Wilson: How do you know that, Mr. Chairman?

Ervin: Because I can understand the English language. It is my mother tongue.
Sam Ervin during Watergate hearings

I used to feel that way, that I understood the meaning of words. Lately I've been having my doubts. As a young child I was a bit behind in learning to read, and much of what I read in grade-school was dreadfully boring (see Spot run). In Jr High School I read my first novel and I  was hooked.

Now I see my language, a wonderful precise tool for communication becoming as squishy as the handling on an Oldsmobile station wagon. For sure some of the blame goes to our current President. If forcing so much water into someone's lungs that they believe they will drown isn't

Torture: the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession

, than I clearly don't know what that word means.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
George Orwell

Like most of you, I struggle with the high price of gasoline. Personally I have been making changes to cope with the new economic reality. For a while I was able to absorb the increased expense by depleting my savings, but that is not sustainable. This diary will be a discussion on what bigger changes are in store for the global economy to deal with the imbalance between oil production vs demand. Please join me over the jump.

Like many of you I have been reading a lot about FISA and what this means for the future of a constitutional government in America. Many people I have come to respect hold conflicting views about where the congressional capitulation will lead. Since I don't have any special understanding about what the most recent developments portend, I  will try to stick to things I do know a little about. More after the jump.

Some friends and I recently went to Yosemite National Park to hike up Half-Dome (man is that a tough hike). When we left the Park the first Gas Station we saw had gas for over $5.50 a gallon. Eventually we found a cheaper station, but like many of you I am cutting back my gas usage. I'll go into what I'm doing after the jump.

I know many people here are hesitant to even think about what is going to happen many months from now (we all know what happens when we take our eye off the ball), but I am interested in hearing what members of this community think we will need to do after George W. Bush is out of office. Is the enthusiam we are seeing sustainable? Will we need 60 Senators to get anything done?

My apologies to Stanley Kubrick. (Dr. Strangelove). I turned 18 years old in 1984. My Birthday was too late in the year for me to vote (not that it would have changed anything) I remember being upset that I could not vote against Reagan. In 1985 I went away to college with little money and a dream of being a scientist. The late 80's were a tough time to work your way through college in California. I worked more and reduced my classload to make ends meet (they never really met but at least I didn't get evicted). In 1990 I had the most lucrative I had ever had ($10/hr), I actually paid income tax that year. By the end of the year I was literally ill that GHWB was taking my money to pay for the slaughter in Iraq. Unable to support the immorality, I took a less generous job, with the added benefit that I could now do schoolwork at work-work. In 1992 unemployment was greater than 9% in California and much higher in many counties. Our former Governor Jerry Brown was running that year, it was all wrapped up by June as it always is. I still voted for Jerry.

As the zen saying goes 'the journey is the destination'. At about 2:00pm my office partner said "I hear Bill Clinton is going to speak at UC Davis tonight", which in turn sent me buzzing. I wrote some e-mails to friends I thought might enjoy it (no response), I called my wife, she said "you can go, but I don't feel like it", I asked the kids (yeah whatever, rather play 'Rock Band'), I called my office partner, he said "I'm too lazy". So it was just going to be me (and a couple thousand friends I just hadn't met yet). After getting home from work, and helping a bit with household chores, I ate dinner, tried to figure out some clues on find 815 (see Lostpedia for more info; Warning it is highly addictive), and it was almost time to go. The speech was set to start at 9:00 and the paper recommended arriving at 8:15, at 7:45 I started what I expected to be a 30 min trip to UC Davis. My first mistake was to just print my directions from google maps. My map very clearly put my destination in the Southeast corner of the University.

When FDR became president he implemented a policy of boosting the power of the labor movement - the fruits of this policy allowed Americans to have a rising standard of living for the following decades.
At a time when a very small proportion of the workforce had a college education, the practice of limiting union membership to those who did not, was insignificant. Today a significant percentage of college graduates are not in management positions and could greatly benefit from union membership.
Unions have been the most effective agents for insuring that workers get their fair share of profits. Since the 1970's America has become much more productive, but wages have failed to keep pace. We need more unions, current unions need more members, lawmakers need to be more supportive of unions. In order to achieve these goals, unions need an agressive plan - that includes specific demands, outreach, publicity, and actions.

Are you tired of candidate diaries? Would you like to discuss something a little more Adult. Then join me for a robust discussion about size. I will be making the case that size doesn't matter. Of course I am talking about the size of the population that has been subject to GWB's unconstitutional behavior regarding detention at Gitmo (or other foreign locations), torture, as well as the whole enemy combatant classification. As always please let me know what I left out.

I'll start with the peaches. I am a huge fan of peaches. We have a tree in the backyard and there are few things I enjoy more than standing under that tree on a hot summer day and eating a delicious peach fresh off the tree. They are often so ripe that the juice runs off my chin, but I don't care I'm in my own little world (a little piece of heaven here on earth). Occasionally I get a store bought peach, some sad little thing that was probably picked while it was still green (grown more for it's looks than it's flavor) it is a pale imitation of a 'real' peach. The store peaches always look great on TV but one bite usually brings disappointment.

Resistance is Futile! is the motto of a violent group of aliens known as 'the Borg' from Star Trek. The meaning being that their military strength is so overpowering that their enemies should give up without a fight. I have noticed recently that some of my fellow Kossacks seem to be a bit fatalistic. I wanted to explore what the effects of this attitude are having on our efforts (if any). Many years ago I ran the 2-mile in track (we did eight laps) and my coach would say that when I passed someone I should go strong and try to look like I wasn't working hard. I was amazed how often I would pass someone, running tall, keeping my breath quiet and they would give up. In politics we see this kind of psychological game played. When a candidate releases internal poll numbers there is the suspicion that the real numbers are probably less favorable to the candidate. Put another way no one low balls there popularity.

I often wonder how I ended up with the political views I have. So if anyone else cares to hear my story, I will tell it now. My father has done a lot of research into our ancestors. We had a relative on the Mayflower, and some relatives that did moderately well in America after that. However by the time my grandfather was born in the late 1800's the family was very poor. At the age of ten my grandfather was pulled out of school and sent to work in the coal mines. At that time an adult coal miner made a dollar a day and a child made 50 cents. He worked in coal mines for the rest of his life, he died at the age of fifty from lung failure (no doubt due to 40 years spent working underground). Along the way he had married a schoolteacher and had ten children. After his death my grandmother went back to work as a schoolteacher, two of my uncles joined the merchant marines as radio operators (and sent money home). Life got much better.

I came up with this diary idea while commenting here recently, about a week ago DHinMI wrote a diary about how this election might be like 1932. In the comments one of the things that came up was mass action in the 1930's and whether that would be helpful now. A few days later I was listening about how 5 million French workers were staging a work stoppage. Do French workers get greater benefits due to thier willingness to take mass action? Another issue that comes up here often is the reality of the corporate media and thier bias against progressive politics. I appreciate the tubes and how the blogosphere has created an opportunity for us to get our message out, but mass media is still dominated by corporate interests. Do we need liberal newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations? or is new media the way to go?

When I first stumbled onto Daily Kos a few years ago I felt like I had finally found something that I didn't know I was looking for. It was quite exhilerating to finally find a community full of individuals who were more similar to me in thier politics than any group I had met before. I was impressed by the thought and effort that went  into the diaries. I would see articles here that took literally days to show up on the TV. Important details that other media would ignore would be explained in detail here. That was fine as far as it goes, a well educated electorate is necessary for our democracy to flourish, but more recently I have felt the need to take it up a notch. What do you think our goals at Daily Kos ought to be.

When I was in seventh grade I had an excellent science teacher, and half-way through the year we had a section on drug use. It started off well enough with lots of accurate information on the dangers of illegal drug use. However the powers that be (either this teacher or more likely the school administration) were unable to let the facts speak for themselves. What followed was a bunch of unadulterated horseshit. The one thing that stuck in my mind was my teacher telling all of us that drugs made you feel awful. The logic was quite simple: use drugs - feel terrible - ruin your life. Whatever the ethics of the situation - the result was that few of us used drugs in junior high school.

I have been reading a number of comments on this site where people claim to have given up on the political process. I hear that Diane Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats are no better than the Republicans. I hear doomsayers claim that the evils of the Bush Administration are irreversable. I share some of these concerns, I think the effects of global warming my well exceed what the IPCC predicts (~1m sea-level rise in 100 years). Remaking the federal judiciary will take many years. I have no idea what it will take to rebuild our image in the world (probably decades at least). One thing that the other side seems to have over us is faith. Not just faith in the goodness of human beings, or faith in the power of good government, but irrational faith untethered to the normal laws of nature.

Even before the inauguration in 2001, George W Bush had begun to have a corrosive effect upon our nation. He made comments extolling the virtues of "the heartland" and condemning the values of those of us who lived on the coasts. He pulled every trick in the book to swing Florida into his column in the election. In the aftermath of 9/11 he spoke of unification of our nation, while attacking Bill Clinton and the Democrats for the attacks. He took advantage of the hightened tensions of post 9/11 America to strip thousands of government workers of thier civil service protections. He pushed through the horrible 'Patriot Act'. He inherited an economy with the lowest unemployment rate in a generation and turned it into a job loser. He took a government that was running a surplus and moved it to one that runs record deficits.

I went over to Survey USA today to see if they had any new Hillary v Giuliani state polls (they didn't). Then I started looking at some other polls they had. I looked at Hillary's approval ratings in New York. I looked at .Gov Fletcher's approval ratings in Kentucky. I even looked at Diane Feinstein and Chuck Schumer'sapproval ratings. Then just for grins I looked at Alabama Senators Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby and that's where I saw something that surprised me. More after the flip