The blogging forecast will once again be “light to nonexistent” for the next two weeks. That’s because I’ll be hitting the road to cover the annual conventions for the Democratic Party (Aug. 25-8), Modern Drunkard Magazine (Aug. 29-31) and the Republican Party (Sept. 1-4). Try to guess which one I am looking forward to the most.

“I’ve heard ‘Thunder Road’ 10,000 times and could hear it 10,000 more, but the minute [Bruce Springsteen] starts with the Che Guevara talk, I push the mute button. When Bruce sings ballads, I think of my summers at the Jersey Shore. When Bruce talks politics, I’m thinking, ‘Why is this plutocrat telling me to stick it to the man — he is the man?’”

– Eric Dezenhall, author of “Damage Control: Why Everything You Know About Crisis Management is Wrong” and CEO of a public relations firm that represents corporations and celebrities in crisis.

Ralph Nader name-checks Jeremy in this interview with the Rocky Mountain News:

If you read this article two weeks ago in Politico by Jeremy Lott, he thinks we’ve already had an impact over the last eight years on the Democratic Party. It was quite an eye-opener to me that he writes that way. I don’t even know him. He didn’t even interview me. But he said “the Democratic Party is now Ralph Nader’s party.” Of course, that’s a little ambitious. But he’s reflecting a pull. They are talking more populist. For heaven’s sake, they criticized WTO and NAFTA. Regardless of whether they’re going to follow through, the first step of reform is lip service. (Laughing.) And they’re giving a lot of lip service in a variety of areas — nowhere near what I would hope them to do. So it’s a tugboat candidacy at a minimum.

That’s what we’re hoping for. What the parties did in the early 20th and the 19th century. I mean, Norman Thomas actually had quite an impact on Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was, like, looking over his shoulder even though Norman Thomas didn’t get that many votes. Huey Long had an impact on Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Thought he was going to challenge him in ’36. And certainly . . . there were other parties that have gotten quite a few votes, really did have an impact. Now, it’s tougher these days because parties are more cast in stone than they ever have been, for all the reasons we’ve talked about and more. But you have to keep trying.

See, I have a sense of history about this. Every social justice movement was started by people who didn’t win, didn’t win, didn’t win, didn’t win, didn’t win. Then someday, they or others won. So they were willing to endure defeat. It’s not easy to endure defeat, because we’re living in a country that loves winners. But all I say to the people of this country is just be as smart a voter as you are a sports fan. You do your homework, you know the history, you know the statistics, you know the strengths and weaknesses of the players, the coaches, the managers. You can, in a sophisticated way, second-guess them. You can show how they made serious mistakes, even though they get paid a lot more to run that game than you do. But above all, you don’t just root for the winners, you root for the team that’s closest to your heart and your mind, even if that team loses again and again like the Chicago Cubs.

Be as smart as a voter as you are a sports fan and we’d have a much more throbbing and functional democracy solving a lot more problems.

While we wait breathlessly for Barack Obama to choose his veep (Biden? Kaine? Sanders? Keyes? Tito? Jermaine?), take this time to enjoy Jeremy’s recent interview with the Washington Times’ Brendan Conway:

When I do talk radio, I usually ask callers to guess how many vice presidents went on to become president. They guess five, six, eight tops. The real number is 14, almost exactly a third of our 43 presidents. When I give them the real number it shocks people. It shocked me when I first figured it out. We’re taught that the vice presidency is this puny, insignificant office, but it’s played a major role in shaping the country’s political history.

And if you haven’t already bought The Warm Bucket Brigade, well, why the hell not?

Jeremy continues to be the best thing to happen to Great Britain since the Clash recorded London Calling. First, he explains the influence of pastor Rick Warren:

During the lead up to the event, Warren had come under fire from both secular liberals and religious conservatives. Leftists caricatured the pastor as a goatee-wearing Jerry Falwell. Would-be friends worried that he was auditioning for the part of the next Billy Graham. That is, they worried that he was becoming a man of fuzzy causes and a candidate for the role of inoffensive counselor to America’s presidents.

The pastor’s performance gave both sides ammunition for criticism. Those who dislike God talk couldn’t have been happy that Warren coaxed senator Barack Obama to confess “Jesus Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him” and to hope that he might be able to “carry out in some small way what He intends.” And when senator John McCain declared himself “saved and forgiven” and called America a nation “founded on Judeo-Christian values and principles”? Nails on a chalkboard never sounded so sweet.

Then it’s on to the stark choices that serious Catholics face in this election:

If you’re a regular Mass-attending Catholic, you’re highly likely to vote for the generic Republican candidate for Congress and president. Catholics are a sliver to the left of Republicans on fiscal issues, but abortion seals the deal.

Why? Because there is the sense among the faithful that, at a minimum, one’s vote should not increase the odds of one winding up in hell. The Democrats are the party of abortion-on-demand, and the Church teaches that abortion is a grievous sin. Best not to take any chances.

That’s not the end of it though. Read the whole column here.

The blogging forecast for Jeremylott.net for the next few days is “light-to-nonexistent”. That’s because I’ll be taking a few days off to wing it down to Aruba. Blogging will resume late next week, assuming I don’t decide to chuck it all and stay in Aruba. Hey, could happen …

Today in the Spectator, I review Stephen Mansfield’s The Faith of Barack Obama. I probably won’t be getting a Christmas card from him:

Stephen Mansfield wants to believe that Barack Obama can lead this nation to a religious revival. He wants to believe it so badly in fact that he is willing to disregard his own reporting. Now that’s faith.

Mansfield is the author of The Faith of Barack Obama, a book-length essay on the Democratic nominee’s religious beliefs. In many ways it’s a good book and, certainly, the subject is worthwhile.

It’s just that Mansfield seems to be willing to give Obama every benefit of the doubt, no matter what the Democratic candidate actually says. How else to explain passages such as this one?

“The uncertainty that Obama’s words inspire seems to be intentional,” writes Mansfield. “Though it does not appear that he means to confuse, he does speak with a thoughtful lack of clarity.”

Read the whole thing here.

By the way, here’s a passage that got dropped from the final edit:

As John K. Wilson put it in Barack Obama: This Impossible Quest: “For Obama, Jesus isn’t a magical creature to be worshiped blindly; he’s a real person to be imitated for his moral example. What’s important to Obama about Jesus is not the ‘Night of the Living Dead’ aspects of a Christian belief in resurrection, but the moral lessons about self-sacrifice for a larger cause.”

Personally I never made the connection between Jesus and George Romero’s flesh-eating zombies before (If there is a second coming, should we shoot Zombie Jesus in the head this time?) but Mansfield quotes the passage with little comment.

I cannot imagine why it got dropped.

UPDATE: Jeremy informs me that “Zombie Jesus” is now back in the column. He says it wasn’t an editorial decision to leave it out after all but just “technical problems.” Maybe, but I suspect that Hanukkah Zombie is somehow involved.

Jeremy reviews David Freddoso’s The Case Against Barack Obama in today’s Washington Times and gives it two big thumbs up:

Mr. Freddoso does not believe the presumptive Democratic nominee is an America-hating Marxist or a foreign agent or the Second Coming. Rather, he argues at length that Mr. Obama is a big phony. The Illinois pol may have “crafted himself an image as one of those rare reformers who succeeds,” but “the idea of Barack Obama as a reformer is a great lie” that many now devoutly, and wrongly, believe in.

Mr. Obama first won office by challenging the signatures on a petition for re-election of one of his mentors, state Sen. Alice Palmer, and having her thrown off the ballot. He hired consultant Ronald Davis to issue challenges to signatures for every possible reason, including a married woman having signed with her maiden name. Oh, and “While they were at it,” writes Mr. Freddoso, “Obama’s campaign got the other three candidates disqualified as well,” setting up their candidate to run unopposed.

Hey folks, Mister Jeremy Lott is giving something back to the community. The work is very rewarding, Jeremy says, although the commute to and from Gaithersburg, Maryland to Washington State every day is kind of a drag.

UPDATE: Jeremy says it’s in case his career in microbiology doesn’t work out.

R.I.P. Issac Hayes, singer, songwriter, actor, the voice of South Park’s Chef and all-around bad motherfucker. Hey, I’m just talking ’bout Issac Hayes …

I saw Hayes perform at the Chesapeake Bay Blues Festival in 2005. In the middle of his set, he said, “Hello, children …” and launched into a terrific version of “Chocolate Salty Balls.” It’s probably the greatest concert experience of my life. There I was, with thousands of other people singing, “Yeah! Suck on my chocolate salty balls …”

He was a truly great musician. Most people know him today for the “Theme From Shaft” and his South Park work, but he was one of the best soul music songwriters of the 1960s. “Soul Man”, “Hold On, I’m Coming”, “When Something Is Wrong With My Baby”, and “I Thank You”, among others, were co-written by him.

It’s tragic he was never able to reconcile with Matt Parker and Trey Stone, but that’s life, I guess. The truly creepy news here is that just before his death, Hayes had just finished work on a film called Soul Men with … Bernie Mac.