Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I have been a resident of Tucson since the early 1960's. I have started each morning, for good or ill, by reading the Arizona Daily Star.

At one time, the Arizona Daily Star was an award winning newspaper with reporters and editors that demonstrated excellence in journalism. That newspaper has not existed for some time now.

There has been a precipitous decline in the quality of reporting and the opinion pages since Lee Enterprises purchased the newspaper. While the Arizona Daily Star still has a few good reporters and on occasion demonstrates flashes of its former self, on most days it appears to be in a race to the bottom to compete with the likes of Rupert Murdoch's yellow rag New York Post.

Thursday's edition is a good example. On the front page of the Arizona Daily Star appeared this AP report by Laurie Kellman Bipartisanship loses its champion (the headline was re-captioned by the Arizona Daily Star. The original headline was Kennedy's absence leaves Senate void of dealmaker – not synonymous with "bipartisanship" by any stretch of the imagination, copy editor).

To paraphrase Rachel Maddow, "If you were to read some of the news today, you would find that the late Senator Edward Kennedy was known for being a centrist, a compromiser — actually, a fairly conservative guy for a Democrat. That and other shameless jaw-dropping historical revisionism" in the Arizona Daily Star today.

Ms. Kellman takes the lame GOP excuse of the day for their opposition to any health care reforms – that the "stalemate" is the result of Kennedy's absence for the past few, crucial months – and spins for the likes of Senators Judd Gregg (R-NH), Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and the lamest of the lame, John McCain (R-AZ), who are singing the praises of Ted Kennedy's bipartisanship and lamenting the loss of his leadership – two qualities sorely lacking in each of these senators.

Entirely missing from this AP report is any semblance of the truth.

Ted Kennedy was the "liberal lion of the Senate," and unabashedly proud of of being a liberal. No one ever mistook Ted Kennedy for a "centrist."

The misuse and abuse of the word "centrist" by the establishment media is approaching criminal negligence. The media uses "centrist" to describe moderate to conservative Democrats. This is the way in which the establishment media maintains the myth that this is a "conservative" country.

In issue poll after issue poll, for years, Americans have identified with the progressive to "left" position on almost every issue, with few exceptions. The fulcrum on the balance scale of political views in this country rests not right of center, but left of center, and has for some time. In 2008, Barack Obama and the Democrats won the largest Democratic landslide election since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

It has been suggested that the Republican's revisionist history to rebrand Ted Kennedy as a "centrist" is an attempt not to bestow any honor on a liberal. Remember the Republican's deification of Ronald Reagan at his funeral? There cannot be anyone of equal or greater stature to their deity. Especially "liberal'" Ted Kennedy, whom the conservative media and the GOP have vilified as Satan himself for decades.

The "bipartisan" landmark legislation Ted Kennedy forged over the years was not the result of "making the right concessions, which really are the essence of successful negotiations," as lame-o McCain said on ABC's "This Week." Kennedy forged those bipartisan coalitions on the power of his personality, his unmatched skills as a legislator, and his convictions in the righteousness of his cause. Kennedy did not trade away any core liberal principles to achieve landmark legislation in civil rights, education and health care. He was able to convince his Republican colleagues in the Senate in the justness of his cause, that it was the morally correct thing to do.

Sen. McCain is lying when he says that If Kennedy had been engaged in the debate this past June, when he handed his committee chairmanship duties to Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), "I think the health-care reform might be in a very different place today."

Sen. McCain serves on Sen. Kennedy's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. The three House committees having jurisdiction have passed America's Affordable Health Care Act (H.R. 3200), and Sen. Kennedy's HELP Committee approved the Senate version of the bill (the Kennedy-Dodd or "HELP" bill) on July 15. The bill included more than 160 Republican amendments accepted during the month-long mark-up, one of the longest in Congressional history. http://help.senate.gov/Maj_press/2009_07_15_b.pdf Yet every Republican on the committee voted against it — including the very same Senators Judd Gregg (R-NH), Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and lame-o John McCain (R-AZ).

So, despite their public statements now that they would have worked with Senator Kennedy on a bipartisan health care reform bill, and did in fact succeed in obtaining over 160 amendments in markup to the Kennedy-Dodd bill, these pathetic losers already voted against the "Kennedy-Dodd" bill on July 15 – a critical detail not included in Ms. Kellman's AP report in the Arizona Daily Star.

As Rachel Maddow correctly noted in this segment 'The Rachel Maddow Show' for Thursday, August 27:

MADDOW: In other words, if only Ted Kennedy were still here. If only he had a health care bill, those Republicans say they‘d vote for that.

You know, Ted Kennedy did have a health care bill. Senator Kennedy was chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which approved a health care reform package in July. It‘s called the Kennedy bill. Senator Kennedy helped write that bill. Senators Hatch and McCain and Gregg all voted against it.

But the revisionist history goes deeper. They aren‘t just saying they would have voted for a Kennedy health care bill, even though they had the chance and they didn‘t. They‘re saying they would have voted for a Kennedy health care bill because Ted Kennedy would have compromised with them, because Ted Kennedy was all about making concessions to Republicans.

* * *

Apparently in the history of Ted Kennedy‘s life and work, as imagined by the GOP today, Senator Kennedy was the great compromiser, ready to water down health care reform in order to bring Republicans onboard.

Of course, in the actual history of Ted Kennedy‘s life and work, he always said that — and I say this without a hint of shyness — he was a doctrinaire liberal who spent the last four decades fighting to get health coverage for every American.

The truth is that on the issue of health care reforms, Senators Judd Gregg, Orrin Hatch and John McCain have never worked in a bipartisan manner with Ted Kennedy. Not in 1993-94 with the Clinton health care reform bill, and not now with the Obama health care reforms.