One of Dem Daze

You know the good thing about getting information today, is that the internet and cable television allows us to hear and see interviews, we would not have seen back in the day. For instance, I was listening to the "sage" of South Central the other day and he was talking about an interview Sen. Ted "Otis" Kennedy did with Tim Russert on "Meet the Press." Russert asked Kennedy if the democrats were going to win the mid term elections. And this is what Kennedy said:

MR. RUSSERT: What’s going to happen in the midterm elections?
SEN. KENNEDY: Democrats are going to be successful. I think we’re going to make progress. I think we’ll carry the Senate and also the House.
MR. RUSSERT: Both houses?
SEN. KENNEDY: Yes.
MR. RUSSERT: What will be the big issues?
SEN. KENNEDY: The big—the overarching issue is the gross incompetency of this administration in every aspect, whether it’s in the Medicare prescription drug bill--45 different programs in my state of Massachusetts—rather than the simple kind of a program that would have been the Medicare system on that thing, the incompetence that we had down in Katrina, the cronyism that we have had in terms of the individuals that have taken government jobs, the refusal of accountability in terms of the—of Iraq. I think it’s all, it’s all out there.

MR. RUSSERT: So you think the Republicans will be blamed for corruption?

SEN. KENNEDY: I think there’s certainly a big—there’ll be a heavy burden for them to try and defend what’s been happening here. The sweetheart contracts, the Halliburton sweetheart contracts that have been out there, I think they’ll have a heavy burden to do so.

MR. RUSSERT: Your very first appearance on MEET THE PRESS in 1962, there was a lot of corruption in Massachusetts, and you were asked, “What would be the political effect of those Democrats who were guilty of corruption?” Let’s watch.

(Videotape, March 11, 1962):

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Will the Democratic Party be harmed this year by these scandals?

SEN. KENNEDY: Well, I think the question of whether individuals who have come up, who’ve been indicted, have been Democrats, I think are irrelevant, really, any more than you can say that because certain of these people belong to a certain racial group, a religious group, a racial group, or from a certain city and town are necessarily all evil.
(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: When it’s Democrats, it’s irrelevant.

SEN. KENNEDY: That’s, that’s really not the issue, is it? I mean, is it just the individuals or is it the whole culture? And I think what most Americans understand is that there is the whole permeation, sort of the stench of money and corruption and cronyism and fixed deals and special interests, that the special interests get special consideration when they make the contribution, all of that sort of wrapped on in...(unintelligible).

MR. RUSSERT: Democrats as well as Republicans?

SEN. KENNEDY: There are some, and there ought to be the accountability. But this is—this really is something that is just waiting on the administration and upon the leadership. The leadership has an opportunity to clear—have done something, and it should have.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Ted Kennedy, thank you for joining us. The book, “America: Back on Track.”

SEN. KENNEDY: “Track.”


Now if you read the whole thing correctly. Kennedy just said that the corruption going on in his party in his own state is irrevelant. But it's different for republicans. As a matter of fact mid term elections different. I wonder if Kennedy was pissed at Russert for that last exchange. My guess he had too, it's equivalent to inquiring about his opinion on drunk driving.

Don't ask....


Another thing in the transcript is that Kennedy said we are in Iraq longer than the Korean War and WWII. Someone needs to remind the dazed senator that we are still in Korea and still in Europe from both wars respectively. As a matter of fact, the Korean War is simmering, it was never over...