leader of the Clinton impeachment, ya gotta be kidding me! everybody laughed) and how we are the envy of the world. He thinks the world envies instead of resents us these days. In tone it kind of reminded me of Bob Dole's "we can go back to the 1950s again" acceptance plea at the Republican convention in 1996 combined with Reagan's "morning in America" optimism. But in reality it's completely at odds with the fear, racism and ignorance he and his party peddles. It probably works for him when he's speaking to a room full of fatcats who want the government to protect not just promote the general welfare of the most prosperous among us at the expense of everyone else. But that's a tiny minority in this country, even in this relatively affluent county and thanks to George Bush it's getting smaller every day.

Tammy hammered him pretty good on his ties to Hastert, Bush and the whole corrupt leadership of the Republican party. If he pulled that (eeek!) Nancy Pelosi is from San Francisco crap I don't remember it. He may have but when he tried to tar her as corrupt for a $1000 campaign contribution she got from a friend of the clown who was indicted yesterday for demanding kickbacks on state contracts she smacked him right back with the half a million he got from Bush at yesterday's closed door fundraiser who also got $5000 from the guy who btw wasn't even named in the indictment. Talking about who would be in Dem leadership isn't winning proposition right now for any Republican. It just leaves them wide open to the Hastert, Foley, Cunningham, DeLay, Ney, Abramoff, Bush scandals and Tammy bulldozed through that door a number of times specifically when he defended the use of earmarks. There's nobody better or more knowledgable at talking about government waste, especially in the DOD than Duckworth and she made a shambles of his argument.

Duckworth for Congress

Thursday is the big fundraiser in Chicago, hosted by Denny Hastert and starring George Bush. Peter Roskam and Dave McSweeney stand to split a million bucks from this shindig. The whole Illinois Repub delegation is scheduled to be there. They're desperate to hang on to Henry Hyde's seat and figure they can bury Tammy Duckworth with negative ads. Read on for the details and what you can do about it.

I can understand McSweeney showing up, he's about broke and Melissa Bean, according to MyDD's 2006 House Forecast has a 459% cash advantage over him.

But Roskam just got $639,000+ from the NRCC last Friday and another $2905 yesterday. That brings his total from them to $1,224,479.69, almost all of it spent on negative mailers and phonebanking lies to turn off independent voters and fire up his base. And he'll probably get that kind of weekly infusion to his frantic campaign from here on out. He's gotten over $200,000 from Repub leadership PACs. The most of any non-incumbent in the country.

That frees him up to use own warchest on those "Brady bunch" ads with his kids. According to the same Chris Bower My DD compilation above, which I suggest everybody read to see who needs it before donating your money, Roskam has 33% more cash on hand than Duckworth.

Even though they've raised roughly the same amount of money personally he's had about a $400,000 cash on hand lead since the primary where he was uncontested and Duckworth had no choice but to spend a lot on commercials with Obama to get name recognition against Cegelis and Scott after her discharge from the active Army in December 2005.

In Chicago's expensive media market Duckworth needs your help to keep her ads on TV in these last few weeks. We're essentially tied in this race and she ought to benefit as a Dem woman from the Foley scandal.

But with the money Tom Reynolds and the NRCC are throwing at her Roskam might just bury her if she doesn't get the cash.

Not many of us have $1000 to get a seat at a fundraiser like Republican fatcats do. Not many of us can round up $25,000 from clients, friends and those beholden to us so we can get a snapshot to blow up and frame on our wall to show how close we are to power. But that's what Republican contributors do. And they do it to buy what they want. It's no surprise Roskam flip flopped on tort reform when he saw what kind of money he could bring in from doctors if he said he'd cap pain and suffering awards. It's no wonder he supports getting rid of the estate tax permanently. These people don't care about the debt they're leaving our kids. Social Security is a hindrance to them. They don't need school loans for college. The Iraq War will never touch their lives or anybody close to them. In short they don't care about our country. They're only in it for themselves. And if that means ponying up money for ridiculous candidates like Peter Roskam, sidling up to Sgt. Schultz clone Denny Hastert (I saw nothing!) and shaking hands with the worst president since James Buchanan then they'll do it.

But while most of us can't raise that kind of money personally there are millions more of us than there are of them. Millions more of us who can afford $10, $20, or $200 who do give a damn about this country and where it's going. We can make up the difference. And in doing so we can counter the lies of the truly morally corrupt Peter Roskam and send a true patriot who will make a great congresswoman to Washington, Tammy Duckworth. If you want to take back congress and put the brakes on the Republican machine this is where we breach that wall.

BTW the next debate is:

Thursday, October 12th

Please arrive by 6:30 as seating is limited Duckworth supporters should wear blue

College of DuPage

Student Resource Center, Room 2800

425 Fawell Blvd

Glen Ellyn, IL 60137-6599

Directions: Located at the corner of Lambert Road & Fawell Blvd. in Glen Ellyn , IL Student Resource Center located on west side of building.

I'll be there in a blue shirt.

On Thursday (October 12th) George W. Bush and Denny Hastert are holding a $1000/plate fundraiser for Peter Roskam (IL-06) and Dave McSweeney (IL-08) at the Hilton Hotel in Chicago. If you're wondering why candidates would want to appear with two of the most unpopular men in the nation right now think money. Roskam and McSweeney are scheduled to split a cool million from this appearance with the boy king and the round mound of congressional coverup.

Hastert can't be uninvited or come down with the Foley flu like Reynolds did yesterday rather than face Rahm Emanual and Tim Russert. He's hosting the luncheon.

So how close are Hastert and Roskam? It didn't take long to find out.

On his own website Roskam cite's this Pioneer Press article from 7/20/2006:

“With nearly $200,000 in leadership PAC contributions so far in the 2006 election cycle, Roskam, as of June 30, has received more leadership PAC dollars than any other non-incumbent Congressional candidate in the nation. Leadership PACs' dollars are contributions from political committees formed by sitting legislators. Roskam campaign spokesman Ryan McLaughlin credits House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-14th, for those contributions. ‘That's related to how important [Hastert] is for us in this race. I think it also shows that, if elected, Peter Roskam can make an instant impact in Washington, D.C.’ he said.”

Roskam needs that half a million just as he needs the whopping $639,000 the NRCC gave him Friday. Because frankly his whole campaign is based on being a part of the Republican old boy network in Washington and how much swag he'll be able to get via earmarks.

And when you don't have much to offer other than being a small cog in the greasy K Street machine you'd better suck up to your benefactors. Petey does, right on cue. Read what he had to say about Denny and Foleygate last week:

“Do I take the speaker of the House at face value? Yeah.” (Peter Roskam, Chicago Tribune, 10/4/2006)

And this from last spring when the House was fumbling around faking an attempt at reform:

Roskam responded to Duckworth’s challenge to lay out his ideas on ethics reform by saying “he would support whatever House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert does, since he has ‘confidence’ in Hastert’s ability to pass a bill to restore public trust.” (Chicago Sun Times, 4/5/2006)

Yeah it's no stretch calling Roskam a rubber stamp Republican. This guy couldn't even be bothered to come up with anything more original than "cut and run" when debating his opponent, wounded Iraq War vet Tammy Duckworth who lost her legs in combat. Anybody appearing with Bush and/or Hastert ought to be castigated for being what they are: shameless creeps who will do or say anything to get elected. And that description fits Peter Roskam to a "T".

http://duckworthforcongress.com/