…the Dems’ “base” regions are the dynamic, growing areas:

“Virtually all of the globally competetive sectors of the American economy, film, television, music and other media, software, financial and legal services, etc. are concentrated in Blue America. The Reddish portions of the country are living off federal subsidies, tarrif barriers, and military spending. It’s not a coincidence that the most dynamic portions of Dixie (the much-rumored “New South”) are some of the Bluest parts (you also have some desperately poor, mostly black, rural counties) and growing Bluer.”

It’s an oversimplification, but with its points. It helps explain why Bush’s favorite industries are land- and resource-based (oil, mining, waste management, agribiz, etc.); while the Kerry camp’s talked about high-tech promises for the future.

People who live in the “blue states” are real Americans too!

…“101 Points to Ponder Before Taking to the Polls.”

…progressives learn from political strategist George Lakoff and unite behind a permanent publicity drive to reframe the language of US politics.

…American politics will only be healed when sane people take back the Republican Party:

“In a very real sense, the health of our democracy may hinge on the conscience of Republican moderates. Only they can keep their party from being hijacked by crony capitalists and gay-and-feminist-bashing evangelicals. If they stand by and let Cheney reinterpret the free market as a playground for corporations who need not worry about competitive bidding or honest accounting, if they let the fiscal conservatism that was once the hallmark of their party be drowned in red ink, if they stand by and watch the Patriot Act be used to squelch dissent, if they let neoconservative advisers hand our foreign policy over to a militarized corporate elite, then there will be no stopping the continued descent of American politics into the slough of megalomania.”

…six months ago that the politicos’ attempt to instill “the image of Decisive, Steadfast Bushâ„¢ as the nation’s last line of defense against untameable chaos” was already in trouble:

“…Instead of being saved for the closing kick of the election campaign, the War on Terrorâ„¢ theme and Decisive, Steadfast Bushâ„¢ persona have had to be trotted out one time after another — to the point where they begin to be no longer comforting, but stale. In fact, as they have metamorphosed through Dubya’s personal neuroses into repeated claims of being a ‘war president,’ he seems increasingly less like Winston Churchill and more like Captain Queeg.”

If anything, this process has accelerated.

…in the LA Times (free registration required) against “Bush’s Empty Rhetoric on Democracy”:

“Bush and his supporters act as if anti-Americanism is simply the necessary and worthwhile price we pay for our principled advocacy of freedom everywhere. The truth is that anti-Americanism has prevented us from consistently advocating democracy throughout the world. And the inconstancy of our belief in democracy — which the citizens of pro-American dictatorships everywhere have noticed and exploited — makes anti-Americanism all the worse. There may be a way out of this dilemma, but preaching the universality of democracy and practicing otherwise is surely not it.”

Of course, this is hardly the first administration to play power-politics under the guise of “promoting democracy.” The story of the Cold War era is awash with the names of brutal despots and murderous regimes who invoked the sacred mantle of anti-Communism, and received oodles of US support in return.

It’s probably not “our freedom” that anti-American troublemakers loathe, but something else.

…the Republicans might be due for a reckoning and rebuilding era similar to that of the post-Carter Democrats.

…a similarity between the already-infamous White House snub against “the reality-based community” and an Orwell line about “Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth.”

…Bush’s continued election viability to his appeal to “our lizard brains,” manipulating the populace into a pre-rational state that leaves us “shrouded in the fog of fear.”

…writing for The Progressive Populist, has some scathing remarks about you-know-what:

“I don’t think it’s accurate to describe America as polarized between Democrats and Republicans, or between liberals and conservatives. It’s polarized between the people who believe George Bush and the people who do not. Thanks to some contested ballots in a state governed by the president’s brother, a once-proud country has been delivered into the hands of liars, thugs, bullies, fanatics and thieves…. What this election will test is the power of money and media to fool us, to obscure the truth and alter the obvious, to hide a great crime against the public trust under a blood-soaked flag.”

…the Des Moines Register has an editorial comparing Bush’s war talk with language George Orwell’s characters might have used.

As I’d predicted, Bush’s big speech was competently written, passably delivered, and largely content-free. He offered few plans for the future. He brought up war, terror, and the war on terror repeatedly. He bashed Kerry “politely.” He made sure to lie about Kerry’s platform, among other topics, along the way. He presented himself as the no-choice-possible “brand” for a demographic target market of “NASCAR dads” and swing-state suburban whites. And, oh yeah, he hinted oh-so subtly that anybody who dared oppose or disagree with him on anything was unpatriotic, un-American, etc.

The only thing I didn’t expect was the humanity, the near-humility, one could see in Bush’s face and his body language (if not in his script). Like Jimmy Carter in 1980, Bush has clearly aged beyond his years in office. He seemed weary, struggling to get through the script without a flubbed line. I pitied him. I still want him removed from office, but now I have another reason why—I want him relieved of his heavy burdens.

Public speaking, of course, isn’t Bush’s strong point. Heck, being President isn’t his strong point. His strengths are as a backroom dealmaker, a fundraiser for the hard right, and a policy whore for certain industries. He called Kerry unqualified to take over the White House; but he’s proven himself unqualified to run anything but a campaign.

And even at that, he’s gotten scared and desperate, as seen in the ever-shriller attack ads and the insult-filled convention speeches he delegated to his underlings.

The Republicans’ bully aesthetic, which Bush has encouraged, just might fatally disgrace him. Bill Clinton announced he was going into a hospital for heart bypass surgery. Bush mentioned this in a campaign speech on Friday. Bush asked his audience to remember the ex-President in their prayers. Instead, the audience loudly booed. Bush did nothing to discourage them. In one moment, the party’s mean side was revealed in all its grossness.

New-age philosopher and “medical intuitive” Caroline Myss once wrote that the fall of Communism came in a sudden, unexpected flash. In a relative instant, seven decades of clunky, kludgy ideology blew away.

Could we be witnessing, at last, the start of neoconservatism’s own dissolving?

ABOVE, AN EXAMPLE of what will keep the Left out of power in the US forever.

I happen to know the gents behind this poster; some of them were also behind the post-industrial rock band ¡TchKung!. I’d argued with them in the past about the futulity of square-bashing.

To dehumanize those whose lifestyles are different from yours—even under the guise of parody—is to become that which you claim to hate.

…is a disturbingly deep element of the USA’s cultural heritage: The early history of Parker Brothers, one of the many toy-and-game companies now consolidated under Hasbro.

The sixteen-year-old George Parker, it seems, had grown up in Salem, MA being bored by something called The Mansion of Happiness, an early board game invented by one Anne Abbott and designed “to teach moral principles.” (Here’s a small picture of the game board.) Young Parker knew there’d be a market for games kids would actually want to play. He also knew many New England parents didn’t allow their kids to play with regular playing-card decks, because of their association with the vice of gambling. That gave him an opportunity to create his own card game, Banking, in 1883. It had a pseudo-financial payoff, but wasn’t played for real money (at least not in the official rules) and offered parents a pseudo-educational, pro-capitalistic element. And, as an original creation, George and his brother Charles could copyright and trademark it, turning them into intellectual-property tycoons.

Fifty years later, in a recently-disputed sequence of events, the Parkers’ firm added Monopoly to its lineup and secured a place in pop-cult history.