Hello Kossacks.  On a few occasions I have posted comments within DailyKos threads related to science education that I had created an MCAT course over the past fifteen years which I was releasing as a Creative Commons work.  In the dozen or so replies to these comments individuals nobody seemed to think it would be too self promotional for me to create syllabus diaries for the modules and post the videos an independent school and I are creating from our live course in Atlanta.  I am a Kossack with a three digit user ID.  The videos would be appearing every other week on Science Friday.  

I trust Barrack Obama's judgement.  There I've admitted it.  I've lost my political cynicism.  Trusting him I've never felt the need to click the Youtube video's of Reverand Wright's most inspired and eloquent sermons. I know implicitly that Obama supporters are choosing beautiful works to counter "God Damn America!".  I'm a white Southerner so I know where it's coming from anyway.  I trust Obama in a way that I won't say I trust Hillary though I love her and forgive her as a friend and old anonymous ally who really sees her for who she is and doesn't take her as seriously as she takes herself, which is what friends are for!

 "My wife wisely indicated that this is a potentially stressful situation, running for president," Obama said.

"And she wanted to lay down a very clear marker. She wants me healthy throughout any process."

Is it hard to quit?, he was asked.

"It's one of those habits. You quit for awhile an then you start back up. Actually, Nicorrete works pretty well."

LINK

I drive the kind of old car that when you're taking your son to school and you say you bet that that fellow in that truck wished he had such a fine car as our Volvo 740, and your son says I bet he thinks that guy kidnapped that kid.  The oil leaks.  The air conditioner is 60,000 miles gone, which makes being pinned on an Atlanta interstate in August a test of human endurance, and the heater rattles in Winter from damaged bearing at a loudness the radio would have if it were still working.  Truth be told, less than 30% of the dashboard is still working at 200,000 miles.  The headliner is oil paint.

Dear Bill,

I don't know if you are a Kossack, although I hope you will be reading this.  As someone whose been visiting Daily Kos since back in the day when Marisacat, Steve Gilliard and Billmon were regulars, I can't see how you could have avoided being drawn into this community, but you might have been run away in disgust if you visited first during the primary election campaign in 2004.  If you did not visit then, I can reliably report that primary season in 2004 was just as bad for Daily Kos as it is this year.  The constant pushing and jostling for idiotic advantage and the lack of intellectual honesty was just as bad then.  This is the problem I hope you might help Daily Kos with.  The subject of this letter.  I hope, by extension, you might help the Democratic Party and our prospects in 2008.

Although as an office it is not much of a credential, I was the President of the Jerry Brown for President campaign at my college in 1992. There are probably many future Kossacks in that campaign.  Brown's 1992 platform included replacing the income tax with a national flat tax.  I bring this up because I am one of the few Democrats with experience defending the flat tax, and with the rise of Huckabee I thought I would weigh in.

From the beginning of the credit storm last year, there have been a few sites in the Blogosphere that have really shined.  Professor Roubini at RGE Monitor and Mish come to mind (Mish even despite his fruity politics).  I have to say that especially Tanta ande Calculated Risk at Calculated Risk deserve accolades for the coverage and analysis.  I really cannot express how much I have learned from those two and the wonderful commenters at Calculated Risk throughout this debacle.  Yesterday, Tanta posted her 'quick' analysis of the Bush-Paulson Bailout plan.  It is by far the best explication of the plans underlying principles I have found, so I decided to post it in full as as Diary and fan-mail for Calculated Risk and to help my friends at Dailykos understand the bailout plan.

Single-lot infill is the practice of tearing down homes in established neighborhoods to build a new home in its place.  While not a problem is the new house fits in with the established neighborhoods, in many locations infill has been occuring in a way that many feel is destructive aesthetically and economically.  If the new homes are not build with any regard for the established neighborhood, it can begin a pattern of dilapidation where the original homes become parked as rentals and the neighborhood slowly gets squeezed and rebuilt in a new form.  At least that was the idea.  

Public school teachers can have more purchasing control of classroom learning materials.  The key technologies are now in place in purchasing management integration.  I have learned about these methods of vendor interface purchasing management integration through my day job at a small family friendly manufacturer of chemicals for molecular biology.  Large educational and research institutions such as Emory and Yale are customers of integrated systems installed by companies like SciQuest.  In this system the buyer accesses a catalog with thousands of vendors and millions of SKUs.  SciQuest earns a consultancy fee from these institutions for implementing their system by removing a mountain of accounting problems.  

Like me, Barack Obama has a twenty year cigarette habit, and he is trying to quit.  I am going to quit too.

I am a long-time commenter who posts very few diaries, so please go easy on this short one.  Maybe you might even help me, a long-time, years of commenting, pre-Scoop, Kossack get his first recommended diary!  I am looking ahead to a Democratic President in 2008.  I think we could have an interesting discussion about who should be the Ambassador to Iraq.

The national GOP stands revealed as the most corrupt American political machine since the 19th century, and Dems aren't motivated to vote?  Why did we just lose in CA-48?

What we have here is a failure to communicate.  The party is not making the corruption a partisan issue.  

I believe that our party needs an explicit information strategy to get across that that the corruption we are seeing is the natural end-point of Republican ideology.

In the discussions of the failed governmental response to Katrina you will often hear that the problem isn't ideology or philosophy.  The problem is fundamental competance.  Although Bush's lack of basic competance in crisis has become a defining feature of his Presidency, I believe that the root causes of the failed rescue of the people of New Orleans are deeper than individual managerial deficiencies.  I believe that the horrible events of the past week, in which thousands needlessly have died, call on us to build a more just society.

While we are at war, Bush has the responsibility to nominate a consensus candidate to the Supreme Court.

With the war going so poorly, the country does not need to be divided more than it already is by a contentious nomination battle.  

If Bush nominates an extremist, it means his commitment is to winning the Culture War against his fellow Americans rather than the War on Terror.

Florida Representative Allen Boyd is the only Democrat so far to openly sign on to Bush's social security phase out.

I suggest that BlogPac start raising a bounty for a primary challenge in 2006. Announce that the funds will be awarded as campaign contributions to one or several Democratic challengers who are polling beyond a certain threshold on, say, July 2006. The money could be raised today and held in trust by BlogPac until that time.

I bet we could raise several hundred thousand dollars this week, virtually guaranteeing Boyd a serious fight for his seat.  

Fear is a powerful motivator.  I think this would  help fortify the spine in any Democratic Congressperson or Senator who might want to roll over on Social Security.

Democratic Florida Congressman Allen Boyd [DC: (202) 225-5235, Tallahassee (850) 561-3979, Panama City: (850) 785-0812] has crossed over to give Bush the phony cloak of bipartisanship he needs to begin the GOP phase out of Social Security.

The GOP is lying about the health of Social Security.  Social Security is not in trouble.  Social Security has ALL of the resources it needs until AT LEAST 2042.  The biggest danger to Social Security isn't in the future.  The biggest danger to Social Security is today's Republican Party.

I have moved my comments to Jeffrey Feldman's excellent Diary on Social Security framing, which he posted at almost the same time, and which is a better platform.

Any Democrat worth his salt can't wait for this fight on Social Security.  We are going to make the GOP rue the day they decided to try to phase out Social Security.

This fight isn't going to be about 'how to save' Social Security or 'how to reform it' it.  This fight is to prevent the GOP from phasing the program out.  That's their plan, and we must prevent it.  The way to save Social Security is not to let the GOP touch it.

Here from DailyKos, we need to put the call out to every corner of our party, to bring every resource to bear NOW, and stuff their scheme to destroy Social Security back down their throats.  With a strong enough campaign, we can make their plans impossible.

Paul Krugman's yesterday and Josh Marshall today both write columns filled with apprehension the power of GOP spin to determine the narrative through which the tomorrow's debate ultimately will be remembered. They fear that the winner won't be determined by the content of the debate but by the power of the GOP Wurlitzer.

According to Josh, "...if the Democrats don't hit the ground running with a plan in mind they'll be overwhelmed by the GOP spin machine -- no matter how many fibs the president tells or how many times he says up is down."

We all know how effective the GOP has been with the use (abuse) of language.  Taking the same phrases and applying them over and over again, seeing an instance of talking head language not as an opportunity to communicate, but more along the lines of an advertiser, who looks for opportunities to imprint.

Well.  I don't think it would too greatly insult the Good if Democrats were to choose a phrase or two preprepared to describe Thursday's debate.  When I saw the title of Code99's diary below, the perfect phrase came to me:

Deer in the headlights

As in:

'One thing that struck me during the debate was how many times Bush looked like a deer in the headlights'

or

'When Bush was asked about the lack of WMD, he looked for all the world like a deer in the headlights'

or

'I think this debate is going to go down in history as the "deer in the headlights" debate'

If our pundits who may be reading this, and all of us agree to this simple discipline to push the spin back, you will find that even while you are watching the debate in real time, there Bush will be staring back at you like a deer in the headlights.