i just saw arlen specter on a sunday-morning

politics show...and the guy looks like he's one step from the casket. why are the majority of our politicians people who should be in retirement homes? why is our president fairly consistently a 60 year old man? (i know there are exceptions, but the average age is pretty high).

why aren't there young people representing americans? Discuss.

i was not aware. even so, he's pretty old. i'm more questioning the age, unless he's younger than he appears. if so, *foot solidly in mouth*

As your body starts falling to pieces, your head takes over. Most older folks get wiser, a lot wiser. They've already been all the places younger folks are going, and they know how all the stories end. There's a reason tribes are governed by their elders, churches are governed by their elders, and countries are governed by elders.

Trust me, some day you'll get there, too.

The tragedy is when government is run by men alone, and those men have gotten older without achieving wisdom. The former ensures that government will remain out of balance, and the latter gives us what we have now. An equal tragedy happens when governments are run by young revolutionaries who were great at achieving military victories but who had absolutely no knowledge of how peacetime works.

Although young men chafe at being ruled by old people, there is a reason for it to be this way. When those young men get old, they'll understand.

experience.

I know sixty years old probably seems ancient to you, but I think there's a lifetime of learning and experience that goes into making a successful politician.

The smartest lawyers I know are the ones you'd consider the "old guys." They're the ones you would want on your side.

i'm just concerned, bc there's usually a "changing of the guard", so to speak. i guess there are some younger politicians, but there seems an inordinately large amount of older politicians.

but you're probably right.

of reality. What worries me is the amount of younger Republicans coming to Congress. They have already been brainwashed by the conservatives into believing they are correct and everyone else in wrong. A one-party system is the first step toward dictatorship, and if we are not already there, we are well on our way.

voting for the stem-cell bill were the older ones.

Notice how the fissure in the Senate and House R representation follows age and experience. The dissenting Rs aren't the ones brought up by the Heritage Foundation, Rush, and FAUX News.

The dissenting Rs were brought up on Goldwater and respect for the private citizen and responsible fiscal policy.

I for one will mourn Specter's passing enormously. He may not always be right, but he's part of a dying breed that earns my respect regardless of whether I agree with them.

What a shame.

I saw a woman on CSpan this morning who is the epitome of the reason I left the Republican Party. Arrogance, sense of entitlement, I'M good--You're bad. She made a complete fool of herself by actually never answering a question. Just rhetoric rhetoric rhetoric.

1. Traditional conservatives, like Kissinger, Nixon, Ford, Bush 41(?), even Buchanan.

2. Neo-conservative Straussians, like Wolfie, Cheney, Pearle, Rummy.
These are the dangerous, maniacal ones who want to rule the world. They have no scruples about doing anything they can to gain control.
They were able to influence Reagan to some degree, and now mastermind Dubya to a very large degree. It's the non-intellectual presidents they can get the furthest with.

We can only hope the gap widens as the neocons become more and more obvious to all.

the upstart Republicans who were elected in 1994 not on the strength of their own character/abilities but on a larger movement that was soon rebuffed. Santorum, Bush, Allen (I think) - they and many more were elected to statewide office that year. They're all young and lack the wisdom and foresight of the previous generation of Republicans. While age isn't everything, as we can see from Reagan and Kennedy, it does count for something.

people considered him youth personified compared to what preceded him.

It was a breath of fresh air. JFK was 43 and Jackie was 31. All of a sudden there were small children running around the White House. Jackie had to haul out all the old Sears Roebuck furniture the Eisenhowers had accumulated. The Kennedys' entertainment included Pablo Casals and Rudolf Nureyev, instead of Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians, and the Ray Coniff singers, which Ike & Mamie favored.

The presidency used to be the ultimate payoff for a life of public service. Naturally, this occurred in the latter years of one's life. After the presidency, there was nothing left to do but play golf and wait for the end. Clinton and Carter are setting a new standard for post-presidential accomplishments and expectations.

The older Senators are imbued with great respect for the institution, which is something the new arrivals lack. After running roughshod over Clinton, it looks as though once the old timers are gone, Congress will be a free-for-all. They consider Byrd, Specter et al to be nothing but kooks, and have no scruples themselves.

Yes, wisdom comes with age. Listening to Barry Goldwater's last interviews makes it difficult to believe he was once considered a dangerous radical. Then again, there are people like Strom, Helms, Lott…

I work as a paralegal and have for 14 years. The older and more experienced the better. They are more level headed and less prone to irrational, shoot from the hip nonsense and definitely, less caught up in the "I am a attorney" misplaced visions of grandeur.

I'm sure the same applies with senior senators and junior senators.

I thought Mr. Spector's interview and debate was poignant this morning. He made the other sentator look like the theocratic nut he truly is and highlighted the irrational hatred of science that people of that mindset espouse.

The Senator he was debating frankly was frightening in his ideology.

is re-thinking some of his earlier antics when he was a young whipper-snapper in the Anita Hill days.

forgive him for his actions concerning the Thomas/Hill affair.

First of all, Arlen Specter has weathered several major health crises. I can't be the only one on this thread who recalls him wearing the baseball cap after surgery for a brain tumor (which was non-malignant, if I recall correctly). He's apparently pretty tough.

And medical treatment for cancer is not for sissies.

Secondly, Specter is a politically complex figure. For the rest of his life he'll have to live down the way he treated Anita Hill. He can also toe the vindictive party line at times.

However, in terms of Specter's stances in general, he tends to be moderate to liberal. I remember him standing to applaud Bill Clinton during a State of the Union speech, and he was the only member of the GOP on his feet in that row.

I just read a profile of Arlen Specter in an op-ed piece, and it seems Specter did admire JFK and probably would have run as a Democrat. However, there was a good deal of corruption in his local Democratic Party, and he ran as a reform candidate.

We can debate his actions till the cows come home, and rightly so. But he's a member of a rare and vanishing breed, unless the GOP really shakes off the current leadership.

I've been an SCR activist for many, many years, as I have ID diabetes.

Specter has been there since the beginning, owing to an illness he had early on.

I despise how he treated Anita Hill, but without him, I wouldn't have any hope for SCR in the US.

He has almost single-handedly pushed the political envelope on the issue, more so than most Democrats.

It's a heart and soul issue with him, so he has fought long and hard for it.

Too little, too late, but I respect someone who's willing to admit mistakes. There are far too many of them around anymore anywhere. Perhaps the wisdom of age helps.

he helped anyway....grotesque old murdering pig...lee harvey oswald was a onduty oni(?) agent on nov22/63 and spector etal used him to help the killers of an american president escape justice...don't be mislead by arlen spector (the magic bullet)...if i got hands on him, he'd squeal
(some of the younger people here have no idea of how awful the JFK murder was....and how Lee Harvey seemed like the lone nut until people asked simple logic question why? and have never found an answer- in fact, the whole 'why' question has never seen much light either, as oswald's role as an office/naval intelligence onduty agent would make blaming him for the murder alot less easy for mediawhores like $28k/day peter jennings..best just say over and over 'oswald did it oswald did it! ad nazism)

the author of the greatest fairy tale of our generation. Remember it well.

He made Sam Brownback look like a moron and an asshole while arguing about whether leftover embryos are life. Brownback said those embryos are life and are, therefore, "sacred." He actually called them sacred.

Specter replied that life does not begin in a laboratory dish and that it cannot be considered life until it is implanted in a womb because it could not become life otherwise.

Better to look like death warmed over than look and sound like a stupid asshole.

I've said it hundreds of times as one who has fought long and hard on theis issue--it can't be partisan.

Brownback was made to look like a HF parrotting fool by an old, ill man.

If that didn't make a powerful statemnet, what could?

they take a true freak like blownback and use him to present a contrasting picture of decent goodness in spector....blownback should ask spector about 'connecting the dots? but why! here we have the {911} blueprint!' statement but blownback is obviously a well trained tapeworm (the gop in america's guts)

(Courtesy of Americablog)

They're talking about stem cells. Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), who looks like hell (no hair, sunken cheeks, raspy voice) is letting conservative Senator Sam Brownback really have it. Specter is "going personal" talking about his Hodgkins Lymphoma and how if the war on cancer had gotten the funding it needed and deserved he might not have cancer today.

Brownback then says:
BROWNBACK: George and Arlen, when did each of your lives begin? When did your life biologically start? And we shouldn't be researching on that life at any time during its continuum unless we have your consent. When did your life start?

SPECTER: Well Sam, I'm a lot more concerned at this point about when my life is gonna end.

and I honestly had to look twice, because I didn't recognize him anymore. What I would like to know is did he know he had cancer when he ran for re-election last November? If he did and kept it hidden till January, then I have totally lost what little respect I had for him. The citizens of PA elected him (although I voted for Hoeffel)to do the job for the next 6 years and if he knew he was ill, to me that represents fraud. But then again what else would you expect from a republican.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005 Posted: 7:00 PM EST (0000 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter has been diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease but intends to continue working during treatment, his office announced Wednesday.

"I have beaten a brain tumor, bypass heart surgery and many tough political opponents, and I'm going to beat this, too," the Pennsylvania Republican said in a statement. "I have a lot more work to do for Pennsylvania and America."

< snip >

A biopsy of a lymph node carried out February 14 at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia yielded a result positive for Hodgkin's disease, but a bone marrow biopsy showed no cancer, the statement said.

Follow-up tests Wednesday at the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson Cancer Center determined that he has "Stage IVB" Hodgkin's disease.

Which, very much against my will, (I'm just not a fan of Specter, or his role in government) saddens me. To me, it looks like he's been trying his best to make amends.

Can't have guys like that running the country.

:eyes:

i was just stating an observation. if someone DIES in office, this means that remaining in the office was dangerous for their health? why not get some fresh blood in there? he could step down, or choose not to run for office again. public office can't be all that great for his health, he would recover a lot more quickly if he didn't have huge stress.

It's that simple. You need time to have developed the connections and experience to fundraise and get others to do the same for you.