Ever since Dean left the DNC we've had a vacuum in Democratic leadership. Obama can paint a broad vision of where he'd like the country to go - and he's great at it - but we've had no congressional or national Democratic leadership, and Obama seems committed to the impossible dream of a bipartisan Washington. It's never going to happen.

The country's mood and progressive's apathy must surely rest at the feet of our current leaders. They do not inspire. They do not get legislation passed. They seem to do nothing but accept campaign donations and go on Meet the Press.

It's time Reid, Pelosi, and Kaine stepped down and allowed leaders with passion to take over - if they can even be found among the spineless politicians that ooze along the halls of power in Washington these days.

Where are our progressive leaders?

Church shooter pleads guilty. Story behind the link.

Much has been made over Obama's claim that small town America is bitter, and how this claim means Obama, and by extension every Democrat running for public office, is elitist. Little, however, is written about the reality of small town America's bitterness. I'm from small town America, so I can speak to some of this.

Many Americans are bitter.

We are bitter because our idiot government is spending the wealth of our future on the corruption of our present. Many of us, or our mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, work backbreaking jobs and pay our taxes to support the idea of this great nation - one of the greatest nations on Earth - and yet we see the fruit of this labor, more and more, being flushed down the toilet of corporate and government corruption. It's wrong. It's disheartening. It's embittering.

We are bitter because our idiot President and his lackey Republican congress (along with several spineless Democrats - to be fair, there's plenty of blame to go around) lied the country into a disastrous, pointless, financially and morally ruinous war of choice in Iraq. The blood of our honored dead - from large towns, from small towns, from the deep south, from the Midwest, from every corner of our nation - has been WASTED on the whims of some private grudge of the moron in chief. This is evil. This is vile. This leaves a bitter taste in our mouths.

We are bitter because McCain is politicizing our emotions. Mr. McCain, patriotic Americans have EVERY RIGHT to be bitter about the exceptionally poor choices our government has made and that you have supported 90% of the time. At every turn they try to divide us. There is no real America vs. a false America. There are no red states and blue states. There's just the United States. And, speaking as a fiscal conservative who can't stand seeing the country be sold down the river to support business cronyism at the highest levels, it makes me very bitter and angry that my patriotism and the patriotism of many of my fellow Americans is being questioned simply because we support a Democrat.

Long ago, when the Republican party sold its soul to Christian hatemongers to create a "permanent Republican majority," it abandoned its former principles, its conservative ideas about financing government, and its generally better approach to government (smaller departments run by expert hands are cheaper and more effective than large bureaucracies). A dislike for large government transitioned into a contempt for all government, so that a horse breeding moron became head of FEMA and a lying, corrupt parrot became a Vice Presidential candidate. In steadfastly refusing to consider any reasonable oversite of our financial institutions, we're on the road to a second Great Depression. I refuse to lend my support to a party that is creating a government of fools.

There is much to be condemned in the Democratic party, but they are right on the most important social issues of the day, they are right about the most important financial issues of the day, and they are going to get the vote of this fiscal conservative. I know the Republican party is bitter about that (many Americans are bitter), but please, don't spitefully condemn my patriotism because of your mistakes. Call me an elitist, but our country just deserves better than you.

They have defamed the memories of our honored dead during their convention of lies. They have attacked a good man’s fight against those who would prey against the most innocent among us. How low will they stoop tomorrow? America can no longer stand for the immoral advocacy of deception. America can no longer endure the failed policies of a party with only corrupt ideas. America needs REAL leadership! America needs Barack Obama!

Why should we expect anything better from a party so desperate to rule that they’ll say or do anything? We don’t, really, but we should. America deserves better than the pitiful scraps the Republicans regurgitate into the toilet bowl they’re making this election. We deserve better than the last eight years, and we deserve better than McCain/Palin!

The Republicans have proven, time and time again, that the best of what they have to offer is fear, and they have proven, time and time again, that they are unfit to rule this great nation. Imagine how angry it must make them that all we have to be is what we are: honorable. All we have to speak is what they cannot dare to speak: the truth. All we must do to permanently ensure America’s future is to live up to the most noble dreams of our founders by supporting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – liberal, honorable, American ideas.

How very simple our job is, and how very hard it must be to be a Republican today.  To be a Republican today, you have to embrace lies and spin and spin webs of untruth to make yourself seem like what you so adamantly opposed only yesterday: a liberal agent of change. To be a Republican today, you must renounce patriotism in favor of the unrighteous worship of money, oil, and power: the very things you’ve sold your own and the country’s soul for. To be Republican today is to dwell in a house made of excrement, where you wallow in the ruins you’ve made of this country’s economy and where your lipstick-stained ass spews forth foul absurdities to defame a man of real integrity and courage: traits you can only say you value, but traits you can no longer honestly  express. We should pity them.

But we must not allow the pity in our hearts to lose this election for us. We should do all that we have to do in order to make certain we secure victory. Luckily, all we have to do is tell the truth.

For eight years the Republicans have had control of our country, and for eight years they have done all in their power to weaken us by wasting the treasury without replenishing it, make us vulnerable to attack by spreading our forces too thin in a pointless war of aggression, and make our children dumber by enabling every child to be left behind and making sure that college tomorrow will cost much more than college today. Their champion is a feeble old man who openly admits that he doesn’t know enough about economics, who openly admits history has left him behind, and who openly admits that to enact legislation to protect America’s children is…dishonorable.  Their champion can only pretend to be what the REAL maverick, Barack Obama, is: a man who can stand up to his party when it matters.

When the deceptive spin machine of Republican lies fooled and badgered a nation still stunned from the horrible day of September 11, 2001 into believing the garbage the neocons shat out at us about Iraq, few politicians broke from the rank and file to stand up against them – Barack Obama was one of those few. Barack Obama could see the lies for what they were. Barack Obama took stand against the lies his own party and a mostly complacent nation believed and didn’t support Bush and McCain’s wrong war of choice. And Barack Obama has consistently maintained this position – the right position – even when it was politically dangerous to do so. The Republicans make even this courage into a weakness by trying to spin Obama’s stance against the surge against him. But what the Republicans have forgotten is that the surge is like trying to use a bucket to bail water on the Titanic. The bucket might work better than you could have possibly imagined, but the ship’s still gonna sink.

We can’t let America sink. We can’t let our pity get the best of us. We must continue to tell the truth everywhere we can and get Obama elected.

We must sometimes discuss the horrific, and I find that there was, during the final night of the Republican National Convention a moment so horrific that it bears discussion.

For those who missed it, for it aired well before prime time, the RNC chose to show graphic footage of 9/11/01 - the tower being struck, people jumping to their deaths, the towers falling. Immediately after this tragic footage aired, they had a short break while "Highway to the Danger Zone" was played.

I am serious - this was no tragic parody taken too far. This was real. And chilling. And filled with hate.

Many Republicans chose to dance to it. These few minutes were permanently etched into my mind as an example of why we must all fight to our last breaths to make sure these wretches never regain political office.

This, truly, must be the final act of a pitiful, ghoulish people without ideas or a soul - to resort to the basest in our natures rather than the best part of our spirits. I am dispirited and ashamed for these low men, these hollow men; ashamed *for* them because they have no shame themselves. Whatever evil urges inspired this senseless display of national tragedy and pain, I can probably never understand. I don't want to understand it. I want to seek to forgive them for it.

I do not know if there is a forgiving God, an angry God, or a vacant nothingness between the stars, but I do know that morality surpasses creed. Is this act a forgivable act? Few seem to be discussing it, and it sorely bears discussion, for whoever approved such a desperate political tactic is unfit for leading a moral, righteous people: unfit because they do not share the basic values of their nation. Unfit, also, because to exalt this tragedy is to be the opposite of a patriot, for it dishonors the memories and ashes our honored dead. To exalt it for nothing more than political gain is unthinkable by a moral people.

It has been said that evil men can think of things that good men cannot. McCain has said he knows "the good and evil" in the world. Well, his party has certainly shown a passion for evil. If there is decency and goodness at all in his party, airing this footage has called it to question.

That his party can dance immediately after seeing such footage...well, that says more about them than anything I could write.

May God take pity on their souls.