| Thursday, July 02, 2009 |
| HELP on the way? |
when you want something done right, get Teddy Kennedy to do it. It seems Kennedy has swooped in and delivered a health care plan with a public option that has the support of all 13 Democrats on the relevant Senate committee, called HELP. The cost of the bill is also way down: from $1 trillion for the previous try, to $611 billion, with 97 percent of Americans covered. Nice. It's called the Affordable Health Choices Act. Read it for yourself here. The committee members are as follows. As you'll see, the committee doesn't include any of the Democrat Refusniks. The Republican side: not so much (includes the cranky old man himself, John Sydney McCain.)
Democrats by Rank:
Edward Kennedy (MA) - Chairman
Christopher Dodd (CT)
Tom Harkin (IA)
Barbara A. Mikulski (MD)
Jeff Bingaman (NM)
Patty Murray (WA)
Jack Reed (RI)
Bernard Sanders (I) (VT)
Sherrod Brown (OH)
Robert P. Casey, Jr. (PA)
Kay Hagan (NC)
Jeff Merkley (OR)
Republicans by Rank:
Michael B. Enzi (WY) - Ranking member
Judd Gregg (NH)
Lamar Alexander (TN)
Richard Burr (NC)
Johnny Isakson (GA)
John McCain (AZ)
Orrin G. Hatch (UT)
Lisa Murkowski (AK)
Tom Coburn, M.D. (OK)
Pat Roberts (KS)Labels: Democrats, healthcare reform, Ted Kennedy, U.S. Senate, universal healthcare |
posted by JReid @ 2:11 PM   |
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| Monday, August 25, 2008 |
| Kennedy being feted now |
Senator Edward Kennedy, the only Kennedy brother to experience old age, is receiving his tribute at the Dem convention, in a film by the great Kevin Burns. I can't imagine anything more moving, or more deserved. Hopefully the video will be online soon.
UPDATE: I'm almost afraid to put up the AP link, for fear it's full of Fournier's GOP talking points. Click if you dare.
| Labels: Democratic convention, Ted Kennedy |
| posted by JReid @ 9:25 PM |
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| Monday, June 02, 2008 |
| Kennedy to undergo brain surgery today |
The Senator will be treated at Duke University:
In a statement released shortly before 6:30 a.m., Kennedy said he would be operated on by Dr. Allan Friedman at the Duke University Medical Center and expects to recuperate there for about a week.
In the weeks and months after the surgery, Kennedy will begin a regimen of radiation and chemotherapy at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, according to the statement.
Our prayers will be with him.
| Labels: Ted Kennedy, The Kennedys |
| posted by JReid @ 10:57 AM |
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| Tuesday, May 20, 2008 |
| Sen. Kennedy's condition updated |
MSNBC is reporting that the senior Senator from Massachusetts, and the pater familias of the Kennedy family, has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, specifically a "glioma," which was the apparent cause of his seizure. The common treatment is radiation and chemotherapy, and apparently, it is a very serious, fast-spreading type of cancer.
All of our prayers should be with the Senator and his family today.
| Labels: health, Ted Kennedy, The Kennedys |
| posted by JReid @ 1:15 PM |
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| Saturday, May 17, 2008 |
| Godspeed, Teddy Kennedy |
MSNBC has the latest on Senator Edward Kennedy's condition. Apparently, he suffered a seizure, but not a stroke. He's resting comfortably at MassGen in Boston.
Labels: health, Ted Kennedy, The Kennedys |
| posted by JReid @ 10:14 PM |
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| Fox News scrapes the bottom of the barrel ... again |
Yet another reason to dismiss Fox News from the ranks of serious journalism: this afternoon, I was scanning through the cable channels for updates on Sen. Ted Kennedy's hospitalization. I happened to pause on Fox News Channel, and caught a few minutes of their coverage. Only on Fox would the news be about politicial reactions the Senator's hospitalization (they were about to introduce Trent Lott), but the crawl be about ... you guessed it ... Chappaquiddick. The right is so dispicable, so callous, that's all they can think of when they think of Ted Kennedy, and they feel the need to remind their idiot minions about it at every opportunity, lest one of the flock break out of the pen and grow a mind of their own.
Fox News staff: you should be embarrased. Of course, if you were capable of embarassment, you wouldn't be working at Fox News...
Labels: Faux News, Fox News, Ted Kennedy |
| posted by JReid @ 10:07 PM |
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| Tuesday, January 29, 2008 |
| NOW for something really stupid |
I was about to write a pretty nasty tirade about NOW New York's whiney jeremiad against Ted Kennedy for his endorsement of ... someone other than Hillary Clinton ... but as fate would have it, Americablog's John Aravosis tiraded better:
ever have I read a whinier, more sophomoric press release from a national organization, or in this case, their rather important state affiliate. Apparently, anyone who supports any Democrat other than Hillary is a misogynist. So does that also mean that anyone who supports any Democrat other than Obama is a racist? Truly one of the most ridiculous, knee-jerk, stuck-in-the-1960s, and downright offensive things I've ever seen from what I thought was a respectable organization. In the immortal words of Patrick Swayze as the lead character in "Ghost," and at the risk of being accused by the NOW ladies of abandoning my responsibility as a woman not to let a man speak for me (unless he's Bill Clinton,) let me say, Ditto.
So what did the nattering nelly's of NOW have to say? Here it is:
Senator Kennedy Betrays Women by Not Standing For Hillary Clinton for President
January 28, 2008
Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, the Family Leave and Medical Act to name a few. Women have buried their anger that his support for the compromises in No Child Left Behind and the Medicare bogus drug benefit brought us the passage of these flawed bills. We have thanked him for his ardent support of many civil rights bills, BUT women are always waiting in the wings.
And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not “this” one). “They” are Howard Dean and Jim Dean (Yup! That’s Howard’s brother) who run DFA (that’s the group and list from the Dean campaign that we women helped start and grow). They are Alternet, Progressive Democrats of America, democrats.com, Kucinich lovers and all the other groups that take women's money, say they’ll do feminist and women’s rights issues one of these days, and conveniently forget to mention women and children when they talk about poverty or human needs or America’s future or whatever.
This latest move by Kennedy, is so telling about the status of and respect for women’s rights, women’s voices, women’s equality, women’s authority and our ability – indeed, our obligation - to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a President that is the first woman after centuries of men who “know what’s best for us.” Blah, blah, blah. The title alone is mind numbing. You mean not supporting Hillary is a betrayal of all women? Well vote me off the island! ... This is why nobody listens to this bunch.
Word to the ladies of NOW New York: Black women are, technically, women too. And many o us -- most by my count having spent the morning talking to people at polls here in South Florida -- happen to love Barack Obama. So where does that leave us? Are we duty bound to vote for Hillary, too, just because we share her chromosomal makeup? I mean for God's sake, if Teddy Kennedy -- a man, no less -- is duty bound to support the women, how can we escape our responsibility?
Perhaps it hasn't occurred to these guys ... I mean ladies ... I mean Women with a capital W ... but ... um ... just as it's not fair to expect every Black person to support Barack, it's not fair to expect everyone who supports equal rights for women to support Hillary (or to expect every woman to do so.) People ... wait for it ... have to make up their own minds, and choose the candidate who most inspires them. In fact, in most years, inspiration isn't even an option. People choose the candidate who will keep them up the least at night worrying about their finger on the button. This year, at last, there are multiple candidates, on the Democratic side at least, who provoke inspiration. Don't hate on Teddy Kennedy if Barack does for him the same thing he does for so many Americans, including a real, live woman-type person named Caroline. Funny your press release finger wasn't trained on her...
NOW New York, thanks for the straight talk. Your statements reveal you to be creatures of the politics of yesterday. The rest of us have happily moved on.
Labels: 2008 election, Barack Obama, elections, NOW, politics, Ted Kennedy |
| posted by JReid @ 3:54 PM |
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| Monday, January 28, 2008 |
| Passing the torch |
 It's rare that I completely agree with Chris Matthews, but today, I do. As Chris just said on MSNBC, today, Ted Kennedy, his son Patrick and his niece Caroline "transferred all the majesty and magic of the Kennedy legacy to this one young guy," Barack Obama. (The endorsement just took place at American University in Massachusetts.)
Think about it: all that Camelot implies: the sea change in this country's search for racial justice and healing, the search for peace amid the cold war, and the hope of enshrining a new generation in politics, all handed, wrapped in soaring rhetoric, to a Black, first generation American -- a man who literally is both Black and White, ordinary and extraordinary, and as young as JFK and RFK were when they became America's knights in shining armor. I'm sounding Chris Matthews gushy right now, but I think it's hard to argue that this was not an extraordinary quartet of speeches at American University, and in my opinion, an historic one for the country.
The endorsement won't help Barack in the general, where Kennedy is seen as a very liberal figure, but in the primary it's big, especially since Kennedy will apparently concentrate his campaigning on eating into Hillary's current advantage with Latino voters.
Also: apparently Ted Kennedy ignored pleas directly from Bill Clinton not to make this endorsement. What an exceptional rebuke.Labels: 2008 election, Barack Obama, Democrats, news and politics, Ted Kennedy |
| posted by JReid @ 1:35 PM |
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| The sword in the stone |
 President John F. Kennedy with Robert and Ted Kennedy at Hyannis Port in 1960
First came Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg's moving New York Times op-ed endorsing Barack Obama as a man who could be the president her father was for so many Americans back in the 1960s. Now, Senator Ted Kennedy, the "lion of the Senate" and a personal friend of the Clintons, will endorse Barack, too.
Right wing bloggers may snicker at Kennedy -- fixated as they are on his most tragic moment -- but for Democrats, this is about as big an endorsement as a candidate can get. For Ted Kennedy, the last surviving son on the tragic Kennedy clan and the family's patriarch, to pass to torch, not to Hillary Clinton, whose husband made the iconic photo of his handshake with JFK on June 6, 1963 (five months before Kennedy's assassination,) into the emblem of his status as the prince of generational change back in 1992, but to Obama, has got to be devastating for the Clintons.
It's also a seminal rebuke of the manner in which Bill Clinton has been fronting his wife's campaign -- the negativity, the bully boy tactics, and the racial tinge.
The endorsement may not change anything -- white women are solidifying behind Hillary, and in states like Florida that have a huge absentee and early vote, she has already banked tens of thousands of votes. On the other hand, the double Kennedy blessing could be a huge boon to Obama as he looks to the Tsunami Tuesday primaries, which include Massachusetts and California, both states where the lore of Camelot could be a touchstone for voters.
The next step for Team Obama will be to have Teddy cut a killer national TV spot for the candidate, along with radio ads that can be strewn across Air America and Jones Radio Network talk shows. Obama has the cash to run a national TV and radio campaign, and Kennedy is the ultimate voice talent. And I would expect that with Kennedy opening the door (and likely pulling off a few stem-winder speeches for his guy as well,) the doors of the church are now open, and more prominent Dems will be falling in line behind Barack before Tuesday.
It's getting interesting again on the Dem side.
Labels: 2008 election, Barack Obama, Democrats, elections, Hillary Clinton, politics, presidential candidates, Ted Kennedy |
| posted by JReid @ 10:03 AM |
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| Thursday, May 17, 2007 |
| Here we go |
The Senate and the White House hammer out a deal on illegal immigrant amnesty reform:
The plan would create a temporary worker program to bring new arrivals to the U.S and a separate program to cover agricultural workers. Skills and education level would for the first time be weighted more heavily than family connections in deciding whether immigrants should get permanent legal status. New high-tech employment verification measures would make sure that workers are here legally. ...
... The breakthrough came when negotiators struck a bargain on a so-called "point system" that prioritizes immigrants' education and skill level over family connections in deciding how to award green cards.
The proposed agreement would allow illegal immigrants to come forward and obtain a "Z visa" and — after paying fees and a $5,000 fine — ultimately get on track for permanent residency, which could take between eight and 13 years. Heads of household would have to return to their home countries first.
They could come forward right away to claim a probationary card that would let them live and work legally in the U.S., but could not begin the path to permanent residency or citizenship until border security improvements and the high-tech worker identification program were completed.
A new temporary guest worker program would also have to wait until those so-called "triggers" had been activated.
Those workers would have to return home after work stints of two years, with little opportunity to gain permanent legal status or ever become U.S. citizens. They could renew their guest worker visas twice, but would be required to leave for a year in between each time.
Democrats had pressed instead for guest workers to be permitted to stay and work indefinitely in the U.S.
In perhaps the most hotly debated change, the proposed plan would shift from an immigration system primarily weighted toward family ties toward one with preferences for people with advanced degrees and sophisticated skills. Republicans have long sought such revisions, which they say are needed to end "chain migration" that harms the economy, while some Democrats and liberal groups say it's an unfair system that rips families apart.
Family connections alone would no longer be enough to qualify for a green card — except for spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens.
New limits would apply to U.S. citizens seeking to bring foreign-born parents into the country. The fur should begin flying shortly. This bill sounds to me like straightforward amnesty, and I'm not sure what in it keeps even more people from streaming across the border, hoping to get in on the deal.
Labels: amnesty, Bush administration, illegal immigration, Ted Kennedy |
| posted by JReid @ 4:19 PM |
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| Tuesday, January 09, 2007 |
| Give 'em hell, Teddy |
 Who knows whether Teddy Kennedy is out there on his own in taking the broad opposition to Bush's troop escalation plan for Iraq to the Senate floor (well, at least alone among the Democrats...) But alone or not, Kennedy is right. Iraq is Bush's Vietnam, and if the Congress enables Dubya to behave like LBJ at his most delusional during that prior debacle, then shame on them.
Meanwhile, even some of the troops waver in their confidence in the Commander in Chief. And polls show Bush has almost no support for his war escalation plan.
For gods sake even Oliver North has gone off the reservation! I think all Bushie has left is John Fund and the kooks at the Weekly Standard and AEI...
Labels: Bush, Bush administration, Iraq, Ted Kennedy |
| posted by JReid @ 9:20 PM |
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