Howard Dean knows the standard

"I want people with Confederate flags on their trucks to put down those flags and vote Democratic ... The dividing of working people by race has been a cornerstone of Republican politics for the last three decades." -- Howard Dean

There is another saltire. This one was designed by the South Carolinian, William Porcher Miles. And it arouses strong feelings, strong emotions pro and con.

Four years ago, in Iowa, Howard Dean was jaunting about in an attempt to become the president. He re-mentioned an inconvenient truth and he was pounced upon and his fellow Democrats did so pro forma and de rigueur.

The Republicans through the bushevik programme may become a regional party during at least the next election. They have the racist south and the mormon west in their back pocket and that's about it. They may even lose Indiana.

The upholders of the lost cause switched parties when Lyndon Johnson passed and signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He predicted that the South would be lost for a generation. He was right, a full generation has been lost and time is still moving. Nixon began a southern strategy that was successful. Reagan and Rove further solidified it, as did so many others and not only on the presidential level, but on all levels.

Dean spoke the obvious, that there are people who vote against their best interests. They vote for the agents of unrepentant, unfettered and unrestricted wealth. They do so in the thoroughly mistaken sentiment that they are resurrecting their rebel pride; when that pride is demographically a racist bonanza for the Republican establishment.

Then there are circles where its display is forbidden. There are people who object when it is properly displayed in confederate cemeteries, schools and museums. A teacher risks his job if he brings it into a history class. One school employee or one parent may hold his last paycheck.