RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Kennedy: Iraq is Bush's Vietnam

Quote:

---

Steve T said:
Didn't we know that ages ago?

---

Well, at least half of America did

Quote:

---

Matter-eater Man said:
I'm surprised conservatives would say to much about Kennedy's gaffes, you guys forget who you voted for President?

---

Quote:

---

the G-man said:
I see that no one is actually disputing that Kennedy's remarks were, to put it kindly, ill informed. At best, rather than get a defense of Kennedy, we're getting a rehash of the tired "yeah, well, Bush is a moron" ploy.

---

Quote:

---

the G-man said:
I see that no one is actually disputing that Kennedy's remarks were, to put it kindly, ill informed. At best, rather than get a defense of Kennedy, we're getting a rehash of the tired "yeah, well, Bush is a moron" ploy.

---

Quote:

---

the G-man said:

Quote:

---

the G-man said:
I see that no one is actually disputing that Kennedy's remarks were, to put it kindly, ill informed. At best, rather than get a defense of Kennedy, we're getting a rehash of the tired "yeah, well, Bush is a moron" ploy.

---

---

Quote:

---

the G-man said:
I see that no one is actually disputing that Kennedy's remarks were, to put it kindly, ill informed. At best, rather than get a defense of Kennedy, we're getting a rehash of the tired "yeah, well, Bush is a moron" ploy.

---

Quote:

---

Wednesday said:
Well, if you really wanna get into it, it's not a ploy, it's a comparison.

If you're going to insist that "Kennedy's remarks were, to put it kindly, ill informed," then you should also admit that Bush's comments are ill informed, to put it kindly. But you don't. You call posting Bushisms a ploy. Well then, your comments concerning Kennedy are a ploy. "Kennedy Flunked History" is a ploy.

---

Quote:

---

That's still a bitter liberal partisan smear on your part that bypasses the truth.

---

Quote:

---

...In contrast to Ted Kennedy's remarks about President Bush, which are vicious accusations based on a pathetically flawed argument. Not just a bungled sentence, but the very foundation of Kennedy's partisan attack is based on science fictional misrepresentation of the facts, and pure malice on his part.

---

That sounds very different from the previous posters who declared Kennedy as "senile" or a "lush". It's somehow fair to make these judgements from one gaffe? As for pathetically flawed arguments, have you ever heard Bush talk about his plans for Social Security?

Quote:

---

Wonder Boy said:
That's still a bitter liberal partisan smear on your part that bypasses the truth, that Kennedy's arguments are baseless.

---

Quote:

---

Wonder Boy said:

The fact is, you pick any politician who is scrutinized nationally during pretty much every hour he is awake --republican or democrat-- you follow that person with TV cameras pretty much every hour he is awake

---

Quote:

---

Wonder Boy said:

and , and no matter how eloquent he is most of the time, he will slip up and say something stupid, once a day, probably several times a day.

---

Quote:

---

Wonder Boy said:

And in the case of George W Bush, you can bet the liberal partisan and bitterly anti-Bush media will be there every time he slips, to portray Bush in the most negative light they can manufacture.

And you can bet just as surely that they will blunt the impact of his most eloquent moments, through selective soundbyting.

---

This "liberal partisan and bitterly anti-Bush media" is something for another thread, but though I'll admit there are some very liberal outlets out there, I'll be as quick to add that there are some very conservative outlets. When Bush says something eloquent, when Bush says something right, we hear about it.

And the G-man makes a new thread about it .

Quote:

---

Wonder Boy said:

Further, you can go through 8 years of Rush Limbaugh broadcasts, or some other conservative source, and find similar stupid remarks by Bill Clinton, for pretty much any day of Clinton's presidency.

---

Quote:

---

Wonder Boy said:

Finally, the goofy remarks of Bush and Clinton were bungled words in an otherwise lucid and serious policy, and they just goofed a line.

In contrast to Ted Kennedy's remarks about President Bush, which are vicious accusations based on a pathetically flawed argument.

Not just a bungled sentence, but the very foundation of Kennedy's partisan attack is based on science fictional misrepresentation of the facts, and pure malice on his part.

---

Quote:

---

Wednesday said:

Quote:

---

Wonder Boy said:
That's still a bitter liberal partisan smear on your part that bypasses the truth, that Kennedy's arguments are baseless.

---

You realize, of course, that name calling doesn't acheive anything, at least not with me. You won't throw me for a loop or knock me off balance with by calling what I say "a bitter liberal partisan smear" if that's what you're trying to do. If not, well, such words have no other effect either. To me, it just sounds like a media byte you've used too many times for it to be effective.

---

Quote:

---

Wednesday said:

Quote:

---

Wonder Boy said:

The fact is, you pick any politician who is scrutinized nationally during pretty much every hour he is awake --republican or democrat-- you follow that person with TV cameras pretty much every hour he is awake

---

First, a President, any President, should be scrutinized. He's a President. Secondly, he's not followed with TV cameras pretty much every hour he is awake. Not even close. The Ben Afflecks and Paris Hiltons of our world are followed everywhere. Presidents spend a lot of time behind closed doors. The job requires it.

---

Quote:

---

Wednesday said:

Quote:

---

Wonder Boy said:

and , and no matter how eloquent he is most of the time, he will slip up and say something stupid, once a day, probably several times a day.

---

No ex-President even begins to compare to Bush in this regard. Show me a President in our history who has inspired websites, posters, and calendars with even half as much material. I could spam the off topic forum with Bushisms and create a flood the likes of which Pariah has never dreamed.

Also, for the most part, these are not personal conversations I'm quoting. These are national speeches. These words were spoken into microphones and recorded for posterity, not because people were following him with cameras, but because he called conferences and addressed populations.

---

Quote:

---

Wednesday said:

Quote:

---

Wonder Boy said:

And in the case of George W Bush, you can bet the liberal partisan and bitterly anti-Bush media will be there every time he slips, to portray Bush in the most negative light they can manufacture.

And you can bet just as surely that they will blunt the impact of his most eloquent moments, through selective soundbyting.

---

This "liberal partisan and bitterly anti-Bush media" is something for another thread, but though I'll admit there are some very liberal outlets out there, I'll be as quick to add that there are some very conservative outlets. When Bush says something eloquent, when Bush says something right, we hear about it.

---

Quote:

---

Wednesday said:

Quote:

---

Wonder Boy said:

Further, you can go through 8 years of Rush Limbaugh broadcasts, or some other conservative source, and find similar stupid remarks by Bill Clinton, for pretty much any day of Clinton's presidency.

---

Thus my point. Every politician--heck, every celebrity--eventually says something stupid, given enough time. Way too much weight is being put on this Kennedy thing. Calling him "senile" because of it? Really? Come on.

---

Quote:

---

Wednesday said:

Quote:

---

Wonder Boy said:

Finally, the goofy remarks of Bush and Clinton were bungled words in an otherwise lucid and serious policy, and they just goofed a line.

In contrast to Ted Kennedy's remarks about President Bush, which are vicious accusations based on a pathetically flawed argument.

Not just a bungled sentence, but the very foundation of Kennedy's partisan attack is based on science fictional misrepresentation of the facts, and pure malice on his part.

---

Every politician has malice towards someone. Comes with the territory. Bush and Clinton have made "vicious accusations based on pathetically flawed arguments." Believe it.

Many of the comments Cheney made about Edwards during the vice-presidential debate were described similarly and just as accurately.

This isn't something new. People should stop treating it as such.

---

Quote:

---

Matter-eater Man said:

Quote:

---

DtWB said:
That's still a bitter liberal partisan smear on your part that bypasses the truth.

---

How can you tell if Wednesday is being bitter?

Quote:

---

DtWB said:
...In contrast to Ted Kennedy's remarks about President Bush, which are vicious accusations based on a pathetically flawed argument. Not just a bungled sentence, but the very foundation of Kennedy's partisan attack is based on science fictional misrepresentation of the facts, and pure malice on his part.

---

That sounds very different from the previous posters who declared Kennedy as "senile" or a "lush". It's somehow fair to make these judgements from one gaffe? As for pathetically flawed arguments, have you ever heard Bush talk about his plans for Social Security?

---

Quote:

---

I concern myself with things that can be proven.

---

Quote:

---

...Each a baseless emotionally charged slander attack, whose sole purpose (rather than a serious inquiry with the best interests of the nation in mind) is to put on a show for his ultra-liberal voter-base, and feed their preconcieved notions with more baseless smears on Bush, that confirm what they (without facts) already believe.

---

Quote:

---

...I know you guys like to portray all republicans as just goose-stepping behind anything Bush proposes, but that really isn't the case.

---

Are you now or were you ever a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton? Are you now or were you ever a reader or subscriber of that group’s magazine, “Prospect?”

After watching today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings into Judge Samuel Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court, you can almost hear the ghost of the infamous Sen. Joe McCarthy pursing communists during the Red Scare paranoia of the 1950s.

I was around for the Army-McCarthy hearings, which was the senator’s vehicle for ruining lives under cover of the law. In honesty, I cannot recall since then any performance that has come anywhere close to this outrage—until witnessing the nauseating behavior today of Sen. Ted Kennedy and his Democratic colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Not since the 1950s, have I witnessed such a vile use of “guilt by association” for political advantage.

In the words of Joseph Welch, the Army’s counsel, after McCarthy had destroyed his latest victim: “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

No, Kennedy and his crew don’t.

In questioning Judge Alito, Sen. Kennedy read from an issue of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton's magazine, Prospect.

Its subject is a lawsuit by a female Princeton student who wanted to be admitted to an all-male eating club at the university. The article argues broadly that elitism isn't a bad thing.

There's only one problem: the article was a joke.

Dinesh D'Souza was the editor of Prospect at the time, and he confirms that the article, by H. W. Crocker III, now an editor for Regnery Books, was a satire:

The essay may not have been funny, D'Souza acknowledges, but Kennedy read from it as if it had been serious instead of an attempt at humor.

"I think left-wing groups have been feeding Senator Kennedy snippets and he has been mindlessly reciting them," D'Souza said. "It was a satire."

Poor Teddy. Maybe next time they'll feed him some hard-hitting exposes's from Mad Magazine...

U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy — who ripped Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito for ties to a group that discriminates against women — says he’s going to quit a club notorious for discriminating against women “as fast as I can.”

Kennedy was outed by conservatives late last week as a current member of The Owl Club, a social club for Harvard alumni that bans women from membership.

In an interview with WHDH Channel 7’s Andy Hiller that aired last night, Kennedy said, “I joined when I . . . 52 years ago, I was a member of the Owl Club, which was basically a fraternal organization.”

Asked by Hiller whether he is still a member, Kennedy said, “I’m not a member; I continue to pay about $100.”

He then said of being a member in a club that discriminates against women, “I shouldn’t be and I’m going to get out of it as fast as I can.”

The Harvard Crimson reports that, in 1984, the university severed ties with clubs like the Owl, citing a federal law championed by Kennedy.

The college where a student shouted 'Remember Chappaquiddick!' as Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., began a speech will not discipline the 20-year-old – even though campus police had warned the man of possible consequences of his action.

Paul Trost, a student at Massasoit Community College in Brockton, Mass., was upset by an introduction of Kennedy given by Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., Tuesday in which the congressman noted how the long-time senator overcame hardship in life on his way to success.

"Lynch said Kennedy had overcome such adversity to get to the place he was, and that's a bunch of bull," Trost said of the introduction, which occurred in the school's student center.

Just as Kennedy began speaking, Trost was walking out of the room when he shouted, "Remember Chappaquiddick!"

"Most of the crowd gasped," Trost said. "Then I walked out of the student center."

The student says a campus police officer went outside and stopped him. He also saw some state troopers go outside, the type who accompany Kennedy around the state to provide security.

Trost says the cop took down his information and told him he would be hearing from school officials about disciplinary action. A spokesman with the campus police verified the incident.

Dick Cronin, a spokesman for Massasoit Community College, said today that Trost is off the hook.

A representative of the United States Justice Foundation offered pro bono legal assistance to Trost had he faced sanctions from the college.

Trost said one of his teachers confronted him after a class Tuesday about the Chappaquiddick issue.

"One of my teachers called me ignorant and told me this was an embarrassment to the school," Trost told WND. "She said to me, 'Can't you forgive him after all these years?' And I said, 'No, he killed somebody.'

"If it had been me or any other person, we'd be in jail," Trost says he told his instructor.

Referring to his two-word shout, Trost said, "I did it because I know about Kennedy's past. I know what happened at Chappaquiddick.

"I wanted to send a message to him that my generation still knows about it. We haven't forgotten about it."

Trost, a liberal arts major who has protested the Iraq war, says he's not a right-winger.

"I tend to have what would be considered liberal views," he explained, "but I go with whatever I think is right."

Rumsfeld's speech drew sharp complaints from Democrats, including Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, whose father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was criticized by Rumsfeld in a speech Monday.

The elder Kennedy, who served as a U.S. ambassador to Britain before World War II, resigned that post because he opposed British and U.S. war preparations.

"Secretary Rumsfeld is the last person who should preach the lessons of history after ignoring them for the last six years," Kennedy said in a statement. "As a result of his failures, Americans are less safe."

Barnes states that the elder Kennedy "opposed British and U.S. war preparations," but it is not surprising that he glossed over just why the senior Kennedy was opposed to the preparations for war.

Wikipedia offers a clue:

Kennedy was (for a while) a close friend with leading Jewish lawyer Felix Frankfurter, who helped Kennedy get his sons into the London School of Economics, where they worked with Harold Laski, a leading Jewish intellectual and prominent Socialist.[4] While holding positive attitudes towards individual Jews, Kennedy's views of the Jews as a people were, by his own admission, overwhelmingly negative.

According to Harvey Klemmer, who served as one of Kennedy's embassy aides, Kennedy habitually referred to Jews as "kikes or sheenies." Kennedy allegedly told Klemmer that "[some] individual Jews are all right, Harvey, but as a race they stink. They spoil everything they touch."[5] When Klemmer returned from a trip to Germany and reported the pattern of vandalism and assault on Jews by Nazis, Kennedy responded "well, they brought it on themselves."[6]

On June 13, 1938, Kennedy met with Herbert von Dirksen, the German ambassador in London, who reported to Berlin that Kennedy had told him that "it was not so much the fact that we want to get rid of the Jews that was so harmful to us, but rather the loud clamor with which we accompanied this purpose. [Kennedy] himself fully understood our Jewish policy."[7] Kennedy's main concern with such violent acts against German Jews as Kristallnacht was that they generated bad publicity in the West for the Nazi regime, a concern he communicated in a letter to Charles Lindbergh.[8]

From Seymour Hersh's Dark Side of Camelot:

There is no evidence that Ambassador [Joseph] Kennedy understood in the days before the war that stopping Hitler was a moral imperative.

"Individual Jews are all right, Harvey," Kennedy told Harvey Klemmer, one of his few trusted aides in the American Embassy, "but as a race they stink. They spoil everything they touch. Look what they did to the movies." Klemmer, in an interview many years later made avail­able for this book, recalled that Kennedy and his "entourage" gener­ally referred to Jews as "kikes or sheenies."

Kennedy and his family would later emphatically deny allegations of anti-Semitism stemming from his years as ambassador, but the German diplomatic documents show that Kennedy consistently minimized the Jewish issue in his four-month attempt in the summer and fall of 1938 to obtain an audience with Hitler. On June 13, as the Nazi regime was systematically segregating Jews from German society, Kennedy advised Herbert von Dirksen, the German ambassador in London, as Dirksen reported to Berlin, that "it

was not so much the fact that we wanted to get rid of the Jews that was so harmful to us, but rather the loud clamor with which we accompanied this purpose. He himself understood our Jewish policy completely." On October 13, 1938, a few weeks before Kristallnacht, with its Brown Shirt terror attacks on synagogues and Jewish businesses, Kennedy met again with Ambassador Dirksen, who subsequently informed his superiors that "today, too, as during former conversations, Kennedy mentioned that very strong anti-Semitic feelings existed in the United States and that a large portion of the population had an understanding of the German attitude toward the Jews."

From George Mason University's History News Network:

Arriving at London in early 1938, newly-appointed U.S. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy took up quickly with another transplanted American. Viscountess Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor assured Kennedy early in their friendship that he should not be put off by her pronounced and proud anti-Catholicism.

"I'm glad you are smart enough not to take my [views] personally," she wrote. Astor pointed out that she had a number of Roman Catholic friends - G.K. Chesterton among them - with whom she shared, if nothing else, a profound hatred for the Jewish race. Joe Kennedy, in turn, had always detested Jews generally, although he claimed several as friends individually. Indeed, Kennedy seems to have tolerated the occasional Jew in the same way Astor tolerated the occasional Catholic.

As fiercely anti-Communist as they were anti-Semitic, Kennedy and Astor looked upon Adolf Hitler as a welcome solution to both of these "world problems" (Nancy's phrase). No member of the so-called "Cliveden Set" (the informal cabal of appeasers who met frequently at Nancy Astor's palatial home) seemed much concerned with the dilemma faced by Jews under the Reich. Astor wrote Kennedy that Hitler would have to do more than just "give a rough time" to "the killers of Christ" before she'd be in favor of launching "Armageddon to save them. The wheel of history swings round as the Lord would have it. Who are we to stand in the way of the future?" Kennedy replied that he expected the "Jew media" in the United States to become a problem, that "Jewish pundits in New York and Los Angeles" were already making noises contrived to "set a match to the fuse of the world."

During May of 1938, Kennedy engaged in extensive discussions with the new German Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, Herbert von Dirksen. In the midst of these conversations (held without approval from the U.S. State Department), Kennedy advised von Dirksen that President Roosevelt was the victim of "Jewish influence" and was poorly informed as to the philosophy, ambitions and ideals of Hitler's regime. (The Nazi ambassador subsequently told his bosses that Kennedy was "Germany's best friend" in London.)

Columnists back in the states condemned Kennedy's fraternizing. Kennedy later claimed that 75% of the attacks made on him during his Ambassadorship emanated from "a number of Jewish publishers and writers. ... Some of them in their zeal did not hesitate to resort to slander and falsehood to achieve their aims." He told his eldest son, Joe Jr., that he disliked having to put up with "Jewish columnists" who criticized him with no good reason.

Like his father, Joe Jr. admired Adolf Hitler. Young Joe had come away impressed by Nazi rhetoric after traveling in Germany as a student in 1934. Writing at the time, Joe applauded Hitler's insight in realizing the German people's "need of a common enemy, someone of whom to make the goat. Someone, by whose riddance the Germans would feel they had cast out the cause of their predicament. It was excellent psychology, and it was too bad that it had to be done to the Jews. The dislike of the Jews, however, was well-founded. They were at the heads of all big business, in law etc. It is all to their credit for them to get so far, but their methods had been quite unscrupulous ... the lawyers and prominent judges were Jews, and if you had a case against a Jew, you were nearly always sure to lose it. ... As far as the brutality is concerned, it must have been necessary to use some ... ."

Brutality was in the eye of the beholder. Writing to Charles Lindbergh shortly after Kristallnacht in November of 1938, Joe Kennedy Sr. seemed more concerned about the political ramifications stemming from high-profile, riotous anti-Semitism than he was about the actual violence done to the Jews. "... Isn't there some way," he asked, "to persuade [the Nazis] it is on a situation like this that the whole program of saving western civilization might hinge? It is more and more difficult for those seeking peaceful solutions to advocate any plan when the papers are filled with such horror." Clearly, Kennedy's chief concern about Kristallnacht was that it might serve to harden anti-fascist sentiment at home in the United States.

Like his friend Charles Coughlin (an anti-Semitic broadcaster and Roman Catholic priest), Kennedy always remained convinced of what he believed to be the Jews' corrupt, malignant, and profound influence in American culture and politics. "The Democratic [party] policy of the United States is a Jewish production," Kennedy told a British reporter near the end of 1939, adding confidently that Roosevelt would "fall" in 1940.

But it wasn't Roosevelt who fell. Kennedy resigned his ambassadorship just weeks after FDR's overwhelming triumph at the polls. He then retreated to his home in Florida: a bitter, resentful man nurturing religious and racial bigotries that put him out-of-step with his country, and out-of-touch with history.

Kennedy, fat, bloated, drunken, murdering hypocrite that he is, has the gall to suggest some are ignoring history. Considering his family history of admiring and trying to appease fascists intent on wiping out Jews, he may count himself lucky if that is indeed the case.

Quote:

---

the G-man said:
'Remember Chappaquiddick!'

The college where a student shouted 'Remember Chappaquiddick!' as Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., began a speech will not discipline the 20-year-old – even though campus police had warned the man of possible consequences of his action.

Paul Trost, a student at Massasoit Community College in Brockton, Mass., was upset by an introduction of Kennedy given by Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., Tuesday in which the congressman noted how the long-time senator overcame hardship in life on his way to success.

"Lynch said Kennedy had overcome such adversity to get to the place he was, and that's a bunch of bull," Trost said of the introduction, which occurred in the school's student center.

Just as Kennedy began speaking, Trost was walking out of the room when he shouted, "Remember Chappaquiddick!"

"Most of the crowd gasped," Trost said. "Then I walked out of the student center."

The student says a campus police officer went outside and stopped him. He also saw some state troopers go outside, the type who accompany Kennedy around the state to provide security.

Trost says the cop took down his information and told him he would be hearing from school officials about disciplinary action. A spokesman with the campus police verified the incident.

Dick Cronin, a spokesman for Massasoit Community College, said today that Trost is off the hook.

A representative of the United States Justice Foundation offered pro bono legal assistance to Trost had he faced sanctions from the college.

Trost said one of his teachers confronted him after a class Tuesday about the Chappaquiddick issue.

"One of my teachers called me ignorant and told me this was an embarrassment to the school," Trost told WND. "She said to me, 'Can't you forgive him after all these years?' And I said, 'No, he killed somebody.'

"If it had been me or any other person, we'd be in jail," Trost says he told his instructor.

Referring to his two-word shout, Trost said, "I did it because I know about Kennedy's past. I know what happened at Chappaquiddick.

"I wanted to send a message to him that my generation still knows about it. We haven't forgotten about it."

Trost, a liberal arts major who has protested the Iraq war, says he's not a right-winger.

"I tend to have what would be considered liberal views," he explained, "but I go with whatever I think is right."

---

Quote:

---

Captain Sammitch said:
Way to address the topic at hand DeadEf- I mean ray!

---

Quote:

---

r3x29yz4a said:I can't see as how Kennedy's actions then reflect the debate on Iraq. The man had just lost two of his brothers to assassination in the six years prior, which doesn't excuse him granted but it does add insight into how and why he could've frozen in the face of a traumatic event. Its criminal negligence, not murder.

As for the statements in the release the guy was bitching about, well every elected official makes themselves seem like an underdog.

---

Quote:

---

the G-man said:

Quote:

---

r3x29yz4a said:I can't see as how Kennedy's actions then reflect the debate on Iraq. The man had just lost two of his brothers to assassination in the six years prior, which doesn't excuse him granted but it does add insight into how and why he could've frozen in the face of a traumatic event. Its criminal negligence, not murder.

As for the statements in the release the guy was bitching about, well every elected official makes themselves seem like an underdog.

---

Come on, Ray, even you have to admit that it was insane of Kennedy to use his anti-semetic, bootlegging, abusive, father as an example of moral courage.

---