Archive for August 27th, 2009
The only good thing we can say about Ted Kennedy: he was the rare Democrat who knew he had to work with Republicans
Someone challenged us to say something nice about Ted Kennedy now that he is dead.
The only thing we can say, honestly, that we liked about the man was that he was often the only Democrat, besides Hillary Clinton, who understood the importance of working with Republicans across the aisle.
Without him in the Senate, and without Clinton there to set that example as well, it’s going to be interesting to see if other Democrats will step up and encourage their colleagues to be sensible and pragmatic and work with the opposition.
Under Reid and Pelosi’s leadership, we think Congressional Dems will take the opposite track, and will pull more of the Dr. Utopia “We Won!” nonsense that leads to loggerheads and disaster. In their rush to ram Deathcare through, we feel Democrats will forget Kennedy’s compromising and accomodating nature and will instead try to use his corpse as a battering ram…all for naught in the end, since the American public does not like Democrats in partisan warrior mode.
Kennedy understood that.
Kennedy knew the Senate worked best when the big fish swam cordially together whenever possible.
Sure, he could be a partisan ass at times, like in the Bork hearings, but more often than not behind the scenes he was an effective deal maker and bridge between the two parties.
THAT part of him will indeed be missed, because there is no longer a stabilizing force to bring reason to loons like Reid or Pelosi.
We believe the bad in Ted Kennedy outweighed the good…but there was some good in there. We’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that.
ABC and NBC refuse to air ads critical of Dr. Utopia
This is stunning…but NBC and ABC are refusing to air ads critical of Dr. Utopia’s Deathcare push.
And this comes after ABC devoted so much time to Dr. Utopia’s informercial, and NBC’s Brian Williams followed Dr. Utopia around the White House bowing to him like a living God.
We don’t know how to push back against this kind of thing, people, but it’s very Big Brother to us when networks refuse to take money to air ads telling the other side of the political story…if such ads contradict the narrative the networks are working so hard to push…that everyone under the sun loves Deathcare and can’t wait to have grandma’s Medicare taken away.
Here is the ad they won’t run:
WILL THEY BE SERVING WAITRESS SANDWICHES AT TED KENNEDY'S WAKE?
Most of you don’t remember another of the vile things Ted Kennedy did in a life filled with such escapades…but we can’t forget the “Waitress Sandwich” piggery Kennedy and Dodd engaged in back in the 80s. And you know something’s truly disgusting and vile when current words fail to capture just how bad it is…so we have to invent something like “piggery” to articulate just how terrible Kennedy’s behavior was.
Read the article above for the full report, but the Cliff’s Notes (or Pig’s Notes, as the Kennedy case may be) are this:
In the 80s, Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd went to Washington restaurant La Brasserie, where they assaulted waitress Carla Gaviglio. Another waitress, Betty Loh, who was not to their liking, had been serving them when the two pigs spotted pretty blond Gaviglio and, after much wine and many cocktails, demanded her, Caligula-style. 225-lb miscreant Kennedy grabbed 103-lb Gaviglio and threw her on a table, then when she was disoriented, he picked her up and threw her into the puddle of moldering Jell-O that is Chris Dodd. With Gaviglio secure in Dodd’s arms, Kennedy climbed on top of her and began dry humping the waitress until her co-worker Loh returned, at which time Kennedy got up and dusted himself off and pretending nothing was happening.
The MSM doesn’t like to talk about the “Waitress Sandwich” incident any more than it will talk about Mary Jo Kopechne.
But we think all of us have a duty to remind those around us that the man being deified on the MSM wasn’t the real Ted Kennedy. The real Ted Kennedy was on display at La Brasserie, dry humping a waitress like a farm animal…the real Ted Kennedy was the coward who let a woman drown.
So, forgive us if our thoughts today, and during the whole Kennedy-palooza that will consume the MSM for weeks, will be squarely with Mary Jo Kopechne, Carla Gaviglio, Joan Bennett Kennedy, and the other female victims Ted Kennedy left in his considerable, orca wake.
The people of Missouri have every right to fire Claire McCaskill
Claire McCaskill is the most terrible United States Senator currently in office.
She has said, repeatedly, that she makes her major decisions by listening to what her children, minors, “bug (her) to do”.
This is a GROWN-ASS WOMAN who can’t think for herself, can’t exercise her own judgment, and who delegates her thought process to minors who “bug her and bug her and bug her”.
Well, that certainly bugs us.
And, apparently, it gets to a lot of Missourians too…because just listen to how they cheer when Claire Bear tells them if they don’t like the job she’s doing they can just fire her.
The only bad thing is they have to wait until 2012 to do it.
Where is Mary Jo Kopechne's Eulogy?
A great read by Henry Rollins, of all people, over at Vanity Fair, of all places (a magazine we once loved, but have not picked up since it got into the Hillary-bashing/Sarah-mangling business last year…and, with Dominic Dunne gone, we might just never read that rag again).
Essentially, Rollins asks the question of what would have happend to you had you driven drunk off a bridge and let someone drown in the passenger seat…while you and friends returned to the scene to stare at what you’d done, but nobody called the authorities while you all waited for the girl to die so she’d never be able to contradict your claims that you weren’t characteristically drunk at the wheel at the time.
You would have gone to prison.
You would have been called “MURDERER!” everywhere you went by anyone who knew you for the rest of your life (the way people did to OJ when he’d go eat in a restaurant or tried to play golf…and rightfully so).
You would not be eulogized without repeated references to your crime.
As the “Remembering Ted Kennedy” nonsense continues for the next few weeks, we will every day keep asking the question, “Where is Mary Jo Kopechne’s eulogy?”, “Where is the ‘Remembering Mary Jo Kopechne’ TV special?”.
If Republicans and FOX were smart, they’d throw something like that together — maybe something on Greta, a remembrance of Mary Jo Kopechne with interviews with her family to show Americans the beautiful and promising young woman Ted Kennedy drowned in 1969.
UPDATE: We never really thought of this until now, when someone put it into a comment, but Mary Jo Kopechne really did prevent Ted Kennedy from ever becoming president. He could have run in 1972 or 1976 if it hadn’t been for Chappaquiddick. Just imagine everything bad Kennedy could have done in the Oval Office…with his drinking problems and womanizing running out of control…and his Kennedy hubris convincing him he could walk on water…and with all that to prove as the kid brother of far greater men. Maybe Kopechne was an unknowing and unrecognized martyr who saved us all from ruin. Jimmy Carter was bad enough for 4 years in the 70s…just imagine if we had 4 or 8 with Ted Kennedy at the helm instead.
Alternate histories are interesting to contemplate. We see a lot of them written about what would have happened if the British won the American Revolutionary War or Hitler won WWII, but we’ve never seen an articulate piece on what would have happened if Chappaquiddick didn’t derail Kennedy’s White House ambitions.
This could be an interesting post in itself. It will always be a crying shame this woman lost her life…but maybe her death did more good and prevented more harm than any of us have ever realized.
Why is Ted Kennedy a murderer? Read this account of what happened at Chappaquiddick for the details you never knew
There are some of you out there who don’t understand why we’ve detested Senator Edward Moore Kennedy since childhood — even though we grew up in Democratic households, where our families always voted the party line, and pictures of Jack and Jackie, Franklin and Eleanor, and Bill and Hillary hung proudly on our walls (Jimmy Carter was always a known anti-semite embarrassment to us, whose single term was best forgotten).
But, whenever Ted Kennedy’s name was said by anyone on television, or Heaven forbid someone in the house, the room would grow quiet and more than one of the older women would literally spit on the floor. Then, the expletives would roll out.
Please read this article by Carl Cannon to understand WHY even staunch Democratic families detested Ted Kennedy and maintain he was a wealthy murderer whose family helped him get away with a horrible, unimaginable crime.
Few of you seem to understand exactly what Ted Kennedy DELIBERATELY did that night in 1969 — which constitutes murder, and not accidental or negligent homicide or manslaughter.
A small part of that night in 1969 can be chalked up to indiscretion and stupidity: Kennedy leaving the party with Mary Joe Kopechne, which was wrong for both of them to do, since Kennedy was married and Kopechne knew it. Kopechne should have had sense enough not to get into a car with a notorious drunk whom she’d observed drinking heavily that night — and a married drunk to boot. Even driving off the bridge doesn’t warrant our scorn…because if it was a drunken accident, it’s still not murder, just a continuation of the stupidity engaged in, primarily by Kennedy but by Kopechne as well, the entire night.
No, the murder happened when Kennedy climbed out of the car but knowingly allowed Kopechne to stay locked inside, to drown in the brackish water of the tidal canal.
The murder happened when Kennedy returned to the party, for more ass-slapping good times, and DELIBERATLY told the men there not to tell any of Kopechne’s friends she was underwater in his car…because he claimed he didn’t want anyone to be injured in a rescue attempt.
The thing is, if a rescue attempt had been mounted, Kopechne who was struggling for life in an air pocket for as much as 2 hours, might have been saved.
Kennedy decided Kopechne didn’t need a rescue attempt.
Kopechne didn’t need to be saved.
He made that decision, sobered up by a swim in the cold water, and realized it was better for him politically that she was dead, instead of alive to tell the tale…or tales, considering this was a Kennedy we’re talking about, Kopechne could have had a lot to tell.
That’s murder in our book.
We don’t believe there are any laws that REQUIRE bystanders or witnesses to dive into the cold water and try to rescue someone, especially if they believe they too could be injured. We also don’t know if there are laws that require you to call the police and report an accident where you believe someone could be dead or dying. Is that a requirement? Or, can you just go about your day and return to a party without letting anyone know a young woman could be drowning in an Oldsmobile at that very moment?
What Ted Kennedy did was PREVENT Kopechne’s friends from mounting a rescue attempt…from ringing the alarm bells and having all of Chappaquiddick come running to try to save that young woman’s life. Kennedy, and his lackeys, CHOSE to wait until the morning when Kopechne would surely be dead before alerting the authorities.
How any of those men were able to look at themselves in the mirror these last 40 years is beyond us.
Read the article by Cannon. Learn more about what Ted Kennedy did that night. And understand why, for our entire lives, sweet little old ladies who never said boo to anyone would spit on the ground and swear up a storm whenever this murderer’s name was mentioned in their company.
Howard Dean admits tort reform won't happen because it would upset TRIAL LAWYERS
This is what we’ve been talking about for a few weeks now: Democrats are scared of alienating trial lawyers, who are the largest contributors to the DNC. Howard Dean has come out and admitted Democrats will not include tort reform in the Deathcare bill because that would upset trial lawyers — upon whose contributions the Democrats depend.
Tort reform, in our opinion, is key to reforming healthcare. You can’t force through the Deathcare bill without taking down the trial lawyers’ abilities to sue everyone for malpractice and go after the insurance companies on a daily basis.
What’s amazing is how stupid Harvard and Yale educated ambulance chasing lawyers actually are, though.
Because even without tort reform, they’re essentially out of business in a single-payer system. Who are these people going to sue once the government drives private insurers out of business with a public option, co-op, or whatever they want to call it? If the government creates an insurance payer that is much cheaper for employers to take than the private insurance companies, what do you think businesses will do?
Once a cheaper government offering is on the table, private insurers days are numbered, since they will not be able to stay in business if they lose policy holders to the government option in droves, which is what we imagine would happen. It also sounds like, in many cases, the government will force employers to take that public option, or face penalties.
In the end, who are the trial lawyers going to sue in Dr. Utopia’s brave new Deathcare world? Will they try to sue the government? Good luck with that, because while Congress is chock full of fools, in reality only a few of them are truly stupid…and whatever legislation is passed to create a public option single payer system will undoubtedly make that system lawsuit-proof. Just imagine how many tax dollars would be drained every year if trial lawyers were allowed to attack the government and drain it dry the way they currently do private insurers.
This whole thing is a nightmare.
Republicans really need to rev the trial lawyers up and get them to see that Deathcare means the end of their fancy homes and flashy cars. Because without private insurers to sue, this whole caste of Democrat donors suddenly loses their high-living livelihood.
