Tomorrow Saturday July 26 marks the beginning of the 100 Days to Victory campaign. I'm calling on anybody and everybody across the country to help Scott Harper in IL-13 by phonebanking for half an hour calling just 5 people from a list of names and numbers and a script we'll send you via email or fax. This is an excellent opportunity for newbies to get their feet wet volunteering for a campaign and you don't have to be anywhere near Illinois to participate. You don't need any campaign experience to help. If you know how to use a telephone that's good enough. Of course if you're an experienced activist who wants to do more you can make as many calls as you want and we'll also be canvassing and phonebanking from many locations across the district. If you're close by campaign HQ in Naperville we're meeting at 1pm for a group photograph. We're gonna have with free pizza, so bring the kids and we'll have a great time.  

So read on for details about why you should spend a little time tomorrow and links to how you can help.

From the making lemons into lemonade file. When Barack Obama appoints his new attorney general (I'm hoping for John Edwards) he should immediately charge him or her with using the new now legal ability of the executive branch to spy on Americans almost without limits to bug all communications by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their aides past and present.

It's incredibly important that these evildoers be brought to justice and not just because it'd make us feel better. There's several good reasons as I explain below.

We had the biggest canvass Dems have ever had in IL-13 today organized by Scott Harper's campaign. We canvassed in all 13 townships in IL-13 thus it was named "13 for the 13th".

Read on for more details and a not so gentle exhortation to get to work.  

Republicans keep repeating the claim that the Chinese and/or Cubans are drilling for oil off the coast the Florida. Myopic, traitorous, fish hugging Democrats are letting communists suck up the black inky lifeblood out of the Gulf that rightly belongs to us! While I'll bet if you squint real hard you can almost see the rigs from Sloppy Joe's in Key West.

The argument is now so prevalent I thought I'd do some googling to find out what's really going on. Besides that I thought I read somewhere the Chinese have signed some contracts with Cuba and may actually start putting some exploratory rigs in the Gulf off Cuba as soon as next year. I envision wingnuts claiming "we were right all along" if that comes to pass.

So here is what I found. Read on for more:

Crossposted at TPM

I gotta tell ya, it's gonna be so nice sleeping well at night with a real good man as president for a change next year.

Make no doubt about it we're gonna have very tough times in the years ahead which Republicans will try to blame on President Obama. Changing our healthcare system, our transportation system and how we generate electricity are going to be expensive but necessary adjustments, massive adjustments that we must make if this country and the world is to not only going to prosper but survive.

It's gonna take more than electing a great man president.
We need to do so much more. All of us. Read more about what that is after the jump. This only the start.  

I'm a precinct committeeman in Downers Grove Township, Dupage County IL (IL-13). I bumped this up from the comments I made on bored now's excellent diary on the race at yinn's suggestion.

I worked on Bill Foster's campaign for the last three weeks. Below are some of my impressions from this great campaign:

This is a common meme you'll hear from Republican opponents of the bill. In order for a cigarette tax to work we'd need 22 million new smokers. Rep. Joe Knollenberg's (R-MI) staffer Trent Wisecup blurted it out in that video with the protester and my Rep Judy Biggert (IL-13) said the same thing in one of her conference calls to constituents I had the displeasure to listen to the other day. This emanates from Heritage Foundation junk economics. Read on for a debunking of this phony argument.  

This is the first of what will be many diaries here from the Scott Harper campaign. After the jump is an open letter we just sent to all the local papers in the IL-13th. We'll see if any print it.

In the coming days I'll be writing a bio piece about Scott whom I met at Yearly Kos and helped recruit to run against House non entity Judy Biggert. Scott will also be posting in the near future himself.

While most of our sitting reps and senators don't have much to say about "Small Price" Boehner's comments Scott does. Read on for more info and if you'd like to learn more about him or send some cash his way (we're gonna need a lot) here's the webpage:

http://www.scottharperforcongress.co...

 

Below is a personal story, anecdotal information about why I think Obama will become president next year. I know a lot of people think America isn't ready to elect a black man. Read on for a story about just one voter and why I think it makes all the difference in the world.

I'm the chair of the visibility committee of my local township Dem organization. At various town fests and parades this summer we want to sell baseball caps with a silk screened slogan on the front. I need help running down a hat supplier and coming up with witty cacthphrases to put on these hats. We want something short and sweet that'll make people say I gotta have that hat. If you come up with a winning slogan I'll send you one of the hats. Read on for the parameters and please contribute any ideas in comments.

I'd like you to join me for a little trip down fantasy lane. Sort of an alternative universe where we wake up tomorrow morning with a great president, boodles of cash and the national will to "win" in Iraq. I'm starting with that to show just how far we are from winning the Iraq war in any sense that Bush thinks of as winning.  

But the real purpose of this post is what comes next. An equally preposterous sounding proposition that is in fact based on the reality of the situation and may just be the viable alternative.  

This morning at 10am there will be a press event calling on Roskam to support parts of the First 100 Hours agenda in Schaumburg. I know it's late notice but I only got the email yesterday. Read on to see how you can join in and help force lil Petey's hand or if he sticks to his guns highlight just how out of the mainstream he is.
 

This is it folks. By the time you read this we'll be knee deep in the last few days of canvassing/phonebanking and then GOTV. Below the fold we have a onestop shop of the ads from both sides currently playing.

We've eked out a lead folks even though The Repubs have spent much more on TV commercials. We've done it by having a better ground game and a better candidate. We need to finish the job. Come out and help us put Tammy Duckworth in congress. Read on to see how the GOTV works, how, where and when you can get in on it, and where the mother of all Victory parties will be on Election Night.

This is it folks. The battle we've all been gearing up for. Read on for the Zogby update on the race, and what you can do, must do, if we're going to send Tammy Duckworth to congress.  

As we come down the stretch here in the final days I have good news from the frontlines and Tammy's fundraising goals for the final week. Read on for links to her new commercials, how the race looks now directly from the frontsteps of suburban Chicago, my encounter with a crabby woman and well...more begging from me.  

This just in: A poll taken in the Sixth Congressional District from October 23-24 by Bennett, Petts and Blumenthal found that Tammy Duckworth's campaign to change Congress has withstood millions of dollars in negative ads.

The poll of 400 voters shows Duckworth holding a 44-43 percent lead over her opponent, Peter Roskam.

Woohoo! Back in front!

After the jump you'll find more details about the poll from the press release and info about ongoing canvassing, phonebanking and the incredibly important GOTV training Tammy's campaign is having this weekend plus a few other observations from the past week. As an added bonus another endorsement.

http://www.duckworthforcongress.com/

Tammy has made it a clean sweep of the 3 major papers in the district getting the Sun Times endorsement this morning. Read on for that and a desperate flub on the part of the once and future nuisance lawsuit filer Peter Roskam.

Friday in Rolling Meadows Peter Roskam was rallying his troops during another appearance with Ken (we really don't know who Abramoff is) Mehlman and made one of his dumbest comments of the campaign.

Read on for my take on that, the invitation to see Clinton on Monday in Chicago, tales from the front yesterday and how you can help Tammy Duckworth get out the vote.