1. I Support President Barack Obama bumper sticker
2. Peace, Earth, Love, Obama bumper sticker
3. Red White and Blue Obama oval sticker
4. Earth O Barack Obama bumper sticker
5. Republicans are idiots, liars, thieves and thugs
6. Samuel Alito? Kiss your freedoms goodbye
7. Don’t Like Gay Marriage? Then Don’t Have One! car sticker
8. Share the Road bumper sticker
9. Question Authority bumper sticker
10. The GOP ReLIES on Ignorance bumper sticker

Six months ago, environmentalist themes dominated as we worried about oil spills. In October 2010, Barack Obama has surged back to the top of the liberal consciousness.

Jesus Would Heal the Sick Bumper Sticker

Frederick Douglass on Injustice and Silence

Obama 2012 Bumper Sticker

Frederick Douglass on Rebellion

Trust No Man … John Adams Quotation Sticker

Older White Catholic Woman for Obama

Bumper Sticker Definition of Environmentalism

Yes We Did Bumper Sticker

No We Can’t Re-elect Obama Rainbow Bumpersticker

With the end of the month approaching, it’s a good time to look at how the swag’s been swinging. The following are our top ten selling bumper stickers for November of 2009:

1. Question Authority. The saying remains applicable no matter which party is in power, don’t you know.

2. I Support President Obama. Because, FOX News appearances aside, there are still a lot of people in this country who do.

3. Another Old White Woman for Barack Obama. The bumper sticker started out as an don’t-pigeonhole-me alternative to the gender and racial polarization of the Clinton-Obama primary fight, but has remained pretty darned popular over time. Does that indicate that gender and race are still issues regarding the Obama presidency that people feel the need to counter?

4. Value All Families… it needs to be said, especially in yet another election where not all families were valued by voters. (See “Maine,” “Disappointment”)

5. Defend Marriage from Republican Bigots. See above. Who do they think they are to tell everyone else who can get married and who can’t?

6. Health Care for All, a bumper sticker that emerges as players in DC fight over whether this will actually come to pass.

7. Turn Off Your TV and Think: but wait, that’s not what Katie Couric said…

8. Jesus would heal the sick / Health Care Reform Now. Or what, do you think he would ask for proof of insurance first?

9. Is it Vietnam Yet? Sure, they call it “Iraq,” and it’s boxier-looking on the map, but it’s looking more like a quagmire every day…

10. The Thing Worse Than the Rebellion is the Thing that Causes the Rebellion, a saying by Frederick Douglass that still rings true, a century and a half later.

I’m writing this post through a service called ThisNext, a kind of social networking web site that focuses on shopping. People recommend things to buy, writing short reviews of them and arranging them into lists.

Among the items that are reviewed and recommended on the network are political bumper stickers – this one, for example.

I appreciate this bumper sticker’s effort to stretch Americans’ political memories. Back in the year 2000, America chose George W. Bush, believing his promise that he would bring honor and integrity to the White House. Barack Obama is offered by the sticker as a long-awaited fulfillment of that promise.

It’s a great message for Obama supporters, but I do want to offer a caveat emptor message: Barack Obama is making a lot of promises, just like George W. Bush did. We won’t know whether he’ll fulfill those promises until he’s actually President. Progressives, as much as anyone else, will need to watch Barack Obama like a hawk, and work to hold him accountable to his promises.

A caveat emptor for ThisNext too. ThisNext offers a means through which people can write articles like this, for their own blogs, on the ThisNext web site.

Think about it for just a second, and you’ll realize that people who write blogs can ALREADY write blog articles about bumper stickers, or anything else for sale for that matter, without the ThisNext widget.

Writing a blog article on ThisNext actually is more difficult, because it doesn’t allow the use of html. A blog article with no links? How useless is that?

Well, it’s actually very useful for ThisNext, because there is one link in this article – to the bumper sticker listed on ThisNext, which provides ThisNext with a source of affiliate income. How very convenient for them. How very useless for bloggers.

My experiment with blogging through ThisNext is done.

Post script: Dear Goodness me. ThisNext blogging is even worse than I thought. Not only is it super-controlling, stripping out html, it doesn’t even work properly. There’s supposed to be a bumper sticker graphic with a link for buying the bumper sticker in this article, but look for yourself: No graphic, and no link, is there.

Now I’m going to have to go back in and remove that garbage code, and place in my own link to the bumper sticker – direct, without any extra affiliate nonsense. Thanks for nothing, ThisNext. I’ll keep blogging for myself.

The more I see of social networking sites like ThisNext, the more I think that independent web sites are really the way to go for substantial networking. Making links and “friends” comes quick and easy on social networking sites, but so easy that the benefit is ephemeral, the relationships lasting just as long as a click.

The truth is that when I think about shoppers, I don’t think about people who buy bumper stickers. I think about people who go to shopping malls and buy far too many clothes for themselves.

On the other hand, when people want to find a bumper sticker for themselves, how do they find the right one? Well, they go shopping.

Maybe, in order to be more successful, progressives need to think more about how to help people who are shopping for ways to express their progressive political ideas. Maybe, Kaboodle is the kind of place political progressives need to go more often. If we want people to pay attention to what matters to us, turning the huge shopping infrastructure in our favor couldn’t hurt.

I’ve spend a little bit of time this afternoon exploring the bumper stickers that are already listed on the Kaboodle system, and adding a few more of my own. I find that I appreciate the way that the system allows me to categorize bumper stickers into lists and sub-sections. Is this capitalist system inherently anti-progressive, or can it be legitimately turned into a medium for progressive activation of previously apathetic citizens?

The following are a few bumper stickers I’ve put together into a section called liberty.

Political Bumper Stickers by oakgall

I’d like to hear from other people what they think about this system, and how they’re using it.