First, everyone should stop reading right now and go over to the whereisthered.com website and sign up for updates. They (Christie, Kerry, Jeremy, and Chris) are doing an amazing job so far, and we are all really looking forward to their adventures in Ohio this week!

Also available is their Flickr Feed which everyone should check out as well for some really cool pictures. Here’s a sample:

As I’m sure many of you have heard, the Democrats in Congress are trying to shutdown the ability for Members of Congress to blog, post YouTube videos, and even Twitter. This is totally insane! The wonders of the Internet have begun to open up government in ways many people never expected, and now the Democrats are trying to stifle this openness and transparency with their new rules.

Well, we can fight back! Stand up with Republicans in Congress and sign the petition to tell the Democrats “No!” (like a dog about do it’s business on the carpet) by clicking on the widget below:

McCain Memo on Fundraising

Take a look. Together with the RNC, McCain’s campaign looks to be in an excellent financial position when compared to the Obama campaign and the DNC.

The Democrats are trying to put on a good show of party unity after their long and divisive primary, but everything might not be quite as friendly as the Democrats would like us to believe.  There is plenty of tension between the Obama and Hillary camps, and a lot of it revolves around money.  Hillary’s campaign is millions of dollars in debt, and in a show of unity Obama has committed to helping her repay it.  However, the Obama campaign doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about achieving that goal.  The Wall Street Journal reports that: 

At a Midtown Manhattan fundraiser designed to help raise cash for his campaign and help retire debt for his former opponent’s, Barack Obama offered praise of Hillary Clinton. But he temporarily forgot to make his pitch about debt retirement.

“Hold on a second guys, I was getting all carried away,” he said about a minute after he walked off stage to Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” that typically plays after campaign events. “Senator Clinton still has some debt, and I could have had some debt if I hadn’t won. So I know the drill,” he said, as he instructed donors to use the “debt retirement” envelopes under their seats to mail in a contribution to his one-time rival’s campaign.” 

Meanwhile, many Obama supporters aren’t very excited about repaying debts that Hillary Clinton racked up in the process of attacking their candidate.  Politico writes:

To this end, when Ed Chandler, a Chicago venture capitalist and Obama donor, sent out an e-mail last week promoting an intimate dinner with the nominee for high-dollar donors he made clear to specify where the dollars were going.

“NONE OF THE MONEY RAISED WILL GO TO PAY OFF HILLARY CLINTON’S DEBTS,” Chandler wrote to potential givers in an e-mail obtained by Politico.  ”While you may have heard that Sen. Obama has asked people to make a separate donation to the Clinton campaign for that purpose, neither the law, nor the ethic of this campaign, will allow for any transfer of funds from Obama For America to Clinton.”

Clearly all is not well in the Democratic Party.  Many former Hillary supporters are already backing McCain, and if they believe Obama and his campaign are slighting Senator Clinton, more will surely follow.

First Obama said he would talk to dictators without preconditions, and now his campaign is taking advice from two men who worked to return Elian Gonzalez to Cuba during the Clinton administration.  The Miami Herald reports that: 

Greg Craig, a foreign policy advisor, represented Elian’s father in the custody battle that ended with the boy being sent back to Cuba.  Eric Holder, a member of Obama’s vice presidential search committee, served as deputy attorney general when the federal agents seized the boy from his Miami relatives. His mother died at sea in the rafting trip to Miami…

“It is cause for indignation that these men sit so closely to a presidential contender while our families, friends and neighbors 90 miles to the South are held captive by a tyrannical regime,” the letter says. “Had it not been for the actions of these two men, lending themselves as instruments to Fidel Castro, Elian could today be enjoying the freedom his mother died to provide for him.”

Thanks to the actions of these two Obama advisors, Elian Gonzales never had the chance to grow up in freedom.  Instead, he was returned to Cuba, where he recently joined the Young Communist Union.

Are these really the types of people we want advising a candidate for President of the United States?

…And CR’s get a plug from our alumnus.

Karl Rove sees some incredible similarities in the Obama ground game and with the BC’04 operation. Utilizing the internet to allow volunteers to self-direct their activity, the effort to expand the electoral map, and creating an army of volunteers are all lessons learned from the Bush/Cheney campaigns.

However, Mr. Rove finds some faults with the program they are running:

There are problems, however. Mr. Obama’s people admit they want to sucker Mr. McCain into spending money. To be successful, a bluff must be credible. In places like Nebraska and North Dakota, Mr. Obama can’t rely on local issues – like Mr. Bush did with coal in West Virginia in 2000 – to unexpectedly win a critical state. Organization alone won’t suffice. And putting Obama dollars into Texas, for example, to help win five state House seats may simply cause Texan Republicans – not Mr. McCain – to raise money and work harder to counter.

In addition (and here’s where we come in):

Democrats don’t have the same large volunteer pool the GOP does with its Federated GOP Women, College and Young Republicans, and local party committees. In the primaries, Mr. Obama instead moved hordes of volunteers from state to state. It was a brilliant tactic, but Nov. 4 is different. The volunteers adequate for primaries held over five months will simply not be enough to compete in 51 separate elections (all 50 states plus the District of Columbia) all on one day.

Of course there is always Barack Obama’s problem with flip-flopping:

By taking Nixon’s advice, Mr. Obama is assuming such dramatic reversals will somehow avoid voter scrutiny. But people are watching closely, and by setting a world indoor record for jettisoning past positions, Mr. Obama may be risking his reputation for truthfulness. A candidate’s credibility, once lost, is very hard to restore, regardless of how fine an organization he has built.