President Obama, speaking earlier today at conference on mental health at the White House:
"There are other people who are leading by example. My great friend, Patrick Kennedy, when he was running for reelection back in 2006, he could have avoided talking about his struggles with bipolar disorder and addiction. Let’s face it, he’s a Kennedy," said Obama.
After the audience stopped laughing, Obama continued, "He was -- his seat was pretty safe. Everybody loved him. And yet, Patrick used his experience as a way to connect and to lift up these issues, not hide from them."
And one day, a woman came up to Patrick at a senior center and told him she was afraid to tell her friends she was taking medication for a mental illness because she was worried they might treat her differently. She told Patrick, “You’re the only one who knows aside from my son.” And so Patrick started realizing how much power there could be for people to speak out on these issues. And Patrick carried these stories back with him to Washington, where he worked with a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including his dad, to make sure the mental health services you get through your insurance plan at work are covered the same way that physical health services are -- a huge victory. (Applause.)
It has become increasingly clear that the Obama-era Democrats view every major societal event as a new invitation to spend money, centralize power, or both. The horrendous shootings in Connecticut have the Democrats lobbying not only for new legislation, but new federal legislation — and hence more federal power — rather than entrusting the passage of any such legislation to the states. Meanwhile, the damage from Hurricane Sandy has the Democrats looking to do the only thing that they might enjoy even more than enacting cumbersome legislation — spending borrowed money.<
Did John F. Kennedy really write Profiles in Courage? It’s a question that has been on the table ever since Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957, and with the death of Theodore Sorensen—Kennedy’s able speechwriter—the issue of authorship has again surfaced. It’s an appropriate time to add new elements to an old story.
Might voters replace another New England Kennedy with a Republican? A new poll, commissioned by the National Republican Congressional Committee and conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, shows that Rhode Island’s First Congressional District is in play, with Republican state representative John Loughlin tied with Providence’s Democratic mayor David Cicilline at 41 percent.
You might have thought that Kennedy kitsch was not likely to proceed much further beyond The Best LovedPoems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, edited by Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg (2005), or that the gold standard had long ago been established with Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye:Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, edited by Kenneth O’Donnell (1972). But you would be wrong.
There’s a phrase that never crosses President Obama’s lips, even as he prepares to propose new tax cuts for small business. The phrase: permanent, across-the-board cuts in marginal tax rates for the wealthy.
To the Boston left, "anger" and "Washington" explain Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts senate race, but the win was also a shaft of common sense hitting Bay State's echo chamber of liberal self-righteousness. "Voter anger caught fire in final days," said Wednesday's Boston Globe. "Massachusetts voters sent Washington a ringing message." Yet it wasn't anger, the final days, or just Washington, as the Globe suggested.
PRESIDENT BUSH has a surprising defender of his contention that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction--Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. "The intelligence from Bush 1 to Clinton to Bush 2 was consistent" in concluding Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and was trying to develop a nuclear capability, Clinton said this morning.
HAVING SAVED THE WORLD many times over in one hit movie after another, Arnold Schwarzenegger now has the chance to breathe life into two real-world but comatose bodies: the Republican party of California and the Kennedy machine. Both once were fountains of power and energy.
SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY is more politically astute than Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle. He understands the legislative process far better than Senator Hillary Clinton does. He is a much cooler head than Senator Jay Rockefeller. And there's a good chance he'll turn out to be smarter than the entire Bush administration on the subject of Medicare and a prescription drug benefit for senior citizens.
Kennedy was the key figure in last week's Senate approval of a drug benefit and modest Medicare reforms. Without his support, the measure would not have passed.
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