Howie Klein is hosting a Saturday Blue America chat at FireDogLake with progressive South Florida challenger Annette Taddeo right now!  Please come join us for to ask questions of the Blue America candidate to replace Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in Florida's 18th.

Howie writes:

Today we have an opportunity to talk with Annette and get an idea of what kind of congressmember she will be. Please join us in the comments section and ask her any questions you think would be relevant for the representative from South Beach, Little Havana and Key West. I asked her to define herself and give us an idea of the most basic differences between the kind of congressmember the incumbent is and kind of member she will be.

Come chat with us here!

Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives Jeff Merkley, who is challenging Bush/Cheney enabler Gordon Smith, is chatting at FireDogLake right now.

The first Democratic Speaker in Oregon in sixteen years, Jeff Merkley is a people-powered politician who is exposing the hypocrisy of Gordon Smith's Bush/Cheney-enabling voting record.  Oregonians are responding to Jeff's positive message of change.

Please stop by and say "hi!" or ask a question.

Jeff Merkley is a Blue America candidate.

(Cross-Posted at MyDD, Open Left, and Swing State Project)

This weekend, we saw once more that no matter what happens in Iraq, there is no end in sight to this war unless we demand it.

For the people of Congressional District 18 in South Florida, getting out of the war in Iraq is a top priority.

www.voteTaddeo.com

Peter Salett played this song at a house party for Oklahoma Senate candidate Andrew Rice. It touched everyone in the room... deeply. I asked him if he could record it, which he did on Friday. It's not so much about Andrew Rice's campaign as it is about the struggle of the American people to take back our government and make it stop serving the interests of war profiteers and start serving the interests of ordinary Americans.

A new Washington Blade article covers the latest incarnation of the discriminatory Federal Marriage Amendment, which would enshrine discrimination into the U.S. Constitution. U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R, GA-10) managed to get 29 co-sponsors for the bill, and we here in NJ were disappointed, if not at all surprised, to see that Rep. Scott Garrett (R, NJ-5) signed on, making him one of only two Northeastern co-sponsors.

All week DownWithTyranny is the guest blog for AirAmerica. We decided to donate the generous weekly salary to one of the Blue America candidates and I'm hoping you'll help us pick which one. I laid out how to do it yesterday, although the short version is just signal us which candidate you want to vote for by adding one cent to a donation to his or her campaign (or just donate one cent) on the Blue America ActBlue page. The canddiate who gets the most votes (not the largest amount of money, just the largest amount of one cents) wins the AirAmerica check.

Blue Dog (and virulent Bush Dog) John Barrow (GA-12) always thought he would be vulnerable from the right. So he moved so far right that he's usually the Democrat most likely to vote with the GOP in the entire Democratic caucus. CQ Politics reports that his political demise looks like it will come from the Georgia Democratic Party mainstream, not the far right. For the last few weeks he has called every African-American he knows to beg them to ask respected state Senator Regina Thomas to not run against him. And on May 2 even I got a letter from Barrow, begging for help! (after the jump)

It was reported recently that State Senator Andrew Rice, currently running against odious republican Jim Inhofe, has raised more than $1 million dollars thus far in the campaign. This is, obviously, good news for Oklahomans and Americans, as Sen. Rice is the kind of progressive candidate that we should all hope for on the ballot.

The problem is that it was also reported today that Inhofe has out-raised Andrew by more than 2-1, with a whopping $2.2 million in cash on hand. Inhofe has long been in the pocket of various special interests and industry lobbyists and it appears he is calling in some favors. It has always been said that Sen. Rice would have an uphill fund-raising climb against Sen. Inhofe. This merely underscores that point.

I know that the national primary season has taken its toll on both our emotions and our pocketbooks. However I believe that the dKos community has it in them to help out a true progressive Oklahoman in his time of need. For some reason, Andrew wasn't included in Kos' Blue Majority pitch, but I know that he is nonetheless behind Andrew 100%. So, I've decided to help out Andrew in whatever small way I can:

As posted at DownWithTyranny:

Little more than a week after showing himself the most scurrilous, divisive prick in the Institutional Democratic Party, James Carville just sent me a letter asking for money. He wants my increasingly meager discretionary income on behalf of at least one of the party's runners-up on the scurrilous prick scale, Chuck Schumer.

Apparently blind to the welter of Democrats and even independents who consider Carville a raving crazy-uncle-ish fossil and tiresome vestige of a misguided experiment in party corporatization, Schumer's Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) has trotted out the Clinton strategist in a mailer that has him het up on gittin us galvanized. Funny thing, I agree with almost every one of the party rallying points Carville, or Schumer's people with Carville's imprimatur, makes in the letter. And yet I find myself reading it with nose wrinkled, more eager to throw it in the shitter than actually appraise it, eager to symbolically, or in my mind, kick Carville square in the nuts as I do. I'm not sure this qualifies as effective marketing communications.

A few days ago Speaker Pelosi called a snap conference call for bloggers. I'm quite certain that almost everyone on the call wanted to talk with her about the FISA bill, particularly about warrantless wiretaps of American citizens and about retroactive immunity for Bush's cronies inside his regime and among his corporate supporters in the telecom industry. But Ms. Pelosi had brought us together to discuss the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act, which the Democrats had managed to pass overwhelmingly with the help of 47 Republicans. I had just finished writing a post about it and I was prepared to ask the Speaker a question while everyone else waited to get to FISA.

(this leads somewhere, after the jump)

Originally Posted on Citizen Orange

The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) recently partnered with Blue America in order to hold Rahm Emanuel accountable for his anti-migrant posturing as the representative of one of the most diverse congressional districts in the nation .

ICIRR began this fight with a rubber chicken campaign at YearlyKos (see left) in an effort to get Emmanuel to stand for migrant rights.  

The exact opposite happened.  After a close electoral fight in Massachusetts, Emmanuel assumed the role of Tom Tancredo of the Democrats, and issued this comment to the Washington Post:

This is my very first DKos diary, so please be gentle. There's only one first time...

Here's some good news from the dark recesses of the Beltway Village. One of their house organs finally got it right:

BLOGGERS VS BELTWAY: The New Whips?

My friend Carole, a terrific Democrat who knows how to work a room, had the ear of a Major Insider at the Magic Johnson party for Hillary this past week (I'm still listening to everyone and leaning Obama).  She was pushing for DC attention to the CA-45th, as she often does, because we have two Democratic candidates (so far) to challenge Mary Bono, and our Dem candidate will need some real support.  Mr. Major Insider thought our GOP/Dem breakdown was 80/20ish, a common misconception, and one which drives Carole right up the wall.  Our actual numbers are:  

Dem (35.85%) * Rep (45.53%) * Other (18.62%)

Not only that, the CA-45th has a high growth rate with newcomers trending Democratic, a weak Bushbot incumbent, a bargain media market (for California), and last year's race was the first potentially competitive one in thirty years.  But the DCCC gave Roth no tangible support.  So why no love from Washington?   Follow me past the flip for the many reasons why the Democratic Party needs to start playing to win in the CA-45th.  

This is a head's up from Major Danby, posting through our campaign account.  Ron Shepston -- who you know as CanYouBeAngryAndStillDream, and who is running for Congress against ethically-challenged Republican incumbent Gary Miller in California's 42nd District -- will be chatting with the amazing Howie Klein and taking questions from all comers in a few minutes as part of Howie's weekly series on FireDogLake.  I'll update with the link to the chat as soon as it's available.  Here's the link!

You will need an account at FDL to participate in the chat -- but, of course, everyone should have an account there, so be if you don't, this is a great time to create one!

The chat is scheduled to go on for two hours -- 11-1 Pacific Time, 2-4 Eastern, etc., so if you're seeing this anytime before 1 PDT, please come on by!  I'll post some excerpts from the chat below as time permits.

Howie Klein and his Blue America has been so important in identifying progressive candidates, leading the netroots-fueled 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress and the fight to expand the progressive majority in 2008.

Today, he wrote about and then liveblogged with Dan Maffei, who came out of no where to take on and come within 1.5% of defeating a 20-year Republican incumbent who wasn't even challenged in '04 -- all without much DCCC attention. In a blue district won by Gore and Kerry, Dan's is a top pickup opportunity in 2006, and a race that we can help win.

Howie Klein, of Down With Tyranny and Blue America,  will speak to Democrats of the Desert about the netroots here in Palm Springs on May 16th.  This is such a gift to us, the latest of many.  Thank you, Howie!

Like most Dem clubs, our membership is largely senior, and many of our members don't drive at night.  Imagine the manpower they'd represent if they spent those evenings in the blogosphere.  I'm also hoping to appeal to the younger set, who already spend excessive time online, but don't yet get involved in politics.  They really need to see what Howie's doing.  

Cross-posted at Calitics

So much more after the jump:

x-posted at MyDD and Calitics

Hi Kossacks (and MyDD'ers and Calitics'istas) -

I would like to invite all of you to join Congressman Jerry McNerney -- the netroots hero who defeated Richard Pombo -- this afternoon at firedoglake's Blue America. But first, I have some great news to tell you.

On Monday, your votes helped Jerry win Senator John Kerry's national "March Madness" campaign competition (along with Rep. Nancy Boyda, KS-2). As a result, Senator Kerry sent over 3 million people an email yesterday asking them to support Jerry, as well as Rep. Boyda, and Senators Tom Harkin and Mark Pryor.

Last night, you did it again. We asked our grassroots and netroots supporters to "Hit a Home Run for Jerry" by raising $300,000 before the Federal Election Commission's March 31st midnight deadline. And, late last night, you hit it out of the park-- a full 24 hours before the deadline.   

More below the flip...

Picture this:  A quiet tree lined street in the suburbs of Virginia, sweet yellow colonial house, pumpkins still on the porch, tired suburban Mom has just sent her children off to school on the school bus.  The television is on CNN, it is muted but Soledad O'Brien is talking to Tom Delay and the heading below the screen is "What Went Wrong?"