President Obama's Eulogy For Kennedy »
Posted By deathray 3 months ago in Political Opinion
Remarks of President Barack Obama - As Prepared for Delivery Eulogy for Edward Kennedy
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deathray
Hm...summarizing a life...Investment banker, sailor, unintentional gourmet cook. Ex US Naval officer, also Foreign Service. Split my time between NYC and Miami Beach ...
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Spadecaller3 months ago
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Thanks dr.
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I am easily turned off to vain displays of pomp and phony emotionalism and was pleased to find neither in Obama's eulogy.
Obama mentioned: "He [Teddy] once said of his brother Bobby that he need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, and I imagine he would say the same about himself."
Obama spoke elegantly and honestly without the need of adding any fluff or exaggeration. Mentioning Kennedy's hard times and struggles and the empathy that he had acquired through his suffering was spot on and made for a meaningful talk. I never once got the feeling that the remembrances shared were greater than life.
The closeness that Teddy shared with so many people on this earth in addition to his wife and closest family members was real and the genuine affection shared by so many did not need to be dressed up for the service.
Because of my old friendships with people from AA that I developed over the past 31 years, and despite my residence in Florida, I have shared the past few days watching the various events on TV with a few Irish Catholic buddies who are transplants from Massachusetts. My wife had to tell them to "pok" the "cah" around the corner to make room for everyone. The last of the Kennedy brothers will be missed by so many of us.
Thanks again for posting this.-
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deathray3 months ago
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spadecaller -
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i had thought to mke s statement at the beginning of this thread regarding the lack of politicization of this solemn event, but i decided that the words of president obama's eulogy for sen kennedy would make the point better, partuclarly in light of the Reagan funeral. i'll end any further discussion of that topic here and now.
no doubt there are those who will see what they want to see, and spin what they want to spin. i suspect that we've seen quite a bit of moral outrage of that sort on propeller these days.
anyway, i thought that president obama did a good job of telling us more about the man, whose private life was under so much scrutiny it may as well have been his public life after all.
teddy kennedy was surely an imperfect being, but at least he had shown signs of growth (yes, and girth) over the span of his lifetime.
oh, and it's 'pahk'
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cowboygrandpa3 months ago
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FTA:
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"This spirit of resilience and good humor would see Ted Kennedy through more pain and tragedy than most of us will ever know. He lost two siblings by the age of sixteen. He saw two more taken violently from the country that loved them. He said goodbye to his beloved sister, Eunice, in the final days of his own life. He narrowly survived a plane crash, watched two children struggle with cancer, buried three nephews, and experienced personal failings and setbacks in the most public way possible.
It is a string of events that would have broken a lesser man. And it would have been easy for Teddy to let himself become bitter and hardened; to surrender to self-pity and regret; to retreat from public life and live out his years in peaceful quiet. No one would have blamed him for that"
This is for those who mock him for his drinking, would that you could, experience what he did and not drink to block out the pain.
Compassion is something that is one's heart, Ted had it big time, he also had empathy !!!
For all you so called "compassionate conservatives" out there that have none for a man that faced so much. Yet wanted to make life better for those who had little.
Your lack of a heart is way to clear and ya should be ashamed !!!-
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chevydog3 months ago
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cbg-- I'm gonna have to take exception to some of the above.
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"This is for those who mock him for his drinking, would that you could, experience what he did and not drink to block out the pain."
I don't mock the guy, but that is not a universal reaction. Yeah, it does happen. I watched the wife of a family friend descend into alcoholism after her husband was killed in a car accident. And I watched another friend drink himself to death after his discharge from the Air Force. But these were exceptions, the more written in bold because they were.
For every horror story like those above, I guess I've seen at least the same number of people at least publicly keep the "stiff upper lip". Grief eventually fades, to be replaced by warm memories. And Kennedy's religious tradition, which we happen to share, is no small thing to fall back upon.
My Dad died last year, less than a year after he was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. So I'd like to think I understand Kennedy's son's sorrow. Dad's funeral was for me a wrenching experience; the more so because, for a variety of reasons, at age 60 it was the first I'd ever been to. But we all have ways of coping; and we're never given more than we can handle. I still wonder how people do sometimes; like my wife, whose father died of cancer when she was a junior in college.
On compassion and empathy-- It's part of our obligation by virtue of our existence to use our talents and abilities to make the world a little better. For some like Kennedy this route may be in the political arena. For others the stage may not be so large. And there are those, whose best contribution is to stand back and cheer. I can live with that personally; just not with obstruction. The guiding principle is that to those whom much has been given, much will be expected.
So RIP Ted Kennedy. You were a very human human. Your successes and not-so-successes can serve as inspiration for all of us.
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injest3 months ago
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cowboygrandpa
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Compassion is something that is one's heart, Ted had it big time, he also had empathy !!!
For all you so called "compassionate conservatives" out there that have none for a man that faced so much. Yet wanted to make life better for those who had little.
Your lack of a heart is way to clear and ya should be ashamed !!!
Compassion! Empathy! You’ve got to be kidding!
How much Compassion, Empathy does it take to let a woman suffocate in the back of your car why your buds are trying to hide you in a hotel!
From Kennedy’s OWN WORDS. His OWN TIMELINE
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/tedkenned...
Ted Kennedy : “On Chappaquiddick Island, off Martha's Vineyard, I attended, on Friday evening, July 18, a cook-out, ……. When I left the party, around 11:15 P.M., I was accompanied by one of these girls, Miss Mary Jo Kopechne.”
Did ya get that? around 11:15 P.M.,
Joyce Carol Oates :”leaving the young woman to die an agonising death not of drowning but of suffocation over a period of hours”.
Hours as in more than 2
Ted Kennedy : “Instead of looking directly for a telephone after lying exhausted in the grass for an undetermined time, I walked back to the cottage where the party was being held and requested the help of two friends, my cousin, …..and directed them to return immediately to the scene with me -- this was sometime after midnight “
Walked back to the party and got 3 other people took them back to the seen of the accident.
Some 45 min after the accident. Mary Jo Kopechne was STILL ALIVE AT THIS TIME!
Accident around 11:15 P.M., Ted Kennedy was back in his hotel room about 2 A.M.
Can ya follow the timeline here? 2 hr and 45 min.
Joyce Carol Oates :“death not of drowning but of suffocation over a period of hours.”-
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deathray3 months ago
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fine, you're outraged.
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now, what have you all done for Kopechne's family?
let's say he's somehow guilty of being complicit in her death.
no room for redemption for a kennedy, injest?
are you now going to state that you're not a christian?
can't find the good in anyone; are you that bitter?
i suppose you feel that the judicial system in this country is not worth participating in because of this one case?
i'm looking forward to seeing the goose stepping series of harangues that usually accompanies your responses to my post.
rant away. -
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Icantwait3 months ago
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My Fellow Americans: Compassion, Ted Kennedy? Please, Obama and Kennedy, two of a kind. The perfect individual to eulogize was Obama, a man with no compassion for real Americans, only terrorist that are part of the mass murder of 9/11.
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SpadeCaller and his Irish Catholic Buddies from Massachusetts, no wonder his mind is so demented. Yeh! down those beers and tell your war stories about the Irish Religious War. How many people did they blow up.
CowboyGrandpa another phony that pretends to be so pious and understanding of the sorry life Teddy led. With his millions and not once did he volunteer to give it all to the poor, as he would have us do, to live on equal status with everyone else.
CowboyGrandpa A war hero. I think not. I don't know of anyone who slopped around the muck and mud of Vietnam listening to enemy rounds slicing through the vegetation above their buried heads, watching their buddies one by one bite the dust, and then come back here and continually trash this country. Man, just returning to the U.S. of A and getting down on your knees and kissing the very earth of American soil knowing that not only is this the best Country in the World but the Best that Ever Existed.
Deathray what an embarrassment to the human race. Can't stay on the Lame subject he brought up but has to go off on accusing someone of not being a Christian. Look in the Mirror Deathray if you can keep it from breaking. DeathRay, what kind of description is that anyway. I have notice that all you Damocrat Radical Liberals have some type of off the wall title.
You are pathetic.
Kennedy was a bum in the finest clothing. I'm surprised Obama is not offended by all the money he had. Oh! without his money and connections he could not have gotten elected. I understand that much better now. The Real American-
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deathray3 months ago
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icw -
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i was wondering which of the sous-chefs would draw the short straw and have to cook up today's special, the **** souffle.
and what a **** souffle it is! very airy, almost no substance at all, and yet, so highly redolent of your **** it's impossible to ignore.
what a masterpiece!
yes, injest is not acting in a christian fashion, and if you feel the need to tell peopleto look in the mirror, perhaps it's because you cant see your own reflection means thatyou have a banyan forest growing from your own eye (there's a biblical reference for you)
calling yourself 'the real american' only means you are really insecure in that role...how could anyone question you if that's what you call yourself. why my avatar id here is deathray is not really your business. push your luck and i'll show you.
oh and as far as staying on topic, perhaps you might have supported injest. it's a lot more interesting than spamming three members of the community who don't share your views.
oh, and your comment is reported.
no, you don't have first amendment rights here. there are limits on what you can say. -
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Radiofreeeuropa3 months ago
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Interestingly enough, these same folks who claim a lifetime is judged by unfortunate mistakes of one evening (if your Ted Kennedy)have had no problems with Laura Bush doing the same thing. I don't think her life is to be judged on that unfortunate mistake, nor should Kennedy's. The man did so much good, but he was a man. Imperfect in a word. Want perfection?
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You won't find any in this world my friends...best look elsewhere. Thank you Ted, you done good. -
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