TRY TO VISUALIZE A BLUE TEXAS AND A BLUE OKLAHOMA

This Saturday Jane and I will be hosting a live chat at Firedoglake with the guy we hope will replace the very worst senator in the entire U.S. Our guest will be Texas Rep. Rick Noriega and the very worst senator-- the absolute bottom of the barrel, most reactionary of all-- is John Cornyn. He hasn't voted in a pro-people way since his mentor Karl Rove got him elected to the Senate. I can't tell you how excited I am about Rick's candidacy; but I will on Saturday. Please come by. Or visit his own website today. And if the spirit should so move you today, Rick's Blue America page is already up and going.

Now when I say John Cornyn is the worst senator in America, I can imagine lots of other people bristling. What about Jim DeMint (SC), Larry Craig (ID), Jim Bunning (KY), James Inhofe (OK), you ask? Sure these guys have all worked hard to be the most reactionary guys in American politics-- and, truth be told, all are about equally hideous. But someone has to have the lowest score and even though it's just by a fraction of a point, Cornyn is officially the worst. Look at their voting records. They're all pretty much the same-- along with Saxby Chamberpot (GA), Mitch McConnell (KY), Trent Lott (MS) and a gaggle of other rubber stamp neo-fascists. But I know Texas and Oklahoma have a kind of long-standing rivalry and, to be fair, though Inhofe might have voted one or two times-- out of hundreds of votes-- less badly than Cornyn, in reality his loud and ignorant crusade against science, evens up the score-- at least in my book.

So... I was delighted to find out today that Andrew Rice has filed papers with the FEC that he intends to run against Inhofe in Oklahoma at the same time Rick takes on Cornyn next door in Texas. We first met Andrew last May 1, when local bloggers tipped us off that there was a populist Oklahoma state legislator people were urging to run against Inhofe. Like I said back then, Andrew starts from a place of geing for people, not corporations and Big Money Interests. Can someone like that win in a blood red state like Oklahoma? Let me answer that by reminding you that one of the greatest poets in America hailed from that blood red state, the man who claimed his guitar was for slaying fascists, Woody Guthrie. And then there was Will Rogers. Yeah, it's been a long time, but even in Oklahoma only 37% of the voters think the country is headed in the right direction. And who do they blame? Well, Oklahoma's Democratic Governor, Brad Henry, has a 71% approval rating. So... come by and hear what Andrew has to say after he's officially in the race on Labor Day. He'll be our guest at FDL on October 6.

This one's for all our friends and fellow Americans in Houston and Austin and Dallas, Corpus Christi, Ft. Worth, El Paso, San Antonio, Laredo, Midland, Odessa, Amarillo, Wichita Falls, Waco, Beaumont, Bryan, Kileen, McAllen, OK City, Tulsa, Ada, Ponca City, Norman, Edmond, Enid, Lawton and Stillwater...