Obama Camp Gives Donors Fundraising Goal For Hillary's Debts
The Obama campaign has put some teeth in its request to donors to help Hillary Clinton's campaign retire its debts, assigning them an official goal. "Barack has asked each of us to collect five or six checks to help Senator Clinton repay the people who provided goods and services to her campaign," wrote Obama national finance chair Penny Pritzker in an e-mail to top fundraiser.

Obama To Appear In Pennsylvania, Then Raise Money With Clinton In DC
Barack Obama will hold an economic summit today with various national business leaders in Pittsburgh, an area that was not particularly kind to him in the primary and where he'll need a strong general election showing. He will then head to DC tonight for a fundraiser with Hillary Clinton -- a show of party unity in front of a crowd of her own donors.

McCain Campaigning In Ohio
John McCain will be holding a town hall event today in Cincinnati, a Republican-leaning area in a state where a loss would make it very difficult for him to win the White House. Expect McCain to stick with some of his standard themes from the last few days: That he's serious on energy policy, that Barack Obama isn't offering any solutions, and that Obama has broken his promises on campaign finance.

Obama Campaign To Deploy "Persuasion Army"
In its strategy for the general election, the Obama campaign plans to rely on what it calls a "persuasion army," confirmed supporters who will talk to their friends and neighbors about the campaign. Campaign manager David Plouffe favorably cited the Bush campaign in 2004, which employed the same tactic.

Swift Boat Financier Doesn't Pay Reward To Kerry Allies
T. Boone Pickens, the chief financier of the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, has unsurprisingly declined to pay his offered $1 million reward to anyone who can disprove the group's 2004 allegations against John Kerry's war record. A group of veterans who served with Kerry submitted a total of 54 pages meant to prove that ten specific charges had been lies.

Cash-Strapped Dem Convention Cutting Volunteer Field Trip
The Democratic National Convention's organizing committee, which is currently $11 million short of its fundraising goals, is scrapping its plan to reward the over 12,000 volunteers with a post-convention trip to the Denver Zoo. No doubt they'll meet enough goofy animals at the convention center, anyway.