In the season of their discontent -- out of power and on the defensive -- Democrats are looking for inspiration and leadership. A bunch of them found it yesterday in the unassuming figure of Wes Boyd, the man who gave America the flying toaster.

An interesting profile in the Washington Post about Wes Boyd, founder of Berkeley Systems (the folks behind the Flying Toasters - which any old-school Mac owner should recognize) and MoveOn.org, one of the fastest growing online progressive political organizations around.

Separation of the spheres also depends on an unspoken deal, a nonaggression pact, between democracy's political majority and capitalism's affluent minority. The majority acknowledge that capitalism benefits all of us, even if some benefit a lot more than others. The majority also take comfort in the belief that everyone has at least a shot at scoring big. The affluent minority, meanwhile, acknowledge that their good fortune is at least in part the luck of the draw. They recognize that domestic tranquility, protection from foreign enemies, and other government functions are worth more to people with more at stake. And they retain a tiny yet prudent fear of what beast might be awakened if the fortunate folks get too greedy about protecting and enlarging their good fortune.

Michael Kinsley in Slate on the Bush-coordinated breakdown between the opposing (but equally necessary) spheres of Capitalism and Democracy.

In a similar vein, Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics comments on this TAPPED post regarding the motivation behind Republican tax policies and how similar idiocy brought down Margaret Thatcher and made the Tories effectively un-electable to the present-day in much of the UK:

Apparently Rep. DeMint has argued that it is necessary to make the tax system more regressive. DeMint said that "unless something is done, most people will have no reason not to keep voting for more government, because they won't be paying for it." Exempting too much of the low-income groups would give them little reason to vote for a smaller government - others would be paying for it. Tapped also published a letter from Bruce Bartlett, a conservative columnist, who argued that the evidence seemed to show that narrowing the tax base tended to help the Republicans, since it increased the voting levels among the rich, rather than widening it as the Republicans have recently done.

The Tories tried to increase the regressivity of the tax code about 15 years ago in order to ensure that every one would want to vote for a smaller government. And that was at the heart of why Margaret Thatcher lost her job and why the Tories remain unelectable across much of London, Scotland, Wales, and within much of the educated middle class.