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George H.W. Bush, 41st President of the United States, Dies At 94 (washingtonpost.com)

George H.W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States, has passed away tonight at the age of 94. As The Washington Post reports, he was "the last veteran of World War II to serve as president, he was a consummate public servant and a statesman who helped guide the nation and the world out of a four-decade Cold War that had carried the threat of nuclear annihilation." From the report: Although Mr. Bush served as president three decades ago, his values and ethic seem centuries removed from today's acrid political culture. His currency of personal connection was the handwritten letter -- not the social media blast. He had a competitive nature and considerable ambition that were not easy to discern under the sheen of his New England politesse and his earnest generosity. He was capable of running hard-edge political campaigns, and took the nation to war. But his principal achievements were produced at negotiating tables.

Despite his grace, Mr. Bush was an easy subject for caricature. He was an honors graduate of Yale University who was often at a loss for words in public, especially when it came to talking about himself. Though he was tested in combat when he was barely out of adolescence, he was branded "a wimp" by those who doubted whether he had essential convictions. This paradox in the public image of Mr. Bush dogged him, as did domestic events. His lack of sure-footedness in the face of a faltering economy produced a nosedive in the soaring popularity he enjoyed after the triumph of the Persian Gulf War. In 1992, he lost his bid for a second term as president.
Bush's spokesman Jim McGrath announced his death on Twitter, but didn't provide the cause of death. In 2012, he announced that he had vascular Parkinsonism, a condition that limited his mobility.

UPDATE: George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States, has issued a statement on the passing of his father: "Jeb, Neil, Marvin, Doro, and I are saddened to announce that after 94 remarkable years, our dear Dad has died. George H. W. Bush was a man of the highest character and the best dad a son or daughter could ask for. The entire Bush family is deeply grateful for 41's life and love, for the compassion of those who have cared and prayed for Dad, and for the condolences of our friends and fellow citizens."

16 of 408 comments (clear)

  1. A reason to respect him by koavf · · Score: 3, Informative

    Tho you can say a lot of things good and bad about him, I will always respect how he stood by Dan Quayle as his running mate, essentially knowing it would cost him the election. Any other snark or criticism aside (and there is plenty, sure) I think that speaks a lot to his character.

    1. Re:A reason to respect him by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 4, Informative

      Dan Quayle? The man who spoke out against single mothers? Remember when Murphy Brown stopped her hit TV show, broke character, and spoke directly to him and all the misogynist bigots just like him, vigorously defending single mothers?

      History judges such people harshly.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  2. Re:RIP by fustakrakich · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes, and John Adams was a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." *a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant*

    And Jefferson! "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father." *a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward.*

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  3. Re:Comparisons and policies... by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Informative

    He's only viewed with rose-colored glasses because the current vulgarian is so awful.

    He handled the end of the Soviet Union really well (even sending $1biilon to the former enemy). His team handled the end of the El Salvador civil war with (especially in retrospect) surprising skill. He also committed to "full enforcement" of the Anti-Apartheid Act in South Africa (unlike the Reagan administration). In many his foreign policy was great (and again, in retrospect, he made the right decision to not conquer Iraq).

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  4. 5,000 casualties, not worth it ... by drnb · · Score: 4, Informative

    Tell me again how he deserves respect?

    During the first Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and Saudi Arabia(*):
    Generals: Estimated casualties to take Bagdhad and remove Saddam Hussein, 5,000 US troops.
    President HW Bush: Not worth it. End the war. Kicking the Iraqis back to their own country was our mission, not regime change.

    (*) Yes Saudi Arabia too, Battle of Kafji. 3 Iraqi divisions invaded, stopped by US Marines and Rangers and a hell of a lot of air support.

    1. Re:5,000 casualties, not worth it ... by drnb · · Score: 4, Informative

      The conspiracy theory based upon the ambiguous communique ignores that face to face meetings with the ambassador where Saddam was repeatedly warned not to invade Kuwait. Plus there is the whole 6 months of military build up and being told to leave Kuwait that also preceded the war.

  5. Re:Comparisons and policies... by pslytely+psycho · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Just a handful of Republican amendments; it was mostly a creation of the Democrats"

    Republicans added 161 amendments to the bill, then refused to vote on it. It was based on the Heritage Foundations earlier proposal (including the hated mandate).

    One hell of a handful there.

    --
    Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
  6. Re:Still? by Rockoon · · Score: 2, Informative

    Guess what Trump's approval rating is?

    More than the new speaker for the Democrats?

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
  7. Re:took the nation to war by Uberbah · · Score: 3, Informative

    That Iraqi troops were throwing babies out of incubators in Kuwatti hospitals, for one. There wasn't much enthusiasm for a military intervention until a teenage girl got on television and told that little fable - of course she was the daughter of an ambassador and was no where near the invasion or any clinics.

  8. Re:took the nation to war by ph1ll · · Score: 3, Informative

    Well documented propaganda, I'm afraid.

    Fake news ain't new.

    --
    --- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
  9. Re:He chose Big Oil over the world's future by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2, Informative

    Oh, look, Greenpeace is infuriated at something. How unusual.

    Just checking, is this the same Greenpeace that slandered genetically modified foods? Why yes it is!

    "More than 100 Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine and other sciences this week signed a blistering letter attacking Greenpeace's "fact-challenged propaganda campaign against innovations in agricultural biotechnology."

    "Greenpeace and their allies have claimed falsely that GMOS are dangerous, untested and inadequately regulated," the letter states. "But the science telling us GM crops and foods are safe has been confirmed by vast experience."

    The letter goes on to point out that "As we have shown elsewhere, we know that GMOS are at least as safe as crops produced with other breeding methods. The only time a safety difference has been found the GMOs have been safer."

    Worse, the latest target of Greenpeace's anti-GMO campaign is a type of rice â" called Golden Rice â" that would "reduce or eliminate much of the death and disease caused by vitamin A deficiency, which has the greatest impact on the poorest people in Africa and Southeastern Asia."

    Greenpeace, mind you, is the same organization that thinks "climate change denial" is a crime worth prosecuting.

    To show just how truly muddle-headed Greenpeace is, a recent study published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature found that the use of GMOs can help fight climate change by cutting methane emissions. Which means Greenpeace's anti-science GMO stance trumps its allegedly pro-science climate-change fanaticism.

    Greenpeace isn't alone on the left-wing fringes here.

    A Pew Research Center survey found, for example, that just over a third of Democrats think GMOs are safe to eat. Translation: two-thirds of Democrats are anti-science."

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  10. Re: RIP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    The Palestinians are a hostage group kept by the Arabs in camps to promote war against Israel. They are never allowed to assimilate into neighboring Arab countries.

  11. Re: Still? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    he's been at 51% mark higher than obama. but CNN fake news won't report on that.

  12. Re: RIP by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 3, Informative

    And yet roughly 2 million of them are now Jordanian citizens.

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  13. Re: RIP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    OK, I'll bite: who were some of the people who were accused who were innocent?

    Quoting from Wikipedia:

    Nelson Algren, Lucille Ball, Alvah Bessie, Elmer Bernstein, Leonard Bernstein, David Bohm,
    Bertolt Brecht, Archie Brown, Esther Brunauer, Charlie Chaplin, Aaron Copland, Bartley Crum,Howard Da Silva, Jules Dassin, Dolores del RÃo, Edward Dmytryk, W.E.B. Du Bois, George A. Eddy, Albert Einstein, Hanns Eisler, Howard Fast, Lion Feuchtwanger, Carl Foreman, John Garfield, C.H. Garrigues,
    Jack Gilford, Allen Ginsberg, Ruth Gordon, Lee Grant, Dashiell Hammett, Elizabeth Hawes, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Healey,Lena Horne, Langston Hughes, Marsha Hunt, Sam Jaffe, Theodore Kaghan,
    Garson Kanin, Benjamin Keen, Otto Klemperer, Gypsy Rose Lee, Cornelius Lanczos,Ring Lardner Jr., Arthur Laurents, Philip Loeb, Joseph Losey, Albert Maltz, Heinrich Mann, Klaus Mann, Thomas Mann, Thomas McGrath, Burgess Meredith, Arthur Miller, Jessica Mitford, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Zero Mostel, Joseph Needham, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Dorothy Parker, Linus Pauling, Samuel Reber, Al Richmond, Martin Ritt, Paul Robeson, Edward G. Robinson, Waldo Salt, Jean Seberg, Pete Seeger, Artie Shaw, Irwin Shaw, William L. Shirer, Lionel Stander, Dirk Jan Struik, Paul Sweezy, Charles W. Thayer, Dalton Trumbo, Tsien Hsue-shen, Sam Wanamaker, Orson Welles, Gene Weltfish.

    and that is just some of the notable people. Think of the thousands of others fired, blacklisted, and deported. Also read Yates v. United States, Watkins v. United States.

    We aren't talking about people going to jail here. You just can't serve in the US government when your goal is to overthrow said government. That's all.

    Somebody isn't familiar with the history of Red Scares in America, which preceded McCarthy, and include false accusations of violence(Haymarket Square), imprisonment (Debs), deportation, subversion(cointelpro), blacklisting(Dalton Trumbo), and more acts of oppression like forbidding the flying of the Bolshevik flag.

    Even school children were punished for not saying the pledge of allegiance.

    Only a few percent of their population were Communists, and they nonetheless dominated over a hundred million of their countrymen. They invented the GULAG.

    Gulags were actually implemented under the Russian Tsars, they just called them Katorga. And of course, the idea of deportation to the colonies existed in Great Britain (Australia, the Americas), and even older examples like the Babylonian Captivity exist.

  14. Re:"Read My Lips...." by Solandri · · Score: 3, Informative

    Civics 101: The President doesn't make the budget. The President suggests a budget, but ultimately it's Congress who gets to decide what does or doesn't make it into the budget. The President only gets to sign or veto the whole thing as one lump sum. He can't excise the parts of it he doesn't like while keeping the rest.

    The Democrats controlled both branches of Congress during his Presidency, and insisted the budget should have a tax increase. Bush refused to sign it to the point where the government went into shutdown. But he ultimately decided stopping the shutdown from further harming the economy was more important than keeping his promise, so he blinked and signed. The Democrats won, got their tax increase, and managed to dump the blame for it on Bush.

    The more you know...