Eulogy

Ted Kennedy Jr.'s powerful eulogy for his father:

Part 1:

Part 2:


Boston Globe

But today I'm simply compelled to remember Ted Kennedy as my father and my best friend. When I was 12 years old I was diagnosed with bone cancer and a few months after I lost my leg, there was a heavy snowfall over my childhood home outside of Washington D.C. My father went to the garage to get the old Flexible Flyer and asked me if I wanted to go sledding down the steep driveway. And I was trying to get used to my new artificial leg and the hill was covered with ice and snow and it wasn't easy for me to walk. And the hill was very slick and as I struggled to walk, I slipped and I fell on the ice and I started to cry and I said "I can't do this." I said, "I'll never be able to climb that hill." And he lifted me in his strong, gentle arms and said something I'll never forget. He said "I know you'll do it, there is nothing you can't do. We're going to climb that hill together, even if it takes us all day."

Sure enough, he held me around my waist and we slowly made it to the top, and, you know, at age 12 losing a leg pretty much seems like the end of the world, but as I climbed onto his back and we flew down the hill that day I knew he was right. I knew I was going to be OK. You see, my father taught me that even our most profound losses are survivable and it is what we do with that loss, our ability to transform it into a positive event, that is one of my father's greatest lessons. He taught me that nothing is impossible.

New Name for The Public Option

Teddycare.

An Appropriate Memorial to Ted Kennedy

firedoglake: Name The Public Option, Not the Bill, After Kennedy

Put Kennedy's name on a weakened bill, and you'll likely be able to break the progressive bloc in the House in two seconds flat when "the Kennedy bill" comes out of conference with the individual mandate but no public option, and progressives are faced with having to oppose "the Kennedy bill." As strong as they've been on holding firm in their demands, putting the Kennedy name on a weak bill -- and remember, nothing at all prevents this -- can only drain their resolve.

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With the Kennedy Health Care Plan intact in the bill, there's no reason the legislative vehicle that creates it cannot also bear his name. But while there's still a fight ahead about just what will be in this bill, if we're going to lend Ted Kennedy's name to something, let it be done in a way that keeps him in the fight to fulfill his vision right to the last, and which keeps his name on people's lips when they are finally able to take their families to the doctor without fear of financial ruin, saying, "We're covered by the Kennedy Plan."

Whip The Senate Into Supporting the Public Option

Time to get the pusillanimous Democrats off the fence and lined up to support a robust public option available on day one of the healthcare reform legislation. Please take the time to send a fax to each of these fine recipients of buckets of cash from the healthcare industry. The fax will be sent by Howard Dean's organization "Stand With Dr. Dean".

* Send a fax to Mark Begich, asking him if he supports the public option!
* Send a fax to Tom Carper, asking him if he supports the public option!
* Send a fax to Jon Tester, asking him if he supports the public option!
* Send a fax to Mark Warner, asking him if he supports the public option!
* Send a fax to Ron Wyden, asking him if he supports the public option!

I took great pleasure in faxing all of them. I'm tired of trying to get more Democrats into office. From now on it's only better Democrats. If you're not with us you're against us.

ActBlue — Standing Up For The Public Option

ActBlue — Standing Up For The Public Option

Barney Frank to WhackJob: "On What Planet Do You Spend Most of Your Time?"

Excellent job, Barney. Time for the Democrats to stop letting the fringe monopolize the discussion.

Obama: Stand Up and Fight for the Public Option

The last tough Democratic President

OpenLeft: Public Option or Primary!

Any Democrat who does not vote for a "public option" insurance plan in health care reform must be challenged in a primary. And this includes any President who does not go to the mat and fight 100% for a public option.

I'll camp out in front of Howard Dean's door for a year to get him to run for President if Obama abandons the campaign promises he made to us.

No public option, not one red cent to any Democrat who opposed the public option. It's that simple. And that includes one Barack Obama. I hope he realizes that. If he does not fight for us he is just another in the long line of corporate shills who talk a good game to get our votes then go off and vote with the money guys.

He's either with us or against us. Will the real Barack Obama please stand up?

Conservatives: Bringing the Crazy Since the 1800s

Rick Perlstein, WaPo: In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition
Birthers, Town Hall Hecklers and the Return of Right-Wing Rage

[Rightwing anger is both crazy, and heartfelt.] If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.

In the early 1950s, Republicans referred to the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman as "20 years of treason" and accused the men who led the fight against fascism of deliberately surrendering the free world to communism. Mainline Protestants published a new translation of the Bible in the 1950s that properly rendered the Greek as connoting a more ambiguous theological status for the Virgin Mary; right-wingers attributed that to, yes, the hand of Soviet agents. And Vice President Richard Nixon claimed that the new Republicans arriving in the White House "found in the files a blueprint for socializing America."

When John F. Kennedy entered the White House, his proposals to anchor America's nuclear defense in intercontinental ballistic missiles -- instead of long-range bombers -- and form closer ties with Eastern Bloc outliers such as Yugoslavia were taken as evidence that the young president was secretly disarming the United States. Thousands of delegates from 90 cities packed a National Indignation Convention in Dallas, a 1961 version of today's tea parties; a keynote speaker turned to the master of ceremonies after his introduction and remarked as the audience roared: "Tom Anderson here has turned moderate! All he wants to do is impeach [Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl] Warren. I'm for hanging him!"

Before the "black helicopters" of the 1990s, there were right-wingers claiming access to secret documents from the 1920s proving that the entire concept of a "civil rights movement" had been hatched in the Soviet Union; when the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act was introduced, one frequently read in the South that it would "enslave" whites. And back before there were Bolsheviks to blame, paranoids didn't lack for subversives -- anti-Catholic conspiracy theorists even had their own powerful political party in the 1840s and '50s.

Read the entire piece.

Lawrence O'Donnell Needs His Own Show on MSNBC

Republican opposing "socialist" healthcare plan handed his hat by O'Donnell. Fun.

My Nominee for Post of the Year

From Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog:

JANUARY 20 WAS BARACK OBAMA'S "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" DAY

His troops were valiant and he'd had a brilliant plan for taking the capital, but now we can look back to January 20, 2009, and realize that Barack Obama was naive to think major combat operations had ended. He never saw the insurgency coming. He and his people seemed to think that there simply wouldn't be that kind of factional strife after the old regime fell; they believed that, despite years of tension between the factions, it would end in an instant and the citizens of the country would immediately see themselves as united.

As the insurgency grew and began to make the country ungovernable, the Obama team and its allies downplayed it as a ragtag collection of end-timers who'd soon be irrelevant. His troops knew how to wage a traditional campaign, but hadn't given serious thought to the problem of dealing with a chaotic aftermath. When it came to the "postwar" period, Obama never really had a plan.

His forces simply have no training in this kind of warfare. Now they have to learn on the fly, and their learning curve seems to be slow. They appear to believe that the forces they're now fighting are thinking traditionally -- they can't seem to accept the fact that the enemy genuinely wants anarchy and a failed state.

How Obama deals with this insurgency will be the main test of his presidency.

Bipartisanship is a crock. I didn't vote for Charles Grassley for Congress, but Obama seems content to let that rightwing nutjob write the healthcare legislation. Get off the mat and fight Baracky or yours will be a one-term Presidency.

The Socialist Life of the Fox News Viewer

I am an American Conservative Shithead

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the internet -- which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

This interwebs gem was originally published by Americablog.

Fight For Healthcare

The millionaires who own the conservative airwaves have whipped the right wing into a frenzy to defeat Obama's healthcare initiative. Mobs of the deranged are descending on the open forums being held by members of Congress. They're intent on disrupting things and shouting down any rational discourse. The left needs to show up the public events and let them know what the public really wants: a healthcare plan with a strong public option.

Here's a list of Congressional events put together by firedoglake. Go to one in your area! Stand up for government working for the people. It's time our government stopped subsidizing health insurers.

Birther Barbie

Orly Taitz -- screeching Birther Barbie -- must be seen to be believed. Claims to be a lawyer, a dentist and a real estate agent. Law degree from an online diploma mill. Admitted in the great state of California. Wow.

Celebration

I wish more people would approach their weddings with this kind of joy and freedom:

RIP Michael Jackson

The Jackson 5 on the Ed Sullivan Show, 1970, the way I'll remember Michael Jackson fondly, before his life went off the rails.

Conservatives Are Stupid: Graduation Edition

From Media Matters

Gillibrand in New York Magazine

New York: Kirsten Gillibrand shuttling between meetings in New York in April.
(Photo: David Burnett/Contact Press Images)
New York: The Reintroduction of Kirsten Gillibrand
After a shaky first hundred days, the junior senator from New York is trying to start over.

More of the Tracy Flick nonsense. If Gillibrand were a man, she'd be the Next Big Thing for her smarts, ambition, and savvy.

One Year Ago

Reuters: Presumptive US Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) holds up a baby as he takes part in a town hall-style meeting in Bristol, Virginia, June 5, 2008.

Torture's Opponent

The best person on TV right now telling the truth about torture is, of all people, Jesse Ventura, former professional wrestler, former governor of Minnesota. Watch him take on torture and the loathesome Sean Hannity:

Big Baby!

The game-winning shot from last night:



The backstory on Glen Davis: