PINKO DAILY BRIEFS:  This is the day of the show y’all. Hi! A few serious reads and a few lighter notes for your weekend. First, we talked yesterday about the Change.gov petition and the special torture prosecutor; Countdown covered it last night and you can watch the discussion here. Another effort is underway to propose new ideas to the new President at Change.org, and a Pinko has made it through to the second round. Change.org is sponsoring “Ideas for Change in America,” a nationwide competition to identify the best … ideas for change. The top 10 ideas will be presented to the Obama administration just before inauguration day and form the basis of a nationwide advocacy campaign to turn each idea into actual policy. PinkoSandy, a frequent contributor here, has authored an important one – Demilitarize Humanitarian Aid and Increase Civilian Capacity — and it’s made it to the second round of voting. He writes: Shifting more resources to civilian development agencies and supporting a non-military humanitarian response apparatus will go a long way toward preventing future failed states from becoming hotbeds of radicalism and will create much more long term solutions to global poverty and crises than a militarized humanitarian intervention. Go here to read the whole piece and vote for it!  Staying serious, PinkoClaire sent over an action alert for New Yorkers encouraging the Governor to tax the shit out of the rich. We’re inclined to agree, or at least put it up for debate. Even more serious is what’s going on in Oakland, where a murder by the transit police of an unarmed, already subdued victim on New Years Eve has sparked protests and outrage but no serious investigation yet. Normally it’s the Oakland and San Francisco police departments who are doing the brutalizing; the transit cops getting involved is a new one. I haven’t seen a good action or petition around this but here’s a good piece from the fantastic Adrienne Brown that&#...