UPDATED: I SUGGEST WE NAME THE SINGLE-PAYER BILL STILL FLOATING OUT THERE AFTER TEDDY!!!!!

Name HR 676 “Kennedy Expanded Medicare Bill”

Its a cold rain falling.

Ted Kennedy passed overnight.

A 2002 tribute in The Nation seems so very poignant and fitting, I offer the link and a quote from it.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/2…

Now, forty years later, Ted Kennedy looks like the best and most effective senator of the past hundred years. He has followed the counsel of his first Senate tutor, Phil Hart of Michigan, who told him you can accomplish anything in Washington if you give others the credit. Kennedy has drafted and shaped more landmark legislation than liberal giants like Robert Wagner, Hubert Humphrey, Estes Kefauver and Herbert Lehmann. He has survived tragedy and scandal, endured presidential defeat, right-wing demonization, ridicule by TV comics. Now, at 70, he has evolved into a joyous Job.

Universal Health Care was one of his biggest dreams, and God, how I wish he was here and well enough to fight those fights, call in those chips and rekindle the alliances that could make that happen.

(Hat tip to grunman for the HuffPo link that lead to this rant)

President Obama is shocked, shocked I tell you that the Leftier Lefts want a Public Option. He’s wrong about that, the Leftiest Left wants Single-Payer, the rest are just struggling for crumbs.

“I don’t understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo,” said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We’ve gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don’t understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform.”

“It’s a mystifying thing,” he added. “We’re forgetting why we are in this.”

No mon frer, you never understood why you are in this in the first place. I can most assuredly help in clarifying this to our esteemed colleagues and spokespeople for the Office of the President.



We want Single Payer, you clueless, Elitist, cowardly douchebags!

Ok, that was unproductive. I will try again.

Do you fully understand how/why you got this, the Highest Office in the Land in the first place?

Again, I assure you that it was not “BI-PARTISANSHIP” that drew record turnouts, although after Bush’s one-party regime, that may have drawn embarrassed Conservatives who were shamed by the neo-cons co-opting of their party, who wanted to be sure that their reasonable voices would again be heard.

You were elected by young first-voters, people of color, the glbt community and a middle class. You were elected because every single one of us who punched your ticket KNEW beyond a reasonable doubt that on the current track we were upon, that we had NO FUTURE WHATSOEVER. You were elected because you spoke of hope and change and made us think you had the balls to derail our bleak future, and Health Care was one of your keys statements.

Every single one of us is, or knows someone dying or in pain from a lack thereof.

And you sold us out to the ones who created that situation.

Crossposted from The Wild Wild Left

Emotion is strength. Love is both giving and tough. Pain is a teacher, sorrow is a guide. The converse, that emotion is weakness, is the biggest lie ever told.

Ultimately, our very essence is about keeping ours alive and well, we are the caretakers, the life givers, those who never give up on our children, who always find a way.

Its not that men are inferior. They are just wired differently, and trained by society to be about impressing and garnering power over others. They think that’s how they attract women, mistake admiration (jealousy) of other men for friendship. Alliances are based on using someones strengths to their benefit, what is in it for them.

Men are about power and sex, and the power to get sex.

Women are about sustaining the species.

Women love people more for their weaknesses, their humanity, are more forgiving.

Women don’t war for “stuff”… they will only fight to protect their own, or someone they see as in need in of protection, the weak.

The famous saying goes, “Those who seek power don’t deserve to have it.”

Who has sought power? Who has not?

Look to us, who have sat in the background, quietly running things so our men could seek the glory they need. Propping up their egos, when they don’t attain it. Fixing things, healing bodies and hearts, and always, always taking the shadows.

Kind of stands to reason, yes? “Those who don’t seek power (for powers sake, especially) surely do deserve it.”

The World can only be saved by Love. Our kind of Love.

Newsflash: Cop acts like douchebag, and uses the standard charge of “not scraping enough to the man” to wrongly jail citizen.

I am of more than one mind about the incident. Had a cop come to my home when someone saw people trying to jam in the door, I would probably thank him for responding so fast and say, “Wow, had this been a break in, I am so glad you would have been here!” But of course, as a waitress and big 3 sales negotiator, (not to mention wife) I am well trained in the subtleties of diffusing any situation.

However, when cops go asshat, and try and swing their dicks just because it grates their egos to not be feared and obeyed instantly, I think the professor played it perfectly maintaining his rights within the law. His only mistake was stepping outside, wherein the bogus charge of “Public” disorderliness could be made. It could not have been made had he stayed inside his threshold.

While profiling happens, and happens a shitload in white communities, this problem is bigger than racism.

Its siege mentality, the paramilitary training and choosing of officers that would have been culled from the force in my youth as “loose cannons” with “bad attitudes.”

Really, the FAIL comes from the Top: The For REVENUE Police State.

I was lying in bed in the wee hours, trying to still my mind, or trick it into contemplating some blissful fantasy to lull myself back to sleep.

But no.

It kept coming back at me, flipping between the style of a debate or like the lyrics of a Henley song, with far more questions than answers.

As both the Health Care debate and the Sotomayer confirmation degrades back into the abortion question, I have to wonder if the zealots ever took a course in Ethics. I think I did, in High School. I’m fairly sure. In a Catholic High School, no less, in that tiny post-hippy, post ruler-smacking and pre-born again window, where they thought being hip and relevant might boost their sagging popularity. They welcomed critical thinking at that age level, even in a Catholic system. But still, short a course, who has not mentally weighed the murk of right, wrong, the greater good in any decision?

Sure, sure I can speak in black and white absolutes with the best of them, depending on my mood, my audience, my opposition and the subject matter. Truth be told? All is grey.

The core question to these subjects haunting me today really comes down to the one thing that is never discussed when abortion is the tool to make reactionaries react.

Do individuals have the right to conscientiously object to any aspect of where their tax dollars are spent? The flip? Does the Federal Government have a right to spend our tax dollars as they see fit, as elected representatives with no public input or recourse?

The path to get to that question is much more convoluted. It wanders through societal limits, personal self determination, collective punishment, vengeance, and self defense.

There are no easy answers, but I wish we could have a societal debate, as reasoned people, thinking men.

Hey you all. I know I am sadly unable to participate to the extent I would like here, especially with my own Mother-in-law’s issues, at 90 and dying right now.

I do know, my husband, an only child is in agony 24/7 right now, its the 800 lb gorilla of grief. I lost both my parents. Been there.

Right now, he walks balk in spent, and feels everything is his responsibility, or that people are faulting him, and I imagine budhy feels much the same way. He is soul weary and touchy and in pain. He needs hugs and a safe place.

Lets give him a week of good feelings and Peace. The rest may not be all about him, but we can make Something about him and for him.

Even if its one song, one essay a day to tell him we value him.

Budhy dear, people are imperfect and I for one, not to speak for anyone else, do not hold you responsible for anyone else, and am proud of the job you’ve done here.

I hold you in my heart, and want a happy place for you now, and hope everyone can think of you first and themselves second, as if someone in their family had been lost.

Hope to see a bunch of “For Budhy” essays sprout. Love to all.