Showing posts with label Ted Kennedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ted Kennedy. Show all posts

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Ted Kennedy: A Malicious Man

On my provocative Hillary Supporters for McCain blog (http://pennsylvaniaforjohnmccain.blogspot.com) I have a new article entitled "Hillary Clinton Deserves Democratic Nomination." It presents a perspective you haven't seen before. Also, please click on the Google "Adsense" links you see to your right. All revenues generated (and, alas, they won't be much) will go to John McCain and other outstanding candidates. On my Pennsylvania blog today, I continue my discussion of how candidates (i.e., Republicans) can win when they're being significantly outspent by their opponents. Thanks for visiting!

On the Hillary site, I write often about Democratic politics. I do so in a respectful way, except perhaps when it comes to Obama, who's a total sad-sack. At times, he makes Rev. Wright look good by comparison. When I started the Hillary site, I did wonder if I'd have enough to write about, but that hasn't been a problem. Here's what I'll be writing about there over the next 7-10 days: (1) Will Hillary sit the Election Out? (2) Why are the Clinton's long-time political allies deserting her? (3) Why did John Edward endorse Barack Obama? (Hint: can you say vice-presidency?) (4) Why have Black voters deserted the wife of the man who used to be called "The first Black President?" (5) Why might Obama's almost-total lock on the Black vote actually hurt him in the General Election? (6) Why is the date May 31 critical to Hillary's future and her attitudes about supporting Obama? (And if it's okay for almost all Blacks to vote for a Black person, why isn't it okay for most whites to vote for a Caucasian?) I guarantee your favorite cable network won't be dealing with these issues. Come visit, okay?

Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New Jersey visitors, of whom there are many, please visit my blog that deals with Keystone State politics: http://pennsylvaniaforjohnmccain.blogspot.com. Thanks!






Senator Edward M. Kennedy in better days . . .


" . . . my good friend, Ted Kennedy." (Barack Obama) Bill and Hillary Clinton refused to kow-town to "Teddy," so the Obama endorsement was payback. John McCain also called Ted Kennedy a "friend." Clearly, the people in DC need a much better class of friends.

The idol-worship about Ted Kennedy that's going on today on cable TV is sickening. Yes, he's capable of being "amiable," but this is man whose entire life is replete with malicious actions -- from leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to drown, to driving his first wife literally to drink and mental illness, to conspiring with the KGB (scroll down) to steal the 1984 election from Ronald Reagan.

No, I don't want any human being to experience stroke or seizure disorder -- and he probably has suffered both -- but enough is enough. He may be a good something (a good liberal?), but he is in no way a good man. He's a great advocate for "the poor," but his own inherited fortune -- he's one of the richest individuals in Congress -- seems to stay in his own bank account. He's a national disgrace

.John McCain, among many others, has said respectful things about Teddy. But would John want such a man as a next-door-neighbor? My advice to John is not be on such friendly terms with a person who has done so much harm to other people.

After Teddy left Mary Jo to drown, his first calls were not to the fire or police departments but rather to a lawyer and a public relations man, Teddy gave a national speech. He quoted liberally from his brother's Pulitizer-Prize winning book (written by a third-party, Ted Sorensen), Profiles in Courage. Somehow, he seemed to mistake his craven behavior for courage. A sickening display of egomania, but hey, that's our Teddy.

If you scroll down to read Professor Paul Kengor's interview about Ted Kennedy's flirtation with the Soviet KGB, you learn a great deal about the Massachusetts Senator. He was very willing to endanger Ronald Reagan's effort to win the Cold War. He saw no problem dealing in a friendly with Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB, and the man in charge of torturing and murdering Russian dissidents. Hey, Teddy thought, "it's okay, because after all the Republican Reagan is the major threat to the world. And maybe the Russians and I can keep Reagan from being re-elected."

That's the Teddy being lionized by a bunch of media sycophants on national TV. This is the Teddy, whose brother John said, "Let every nation know, whether friend or foe, that we shall bear any burden, pay any price, to ensure the survival of liberty."

Can you imagine such words coming out of Teddy's mouth? I can't.

As we're hearing ad nauseam, Ted Kennedy is the apotheosis of liberalism. He believes in collective responsibility -- that is, we're all responsible for "others" in our society. Exactly how we have collective responsibility -- looking out everyone else -- if we don't look out for ourselves is never made clear.

Redistribution of income -- although not of HIS great wealth, which is not income -- pays political dividends. It has gotten Ted Kennedy elected seven times in Massachusetts. It's the politics of envy and of class warfare. It doesn't ever mention people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. If Ted Kennedy, worth $100 million-plus, ever earned a dollar in his life (aside from feeding at the public trough -- it's never been recorded.

As one thoughtful observer put it, "Poor people have been voting for Democrats for 50 years -- and they're still poor." When poverty is a source of so many Democratic votes, we can all be sure that poverty will endure as long as the Democratic Party.

That is Ted Kennedy's legacy: a pompous, self-absorbed man who has done almost nothing to advance the security and economic growth of his society. If he loved his country a little -- and himself a little less -- America would be a better nation.

I don't wish him serious illness, but the U.S. Senate will be a much better place without him. He lacks not just physical courage but the kind of moral courage he needs to be honest about our country and its people.

Friday, May 16, 2008

TEDDY KENNEDY CONSPIRED WITH KGB

Paul Kengor, Grove City College professor with explosive new revelations about Sen. Ted Kennedy playing dangerous games with the Soviet KGB to harm the Reagan presidency.


NOTE: SCROLL DOWN TO SEE THE INTERVIEW WITH PROF. PAUL KENGOR ON KENNEDY'S BIZARRE, MALICIOUS, AND UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES
May 16
2008
Steve -- Teddy Kennedy Conspired with Soviet KGB
Posted by Stephen Maloney in Untagged

Say what?

Yes, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts conspired with members of the KGB, including Yuri Andropov, head of the organization, in a failed attempt to deny Ronald Reagan re-election in 1984. Kennedy expressed his deep sympathy with the Soviet leadership in its struggle with President Reagan at the height of the Cold War.

I know, when Dr. Paul Kengor, the distinguished professor of political science at Grove City College, told me about this today, I could hardly believe it -- even though my expectations for Teddy are extremely low. (Senator Kennedy of course is a proud supporter of Barack Obama.)

The story told by Paul Kengor is in fact true, and it is one of the most appalling ones I've ever heard. It demonstrates not only Teddy's envy and egoism, but his willingness to put Party and (left-wing) ideology above country. It's really a story about Teddy's depravity, something that doesn't really come as news.

I put the story up an hour ago on my blog (http://stevemaloneygop.blogspot.com/), and I've already heard a response from Australia! You can read the whole (Paul Kengor) interview in http://frontpagemag.com/. I'll write about it some Friday morning, and add what I say to this piece on McCainNow.

Should Teddy resign his seat in the Senate? Of course, but don't hold your breath. If he could survive leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to drown, he can survive anything. I prophesy that he will live longer than Senator Robert Byrd and leave the Senate feet first. (Kengor interview follows.)


Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Paul Kengor, the author of the New York Times extended-list bestseller God and Ronald Reagan as well as God and George W. Bush and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. He is also the author of the first spiritual biography of the former first lady, God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life. He is a professor of political science and director of the Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College [Pennsylvania, 40 miles north of Pittsburgh].


FP: Paul Kengor, welcome back to Frontpage Interview.


Kengor: Always great to be back, Jamie.


FP: We’re here today to revisit Ted Kennedy’s reaching out to the KGB during the Reagan period. Refresh our readers’ memories a bit.


Kengor: The episode is based on a document produced 25 years ago this week. I discussed it with you in
our earlier interview back in November 2006. In my book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, I presented a rather eye-opening May 14, 1983 KGB document on Ted Kennedy. The entire document, unedited, unabridged, is printed in the book, as well as all the documentation affirming its authenticity. Even with that, today, almost 25 years later, it seems to have largely remained a secret.

FP: Tell us about this document.


Kengor: It was a May 14, 1983 letter from the head of the KGB, Viktor Chebrikov, to the head of the USSR, the odious Yuri Andropov, with the highest level of classification. Chebrikov relayed to Andropov an offer from Senator Ted Kennedy, presented by Kennedy’s old friend and law-school buddy, John Tunney, a former Democratic senator from California, to reach out to the Soviet leadership at the height of a very hot time in the Cold War. According to Chebrikov, Kennedy was deeply troubled by the deteriorating relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, which he believed was bringing us perilously close to nuclear confrontation. Kennedy, according to Chebrikov, blamed this situation not on the Soviet leadership but on the American president---Ronald Reagan. Not only was the USSR not to blame, but, said Chebrikov, Kennedy was, quite the contrary, “very impressed” with Andropov.


Kengor: The thrust of the letter is that Reagan had to be stopped, meaning his alleged aggressive defense policies, which then ranged from the Pershing IIs to the MX to SDI, and even his re-election bid, needed to be stopped. It was Ronald Reagan who was the hindrance to peace. That view of Reagan is consistent with things that Kennedy said and wrote at the time, including articles in sources like Rolling Stone (March 1984) and in a speeches like his March 24, 1983 remarks on the Senate floor the day after Reagan’s SDI speech, which he lambasted as “misleading Red-Scare tactics and reckless Star Wars schemes.”Even more interesting than Kennedy’s diagnosis was the prescription: According to Chebrikov, Kennedy suggested a number of PR moves to help the Soviets in terms of their public image with the American public. He reportedly believed that the Soviet problem was a communication problem, resulting from an inability to counter Reagan’s (not the USSR’s) “propaganda.” If only Americans could get through Reagan’s smokescreen and hear the Soviets’ peaceful intentions.


Kengor: So, there was a plan, or at least a suggested plan, to hook up Andropov and other senior apparatchiks with the American media, where they could better present their message and make their case. Specifically, the names of Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters are mentioned in the document. Also, Kennedy himself would travel to Moscow to meet with the dictator.Time was of the essence, since Reagan, as the document privately acknowledged, was flying high en route to easy re-election in 1984.


FP: Did you have the document vetted?


Kengor: Of course. It comes from the Central Committee archives of the former USSR. Once Boris Yeltsin took over Russia in 1991, he immediately began opening the Soviet archives, which led to a rush on the archives by Western researchers. One of them, Tim Sebastian of the London Times and BBC, found the Kennedy document and reported it in the February 2, 1992 edition of the Times, in an article titled, “Teddy, the KGB and the top secret file.”


Kengor: But this electrifying revelation stopped there; it went no further. Never made it across the Atlantic. Not a single American news organization, from what I can tell, picked up the story. Apparently, it just wasn’t interesting enough, nor newsworthy. Western scholars, however, had more integrity, and responded: they went to the archives to procure their own copy. So, several copies have circulated for a decade and a half.I got my copy when a reader of Frontpage Magazine, named Marko Suprun, whose father survived Stalin’s 1930s genocide in the Ukraine, alerted me to the document. He apparently had spent years trying to get the American media to take a look at the document, but, again, our journalists simply weren’t intrigued. He knew I was researching Reagan and the Cold War. He sent me a copy. I first authenticated it through Herb Romerstein, the Venona researcher and widely respected expert who knows more about the Communist Party and archival research beyond the former Iron Curtain than anyone. I also had a number of scholars read the original and the translation, including Harvard’s Richard Pipes.

Below is the link to the complete Kengor inverview with Frontpage:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=0DC20D32-80C6-446E-BF51-1C054E35B7BA

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Bill, Hillary Play "Race Card"

On this blog, I write about both Dem candidates -- Obama and Clinton -- and the best ways to beat them. Obama has run a brilliant campaign, but he has come up against the Clinton's "win-at-any-cost" politics and that threw him off his game.

As I predicted, the Clintons have used the race card in very subtle ways, trying to pigeonhole Obama as someone only Black voters will support, thereby suggesting that White folks should vote for Mrs. Clinton. That is a despicable act, especially as performed by the usually jovial "first Black President,' Bill Clinton. Barack, 24 hours per day: watch thy back.

One of the intriguing elements of the Dem campaign is that, if Hillary wins (as expected), she will be under great pressure to name Barack as V-P nominee. She'd rather have four root canals than do so.

It's important to recognize that with Democrats elective office is their job-for-life (check out people like Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, John Murtha, and Charlie Rangel). They are not going to "return to the private sector." where they've never been anyway. They will remain in Congress until they're carried out feet first.

Mrs. Clinton is now talking about her "35 years of experience." Thirty-five years? Did we miss something? She's been a Senator for seven-plus years, and she never have elective office before -- although she did function as "someone's wife." Hillary seems to be tracing her so-called "experience" back to early days at Wellesley College.

Later today (Thursday), I'll be posting some important information about John McCain and the best strategy for him as he goes into the general election. Please return and, if you'd like, leave your comments.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Sarah and Todd Palin and BP: Conflict of Interest?

I support Sarah both as a person and as a symbol of the kind of person we need leading this country. If the new Republican President were to pass away unexpectedly, Sarah would do a good job as POTUS. Then, she would begin doing a great job, because her character and basic decency would attract wide support from the American people. Obviously, the woman is a sponge when it comes to soaking up wisdom.


I'D LIKE TO URGE EVERYONE WHO VISITS THIS SITE TO TAKE A LOOK AT http://palintology.com/, A SITE RUN BY TRISH IN ALASKA, A PERSON WHO STRONGLY SUPPORTS SARAH PALIN. SHE TALKS ABOUT A GOSSIP COLUMNIST AT THE ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS, ONE SHEILA TOOMEY, WHO WROTE OBVIOUSLY FALSE STATEMENTS ABOUT TRISH AND HER WORK. SHEILA TOOMEY SEEMS TO BE COMPETING FOR THE SCUM-OF-THE-EARTH AWARD, A TRUE GUTTER JOURNALIST CONSUMED WITH HATRED FOR SARAH AND WILLING TO GO TO ANY LENGTH TO TARNISH HER BETTERS. WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON AT THE ADN?

R. A. Dillion (see the link to his blog at the right) seems to be a good man and a fine journalist. However, he recently wrote about Todd Palin (Sarah's husband) going back to work for BP in a production job. Dillon wondered if this might not give the appearance of "conflict of interest" since Gov. Palin will be holding a special session to raise the taxes on oil profits, including those of BP. (There are three companies -- BP, Exxon-Mobil, and Conoco-Phillips -- who produce the oil on Alaska's North Slope. Long ago, I worked for Phillips, which has since merged with Conoco.)

When I read Mr. Dillion's piece, I went mildly ballistic and left him the following comment:

R. A. Dillon: "Let not Beltway thinking color thy views."

What do I mean by that? I mean that the Beltway thought is that such things as "conflict of interest" appearances (inventions?) are very grave. In fact, Sarah Palin and "First Dude" (Todd) are people of modest means who have to work for a living. Being of such means should NOT be a disqualifying factor in running for high office.

I realize that money isn't a problem with Senator Herb Kohl (who bought a Senate seat from WI), Jay Rockefeller (who bought the WV seat), John Corzine (who bought the NJ seat), John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi (married the super rich guy), Jane Harman (hubby maybe even richer than Pelosi's), and Dianne Feinstein. Mrs. Heinz-Kerry inherited hundreds of millions from her deceased first husband.

Anyone who wants to see how "The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" play out in Washington, DC, should go to the OpenSecrets site (link on my blogroll). You will find one Senator or Congressman (and the same is true of most governors) who is worth tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions. Most of this people inherited the money, never being called up to earn a dollar on their own. Sarah and Todd Palin are NOT among this group.

Hopefully, all candidates for high state and federal office will not have to be filthy rich in order to qualify for such positions. Ms. Heinz-Kerry never worked a day in her life. Neither have people like "Teddy" Kennedy or Jay Rockefeller, most of whose fortune derives from his grand-grandfather's oil fortune made at Standard Oil (the original company of which Exxon-Mobil is an offshoot). I predict that the next time you hear about Rockefeller having a "conflict of interest" will be a very warm day in Fairbanks, Alaska.

I know the "conflict of interest" (possible) line on the Palins is a natural one, but in fact it's something of a cheap shot. Once in great while it's nice to have a candidate whose husband (or wife) is a working stiff.

Is your point that Todd's job constitutes a possible conflict, while the vast stock and bond holdings and corporate tie-ins of the super-rich souls I've mentioned (and the many mega-rich people I've left out) don't? That doesn't strike me as fair at all.

In fact, it strikes me as case being made for Government by Plutocracy. You fell into a trap, but you aren't alone there. If BP prospers mightily in Alaska, the benefits (in the form of money from taxes on profits) go in significant quantities to the people of the state.

At the same time, no one in his right mind believes that Sarah isn't going to propose a large increase in Alaska's tax on oil profits. Nothing in her career indicates that she won't consider the people of Alaska first, last, and always. She has built her political life on opposing the kind of corruption that plays much too big a role in Alaska politics.

There is no conceivable conflict of interest with Sarah Palin. She's as far-removed from your usual sef-dealing politician as Jersey City is from Anchorage.


Here are the ranges of net worth reported by some of the individuals I've mentioned above. I think you can the problem. Is it possible for a candidate of modest means -- or even of somewhat immodest means -- to afford to run for a national office? Very few of the people listed below actually earned more than a small portion of their assets. People like Jay Rockefeller and Ted Kennedy inherited their great wealth, while people like Kerry, Harman, and Pelosi married into it. By the way, Mitt Romney's net wealth adds up to more than $250 million. The following is the link to opensecrets, which reflects the disclosures of net worth. Sociologist Thorsten Veblen once talked about "the sheer vulgar fatness of great wealth." Read and meditate on these numbers and you will see what he meant.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/overview.asp


Name
Minimum Net Worth
Maximum Net Worth

Herb Kohl (D-Wis)
$219,098,029
$234,549,004

Jane Harman (D-Calif)
$168,651,649
$289,045,000

John Kerry (D-Mass)
$165,741,511
$235,262,100

Darrell Issa (R-Calif)
$135,862,098
$677,230,000

Jay Rockefeller (D-WVa)
$78,150,023
$101,579,003

Donald H. Rumsfeld
$57,089,104
$174,672,011

Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ)
$38,198,170
$90,733,019

John McCain (R-Ariz)
$20,571,136
$32,043,011

Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ)
$19,978,175
$67,170,000

Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass)
$19,189,049
$93,043,004

Dick Cheney
$17,120,041
$79,588,010

John Campbell (R-Calif)
$16,504,086
$76,512,000

Nita M. Lowey (D-NY)
$14,987,069
$60,881,000

Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif)
$14,246,107
$54,085,000