I have always liked Garrison Keillor

Years ago I ran across his Lake Wobegon monologues on tape at the BookStop on Alabama in Houston when that was the largest bookstore and the place to go if you loved books. I started purchasing the tapes. It was only later I found the Prairie Home Companion Radio show on our public radio station, a mixture of old-style radio and artistic performances. I even shared the tapes with Republican Christian friends up in Ohio. I later read a couple of his books but I like his monolgues and radio show better. Everyone enjoys "Bruno the Fishing Dog" and similar stories.

He has recently come out with a simple and powerful book on Democratic values. Homegrown Democrat - A Few Plain Thoughts From the Heart of America is a powerful story of what it means to be a responsible citizen and naturally a Democrat and it urges citizens to throw out those who are threatening what it means to be American. I believe it makes a compelling case for liberalism and the progressive side of the Democratic party.

Natasha just saw him talk about it at a Democratic Party meeting and bought the book and has become another fan. She has posted a few excerpts - here's two:

(p. 25) The Union is what needs defending this year. Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of. Not even close. This gang of Pithecanthropus Republicanii has humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from town and clear-cut the forest and gut the IRS and promote the corporate takeover of the public airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them. Their crusade against government has given patriotism a bad name. And their victory has been accompanied by such hubris as would choke a goat.

(p. 194) You drive out of St. Paul into the Republican suburbs and you see what the New Deal and Fair Deal and Great Society accomplished: they enabled people of modest means to get a leg up in the world and eventually become right-wing reactionaries and pretend that they sprang fully formed from their own ambitions with no help from anybody. And vote to deny to others what they themselves were freely given.