I generally put new posts here on Saturdays, the only day I can really spend writing things for which I do not get paid.  With not much time for writing here today, I will let a few presidents do my talking for me:


First, the current one, on the occasion of his inauguration:

What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.

His predecessor, in 1961:

In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than in mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course.

Their predecessor, in 1933:

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.

So, now is our turn. It is Sunday. The Senate will vote their stripped down, far less than half a loaf bill
on Tuesday and then it will go to conference.

We know now that the Speaker was not the problem. The fear of the filibuster was. (Maybe not completely, since it appears that 60 votes are needed even without a filibuster).

So, where do we get the sixty? Well, the four who seem to have the most say in this matter are the Maine babes, Senators Collins and Snowe, as well as Senator Specter, a Republican in a Democratic commonwealth, plus the faux Democratic Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

If you live and vote in Maine, Pennsylvania and Nebraska, you need to do whatever it is you did to get the President elected. (OK, Nebraska, you didn't do much, butnow is your chance).

This is what Presidents Obama, Kennedy and Roosevelt were talking about. This is not a tv show, for you to watch and cheer on your favorite, asking him to do it for you. I won't republish President Kennedy's line about doing for your country, but another of his lines, the one which ended his inaugural address:

With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

Let's go.