Obama's actually starting to talk about the public option again. Keep letting him know you're paying attention -- if he really fears a repeat of 1994, let him know that listening to Rahm Emanuel is not the way to avoid one.

While Blue Cross' pet senator Kent Conrad pushes for co-ops, a scandal on the North Dakota prairie shows what happens when BCBS -- which would be part of the co-op system -- is allowed monopoly status in a given area.

Good news from California on the health-care reform front -- we're about to get John Garamendi (a strong friend of reform and someone MUCH better than the former occupant) in Cali-10.

It’s not just that the Villagers are passing along without comment or correction RNC-dictated lies about Teddy Kennedy. It’s that the Republicans’ lies are based on projection.

Joe Conason has a good piece in Salon on Edward Kennedy's liberalism, his backing of the public option, and his talent for true bipartisanship -- in other words, how Teddy could get even the most conservative Republicans to back his legislation on occasion without selling himself and us out. Add reformed Cigna executive Wendell Potter to the list of experts who back a public option. And because we need cute furry things in our lives, Rochelle Lesser (who is greater to me) offers us this lovely improvement on my first Tedicare (see also picture in this post).

Naming a bad bill after Teddy is an insult to his memory. It's better to name the key thing he wanted, the one thing that was non-negotiable to him, after him: The public option. In that spirit, I decided to break out the graphics program and create a little Teddy for Teddy, and call it "Tedicare". I've put a basic slogan on Tedicare's chest, but readers are invited to come up with better ones. Tedicare for All!

Max Baucus and his fellow travelers for Big Pharma and Big Insurance are pretending that single-payer champion Teddy Kennedy would approve of their selling him out with their co-op bills, saying he would welcome that "compromise". What they aren't telling you is that Teddy already did compromise by dropping single-payer for the public option, and eliminating the public option would make a "reform" bill worse than no bill at all.

One of the key thing the astroturfing teabaggers and their Republican fellow travelers have learned to do is to strongly disavow the very idea that the teabaggers' efforts to shut down Democratic legislators' town hall forums are anything but wholesome spontaneous grass-roots affairs, with no corporate or Republican backing whatsoever. As Jason Rosenbaum points out over at The Seminal, that just got a little bit harder to say with a straight face.

Dear CNN and Fox: This is what happens when you give a microphone, and false legitimacy, to people like Glenn Beck. Sow the crazy wind, reap the danger-to-herself-and-others whirlwind.