Emanuel Cleaver on Fire at DNC

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This speech, which was part of the Black Congressional Caucus, wasn't shown in prime time and therefore many of us missed it. But I kept seeing tweets about how amazing Emanuel Cleaver was so I tracked it down.

He is on fire, preaching to the choir, and hopefully will inspire! :)

Oh, and he is totally off-script and ad-libbing this!

Cleaver's speech begins at 5:37 on this video:



"Now I greatly respect my Republican colleagues and their ideas. But make no mistake: I am proud to be a Democrat. I am proud to be a member of this great party. And we have, in many instances, been hit: 'They are liberal, they are progressive.'

"Look, if being liberal and progressive means that I care for children and whether they go hungry, color me! Color me a Democrat! If being a Democrat means I'm concerned about our seniors in the sunset of their life, color me Democrat! Color me liberal! After all, we are the ones who protected Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, who fought for fair wages and who ended 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.' We are Democrats! And don't you ever forget it!"

~~~~~~~

"There is something essential in the human spirit that searches for hope. We are driven by hope. President Barack Obama has been lampooned for speaking of hope; hope for a better America. I want to encourage our president and all of us to continue to hope for an America that remembers, recognizes, and fervently protects its greatness."

"Yes, Mr. President, hope on. Continue to hope, Mr. President. No matter what, Mr. President, you continue to hope! As long as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob sits on the throne of grace, hope on! Hope on! Hope on! We are people of hope, Mr. President! Hope on! Hope on! When everything else is gone, hope on!"

~~~~~~~

"Hope inspires me to believe that any day now, we will catch up to the ideals put forth by our nation's founding fathers. ... It is our hope and faith that reminds us to pray and also affirms that we must move our feet. It is our hope that tells us our latter days will be better than our former. It is our hope that instructs us to march on!"
(marching in place)
"And march on! And march on, means marching through our communities and to make sure everyone is registered and ready to vote."

~~~~~~~

Let me erase some confusion. Let me tell you something. There are people who poke fun at us Democrats. They say we go to far with this inclusion stuff. They say that we have a caucus for tall people and caucus for short people and a caucus for people who don't fit into any other caucus.
But let me just tell you - God did not burden the United States with the diversity of backgrounds, ideas and religions. He BLESSED America with them!

Why Liberals Shouldn't Give Up

Couple of great videos:

First this one on the rise of conservatism, and the fact that liberals should get busy at a grassroots level instead of just blaming Obama. Great history lesson - Obama actually has something in common with Reagan, who was blamed by the Right for making too many compromises. Sounds familiar, eh?



Here's a clip with Richard Wolfe on MSNBC discussing the losing proposition of rape as an election issue for Republicans with author Michelle Goldberg (who made the video above) and pundit Joy Reid.

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My paraphrase of what they said: The main point is that the Tea Party thinks it is a majority in this country, so they honestly believe the people want all these anti-government draconian measures. They live in an echo chamber of their own media, such as Fox and Breitbart, telling them day and night that the Democrats are always wrong and the "foreign socialist Obama" wants to destroy America. And they believe in traditional values such as Biblical gender roles, with men taking the role as leader and making all the decisions, which is why so much of agenda circles around controlling women.

In 2010, they had a great victory because so many Tea Party conservatives were elected, and now they feel power-happy. Some of these newly elected officials really believe that they are patriots and should oppose Obama and the Democrats even if it means shutting down the government, which they did last summer. Eventually, those same Republicans are going to start losing elections, but right now the Party is in transition, so they will say almost anything to get elected, even if it contradicts their deeply held beliefs. Hence, the Party wants to get rid of Todd Akin even though he is one of them just because he said too much and gave away their real agenda. Also, that's why Paul Ryan now suddenly agrees with Romney about abortion, even though just last year he was writing anti-abortion legislation with no exceptions, just like Todd Akin.

Makes sense to me.

Obama Ad Tells Mitt to "Get Real" on the Cost of College

London Olympics Tribute to National Health Care

The opening ceremony of the London Olympics is an extravaganza par excellence - you've got to see it!!! It was everything I hoped it would be, eccentric, trippy, colorful, historical - all of it, from the Shakespearean reference to "The Tempest," to the Queen arriving with James Bond, to the flights along the Thames and all the little hat-tips to Pink Floyd, Monty Python, Harry Potter, Mr. Bean, Mary Poppins, Peter Pan, and of course, the Beatles.

We enjoyed every minute of it, but especially the democratic aspect, the idea that everyone got to participate even in a small way, which is the brainchild of designer Danny Boyle. In an interview following the ceremony he told Meredith Vieira of NBC that he loved the idea of the Olympic Torch being carried past the very people who built the Olympic arena, which is built on the once-wasteland of East London. And indeed, an Olympian ran with the torch past rows of ordinary people in hard hats, connecting them to what they had built, and as he put it, connecting them to the Queen herself.

But the heart of the whole show for me, and the part which really shamed the U.S. was Boyle's spectacular tribute to the National Health system in the UK, which rendered me speechless for a few minutes. It was all about doctors and nurses protecting children from their worst fears and nightmares, symbolized by literary characters such as Voldemort, Captain Hook, the Child Stealer from Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang, and the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. When I recovered my senses, I assured my own children that they will probably never see such an outpouring of creativity to celebrate a social program in the United States, more's the pity.



I hope that most Americans were watching and got an eyeful, especially everyone in Congress or the Senate who voted against President Obama's healthcare plan, everyone who held hysterical prayer groups on Facebook in hopes the Supreme Court would strike it down, and every member of that Court who wanted to trash our only safety net for the uninsured. Our flawed system in such a rich country is the shame of the world, and while Britain's health plan may not be perfect, most people there have grown up with it and never had to choose between buying glasses or going to the dentist, between buying food and buying medicine. No one suffers because they don't have insurance - everyone has it!

Because of National Health, the Brits have a different reality than we have in the United States, and it made me think that instead of scary literary characters, we have scary lawmakers and judges who don't care whether children are protected. Mitt Romney was in the audience watching, and I hope the words "repeal Obamacare" were ringing in his ears.



Director's Tribute to "Amazing" NHS

More than 600 real-life nurses and other healthcare workers joined Boyle's army of volunteers during the extravaganza.

. . . Boyle said: "One of the reasons we put the NHS in the show is that everyone is aware of how important the NHS is to everybody in this country. We believe, as a nation, in universal healthcare. It doesn't matter how poor you are, how rich you are, you will get treated.

"One of the core values of our society is that it doesn't matter who you are, you will get treated the same in terms of healthcare. We all end up there. You can be in all these private hospitals - if anything serious happens to you, you are in the NHS. And that felt like something that we thought was a great thing to celebrate.

"We are almost unique in having universal healthcare. It is something that is very dear to people's hearts. All types of government fight like billy-o, to control it, to cut it, to deal with it. But there is something about it - it is so embedded in us that we have decided to keep it. It is an amazing thing to celebrate."

Boyle said that the volunteers who came from the NHS were "proud people", adding: "They work for something that they truly, truly believe in. We're delighted to add to that by saluting them. All of the volunteers have made a special sacrifice to be with us but these guys are extraordinary.



"They turn up after shifts - you know what they are dealing with every day, they are dealing with mortality and sick children - yet they turn up and they have made it absolutely amazing."

. . . Lottie Pink, from Kingston, south west London, was one of the patients from the hospital who took part in the show. The 10-year-old was treated for a brain tumour two years ago and returns to the hospital every few months for check-ups.

She said: "I am proud to represent all the great work the hospital does. Without them, I would not be here.