As you know, Sen. Kennedy’s posthumous memoir comes out today. And we’ve obtained an exclusive excerpt where he blasts the Bush administration for the selling and execution of the Iraq war. Take a look.

Sen Tom Harkin (D-IA): I will carry the torch on a strong public option.

We’ve gotten several emails in recent days from readers asking why all the focus is on Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) when it comes to a compromise on public option while her GOP colleague, fellow Mainer and often-kindred spirit Sen. Susan Collins goes unmentioned. The reason: Collins is a firm no on public option or even a triggered public option, putting her vote out of play. She asserted as much yesterday on CNN. Watch.

Kudos to Maureen Dowd for going there. ‘There’ being some public recognition of what should be inescapable by now: that a lot of the more electric and intemperate reactions to President Obama come from people who cannot or will not accept that a black man is the President of the United States.

I think Dowd was right to see it behind Wednesday night’s outburst from Rep. Joe Wilson (R) of South Carolina, a man previously best known as one of the last hold-outs for keeping the confederate flag flying over the Capitol in South Carolina. And you didn’t have to wait for the night of the speech though. The day before the speech, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) of Georgia said Obama needed to show some “humility” when he showed up on Capitol Hill Wednesday night. I’ve heard presidents criticized, pilloried, even villified for lots of things. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard one warned to show some humility.

It’s no accident that both comments came from white men from the Deep South in their early to mid-60s. I won’t say because I don’t think this is all the GOP, just as I don’t think that all the opposition to Obama is rooted in atavism and paranoia. But it is a big chunk of it. And it’s the ‘chunk’ that’s got the voice at the moment and increasingly seems to be calling the shots.

I think this must be just really hasty or poor word choice (‘native’ for ‘ancestral’?). But TPM Reader AH just flagged for us that in his column today Howie Kurtz refers to Kenya as President Obama’s “native country.”

Back in Kenya

The Boston Globe has an interesting piece from Obama’s native country on attempts to cash in:

“The price of land here has skyrocketed because of rampant speculation about an Obama family museum that the Kenyan Ministry of Tourism has promised to build. And there have been some modest, but tangible, signs of progress that seem tied to the village’s new notoriety. Within a week of Obama’s election victory last year, the government began to pave the main road to town. It also brought in an electricity and water lines to Obama’s step-grandmother’s compound.

Late Update: As I suspected, poor word choice. Kurtz explains.

Crowd size controversies are as American as apple pie when it comes to major political events and protests. Let’s start by stipulating to that fact. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of quite these dimensions — where the reasonable and disinterested estimates (mid-to-high 5-figures) are so dramatically dwarfed by the fantasies of the organizers and participants (1.5 to 2 million). Read More

There’s so much stuff in today’s slideshow of the weekend’s Tea Party protest it was a bit difficult for me to know which picture to feature on the front page. There’s this picture with a sign that says “Keep Pushing Us … Find Out What Happens“. That’s a good conversation starter. And this poster of Obama that reads “When we smell the burning flesh from the ovens it will be too late for us all.”

In the end I chose this one.

Max Blumenthal hits the 9/12-Tea Party March with his video camera.

From TPM Reader RD …

What to call the Teabaggers gathering in DC this past weekend–the 2009 Birthing Man Festival!

It only *seems* like you’ve dropped acid.

I generally like my reader emails a tad more elaborated and not so sloganly. But there’s enough of a germ of something here that I wanted to share it with you. There is unmistakable counter-culture, performance art aspect to the thing. Even the revolt against numeracy.

ABC News is reporting that former Carter White House press secretary Jody Powell died today of an apparent heart attack.

Powell was a member of Carter’s “Georgia Mafia,” that blew through Washington in what was supposed to be a cleansing storm that ultimately proved to be short-lived. Powell stayed on in Washington, making frequent TV appearances as a political analyst and co-founding the public relations and consulting firm Powell Tate, where he was chairman at the time of his death.