"The hope rises again and the dream lives on . . . ." DNC chat
 

Alas, Teddy Kennedy. A contradiction to be sure, but I teared up seeing him.



I suppose we should put all the DNC chat in this thread.

yeah me too, crocodile tears. :rolleyes:

Meh - he has terminal brain cancer amd is the very last of an outstanding generation -- so, I cut him a break.

Of course I wasn't joking about his illness.

But the "last" of an outstanding generation? Ted Kennedy?

I didn't get to *see* him speak, but the convention was live on NPR so I heard it as I was driving home.

Whoever was speaking used the sea as a metaphor (was it Caroline's speech or the videoclip?)

...about how the water meant a lot to Teddy coming from Massachusetts and teaching the younger Kennedys how to sail, etc., etc.

My mind began to wander -- and remember 1969 -- and how water figured so dramatically in Ted's life.

But the mantra about Teddy being a senator from Mass and being everybody's advocate, brought me back to 2008.

The NPR guys described the scene as everyone in the hall having a Kennedy sign and that it was very moving....the highlight of the night.

When I asked my husband about the signs, he said, he never saw one. (He was watching CNN's coverage.)

Enough of my rambling...here are a couple questions.

1. What was the visual like? The TV coverage of the convention hall...did the delegates seem interested in listening to the speeches, or did they look tired and bored?

2. On the radio, the announcers kept interrupting to talk amongst themselves...which I hated. I wanted to hear the convention, not the radio-know-it-alls....and the topic was if and how the Clintons are gonna upstage Obama and take over the convention. Was anything along those lines mentioned on TV?

BTW... #3. Anybody read Rolling Stone? Here's two interesting articles:
August 21, 2008 Michael Moore "How the Democrats Can Blow it"
Sept. 4, 2008 - How Bush Destroyed the Republican Party by Sean Wilentz

Don't be dissing the Kennedys. They did alot for this country and could have done alot more good if two of them weren't assasinated , unlike that other political dynsasty that have runied it perhaps for years.

You mean JFK escalating our military and political commitments in Vietnam?
Look how that war ended.

And as far as the other political dynasty, how's the Iraq thing going? Oh yeah,
we are winning no thanks to the Democrats.

I thought we won the Iraqi war 5 anda half years ago when Bushie paraded around on the deck of the U.S.S . Abraham Lincoln in military drag behind a "Mission Accomplished "banner?That war should have never happened and over 2/3 of Americans believe that..it will be remembered as one of the darker times in our history and our "war president" who unlike JFk didn't even bother to show up for service will be remembered as what he is the lamest President of modern times perhaps of all time.

Great speech tonight by Michelle Obama. It was a poignant moment seeing Caroline speak and Maria Shriver crying when Teddy took the stage. He has done much good. Out of all the people in town for this thing, I always hoped I'd run into him the most.

Woo! We are winning. And at what price? Our treasury has been bankrupted by this war and countless are dead. Why the fukc are we there again? Seriously, can you tell me why we are there?

1. A blunder on his and his advisors part on the Mission Accomplished.
2. Don't worry about the polls, they change all the time. You can't lead
the country by them like Clinton tried to do.
3. We are not far away from this yet to truly judge whether this is one of
our darkest times. Not even close is my opinion.
4. He was in the National Guard, even if he was shown preferential treatment.
I wish everyone would be a little more careful about putting down the Guard.
My father was a member, and he was called up during the Cuban Missle Crisis.
5. Which is it? The lamest or evil genious, you really can't have it both ways.
If he tricked all of us into this war, how could he be lame? Maybe that says
something about all of us (if that's true).

Yes, we are winning. At the highest cost. War is Hell.

Maybe we are there to kill terrorist and yes for the OIL!

Even after all we've spent our economy has been strong enough to pull through it.
It it wasn't for the Banks & Mortgage Companies loaning money to people who don't
qualify for loans, and people just over extending themselves, you wouldn't be hearing about how bad the economy is.

I know you were joking :cool:

I was talking about the leaders of the 60's. His brothers John and Robert were pretty great leaders - Ted is the last of that generation :shrug:

Actually, it seems to me that if people like the D's did not start to balk at W's half a$$ed invasion of Iraq (against all military advice regarding number of troops - thanks a lot Rumsfeld) with absolutely no coherent lan to win the peace, we would not still be there with no end in sight, our blank, signed checks, and our dead and injured soldiers? I get that we are winning because of the surge, but to congratulate W for that is like congratulating someone for saving your arm when they are the reason you lost your hand in the first place. Are we supposed to now just forget the disaster Iraq was before the surge, which was directly caused by W? I suppose:

1. Losing OBL in Afgan.;
2. Lying to force an unnecessary invasion;
3. Thousands US soldiers dead in Iraq.
4. Tens of thousands of US soldiers brutally injured with no adequate medical care;
5. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians dead, and;
6. A bankrupt country

are all just forgiven in the end because W finally, for some unknown reason, determined it was time to get serious in Iraq. Do you actually believe that :eek:

In the end, don't you find it at the least interesting that W is now apparently going to get the conbat troops out of Iraq in roughly the same timetable as that espoused by Obama and Hillary, which W and his cronies, including McCain, have consistently called the strategy for losing or "they, the D's, want America to fail by setting a timetable for Al-Q to take over." Yet, when W does it with essentially the same plan, it suddenly is a "win" :rolleyes: You may buy that rhetoric crapola, but I sure as hell do not. Can you not see that W is using this as a campaign strategy for the R party.

Then again, people actually believed W when he said Iraq's oil would pay for the invasion. That anyone believes anything out of W's mouth amazes me.

The point is we never had to go in the first place. There was no Al-Q presence in Iraq. In fact, they hated each other. To suggest otherwise ignores that facts.

The terrorists who attacked us were not there at all prior to the invasion. Moreover, had W put enough troops there to begin with, Al-Q would not have the alleged foothold it now has there even if we toppled SH, which was a good thing at too expensive a cost when the people that attacked us were and still are running loose.

and - we were too stupid even to get that now weren't we. Because, if we have it, that's news to me. Why the hell isn't Iraq paying us back for this instead of having huge surpluses when all we have is debt incurred to get Iraq on its feet.

Actually, the economy was in bad shape prior to then.

I blame the Bush Admin. because it knew that was going on (Greenspan continuously warned about it) for years and passed no law to stop it. But, they could not because that phantom wealth was driving the economy since W took office.

But, even if you take that fiasco out of the equati0n, the bottom line is W spent a trillion or so dollar surplus and then borrowed at least that much to pay for Iraq. That tab would has to be paid despite the housing crisis :shrug:

I get that you are passionate about W, but surely you see these facts :shrug:

Again, if W were your employee and he bankrupted your business, made most of your customers hate you, and he never succeeded at anything -- would you keep him employed or would you fire him? I think you know the answer to that.