NY-25's (Central New York, and suburban Rochester) now 10-term incumbent Jim Walsh was forced to run an actual competitive campaign for the first time in years last Fall when Democrat Dan Maffei pushed the 90% Bush Voter to within the margin of error, despite the institutional advantages a guy with 18-years of K-streets roots and who won over 90% of the vote while running unopposed in 2004.

Now, faced with a Maffei rematch, Walsh is forced to fundraise and really milk his Republican insider buddies for cash. So, this week he attended a fundraiser with Rudy Giuliani, raising over $200,000. But it's too bad he chose to do it Tuesday, missing 11 crucial votes in the process. That $11,764 per vote.

Let's see what issues Jim Walsh thought were worth less than $11,764 for his campaign coffers:

As Chris Bowers wrote in Breaking Blue, Dan Maffei, the young former Congressional Staffer who gave 18-year incumbent James Walsh a run for his money last fall, is officially running for Congress again.

Dan has THREE Ivy League degrees: Undergrad from Brown, Journalism from Columbia, and a degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He worked for NJ Sen. Bill Bradley, the late NY Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and then for the Appropriations Committee under Charles Rengel.

He's been an outspoken critic of the war, and has a great understanding of what working families need to make it in America, coming from a working town in a working part of the state.

On Saturday I posted a diary with a link to a brand new Draft Al Gore group on Facebook (http://syr.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22 43414401). Since then, we've had a bunch of people sign up, many of whom said they heard about the group from Daily Kos. In addition, we've been contacted by a number of national organizations interested in what we're doing.

When you start a facebook group, there is a slow trickle of members at first. Then, when the news about the group hits what is called the Newsfeed (an RSS about what your friends are doing on facebook), membership starts to soar. We're starting to reach that point, and can use all the help we can get.

As a college student, I've been on Facebook for three years now. The MSM is finally understanding what all us college students and young people know: facebook is a ubiquitous, semi-addictive social networking tool that is the platform of communication for a new generation, a new generation that Al Gore seems so dedicated to, with Current TV and the host of other youth-related projects he's involved in, such as training Environmental Leaders. Mix that in with the fact that he is on the boards of Apple and Google, and the basic fact that he invented the internet, and we've got a powerful way to send a message to Al Gore.