Where's the bar?

About 15 years ago, when one of my daughters was a hostess at a DC restaurant, Ted Kennedy came in for a private function. My daughter said "Senator, as a registered Massachusetts voter, I welcome you to (name of restaurant)."

"Where's the bah," Ted replied.

He was who he was, and somehow I like that story about him. He will be rolling in encomiums as they lower him down, most undeserved, but somehow I just can't help liking the guy.

The Kennedy/Feingold bill made me and just about every other doctor in the US a slave to paperwork. But real people with real jobs whose employers changed insurance every year suddenly found themselves relieved of the 'pre-existing condition' trap, and people got helped.

He was running against Ray Shamie (R) for reelection some years ago, and during one of their debates, Ted was declaiming on the network of support and intercalated logs that could be rolled, and Shamie interrupted.

"So, that's what you do?" Shamie sneered. "You crank up the democratic machine and just follow the party line?

"You BET I do!" Ted shot back. "That's how things get done in DC! And if you don't know that, you've got no hope of doing anything for the people of Massachusetts if you evah get up theah!"

You gotta love this guy.

I think in the end, Ted got what he wanted publicly and privately, and delivered on what he got paid to do by the people who bought him. Few others in the Senate have done even that. Graft is graft, but honest graft is honest graft.

And that's what Ted did. He was an honest thief, and given the state of the Union, we should have more like him. Senators will get paid. They just won't give quality for the money like Ted did.