Thursday, August 27, 2009

so long, Teddy

You wanna know why we should honor the memory of Edward Kennedy? It's not his many accomplishments, it has nothing to do with Chappaquidik or No Child Left Behind, it's not his family legacy or even his decades of service to Massachusettes and America.
It is because even though he was a really rich guy, he never acted like those who were less fortunate than him were that way because they deserved to be. That alone places him high above the entire Republican Party and many of his fellow Democrats.
noblesse oblige, baby!
That's all I've got, since you've heard all of the usual stuff elsewhere (though the Rude Pundit does a nice piece that ought to be required reading for all the sour-grapes Republicans out there feasting on Kennedy's dead flesh).


My fear now is that a total-crap health care bill will be passed with some name like The Edward Kennedy Memorial Health Initiative, so that Democrats have to vote for it, but all it will be is yet another permission slip to Big Pharma and The Insurance Industry to continue raping ordinary Americans for another fifteen years.

7 comments:

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

A cruel blow to lose him on the cusp of something great, Obama has lost his healthcare conscience.

Unknown said...

The Big O is on my last nerve regarding healthcare reform.

Teddy was a good man, regardless of how much money he had or how many silver spoons were in his mouth at any given time.

He wasn't perfect because NO ONE IS.

Unknown said...

Oh and RP's piece was great..as is his latest one on Teddy.

daveawayfromhome said...

Read this and prepare for treachery. I'm really starting to think that the Democrats are going down in 2010, and they'll have one to blame but themselves.
Of course, we have no one to blame but ourselves, either, for not tossing the whole lot on both sides out. After the disgraceful showing of most Democratic office-holders during the Bush years, did we really expect anything different?
Time to clean house from the bottom upwards.

Unknown said...

Dave, I think they will start the big downward spiral too!

I have been on this train of thought since the shit started hitting the fan on healthcare...which was day one of course.

I truly am NOT a Democrat, and I am beginning to gag over the whole lot of them. I have been registered as Decline to State for over two decades.

daveawayfromhome said...

I've never been registered with a political party, always staying independent. I've never had cause to regret that, even though I've always despised the Republicans (they've always struck me as "mean", and I define that as both hateful and small).

Unknown said...

I'll Miss Teddy.

Like Dusty said, he was not perfect but you had to appreciate his heart and drive. As for healthcare, it was on its way down the crapper before his death and now the toilet will just be flushed that much sooner.

It pisses me off.

I saw a story the other day about this poor guy who just got laid off and his wife, 8 months pregnant, goes into a comma and both wife and child are in trouble, and, and, and . . .

...he stands out in the center of intersections collecting money to pay the hospital bills.

the local news was doing a story, asking for donations, but never once, NEVER ONCE, pointed out how screwed up this is! Never once made the connection back to a crappy healthcare system that values the rich over the poor, the well insured over the poorly insured. It sickens me.

Yes, Obama lost his healthcare conscience when Kennedy died, but it was slipping even before he was diagnosed with cancer in my opinion.

R