It was suggested that I post this as a diary to get these ideas out, it's a slow news Sunday afternoon, here it is. I've run it up the flagpole, let's see if anyone salutes.

This is basically a set of recommendations for what a President and Congress who actually wants to solve the problem can get going while a program with long-term fixes is put together; something to do for the first "100 days".

Some of you may already have seen this or portions of this, these are some ideas that have been cooking in my head for a while and I decided to put them together and see how people react. There are a lot of things

What I propose here is not THE solution but I'd settle for a decent starting point to stabilize the situation while we work on the long-term answers.

Also note that the best jobs program the Obama Administration can possibly create would be a  serious crash program of the sort described here to transition off fossil fuel, creating jobs across the occupational and educational spectrum.

It was suggested I turn this post into a diary. Here it is.

ACLU poll says that a supermajority of the American people oppose telecomm amnesty and warrantless wiretaps.

America as shown by polls also want

• Out of Iraq
• something done about global warming
• national health care

The center is where the American people actually are.

They sound pretty progressive to me.

In American political-speak, "running to the center" is espousing rhetoric and programs to appeal to the GOP/DINO "CENTRISTS", who are well to the corporatist right of where polls show the American people are.

What happens if something goes seriously wrong with the US food chain?

The U.S. Has No Remaining Grain Reserves

...U.S. has nothing else in our emergency food pantry. There is no cheese, no butter, no dry milk powder, no grains or anything else left in reserve. The o°©nly thing left in the entire CCC inventory will be 2.7 million bushels of wheat which is about enough wheat to make 1⁄2 of a loaf of bread for each of the 300 million people in America."

reprinted from my post within the referenced diary by popular demand... with a few minor edits.

The spot on the ballot next to Obama's name which I plan to fill in with an opaque spot before mailing it in is listed under President of the United States. NOT Messiah.

Read this diary. It's how Obama and his people built a bottom-up political machine based on giving people empowerment tools and letting us do what we thought needed doing.

That is how I expect him to govern. (within the limitations of the system in general and the Constitution in particular.)

I see him as helping us get the tools and resources together so we can work with him in building an America which will be a place people want to come to, not flee a generation from now. This means we don't get a free ride and neither does he.

To paraphrase an old saying, a billion here and a billion there and soon, you're talking about real money".

Billion-dollar IT failure at Census Bureau

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 7:51 pm

The US Census Bureau faces cost overruns up to $2 billion on an IT initiative replacing paper-based data collection methods with specialized handheld devices for the upcoming 2010 census. The Bureau has not implemented longstanding Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommendations and may therefore be forced to scrap the program. Harris Corp., the contractor associated with this incompetently managed initiative, was awarded a $600 million contract to develop the handhelds and related software.
. . .
Computer World blogger, Frank Hayes, summarized the situation succinctly, "The fancy custom handhelds might work. But if they don't, the Census Bureau will use paper instead."

fair usage quote, rest at the URL

FutureGen "Cleanish Coal" Plant Cancelled
By Alexis Madrigal EmailFebruary 01, 2008 | 6:04:57 PMCategories: Energy  

Futuregen_artistcon200px The controversial attempt to build a coal plant that captures and stores its greenhouse gas emissions took another step backward yesterday. The Department of Energy pulled its financial support from a project known as FutureGen, which would have been a first-of-its-kind cleanish plant. The DOE cited the rising costs of the project. From the environmental blogs through cleantech to the Wall Street Journal, the move was seen as slowing the development of so-called carbon capture and sequestration technologies.

Rhetorically, it sure looks bad for the Bush administration to bang the clean coal technology drum during the State of the Union and then cut its most visible support for the technology the next day.

Rest at the URL.

fair usage quote of NYT article
December 22, 2007
No Joke, Bulb Change Is Challenge for U.S.
By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH

The new energy bill signed this week makes it official. When 2012 hits, stores can no longer sell the cheap but inefficient incandescent light bulbs that are fixtures in most homes.

Even so, light bulb manufacturers say that worries about greenhouse gases and the high cost of energy had them moving away from conventional incandescents way before Congress weighed in. For quite some time, they note, they have been trying to soften the light emitted by compact fluorescent lights, bring down the cost of light-emitting diodes, and yes, find ways to increase the efficiency of incandescents.

Many of the products are already on the market, and more will be available before the deadline kicks in,

From a Colorado State University press release:

New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production

Colorado State University's method for manufacturing low-cost, high-efficiency solar panels is nearing mass production. AVA Solar Inc. will start production by the end of next year on the technology developed by mechanical engineering Professor W.S. Sampath at Colorado State. The new 200-megawatt factory is expected to employ up to 500 people. Based on the average household usage, 200 megawatts will power 40,000 U.S. homes.

Saturday, June 16, 2007
Microsoft Muscles the NYS Legislature

Software giant moves to weaken NY Election law

The 800 pound gorilla of software development has moved forcefully into New York State, supported by voting machine vendors using Microsoft Windows in their touch screen voting machines and other systems. Over the last two months Microsoft and a cadre of high paid lobbyists have been working a full-court press in Albany in an attempt to bring about a serious weakening of New York State election law. This back door effort by private corporations to weaken public protections is about to bear fruit.

Bill number is the California version - and yes, it got out of committee.

AB1475:  SUMMARY  :   Makes commercial computer technicians mandated reporters for the purpose of the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act (CANRA).

is the most dangerously stupid computer law proposal I've EVER heard of in 20 years of computer journalism.

We've got to stop electing "Internet tubes"-level computer illiterates to public office, and this is a reason why.

The following is a letter I'm planning to send my state legislator as soon as I decide whether to print/mail or fax it. I encourage people who have similar laws under consideration in your states to post bill numbers and pointers to your state legislature websites.

The only other comment I have is . . . there's a slippery slope here.

The computer 'professional' mandated to report kiddie pr0n today may be mandated to report "subversive activity" tomorrow.

 
Mid-flight sexual play lands US couple afoul of anti-terrorism law
 Nov 14 6:53 PM US/Eastern

   A couple's ill-concealed sexual play aboard a Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles got them charged with violating the Patriot Act, intended for terrorist acts, and could land them in jail for 20 years.

 According to their indictment, Carl Persing and Dawn Sewell were allegedly snuggling and kissing inappropriately, "making other passengers uncomfortable," when a flight attendant asked them to stop.

 "Persing was observed nuzzling or kissing Sewell on the neck, and ... with his face pressed against Sewell's vaginal area. During these actions, Sewell was observed smiling," reads the indictment filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

rest at the URL

There is a religious movement called Quiverful that literally seeks to turn American women into walking incubators for Jesus in order to provide the Religious Right with cannon fodder.

That isn't unusual. The DLC jumping the shark to join this kind of craziness is.

However, while one Kossack is tired of DLC slurs, the DLC he wants us to ignore have been very busy on our behalf. I think you should know what they've been busy with.

fair usage quotes follow:
(note: an extended explanation of Quiverful is also at the URL, I had to leave it out in order to keep the quote down to reasonable fair usage - go back to page one of the article to read it in full)

the DLC and Quiverful (quoted from: 'Arrows for the War' page 5 - Kathryn Joyce, The Nation)

Meanwhile, Phillip Longman hardly offers a left-wing counterpoint. Instead, he's searching -- at the request of the Democratic Leadership Council, which published his policy proposals in its Blueprint magazine -- for a way to appeal to the same voters Carlson is organizing: a typically "radical middle" quest to figure out how Democrats can make nice with Kansas.

The bottom line for us is simple.

China wants to leverage IPv6 (and probably a true broadband infrastructure in progress) into technological dominance over America and everyone else and worldwide control over the Internet.

IPv6 is an advanced Internet addressing plan under which anything anybody might conceivably want to plug into the Internet gets its own individual IP address, making it much simpler for devices to interconnect through the Net. Sound geeky? It is.

.

We can expect Bush to be trumpeting soon how the average American's wages have gone up during his regime despite the fact that few of us have seen this going on with our paychecks. It appears that one set of numbers shows wages as going up because it conflates stock options which don't get awarded to anyone on the low end of the food chain with salary.

The rest of the article is at the URL, this is something WSJ didn't put behind the subscription wall.

http://online.wsj.com/...

THE OUTLOOK

How Stock Options Muddle
The Relationship Among Wages,
Corporate Profits and Inflation
By GREG IP
September 18, 2006; Page A2

Scorekeepers at the Commerce Department last month discovered that
American workers were earning far more than previously estimated -- and
that created an economic puzzle.

Would you believe that the only new source of jobs since the Chimp took office has been in health care? The situation is not only worse than we've been told by the Bushmen and MSM, but even worse than I believed.

From Business Week:

What's Really Propping Up The Economy
Since 2001, the health-care industry has added 1.7 million jobs. The rest of the private sector? None

a simple fact: Without the health-care industry the nation's labor market would be in a deep coma. Since 2001, 1.7 million new jobs have been added in the health-care sector, which includes related industries such as pharmaceuticals and health insurance. Meanwhile, the number of private-sector jobs outside of health care is no higher than it was five years ago.

Of course the judge is a Bush appointee. Imagine the doctors and biologists of the future, trained in science by people whose qualifications are that they are "real Christians"

Article excerpted to comply with "fair use".

Christian school's lawsuit against UC system to go to trial

[rest below the fold]

I've been saying for a while that anyone who publically takes hydrogen as the "fuel of the future" has publically admitted to cluelessness about alternative energy. It appears I'm not the only one who thinks this.

At last weekend's Lucerne Fuel Cell Conference, which is a highly respected technical conference, Ulf Bossel, the organizer, made a pretty signinficant announcement: the European PEMFC Forum series will not be continued because hydrogen fuel will never contribute to a sustainable world. Instead they will focus on phosphoric acid fuel cells, molten carbonate fuel cells and solid oxide fuel cells which "can meet the challenges of a sustainable future".

Study Shows Americans Sicker Than English
http://news.yahoo.com/...
By CARLA K. JOHNSON and MIKE STOBBE, Associated Press Writers
Tue May 2, 10:47 PM ET

CHICAGO - White, middle-aged Americans ? even those who are rich ? are far less healthy than their peers in England, according to stunning new research that erases misconceptions and has experts scratching their heads.

Americans had higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, strokes, lung disease and cancer ? findings that held true no matter what income or education level.

Those dismal results are despite the fact that U.S. health care spending is double what England spends on each of its citizens.