Posted on 05/17/2008 9:02:55 AM PDT by COUNTrecount
HYANNIS -- U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy was rushed by ambulance to Cape Cod Hospital this morning after falling ill at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport.
Hyannis fire responded to the compound after a call was made around 8:30 a.m. It's unclear what Kennedy's medical condition is, but after he spent almost two hours in the emergency room a decision was made to transfer him to Mass General Hospital in Boston.
Kennedy, 76, was placed on a stretcher and wheeled out to the MedFlight helicopter around 10:15 a.m. where it took off from Barnstable Municipal Airport.
The Kennedy family is preparing to host the annual Best Buddies Challenge event in Hyannisport this afternoon, which is a fund-raiser for the organization. Best Buddies was founded by Anthony Kennedy Shriver and helps people with intellectual disabilities.
Hundreds are expected to participate in the event, which kicked off this morning with a 100-mile bicycle ride from the Kennedy Library in Boston to Hyannisport.
A concert at the Kennedy compound is scheduled for tonight.
Kennedy has represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate for forty-three years.
He was elected in 1962 to finish the final two years of the Senate term of his brother, Senator John F. Kennedy, who was elected president in 1960.
Since then, Kennedy has been re-elected to seven full terms, and is now the second most senior member of the Senate.
Mod Note: We're watching this thread and are more than happy to hand out suspensions
He must be incapacitated.
Very nicely stated.
Like I said on the other thread before it was pulled, if something happens to Ted get ready for a non-stop Kennedy-fest on TV for a long time.
Would the governor name his replacement? Could a Republican take his place?
This doesn’t sound good for him. At his age and him being as large a man as he is it could be really bad. I don’t like his politics but beign raised Irish Catholic the Kennedy’s were always held up as the shinning acheivement in this country. In our house there was a photo of the Pope and JFK side by side. Prayers to the family.
I was thinking the same thing
Sounds very much like an eulogy
I wonder if they know something we dont, or are just reading between the lines.
Amen
I hope the Senator makes a full recovery, if for no other reason that he’s been such a long-time figure of fun for us and I don’t want that to end yet.
That said, I’m guessing the symptoms must have been something other than garbled speech.
Regardless of my personal feelings, prayers for him.
not anymore; rule was changed in ‘04 when it looked like
Kerry might win and they didn’t want a Republican gov
(Romney) appointing a successor. A Dem is in office now,
Deval Patrick
if he has already passed away...they will wait until the family has all been told before announcing it on TV
I will pray for his recovery and his soul. It doesn’t sound like this will end well for him.
Self deleted to save the moderator the trouble. Prayers offered to his family though.
I can’t even imagine how difficult that had to be to go through. (((hugs)))
Exactly. There was also a tradition (Christian? I do not know.) in this country originally that one was NOT supposed to pray for oneself but for others. I learned this from The Little House on the Prairie books (true stories of growing up in covered wagons and homesteads in the Midwest by Laura Ingalls Wilder). Their family was starving to DEATH and when some men went out in a blizzard to ask one distant farm they knew of for some of their seed wheat to eat, young Laura was told by her mother NOT to pray for their own family’s survival; that G-d would think ill of them for that. So she prayed for those young men instead.
Anyway, if Kennedy should pass, it would be a HUGE event in this land. Let’s all hope and pray that he survives, recovers fully, but as someone upthread already said, retires peacefully to one of his compounds.
Pat Buchanan said Kennedy was a “great bi-partisan” Senator.
Chris Wallace said he was “lucky” enough to be invited to Ted’s Birthday party last year.
I wonder, for his size could he have apnea so bad they need to help him breath if he is unconscious, like when he is sleeping but he can’t wake himself to take a breath?
>>Could a Republican take his place?
Knowing Deval Patrick and the state of MA (about 4 per cent of officeholders are GOP and hardly any major ones*), no
*—let’s see, sheriff of Essex County is a Republican.
Gov? Lt Gov, Atty Genl, Auditor, most legislators,
Treasurer, et al, all Dems.
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