Much will be made by the Republicans concerning the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom Awards. Certainly the recipients are deserving, and certainly there is a political angle to the choices of several of the recipients. Healthcare is important to Obama, and even the small headlines that result from these awards will reflect the healthcare issue. For instance, Nancy Goodman Brinker founded a charity dedicated to fighting breast cancer, Dr. Pedro Jose Greer, Jr. leads a nonprofit which provides healthcare to homeless people, and Dr. Janet Davison Rowley, a distinguished research professor at the University of Chicago. Certainly Republicans will say that these three nominations merely serve to boost the Obama healthcare agenda.

Barack Obama has also awarded the Medal of Freedom to several recipients who could be said to have served civil rights causes in their lives. Billie Jean King fought for women on the tennis court, and Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman on the Supreme Court. Desmond Tutu has long been praised for his work in the transition from Apartheid in South Africa, and the Rev. Joseph Lowery was a leader in our own civil rights movement here in the United States in the 60’s.

Perhaps most interesting is the award for Sidney Poitier, who through numerous movies became not just the face of jusctice for African Americans in this country, but has never failed to speak for civil rights in his private life, either. While Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner might be seen as the most important cinematic work by Poitier in aiding the liberal motion against racism, I’m more inclined towards To Sir With Love, where Sidney Poitier plays a teacher and role model. That movie dealt with social class as much as with racial issues, and as such shows a mature and more complicated attitude towards race. Besides, the music, especially the title song by Lulu, is better.

Republicans don’t dare criticize any of the above nominees, but they sure will snipe at the Presidential Medal of Freedom given to Senator Ted Kennedy. Oh, it won’t be in the Senate where they will attack this choice, but on the airwaves. The likes of Coulter and Limbaugh and O’Reilly will scream about libruls and socialism and Chappaquiddick. But Ted Kennedy is perfect for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, at least along the themes of healthcare and diversity that President Obama’s awardees spell out (other diversity candidates include a Latina, Chita Rivera, a disabled man, Dr. Stephen Hawking, a Native American, Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow, a gay man, Harvey Milk, and a Muslim, Muhammad Yunus).

Perhaps Ted Kennedy will be remembered as the younger brother of two men who died at the hands of assassins, JFK and RFK. Perhaps Ted Kennedy will be remembered for his inspiring eulogy for his brother Bobby, a eulogy I still remember from when I was a mere 11 years old. That eulogy may sum up Ted Kennedy’s charge, to carry on the legacy of his brothers, to do the courageous work of following through on a legacy. Ted Kennedy will be remembered as the Lion of the Senate, but that eulogy of 1968 was composed mostly of Bobby Kennedy’s words, and the charge within was to help the poor, the oppressed, the halt and the weak. The charge was about civil rights and the health and well-being of his fellow Americans.

It is too soon to write a eulogy for Ted Kennedy, but it is not too soon to honor him. He is an American with faults, and the ugliest on the right wing will attack those faults. But Ted Kennedy lived by the last words, Bobby’s words, of that eulogy of 41 years ago. Here they are from American Rhetoric (audio file also):

“Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not.”

Some of us progressives may think Ted Kennedy failed to achieve the lofty goals he took on early in his Senate career. No, he didn’t live up to all of our ideals. Some might even say that Ted Kennedy wasn’t combative enough — he is reportedly fast friends of Orrin Hatch, a man clearly the enemy of progressive political aims. But our politics in this country doesn’t work by combat, nor by villification. Sure, the extremist right wing will try to disrupt this honor for Ted Kennedy in further attempt to disrupt Obama’s healthcare and diversity goals, but that will surely be seen for what it is, ugliness. Instead of villification and combat, our politics lives through compromise and rhetoric, no matter how some of us might regret that fact. Ted Kennedy has enabled some great compromise over the years.

I’m in that 80%. I’m dearly hoping Sarah Palin runs for President and gets the Republican nomination, for that would spell the end of the Republican Party as a national force for a long, long time. Some Republicans, such as George Voinovich and Tom Davis, already realize that the Republican Party has regionalized itself. (The Republican South is defended by diaper-wearing Senator Vitter.) Hey, how more rural can you get than Sarah Palin’s Alaska?

And it isn’t just Southern and regional. Tom Davis (R-Astute) also notes that the intellectual demographis are heavily leaning in a Democratic direction. From Huffington Post:

The high education areas Obama carried - 78 of the 100 counties with the highest education. McCain carried 88 of the 100 counties with the lowest education. As we move to cultural politics, that’s been the shift.

We saw all those sharp pencils in the primaries, questioning whether Barack Obama was an American. Wait, wait, they’re still out there! They can’t read a birth certicate, are pursuing a stupid theory based on anti-intellectual “evidence,” and even some Republican legislators are backing the same anti-intellectual “theory.” How much more anti-intellectual can you get than by choosing a former beauty queen who thinks she can see Russia from her front porch? It isn’t just Southern and regional. It’s stupid, but NewsMax has it in black and white!

This poll by the respected people over at NewsMax is amazing. 80% of those polled want to see Sarah Palin run for President, and I’m guessing, since this is Newsmax and all, that the poll isn’t polluted by a whole lot of Dems such as myself who want to see Palin run, win the nomination, and therefore ruin the GOP. That’s clear from the internals of the poll. Sure, the poll shows an 83% favorable for the divine Ms. Sarah, but it also shows 81% of the respondents voted for McCain/Palin. No, this poll simply isn’t polluted by Dems, not one bit. Heck, this poll might not be on nodding acquaintance with reality! And that shouldn’t bother the true believers at NewsMax.

What about the latest Wall Street Journal/MSNBC poll, you say? You know, the one that shows 67% of Americans thinking Sarah Palin should never be President, the one where her unfavorables are higher than a moose’s eye? I say MSNBC is biased! Look at that Olbermann fellow this week. He looks an awful lot like former DNC Chair Howard Dean — that sure sounds like bias to me! And the Wall Street Journal couldn’t even predict the stock market collapse last year. . . what good are they? No, we should all count on NewsMax’s results, and hope and pray they are right, that Sarah the magnificent, in her wolf fur muklucks, is the Republican nominee for 2012.

Larry Craig has set up shop as an oil lobbyist, with New West Strategies LLC. Yes, the guy is sleazy, and it surprises nobody that he would set up shop as a lobbyist. Given Craig’s evident homosexual encounters in airports, one wonders, though, if he’s not doing it for a lifetime supply of lube. The story is here, at grist.org.

Seriously, are energy companies really going to hire this guy? Where’s his office, in the Men’s room outside the Senate cloakroom?

Duncan Black (Atrios) asks on Facebook and Twitter:

What if the birthers are right?

I think we should just stipulate that they are, and have the Honduran army stage a coup here. There doesn’t seem to be any other mechanism for a dramatic change in government, and we don’t seem to be able to mount an effective challenge to the status quo ourselves.

(Wouldn’t that put some stink in Lou Dobbs’ cheese?)

This is from a FoxNews poll, so it must have validity, eh? They found that Palin’s favorables were down to 38%, and her unfavorables were up to 51%, but I wouldn’t think that’ll stop the wingnuts from nominating her in 2012.

Still, Palin’s favorables and unfavorables are not the interesting thing here. The list of responses to this question is what’s interesting: What do you think is the best job for Sarah Palin now that she has resigned as governor of Alaska? Here are the answers, from the FoxNews poll:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s personal ratings have slipped and most people think the best job for her now that she has resigned as governor is away from the world of politics.

About a third of Americans think the best job for Palin is homemaker (32 percent), while nearly one in five see her as a television talk show host (17 percent). Vice president of the United States comes in third (14 percent), followed closely by college professor (10 percent), with president coming last (6 percent).

Republicans think the best job for Palin is vice president (27 percent), followed by homemaker (18 percent), talk show host (14 percent), president (12 percent) and professor (7 percent).

Yes, some of these folks think Sarah Palin would make a good college professor. What, Bob Jones University needs help with accrediting? What would she teach, pageant walking? Weathergirl 101?

My goodness! Run for the hills! Blindfold the children! We don’t want them getting a look at DNA, or even a model of it! That’s the big controversy in Berkeley, where there are large scultures representing DNA in a palyyard of a school. One woman is trying to start a letter-writing campaign to get this vile and offensive sculpture taken away! Here’s the words of Jenny Garrotte, Claremont Park PTA President, from stateofprotest.com:

Although DNA Sculpture has been on display in various public parks and playgrounds, Jenny Garrotte, Claremont Park PTA president, said she found it distasteful and verging on obscene, and e-mailed parents Wednesday morning, asking them to file complaints with Pegro and with Alameda County Code Enforcement.

“Everybody is entitled to their own opinion regarding what art is,” said Garrotte. “If this piece weren’t visible to passersby and available for children to play on, I would not have a problem with it.”

That woman should be thrown out of the PTA right away, and there should be a law preventing her from having any influence over anyone’s education. Good God, she thinks there’s harm in kids climbing on a sculpture of DNA? I can’t imagine what she could be thinking. Is it sex she’s worried about, or that the very notion of DNA undermines a creationist belief?

Even more stupid is John Copeland:

“My daughter suggested that it was funny,” said John Copeland, whose 7-year-old daughter attends summer camp there. “She shouldn’t be talking to me about this. Now I’m forced to explain genetics to her, and why the Bible doesn’t say anything about it.”

. . .

Meanwhile, Copeland said he hopes the owner of the plaza removes the sculpture before school starts next month.

“There are 1000 kids in the school that are going to be exposed to it,” he said. “It’s vile and offensive, and kids have no business seeing what God thought fit to hide from our eyes.”

Let’s make this very clear. This is not nudity. It’s a model of the double helix of a DNA molecule built so large that kids could play on it. And it is making certain stupid people actually go on record as completely stupid.

Perhaps the most stupid thing here is that it is all set in Berkeley, home to a major university and a huge liberal populace. What do these people expect? What they deserve, certainly, is ridicule, and maybe to have their kids taken from them.

How long are we supposed to wait?

How long are the American people going to put up with this crap?

How long are we willing to blindly accept the ministrations of a federal government that clearly subscribes to the Buck Turgidson School of Social Darwinism?

“I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops!”

At the end of July, 2009:

More Americans are without access to basic healthcare or medical insurance than ever before.

More Americans died in Afghanistan during the month of July than at any time since the start of hostilities in that country.

More Americans are unemployed tonight than in recent memory.

More Americans will go to sleep hungry tonight (or worried about where the next meal for their families will come from) than at any time in history - even as foodbanks and feeding programs are stressed at unimaginable levels.

State after state - it’s not just California - is laying off or not paying state workers. Essential services are being cut beyond the bone: entire governmental limbs are now being severed.

I actually, for a few months, entertained the audacious thought that health care reform might really get done, and get done right. My “audacity of hope” has been rapidly transformed by the “mendacity of nope”. DKos diarist teacherken wrote a series of diaries over this past weekend regarding a rural health care event that literally made me cry with sadness and anger.

I am sick to death of listening to the gasbags on NPR blather on about how much healthcare reform is going to cost. The banks should have been allowed to collapse, and single payer, universal health care should have been a no brainer. Instead, the banks got a trillion and the sick, uninsured, and poor are gonna get bupkis.

Same as it ever was…same as it ever was…

I am sick to death of being sick to death.

Oh, and before anyone slams me asking what I’m doing about it - yeah, I’ve done my time. I’ve pissed into the tide of social activism so many times that I’ve lost count.

Jeff Miller, Allison Krause, Bill Schroeder, and Sandra Lee Scheuer never had the time to consider that giving up their lives would make a profound difference. But each of them contributed immeasurably to a true, real, movement (and a single cause) that changed the course of history.

I would quite literally give up my own life for this stuff if I thought it would make a difference. But in this day and age, I fear it wouldn’t.

With each passing day, it feels more and more like we’re all drowning in a roiling, angry sea of ineffective national leadership. A riptide of malignant political indifference has washed over the government of the United States of America, and it seems as if we proles are powerless to escape the undertow.

I’m not one of those who thinks we’ve heard the last of Sarah Palin. Sure, her unfavorable numbers are at 53%, but Sarah is still popular with the Republican base, and only the incompetent leadership of the Republican Party is going to count out Sarah Palin for 2012. But Sarah didn’t do herself any favors in abandoning her Governorship this weekend. It happened at a BBQ. She turned over the reins of the Alaska Governor’s office to Sean Parnell, who reportedly attempt to carry out Palin’s program while Sarah herself will continue to soldier on fighting ethics accusations. By all accounts, it was a sweet farewell. But Sarah opened her big mouth a bit too much. Here is some of what she said, from Times Online:

“When I took the oath to serve you, I promised, remember what I promised?” she asked. “To steadfastly and doggedly guard the interests of this great state like that grizzly guards her cubs, as a mother naturally guards her own. And I will keep that vow wherever the road may lead.

“With this decision, now, I will be able to fight even harder for you, for what is right, and for truth. And I have never felt that you need a title to do that.”

Oddly, Sarah Palin thinks abandoning the job voters charged her with is the best way to serve. That sort of whackjobbery is the tip of the iceberg of a huge Titanic whackjobbery, the whining and bitterness that also came out at the BBQ on Sunday. this bit seems to take aim at the press, though with Sarah Palin it may be some other demon. Who knows?

Free speech was a theme of her farewell speech at yesterday’s picnic as she scolded “some seemingly hell-bent on tearing down our nation”, and warned Americans to “be wary of accepting government largesse”.

She also took a parting shot at reporters. “Democracy depends on you,” she said. “That’s why our troops are willing to die for you. So how about in honour of the American soldier you quit making things up?”

Then she whines about Hollywood, or at least on the surface. It’s a second amendment whine, so maybe she’s lumping Hollywood in with all thos libruls out to help Obama take away all the guns, ignoring on the way that there simply isn’t any such movement afoot:

Warning Alaskans to stand against what she said were “anti-hunting” messages delivered by Hollywood celebrities, Ms Palin offered a message of her own.

“Patriots will protect our Second Amendment right to bear arms,” she said. “Hollywood needs to know: we eat, therefore we hunt.”

There’s our Sarah, appealing to the values voters by spitting invective at the press and Hollywood while at the same time pretending to stand up for constitutionally protected speech. What kind of irony is that? Well, it’s irony we can expect to hear a lot more. Hey, maybe Sarah Palin will be pulled in to take over for G. Gordon Liddy on the radio, the man who self-destructed on Hardball the other night. It’s not an improvement over Liddy, but they need a whackjob replacement, and she just might fit the bill, until she also goes further round the bend.

So the real reason Lou Dobbs is focused like a laser on the faux controversy about the Barack Obama birth certificate, the real reason Lou Dobbs is featuring the whack jobs and their ugly theory on his show, is bound to come out soon. So I’ll expose the creep. Lou Dobbs is a murderer. The Obama birth certicate thing is just to throw everyone off the scent.

The victim is a Mexican, though I don’t know whether a legal or illegal alien. Her name is Gidget, and she died, supposedly of natural causes, on Tuesday, roughly when Dobbs ratcheted up the attention on the birther whackjobbery. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Yesterday the Matthew Shepard Act passed in the Senate. President Barack Obama will sign the measure soon. This is a big day for civil liberties and gay Americans. It was also a big day for six GOP cowards, Senators Mel Martinez, Lamar Alexander, Bob Corker, Kitt Bond, Jim Bunning, Judd Gregg and Lindsey Graham. No, these Senators did not vote (Senate Roll Call on Matthew Shepard Act here) against the measure, citing whiney reasons, as did 28 other Republican Senators. They did not stand behind the notion that the Matthew Shepard Act would punish pastors, as the right wing paranoia insists. They did not stand behind the states rights notion, as Senators Kyl and McCain argued. These Senators also did not vote for the measure, as their fellow republicans Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Richard Lugar and Lisa Murkowski did. No. Evidently for the cowardly seven, voting on gay rights, either up or down, is too dangerous for them. They are cowards.

Let’s give Jim Bunning a pass, since he is suffering from dementia. Mel Martinez is retiring from the Senate, and he’s probably out seeking other jobs already. Lindsey Graham desperately doesn’t want to be outted, so that might account for his absence. And Judd Gregg’s nonvote is easy to understand, what with him being from a blue state but having to cowtow to the extremists on the religious right for primary votes. Kit Bond is also retiring and not seeking another term, so maybe he, like Jim Bunning, is just lazy in not voting. But the nonvotes of Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, their cowardice in facing a simple issue, at least by Republican standards, is not so easy to understand. Let’s start with Lamar Alexander.

The actions of Lamar Alexander are not easy to figure out on first blush. Yeah, Alexander is considered a moderate, and his foray into Republican whackjobbery by supporting the Iraq War has turned into an ugly decision. Alexander is in the Republican leadership of the Senate, though, and one would expect him to lead on an issue so importatn to that large right wing Christian constiuency. Certainly on abortion issues Alexander gets a hish rating from the right wing whackjobs, so he’s not normally scared to vote as the puppet of the extremists on the GOP right wing. Alexander just got reelected, so he doesn’t have to appease interest groups for a couple years, and he’s old enough that a run for the Presidency, so he doesn’t have that excuse to dodge a vote. Could it be he has a conscience, or that he might actually be a little teensy bit moderate?

Bob Corker is even harder to figure out. While he gets a perfect rating from the National Right to Life Committee, showing his social conservative bona fides (he’s evidently a flip flopper on abortion from way back, and Tennessee Right to Life has given him a hard time in the past). Corker has shown some minor moderate leanings, joining the Republican Mainstreet Coalition. Still, Corker was an unabashed supporter of the Iraq War and helped carry the water for the failed policies of the Bush years. Maybe he’s seeing the political landscape changing in Tennessee, and even four years out from reelection Corker is protecting himself from looking too much like a whackjob? Guerilla Women, a bunch of liberal Tennessee bloggers, thinks Bob Corker will shift with any wind in order to win an election. I’m thinking this time he’ll doge an issue in order to do so. Simply a coward is my guess.

Bottom line, extending hate crime protection to gay and lesbian members of our society is an important issue, no matter which side of the issue you are on, and these Republicans failed to show. They are paid to represent the citizens of their state, and there are no health issues keeping them from doing so, as is the case with Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd. Sure, a few of these guys aren’t running again, but that doesn’t mean they are exempt from representing their constiuents while they serve out the remainders of their terms. Their refusal to even vote is simply cowardice in my view. Republican cowardice? Could it be that they are so fearful of angering the whackjob base of the Republican Party that they stayed home?