I doubt if there’s anyone who is capable of decidely picking up and carrying the torch that Senator Kennedy did for so long. I grew up in the 60s,   witness to such a deeply historic time. It is why I have such intolerance for neocons who are quickly becoming the speakers of the Republican party, drowning out their moderate colleagues. To Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Rove, Cheney, Palin, Bachmann, and all of their cohorts – there is a special place in hell reserved for you all. Your devicivness  and blatant lies that you scream out (evidently they believe the louder they are the more truthful they appear to be) are mindful of petulant children who’ve been at the feeding trough too long and find yourself without dessert.

Enough pandering to bipartisanship. Push the original health care bill  through and to hell with the naysayers. Find your goddamned backbone and just do it.

Mark Karlin has a great post over at Buzz Flash

And I remember at Yale — many, many years ago — when he came to speak to the political union.  Protestors were advocating violence as a solution to a political issue of the time and interrupted his remarks.  Kennedy let them have their say and then — his voice audibly breaking and trembling — admonished them that he knew personally the toll that violence takes upon a family and that it was not what our nation was about, nor would it yield anything but loss and pain.  You could have heard a pin drop as he sucked the air out of the room with his spontaneous reaction from the depth of a wounded heart.

I am a Liberal.  I am a PROUD Liberal. And I will never feel intimidated, ashamed, or threatened by those of you who aren’t. Ever. Again.

I wasn’t too young to understand the horror of President Kennedy being killed, but I was too young to understand the impact. A few years later when King was slain, I had become all too aware of the racial inequality. When Robert Kennedy was assassinated, I was too shocked to do anything but look toward McCarthy to carry on from where RFK had left off. Too young to vote, but an awareness was growing inside.

But, at this point in my life, knowing and understanding all that I now do, when I read the news that Ted Kennedy had passed away, tears sprang to my eyes and flowed off and on all day. What a brave fighter. Women will not have a stronger voice than they had in him. The poor will not be spoken for as he did for them. The blue collar worker will not have another champion for them as he did. It’s all gone now.

There is no bipartisanship. Someone said to me today, “Why is it always the Democrats who listen and try to find real compromise?” It’s because Kennedy could get it done. There were those from the other side with whom he could convince to help. There won’t be that anymore. And, as the Republican party marches sternly into extreme conservatism, I’m afraid the Democratic party will slide into jello-ed nothingness, it’s spine having died today.

God bless you, Senator Kennedy. You were a roaring lion for those with little or no voice. Is there anyone capable, or worthy,  of carrying the torch?

Have Wells Fargo as your lender.

Now the state is investigating them.

Good. Because I tired of putting for the effort about 8 months ago.

www.avaaz.org. Go read and become enlightened.

Tonight we will take little grr and have her put down. She’s very weak, not suffering that we know of, but she’s always been in survival mode.

While we are going about our daily lives pretending that everything is just swimmingly fine, as that is what our jobs require, our hearts are breaking knowing that we will be saying goodbye to our friend and trusting companion.

Job well done, Tigger. We will love you always.

Tigger, Little Grr. Almost 13 years ago, she left her Georgia home and came to live with us. Nikki was pissed that she had to share her new domain with another *gasp* feline. There went the playmate idea out the window.

Nikki felt it was her obligation to terrorize Little Grr. Little Grr, on the other hand, would exact her revenge and assert her toughness by digging in the flower pots at 2 AM. She was sneaky about it too. I’d wake up to the sound of soft scratching, not move a muscle other than peering through the narrowist of eye slits, only to see Tigger statue-like still, looking at me. After 20 seconds or so, she’d resume her relocating the dirt from the pot to the floor.

I was going through a fairly rough patch at the time. You know, where being thrown into an active volcano would have been easier to manuever.  So, Tigger decided to be a lurker – standing on the outside until the house was asleep and then exploring to her fullest abilities. And as the storm that was eating up my life started to calm, so did she.

When we moved into an apartment where we weren’t supposed to have pets, she insitnctively ran under the bed or into the closet until “stranger danger” went away. She became very cuddly – snuggling right up to us when we watched tv or slept. But, she’s always been very polie about it; she sits at the foot of the bed waiting for any signal at all – the blinking of an eye will do just nicely thank you. And she’s always stiff as a board when you pick her up.

Getting up on the bed has been more difficult for her the last couple of weeks. She’s always managed to stay hidden when she wants to be left alone, so we didn’t think anything unusual when we didn’s see her. Our cats stay inside, so we knew she was around.

She let us know this evening that she didn’t feel well. We’re trying to give her water and soft food, but she wants none of it. She just wants to be petted and then she falls asleep.

Little mama cat, or she seems to think she is to all breathing creatures in the house, is right by Tigger’s side.

 Man, this is really hard. If karma is a bitch, then I wish she’d show her face so that I could punch her into oblivion. What with Baby dying earlier this year, this is just wrong.

Little Grr. Big sadness.

Since Mr Obama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 per cent from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush.

30 potential death threats a day. Secret Service that is stretched beyond its limits. Birthers foaming at the mouth in their nonsensical batshit crazy way, hate crimes on the increase, membership in hate groups (predominantly white supremacist groups) on the increase, homegrown terrorists sprouting like clusters of mold.

I don’t know anymore. When you have folks trying to replace science with religion, moralistic legislators who are anything but, ignorance trumping intelligence, I suppose it’s a miracle that we still exist. 

Excuse me while I go off to find another wall to  bang my head against.

“Why, in this country, is it always the religious right that won’t take anything on faith?” Bill Maher, 7/31/09

“We’re conservative Democrats. We want to save your money. We’re looking out for you: the little guy.” I was working on a post about Blue Dogs, when out of Google heaven, a precious piece of coal came forth.

Yeah, I’m pissed. Big time. So pass on by if my language upsets you. Frankly, I don’t care. You’ve been warned.

Bull fuckin’ shit. Damned little liars. They hold your health care hostage and don’t give a damn whether or not you make it to the doctor. Yet they pretend to have your best interests at heart. I hope that every god damned one of them loses their next erection. (Typo, but it seems appropriate so I’m leaving it.) I’d much rather have a true centrist from either party than these bottom feeders that will have a hell of a moaning party when karma returns to bite them in their fat pharmaceutical insurance corporation loving asses.

Recalcitrant Blue Dogs Raked in the Health Industry Cash

• When it came to the Blue Dogs in particular, that data showed that the seven members who sit on the Energy and Commerce Committee — Reps. Mike Ross (Ark.), Baron Hill (Ind.), Charlie Melancon (La.), Jim Matheson (Utah), John Barrow (Ga.), Bart Gordon (Tenn.) and Zach Space (Ohio) — have received, on average, $711,828 from the health and insurance sectors. Other Democrats on the committee, by contrast, have received an average of $628,023.
• Not all the Blue Dogs partook at such high levels. Space, for instance, has raised only slightly more than $200,000 from those two sectors, according to Public Campaign Action Fund. But on the whole, these self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives have found their coffers filled by the industries over which they now have massive legislative sway. Gordon has received more than $1.4 million (Cauli would like to know how he justifies that given the severe poverty in his state.)  in donations; Matheson got slightly more than $1 million. Ross, who is leading the Blue Dog negotiations, took in more than $980,000.
• The connections between the Blue Dogs and the health and insurance industries extend beyond campaign donations. An analysis of lobbying reports done by the Huffington Post reveals that several former staffers for these seven Energy and Commerce Committee members have also served as lobbyists for major pharmaceutical companies. For instance, after serving as Gordon’s legislative director, Louis Finkel was employed by Lent, Scrivner & Roth. The firm earned $920,000 in lobbying fees from Pfizer between 2001 and 2006, with Finkel acting as a lobbyist for the client.

Blue Dogs: Go to hell

            Any of you part of the Birthers or the invisible klan as well?