We'll run off that bridge when we get to it.
Posted on 08/22/2009 6:00:29 AM PDT by IbJensen
As soon as his cancer was detected, I noticed the immediate attempt at the “canonization” of old Teddy Kennedy by the mainstream media. They are saying what a "great American" he is. I say, let's get a couple things clear and not twist the facts to change the real history:
1. He was caught cheating at Harvard when he attended it. He was expelled twice, once for cheating on a test, and once for paying a classmate to cheat for him.
2. While expelled, Kennedy enlisted in the Army, but mistakenly signed up for four years instead of two. Oops! The man can't count to four! His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, former U.S. Ambassador to England (a step up from bootlegging liquor into the US from Canada during prohibition), pulled the necessary strings to have his enlistment shortened to two years, and to ensure that he served in Europe, not Korea , where a war was raging. No preferential treatment for him! (like he charged that President Bush received).
3. Kennedy was assigned to Paris , never advanced beyond the rank of Private, and returned to Harvard upon being discharged. Imagine a person of his "education" NEVER advancing past the rank of Private!
4. While attending law school at the University of Virginia , he was cited for reckless driving four times, including once when he was clocked driving 90 miles per hour in a residential neighborhood with his headlights off after dark. Yet his Virginia driver's license was never revoked.. Coincidentally, he passed the bar exam in 1959. Amazing!
5. In 1964, he was seriously injured in a plane crash, and hospitalized for several months. Test results done by the hospital at the time he was admitted had shown he was legally intoxicated. The results of those tests remained a "state secret" until in the 1980's when the report was unsealed.. Didn't hear about that from the unbiased media, did we?
6. On July 19, 1969, Kennedy attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts . At about 11:00 PM, he borrowed his chauffeur's keys to his Oldsmobile limousine, and offered to give a ride home to Mary Jo Kopechne, a campaign worker. Leaving the island via an unlit bridge with no guard rail, Kennedy steered the car off the bridge, flipped, and into Poucha Pond..
7. He swam to shore and walked back to the party, passing several houses and a fire station. Two friends then returned with him to the scene of the accident. According to their later testimony, they told him what he already knew - that he was required by law to immediately report the accident to the authorities. Instead, Kennedy made his way to his hotel, called his lawyer, and went to sleep. Kennedy called the police the next morning and by then the wreck had already been discovered. Before dying, Kopechne had scratched at the upholstered floor above her head in the upside-down car.
The Kennedy family began "calling in favors", ensuring that any inquiry would be contained. Her corpse was whisked out-of-state to her family, before an autopsy could be conducted. Further details are uncertain, but after the accident Kennedy says he repeatedly dove under the water trying to rescue Kopechne and he didn't call police because he was in a state of shock.
It is widely assumed Kennedy was drunk, and he held off calling police in hopes that his family could fix the problem overnight. Since the accident, Kennedy's "political enemies" have referred to him as the distinguished Senator from Chappaquiddick. He pled guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, and was given a SUSPENDED SENTENCE OF TWO MONTHS.
Kopechne's family received a small pay out from the Kennedy's insurance policy, and never sued. There was later an effort to have her body exhumed and autopsied, but her family successfully fought against this in court, and Kennedy's family paid their attorney's bills... a "token of friendship"?
8. Kennedy has held his Senate seat for more than forty years, but considering his longevity, his accomplishments seem scant. He authored or argued for legislation that ensured a variety of civil rights, increased the minimum wage in 1981, made access to health care easier for the indigent, and funded Meals on Wheels for fixed-income seniors and is widely held as the "standard-bearer for liberalism". In his very first Senate roll, he was the floor manager for the bill that turned U.S. immigration policy upside down and opened the floodgate for immigrants from third world countries.
9. Since that time, he has been the prime instigator and author of every expansion of an increase in immigration, up to and including the latest attempt to grant amnesty to illegal aliens. Not to mention the pious grilling he gave the last two Supreme Court nominees, as if he was the standard bearer for the nation in matters of “what’s right". What a pompous ass!
10. He is known around Washington as a public drunk, loud, boisterous and very disrespectful to ladies. JERK is a better description than "great American". “A blonde in every pond” is his motto.
Let's not allow the spin doctors to make this jerk a hero -- how quickly the American public forgets what his real legacy is. Let’s keep this going for truth, justice and the American way .
Don’t forget the 4th brother, who may have been the good one. He died while flying in a radio controlled bomb headed towards Germany. Old Joe had pinned all his hopes on the oldest brother, but after his death, had to start working with less and less.
Ditto.
He also called his cousin and tried to get him to take the blame for Mary Jo
“I’d rather be hunting with Dick than driving with Ted”
LMAO!
We'll run off that bridge when we get to it.
Some in Massachusetts say Ted invented the “graveyard vote” and I tend to agree.
For decades he has won re-election by large margins but I can’t find anybody who has ever admitted to voting for him.
His biggest Senate challenge came in 1994 from Mitt Romney, where it looked like Teddy was finally on his way out. But Romney played the “gentleman” and refused to hammer on all of Ted’s many scandals, which cost him the election. (Romney later won the governorship in Massachusetts, which I suspect might have been payback from the Kennedy machine.)
Actually, until you mentioned it, I’d forgotten. All I really remember is a commercial on ABC (I think) for a week or so advertising a TV movie, “Joe: the Forgotten Kennedy”.
Were his name not KENNEDY, Teddy would be employed at a local Wendy’s. Part-time, no doubt.
The Democratic party is a criminal enterprise. (Hi, Google!)
L0L
what is wrong with the people of MASS for electing and re-electing this scum?
I imagine that his family wouldn't let him have a real limousine because that would look bad politically for a champion of the poor & downtrodden. But I imagine they made him have a driver because they knew he would have a drunken driving accident just about every night if he tried to drive himself.
But he "borrowed" the keys like a fratboy because he felt like having a good drunken drive with a pretty woman. And the inevitable occurred.
Romney lost because he rejected the Reagan era and tried to run as a me-too liberal, in a year that saw Republicans take back Congress.
When he goes to his just reward, I won't be listening to the radio or watching TV for a couple of days.
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