Has everybody read Ted Kennedy's proposal on healthcare

[Mass]

Just a part here, but read everything. Absolutely awesome. And a real proposition for healthcare at the same time. I just hope Kerry will be the first co-sponsor. This is the first real healthcare reform proposed since the Clinton's reform.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0112-37.htm

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Today, I propose a progressive vision for America, a vision that Democrats must fight for in the months and years ahead - a vision rooted in our basic values of opportunity, fairness, tolerance, and respect for each other.

These founding beliefs are still the essence of the American dream today.

That dream is the North Star of the Democratic Party - the compass that guides our policies and sets our course to freedom and opportunity, to fairness and justice - not just for the few, not just for some, but for all.

At our best, in all the great causes for which our party has stood, we have kept that dream alive for all Americans, even and especially in difficult times, and we will not fail to do so now.

Today, as we know too well, that dream is again in peril. The hopes of average Americans have faltered, as global forces cause the economy to shift against them. The challenge has been needlessly compounded, because Republican Congresses and Administrations have consciously chosen negative policies that diminish the American dream.

We cannot reclaim it by tinkering at the margins. No nation is guaranteed a position of lasting prosperity and security. We have to work for it. We have to fight for it. We have to sacrifice for it.

We have a choice. We can continue to be buffeted by the harsh winds of a shrinking world. Or we can think anew, and guide the currents of globalization with a new progressive vision that strengthens America and equips our citizens to move confidently to the future.

Our progressive vision is not just for Democrats or Republicans, for red states or blue states. It's a way forward for the nation as a whole - to a new prosperity and greater opportunity for all - a vision not just of the country we can become, but of the country we must become - an America that embraces the values and aspirations of our people now, and for coming generations.
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And this. Everybody has been talking about values. Teddy can find the world to talk about values without bringing that to religion.

In an election so close, defeat has a thousand causes - and it is too easy to blame it on particular issues or tactics, or on the larger debate about values. In truth, we do not shrink from that debate.

There's no doubt we must do a better job of looking within ourselves and speaking out for the principles we believe in, and for the values that are the foundation of our actions. Americans need to hear more, not less, about those values. We were remiss in not talking more directly about them - about the fundamental ideals that guide our progressive policies. In the words of Martin Luther King, "we must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope."

Unlike the Republican Party, we believe our values unite us as Americans, instead of dividing us. If the White House's idea of bipartisanship is that we have to buy whatever partisan ideas they send us, we're not interested.