If there's anything you can take away from yesterday's wildly successful rally, it's this: 'They've Got the Kooks, We've Got the People!'

I'll have some pictures to add once I get home [added!] but I just wanted to say that the HCAN people put together a great rally with several hundred people in the Federal Plaza.

William McNary led off with his usual rousing style. First Gov. Pat Quinn then Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky and Congressman Danny Davis spoke passionately about the need for health care now and what to do to make sure it passes. A number of other people spoke -- everyone from Lou Lang (who was in wonderful form) to Alexi Giannoulias, Julie Hamos, Toni Preckwinkle, Lou Harris and David Orr.

If you're in the Chicagoland area, you can show the teabaggers "Brooks Brothers Brigade" what a real grassroots movement looks like by coming to the HCAN Rally in the Federal Plaza (8/4, 4:30p-6p).

From Mitch Stewart, Organizing for America:

Congress is moving rapidly toward finalizing health care reform legislation, with crucial votes expected in both the House and the Senate within days. With so much at stake -- and the D.C. lobbyists going into overdrive -- we have to take our grassroots campaign to the next level.

There's an important difference between Blue Dogs and the rest of us: Universal Health Care isn't necessarily part of their agenda; it's most definitely part of ours.

Blue Dogs can afford to wait around hoping for something less earthshaking to come up. They can even afford to risk not getting anything at all.

It's the rest of us who are going to get screwed.

So turning up the heat on them makes a whole lot of sense. Here's what Mark Kleiman recommends:

From TPM:

Six key Senate Centrists--Ben Nelson (D-NE), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Ron Wyden (D-OR)--are asking Democratic and Republican leaders to slow down the pace of health care reform efforts.

From the same crowd, Wyden excepted, who gave us Sam Alito.

From the AP:

Obama wants the House and Senate to act on health care this summer so lawmakers can reconcile differences in their respective bills after Labor Day and put final legislation on his desk this fall.

Obama's all-out effort since he returned from his overseas trip last week has "galvanized things," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said.

Yahoo! It's time we made the same shift. It's time to bring universal health care to America.

The headline in the HuffingtonPost reads:

"House Health Care Bill Arrives: Would Cover 97 Percent Of Americans, Cost $1 Trillion"

Why do I feel like we've been here before? Fox News correspondent Mara Liasson just had a segment on NPR's Morning Edition that essentially did nothing but complain that the Democratic Administration no longer uses right-wing catch phrases, many of them the product of paranoia and fanaticism, such as 'Axis of Evil', 'War on Terrorism', 'Death Tax' and 'Right to Life'.

Disaster averted: Burris bows out.