On Tuesday in New York, Jonathan Tasini will announce the launch of his campaign for United States Senate, challenging Hilary Clinton in the Democratic primary. 

A Democrat, at least one who convincingly opposes Bush, is very likely to win the general election in this race.  This means that the primary is the real election, and the question is what kind of Democrat we want to have in the Senate.

Behind curtain number one is Hilary Clinton, a pro-war, pro-CAFTA, pro-corporate health care Republicrat who's so very much more aggravating than most of them because of the widespread pretense that she's some sort of leftist or democrat with a small d.

Behind curtain number two is Jonathan Tasini, a veteran labor organizer and strategist who opposes the war, opposes corporate trade deals, proposes to expand Medicare to universal coverage, and can be counted on to fight for working people. 

Which kind of senator do the people of New York want?

And which kind of party do Democrats around the country want? 

On Saturday, December 10, in London, England, leaders of the peace movement against the Iraq war from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Iraq will meet to strategize.  There is hope that the tide has already turned against the occupation, and that a coordinated international effort will be able to mobilize sufficient public pressure to bring the war to a complete end. 

If you can make it to London, sign up here: http://www.stopwar.org.uk

If you can't make it, I think I have an easy second-best course of action for you.  One of the speakers at the opening session in London will be Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., and at the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam.  Phyllis has just published a book called "Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the U.N. Defy U.S. Power." 

You can buy it here: http://www.interlinkbooks.com/BooksC/challeng_empire.html

Radically conservative Christians are attempting to shove a “Wedge” down the collective throats of Kansans, but some of us are not opening up and saying “Ahhhh”. As a parent of a sixth grader at a Kansas public school, I assert that the six conservative members of the Kansas State School Board are abysmal failures at ensuring the intellectual growth of our children and have grossly violated a sacred parental right.

In opening the door to introducing “Intelligent Design” into Kansas classrooms, the Kansas Board has advanced the “Wedge Strategy” of the Discovery Institute, which originated “Intelligent Design”. “Intelligent Design” is a “theory” which rests solely on the observation that the complexity of the world “proves” the existence of a Creator.

Per Discovery’s own internal document called The Wedge Strategy:

Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.

"Advice to Retirees: Embrace the future," syndicated columnist Tad Bartimus recently wrote in my local Seattle paper. Sounds good, but for Bartimus the future was a layoff, in a corporate cutback, from a 25-year career at the Associated Press news service. Faced with the Hobson's choice of agreeing to it or losing all health care access and pension benefits, she suddenly had to find ways to reinvent herself and survive, with less than half of her previously promised pension. She explores how her situation echoes the predicament of more and more Americans, like those who took middle-class futures for granted at companies such as General Motors, Delta Airlines, and Ford, but who now scramble to get by at jobs paying a fraction of the wages they were used to. America's social contract is being ripped apart, she writes-then she backs off to counsel individual adaptation and seeing life as "a banquet," where we need to savor even the unexpected courses.

I know lots of people like Bartimus's friend Sue. Sue worked for United Airlines for 23 years, lost her savings when the company's stock crashed, may lose her pension in the current bankruptcy, and has to supplement her