My political history with Howie Klein dates back to the mayoral campaign of our mutual friend Jello Biafra in San Francisco when we were all hanging out at the Mabuhay Gardens.  It’s so much fun to have hooked up with Howie again in the blogosphere (via, it must be said, Johnny Angel) and watch him make such a difference in so many progressive campaigns with his Blue America column.  His sincere efforts to seek out and vet progressive candidates, have them here to discuss their campaigns at FDL, and spur their fundraising efforts with free CDs has made an incredible difference in campaigns that have been largely ignored (nay discouraged) by the DCCC.

Yesterday Howie had Coleen Rowley (MN-2) in for chat with readers, and today Coleen wrote this thank-you note:

Oh wow!!!   Thanks so much, Mr. Klein!  As you probably know, politics as it is currently practiced, is aptly described as "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." Since "the bad" and "the ugly" are already two thirds, it takes a lot of "good" to balance things. But it’s amazingly real people like you (and David Bailey who traveled over an hour and a half through Montgomery parade traffic just to help transcribe) who do just that – make the good win out over the bad and the ugly!

And when I and 14 other ethically-minded Democrats are elected in November, we’ll really go to work on the bad and ugly parts. Thanks so much for the help! Now I’ve got to go set the alarm for 5 am so I can get to tomorrow’s district bus stop to hand out our campaign’s educational bookmark.  By my calculations, this Act Blue money will buy about 60,000 bookmarks which, if we could dispense them all properly, would reach about 1/6 of all the people in the 2nd District. Unfortunately, I always end up handing out a lot of them to the 4 year olds with outstretched hands who line the parades so ANY and ALL FURTHER HELP will be appreciated.   THANKS AGAIN!!  Coleen R. 

Howie even maintains a good relationship with the folks at the DCCC, who have been known to link to his chats on occasion.  He’s a truly remarkable person.

Anyway, in honor of Howie, Biafra and the long history of progressive politics (and opposition to public morality scolds like Joe Lieberman) that came out of the SF punk scene, here is Biafra on net neutrality (MP3 ).    

(Hat tip mcjoan for the Biafra link, and a shout out to David Bailey who was one of my very first blogging friends, since retired to the Rowley campaign.)