Senator Ted Kennedy

Much to my relief, the news reports do not paint a saintly portrait of Ted Kennedy. 

Sen. Kennedy was an effective legislator and a champion of causes important to those not born into wealth.  He was a complicated man from a complicated family.  He lost three brothers violently.  First, Joe in the carnage of WWII, followed by John and Bobby by assassination.  He drank.  He left a woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, to die in the water when he drove his car off a bridge.  His personal life seemed out of control, until the 1990s. 

People are complicated.  When they die, they don’t shed the complexity.  Their deaths force us to contemplate the messy wholes that don’t fit well into eulogies.

Elie Wiesel once said that only a victim can forgive his tormentor.  He is right.  We can laud Sen. Kennedy for all he did to make our nation a more perfect union, but only the Kopechnes can tell us whether on balance his good deeds outweighed his failings. 

For me, I hope he rests in peace.

GOP: Congrats on your Pyrrhic Victory

So, scare tactics work (see below article).  Great.  Thanks for that information. 

Pyrrhic victory, don’t you think?  No reform now — let’s leave the disaster to our children. 

Thanks, Glenn Beck, Dick Armey, GOP leaders. I hope your children and grandchildren remember that, at this critical juncture, you chose to support big business profits over better medical services and economic stability.

 

From Yahoo:

67 percent of respondents believe that wait times for health care services, such as surgery, will increase (91 percent of Republicans, 37 percent of Democrats, 72 percent of Independents).

About five out of 10 believe the federal government will become directly involved in making personal health care decisions (80 percent of Republicans, 25 percent of Democrats, 56 percent of Independents).

Roughly six out of 10 Americans believe taxpayers will be required to pay for abortions (78 percent of Republicans, 30 percent of Democrats, 58 percent of Independents)

46 percent believe reforms will result in health care coverage for all illegal immigrants (66 percent of Republicans, 29 percent of Democrats, 43 percent of Independents).

54 percent believe the public option will increase premiums for Americans with private health insurance (78 percent of Republicans, 28 percent of Democrats, 58 percent of Independents).

Five out of 10 think cuts will be made to Medicare in order to cover more Americans (66 percent of Republicans, 37 percent of Democrats, 44 percent of Independents).

There were exceptions.

Fewer participants believe “myths” regarding the impact of proposed changes on current health insurance coverage. For instance, less than 30 percent think private insurance coverage will be eliminated. And just 36 percent think a public insurance option will put private insurance companies out of business.

In addition, only three out of 10 respondents believe the government will require the elderly to make decisions about how and when they will die.

Health care

We are getting lesser care and paying more and the health care giants are getting richer and doing less. 

Is everyone so afraid of changing the status quo? 

Yet, everyone is dissatisfied with the status quo. 

Am I scared that the public option will be a lumbering giant and people will get lost in the system?  Hell, yeah.  But people are already lost in the current system and something has to change.  Health insurance companies are too entrenched in government and in our lives. 

We have to do something big and bold. 

I am not telling my son that I was too scared to support change to the intolerable status quo.

I stand with President Obama. Do it for your children. Make them proud.

Jon Cronkite Stewart

Someone wrote somewhere: push the panic button when Obama loses Jon Stewart.  LBJ knew he lost the confidence of this nation to fight the Vietnam War when Walter Cronkite essentially called it an unwinnable quagmire.

Jon Stewart wondered aloud whether Obama is ten steps ahead of us or if health care is kicking his butt.

According to random and anecdotal polls, Jon Stewart is today’s most trusted name in news.  (Psssst, CNN: stop claiming that honor — you are a weak also-ran at best.)

Here is the crazy part:  wait for it, wait for it, here it comes . . .

He does fake news for Comedy Central. 

That should tell us and the politicians that we are living and thinking in an alternate universe.  The jokesters are the prophets and the leaders are their very own caricatures.

Jon Stewart is just a comedian, but the times make a person.  For now, the times demand that he keeps politicians and talking heads honest within a corrupted system (but only if he is funny, because otherwise no one will watch).

He should get the Presidential Medal of Honesty and Comedy (a quasi military honor known in the military argot as PRE-MED-HAC, which Stewart probably was before he failed Organic Chemistry).

But he should get this high honor only on a president’s last day in office, so it doesn’t interfere with his lampooning.

Ooh la la la, GOP Hammer Goes Dancing

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Some of us may remember former Representative Tom Delay, affectionately known as “The Hammer” for his role as GOP whip in the Congress, as an aggressive, partisan operator.

In a move the proves that politics and game shows are alteregos, The Hammer has announced that he is auditioning for a place on TV’s “Dancing With the Stars”.  I haven’t decided whether I am more embarassed for him or the show.

This raises some very complex issues:thumbnail[2]

  1. Will he be paired with a dancer of little fame or a Democrat with star power?
  2. Will he make suggestive dance moves that would alienate the conservative right and delight the left leaning tangoistas? images[1]
  3. Will we be able to read into his dance what he thinks of health care reform by just how much he struts his 60+ year-old body around?
  4. What if he is voted off? Will the right wing picket the show and accuse it of being un-American, commie and pro-health care reform?
  5. Will sitting members of Congress be in the audience wildly cheering him on?  Will they neck dance?
  6. Will Sarah Palin draw an example from this and audition to be a contestant on the Amazing Race?  I just realized how ironic that would be.
  7. Will the GOP release a statement that The Hammer was in no way following the example of disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich?
  8. Will The Hammer wear effete dancing shoes and tight sequined clothes, signalling a softening on gay issues?  Will John Ashcroft, our former US Attorney General and lounge lizard,  join him behind the piano with a Liberace candelabra on it?tdy_nod_bush_041110.300w[1]
  9. Will Delay appear with Donny Osmond, a famous Mormon, and will that give Mitt Romney the needed boost to go for the 2012 GOP Presidential nomination?ss-090817-dancing-2009-tease.vsmall[1]

(P.S.: 40andYoungerForNow — is this less depressing?  Tom Delay today was a gift.)

Still bothering me

Cheney says the statute of limitations has run on his secrets.

Does that mean that the statute of limitations has run on the classified “secrets” relating to renditions, the exposure of Valerie Plame, the panel of “oil executive environmentalists” who helped shape our energy policy, the behind the scenes deals giving Halliburton no-bid contracts and the lies and half-truths in the run up to war in Iraq?

If Cheney can tell secrets, then the secrets about him should be open for viewing.

Take that Bubba — Webb visits Suu Kyi and gets a Stupid American released

Uh oh.  There is a throw-down happening between between Bubba Clinton and all other politicians and ambassadors.  Sen. Webb, a decorated veteran, went to Burma and freed an idiotic American.  (If he was a US government operative, then we should save him.)

More importantly he spoke to Suu Kyi who is the democratically elected leader of Burma and has been prevented from governing by the oppressive military regime.  Ok, a publicity stunt for the military regime.

Americans have many freedoms.  One is to be as stupid as you want.  But don’t expect the government to intercede when you swim into Burma to see Suu Kyi who was already under house arrest and ruled by an oppressive regime.  All this American did was cause more problems for Suu Kyi and our government. The US government shouldn’t use its diplomatic capital to help this stupid guy whose only goal was a “scoop” and the fame it would bring him.  I think Sen. Webb was wrong.

Stupidity at this level should be a felony.

 

updated 27 minutes ago — Associated Press

YANGON, Myanmar – U.S. Sen. Jim Webb won the release Saturday of an American prisoner convicted in Myanmar and sentenced to seven years in prison for swimming secretly to the residence of detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the senator’s office said.

During his visit to Myanmar — the first by a member of the U.S. Congress in more than a decade — the senator also secured a rare visit with Suu Kyi, who was convicted along with Yettaw and sentenced to 18 more months of house arrest.

Kiss today goodbye

Today:

in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act.  This was a day of celebration for my grandfather who grew up in Czarist Russia and came of age during the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

In 1945, Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, ending World War II.

In 1980, Lech Walesa led workers on a strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, leading to the creation of the Solidarity labor movement.

In 2009, Barack Obama, our President, goes to Montana to fight for affordable health care.

Another GOP protest instigator gets caught

Dick Armey hasn’t used his given name, Richard, in a long time because, well, Dick really fits the man he is.

Let’s see, he is stoking and organizing faux protesters to spread baseless rumors and instill fear of health care reform in order to serve the health care industry.  Well, I am not going to quarrel with his not using Richard.

From Politico:

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) is resigning from DLA Piper law firm amid a wave of negative attention his grassroots organization, Freedom Works, has drawn for helping to organize protesters at health care town hall meetings with members of Congress.

In an interview with POLITCO Armey said that he was concerned about the media scrutiny the health care protests were drawing to the firm he has been associated with since retiring from Congress.

On Aug. 7 MSNBC host Rachel Maddow raised questions about the law firm’s potential role in the protests.

“In addition to fronting [FreedomWorks], Dick Armey is a senior policy adviser at a law firm called DLA Piper. DLA Piper just happens to have received $830,000 this year, so far, from a giant pharmaceutical firm called Medicines Company. This after the $1.5 million Medicines Company paid Mr. Armey’s firm last year.

“The fact that Dick Armey and FreedomWorks are standing alongside regular Joes like Rick Scott to lead the charge against health care reform could be just a coincidence. Or it could be a stark reminder of who we’re dealing with here. Who is actively organizing the campaign against health care reform? Scaring real Americans with increasingly paranoid and kooky lies about health care and then providing a script for how to express that fear.”

The reason why I watch Jon Stewart

Dan Rather wrote a book entitled, “The Camera Never Blinks”.  Now, with the Internet, nothing is ever lost.

Last night, Jon Stewart showed Glenn Beck railing against the health care system when he was a CNN host and now saying that health care is awesome as a FOX News host.  During Glenn’s time at CNN, he experienced the health care system first hand, with a botched hemorrhoid procedure.  Hypocrisy revealed.

Jon Stewart took aim at Hillary Clinton’s outburst and Blagojevich’s downfall, so he is not a Democratic partisan hack.  In fact, I understand that he would have voted for McCain in 2000.  But let’s face it, Republicans are doing such stupid things these days that dumb Democrats rarely get any coverage.

I know, I know, Jon Stewart is just a comedian.  A political satirist.  And so funny.