[H/t Heather]

Have you ever wondered if that petition you signed actually gets delivered? Or if it makes a difference?

Well, last week Progressive Change Campaign Committee members delivered over 50,000 notes directly to Senator Harry Reid -- thanking him for boldly opposing cuts to Social Security. And Senator Reid made some news at the meeting.

TPM:

At an event with progressive activists last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took major Social Security cuts and privatization completely off the legislative table.

"As long as I'm the Majority Leader, I'm going to do everything within my legislative powers to prevent privatizing or eliminating Social Security," Reid said. "I'll simply say it's off the table."

You can watch video of the event below, courtesy of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. The key quote comes at the end of the clip.

Reid's been a pretty staunch defender of Social Security, but this statement goes a bit further than previous ones. Most recently, on Meet the Press, he said he wouldn't be a part of any effort to undermine the program. But now, he's taken privatization and raising the retirement age off the table.

Not only does this go further than what Reid has previously said on Social Security, but it goes much further than a number of Democrats in the Senate who are actively supporting cuts.

Reid is holding the line on Social Security. Given the Republican held House and the president's shall we say whishy-washyness on the subject, Reid's strong stance could be crucial to protecting Social Security.

There is a lot of work to be done though and we could use your help. Watch the video above and then join our effective campaign to protect Social Security.

(full disclosure: I'm the Senior Online Campaigns Director at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee)

We did it! Today, President Obama names Elizabeth Warren to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- and become a White House economic adviser with direct access to the President.

This is a HUGE victory, and it wouldn't have happened without over 200,000 advocating for Elizabeth Warren's leadership. For the first time, progressives successfully pressured President Obama to select the most progressive option on the table.

Together, we made thousands of calls, wrote hundreds of letters to the editor, and left politicians and the media baffled over all the fervor for Elizabeth Warren. The Boston Globe called it an "uprising among Warren's legion of supporters." The Huffington Post wrote that PCCC members were "bombing Senate with Elizabeth Warren calls."

So, seriously...congratulations. People-power made a difference!

Can you sign our congratulations card to Elizabeth Warren? Click here. We'll deliver the card to her personally -- please encourage others to sign.

Elizabeth Warren wrote on the Huffington Post:

The President "asked me to take on the job to get the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau started -- right now. The president and I are committed to the same vision on CFPB, and I am confident that I will have the tools I need to get the job done."

There has been a lot of concern about how this special gig will work out. Well as Adam Green tells CNN, there will be hell to pay if Warren isn't in charge of doing exactly what she wants with the CFPB.

"The fact is that Warren will functionally have the keys to the new bureau for it's opening months, giving her immense opportunity to craft it the right way."

"It's still completely on the table that she'd be given a permanent appointment, and if the Wall Street types in the White House tried to stab her in the back and give someone else that role, there'd be hell to pay with progressives."

But right now, we are celebrating! Go sign our card and share it with your friends. Click here to share on Facebook and here to Tweet.

(full disclosure: I proudly work for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee)

We have a couple failed CEOs running around pretending to be moderates out here in California. You can't go far without stumbling across a Fiorina or Whitman ad.

Retail politics doesn't really work here, because the state is too huge. Even though TV is crazy expensive (it's a couple million dollars just for a statewide penetration ad buy), it's the most efficient way to move California voters.

Fiorina and the NRSC have already reserved more than $9 million in TV time. And that doesn't count all the outside groups who are going big against Boxer, including the $1 million buy last week from Karl Rove's new group. Whenever Fiorina's needed more money, she's just cracked open the checkbook and wrote out another multi-million dollar check.

In short, she has effectively unlimited resources for her race. Plus, when Whitman cuts whatever multi-million dollar check for California Republican Party GOTV, Fiorina gets a slice of that as well. Boxer's only shot to is to match it with grassroots support.

Today's the first and only debate between Boxer and Fiorina. Boxer is celebrating it with a big moneybomb, pushing to get as many donors in a day as possible. Give whatever you can to help counter Fiorina's big bucks.

And if you need more motivation, here is Sarah Palin's endorsement of Carly Fiorina:

"I'm proud to endorse [Carly Fiorina] for U.S. Senate... She is pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-military, and pro-strict border security and against amnesty... Carly is also a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. Like me, she is a member of the NRA, has a 100% NRA rating, and she and her husband are gun owners."

Gag me.

I'm throwing in $50 right now to Boxer. Who will join me? If you have $3, give $3. Every little bit helps.

Oh and have you seen Brave New Films' latest ad whacking Fiorina for supporting Arizona's racial profiling law targeted at Latinos? It's atop this post.

Now go chip in what you can.

Meet Alan Simpson. He wants to gut Social Security. And he's in charge of the future of Social Security.
How's that? President Obama appointed him to lead a key Social Security commission. Why? I have no clue.

He's like that crazy uncle you see once a year at Thanksgiving, except he has his hands on Social Security.

Karoli mentioned earlier Simpson's foul-mouthed tirade against a woman who had the temerity to challenge his attacks on Social Security in a Huffington Post blog post. The thin-skinned Simpson ranted:

"I've made some plenty smart cracks about people on Social Security who milk it to the last degree. You know 'em too...We’ve reached a point now where it’s like a milk cow with 310 million tits! Call when you get honest work!"

And this isn't the first tirade against someone who publicly criticized him and the commission.

That's why we at the Progressive Campaign Change Committee are launching a new site: StuffThatSimpsonSays.com to expose the out-of-control Simpson and the commision he co-chair's attempts to gut Social Security. Visit the site and see if you can tell a real Alan Simpson quote from a fake one and share it with your friends.

This would be funnier, if what the commission of unaccountable millionaires is working on wasn't so serious.

Congress will be voting on whatever this commission recommends. They need to understand the commission is being led by Alan Simpson, a guy who's so unhinged that you literally can't tell his real utterances from fake ones, they're that crazy.

Who else is on the commission? A bunch of millionaires... multimillionaire defense contractor (David Cote), a corporate CEO (Ann M. Fudge), and only one economist (Alice Rivlin) who's claim to fame is advocating for $47 billion in cuts to Social Security. You'll never guess where the executive director behind the commission also works: Bruce Reed, the CEO of the corporate-funded Democratic Leadership Council.

And on top of that the committee meets in secret.

Alan Simpson - has a) no idea what he's talking about when it comes to Social Security and b) is incredibly offensive to just about everyone he talks to.

Check out StuffAlanSimpsonSays.com. Some of the actual things he said are just mind-blowing.

Enjoy and then share it with your friends so everyone gets the message we need to save Social Security, not hand it over to people like Alan Simpson.

Click here to tweet about the site or here to share it on Facebook and help get the word out!

P.S. If you like Simpson have a potty mouth, http://ShitAlanSimpsonSays.com also works.

Google and Verizon released a new plan this week for how the Internet should operate (see Susan's post for more background), if they got to rule the world. We'd keep Net Neutrality for the wired Internet (at least for consumers not corporations), but they could set up fast lanes and slow lanes for the wireless Internet. Wireless is of course the future of the Internet, but then again that is exactly the point.

Their proposal has devided the tech industry, as the NYT reported today, with Facebook, Amazon, eBay and venture capitalists raising serious concerns with the Google/Verizon evil deal:

It set off a flood of reaction, much of it negative, from Web companies and consumer advocacy groups. In the most extreme situation that opponents envision, two Internets could emerge — the public one known today, and a private one with faster lanes and expensive tolls. [snip]

The wireless Internet is quickly emerging as the dominant technology platform, said Matt Cohler, a general partner at Benchmark Capital, a prominent venture firm in Silicon Valley that has invested in start-ups like Twitter. “It is as important to have the right protections in place for the newer platform as it is for the older platform.”

The media has trashed their evil deal and over 300,000 people have signed an open letter demanding Google drop this proposal.

It's a giant corporate power-grab and Google who claims to "do no evil" is doing exactly that with this evil plan. That's why MoveOn, the PCCC (where I work), CREDO Action, Color of Change and Free Press are holding a rally at noon tomorrow in front of Google headquarters. The event is at the corner of Amphitheatre Parkway and Charleston Road in Mountain View. Click here to RSVP.

For people in the San Francisco area, there will be a bus leaving from the San Francisco Opera House at 11 a.m. You have to RSVP to get on the bus, as seats are limited.

This deal can be stopped, but only if President Obama and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski understand just how angry we are at the prospect of our rights being trampled online by Google and other corporate giants. So, please join us, or if you don't live in the Bay Area, pass along the info to your friends.

(on loan from the Courage Campaign in Maine)

The Yes on 1 campaign just issued a "red alert" last night, raising their ad buy by $25,000 today.

I'm here in the No on 1 campaign boiler room (nerve center) and our coffers are dry after having invested in a field campaign to protect marriage equality second to none. We need to raise $50k on ActBlue today to counter their ad buy and expand our online ad buy to match their expansion. Jesse Connolly the No on 1 campaign manager just sent out an email to their list about it:

I wasn't going to come to you to ask for money again. We've asked so much, and you've dug deep and really come through.

Honestly, I wouldn't take my time away from managing our Get Out The Vote operation to send this email if it wasn't really important.

[snip]

With the money we have now, we simply can't counter their arguments on TV.

You and I have both invested a lot in this campaign. I won't-- I can't-- let them win this because we couldn't come up with the last $25,000 $50,000 in the final 36 hours.

We can't let Yes on 1 win the airtime war with their misleading, and factually inaccurate ads.

We can't let Yes on 1 lie to Maine voters about schools and teachers and children and same-sex couples in Maine.

We need to stand up and match every one of their lies with an ad of our own, that explains that marriage equality won't do anything to families but protect all of them.

And I need you to help. Can you come through one last time and give what you can to help us finish this campaign with a win?

Not much more I can add to that. We wouldn't be asking if we didn't really need it. I would be writing a "please help us make calls" blog post and we would be sending GOTV emails, not asking you for money.

I know the Blue America community has dug deep, but can you do it once again? We are 0-30 on marriage equality races. We can win this one, but we need your help.

In 19 days we will know whether we beat back NOM and the Catholic Dioceses and protected marriage equality for Mainers, or took yet another step backwards at the ballot box for equality. 30 states have had votes on marriage equality since 1998 and the right-win has won in all 30 of them. We are going to stop that streak in Maine, but we can't do it without the resources to fuel a massive get-out-the-vote operation.

Today at midnight is the last major financial reporting deadline and it also marks the first day of early voting. If you were planning on giving to No on 1 and haven't yet, or have the resources to give again, today is the day to do it. Luckily, we at Blue America have a little sweetener, courtesy of Howie:

Meanwhile we have something nice to offer to donors today. The first 9 people who kick in at least $30 at the Blue America '10 page each wins a special DVD of Barbra Streisand's spectacular 1966 television special Color Me Barbra (which includes a rare poster). And if that wasn't fabulous enough, we also have something pretty mind-blowing for the person who donates the most by 6AM (PT) tomorrow. The picture is above. It's a gorgeous Joan Osborne RIAA custom double platinum award for both Relish and "One of Us." It's rare, collectible, unique and... well, what a gift it would make for anyone who you happen to know who went bonkers over the song below! And, more important, what an opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of our brothers and sisters in Maine!

There is new polling out that shows us up 51.8% to 42.9%, but Bill in Portland Maine over at the great orange satan reminds us of why poll numbers are crap:

I take you back to 1997 when, after nine attempts spanning 20 years, the Maine legislature finally passed a basic civil rights bill preventing discrimination in employment, housing, credit and public accommodation on the basis of sexual orientation. Governor Angus King signed it. The law was put on hold while the religious conservatives---trying to marginalize our very existence by denying us any official state recognition---launched a war to repeal it by a citizens veto referendum, very similar to the kind they're waging now. They got the signatures they needed and the fight to take away our newly-won civil rights was on.

The polls had our side up by several points. The result? The 1998 referendum passed. The fundies won. The final vote: 51.9% to 48.1%. It's one thing to feel disappointment when your favorite candidate loses. It's quite another when you are the one being voted on by your neighbors, and a majority of them agree that, yes, it should be legal for a Maine business owner to pull you aside and say, "I don’t want no faggots workin' here. You're fired." It took another seven years to finally make that against the law. To this day I still get a knot in my gut when I think about what happened 11 years ago.

The only way we stop this from happening again is to make sure that we can get our voters out to the polls. The No on 1 campaign needs your help to make sure they have the resources to execute their field plan. So give today and maybe take home a platinum Joan Osborne album, or a rare Barbara Streisand poster and DVD.

The Courage Campaign is sending me back to Maine in a week or so. Expect more reports from on the ground there on how your generous donations are being spent. I was there a couple weeks ago and can assure you, the campaign is a tightly run ship, simultaneously on the offense and firing back at the lies spewed from the other side. No on 1 is IDing and turning out their voters, relying on thousands of in state volunteers and assisted by out of state phone bankers from around the country. They know how to win in Maine "and can do it with your help.

Yesterday, the No on 1 campaign released this great new ad, featuring a Catholic mom who wants nothing more than for her gay son to have the same rights as everybody else.

It seems to have touched a nerve with the other side. A Catholic group is demanding that the ad be taken down, because:

“Everybody knows the Catholic Church is opposed to counterfeit marriages. The Church believes marriage is a natural institution, vindicated by common reason that serves both men and women, and the needs of children. The Church defends marriage as a civic institution believing marriage and family to be the fundamental unit of society,” explained Burch.

“For homosexual groups to suggest that the Catholic Church believes otherwise is disingenuous, dishonest, and an insult to the intelligence of Catholic voters in Maine,” said Burch.

We are on offense here in Maine, pushing back at the Catholic Church which has raised over $214k for Stand for Marriage Maine last quarter.

But the campaign needs your help to win this election, to be the first to protect marriage rights at the ballot box, to keep the momentum up that we have gained since Prop 8. And they need the resources to do it.

We are launching a "moneybomb" for Maine, with a big push to get as much cash in the door for No on 1 by Oct 15th, the last major financial filing deadline and the first day of early voting.

After that date money in the door just isn't as useful for the campaign. They need to figure out their budget for the last few weeks of the campaign.

Give now if you can on Blue America's ActBlue page. Maine is a cheap state. Here's a breakdown of what your donation will "buy".

$1,000 we can blanket the state with radio ads for 1 day

$800 pays for one field organizer for a week

$720 would fund 20 canvasses in key counties around the state on a Saturday

$550 pays for one channel of cable for a day

$420 pays for one much needed field organizer for a week

$330 is 2 radio commercials to beat back their lies

$210 pays for 70 $3/day cell phones to talk to targeted voters

$186 about the cost of 1 radio commercial

$137 will buy supplies for 4 door-to-door canvasses

$108 buys about 100 yard signs for visibility

$72 will pay for signage for visibility for one weekend on a targeted campus

$66 pays for about 20 $3/day cell phones to talk to targeted voters

$54 buys 50 yard signs for visibility

$36 will fund supplies for one door-to-door canvass

$24 buys 20 yard signs for visibility

Greetings from Maine! I arrived on a red-eye yesterday to help out Maine's "No on 1" campaign to protect marriage equality. Everyone around here is pumped up, but they just crunched the numbers for their quarterly fundraising goals. As of a few minutes ago they are $112,000 short of the goal.

The reporting deadline is Wednesday at midnight and they need to get to $803,208 on ActBlue. Contribute on the Blue America ActBlue page.

If you need more reason to give, than me just saying they really need the cash (and they do), check out this quote from the other side via the Baptist Press:

"Until this point, our opponents have presented a rose-colored glasses view of homosexual marriage," Stand for Marriage Maine campaign director Marc Mutty said in a statement. "Starting today, Mainers across the state will hear about the real cost to society should traditional marriage be replaced by genderless contracts whose sole focus is the adults involved in the relationship."

Rose-colored glasses? What the heck is he talking about? (Note the use of homosexual marriage, not same-sex or gay) It's simply an attempt to sow doubt about marriage equality "scary unforeseen consequences" boooo!

Repeat after me: marriage is a civil contract. It is a legal binding agreement between two adults. Letting gays get married changes nothing about this.

Mutty is seems to be insinuating that some how kids from straight couples will be effected when the forms people fill out when they get married no longer read "male" and "female" and instead are some version of "party 1" and "party 2". That of course is patently absurd.

The other side is counting on prayer to help them. In honor of Yom Kippur, I ask for you to atone for your sins and promise to make next year even better with a win in Maine. ">Do that by contributing to the No on 1 campaign.

Although funding certainly is critical, Joey Marshall, a local Southern Baptist pastor, says the pro-Question 1 side must not forget the importance of prayer. It's vital to "inform the people in the state of Maine of the dangers of same-sex marriage," he said, but it's more important to pray.

I'm fasting and working. I'm sure you guys can multi-task as well.

This is the brand new ad from the Yes on 1 campaign in Maine:

And, this is a Prop 8 ad from last fall in California:

The same consultants behind Prop 8 were hired for exactly this, drive up fear about marriage equality using lies about kids and churches. It goes without saying that Maine does not force school to talk about marriage equality, in fact they don't have to talk about marriage at all. Dirigo Blue got a comment from the Maine Department of Education Comunications Director David Connerty-Marin:

I cannot comment on Massachusetts education law or decisions made by local school districts in Massachusetts. Here in Maine, our Learning Results standards and education regulations make no reference to the teaching of marriage in any way. So a change in Maine's laws or definition of marriage places no requirements on local districts regarding whether or how they teach about marriage. Such curriculum decisions are strictly local. Before or after passage of the gay marriage law a district could choose to teach about marriage or not, and to teach about it in any way it deemed appropriate. It simply is not governed by state education law.

But Schubert/Flint seems to be phoning it in a bit. They don't seem to realize what a far right wacko they picked to be in their ad.

Charla Bansley is a high school teacher at a private Christian school, not an elementary public school teacher as they are implying in the ad. And the leader of the Maine Chapter of Concerned Women of America, which is a hard-right nut-job org (anti-gay, anti-abortion, pro-religion in schools, anti-porn, and anti-UN, yes they hate the United Nations). And she is a teabagger. And tried to get a student expelled for writing a pro-marriage equality letter to the editor as part of a class project.

And she thinks gays are psychotic and deviants. From a speech she gave at a Stand for Marriage Maine rally recently. Louise has much more over at the Blend.

Public display of psychosis and we have dealt with it by redefining decency down so as to explain away and make normal what a more civilized, and ordered, and healthy society would label deviant and the result has been a stunning failure.

This woman is a walking opportunity for opposition research and should be fodder for a while. Her values are not Maine values.

Fight back against this nasty. Fight back against fundie lies. Fight for love and marriage.

Give till it hurts, because if they win, there will be pain for Maine LGBT families.

P.S. The Courage Campaign is deploying me out to Maine next week. So expect a few posts from on the ground.