Showing posts with label ted kennedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ted kennedy. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

The Democrat Party's War On Women !!!

The Democrats are promoting a Republican War On Women meme, when they should be pumping out a Republican War On Freedom, Fiscal Sanity, and Stability meme.   
From Rand Simberg:

It should be shocking, by the conventional narrative, that the White House of a “liberal” president would be a hostile work environment for women, but it is not at all a surprise to anyone familiar with the history of the Democrats and the Left, going back at least to the 1960s, when a prominent Democrat politician got a pass from the media for abandoning a young woman (possibly pregnant by him) to drown in his car. The same man went on to later fame as the top slice of bread in a “waitress sandwich,” and yet was so lionized by the Left that not that long ago, at the time of his death, a woman(!) wrote that Mary Jo Kopechne might have been happy to undergo the terror as her lungs filled with the brackish water of Martha’s Vineyard had she only known what a great legislator he would turn out to be.



To see similar hypocritical Leftist misogyny, we need only go back to the last time a Democrat was in the White House. Whenever a woman came forward with allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct by Bill Clinton, the response of the Clinton defenders, both in and out of the media, was to attack her credibility, character, and virtue. Advisor James Carville famously said of Paula Jones (the young Arkansas state employee whom Clinton as governor had his state police guard procure to his hotel room for the purpose of orally pleasuring him), “Drag $100 bills through trailer parks, there’s no telling what you’ll find.”



Evan Thomas of Newsweek dutifully complemented the slander by declaring her on national television “just some sleazy woman with big hair coming out of the trailer parks,” though he later was compelled to apologize in print. (One wonders how residents of trailer parks felt about that, but I guess empathy for them is for the little people.) When Kathleen Willey accused the president of groping her in the White House, and was physically threatened for her trouble, feminist icon and (former) scourge of sexual harassers Gloria Steinem said that it was no problem — he was entitled to a freebie, after which Cathy Young of Reason magazine reported on “the death of sexual harassment.”

Remember the outrage from NOW in response to all of this?  That's funny.  I don't either. 


It got worse. As the Paula Jones lawsuit progressed, and the president committed acts of obstruction of justice (federal felonies) by perjury and subornation of perjury through threats and bribes, the White House was prepared to go after Monica Lewinsky, the woman about whom he engaged in such obstruction. She was bribed with jobs, and urged to in turn suborn perjury from her confidante Linda Tripp, by implying threats against her family. If the incriminating blue dress hadn’t turned up, their plan was to continue to cover up and lie, and accuse Lewinsky of being a crazy stalker. The White House orchestrated the leak of the personnel files of Pentagon employee Linda Tripp, the only person in the entire fiasco who told the truth, in an attempt (sadly quite successful) to discredit her. This included a mistaken felony arrest record that had been sealed since she was a teenager. She was vilified and maligned in the media, with late-night comedians mocking her physical appearance. It’s unlikely that many of these people were either conservatives or Republicans.

Or Libertarians. 
I don't think that Lee Wrights or Gary Johnson will kill any women if elected. 

Monday, May 23, 2011

America the stony-hearted

Neal Gabler has an editorial in the L.A. Times.  It's called "America The Stony-Hearted", and it shows how we've gone from a nation that meekly goes along with whatever ridiculous spending boondoggles the Democrats propose, to a cold-hearted group of selfish bastards.  The closing tag (which Mr. Gabler didn't write) is one of the funniest accidental juxtapositions I've ever read. 

It made me spew Coca-Cola and donuts all over a Firestone Auto Repair center waiting lounge. 

But before we get to the money quote, here's a typical paragraph:

One can see this division in something as simple as the denigration of the term "liberal," the "L" word, with its attendant idea that to be compassionate, caring and tolerant — virtues that had been celebrated, if only via lip service, by most Americans — is really to be mush-minded, weak and, more concretely, willing to give taxpayer largesse to the undeserving and lazy. (This was essentially the argument that some Republicans, such as former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), used when they sought to deny an extension of unemployment benefits.

The conservatives and libertarians that I know are, as a general rule, generous people.  It's just that the Department Of Health And Human Services, HUD, ACORN and such aren't their charities of choice.  The statists (as a very general rule) that I know?  They seem to think that lobbying to tax the rich is enough to exempt them from charitable giving. 

Folks, lobbying to take money from one person to give it to another, after taking a cut for yourself off the top, doesn't make you virtuous.  I'm a moral leper, but I've got that much figured out. 

Anyway, back to Mr. Gabler's editorial, and the side-splitting tag from the L.A. Times.  Here's the last paragraph. 

But it is to say that this moral reconfiguration has not only changed our politics and our perception of morality; it has changed us. If compassion is seen as softness, tolerance as a kind of promiscuity, community as a leech on individuals and fairness as another word for scheming, we are a harder nation than we used to be, and arguably a less moral one as well. In undergoing a revolution for the nation's soul, we may have found ourselves losing it.

Yeah, blah blah blah.  We should all get out of the way of those who best know how to spend our money. 

And here's the glorious tag line at the end of the editorial, courtesy of the L.A. Times....

Neal Gabler is at work on a biography of Edward M. Kennedy.

Go here to read how much Ted Kennedy gave to charity. 
Go here to read about the Kennedy tax avoidance strategy. 

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Unfortunate statement about the Ted Kennedy senate seat


Here's Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, on the possibility of a non-Democrat winning the Ted Kennedy senate seat:

"Why would you hand the keys to the car back to the same guys whose policies drove the economy into the ditch and then walked away from the scene of the accident?”



I don't know why we would give the keys to someone like that. Tradition, maybe?

Monday, January 18, 2010

For the Scott Brown truck bomb - Townes Van Zandt's "White Freightliner Blues"

My friend Leslie at Leslie's Omnibus has been keeping up with the election for what people insist on calling Ted Kennedy's senate seat.
It's NOT Ted Kennedy's senate seat. It's the Kennedy FAMILY senate seat. When JFK was elected president, he had a family servant named Ben Smith keep the seat warm until young Teddy came of age (he was not yet 30). Calling it the "Ted Kennedy Seat" does a disservice to the Democratic Party's Constitutional Monarch system.

Note to self: Write a post on why the Democrats have Superdelegates at their conventions and the other political parties don't.

Scott Brown, the Republican from out of nowhere, has caught the attention of The Teleprompter Jesus by driving a truck and mentioning the truck as proof of his just-us-folks credentials. Go here for more info. Obama recently said "So, look, forget the ads. Everybody can run slick ads. Forget the truck. Everybody can buy a truck." Brown responded with "Are you out of your damn mind? With 10% unemployment caused by your insane crap, and you wanting to tax or insure everything with a pulse? You think anybody feels secure enough to go out and buy a truck?" “Mr. President, unfortunately in this economy, not everybody can buy a truck. My goal is to change that by cutting spending, lowering taxes and letting people keep more of their own money.”

That's the essence of the 2010 Massachusetts truck controversy. I'm partial to the libertarian guy who is running as an independent, Joe Kennedy (no relation to the family which has long held the seat due to royal prerogative).

Leslie is asking that everyone post a truck photo or song to commemorate this exchange between Scott Brown and The Teleprompter Jesus. A truck bomb. She should have quite a collection by the time this thing is over with. This is Townes Van Zandt's 'White Freightliner Blues' as performed by Lyle Lovett, Ricky Skaggs, Alison Krauss, Jools Holland, and Faith Hill. (Imagine that lineup as an SAT question, where you're supposed to circle the name that doesn't fit !)



Ok, now you can forget the truck, Martha Coakley, and Scott Brown. GO JOE KENNEDY ! ! ! ! !

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Guess who came to dinner?

Martha Coakley, democrat candidate for the senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy, held a fundraiser last night. Here's The Wall Street Journal:

We've argued that the leading health industry CEOs will one day be exposed as the most short-sighted business leaders in history, but how to explain the gala fundraiser that their top lobbyists hosted for Martha Coakley last night?
Amid a Beltway panic, the health lobby is riding to the rescue of the Massachusetts liberal, whose defeat in the special Senate race next Tuesday could deny Democrats the 60th vote for ObamaCare and thus maybe spare the U.S. health system from the coming damage.
As first reported by Timothy Carney of the Washington Examiner, the host committee for the fundraiser at Pennsylvania Avenue's Sonoma Restaurant includes lobbyists for Pfizer, Merck, Eli Lilly, Novartis and sundry other drug companies that have been among the biggest of ObamaCare's corporate sponsors. Other hosts—who have raised at least $10,000 for Ms. Coakley—include representatives from UnitedHealthcare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Humana and other insurers. As far as we can tell, the insurance industry claims to oppose ObamaCare's current incarnation.
Naturally, lobbyists from America's Health Insurance Plans and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the major trade groups, were on hand too. Money follows power in Washington, obviously, though this example seems especially inexplicable given that Ms. Coakley's GOP opponent, state senator Scott Brown, may be the last chance to defuse the health-care doomsday machine. But maybe someone in the press corps will bother to mention this episode the next time President Obama takes aim at the "special interests" he claims are opposing his agenda.
Against overwhelming public opposition, the only things keeping ObamaCare alive at this point are power politics and the misguided corporate cease-fire that Democrats have either coerced or bought—or is homegrown at companies like Pfizer that are deeply invested in more government control of the economy. Ms. Coakley's election would make that outcome a certainty.

Can someone please explain to me, using little-bitty words that I can understand, why it is that requiring us to spend money with these monopolist wannabes is some kind of "reform" ?

Thursday, August 27, 2009

The Obligatory Post About Ted Kennedy

I'm a huge fan on the movie "Shattered Glass", a film in which journalist Michael Kelly is portrayed as a brilliant editor for The New Republic magazine. After leaving TNR, Kelly went on to edit several other news and opinion journals and was eventually killed while covering the war in Iraq.
I immediately bought a copy of "Things Worth Fighting For", a collection of Kelly's collected journalism pieces. One of my favorites in the book is this gem, which was originally published in GQ. The link is much shorter than the original. I hope you'll go there and get back to me. It's pure, undiluted greatness.

Next, imagine if GW Bush had done this....





But, as Shakespeare said (or maybe it was Christopher Marlowe), the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones. Here's Nick Gillespie, of Reason magazine on Kennedy's major accomplishment:

There is, buried deep within Kennedy's legislative legacy, a different set of policies worth exhuming and examining, precisely because they were truly a break with the normal way of doing business in Washington. During the 1970s, Kennedy was instrumental in deregulating the interstate trucking industry and airline ticket prices, two innovations that have vastly improved the quality of life in America even as—or more precisely, because—they pushed power out of D.C. and into the pocketbooks of everyday Americans. We are incalculably richer and better off because something like actual prices replaced regulatory fiat in trucking and flying. Because they do not fit the Ted Kennedy narrative preferred by his admirers and detractors alike, these accomplishments rarely get mentioned in stories about the late senator. But they are exactly the sort of legislation that we should be celebrating in his honor, and using as a model in today's debates about health care, education, and virtually every aspect of government action.



So at least he deregulated the trucking industry. I owe him a big one.

Here's a picture of him coming out of the swimming pool, shortly after killing somebody.

Multiple coats of high gloss Whitening to Instapundit for the collections of links.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Ask Not What Ted Kennedy Can Do For You, But What You Can Do For Ted Kennedy's Sense of Paid Voluntarism

Here's Reason magazine's Nick Gellespie on the gloriously misnamed "Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act":

Yesterday, President Barack Obama delivered (finally!) on arguably his most hope-changiest of all his campaign promises to use your tax dollars to support make-work jobs that will (finally!) allow America’s vast, all-ages reserve army of the unemployed to be paid volunteers with AmeriCorps. . . .First, public or national service is profoundly un-American as a historical concept and comes always and everywhere slathered in the stink of trench warfare and rhetorical horseshit. This is especially true when it is paid service even as those participating and spending your tax dollars luxuriate in the silky-smooth language of altruism. Which, last time I checked, was supposed to be free. Jesus rendered unto Caesar; he didn’t ask for a block grant from Pontius Pilate in return. That Obama pushes national service and voluntarism even as he works to limit tax breaks for charitable giving that drives all sorts of philanthropy is a classic screw-you, my-way-or-the-highway move.

And why hasn't this mis-step been reported around the globe?

A few things regarding this piece of self-congratulatory lard every bit as bloated and morally compromised as the man for whom it is named (as it happens, Obama seemed to be confusing Teddy K with JFK, proclaiming ""I want all Americans to take up that spirit of the man for whom this bill is named; of a president who sent us to the moon; of a dreamer who always asked 'Why not?'").

Read the whole thing if you get a chance. Worth committing to memory:

AmeriCorps is a program with a long and distinguished history of sucking even by government standards. It effectively comes in second to the standard-issue DMV bureau, with its director in 2003 dubbing it "another cumbersome, unpredictable government bureaucracy." Yeah, yeah, they can fix all that and become squeaky clean, yadda yadda yadda, and that still doesn't address the more basic fact that it is at best superfluous to what Americans, young and old, are already doing: Which is volunteering and "giving back" to the community up the ying-yang.

The concept of "paid" volunteers reminds me of the confusing voluntary/mandatory training camps the NFL gets confused about every summer. (See the 2nd commenter on that link.) It's one or the other, voluntary or mandatory. Not both. Or in another sense of the word, one can either do volunteer work or have a job. Not both within the same organization. If you're getting paid, it's a government job.

Gillespie gives Ted Kennedy credit where a wee bit o' credit is due:

(Kennedy) played a leading role in the deregulation of airline pricing and (even more important) interstate trucking, the latter of which is surely one of the greatest reasons why so much in America is now within reach of even poor people.

Even a blind hog can find an acorn every now and then.

A fresh coat of whitening to Instapundit for the link.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Senator Ted Kennedy

Yesterday I tried to point out the irony of Barack Obama’s most prominent supporters in the Senate being 1) a former Klansman and 2) someone who left his companion to drown after an auto accident.

Today the guy who failed to render aid, Senator Ted Kennedy, was diagnosed with malignant glioma, a type of brain tumor. The former Klansman, Senator Robert Byrd, broke down on the floor of the senate, sending his thoughts and prayers to the Kennedy family. It’s not on Youtube yet, but I’m sure it will be. I'll plug that in here if it's posted soon.

Addition from 9:45 p.m. - as promised. I heard a clip from this on the radio this afternoon. These guys have worked together, for better or worse, for the last 40 years.....


And there I was with yesterday’s piece of smart-assedness on my front page all day. The emails have been….interesting. Great timing on my part, huh?

Just to show the impact that all things Kennedy have on our culture, here are 36 of the top 100 search terms being entered into the Google search engine, according to “Google Trends” for May 20, 2008.

Malignant – a severe and progressively worsening disease or medical condition.
Glioma - any tumor formed in the glial, or supportive, brain cells.
Malignant Brain Tumor
Ted Kennedy Brain Tumor
Parietal Lobe
– In the senator’s case, the left lobe, the location of the tumor
Mary Jo Kopechne – Kennedy’s unfortunate passenger in the Chappaquiddick Bridge incident
Chappaquiddick – see bridge above
Joan Kennedy – Ex wife of Ted Kennedy
Kennedy Family
Senator Kennedy
Vicki Kennedy
Victoria Reggie Kennedy
– Current wife
Edward Kennedy
Chappaquitic
– proof that American’s can’t spell. Enter the word Chappaquiddick – it’s the bridge connecting the island and Martha’s Vineyard. Location of the senator’s auto accident.
Glioblastoma – see Glioma
Kara Kennedy – the senator’s daughter
Patrick Kennedy – the senator’s son
Boston Globe – the paper of record for all things Kennedy
Kennedy Curse – the series of accidents, assassinations and traumas surrounding the Kennedy family.
Joseph Kennedy – the senator’s father. Also father of Joe, John/Jack, Bobby, and Ted/Edward.
Teddy Kennedy
Define Malignant
– tending to be severe, and getting progressively worse.
Robert Kennedy – Senator Kennedy’s brother, assassinated while running for President in 1968.
Glioma Tumor
Cape Cod
– the location of the famous “Kennedy Compound”.
Rose Kennedy – wife of Joe, father of Senator Kennedy
Rosemary Kennedy – institutionalized sister of Senator Kennedy
Ed Kennedy
Malignant Definition
– tending to be severe, and getting progressively worse.
Joe Kennedy – either the patriarch Joe, or the son of Bobby.
Kennedy Chappaquiddick – already discussed above.
Ethel Kennedy – wife of Bobby
Brain Cancer
Longest Serving Senator
– Senator Robert Byrd, who sent an emotional message to the Kennedy family today from the floor of the Senate.

Out of the top 100 terms put into Google today, Senator Kennedy in some way accounted for 36 of them. Agree with him or not, that’s some serious influence. Is there anyone else who could dominate the national conversation like this?

Monday, May 19, 2008

A Byrd In The Hand....

Former Klansman Robert Byrd, the Democratic Senator from West Virginia, has endorsed Barack Obama for President.
The former KKK "Kleagle" and "Exalted Cyclops" stated that:

I believe that Barack Obama is a shining young statesman, who possesses the personal temperament and courage necessary to extricate our country from this costly misadventure in Iraq, and to lead our nation at this challenging time in history. Barack Obama is a noble-hearted patriot and humble Christian, and he has my full faith and support.

Senator Byrd entered the Senate in 1959, a period of service rivaled only by Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, another early Obama supporter in the Senate. You probably remember Senator Kennedy, whose anti-PT 109 moment in 1969 involved driving a car off the Chappaquiddick bridge. His heroic underwater escape from the car, which was burdened with an unconscious secretary, has become legendary. But not legendary enough to keep him out of the Senate for the last 40 years.
Hey, anyone can make a mistake. I know I make hundreds per day.
David Duke, Charles Manson, and Lieutenant William Calley have yet to endorse a Democratic candidate. The nation waits....
Book cover from Grouchy Old Cripple.