Chris Bowers reports that the new GOP slogan “The Change You Deserve” is a lot worse for them than you think it is:

Third, it was particularly brilliant to unveil a campaign slogan that is already copyrighted as an advertisement for an anti-depressant.

I don’t feel a need to dwell on this.  It sort of speaks for itself on the pure irony level, plus it was discussed in a front page Kos diary yesterday.

Instead, let’s focus on the other possible slogans the GOP could have picked.  ASD has a list of registered slogans that provide all sorts of alternate possibilities:

I like EMLA’s “numbs the pain,” because it accurately reflects the short-term effect of us all getting drunk and crying into our drinks should McCain win in November.

Aricept has a medication with the slogan “A first step in Alzheimers.”  I think that would do well as a GOP slogan: “Republicans: a first step in Alzheimer’s.”  You can put a picture of Reagan next to McCain.

One of Band-Aid’s slogans is “We’ve got you covered.”  I can picture that being used with a photo of hooded prisoners:

WE’VE GOT YOU COVERED

Beano has the slogan “Take Beano before. There’ll be no gas.”  I think we can shorten that to a photo of an abandoned automobile with a gas pump handle hanging from its trunk and use the slogan “There will be no gas.”

Bufferin has the “Bufferin is smarter” ad.  We could change that to “The Republican Party: even Bufferin is smarter.”

Crestor has the slogan “Now you’re getting somewhere.”  I picture that with a photo of a humvee driving into Baghdad:

NOW YOU’RE GETTING SOMEWHERE

Immodium uses “Forgotten something?” as one of its slogans.  I picture a print ad with McCain hugging Bush in the bottom left corner, him eating cake with Bush in the upper right, and then in the middle, scenes from Iraq interspersed with photos demonstrating the conditions at Walter Reid medical center and scenes from Arlington.

Or, possibly, we could connect it to hurricane Katrina, as suggested in the excellent Kos diary We Should Use This Photo. Every. Single. Day.:

FORGOTTEN SOMETHING?

Lemslip uses the phrase “Here to help” in its advertising.  I think we can use that with that photo of Bush trying to exit through the wrong door:

HERE TO HELP

You can tell that it’s a day when I just can’t think about anything serious, can’t you?

Today’s Free Press has a surprisingly good article about mothers in jail and the problems they face:

Francis is one of the roughly 130 women in the Vermont prison system who will spend Mother’s Day separated from their children. For Francis and many jailed mothers, their challenge, beyond staying sober and not reoffending, is maintaining their parental bonds and making sure they remain intact after their release.

With the female prison population in Vermont having grown exponentially in the past 10 years, more women are finding themselves in Francis’ position – struggling to be good mothers while behind bars.

The article goes on to note that many of the mothers who are in jail are there for crimes related to substance abuse problems and I’m at the point where I question whether or not jail does these women or their families any good.  I’m not arguing for a removal of the prison system, but I am wondering if drug-related crimes might be better dealt with through treatment facilities with an active interest in, when possible and appropriate, keeping families together.

It’s up to you

All I can do, I’ve done

But mem’ries won’t go

No, mem’ries won’t go

(With apologies to UB40 and their song Red, Red, Wine)

The cry has once again been raised on this board.

If only Douglas wasn’t so mean. If only Pollina weren’t in the way. If only everybody would do it our way …. WE, THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY COULD WIN!

Two lines taken from a short Free Press article this morning. Will Dems, Progressives unite? There is some speculation about Pollina for Lt.Gov.but the evidence is slim that such a thing will come about .I forget who said this about relationships .. they are like a shark if you don’t swim forward it dies ..what we have here is a dead shark.

Pollina argues that Democrats have been unable to beat Douglas the last three elections without a Progressive in the race. “Democrats alone have not been able to beat Jim Douglas. You can either repeat that strategy or try another,” he said.                              

Peter Galbraith, a Democrat who considered running for governor but turned his support instead to Symington, said he had two conversations with Pollina last fall about efforts to work together. They agreed to keep in touch, Galbraith said, but Pollina ended up announcing his candidacy without getting back to Galbraith.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress…

There will be something like 600-plus delegates pledged to Obama at the Vermont Democratic Party’s State Convention in Barre on May 24.  Of those, 110 are declared candidates for the six open district-level slots to represent Vermont’s Obama voters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. If every candidate gets two minutes of air time, that’s three-plus hours of listening to impassioned people say, “I’m just so fired up, and I’ve worked so hard to get here.”

So I heard an interesting take this evening at our County Committee meeting. A young woman who worked the phones, stood in the cold at the honk & waves, and brought the signs to the Maple Fest Parade, told us why she wanted to go to Denver to help nominate Barack Obama. She’s biracial, moved here despite her family’s concern that she would be terribly isolated in the whitest state in the US, and she wants to show the rest of the country that there’s more to Vermont than skiing, ice cream, and being the whitest state in the country.

More after the jump.

[She also said that she had been too young to vote for JFK or march for civil rights with Dr. King. But she’s not too young now (she said she was over 40), and she wants this chance to help make history.]

So, thinking about it later, it occurred to me that one of the things I want people to know about Vermont is that a hell of a lot of white people here are going to vote for Obama — and it’s not about race or race guilt. And then up came questions that I can barely articulate about whether voting for this delegate for the reason she stated would be some kind of weird tokenism, or — as my spouse prefers to frame it — ‘affirmative action.’

And how are we going to choose 6 from 110?

A political sister forwarded to me an email from Damian Sedney,  who decided to organize a series of Obama delegate-candidate forums so people could hear from or meet at least some of the folks running before the convention. The email was supposedly sent to all the Vermonters for Obama going to the State Convention (although I wouldn’t have received it if my friend hadn’t sent it on). Sedney also promised to publicize the dates and locations of the forums to the 600 Obama State Conventioneers, but I never got that from him either. More importantly, neither did the young woman asking for Franklin County votes to send her to Denver.

The three forums are in Norwich at the Public Library, 368 Main St. on Thursday May 15, 7 p.m.; Monday May 19 in Burlington at Oakledge Park (end of Flynn Avenue) at 6:30;  and at Mark Skinner Library, 48 West Road, in Manchester on Tuesday, May 20th, 6:30. (Info from http://my.barackobama.com/page…

NanuqFC

In a time of Universal Deceit, TELLING the TRUTH Is a Revolutionary Act. — George Orwell