I've read many tributes to the late Senator Kennedy, and while this isn't exactly a tribute, it is a story that really touched me. I think it gets to the heart of who he was.

It is well known that Axelrod is an astroturf master. It is clear that if the president wanted real health care reform, he would employ the marketing skills we saw used to sell a virtually unknown Senator to a populace hungry for "change." Instead, we see the opposition in full swing, while Obama neglects to use the tools he has to counter them. He. Can. Do. This. We know he can. But he won't.
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The following is from a diary by Don Siegelman, called Fire Rove's Prosecutors. Now, why, I wonder would we even have to ask the current president to clean house of GWB's U.S. Attorneys?

By: Jane Hamsher

Kagro is right:

By Bernie Horn @ Campaign for America's Future

Conservative pollster Frank Luntz recently provided right wingers on Capitol Hill a secret 28-page memo entitled The Language of Healthcare 2009—which has leaked! The memo was intended to offer a message framing strategy to defeat President Obama’s plan to provide health care for all. But the document is more useful to progressives than conservatives.

News: Getting the economy back on its feet, giving taxpayers a break, saving your retirement fund and your kid's college tuition? Done. And it won't cost you a penny.

By David Cay Johnston

January/February 2009 Issue @ Mother Jones

Let's hope the honorable Senator Sanders words are heeded.

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=303188

In Reagan's Shadow

Watching precipitous drop on Democratic popularity in the polls - from the anonymous Democrat to the presidential nominee - leaves me shaking my head at the sheer ineptitude of the people allegedly in charge of the operation. But even more it makes me want to take a long, hard look at why, in a political year that favors the Democrats more than any year since the FDR era, victory is being thrown away.

by Andrew Stephen
UK's New Statesman US correspondent

Gloating, unshackled sexism of the ugliest kind has been shamelessly peddled by the US media, which - sooner rather than later, I fear - will have to account for their sins