good news...all from DavidMixner.com

...first, sorry to have been away for a couple of days. personal life has been, well, unmanageable at best and downright hellish at worst.

now for the good news:

-Didn't you just love the fact that during the funeral Mass of Senator Edward Kennedy part of the official religious rite included the words gay and straight? Right there in the Cathedral with the Cardinal reigning in his robes, Senator Kennedy, even in death, did not forget the LGBT community.

we've lost a champion for equality. Godspeed, Senator Kennedy...and TAKE THAT vatican city!

-In another historic first, Mayor Denise Simmons of Cambridge, Massachusetts (photograph) will marry her lesbian partner in an African-American church. Bravo to the Mayor and her partner and wishing them much happiness.

mad props to the AME church in mass! as one who attends a predominately AA Church, this is very encouraging!

-Famed political commentator Charlie Cook says that there are seven toss-up states in the 2010 United States Senate Races. The seven are Texas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, Connecticut and New Hampshire. In addition Pennsylvania, California and Colorado are only 'leaning Democratic' which could spell a tough year for the Dems!

as a proud, LIBERAL texan, this is prolly the best news i've read in AGES! we're definitely moving towards the political promised land...about time, since i'm so OVER wandering in the desert!!!

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.