Teddy* Kennedy is dead. He led the fight for universal healthcare and was the strongest supporter of Obama's plan for reform. Teddy will be missed in ways most people won't even realize.
And who will make "Dora the Explorer" rhyme now?
*My mother, the original 60s liberal, always referred to Ted Kennedy as "Teddy". I don't know why. It was as if they had a personal relationship.
Wow - that's so sad. He was a great Senator.
ReplyDeleteThat pretty much kills it for the Kennedy dynasty. It is sad though. I do hope congress can see through the health care reform Ted has been pushing for so long.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I used an old picture of all three Kennedy boys- it's a season that has passed.
ReplyDeleteThis is sad. But maybe his death will rejuvenate the dem party to get a good, strong health reform bill past with a strong, open to every single person, public option. I can see his death turn into a positive rallying cry of, "Lets just this done for Teddy"
ReplyDeleteLet's hope his death does rejuvenate the morally stagnant liberal wing into getting off their big-business bound duffs and thinking about the job that needs to be done. Isn't the Johnson administration looking better and better in retrospect when we look at the direction Congress has gone in the past three decades with respect to healthcare?
ReplyDeleteWas your mom from New England? Because that's how we always refered to him too, and we spent a lot of time in NE when I was a kid. People up there owned the Kennedy's, it was weird. It was like they actually did have a personal relationship.
ReplyDeleteThat said I am sad of his passing. And sad that the wingnuts are dragging up his past instead of looking at what happened after he sobered up and became the man he should be remembered for.
My family is originally from Erie, PA, then Indiana, so, I dunno. When I was a kid, I used to pretend that they were "special friends" and I was really a Kennedy, and any day now, they were going to take me to Hyannis Port to . . . well, I have no idea what Kennedys do when no one's around. Probably watch X-files reruns or something.
ReplyDeletePlay football? They used to do that lot. Rough house. Normal people stuff.
ReplyDeleteWe will definately miss him...and his commitment to the average working stiff. We are left even more polarized by his passing, with meaningful healthcare reform still very much in doubt.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we should get the Republicans to do the bill, their last effort was the Medicare Prescription Drug benefit that has a projected program lifetime cost of 32 Trillion dollars. Thats right they increased the cost of medicare by 32 Trillion dollars without even attempting to find a way to pay for it. But of course that money is strictly going to the major pharmaceutical companies, a hugh profit guaranteed for many years to come. That also ensures campaign contributions to the sponsors for many years to come also.
Yet now when we want to cover 47 million people who are uninsured at a cost of 1-1.6 trillion over ten years we are accused of trying to bankrupt the country.
Same old story, those evil "tax and spend" Democrats are going to ruin everything. Everyone with half a brain knows that they should vote for the "borrow and spend" Republicans instead...uhh, right?
If you have seen the projections of the medicare costs to this country over the next thirty years then you know that we have to do something. When Medicare reaches 100% of the GDP what will we do, take home an ace bandage in lieu of a paycheck? Eat bandaids?
Universal healthcare sounds like a pretty good idea when you realize that we already spend over $7000.00 a year per citizen for healthcare in this country and get practically squat for it while others use less money to finance their entire universal healthcare system!
Kennedy always had the right idea, it is a shame no one will listen to the honest blatant facts...