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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."
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."
Thus goeth the last Republican politician that I still respected.
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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.
He was famous for saying, "Read my lips, no new taxes." and then raising taxes. Awful liar.
In retrospect, that was a fairly harmless lie compared to what's come since.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
He's only viewed with rose-colored glasses because the current vulgarian is so awful. He was a warmonger and the US incarceration rate increased 40%(!) during his tenure as President. We're still paying for some of the policies of his era today.
Frankly, I think this country would have been a better/different place today if Michael "card-carrying ACLU" Dukakis had won in 1988. I don't really have much else to say about the guy, honestly. I have no emotional interest in mourning him.
One thing I've marveled at is that he was the most recent President to NOT be reelected. And that was almost 25 years ago. That's probably a good argument in favor of term limits.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Seriously, there isn't even a hint of a tech or geek angle to post this story on slashdot.
Ken
Yeah, another one based on lies!
What lies?
Set the stage for the 2003 homicide spree in Iraq (Gulf War II).
No he didn't. He very eloquently and clearly explained why "going to Baghdad" would have been a supremely stupid thing to do in 1991. Everything he said applied just as much in 2003.
It is not his fault that his son was a moron.
"Read my lips, NO NEW TAXES"
"War on drugs"
And ... his good-for-nothing, that 'president went hiding' son, who launched attack on Iraq BASED ON A GODDAMN LIE !!
Homicide spree? You mean Obama's drone campaign? He murdered more children than any other Nobel peace prize winner. Remember when he bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital and then sent gunners in to murder the fleeing doctors and patients? This was 2015. Don't pretend you don't remember.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Didn't he propagate bringing cocaine to America so he could sway politics in Central America asking for my friend with a Coke habit
highly doubtful you respected him while he was president.
A *whole* lot of people who claim to respect him now were claiming he was hitler at the time.
Kind of like Trump now...
No. Bush I had an average approval rating of 61% in office, as high as 89%. ... keep going ...
Guess what Trump's approval rating is?
No, lower.... lower still
Yes, it is. The first war was predicated on falsehood also, stop making excuses you old saggy titted liar.
What falsehood, that Iraq invaded Kuwait?
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.
Guess what Trump's approval rating is?
More than the new speaker for the Democrats?
"His name was James Damore."
Yeah, another one based on lies!
What lies?
The lie that Iraq invaded Kuwait. The invasion was filmed on the old Apollo 11 moon landing set. ;-)
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.
Go jump out of an airplane over the Pacific and let us know how much kinship you feel you vicarious-living charade.
Jumping out of a plane going down in flames isn't really the accomplishment. Flying a perfectly good airplane to the island that is heavily defended and known to be commanded by someone who beheads captured pilots and practices ritualistic cannibalism is the accomplishment.
I was not in agreement much the time with the elder Bush when he was in office. But at least he knew enough to look and act the part, and to speak about things in a somewhat intelligent fashion.
My opposition to Trump stems not so much from his political or philosophical positions (he essentially has none), but rather from the fact that he was plainly incompetent and quite possibly detached from reality having spent all his life surrounded by yes-men. He's done nothing but confirm this since he's been in office. Add to that the fact that the same crew who engineered his election victory were also responsible for engineering the Brexit vote.
Oh, and treason. Lots and lots of treason.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Fun fact: guess what Obama's approval rating was at the same time in his presidency? No, lower...
I'm going to guess higher than Trump. Hey I was right. Why would you tell me to go lower? Do you have some blind partisan agenda to support the Organeutan?
Trump is the first US president in modern times to never get above 45%. That can still change, but smart money says it won't.
Set the stage for the 2003 homicide spree in Iraq (Gulf War II).
No he didn't. He very eloquently and clearly explained why "going to Baghdad" would have been a supremely stupid thing to do in 1991. Everything he said applied just as much in 2003.
It is not his fault that his son was a moron.
His son was not the reason why Dick Chaney and corporate America made it a priority to invade Iraq instead of going after Pakistan and the Taliban. At the time Sadam was continuing to manage to ship oil on the sly to Asia and work in conjunction with Pakistan to develop strategic nukes. If Sadam had managed things better then things might have been different, he would not have been caught with his pants down and might have even clobbered the shit out of Dick Chaney and company if he had taken the help that was offered to him on the sly by China and some of the disaffected crowds in Russia. That is why Chaney was in such a hurry to take out Sadam, he was starting to effect the worlds oil supply again and was slowly building up support in Asia and Russia that would soon have made it impossible for the US to control.
No the second gulf war was a war to make certain that oil would only flow to China largely through companies approved by the real oil cartels which are run by the major corporations. Chaney made certain that the big payoff for the US in undertaking the second Gulf war was the sudden dominance in world wide oil patch industries by Halliburton. In Canada Halliburton then swallowed up all sorts of major corps like Schlumberger and the like as a direct result of all the cash they were paid to do the logistics of the second Gulf war. In case you are interested at the time Canada started to ship more oil to the US than any other country or region on earth so the US was not that interested in how Iraq oil effected the world market only that Sadam would stop making his money from it.
The Bush era was and is the era of big oil and the consequences of not diversifying the energy economy fast enough in the US. This is the real legacy of the Bush presidencies, the inability to wean the US off fossil fuels quickly enough. GM and others have finally seen the writing on the wall, as does anyone with half a brain except the petro chemical industry which still runs the United States and far to much of the worlds economy. The legacy of the Republican party and the petrochemical industry in the US is what history will remember the most about the Bush family. And the fact that the oil industry controlled the presidency of the US and led the world down the path to what has is essentially corporate despotism culminating in the presidency of the complete moron puppet that is now in power.
Well documented propaganda, I'm afraid.
Fake news ain't new.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
So which former President is he going to pal around with?
George and Barbara couldn't stand him.
Obama? The Obama's despise him for his birtherism crap
George W. Bush? He and Laura wouldnt even vote for him.
Jimmy Carter?
Ronald Reagan snubbed Trump over and over again during his presidency.
George H.W. Bush was instrumental in undermining the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro ... and then bullshitting about it, calling the US a "global leader" for the climate in a speech.
After having got a letter from his buddy Ken Lay at Enron before the event, he made sure sure that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change's mandatory emission cuts were replaced with voluntary measures. He also got it changed that developing nations would be exempt. For many nations, including the US -- the world's biggest polluter -- this meant no change at all. Also, that China -- then (and for some inexplicable reason, still ) classified as a "developing nation" could increase its emissions.
Greenpeace called him a "environmental degenerate" and a "highway robber".
It has been said by many researchers that have looked back, that if it hadn't been for Bush in '92, the world's climate would have been in a much better state than now.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
He'd need a Ouija board to pal around with Reagan, he kind of died back in 2004.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
The US basically tricked Iraq into invading Kuwait. Kuwait was pumping oil from Iraqi oil fields (horizontal drilling). When they refused to stop, Saddam Hussein met with American diplomats to ask if the US would have any problem with an Iraqi military action against Kuwait. The US told him that it wouldn't be a problem since we don't get involved in regional conflicts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Glaspie
The allegation being that it was done under the direction of Lyndon B. Johnson and collaboration of Allen W. Dulles, CIA director 1953–1961 who hated Kennedy while H.W Bush was serving in the CIA at the time of Kennedy's assassination.
Who knows what the truth is? The truth is that our reality has been fuzzed for decades now by our own media and politicians that we've been conditioned to respond to any information that challenges the status quo with the words "Conspiracy Theory" despite knowing that we are being lied to constantly.
Most of us here wern't even alive back then which shows how practiced the lies are.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
It is not his fault that his son was a moron.
isn't the moral thing to do to public tell your son is a moron, if he's about to cause a war?
He stole the milk because he was poor and his baby was hungry
Maybe he should have signed up for WIC instead.
Yes it should.
People don't want what they think they want. They think they want a leader who will do the right vs. the expedient thing. But they'll punish leaders who actually do this. Bush was one of those old-school people who thought debt was a real problem for a country. Raising taxes after promising not to was political suicide, but whether or not it was the right thing to do, he thought it was.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
At the time so many of us hated the 16 years of one Bush or the other in the White House, feeling they were evil men.. but compared to what we're having to endure now, these men were saints. Godspeed, Dubya. History will be much kinder to you than some that came after you.
No. Moron is what we have now. Bush Jr was of the same caliber as Obama: establishment stooge.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Apparently you did not read your own citation. You focus on a vague communique and ignore the face to face meeting where she clearly told Hussein not to use military force.
Plus you ignore the 6 months of military build-up and instructions to leave Kuwait that preceded the US led war.
What lies?
Oh please! You really have to ask? It's marketing 101. They have a product to sell.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This story is literally everywhere else on the Internet. Why is it a Slashdot type of story?
I hate this is becoming a generic news site. Now, if Al Gore "Inventor of the Internet" died, that would be different. :P
I know this is important to world events, but shouldn't this site really be about... science and technology? Post anything you want, of course. It's just regrettable that you set precedents like this. David Bowie was at least weird enough that he appealed to hacker culture....
I think when Donald Trump is gone, it will be technology news. I think he rigged or unfairly influenced the election, at least indirectly with collusion with the Russians. I think it's Trump with his lying ways, not Obama. Though GW junior made things toxic, didn't he?
Well, genetically speaking, it's about half his fault. :-D
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Yeh... that is the clear answer. But I've been a have and been a have not as well.
When you're a have, it's easy to manage money. Things kinda line up and even if you screw up here and there, there's always a few hundred bucks in the couch cushions somewhere.
When you're a have not, there are all kinds of problems.
A friend of mine who had a childhood that still gives me nightmares to think about would tell me about how she was beaten as a child because her father was frustrated that he couldn't make ends meet. With the exception of her (who worked as a glamour model for a long while) the family was obese. This was because they couldn't afford to gas to drive to the grocery store more than once a month, so the freezer at home was full of food that would last. That means preservatives.
When you're a have not, you run on empty. When you're buried in a hole so deep that even though you can see the top, you know you can never reach it, you eventually come to grips with knowing that you'll never get out... and if know you can never get out, what's the point of trying?
Trust me, as a "have" I'm thoroughly convinced there's no such thing as a hole I can't get out of. But I've spent enough of my life around "have not"s to know that they lack the tools, the knowledge, and worst of all the hope to do so.
So, if you're ok scraping by... consider this.
You consider a big payday when you make it to the end of the week and you actually get to keep your whole welfare check because you haven't already borrowed against it at 30%/week interest rates at the corner shop.
WIC is something you trade for cash. This is done either with a friend or family member you go shopping with and you buy their groceries and they pay your electric bill so you don't freeze. And if none of your friends or relatives are able to help you... then you end up finding some asshole you don't like who is willing to trade you $0.50 cash for $1 WIC
T-Mobile is king because they have some crazy ass way of making it so that you can buy an iPhone X 128GB even though the government doesn't trust you with your own paycheck and is withdrawing money from it.
Paper checks are a blessing and a curse because if you can get someone to take a $5 post dated check and get the money deposited before the check comes due... you're golden. If you can't, then your $300 pay check just became $150 because you got hit by 5 penalties for being poor.
No... if every single week you have a deficit that is compounded by additional fees incurred from poor money management the week before...
You and I clearly know that life doesn't have to be like this. If I were in the position today, here's my plan :
- pawn whatever's left and get a few clean and decent outfits
- Use that iPhone X I somehow lucked out on and watch about 1,000 hours of Khan Academy
- Take my GED
- Visit a local school and beg a teacher to assist me with speech therapy to make my speech patterns "wealthier" and less "ghetto". Ghetto schools actually have programs for this in big cities.
- Start visiting a church in a wealthier neighborhood and volunteer enough to be noticed as a hard and honest worker until someone takes pitty on the fella down on his luck and offers him something. Rabbis and Priests have a "discretionary fund" which is often used to help the poor or even to make a mortgage payment for a member of the church or temple that is desperate. You'd be surprised how much those people are really willing to help. (I'm atheist, but I respect people who help other people)
- Read the news paper every day and learn how those entitled people think in order to better communicate with them.
This seems like a lot of work and it is. But it's a plan that has a 90% or better chance of working and certainly wouldn't leave you worse of than when you started.
For someone in that position, no... you don't have the tools, the knowledge... or worse... the hope. And trust me... that guy has WIC... or he did on Monday and now it's Wednesday and after paying off the guy who helped keep the water on last week, there's nothing left.
Why yes, Bush, Sr., did fight against the Nazis!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Funny, those polls were predicting a Democratic wave election and wow they were right!
As "waves" go it was a "Blue Ripple", compared to typical first-term-midterms losses. But you missed a couple other points:
First: He GAINED several seats in the Senate, where it really mattered.
Second: The Rs were going to lose the house anyway. So the US electorate (with Trump's assistance in the form of non-campaining for the R-side swamp creatures), took the opportunity to do some swamp-draining in the House.
Notice it was primarily the RINOs and Never Trumpers (that hadn't already retired) who were the losers.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Get over your petty red-v-blue partisan politics.
I was just pointing out that Bush I comparison to Trump was wrong.
WTF does Obama have to do with that?
Of course approval ratings are not a good metric. US presidents usually get high ratings by starting or escalating a war.