[courtesy of Blog for America]

(Email from Melissa Noriega, for Rick Noriega's Senate campaign.)

This week and the next, my husband Rick Noriega will take leave of his campaign to perform mandatory National Guard Annual Training (AT).

During this time, I will be joined by several prominent Texans in the effort to "Fill Rick's Boots" on the campaign trail.

Each of us has agreed to give several hours of our time to raise funds for Rick's campaign while he is away. I'm honored to fill in for my husband. And I am hoping you will join me and help us "Fill Rick's Boots."

We've set an ambitious $50,000 online fundraising goal for the 2 weeks that he's gone, and there are 2 ways you can help right now:

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

Yesterday's Daily Kos featured this fascinating post by its founder (who spoke at the Assembly Democrat's policy seminar earlier this year). Seems the king of the netroots is enamored by Hillary's efforts on the campaign trail. As of this morning, more than 750 readers responded to the post.

"Steady, steady
by kos
Mon Oct 29, 2007 at 01:22:16 PM PDT

A few thoughts about the presidential campaign:

1.) In 2003, it made sense for campaigns to build a strategy around the possibility that Dean would implode. I mean, Howard was a ticking time bomb. Every time I saw him about to speak, I would cringe and hold my breath, praying he said nothing damaging to the campaign.

In 2007, it's been frustrating seeing everyone except Edwards run a safe, milquetoast, non-threatening race, thinking it would somehow challenge the Hillary machine.

Clinton is no Howard Dean. In fact, she may be the most disciplined politician I have ever seen. She's a machine, always on message, relentlessly perfect on everything -- appearance, message, and policy. It's that discipline that has allowed her to fool people into thinking she'd pull all of our troops out of Iraq and that her vote on Iran wasn't REALLY as horrible as it really was.

There's more...