The Obama campaign isn't worrying about Illinois. You only think Obama is popular in your state; he's really popular in IL.
They're sending people from different congressional districts to different states. The 9th CD, on the eastern edge of IL, is assigned to Iowa, over the western edge. On Saturday, Northside DFA drove from Chicago to Dubuque to canvass.
As of Friday morning, we expected three canvassers and no cars. In the event we had six canvassers and a potential of three cars. We left one of the cars in Chicago and drove off a little after 7:00 a.m. We expected to arrive before 11:00, but one car headed wrong and the other got a flat tire. We didn't head out of the Dubuque Obama office until after noon. My experience after the jump.

The Nation had an excellent article on the media adoration for McCain on July 7. The URL is Loving McCain.
In the midst of it, Eric Alterman and Geeorge Zornick list a huge -- although incomplete -- number of McCain flip-flops.
The picture I get is that they have decided that:

1. McCain doesn't mean it whaen he says all those conservative things. It's just what he needs to say to get nominated. A McCain administration would really be moderate-to-liberal.

2. McCain is a real straight-shooter, who never tacks his positions to fit the political winds.

(Neither seems to explain that McCain's law forbidding politicians from riding corporate jets on the cheap had a loophole that conveneiently covers John McCain.)

There keep being diaries saying that one or another of Obama's articulationg of more centrist positions means that the diarist won't support him in the general.
That's cuting off your nose to spite your face.
Look at McCain. Admittedly, we don't know where he stands on most issues, since he's been on both sides of them. His record on the Iraq occupation has been consistent, though. He won't decrease our presence significantly until the US wins the civil war between Arab Shias and Arab Sunnis. (What he'd do about th4 Kurds, nobody knows. They've been sensibly avoiding the war between their enemies.)
Some other clear issues after the jump.

When Bush's tax cuts went through, McCain rightly voted against them 'cause they were mostly a give-away to the rich. Now, McCain wants to make those cuts permanent 'cause letting them expire  would be a tax increase; he's adamanantly against any tax increase.
Well, almost any tax increase.
His health plan involves newly taxing employer-paid health insurance. He would compensate with a small deduction for health insurance you paid for yourself. I dealt with that in a post on the Washington Post blog. It was in response to a quote from McCain on Social Security and can be read after the jump.

There was a story in the New Yorker for June 30 which includes the money quote from Obama's speech against involvement in Iraq. I've selected one sentence for my sig, but the whole thing is worth reading.
The story is here, and is not especially about the quotation.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U. S. occupartion of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear ratiohnale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst -- rather than the best -- impulses of the Arab world, and strngthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to stupid wars.

This is the guy who needs more experince in foreign affairs?

Impossibility comes in (at least) four brands. There are:

1. The logically or mathematically impossible. It can't be.

2. The scientifically imposible. It doesn't happen.

3. The technologically impossible. We can't do it.

4. The economically impossible. We can't afford to do it.

Much technological progress results in moving things from the economically or technologically impossibe to the possible.

The most important scientific developments reveal that things which once appeared scientifically possible are really scientifically impossible. Almost never does scientific progress lead in the other direction.

Those ignorant of science often confuse (2) with (3). That can lead us to anything from simple silliness to policy blunders. Concretions after the jump.

Northside (Chicago) DFA sent three of us up into the northern suburbs to canvass for Dan Seals, who came close to beating Mark Kirk in '06. He's running again, starting with the people he recruited and teh lessons he learned last time.
Turns out that the campaign was holding a "United for Change" event before we went out. I'll talk more about that after the jump.
the campaign provided us with a list of supposedly swing voters. (In Illinois, where you don't register by party, this consists of people who don't vote in primaries or vote in different primaries different years.) So, in a couple of hours, two of us nearly covered the limited list of names we'd received from a precinct. The driver was in a different precinct with a walk sheet covering only half the precinct. My experience after the jump.

I've just been reading Crashing the Gates. (Yeah, I know Palmer is behind the curve.) Kos and his coauthor go into great detail criticizing teh single-issue mindset.
You know what current activity reminds me of that criticism? All this bitching about FISA.
Yeah, I hope the filibuster works.
Yeah, I don't like the idea that my phone calls -- few and unimportant -- and my e-mail -- more important and more political -- are being tapped.
Still and all, the House has made great strides forward. They passed several necessary bills and are beginning to hold hearings on some of the abuses of this administration.
Is Pelosi perfect? No.
Does she shine in comparison to Hastert and De Lay?
Hell yes!

It never rains but it pours. I had a letter to the editor published in the weekly "alternative" paper, the Chicago Reader. The LTE may be found here. This letter was written after the one mentioned yesterday, but published earlier.
Now, probably this is the least important paper in the country for a LTE on the '08 presidential race. IL's last vote for a Republican candidate went to Ronald Reagan; Obama is even more popular in IL than he is in the reast of the country; Chicago is where the Democrats are in IL; the Reader's target audience is much more liberal than Chicago as a whole.
Still, we need to promote our memes whenever and whereever we can.
How many LTEs have you written this week?

I had a letter published in USA Today. I think it was Monday's edition, but I haven't seen the print version yet. The text of the letter is here.
The paper printed a reasonable reaction to the Supreme Court decision that the Constitution applies. (The specific decision was that Habeas Corpus applies to Guantanamo detqainees.) They printed an opposing view, which called the Supreme Court ruling a "power grab."
My letter was probably no different from what almost anyone on dKos would have written.
The diffierence was that I wrote.
Have you written a LTE today?

David Sirota, best-selling author, Daily Kos contributor, and syndicated columnist, is coming to Chicago this week. His books are The Uprising: An Unautorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington, just published by Crown, and Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government and How We Take It Back.
He's speaking at Loyola University on Saturday.
Subject: Money and Power.
Address: 63333 N. Winthrop (on the West Sheridan extension of Devon) The Simpson Multipurpose Room.
Time: 2:00 pm.
Other appearances after the jump.

In an earlier diary, I wrote my recommendations for what the USA could do towards mitigating the Global Warming crisis over decades.
(This wouldn't stop the crisis unless other countries took action, as well. But you can't preach what everybody can do while you are the worst offender. Would you listen to Imelda Marcos telling you not to buy a second pair of shoes?)
In this diary, I'll discuss things we should do to make a small difference in a few years' time. It begins with an old saw:

When you're at the bottom of a hole, stop digging.

The Federal (and most states') road building program is making the problem worse. We should reverse it, and it would be remarkably close to painless.
Details after the jump.

The world needs to be weaned from consumption of fossil fuels. Not only excessive use, such as you see on any American highway, but almost all use. Carbon cycles from plants to animals to the CO2 in the air. When more carbon is added to that cycle, it accumulates in the CO2 in the atmosphere. (When, in the distant past, carbon was removed from that cycle by being sequestered as coal, the atmospheric CO2 dropped.)
If the rest of the world would absolutely stop using any fossil fuel, the present American consumption would still be too much to maintain present levels of atmospheric CO2.
A more reasonable, and less selfish, sceneario is for us to drop to the level of per person fossil fuel usage that the world needs to reach to maintain present levels (which lead to a good deal of problems even now).

More after the jump.

In an earlier diary, a comment chain led to my trying to defend my claims that tax loopholes led to slower growth and progressive taxation to faster growth. It was way too much for a colmment, andf I found myself writing too much to be read and too little to presuade anyone.
Indeed, I'm trying to deal with the questions in two seperate diaries, the first on loopholes and this on progressivity. A tax is "progressive" if it takes a larger percentage of higher incomes. It is "regressive" if it takes a lower percentage of lower incomes. "Progressivity" is the degree to which it takes a higher percentage from higher incomes. I'm talking mostly about the rate on the highest bracket, but that is only one measure of progressivity.
Reactionaries claim that progressivity hurts growth. Historical evidence and the theoretical argument refuting this claim after the jump.

In an earlier diary, a comment chain led to my trying to defend my claims that tax loopholes led to slower growth and progressive taxation to faster growth. It was way too much for a comment, and I found myself writing too much to be read and too little to presuade anyone.
Indeed, I'll try to deal with the questions in two seperate diaries, this on loopholes and the next on progressivity.
After Reagan cut loopholes (and passed the savings on to the top tax bracket) the country experienteh greatest rate of growth under a Republican president since 1928. (It was not, however, as great as the average growth rate under Democratic presidents. Look at the history. Reactionaries claim it was the lowering of the tax rate on the top bracket, but that doesn't result in higher growth by itself. Still, an honest man has to admit that one case is thin experimental evidence. I'll try to muster the theoretical evidence after the jump.

Norethside (Chicago) DFA has decided to go "all Dan" for the general election. Our two adopted candidates are Dan Seals for Congress and Daniel Biss for the (Illinois) state legislature.
We have been a little slow to begin this concentration, though. We did noe excursion into western IL for Foster, and a couple into western IN for Obama. (Irtonically, crossing the state line was a much shorter drive.)
Sturday, however, we finally got sdtarted on this ywear's support for Biss. Six of us went to his new campaign headquarters (across the street from the terminal of the Skokis Swift line). from there, we fanned out into a precinct in Wilmette.
My report of my experience after the jump.

Let me tell you three stories, and ask which ones you believe.

1. Peter and Paul are both pole vaulters. in the '06 track meet, Peter used an old fashioned wooden pole while Paul used a modern, springier, composite. Paul won first place. In '07, they both used composites; so, they both won first place.

2. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all applied for the two bag-boy jobs in the local supermarket. Since they had all taken the schools special training in writing resumes, they all got the jobs.

3. Two million unemployed men looked for jobs while there were one million openings. They each had enough skills and training in job application; so, they all got the jobs.

If you didn't believe (3), you are less credulous than most of the politicians in Washington -- even the liberals.
Why, after the jump.

I sent a friend to my study on how Republican presidents experience much slower economic growth than Democratic presidents experience.
He responded, "I don't like to use the GDP; we need measures which include well being." I figure that this opinion is widely shared on dKos.
So, I decided to post the reasons for using real GDP.
They are:

1. The measure is -- if imperfect -- a clear, well researched, and widely understood (as economic measures go) measure of economic production.

2. The Republican claims (lies, really) of growth are based on these figures.

3. Any new measure looks like it was selected to misrepresent the results.

Details after the jump.