…in the New York Press that Putin’s scheme to consolidate power in Russia has eerie, but unsurprising, home connections:

“Many of us who spent the ’90s in Russia became aware over time that the aim of the United States was to create a rump state that would allow economic interests to strip assets at will. The population in this scheme was to be good for consuming foreign goods produced abroad with Russia’s own cheaply sold raw materials. The aim was a castrated state, anarchy, a vast, confused territory of captive consumers, cheap labor and unguarded oil and aluminum.Some of us who came home after seeing this began to realize that the same process is underway in the United States: the erosion of the tax base, the gradual appropriation of the tools of government by economic interests, a massive, disorganized population useless to everybody except as shoppers. That is their revolution: smashing states everywhere and creating a scattered global nation of villas and tax shelters, as inaccessible as Olympus, forbidding entry even to mighty dictators.”

…in a little invective entitled “Get Out And Vote And Scream,” suggests we imagine a happier time in the near future:

“We know that 20 years hence, there will be no Reagan-like legacy for Shrub. There will be no renamed airports or honorary expressways or revisionist rose-colored history books arguing the good and the bad of his epic much-loved presidency, because there is so little good and so very, very much bad and there is absolutely no love anywhere.We already know that history will look very, very unkindly upon this most booblike, lie-torn, appallingly underqualified of American presidents. Of this we can rest assured. Of this we will only look back and be incredibly grateful it didn’t last all that long….

You simply have to get out and vote and scream and then roll up this ugly hunk of living history into a tight little ball of hot gelatinous goo and hurl it at the wall of time and see what sticks.”

…sees, much to his surprise, liberals actually working together.

…”Do we not care that our president lies, cheats, and steals as long as he bullies the rest of the world and the weakest amongst us at home? I hope not.”

…to settle ourselves, find our strength, and stay positive:

“We are part of a huge movement right now and that in and of itself is quite incredible. Breathe… Relax… Feel the energy in the air because there really is a feeling of unity floating around.”

…continues the track about defending the American-ness of city dwellers and blue-staters.

…a quasi-abstruse model, complete with charts and graphs, for learning “how to deprogram yourself from the cult of consumption.”

…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.