We are not a fan of Ted Kennedy's in any description. However, I want to point out the rare time when he tried to do the right thing. The agency I work for has an absurd rule with hiring term employees. The term employees have no rights and are subject to arbitrary dismissal and next to zero union protection.
Due to an arbitrary law my agency was set to fire around 1000 term employees. The work would have to be done on overtime. Many of these jobs were in Vermont. Not surprisingly Bernie Sanders was MIA as were the other local politicians. According to our Union rep the sole person that stepped up to save the jobs was Ted Kennedy.
While there is legitimate reason to bash Kennedy for bad behavior in the Cold War and Immigration policy it is important to point out one he did get right.
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For decades, Edward Kennedy and the rest of his family were at the forefront of fundraising for both Noraid and the IRA – and is therefore, by any definition currently employed, a terrorist – and is soaked in the blood of thousands.
I hope the murderous terrorist scum-bag rots in hell.
This is true as are many other things but now is the time to wish him well.
I'll leave it to the Judge to decide Kennedy's heart.
I do wonder how Joan Kennedy will react. That breakup was ugly. He broke her heart.
Like all people Kennedy made life choices that were good and bad.
I did not have respect for the man because of many of the shadey things in his past and his "socialist" views and the direction he wanted to take this country.
However, I would not wish him to rot in hell as I would not wish this on anyone.
Speak no evil of the dead for their fate will be yours one day. Will you be remembered lovingly or with bitterness?
Well Beak, we'll have some sanctimonious clowns talking about whether or not they respected the man or not. But the right has been so bereft of any reasoning or humanity for these 30 years that it doesn't matter.
Kennedy tried to stand up for working class America and he tried to make this a more just nation. Those aren't values of the right and they would certainly rather have us believe that a man must be judged by one grave act.
So we'll have the Texans and assorted crackers talking about "socialist" views and talking about deciding who rots in hell as if they on have achieved some sort of holiness.
And the beat goes on as we try to save the world from the American south and its perversions of religion and justice and democracy. Ted Kennedy was a good soldier in that fight.
Beak, tie a can on it. Why is the British government speaking well of him for what he did to resolve the Irish standoff?
And what the bleep do you know about any ethnic violence outside Israel anyway?
Ducky
You have me confused with Scott.
Ted Kennedy did try to work against Reagan in the Cold War. He did make a mess of immigration policy.
Ducky I don't think along class lines as I am an individualist. The nation should be more like the South.
Worked against Reagan?
When? When the moron cut and ran from terrorists in Beirut after that fat punk Sharon started writing checks his ass couldn't cash?
When Ronnie the Dipstick was selling arms for hostages?
The Cold War was effectively over when Kennedy's brother backed down the Soviets in Cuba. Reagan was a right wing circus clown.
Goodness, Beak, that man ought to to rot in hell for so many reasons. If you do not want to say anything unkind (which speaks for you) don't say anything at all.
Ducky
That is revisionism and ignores the reality of the Cold War. Communism expanded under Carter.
Editrix
He was not a great person and his politics were dreadful. He was a mediocrity who largely got by on his brothers name after martyrdom.
However, when the workers in my agency needed a friend he was there.
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
Egalitarian immigration. You should know all about his first bill, Beak.
What was revisionist, Beak? The part about Sharon being a fat punk or the part about the Cuban missile crisis? Because if you think Ronald Raygun had anything to do with winning the cold war you are insulting a lot of people who did the lifting. And none of them were named Reagan.
Ducky
We Texans have a simple word for socialist dimwits like yourself and we generaly flush it down the toilet with the rest of the socialist crap that comes out of your mouth. :)
By the way Ducky poo isnt the term "cracker" black use to slur the white people? Is your true color showing through?
I wasn't going to say anything bad about the murderer and drunken sod Ted Kennedy, but screw it.
I always wondered why Kennedy translated the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938 nearly verbatim into the 1968 Gun Control Act.
Not so much why he plagiarized the Nazis, being that he was a fellow leftist and his daddy such a fan of Hitler, but rather why he didn't even try to rephrase the plagiarism to make it less obvious.
Kennedy won the Cold War? HaHaHaHa, that's the best one I've heard yet from the Duckster. Kennedy CAUSED the Cuban Missile crisis, and he got out of it by tucking his tail between his legs like the little cur he was and agreeing to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan. The only "heavy lifting" Kennedy ever did was when he had to lift himself up off the floor after Khruschev mopped it with him in the course of their first summit.
In the meantime, Kennedy got us into Vietnam, where he and his little punk brother Bobby conducted the assassination of the rulers of South Vietnam, the Diem Brothers, something Ducky would be raising the roof about had it been done by a Reagan or a Bush.
For his next trick, the little punk Bobby, presumably with Camelot John's blessings, kidnapped a man without a hearing and had him dumped in the jungles of Guatamale with nothing but the clothes on his back and the money in his wallet, and did all this without even so much as allowing the man a hearing, an appeal, or even the time to pack a suitcase or call his family to say goodbye.
Translation-the Kennedy's were too bit motherfuckers who took abuse of power to a previously unheard of level while trying to turn government cabinet departments, especially the Justice Department, into their own private little fiefdoms for the imposition of their will on the country.
All of that said, I agree with Beak that Ted Kennedy did do some good things. It would be awful hard for somebody to achieve his level of national prominence and authority over such a long period of time and not do some good things, and still manage to get elected, even if he is a Kennedy.
The trick is balancing the good with the bad and judging him accordingly. I have done so and decided that he comes up seriously lacking.
As far as rotting in hell goes, I am far more concerned with the hell Kennedy has tried to turn this country into for the rest of us than I am about the private hell he created for himself.
"However, when the workers in my agency needed a friend he was there."
When Mary Jo Kopechne needed a friend, he was NOT there.
Editrix
This is true, but life is filled with ironies. I know all the criticisms are 100% valid. Yet I know that when my coworkers needed a friend he was there for us.
I had a very difficult time grasping this concept when it happened. It would be easier for me to echo the sentiments I read here. He did do all those dreadful things. Yet he did the right thing
a few times.
History will not be kind to him and his legacy will be as you stated.
Why is the British government speaking well of him for what he did to resolve the Irish standoff?
Because it is politically expedient for the to do so and it helps to keep a peace.
But that is the government - ask the average man / woman on the street of any mainland city and you will find a near universal loathing of the entire Kennedy clan .. and Edward Kennedy in particular.
Giving Edward Kennedy a an honorary knighthood earlier this year was the single most unpopular act of the current Labour British government - even more unpopular than dragging us into America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - so that is saying something.
Look at the newspapers at the time and you wont find a single newspaper editorial - from either the left of right - which wasn't outraged.
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