Ted Kennedy’s Health Deteriorating
I am very sad to say that it has been reported that Ted Kennedy is losing his battle with brain cancer and that he may only have a few months left. He has represented Massachusetts for forty-six years in the Senate. He was elected in 1962 to finish the senate term of his brother John F. Kennedy. He is the second most senior member of the Senate. He recently said, with classic Kennedy self-deprecating humor, ”People ask me how long I will continue to serve in the Senate. I give the same response, that is: I am going to stay here until I get the hang of it.”
He has had a distinguished career of public service that consisted of fighting for the working people and the poor. He has waged a battle to make health care affordable to all Americans for 46 years. His other passions include education and immigration reform, raising the minimum wage, defending the working man’s rights and their families, furthering civil rights, assisting Americans with disabilities, buttressing Social Security and Medicare and fighting for clean air and water.
He has been a husband and a father to his won children and he has been a father figure to both John and Robert Kennedy’s children after their untimely deaths. The mantle of responsibility on him was huge. Please see story about his life here at Boston.com.
I worked for his campaign in 1979 and 1980 in Boston and was pleased to meet him several times. He invited me to come to Washington and to see him there if I came. He knew that I adored his brothers, but I doubt that he remembered that. It didn’t matter, I got to see his office and all of the very special items that he has realting his his career and his brothers. He was very kind to me considering that I was just a very eager volunteer who admired his family’s dedication to public service and tradition of fighting for the poor and disadvantaged. I will never forget him. Part of the reason thta I wanted to go to law school was so that I could make a contribution, even if it was only in some small way, toward the greater good. I have not come anywhere near Senator Kennedy’s distinguished service. We are all very luck to have had him in the Senate. Few have contributed to this country as much as Ted Kennedy. According to USA Today:
Kennedy’s ability to maintain warm friendships with political foes has been a hallmark of his legislative career and has enabled him to be both a full-throated partisan and a bipartisan dealmaker. Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, says Kennedy is “an ideologue” whose “even greater passion to make something happen” has made him one of the Senate’s great compromisers.
It was Kennedy who helped shepherd Bush’s landmark education bill, No Child Left Behind, through Congress, although he later contended the president underfunded it. He worked closely with McCain on a failed effort to overhaul the nation’s immigration policy and give an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants a chance at citizenship.
“For the Democrats in particular and the nation at large, I think he has played the role of the most accomplished legislator of his time,” said Democratic strategist Bill Carrick. “Since 1962, I think he’s been involved in almost every significant debate that’s confronted the United States Senate.”
Kennedy, whose maiden speech in the Senate called for an end to the filibuster of a civil rights bill, has been an ardent advocate for minorities and women. He also has been a fierce opponent of Republican judicial nominees whom he suspects are likely of curtailing access to abortion and gay rights.
He’s a favorite punching bag of conservatives.
“Nothing will bring a Republican audience to its feet faster than a speech against high taxes, against federal control and against Ted Kennedy,” Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., quipped last year on the Senate floor when Kennedy was honored for casting his 15,000 vote. Alexander went on to hail Kennedy for his statesmanship, saying that even Republicans in the Senate “respect and appreciate” the senator’s efforts to reach across the aisle.
He’s an incredible speaker and he gave what is considered to be one of the greatest speeches of all time at Robert Kennedy’s funeral. The words that he wrote for his brother Bobby are equally applicable to him:
My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.
As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:
“Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not.”You can hear the entire eulogy by playing the last video on the “RFK” page above
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
:: 
It’s not socially acceptable to say anything about people unless it’s the truth.
Reply: Too bad you did not stick to the truth
Truth be told, Kennedy destroyed and slandered Justice Robert Bork, Justice Clarence Thomas (Pubic hairs on coke bottles ? Anita Hill who was a surrogate partner to the Thomas slander) and the destruction of many others who disagreed with the Kennedy socialist principles.
Reply: Bork was a lunatic and should never have been nominated. Thomas is a festering sore on the face of the Court. Another one who should never have been appointed. If anything, Kennedy was criticized for not doing enough with these two nomimnations. You are way off base.
Mary Jo Kopechne manslaughter – Anyone else would be doing jail time- Not Teddy. He’s connected.
Reply: I am not sure of that. I don’t think the evidence was there.
Writing education bills to benefit teachers while dumbing down kids through government intervention, homosexual instructions, restriction of free speech, allowing schools to become indoctrination centers and growing daycare centers within government funding to become indoctrination centers for kids from 6 months to 5 years soviet style.
Reply: His education bills were bipartisan efforts with Republicans and George Bush. Soviet style. You really are a nut. He’s a Democrat, not a socialist. You’ve been listening to Rush too much. Go adjust your tin hat. is it time for your meds?
60% of blacks dropping out from schools while administrators and teachers are added at an alarming rate as vote chaff for Kennedy and Democrats.
Reply: Nonsense. Are you hearing voices in your head?
Forced school busing to “integrate” when the entire racial integration process has been a dismal failure.
Reply: So, I suppose you think segregation is a good thing? Why a failure? What is your evidence of failure?
Championing the War on Poverty and spending 5 trillion dollars. Sixty (60%) of which went to reward democrat groups to sustain future democrat policy in the 1960′s with Lyndon Johnson.
Reply: Where do you get this? What evidence?
Fueling and empowering black race baiters like jesse jackson and Ralp Abernathy with head of the table seats at the Democratic National Committee.
Subverting journalism schools and slanting hiring only of left wing professors to teach the liberal lies of paying any price to corrupt the journalism profession as long as it promotes the liberal agenda.
Reply: Wow. You blame Kennedy for all of this? He’s been busy. Journalism schools too. How did the right wingnuts at Fox news evade him?
Promoting the Kennedy School of Governmnent. The greatest institution teaching subeversion of democracy in America. Political hacks and leftist profs dominate the “KSOG” creating more leftists hell bent on depreciating AMerican history and freedoms.
Initiating hearings against President Reagan for fighting A the Sandanista’s and siding with the contra’s. Reagan supported the Contra’s giving financial support, a difficult task politically after the Democratic sweep of congressional elections in November 1982. First Democrats passed the Boland Amendment, which restricted CIA and Department of Defense operations in Nicaragua specifically; in 1984, a strengthened Boland Amendment made support almost impossible. A determined, unyielding Reagan told National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, “I want you to do whatever you have to do to help these people keep body and soul together.” COntras were fighting for freedom and democracy whioch went against the grain of Kennedy an avowed Socialist.
Reply: Reagan was a joke and a failure of a President. He accomplished nothing. The contra thing did nothing. Kennedy is not a socialist you loon. Three of his brothers died in the service of this country. Now if you want to talk socialism, Reagan and Bush both qualify. First, Reagan’s massive tax cuts to the rich was the first bit of socialism in the sense that even more wealth was transferred to the wealthy. Then under Bush it happened again.
I’ve always believed Kennedy would do whatever necessary to avenge both brothers who were asassinated, by him destroying America within America.
Reply: Quite to the contrary, he’s been a great public servant who has made major contributions to this country. He has done nothing to destroy this country. Now Nixon, Regan and Bush have done plenty…
Kennedy has done enough damage to America. Now that he has reached the end of his life I have the greatest respect understanding why life is so finite and must end. As I did when Josef Stalin Died.
Reply: That was disgusting. You are as hateful and nasty as most of the people I observed at CPAC and almost as nutty.
JustJustice
March 2, 2009 at 10:26 pm
May he rot in hell. He fought to destroy our values and to enable generations of government sucking lazy bastards and illegal immigrants to bilk our nations money and unity.
Reply: You are way off base here. He has been a phenomenal public servant for years and years. As far as I am concerned, the people who really sucked Americans dry are the Wall Street investment bankers and hedge fund managers who gambled with our 401Ks. What do you have against immigrants. After all, we all came from somewhere else.
Common Sence
March 18, 2009 at 9:04 pm