the lion of the senate, senator kennedy, is back in the den!

now THIS is change i can believe in!

thanks to senators ted kennedy and chris dodd, we may actually be getting health care reform with an acceptable price tag ($600B over ten years) and that will cover 97% of all americans, with a robust public option.

what did we have on the table before?: a $1TRILLION dollar program and the "possibility" of a public option that might or might not kick in at some unspecified time in the future.

By contrast, an earlier, incomplete proposal carried a price tag of roughly $1 trillion and would have left millions uninsured, CBO analysts said in mid-June.

The letter indicated the cost and coverage improvements resulted from two changes. The first calls for a government-run health insurance option to compete with private coverage plans, an option that has drawn intense opposition from Republicans.

thanks, chris...now would you please speak to "fierce advocate" for us?

h/t Joe.My.God via Pam's House Blend, where you can read a more substantial piece.
(emphasis added by me)

"Public officials aren’t supposed to change their minds. But I firmly believe that it’s important to keep learning. Last week, while I was in Connecticut meeting with members of the gay and lesbian community from across the state, I had the opportunity to tell them what I’ve learned about marriage, and about equality. While I’ve long been for extending every benefit of marriage to same-sex couples, I have in the past drawn a distinction between a marriage-like status (“civil unions”) and full marriage rights.

"The reason was simple: I was raised to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. And as many other Americans have realized as they’ve struggled to reconcile the principle of fairness with the lessons they learned early in life, that’s not an easy thing to overcome. But the fact that I was raised a certain way just isn’t a good enough reason to stand in the way of fairness anymore. The Connecticut Supreme Court, of course, has ruled that such a distinction holds no merit under the law. And the Court is right." - Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), posting on his official site that he has reversed his position and now supports full marriage equality for LGBT Americans.