Friday evening, I took a break from the Netroots Nation 2008 conference to go out to dinner with a friend of mine from high school and his girlfriend; I'll call them Joe and Mary. Joe isn't exactly what you'd call a liberal, by most measures, but he's genu­inely open to the possi­bility that the liberal posi­tion on a speci­fic issue may be right. He's also not at all a religious sort, but neither an ardent atheist. Mary, on the other hand, is a Southern Baptist who listens to Rush Limbaugh and watches Fox News. Yes, a real live conser­vative, although she insists that she's somewhere near the center. She's not really a full-blown Dittohead, but hey, she does listen to Rush and watch Hannity & Colmes. It was quite an interesting chat.

What can I say, I like this guy. No, I'm not crazy, nor have I suddenly sold out to the gang at Swindlers' Inc (aka the current Republican Party).

There are two models of the acquisition of political power discussed here:

1. the Republican model, in which an "aestheticized" politics is promoted (in this case, it's the "aesthetics" of the War on Terror and of insecurity in general) in order to capture power for an elite (the Bush administration and its neoconservative cronies, and its financial backers in the oil and defense industries)

2. the model proposed by the Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci, in which a coalition comes to power in order to support the claims of working people.

Here I will try to suggest that the former is "bad pragmatism" and the latter is real pragmatism, and suggest that the Democratic Party stop imitating 1) and find a way to subscribe wholeheartedly to 2).

(crossposted at Docudharma)

And the Democrats gain 700,000:

In the 29 states (plus the District of Columbia) where voter affiliation is kept by party, the Democrats have scored perceptible gains since the presidential election of 2004 while the Republicans have suffered significant losses. To be specific, the number of registered Democrats in party registration states has grown by nearly 700,000 since President George W. Bush was reelected in November 2004, while the total of registered Republicans has declined by almost 1 million.

November is going to be kick ass...

So Sue Me!

The great minds at the Republican National Committee are once again demonstrating their transcendent grasp of marketing, finance, and public relations.

In an action so preposterously witless as to scramble the common cranium, the GOP has sent a "cease and desist" letter to CafePress citing trademark infringement on the part of sellers using the term "GOP" or the elephant logo.

Brought to you by...
News Corpse, The Internet's Chronicle Of Media Decay.

This is an open letter to the "legitimate press" to ask that they stop using the derogatory term "flip-flop" when characterizing Democrats.

I address the letter to Bob Schieffer of Meet the Press for reasons that will be made clear in the letter.

You have got to be kidding me.

I just got wind of a report from noted birder Ken Kaufman about how John Bohner will lead a delegation of members of Congress to investigate ANWR:

Birders who hear about this trip are likely to respond with envy when we think about all the amazing species that the lawmakers will see, the abundance of nesting sandpipers, plovers, phalaropes, jaegers, Arctic Terns, Snowy Owls, Long-tailed Ducks, Steller's Eiders, Spectacled Eiders, and so many other beautiful birds.  We might quibble about the timing of the trip -- after all, many of the Arctic-breeding shorebirds have already started to migrate south, with Pectoral Sandpipers and others already appearing in my area of Ohio on their way to South America.  But still, most of us would jump at the chance to go along.  I've been to the North Slope about a dozen times as a leader of birding tours, and it was always an amazing experience.

Can we, however, expect that to happen?  

Not a chance.  More, below the jump.

The Pittsburgh Tribune continues to report on the alleged white supremacist group attempt to honor Republican State Representative Daryl Metcalfe with the groups White Christian Soldier honor.

The Tribune reported "Adams Township officials are not commenting on whether they rented a pavilion at a public park to an alleged white supremacist"

http://butlerdemblog.blogspot.com/...

http://www.youtube.com/...

Gov. Matt Blunt, who is leaving office as one of the least popular governors in memory, has given the Democrats (and Obama) a wide-open door in the Show Me State.  Proof below the fold.

Everyone who pays any attention to politics knows that the GOP is on its heels.  On every issue from the war to healthcare to the environment to the middle-class economy, the American people have sided firmly with Democrats and progressives.  The issues have always favored Democrats, of course.  But the prominence of those issues as the basis for voting as well as the strength with which those issues clearly favor Democrats first made itself abundantly clear in 2006.

And the same thing is likely to happen in 2008, with the outside chance of a filibuster-proof Senate to boot.

There have already been a few articles and discussions over the past few months about the "Bradley effect", which attempts to "explain" discrepancies between what white voters tell pollsters and how they actually vote when it comes to "non-white" candidates.

And even though a lot of these discussions end up with evidence that dismisses the theory, as the election season heats up, there will no doubt be more of a racial undertone (whether it is blatant or not), and as long as poll samples are intentionally skewed to help McCain, or likely Obama voters are being excluded from the polling samples - there will be more focus on the so-called "closeness" of this race.

Obama Campaign spokesman Bill Burton just made a major gaffe, on energy policy. What may make this more problematic as a gaffe, is that it also may not be recognized by many Democrats as such.

I ask one favor in advance. This piece is not short. It goes through both the underlying issue, some broader points regarding the importance of talking point communications to the public, and some general tendencies that may perpetuate certain critical types of mistakes when it comes to dominant message framing.  While I hope that you do take a few moments to read this piece --- in fact I actually hope you send it to the DNC -- you certainly can choose not to. But what I ask, I hope reasonably, is that if you do choose not to read the full piece, is to refrain from commenting upon it or recommending comments. If you do not read it, you can not know what it really says.  And it is what it really says, that is important. Thanks in advance for that consideration.

McCain's team is known to be flush with "lobbyists" and some of them are top-level people opposed to anything resembling healthcare "reform".

Drug Lobby Spends $1 Billion, Study Finds

Republicans in general, of course, are to blame for much of our screwed-up healthcare in this country. Big Pharma slides them billions of dollars, they in turn give Big Pharma all sorts of perks - illegally and unethically.

I remember during the first term of the Bush administration that I spent a lot of my time worrying about John Ashcroft, the peculiar fellow who substituted crisco for Chrism as his father anointed him to high office, and sang a dreadful song in Fahrenheit 9/11.

Maybe that seemed harmless enough, downgrading Holy Chrism to vegetable oil. But it seemed emblematic somehow of the general lack of seriousness with which society in general and the Bush administration in particular are afflicted with. And his maudlin song about the Eagle soaring...

Let the Eagle soar/Like she’s never soared before/From rocky coast to golden shore/Let the mighty eagle soar.

Maybe the words are harmless; indeed, they probably are. But the reference to the 'mighty eagle' from the kind of Republican who actually has no interest in birds or wildlife seemed to me to be another example of the way the supposedly libertarian-leaning Republicans liked to exalt the state.

The latest in closeted anti-gay republican scandals: Alabama Attorney General Troy King is denying allegations of having a gay affair. The rumor mills have been buzzing over the past week with the story that King was caught in bed with a young male assistant by his wife Paige Troy, leading to his banishment from their Montgomery home. Not to be too accusatory, but I don't have a single doubt in my mind that the rumors are true.

King was an earlier supporter and had strong ties to John McCain. But I don't even consider that to be an issue at all, why would it be McCain's fault he accidentally made friends with a closeted gay? This connection does matter to his bigoted republican supporters. Which is why McCain removed several references to King from his website this past Friday, as reported by The Pensito Review.

This is breaking political news and the details will be forthcoming later today. Once again, McCain's association with Abramoff, whether direct or through channels is brought to the fore. This time, one of his top bundlers has an Abramoff association..it's actually a very close association.

I believe that it is now time for McCain's involvement in the Keating 5 scandal to be brought out of the closet and explored again for all to see and scrutinize.

The Associated Press article, "McCain Hasn’t Ignited the Passions of Evangelicals," offers a glimpse of conservative Christians' rather tepid response in a very Republican region of Iowa to Sen. John McCain's candidacy. Dave Mulder, a retired professor from Northwestern College in Orange City, remarks:

I think people here genuinely believe that George Bush and his Christian faith was very sincere.... People have said that when they talked to him, he took time to let them know how much that Christian belief meant. For McCain, I just don't think there's that same enthusiasm

After the flip: An editorial commentary--and something of a correction to the AP article--from me, who attended Northwestern College:

I find it very telling that the richest country in the world, My America, with all its values is not living up to its potential because "The United States of America is becoming less united by the day. A 30-year gap now exists in the average life expectancy between Mississippi, in the Deep South, and Connecticut, in prosperous New England" (Leonard Doyle: July 17, 2008). Research has supported time and time again that disparities in health care access and socioeconomic status are key influences on health outcomes and according to the article huge disparities have opened up in income, health, and education depending on where people live in the US, according to a report published yesterday (Leonard Doyle: July 17, 2008).