The Compliment: I received two wonderful comments -- so far -- on the Dickens's email below. I responded to one which mentioned JFK's famous inaugural "Ask Not" speech:

Thank you, Susan, for your kind words. I do not always get kind words but they surely are appreciated when I do. I believe JFK in his "Ask not" speech was calling the country, most specifically its young, to service. He was asking those who could to help those who could not. I also think FDR before him set a new rationale for government action WHEN its action is required to save the whole. It was the permission slip which the nation had never known, certainly at the time of Dickens’s visit, but extending to the 20th century as well.

FDR through his leadership gave the government the right and, indeed the obligation, to help when the many suffer extensive egregious wrongs by the few catapulting everyone into the death knell of Depression. Those wrongs were, in fact, righted by that great man whom I never knew but loved through the study of the history of that era and through my parents – despite their Republican leanings -- adoration of him. He did not shrink from his enemies he welcomed them, he did not try to compromise with the uncompromising, did not try to work with the unworkable but knew he needed to try something different that did work.

I worry that the our nation’s preoccupation with spending cuts and reducing government to an Ayn Randian postage stamp will be forged on the backs of those who can least afford it and that those who vote for these misguided and duped corporate lackeys will step on their own toes by falling prey to the sinister forces of race and to its camouflaged sound bites of small government and spending cuts.

I DEARLY hope that this debt ceiling manufactured problem which could have brought our country and the world to its knees, has been resolved. I even more prayerfully hope that the hard-fought-for benefits of the New Deal years that placed government front and center to solve the most dire economic threats and in doing so produced Social Security and its offspring Medicare will not ultimately face extinction. I do not want to see it succumb to those small minded egocentrists and over stuffed forces of Wall Street greed and the minions who serve them. This is a serious time of struggle and suffering. It should, I believe, provoke a clarion call to continue to help the least of these our brethren so that they do not perish from this earth.

An Apology: I apologize for the plethora of email regarding the latest most egregious Congressional debt ceiling vote compromising everything we elected our leaders to be in 2008. Please Google Keith Olberman's Special Comment on Current TV if you have not heard it already on the new cable network of Current TV. I provide the link below which Current TV has just posted to make it easier for you to do so. It is so important that I yet again write this email to you and provide you the link to hear it. (Do not be deterred by the one minute ad before the comment.) It is WELL worth waiting to hear this gem of auditory excellence!

I agree with 100% of everything he had to say but Keith says it so much more eloquently and passionately than I ever could. He made reference to the protests of the late 1960's of which I am so closely aligned if not in body then certainly in spirit. I yearn for those days when humanitarian ideals meant something and people took to the streets in non-violent protest to show it. It really did seem that our nation was being born anew -- for the better at least for that brief but inspiring-to-me moment. He talks about so much more than even that.

The link to Keith's Special Comment is posted below. If you cannot click on it then Google Current TV. I urge you to contact your cable provider if yours does not offer Current and ask them to make available the Current Channel. If you have it find the channel. FIOS channel for Current TV is 192. Current TV is new and unfolding in its content and owned in part by the brilliant Al Gore. Be patient but tune in often to see what it has to offer. It is getting better every day and soon I HOPE will upgrade its broadcast to compete with the glitz of other mainstream channels. It still is very good but getting better all the time and Keith alone is worth the price of admission.

I can ASSURE you it is infinitely better than the other go-along-to-get-along commentary one hears everywhere else. Please listen, savor and enjoy!

http://current.com/shows/countdown/videos/special-comment-the-four-great-hypocrisies-of-the-debt-deal