How ironic that our public discourse these days villifies national health insurance, Kennnedy's passion, even as it weighs the relative virtue of torture.

That was really well-put and it breaks my heart to say so.

We've become--I don't know anymore.

The taglines of the drugs are often vague — for drugs for depression, the slogans might speak broadly but inspirationally about change and hope and getting back to one’s true self.

Many people--many--are certain they've departed from their true selves at some point and they want that back; even when they can't quantify or qualify what/when that "true self" existed.

I don't exclude myself from this.

Many of us feel that, at some hazy, distant point in the past, things were better, we were more normal, we were whole. And now we're not.

Pharma plays with this, with us; and I'm not quite certain that I object to being made to feel good--the alternative is having to put up with--and unmedicated!--the likes of Limbaugh, O'Reilly and all those other freaks.

Ted Kennedy passed away this evening.

Man, I didn't know that. I suspected it was rapidly approaching since he started agitating for the MA governor to get on the ball about a replacement.

The end of an era, I suppose. It's too bad he never got to work on the healthcare legislation since that was a passion for him.

(and, indeed, I am but without mirth) at the thought that someone like Boehner will be Speaker:

Speaker Boehner paused to smooth a mysterious ointment into his bronzed face, and then, smiling, hinted at even bolder moves to come. "As Ronald Reagan once said, 'I am not frightened by what lies ahead, and I don't believe the American people are frightened by what lies ahead.' Also, we're going to make death panels even more illegal. Like, super double illegal."

Here's the funny part--Boehner, double illegal phraseology, all that tanning, the inability to deliver remarks with anything approximating a belief in those delivered remarks.

Here's the unfunny part--Boehner, chain-smoking and overly tanned, casually tossing off comments that'll please the special-ed rank and file as they wait in line for their prescriptions at Walmart, while laughing in the cloak room at said Walmart customers.

Meanwhile, those Walmart customers are nodding, sure and confident that Boehner is "their guy," while they await their scooter from some company that's figured out how to game Medicare--the same Medicare that's not a socialistic, government-run, government-led operation.

I'll bet Einstein himself suffered a 50% loss in brain power simply by moving to this great nation.

dems plotted and lied ... and he still won.

You've really topped yourself tonight when it comes to incoherency with a dash of desperation (the Recipe of the Right, as we say on TopChef).

You have my permission to continue fumbling about, tripping, dusting off your Levied knees, wiping your saliva-covered fulsome lips, wailing at how your country was lost to "those guys" who're not white.

Timothy McVeigh is awaiting your presence and I'm certain you'll compare notes as to which of you can destroy more people.

My vote's with McVeigh but I'm sure you'll give it the ol' college try.

Also, you can whimper and pout and moue but this country is changing in a way that'll infuriate you until that happy moment you expire. That really pleases me.

Voting to keep lunatics like you and your kind out of office is what people like me do. And more often than not we do it well.

I'd like to say "Get thee to a psychiatrist," but that would only result in your psychiatrist hurrying to a psychiatrist.

Remember the Bradbury title "Something Wicked This Way Comes"? Well, I hope you enjoy it when it comes for you; all the squealing you generate will be uttered into a void, where the soulless gather.

already cited this, but it's always just below the surface of my consciousness when I consider this issue:

"First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me." (Martin Niemoller)

Guys like Beck and King don't believe they'll ever be on the receiving end but, as we know from experience, once you let these things become institutionalized, once you accord them some sort of normality, all bets are off--and, at some point, they will come for you or your children, and all the weeping in the world won't save you.

People will just shrug.

when we thought of ourselves--justifiably--as a noble people. My father and grandfather worked hard and long hours, and did so honestly with no graft or padding of expense accounts, all for the betterment of their families.

And when war came, they enlisted and fought to defend the best that their nation had to offer. And as I mentioned elsewhere, when my late father served in the Pacific, he spoke often of how eager many Japanese soldiers were to surrender to American troops, because they understood--and it was true then--that Americans had something better to offer.

Yet here we are, a disgraced nation that tortures others; and almost worse--almost--are the number of people who come here to defend that.

When did we fall so low? When did that happen?