Update: Bruce writes an op-ed in today's New York Times. [link via Cursor.]

**********************
Live blogging of Bruce Springsteen on Nightline: He's most concerned about foreign policy. He says he likes Kerry and Edwards, it's not just an ABB (anybody but Bush) thing, but he also says there's not that much difference between Bush and Kerry. He says no candidate has it all. But it seems like he really does like Kerry and Edwards. Ted Koppel doesn't buy it and comes back for a second round at the topic. Ted Koppel gets him to acknowledge that he wants to get rid of Bush. So what, that doesn't mean he doesn't think Kerry and Edwards are up to the job. He does.

Bruce says he's afraid America is becoming an oligarchy. Oligarchy?

Oligarchy is a form of government where most political power effectively rests with a small segment of society (typically the most powerful, whether by wealth, military strength, ruthlessness, or political influence). Oligarchies are often controlled by a few powerful families whose children are raised and mentored to become inheritors of the power of the oligarchy, often at some sort of expense to those governed. In contrast to aristocracy ("government by the 'best'"), this power may not always be exercised openly, the oligarchs preferring to remain "the power behind the throne", exerting control through economic means. Unlike plutocracy, oligarchy is not always a rule by wealth, as oligarchs can simply be a privileged cadre.

Bruce knows he's going to piss a lot of people off. But he says most of his fans know where he stands on the issues and he wants to make a difference in the election. Bush has taken us away from mainstream American values. Bush has burned his bridges on foreign policy.

The purpose of the concert series: Change the direction of the government, mobilize progressive voters, and change the Administration in November.

Overall reaction? Thank you, Bruce. We need you to stand up against Bush. We need the money you can raise. We need the votes you can get out. We need you to dissipate the apathy among young voters.

Background on planned anti-Bush concerts is here. The New York Times covers the tour here.

You can't rock the vote any better than this....

Confirming a couple weeks of speculations, a mega lineup of artists including Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, REM, Bruce Springsteen and Dixie Chicks, have announced the not so subtly-titled Vote For Change Tour. The bands will play shows during the first week of October in a number of swing states (areas where the popular vote between the Democrats and Republicans is expected to be close). For the politically challenged, we should explain that U.S. presidents are determined by how many states they win the majority of votes in. Each state is worth a different number of points based on its population, so populated states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Florida are key battlegrounds.

Springsteen will be on Nightline tonight talking about it. Here's the lineup, divided into six groups:

• Pearl Jam with Death Cab For Cutie
• Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band with R.E.M., John Fogerty and Bright Eyes
• Dave Matthews Band with Jurassic 5 and My Morning Jacket
• Dixie Chicks with James Taylor
• Jackson Browne with Bonnie Raitt and Keb' Mo'
• John Mellencamp with Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds

Each group will play in a different Pennsylvania town on October 1. The tours will move on, with some or all of the bills hitting cities in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Missouri, Minnesota, North Carolina and Florida.

Any chance the concerts could be made available on pay-per-view around the country? It could be a great source of revenue for the party and the candidates.

Go Kerry! More like these, please.

Democrat John Kerry, in a veiled swipe at Vice President Dick Cheney, said that he won't dole out special favors to corporations if elected president. "My vice president of the United States will never meet secretly with polluters who want to rewrite the environmental laws," the presidential nominee told a cheering crowd packed into a hockey arena Tuesday.

The barb referred to Cheney, who met with industry officials while drafting proposals for new energy laws. Democrats want more information about those meetings and have argued that Cheney, the former head of the Halliburton Co., had allowed the loosening of clean air and water rules at the behest of corporations.

The Bush Blog links to this NRO article which is very disrepectful of Firefighters.

Generally speaking, the likelihood that a firefighter will vote for John Kerry is inversely proportional to the number of fires he has actually fought. Witness all those T-shirted "Fire Fighters for Kerry" you saw at the convention. A little soft around the middle some of them were, weren't they? Do you think some of them could haul a hose pack up 50 flights of stairs? I'm not betting on it. I'm guessing the only fires many of them have seen lately were at IAFF barbecues.

Received by e-mail, what do you think:

Update: This is the source.

Tuesday, August 03, 2004 Kerry's bounce WAS as big as Clinton's, and here's why
by John in DC - 9:19 PM

1. The August 2d Newsweek says that in 1992, by one count, roughly 66 percent of all voters were up for grabs. According to the same story, 17 percent are up for grabs now (my friend Rob, who knows such things, says other polls show only 10 percent up for grabs). If you take the 17 percent figure, that's almost 4 times as many voters up for grabs in '92 as compared to today.

2. Clinton got a 16 point bump from his convention in 1992 - that was considered a "massive" bump according to the AP. The average bump, according to Gallup, is 5 to 7 points.

3. Kerry gets a bump of 4 points from last week's convention, according to the latest ABC/Washington Post poll. That's a tad below average, according to Gallup.

4. But more importantly, Kerry's bounce was as strong, if not stronger, than Clinton's, and here's why.

New York Attorney General (and likely gubernatorial candidate) Eliot Spitzer gave a strong warning to Republicans at a breakfast last week:

Democratic state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer on Thursday warned Republicans not to "dare" use the memory of 9/11 for political purposes when they convene for their convention in New York City next month. "Do not go there," Spitzer said at a breakfast he sponsored for the New York delegation at the national convention Thursday. "We have seen in the 9/11 report how many errors were made and opportunities were missed. No one, and I mean no one, should use it for politics."...."we will not let you do it."

Cool.

The Grateful Dead's Bob Weir is pleading with Deadheads everywhere not to vote for Ralph Nader. Performing on Saturday in Boston, Weir told the band's followers to be sure to vote, but the exorted, "Don't vote for Nader. I know him. He's an a--hole," our spies tell us. The band then broke into "Johnny B. Goode," a theme song of the Kerry-Edwards campaign ...

Nothing personal against Mr. Nader, he was very polite the one time I had a discussion with him shortly before the 2000 election, but I disagreed with several of the comments he made in his speech that night and thought some of them were mean-spirited. Let's not let him take any of Kerry's votes.

Example of a mean-sprited Nader comment:

The current issue of GQ Magazine brings us The secret life of G.W. Bush. What was he really doing in 1972 when he couldn't account for his time? Read on:

Isn't that a bare-chested George W. Bush cavorting with Saigon bar girls in 1972? And who knew that the leader of the free world once worked as a Rolling Stones roadie? Or hung out with Andy Warhol's Pop Art crowd? It's all laid out in a lavish photo spread and accompanying text in a national magazine now on the newsstands.

In a satirical prank complete with a half dozen arty photographs by a British conceptual artist, "Bush: The Missing Year" purports to account for the unexplained gap in the president's Air National Guard service in 1972-73. The story, by senior editor Jason Gay, details Bush's clandestine activities in the U.S. military's fictitious Special Undercover Missions Service (SUMS).

....Other images show the Bush stand-in playing cards with a Mick Jagger model and touching up a Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe. In the final staged photo, a white-haired Barbara Bush type yanks her son out of bed by his ear, a fifth of Jack Daniel's in his hand and pictures of nudes scattered on the floor.

The narrative that accompanies the photos is just as funny:

It is well-known that most Cuban-Americans favor the Republicans. Could that be changing? Markos of Daily Kos presents this anecdotal report:

My father-in-law, Cuban-American to the core, is itching to vote against Bush. He visited his family in Cuba every year, and is furious that anyone would try to separate him from his family. Three months ago, Kerry was a "communist". Today, he's got my father-in-law's vote in crucial New Hampshire. And lots more votes just like it in Florida.

Kos's conclusion:

It's the little things that'll add up to Kerry's landslide in November.

David Sirota from American Progress reports on The Sirota Blog :

THEN:

• "I've asked the attorney general and the deputy attorney general to examine racial profiling. It's wrong in America and we've got to get rid of it."
  - President Bush, 7/30/01

NOW:

• "President Bush's re-election campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney."
  - Arizona Daily Star, 7/31/04

Instapundit links to Yuppies From Zion who relies on a Matt Taibi article to claim Kerry will be tougher than Bush on drug offenses.

We disagree--we've been reporting on Kerry's (and all the Democratic candidates') positions on drug offenses and crime for the past two years on Talkleft. Here's a quick recap on Kerry:

Kerry voted "No" on increasing penalties for drug offenses (Nov 1999). The amendment he voted against would have specifically targeted the manufacturing or trafficking of amphetamines & methamphetamines and possession of powder cocaine, and set stronger penalties for dealing drugs. He voted "No" on spending international development funds on drug control. (Jul 1996) In 1994, he voted against mandatory minimum penalties for firearms offenses committed during the course of a drug crime.

He would end Ashcroft's raids on medical marijuana patients and providers.

Here are more of Kerry's views on marijuana. See also here.

As to John Edwards, check this out:

He also would have us shrink our bloated prison population and return its present members more successfully to society by better distinguishing non-violent drug crimes from other offenses; restoring abandoned treatment and training options; and re-enfranchising those who have done their time.

And, don't forget, Kerry opposes the death penalty, except for foreign terrorists; He has called for a federal moratorium on the death penalty pending further study; and he advocates DNA testing for every inmate facing execution.

So, don't believe it. Kerry is not going to be worse than Bush and Ashcroft on the drug war--or on crime.

Natasha at Pacific Views interviewed the the chief of Act Blue at the convention. She reports:

Enter Act Blue. People interested in supporting Democratic candidates can set up an account, and just start picking candidates they'd like to channel money towards. After picking your set of candidates, Act Blue sets up a single web page for you that lists all of them. When your visitors click through to the page, they can check off one or all of your chosen candidates, and enter an individual donation amount next to each one. When you finish the transaction, one total charge is made to the donor's card, and Act Blue gets the cash to its destination. Rahn says that anyone who uses email or makes purchases on Amazon can use this system.

We're setting up TalkLeft's list. If you have a special candidate that you think deserves TalkLeft's support, let us know in the comments.