If you live in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, or Connecticut, you've probably heard about the possibility of a strike at Stop & Shop.  For the rest of us, here's a summary from the Providence Journal: Stop & Shop workers OK strike option

Employees of Stop & Shop who are represented by a labor union have voted to authorize a strike against the supermarket chain. Negotiations on a labor contract nevertheless are scheduled to resume [Tuesday]. ...

The chain, based in Quincy, Mass., wants union workers to contribute to their health-care premiums and allow it to switch from an employer-paid pension fund to a 401(k) plan for new employees. Riley said the employees would be willing to help pay the premiums if their health-care plan is improved.

More details on the potential Stop & Shop strike, plus a compilation of editorials on Iowa's Fair Share bill and anti-teacher union comments from Steve Jobs beyond the fold.

From the Des Moines Register: Labor, business square off over fee proposal

The fight is getting nasty.

Organized labor and business are butting heads in Iowa over a "fair share" fee proposal in the Iowa Legislature that would force some nonunion workers to pay fees to unions.

The two sides are arguing about the proposal's fairness for thousands of Iowans, its effect on economic development in the state, and the question of whether passage of the proposal would end Iowa's 60-year run as a "right-to-work" state.

What do "right-to-work" and "fair share" mean?  What would this bill actually do?  What is the Republican noise machine doing to try to prevent this from passing?  This, and more, below the fold.

There seems to be a lot of talk recently that the U.S. is going to invade Iran.  There is even talk the U.S. may use nuclear weapons.  This talk SHOULD be completely ridiculous, but sadly in today's political climate it is not.  We need to have guidelines to tell us when war should be an option and when it is not.

So why don't we make some.  Why don't we say exactly when war is an allowable choice and when it is not.  And why don't we make clear that it will not be acceptable to go to war outside of those terms.  Below the jump are my suggestions for what such terms should be.  If anybody has better ideas for when we should attack foreign nations, or what we should pledge to do if this occurs outside of these guidelines, please do comment.  They should be something that will not paralyze our nations ability to defend ourselves, yet prevent wars of aggression George Bush or any other president may declare.

If 10 million people could promise to shut down this country in the event of an immoral attack on a foreign nation, this would hopefully prevent our leaders from taking such immoral actions.

Last night at Iowa State University there was a debate between the four candidates for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.  The candidates are:

Michael Blouin - http://www.mikeblouin.com/ - Mike is a former school teacher in Dubuque.  He was elected to the Iowa House in 1968, and was in Congress from 1974-1978.  Since then, he has worked in the community college system and has been the director of the Iowa Department of Economic Development.

Chet Culver - http://www.chetculver.com/ - Chet is the son of former Senator John Culver.  He taught at Des Moines high schools until being elected Secretary of State in 1998.

Ed Fallon - http://www.fallonforgovernor.net/ - Ed is a professional musician.  Since 1992, he has served in the Iowa House.

Sal Mohamed - http://www.salmohamedforgovernor.org/ - Sal is a chemical engineer from Sioux City.  He ran for the Democratic Nomination in Iowa's 5th district in 2004.

My summary of the debate and impressions of the candidates behind the cut.

From the Land of the Rising Sun:

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will call a snap election, public broadcaster NHK said on Monday after parliament's upper house rejected bills to privatize the postal system -- the core of his reform agenda.

Political analysts have said Koizumi's divided ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has ruled for most of the past half century, was in danger of losing the election for parliament's powerful lower house.

The bills were rejected in the upper house by a vote of 125 to 108. Media said some 20 LDP members had voted against the legislation.

A brief discussion of the situation in extended text.

The CAFTA Debate is on C-SPAN right now.  This is an open thread for discussing it.

Previous Speakers:

For - Bill Thomas, R-CA
Against - Charles Rangel, D-NY
Against - Charlie Norwood, R-GA
For - William Jefferson, D-LA
Against - Ben Cardin, D-MD
For - Jim Moran, D-VA

The debate started at around 7:15, and will go to around 9:15, if I understand correctly.  Then, there will be a vote which will last as long as DeLay wants.  The main argument of "For" is "It's not too bad".

Do you know what the Road Map for peace in Iraq is?

How far along are we on that process?  Are we two steps away, or 10 steps away?  Is it a detailed plan, or a generic one?

After reading all of the news coverage on Iraq recently, I was thinking that it seemed that it all was focused on the national government.  Due to a lack of troop power, interest, press coverage, or other reasons, there hasn't been much talk about establishing local governments in Iraq.  As it seems logical that this should be done first, I was wondering where it fell in Bush's "road map".

However, that led me to a far more interesting question: What is Bush's Road Map?  Have you seen it?  Do you know what Bush is trying to do in Iraq?

The Senate has voted on the Highway Bill.  The vote was 89-11 (Sarbanes is there and voting), and since it started at 3 Eastern, the vote is done now.

If I recall correctly, the plan is that the filibuster fight will begin once the highway bill is passed.  So, we may have a situation on our hands soon.

We are entering morning business now. Senator Boxer is now talking for 1 hour. So no vote, but debate most likely continually.

From USATODAY.com - http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-04-28-zell-hospitalized_x.htm

It seems that there are quite a few people bemoaning how Republicans, both nationally and in states such as Indiana and Missouri are "doing damage that may never be repaired".  However, to listen to some people, we would think that the one reason to elect Democrats to office is so the Republicans won't be in office.  This was the basic philosophy behind "Anybody But Bush" - the main qualification for being President was simply not being George W. Bush.

Since the Democrats don't define what they would do in office, only what they wouldn't do, they leave the Republicans to define them.  And the Republicans have risen to the bait, claiming Democrats want power in order to make you less safe, raise your taxes, kill your babies, take your bibles, and force you to have gay sex.

My question is simple: Why do Democrats want power?

According to the Minnesota Star-Tribune, former Senator Rod Grams is considering a run against Mark Dayton in 2006.

We all hear about top CEO's getting absurd compensation.  The average CEO pay in an S&P 500 company is in the millions.  With stock options, their pay can be many times that.

Even lower-level managers still receive pay far greater than those who they are supervising.  My question is: Why?  Why are we paying the people who actually DO the work in this economy less than those who stand around and WATCH people do the work?

I came across an "interesting" (in the sense of a burning wreck being interesting) article entitled "The Left Does Not Get It" recently.  The article is another "THEY are calling everyone victims, surrendering for America, and pro-gay marriage baby-killers".  Directly rebutting the article would be completely ridiculous, and I don't intend to do so.  Rather, I am going to analyze what tactics this and other articles are using to demagogue "liberals" as evil hatemongers.

Do we get the issues today?  Of course.  Do we get how to talk about them?  I'm not sure.

After reading the comments in this diary by Eternal Hope, I have been inspired to do a bit of a biography of Al-Zarqawi.

For historical information, there seems to be little debate; the New York Times, Wikipedia, and Rotten.com all give similar backgrounds for his history.  However, his actions in recent years are clouded in uncertainty.  We only have a few undated photos of him, and none recent.  Do we really know who Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is?

There are over 37000 members of Daily Kos.  Of these, some are likely multiple accounts and trolls, but there are also "readers" of Daily Kos who are not members.  Clearly, there are enough people at Daily Kos that we cannot expect to have a very large amount of ideological conformity across all reasonable posters.  There is room within the Daily Kos tent for posters of various different ideologies.  For instance, there is room for people with widely differing positions on abortion, gun control, etc. here at Daily Kos.  However, there are some political positions which are not "acceptable" here at Daily Kos.  I intend to try to highlight some of them here, and would like your feedback on any other positions you do not think would be welcome at Daily Kos, as well as if you think I have made any mistakes on my categorizations of these positions.

I remember from years back Wal-Mart having a marketing campaign "We Buy American, Whenever We Can".  However, we don't see that anymore.  With the recent main-page post by Trapper John about Wal-Mart dealing with Chinese Unions, and Wal-Mart's general hostility towards the worker, I started thinking: "Why doesn't Wal-Mart buy American anymore?"

The answer, of course, is money.  It is cheaper for Walmart to buy products made abroad, so they buy them over American-made products.

However, why shouldn't Wal-Mart buy American-made products?  Why can't WE tell Wal-Mart "We want you to sell American-made products.  We want you to stop sending manufacturing jobs overseas."?

In response to the recent main page about an anti-abortion amendment, I agree that we can't really propose an amendment we disagree with ourselves.  That would reek of political pandering.

On the other hand, we can't propose one to enshrine abortion in the Constitution, because that would imply that up to that point it was not constitutional.

However, we could offer an amendment auxilliary to the discussion of abortion, that the Republicans would have to oppose if they opposed abortion, and that could be widely popular.  It's based on the following question:

What is a person?

I was reading through the Free Republic, and came across this thread.  Basically, the article claims John Kerry lost Vietnam and now by his mentioning Al QaQaa in the campaign betrayed "my [the author's] son in the same manner that he had betrayed his fellow Swift Boat servicemen, and then all the American servicemen and women who served honorably in Vietnam so long ago."  The comments included such rubbish as (on Vietnam) "The scoreboard says we lost. The players know better", various defenses of Joseph McCarthy, blaming Truman for losing Korea, etc.

I think the reason this "conflict" in politics continues is based simply on the fact that neither side understands how the other thinks, and thus neither side can attempt to solve the problem for their benefit.  I don't claim to understand either side perfectly, but I think I have an idea of why Republicans remain convinced that we are winning the war in Iraq.