IF and I stress the word IF this is true, I'm chillin' the champagne and getting ready to dance in the streets! LOL!
Howie column from the NY Post
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01292008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/teddys_last_call_955655.htm
TEDDY’S LAST CALL
By HOWIE CARR
January 29, 2008 — BOSTON
TED Kennedy couldn’t help himself. He decided to throw his own last hurrah.
“This is the first good thing that’s happened to the Republicans all year,” said one Bay State Democratic politician yesterday, watching Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama on TV. “He’s reminding everyone why sometimes they can’t vote Democratic.”
Teddy turns 76 in three weeks. He’ll be 80 when, or if, he next faces the voters. Where his nephews used to run his Senate campaigns, now it’s his grand-nephews. He is, as they say at the St. Patrick’s Day breakfast in South Boston, rounding third. Kennedy is nearing the checkout counter.
As late as Sunday afternoon, Clinton coatholders were blaming Ted’s wife, Vicki, for the unexpected nod to Obama. More likely, it was Ted’s call alone.
Go left, young man: That’s been the Kennedy mantra since Bobby’s murder 40 years ago. They’re not just for abortion; they’re for partial-birth abortion. They’re not just against the surge; they’re against the war.
JFK talked about the rising tide; the Kennedys have been swimming against it. Look at the last generation - Kathleen Townsend Kennedy, defeated for governor of Maryland; Joe Kennedy, reduced to membership in Hugo Chavez’s amen chorus in return for cheap Venezuelan oil. Their brother Max was even forced to drop out of a 2001 House race in Boston on the grounds of complete political ineptitude.
The only Kennedy relative who’s really succeeded lately in politics is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. But the Kennedys stubbornly refuse to change course. Like the royalty they think they are, they never learn, and they never forget.
Now Bill Clinton feels betrayed. After all he did for them - the Cabinet job for then-in-law Andrew Cuo- mo, the ambassadorship to Ireland for Willie Smith’s mother, Jean . . . Have they no gratitude?
To which the answer would be: No, they don’t - as any number of Massachusetts politicians, dating back to James Michael Curley, could attest. It’s all about them. It’s their movie, and everyone else is an extra.
A political endorsement is almost always more about the endorser than the endorsee. In this case, Kennedy reinvents as his brother a freshman senator whom he was confusing with Osama bin Laden three years ago.
At the start of this presidential cycle, Teddy was backing his Senate colleague, John F. Kerry. Then he privately let the word go out to a new generation that he was with Sen. Chris Dodd, his old drinking buddy from the 1980s. Some of the lesser royals publicly endorsed Dodd, while others (like Townsend) have stuck with the Clintons.
But they don’t matter. Those Kennedys in the direct line of succession - Ted and Caroline - have thrown in with the insurgents. So has Ted’s son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy.
Adding insult to injury for the Clintons, Teddy delivered his stemwinder yesterday as Hillary campaigned here in Massachusetts. In fact, the Kennedys stole the spotlight not only from Hillary but also from the State of the Union Address.
Both cited JFK - with Caroline mentioning an earlier American University speech in which her father vowed, as she put it, “to make the world safe for diversity.”
Teddy, the old war horse for racial quotas, denounced politics that “parse us into separate groups.” He trotted out all his customary bromides - on universal health care, global warming, illegal immigration. In the media, the usual suspects swooned in the usual ways.
But (perhaps ominously for the fall campaign) the right-wing Web sites were also aflame. The customary Photoshopped pictures of Mary Jo Kopechne in a sinking 1967 Oldsmobile were replaced by photos of Hillary, her hands raised, her mouth open, panic stricken in the Olds’ backseat.
As one poster summed up the red-state reaction on a California thread: “Can’t drive, can’t fly, can’t ski, can’t skipper a boat - but they know what’s best for us.”
Ted Kennedy’s back in the spotlight. It was fun yesterday. He’ll soon know how long that sensation lasts.
Howie Carr is a columnist for The Boston Herald.
Say, is Giles Threadgold still alive and mentally competent?
I'd like to hear him defend this move. One segment only, please, then one segment of him going up against callers.
And can someone explain why Dan Kennedy, and others, say Finneran's conviction was a "travesty"?