The shirt features a unique design: The peace sign, not as a solid graphic but as a symbol made up of dolphins swimming free.

The shirt manages to appeal to another progressive value as well: It’s made in the USA in order to avoid association with sweatshops that pollute the environment and abuse workers.

What’s more, every sale of the shirt will benefit both progressive organizations and people working in what some people refer to as “developing countries”. One dollar from every sale is donated to a progressive organization, and another dollar is added to a Kiva fund to provide microloans to people in impoverished communities seeking to establish small enterprises to improve their lives.

This microloan program proves that Americans don’t need to choose between buying goods made in the USA and supporting economic development in less wealthy nations. Sweatshops just don’t provide economic advancement of the quality that microloan investment does.

Now it’s sure, they’re no barn owls over at Irregular States. They’re right on the money. Today, Representative Griffith announced that he’s switching political party constituencies from Democrat to Republican.

Don’t expect to see a change in Griffith’s voting record, though. Griffith was already voting like he was a Republican. He was a Blue Dog Democrat, a Democrat who supports a right wing agenda pretty much like that of the Republican Party.

This afternoon, Irregular States has posted a new button design: Alabama Voters Unite Against Parker Griffith. Democrats have learned that Congressman Griffith can’t keep his word. Republican can see that Griffith might switch allegiances again next year. Whatever his political party of the moment, Parker Griffith holds to an extremist agenda that’s just plain out of touch with the needs of the day.

Will it end there? Will John Edwards fade off into the background now? Don’t bet on it.

After seeing the crowd’s enthusiasm for John Edwards last night, combined with the tidal surge of support for Obama, I’d say that an Obama-Edwards ticket is more likely than ever.

John Edwards fits with Barack Obama, politically and biographically. Both come from modest economic backgrounds, and understand political issues from the perspective of working Americans. Both have rejected negative campaigning and lobbyist influence as well, and that will be a strong point in opposition to John McCain, who has filled his Senate office and his campaign staff with corporate lobbyists. Edwards and Obama also both represent an idealistic vision of a better American future, not a desperate clinging to the past.

If you’ve caught me being enthusiastic about the idea, well, I’ll admit it. Isn’t it time that Americans begin to feel a sense of optimism again? That’s what the Barack Obama campaign is about, really – overcoming fear with hope. With John Edwards on Obama’s team, that hope is all the more believable.

That’s the idea that’s behind this Obama-Edwards bumper sticker – and I’ll add on a note about the Obama Edwards campaign tshirt as well: It’s made in the USA, not in some overseas sweatshop factory that uses outsourced labor to make big profits for some corporate executives on the backs of child labor. This t-shirt fits the moral vision of the Obama Edwards campaign.

Maybe this one in particular is not for you – but please, make sure that when you do buy Obama or Obama-Edwards campaign shirts, they’re made in the USA. Don’t mix hope with despair.

However, this site is actually about a larger sphere of information. Yes, we talk about progressive bumper stickers, but we do so with the goal of discussing the ideas that provide the foundation for the bumper stickers’ power. There is poetry in the brief form of the bumper sticker, and we read bumper stickers with toward that end.

So, every now and then we take a look at other forms of progressive political speech, besides bumper stickers. We’ve examined the meaning of t-shirts and buttons, for example.

I’m happy to say that I’ve found a new source of progressive political lapel stickers, and I intend to explore those too. No, they’re not bumper stickers, to put on the back of a car, but they have the same potential for expression and representation of ideas.

So far, from what I’ve seen, the lapel sticker looks like a shorter form, a kind of political ping, a way of saying “Here I am, and here’s what I stand for.” I see more imagery and simple wording, declarations of support or opposition. A page of lapel stickers for Barack Obama provides an example with its very first sticker – the simple image of the face of Barack Obama, without any words. This sticker tells me that the face of Barack Obama has become an icon, representative of meaning in itself, a powerful cultural symbol that is regarded as needing no explanation.

It’s time to pick a candidate, and support that candidate in your state. Voting in the primary is important, but it’s even better if you help your chosen candidate by promoting that candidate to your friends and neighbors before the election.

A yard sign is a great way to do that. But for which candidate?

Let me suggest Barack Obama. I don’t mean to slam the other Democratic presidential candidates too hard, but the fact is that many of them supported George W. Bush in starting the Iraq War.

Bill Richardson did.
Hillary Clinton did.
Chris Dodd did.
John Edwards did.
Joseph Biden did.

Barack Obama didn’t. Barack Obama opposed invading Iraq from the start. He’s not had to offer any apologies on this issue. He got it right from the start. Obama never caved in to the pro-war pressure from the Republicans.

If that matters to you, then consider putting this Barack Obama campaign lawn sign out in your yard, to encourage people in your state to vote Obama for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2008.

Barack Obama 2008 Yard Sign

Nationwide, online measures such as search engine statistics show a lackluster interest in the 2008 presidential campaign. On a national level, many people seem not to care much who the next President is, so long as it isn’t a Republican.

Let’s cross our fingers and hope that personal displays of political interest, through objects like this lawn sign, encourages greater citizen participation at the state level.

Right wingers are out of touch with this natural symbolism of sexuality. They’re so much into dirty, stinking oil wells that I don’t think that they really have much fun in the bedroom. They mock environmentalists as “tree huggers”, and don’t realize that this very phrase reveals how much they’re missing the boat.

This t-shirt (made here in the USA, free of sweatshop child labor) takes the right wing insult and embraces it, much as environmentalists embrace trees: I don’t just hug trees – I kiss them too.

All the other major Democratic presidential candidates have been quoted by the Joseph Biden for President campaign – as agreeing with Biden’s foreign policy. Dennis Kucinich alone has the courage to point out what’s wrong with Biden’s pro-war foreign policy history.

The Kucinich campaign writes:

The Congressman has the utmost respect for Senator Biden and his years of service to the nation. He just happens to be wrong on some very major issues; and, if the other candidates agree with him, then they’re wrong, too.

They voted to authorize the war in Iraq. They approved continued funding of the war. They voted for the Patriot Act. They supported trade agreements that have had a devastating impact on American workers. They have failed to challenge the President and the Vice President for their unrepentant and continued violations of the U.S. Constitution.

I chose the progressive button design you see here at the top of this article because it shows Dennis Kucinich looking where the other Democratic presidential candidates don’t have the courage to look: To the left.

I don’t think that there’s ever been that kind of award given before.

I’m not in a position to judge what the best tshirt ever is, but this one would be among my top picks, to be sure. It features a handsome young boy, giving us the peace sign with his right hand, and a slogan written as a definition, “Pacifist: Someone with the nutty idea that killing people is a bad thing.”

I’m glad that this t-shirt is out there, because, on consideration, it’s absolutely nuts that so many advocates for war out there are trying to make pacifism out to be an extreme ideology. In fact, pacifism is the heart of true moderation. War is not moderate. It’s violence that’s the true extremism.

“Arizonans, we can make a difference. From Flagstaff to Tucson and across the Phoenix metro-area, the political dynamics of our state have changed. Arizona has come to represent the return of American politics to the mainstream – where it is more important to solve problems of real Americans, than argue about being a ‘red state’ or a ‘blue state’. A mainstream where we recognize that there is more that unites us, than divides us. This campaign is about us, and as Arizonans, we have work to do. Whether you are in Tempe or Tucson, Phoenix or Payson, Sedona or Scottsdale – our energy, our time, our hope, and our dedication will determine this election.”

The Irregular States progressive directory notes the many subgroups of presidential activists coming together to support the Barack Obama presidential campaign in Arizona, including: Arizona Artists for Obama, Arizona Gays and Lesbians, Arizona Women for Obama, and Arizona Young Democrats for Obama, and Prescott, Arizona for Obama.

This political campaign button celebrates the high level of grassroots political activity going on to support the presidential campaign of Barack Obama for President in Arizona. It features the striking design of the Arizona state flag, which evokes a kind of idea of Barack Obama as a rising star, or of the United States of America at a time of new dawn.

In doing so, the button links the Barack Obama for President campaign to the old story about America’s first President, George Washington. The story goes that, at a critical historical moment in the origin of the United States, Washington was looking at a chair that had, carved into it, the sun on the horizon. He looked at that sun, and asked whether he thought it was rising or setting, a meditation upon the fortunes of the United States itself.

The Obama 2008 campaign asks us to believe that the sun may rise again, and that our nation need not remain in the darkness of fear and secrecy brought down by the presidency of George W. Bush.

Arizona for Obama button (2.25″)