Possible opponent in FL-25 is ally of indicted Ray Sansom. What's new?

The Republican side of Congressional District 25 is shaping up on the slimy side of life.

Who’s running? One of the best allies of a disgraced big shot in the Florida Republican Party. The candidate is David Rivera, who sits in the Florida House of Representatives in a prominent role -- chair of the Budget Committee. You know, the people who do the bidding of the Republican Party to divide up the spoils of and otherwise mismanage one of the biggest states in the USA. Rivera was anointed chairman by Ray Sansom, former speaker of the House, now under criminal indictment.

To quote Eric Jotkoff, spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party, “It hasn’t even been a week since disgraced Speaker Ray Sansom resigned under criminal indictment and now his handpicked Budget Chair says he’s running for Congress. Is this an indication of how hard it is to find a Republican candidate in Florida not marked by scandal?”

Right on, Eric.

The Democratic spokesman points out a good question to fire at David Rivera: Tell us about whether you had a Republican Party credit card. And did you use it for personal expenses, like Marco Rubio?



Florida Republicans are in a fine mess, all by themselves. Trouble is, who’s going to call out a thorough investigation of them when the chief law official in the state is Attorney General Bill McCollum, likely the Republican candidate for governor? Where’s the Tea Party when you need them?

Read The Buzz for details on how bad the Republicans are.

We Democrats are waiting for Joe Garcia, former chair of our Miami-Dade County party and now serving in the Obama administration with the Department of Energy, to declare his candidacy.  District 25 is such an important part of Florida, as its two arms in Miami-Dade and Collier counties embrace the Everglades, which has few voters but such vital resources as water, beauty, wildlife and climate control.

Don’t forget to sign up for the Draft Joe Garcia for 2010! page on Facebook.

Joe ran a strong race in 2008 and now the district looks even more winnable as the seat is open (Thank you, Quitter Diaz-Balart brothers!) and the demographics have continued to shift toward the Democratic Party.

Here's a look at the race by CQ Politics.

Love those statistics, Take it away, TED

This came to me via Facebook and the Draft Joe Garcia page. On this alone, Joe should be elected to Congress by acclamation.

Technology Thursday. Stuff to blow minds

This blog doesn’t often devote itself to technology. I’m interested but way behind the times and figure anything I say would be old hat. Nonetheless …

Last night, thanks to a chance meeting the day before with Alex de Carvalho organized by tireless Obama campaigner Brad Schenck http://twitter.com/bradaschenck to toast the conversion of Arlen Specter, I went to a meeting of Refresh Miami and was plunged into a hundred people who are at a much higher level of Internet understanding than I am and for at least a while here I’m Tweeting and Facebooking at speed and ricocheting around cyberspace where new things reside and are announced.

Look at this: Something better than Google, and coming soon. It’s called Wolfram Alpha.

Now, I remember having had a change to invest in Google at the beginning and passing it up. Will the same thing happen with Wolfram Alpha? Yes, I had more money then.

A few clicks further, and I’ve been captured by yet another microblogging service that promises to hit close to home. Take a look at flaprogressives.com. Here’s a rundown by the creator of it all ( think), Dave Harper.

This could speed up our campaigning in ’10, which brings me back to earth.

UPDATE: Thanks to Alex and Twitter for letting me know about this link to a slide show of pix from the Refresh Miami event Wednesday night. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wQ8lafzqc8

Your blogger can be seen in several pix wearing a long-sleeved white T-shirt, with Flip camera in hand.

Call the governor on voting bill in Tallahassee

I just did it and the staffer said she'd be glad to pass it along.

There's a story out that Gov. Crist is thinking of vetoing this retrograde bill, and now is the time to encourage him in that direction.

Call 850 488-4441.

Facebook and emails are alive with concern about the Republican drive to restrict voting rights -- and solidify Florida as the laughingstock of the nation. It's wonderful to see the Netroots in action!

They keep your content more or less indefinitely

Happened to stumble upon (hint?) news that Facebook's guru had sort of explained a revision of their terms of service. Since many of us blog-readers also prowl Facebook, I thought you'd like to read about it here. Click away.

A day later, an UPDATE: This turned out to be pretty controversial, and now there's talk of rescinding Facebook's new terms of service. A link to the Huffington Post writeup.

FISA today. Doing anything?

Having decided belatedly to get into action on the FISA bill, I enrolled in the fastest-growing group on MyBarackObama.com; that is, the one urging the candidate to be much tougher. Here's the link for you to join as well, if you like.

There's also one on Facebook to be together in watching the drama unfold. I joined that, too.

WHOA, UPDATE: So I was out all day and when I came back I had 235 emails in the inbox of the account linked with the mybarackobama.com site. Wow! People all over the land were not happy about the FISA situation. Thanks goodness I figured out how to stop the inflow of emails.

A Facebook development

This column in Saturday's Miami Herald is a good exposition of your need to get a Facebook account. If Marco Rubio and Beth Reinhard are on Facebook, what's your excuse?

And once you've signed up, check out the Miami-Dade Democrats on Facebook, and sign up for our Group, and become a fan of our Page. A little search will reveal all.

Obama+Facebook=Bumper sticker

A little while ago I got this Facebook message from MoveOn saying I could get a free Obama bumper sticker by clicking on a link. I did it and decided to go for a $25 donation and get 100 Obama bumper stickers. Soon came another message from MoveOn saying it took only 30 minutes to have 1,000 people join that group. Great!

Now, here's your chance to climb aboard: Click on this link and join up.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign emails with news that the McCain campaign raised $21 in May, along with $23.7 million raised in partnership with the Republican National Committee. Bottom line: Please give to the Obama campaign, and don't wait. As to the first paragraph above, don't go for the free single bumper sticker -- get more stickers by giving some money.

https://donate.barackobama.com/match is a link that lets your money be matched by money from another donor. Cool doubling.

Facebook group grows like topsy against Republican congressmen

They called it "South Floridians for New Leadership" and got it started on Facebook last week, Oct. 4. Its targets are the three Republican members of Congress in Miami-Dade County, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18), Lincoln Diaz-Balart (FL-21) and Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-25). Within a few hours it had more Facebook signups than its targets did, and now it's around 150. If you're on FaceBook, sign up and join. Otherwise, sign up for Facebook, and then join. Here's the link to the site.

Thanks to the students at Florida International University for starting the group.