"The Dream Shall Never Die."

Late last night Senator Ted Kennedy died of cancer. While his career in the Senate was illustrious and his personal failings and hardships are well-known, his dream of the last decades of his life remains unfulfilled: that every American should have the benefits of the greatest healthcare system in the world without regard to their income or their station in life.

Right now we stand on the cusp of fulfilling that dream – a dream that would make America a more equitable nation where opportunity is not constantly overshadowed by the specter of crushing debt – or worse, life cut short – due to a person’s station in life or his bank balance when confronted with the awful choice of having expensive medical care or going without.

One of Kennedy’s great friends is Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, who co-wrote the above tribute to his friend and colleague. And yet Senator Hatch stands on the opposite side of Kennedy in the struggle for health care equality, still determined to thwart the ideal that all Americans should have access to the benefits of modern medicine that every member of Congress enjoys.

So here’s what I’m asking: Go to Senator Hatch’s YouTube page where he posted this song. Leave a polite and respectful comment urging Senator Hatch to fulfill Ted Kennedy’s legacy by voting for healthcare reform that would make the best of our national healthcare available to all. Please don’t argue with the folks who will disagree with you – this is Senator Hatch’s page and his personal tribute to his departed friend, and it wouldn’t be right to tarnish that. But one of the most ardent opponents of healthcare reform needs to hear our voices.

There’s no guarantee that it will change his vote. But if Senator Hatch hears our voices it will make it harder for him to vote against it, knowing he’ll be choking down the will of the people and forsaking a chance to make this land’s opportunity available to all of its citizens equally. And what a tribute it would be to see his friend’s dream realized.

Obama, Harper, Calderón Announce Socialist Monarchy, Ban Texas

The three leaders of North America got together in Guadalajara today and, in a surprising move, suspended their nations’ constitutions and announced the formation of a socialist monarchy to be called Weedfarmgodblessamericacokedoutviolenceistan. The three co-kings then crowned themselves in a brief ceremony before appearing before the press in a hall decorated with their likenesses. Stephen Harper was portrayed as a crusading knight with some sort of implement – a rudimentary prosthesis? A primitive plumber’s helper? – across his knees to symbolize, one supposes, the primitive, Dark-Ages technology and state-of-nature brutality of your typical socialist regime, to which we can all look forward.

President Obama chose for his likeness a barely-clad Roman gladiator, wearing nothing but a few leather straps and a shortsword, and with a seemingly transparent left leg through which his femur, patella and tibia are clearly visible. It was not explained whether this was some sort of Muslim, neo-pagan or Masonic imagery, and the cowed press was too busy suppressing the truth about the president’s birth certificate to be bothered to ask.

And Mexican President Felipe Calderón, in perhaps the most audacious self-portrayal of the three, had himself represented as a shimmering luminescence that seemed to fill the hall with its Platonic idealization of the narcoterrorist corrupt socialist failed state.

As Harper explained during the Q&A session, “We just sat down and looked at each other and said, ‘You know, the time is right – let’s strike while the iron is hot.’ And so we just threw away the script and decided to unite in the name of long lines, labyrinthine bureaucracy, and driving the sick and the old to the depths of despair.”

“Now we each have different ways of achieving this,” boomed the resonant tenor of President Obama. “But the important thing is that we all learn from each other, so that we can build an enslaved populace with careful appreciation of the needs of each individual. Thus the Canadians can be lulled into a state of indifference with BC bud, curling and free doctor’s visits. The Mexicans can have a fiesta of maquilladoros, crappy beer and illiteracy. And we Americans can slowly numb ourselves with the rich blessings of pork rinds, pro wrestling and the Michael Jackson death investigation.”

At this point Mexican President Felipe Calderón said something, but as a citizen of GodBlessAmericastan, I haven’t bothered to learn a word of his native tongue, which I am pretty sure is not called Mexican. Let’s just say it sounded like he ordered every damn thing off the menu at El Rio Grande and move on.

And in another surprise move, the three monarchs announced that Texas was going to be expelled from North America. “Socialism, as we know,” explained King Barack I, “comes from the Greek term for surrender to the weak. For too long the rugged individualism of the great state of Texas – embodied by such larger-than-life heroes as Ronald Reagan, John Wayne and Antonio López de Santa Anna – has stood in the way of the success of the poor and lazy. We just couldn’t compete. But we would like Texas to know that we wish it nothing but the best, and know Texas will have nothing but success in its future endeavors. And we hear the Middle East is nice this time of year.”

It Was 48 Years Ago Today

Happy Birthday, President Barack Obama. In honor of the day your first birth certificate was forged in some rudimentary hut in the wilds of the Rift Valley, I hereby present this family portait of the formidable forces of Truth and Justice arrayed against you.

Go easy on them, okay?

Appeased Opponents of Healthcare Bill Still Hate It

He was only five-foot-three
Girls could not resist his stare --
Henry Waxman was never called an asshole...

Well the healthcare bill finally passed a vote in Henry Waxman's Energy and Commerce Committe. And you know who was still complaining about it? If you guessed that liberal Democrats were whining about there not being a chain of national organic cafeterias or a clause requiring a five-month wait to set a broken leg, guess again. According to The Huffington Post, it was the Republicans. Apparently the bill doesn't suck enough:

Republicans expressed disappointment that the Blue Dogs were unable to water the bill down more or cut the public option entirely. "You allowed them to pick the color of the lipstick that's going on this pig," Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) grumbled to Waxman shortly before the amendments were added to the bill.

Maybe this type of gratitude will finally convince the remaining Democratic holdouts that there's a difference between reaching across the aisle and surrendering to the losers.