Following up a prior entry on privatizing flood control, we get this from another great political mind, a true pioneer in planning, (from the Nashville Tennesseean; source here http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051015/NEWS01/510150331/1001)

I've been having an e-mail debate with a bunch of folks (none of whom I've even met--isn't the electronic age wonderful?) on what the Democrats need to do to get back control of the government.

In the course of it, I developed a list of issues/goals that seem worthwhile to me.  Here's my summary of a proposed agenda for 2006 and 2008--I'm interested in what other people think of these.

Okay, sometime in the last week I decided that we had finally gone from stage one of the deflation of America, to stage two of the deflation of America.  Stage one was the recent damper on wages for those American jobs that have yet to be shipped overseas.  The most discernbible effect of stage one is that prices in America have risen faster than wages in America for the last year-plus.

Stage two hit home with the announcement that Delphi Corp., the huge auto parts manufacturer, is asking its employees to take a 63% pay cut, and some loss of benefits, to boot.

What happens when all segments of a large, militarily powerful nation are running on empty?  Or worse, running on minus, up to its collective national neck in debt?  We're about to find out.

That the national debt is at its highest ever is now common knowledge.  And pretty much everyone acknowledges that the level of consumer debt is staggering, with the country now having a zero savings rate.

Now it turns out that individual business have run up so much debt, compared to their assets and future earnings expectations, that more and more companies are finding their bonds reduced to "junk" ratings.

Ever the victim of emailing neocons....

A few days ago, the media reported the details of a letter from Zawahiri, believed to be the second in command of Al Qaeda, to al-Zarqawi, believed to be the leading representative of Al Qaeda and the insurgency in Iraq.  The letters contents were described in some detail on Oct. 7 in the NY Times.[source here www.nytimes.com/2005/10/07/politics/07zarqawi.html]
That article offers one of the first pportunities for Americans to compare the announced goals and concerns of Al Qaeda to the descriptions of those goals and concerns by Western officials, most  notably President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, and to events in Iraq.

In a recent story, Kevin Knobloch of The Union of Concerned Scientists insists that fighting global warming would actually be good economically...

The sleaze connections among top Republicans and the corporate world seem endless.  The investigation of Abramoff now includes criminal charges against three mafia types accused of killing the man from whom Big Jack and his "connected" buddy bought a cruise line/gambling company, and could well entwine Grover Norquist, a host of Ohio Republicans, and several members of congress.

Now the Missoula Independent publishes an article speculating that the investigation and trial of the money laundering charge against DeLay may lay bare the role of then-RNC Chairman Marc Racicot in both the money laundering and the deregulation of power companies in Montana that has been a disaster for the state's citizens. story here

I'm far from the first to notice that Bill O'Reilly can't seem to be bothered to check his facts, or his mouth, before blurting some nonsensical thing.  Which he frequently denies having said (sort of what Bush's old Yale Economics professor says about Bush).

A few days ago he made a beaut, claiming that the 82nd Airborne Division had committed mass murder of German troops during World War II, when, in fact, it was the German troops who murdered a bunch of American prisoners.  But the same insightful genius can be gleaned from his comment that "Now, in order to fail in this country, you've gotta be one troubled individual."

So I ask, which statement is worse?  You be the judge.

I have a theory on why it is seems to be so much harder to get people outraged today than it was during the Viet Nam war (actually, it's my wife's theory, but I can use it).  We simply have too many people on anti-depressants and tranquilizers.  These drugs chemically interfere with the emotions of sadness, anxiety, and anger.  And you've seen the dollar figures for sales of these drugs in the US--billions a year.  How many patients would that equate to?  One million?  Five million?  All chemically indisposed to dissent.

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