So MANY excellent, excellent diaries today! It was difficult to pare it down, but here are some gems for the night shift:
- Two diaries are looking for collective Kossack brain power: Kirk Caraway's Open Source Campaigning: Take Action, which follows up on the terrific idea of the blogosphere helping underfunded candidates by donating their skills, and clammyc's HELP WANTED to develop a realistic and fair tax policy, which proposes putting together a tax policy proposal, using the Energize America collaborative model. Go volunteer and help out.
- And speaking of tax policy ... check out randyhauser's It's Time for a New Tax Discussion in this Country, which pleads for straight talk and straight math in order to make discussions less arcane to voters.
- Elwood Dowd's 'My job is to make decisions' is a concise, biting takedown of Bush's most recent iteration of his job description.
- blandiz's The Right Side of History is a personal essay that ponders what our children and grandchildren will think of our individual roles during this time in our national political life.
- pico's My grandmother - a personal story is an excellent essay about the diarist's grandmother, her line-straddling politics and her traditionalism, set against the backdrop of having her home ravaged in New Orleans.
- NewDirection's How BushCo Could Make Itself Useful For 33 Months offers interesting advice to the Bush administration on its final stretch in office.
- andrethegiant's The American Dream Dies, Economic wolves on the prowl... looks at a new report on economic mobility and wonders why the American people are so delusional about their chances to live the rags-to-riches fiction. Really excellent diary.
- Mash's Kirkuk, Oil And The Dance Of Death is an informative account of the importance of oil-rich Kirkuk as the players in the Iraqi civil war struggle for control of the region.
- Bernhard's Official Report to Congress: Iraq War Prepared In 2001 examines the first official report, from CRS, to show that money was diverted prior to the invasion to build up to the war.
- kay dub's Suicide Watch is a despairing, honest, painful diary with some of the best raw writing I've seen here. It'll cut you to the bone.
- MarketTrustee's Mapping Energy to Politics is an incredibly detailed research diary about the politics and impact of the complex subject of regional deregulation.
- Superribbie's Presidential Approval Ratings and House Midterm Results is a really, really positive statistical analysis that bodes well for Dems in the mid-terms.
- Street Kid's Medicare Death/Rx Corporate Profits And Acquisitions looks at the "slow, sadistic torture" of the new Medicare plan's effect on seniors, and gives an account of the first reported death due to the program.
- Pericles' Cato vs. Caesar is a helpful synopsis of a Cato Institute report highly critical of Bush's constitutional overreach.
I know I bypassed many really excellent diaries for this list because of unusual quality/quantity today, so feel free to add more in the comments.
You people are amazing writers and founts of wisdom and knowledge. I am in awe.