Help Kick Tom Delay뭩 Buddy in the Ass and Out of the House!

salib

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Fri Aug-11-06 09:54 AM
Original message

Help Kick Tom Delay뭩 Buddy in the Ass and Out of the House!

Help Kick Tom Delay뭩 Buddy in the Ass and Out of the House!

Tom Delay illegally laundered money to ensure that the Congressional Districts in Texas were redrawn to favor Republicans. Now some of these same districts have again been redrawn. This time, affecting Tom Delay뭩 best bud Lamar Smith, who provided cover in the House from ethics charges (http://www.offthekuff.com/mt/archives/003374.html, http://www.courageforcongress.org/blog/?action=view&id=17)
, and money to Delay뭩 legal defenses (http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=476747). Smith뭩 base is the rapture-ready wacko crowd that thrives in part of his district (http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2004/10/27/scherer-christian/).

This is our chance to turn what the repugs thought was a coup (redistricting), into a disaster for Tom Delay, his lackey Smith, and his party. As a result of the lawsuit challenging Delay뭩 redistricting (link), the 21st District, which Lamar Smith infests, has been redrawn again. About 60% of the voters are new to him. He is effectively no longer the incumbent.

The Democratic challenger, John Courage, is a true progressive. He is fighting a very hard campaign, even before the redistricting, turning what many thought was a no-brainer win for Smith into a competitive challenge. Few were willing to take on this challenge, but John the strength of character and determination required.

John is a National Netroots endorsed candidate (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/30/143640/516), received the DFA Grassroots All-Star Endorsement (http://www.courageforcongress.org/endorsements/?action=dfa), and won funding as the first Progressive Patriot from the Progressive Patriots Fund (http://www.progressivepatriotsfund.com/).

Now, Lamar has a great deal of money to spend on this campaign, and we know that it will pour in from the RNC as the race gets tighter. Thus, as always, it would be wonderful if you can support his campaign (http://www.courageforcongress.org/donate/).

However, this rant is not about just asking for money. Instead, this is a challenge and a bit of an experiment. John is not going to win simply with dollars. Lamar has plenty. Besides, John would just as soon see money taken out of the process. Instead we will win the Democratic way, i.e., with individual 밽rass-roots� volunteers. This is where you come in.

Many here are saying that they want to get involved with a campaign that really needs and can make use of their time, not just their dollars. And many others, like myself, say we should all be working on one. So, you might ask, 밾ow can I work on a campaign when I am not in the District?�

Well, technology has arrived with a potential solution. Hence the experiment and the challenge.

You can help John Courage win this election by volunteering to help John at True Blue Action. True Blue Action tools allow you to volunteer more of your time from the from anywhere you have Internet connectivity and a phone.

This is pretty exciting new technology, and I doubt anyone knows what its potential will be. I would like to challenge you (as you are reading this deeply into a long post) to register and try the on-line phone banking (for those who have free long-distance or live in the central Texas area), or send this invite to someone that has. Also, take a look at the service you might find that friends, family, etc., need to register. Also, you can used Friends Vote to ensure that they are reminded, get called by someone who has local phone service, and get뭩 to the polls.

I think we can create a new method of bringing something democratic and Democrat to the election process, to counter the always huge dollar advantages that repugs generally have in Congressional and Legislative races.

So, I Challenge You! Register at http://trueblueaction.onlinephonebanking.com/opencallv2/index.php and try it out. If you cannot, send this to someone who can.

Also, please let me know what you use and find useful. This may just be the latest way to win races in a money-neutral, i.e., people-powered manner!

Thanks, and please let me know.

P.S., if you have any other ideas about how one might leverage the huge community here at DU to help Congressional candidates, please suggest loudly. We need to do everything we can to help these candidates, like John Courage, who are striving with every bit of their fiber to topple these repug incumbents, take back Congress, and truly fight for us and what we believe in when they get to Washington.