Republican presidential contender, and American laughing stock, Rick Santorum has made some recent issues with the Kennedy family. Something about throwing up. Rick Santorum makes me want to throw up too.

Anyways, I’m reminded of this great speech made by Ted Kennedy to his brother Robert F.Kennedy. Good stuff:

Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, Mr. President:

On behalf of Mrs. Kennedy, her children, the parents and sisters of Robert Kennedy, I want to express what we feel to those who mourn with us today in this Cathedral and around the world.

We loved him as a brother, and as a father, and as a son. From his parents, and from his older brothers and sisters — Joe and Kathleen and Jack — he received an inspiration which he passed on to all of us. He gave us strength in time of trouble, wisdom in time of uncertainty, and sharing in time of happiness. He will always be by our side.

Love is not an easy feeling to put into words. Nor is loyalty, or trust, or joy. But he was all of these. He loved life completely and he lived it intensely.

A few years back, Robert Kennedy wrote some words about his own father which expresses [sic] the way we in his family felt about him. He said of what his father meant to him, and I quote:

“What it really all adds up to is love — not love as it is described with such facility in popular magazines, but the kind of love that is affection and respect, order and encouragement, and support. Our awareness of this was an incalculable source of strength, and because real love is something unselfish and involves sacrifice and giving, we could not help but profit from it.”

And he continued,

“Beneath it all, he has tried to engender a social conscience. There were wrongs which needed attention. There were people who were poor and needed help. And we have a responsibility to them and to this country. Through no virtues and accomplishments of our own, we have been fortunate enough to be born in the United States under the most comfortable conditions. We, therefore, have a responsibility to others who are less well off.”

That is what Robert Kennedy was given. What he leaves to us is what he said, what he did, and what he stood for. A speech he made to the young people of South Africa on their Day of Affirmation in 1966 sums it up the best, and I would like to read it now:

“There is discrimination in this world and slavery and slaughter and starvation. Governments repress their people; millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich and wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere. These are differing evils, but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensibility towards the suffering of our fellows. But we can perhaps remember — even if only for a time — that those who live with us are our brothers; that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek — as we do — nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. The answer is to rely on youth — not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to the obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They cannot be moved by those who cling to a present that is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that come with even the most peaceful progress.

It is a revolutionary world we live in, and this generation at home and around the world has had thrust upon it a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived. Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills. Yet many of the world’s great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation; a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth; a young woman reclaimed the territory of France; and it was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the 32 year-old Thomas Jefferson who [pro]claimed that “all men are created equal.”

These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. *It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.* Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe.

For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. All of us will ultimately be judged, and as the years pass we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that event.

*The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society.* Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live.”

That is the way he lived. That is what he leaves us.

My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.

As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:

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

No surprise here:

FRAC: Food Research and Action Center

2011 was another year of difficult economic struggles for American households, and the most recent food hardship data demonstrate that. When asked by the Gallup organization, “Have there been times in the last twelve months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?” more people answered “Yes” in the third and fourth quarters of 2011 (19.2% and 19.4%) than in any period since the fourth quarter of 2008. While the fourth quarter of 2011 saw more robust employment growth, a positive development which has continued in early 2012, economic progress in 2011 was painfully slow for tens of millions. Unemployment and underemployment rates stayed high. Median weekly earnings for wage and salary workers (adjusted for inflation) were lower in the fourth quarter of 2011 than in 2010. And particularly damaging to any recovery in food security was the rate of food inflation. While the overall inflation rate remained subdued, food inflation, especially for the types of cooking-from-scratch foods the government uses to construct its cheapest hypothetical diet, the Thrifty Food Plan, rose fairly rapidly. As a result, the Thrifty Food Plan cost 6.2 percent more in December 2011 than in December 2010.

(PDF)

Poor Rush. MarketWatch:

Looking at the flip side, which three of the 26 news personalities are America’s least favorite, almost half say Rush Limbaugh (46%). Three in ten say Bill O’Reilly (31%) and almost one-quarter say their least favorite is Nancy Grace (23%). Rounding out the top ten least favorite news personalities are Sean Hannity (14%), Katie Couric (10%), Piers Morgan (10%), Barbara Walters (10%), Chris Matthews (10%), Rachel Maddow (7%) and Wolf Blitzer (7%).

Heard this guy on XM radio while cruising down to Key West last week. Love him. Chicher probably has heard of him before. I think he may hail from NOLA. Anywho….. like him….mucho mucho. They said he has a new cd out. Have to look for that one. Here’s another one……

Michael, you’re missed.

Visit SomeEcards.

Driving home from Key West today I heard Bruce Springsteen’s Glory Days on the radio. Made me think. Tomorrow I turn 60 big ones. Seems my Glory Days are over……. but they were surely fun. I started thinking back on my younger days. I told a friend yesterday, who had wished me happy birthday, “I wish I knew what I know now, when I was younger.” But you know….. perhaps it’s good I didn’t know what I know now. I wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun if I had the knowledge that I have now. I wouldn’t have done all those oh so fucking stupid things that I did…..that were so much fun at the time. I’m still above ground, still have a roof over my head and food in the fridge…… so it’s all good. Glory days….. well they’ll pass you by.

Thank you, sweet Etta

Good Morning! I’ve been doing the roundup at C&L this week. Here’s some of the links I came up with. I was sick as a dog yesterday after taking some meds. I took the same thing a few years back and had the same reaction. I don’t know what made me think it would be ok this time around. Puking in a wastebasket while shitting my brains out. Not pretty. Aren’t ya glad I shared? I think I finally got it all out of my system. Hope you all had a good week!

Here’s some amazing photos for your viewing pleasure if you so choose.

Cognitive Dissidence: Walkergate Exclusive: Add a New Campaign Violation to the List

Cutting Through the Crap: Ham of God

Big Think: Do You Have the Moral Compass of a Toddler?

Occasional Planet: Kids in Prison: Illinois’ Expensive, Dangerous and Failed Policy

Litbrit: Abusing our Utilitarianism: Bait-and-Switch, and Beating the Drums of War

Faith in Public Life: PICO Pastor Talks About Religious Movement to Challenge Big Banks, Restore American Dream

A Nomadic View: Indoctrination

Hullabaloo: Just Keep Working Old Man

We Are Respectable Negroes: Uncomfortable Worshipfulness Towards a Killer: Fox News Interview With Chris Kyle

Mad Mikes America: Newt Gingrich’s Patriotic Adultery

Juanita Jean’s: The “I Love Yew Newt” Daily Newt

Jay Allbritton: Republicans Doing Ted Kennedy’s Material

Latest case: State Rep. Judy Manning (R-Marietta, GA),

“I think Mitt Romney is a nice man, but I’m afraid of his Mormon faith,” Manning said. “It’s better than a Muslim.“

Now why in the world would any Muslims out there hate us?

“Of course, every time you look at the TV these days you find an ad on there telling us how normal they are. So why do they have to put ads on the TV just to convince us that they’re normal if they are normal?”

They probably have to do it, bitch, because dead-headed people like you will go to your grave convincing yourself, and everyone around you, every day that they’re not.

“If the Mormon faith adhered to a past philosophy of pluralism, multi-wives, that doesn’t follow the Christian faith of one man and one woman, and that concerns me.”

Dog whistle. Anyone who is not glued to their TV screen at least 10-hours a week watching the 700 Club aren’t true Americans. And only true Americans should be allowed to rule over the rest of us.

God, I hate the stupidity…