George H.W. Bush, 41st President of the United States, Dies At 94 (washingtonpost.com) 408
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."
RIP (Score:4, Insightful)
Thus goeth the last Republican politician that I still respected.
Re: (Score:2)
George HW Bush ushered in the era of Republican smear campaigns, that's his legacy.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
George HW Bush ushered in the era of Republican smear campaigns, that's his legacy.
You might want to read up on Richard Nixon. He was a master smearer, but even he did not originate the artform.
His smear describing his 1950 senate campaign opponent, Helen Douglas, as "Pink right down to her underwear" is a classic.
Dick Nixon was, of course, the target of plenty of Democratic smears himself.
Re: (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.*
Re: (Score:2)
Is this performance art, or are you really so far out there you can see Pluto from your house?
Re: (Score:2)
It's not nuttery. Far from it. After the Soviet Union fell, we got to see just how many communist sympathizers and traitors there really were. There were a lot. Many people we think of today as unjustly accused were in fact justly accused.
Why would the communists NOT want to run a campaign of subversion and undermining? It's how they operated. After WWII communism was *on a roll*. They overthrew government after government with these tactics. China was the big one. The legitimate Chinese government was ful
Re: (Score:2)
You obviously know very little about China in the 1930s-40s.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree here - someone that you could still politely disagree with.
He wasn't really someone that was able to "sell" himself as becoming a president, he more had the appearance of an accountant. But he did a decent job in the office.
Re: RIP (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The last republican *president* worthy of respect, but there have been plenty of respectable republican politicians.
Of course it's hard to notice them among the rabid anti-science, racist, and sycophantic behavior that dominates the party.
Re: (Score:3)
Bob Dole is still alive -- the last Presidential candidate of the Greatest Generation and the last nominee to run as a genuine conservative.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
McCarthy was Congress, Hoover wasn't exposed yet, FBI was SOP for the day. Typically the oversight role was Congress and the courts. The best you can do is go re-read your books with both eyes open.
Re:RIP (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:RIP (Score:4, Insightful)
Ike despised McCarthy, but felt that publicly confronting him would strengthen the Taft wing of the Republican Party. Many people on the right viewed Ike as a RINO. So he worked behind the scenes to undermine McCarthy.
But it should also be noted that when Soviet archives were opened in the 1990s, some of the people that Joe McCarthy was accused of unjustly persecuting turned out to have actually been commie agents.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But it should also be noted that when Soviet archives were opened in the 1990s, some of the people that Joe McCarthy was accused of unjustly persecuting turned out to have actually been commie agents.
That's how it always is.......there is a problem in the world, but then a stupid politician (or group) comes along and tries to co-opt it for their own purposes.
Yeah there are terrorists in the middle east, but Bush used that to manipulate the public into supporting an Iraq invasion. Yes, there were Russian spies in America, but McCarthy used that fact to push his own agenda. Yes, atmospheric CO2 does have an effect on global temperature, but plenty of people have tried to use that problem for their own
Re:RIP (Score:4, Interesting)
Bush Jr. invaded Iraq, Bush Sr. invaded Kuwait. He made two big mistakes. Telling the Iraqi Shi'ites to rebel against Saddam and then didn't back them...they never forgave the U.S. for that. The other mistake was giving Kuwait back to the fat boys in the robes. What should have happened to give Kuwait to the Palestinians. It would have removed the biggest threat to Israel, paid the Kuwaitis back for being such fuck ups, and given the Iranians and Saudis their own private Palestinian problem. It have been an easy sell to the PLO, Arafat was always a sleaze and it comes with its own oil supply.
Re: RIP (Score:4, Informative)
And yet roughly 2 million of them are now Jordanian citizens.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
That is the most retarded....... If I accuse everyone in a room of being a dick sucking homosexual, statistically I'll be right 15% of the time.. Yeah, that's the exact same logic you just used, asshole.
Cast a wide enough net.....
Actually, you'd be right about 4% of the time, if we're just talking about homosexuals. If you're talking about male homosexuals, probably only about 2% of the time.
Re: (Score:2)
So Hitler was right because a few of the 6* million was really shitty people? Really...
(* I know...)
Re:RIP (Score:5, Insightful)
But it should also be noted that when Soviet archives were opened in the 1990s, some of the people that Joe McCarthy was accused of unjustly persecuting turned out to have actually been commie agents.
Not really surprising, if you let the cops break down doors at random in violation of the 4th amendment they'd probably find a lot of guilty people too. In retrospect you can always claim the times you were right were justified and the times you were wrong were honest mistakes. There's no doubt more guilty people would go to jail if you lowered the standard from "beyond a reasonable doubt" to "probably", but a whole lot more innocent men too. And beyond that you have guilt by association and "no smoke without fire", statistically you're probably more likely to be a communist if your friends are communists than the general population. And there's probably more rapists among those accused of rape than those who've never been accused. It's just a terrible way to run a justice system. And beyond that lies putting the blame on entire populations, which is how you end up with genocide.
Re: RIP (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.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Eisenhower presided over the McCarthy era and a lot of FBI abuses. He seems to have been a likable guy, but the best you can say is his eyes were half closed during his presidency.
I remember McCarthyism. Night after night of pundits representing the minority party that had run out of ideas accusing the President and his associates of being stooges for the Russians. Aren't we glad that era is long gone?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
GHWB killed JFK.
Serious as a heart attack.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone else did it?
Jed Bush.....to gain sympathy for his next presidential run. He had access, motive.......it all lines up.
Re: (Score:2)
Damn, I sure hope no one at FOX is reading this.
Re:He was definitely a classier man than Reagan or (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re: (Score:3)
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?
Re: (Score:3)
No. Moron is what we have now. Bush Jr was of the same caliber as Obama: establishment stooge.
Re: (Score:2)
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?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Still? (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Guess what Trump's approval rating is?
More than the new speaker for the Democrats?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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?
Re:Still? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
5,000 casualties, not worth it ... (Score:5, 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.
Re: (Score:2)
Uh huh. He still lied his ass off [youtube.com] to get that war started in the first place. To anyone who still supports the first Gulf War, I ask the question: why aren't we bombing Saudi Arabia to stop their actual genocide on Yemen, instead of helping them to do it?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because Obama fell for the Arab Spring and, after it was sprung and turned out to be no match for the dictators, decided that cowardice was the better part of valor and agreed to support the Saudis who see an Iranian behind every grain of sand.
Yemen has been in turmoil ever since I can recall, to support one side over the other was dumb. Trump is supporting the Saudis for different reasons though. He receives money to his shell companies from them. Trump's motivations start and stop with his loot and his pr
Re:5,000 casualties, not worth it ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
More revisionist history, Saddam long figured he could use Kuwait to pay off his debts for the Iraq-Iran war, which he started. Ignoring a 6 months build up was monumentally stupid seeing as the U.S. had all those lovely bombs left over from the cold war in Europe and wouldn't mind unloading them quickly as opposed to the expensive process of deactivating them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ah yes, the Deep State. Known to be behind all nefarious designs, and have super-earthly powers to do anything they please, even repeal global warming and the laws of gravity. Then, get this, they offed Bush Sr. to cover their tracks. Yes, yes, it all makes sense now.
A reason to respect him (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I will always respect how he stood by Dan Quayle as his running mate
He had no choice. The lesson from 1972 is that you always always always stick with your VP choice no matter how utterly unqualified he turns out to be.
Besides, after Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle doesn't look so bad.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:A reason to respect him (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Total myth. Perot "took" votes from Democrats as well as Republicans, and Clinton was passing Bush when Perot dropped out of the race before dropping back in.
Re: (Score:3)
Total myth. Perot "took" votes from Democrats as well as Republicans, and Clinton was passing Bush when Perot dropped out of the race before dropping back in.
Perot took more from conservatives. Conservatives includes some democrats, democrats that were more inclined to support a Reason or Bush than a Carter, Mondale or Clinton. There were once these strange creatures called conservative democrats and moderate republicans that leaned conservative on defense and public safety but leaned liberal on social and civil rights.
Polls don't mean crap, especially in such timeframes as between Perot's exit and return.
Perot gave us Clinton. Nader gave us Bush Jr. Sande
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The Nader lie is empirically untrue: most Nader voters would have not voted. This is just a canard.
No, you are merely ill informed. Nader claimed that exit polls said 25% of his voters would have gone Bush, 38% would have gone Gore and the remaining (37%) would not have voted. That is a net 13% for Gore, and with Nader receiving 97K votes in Florida that is a net gain by Gore of 12K votes in Florida. Bush won Florida by 500.
Nader voters would have otherwise leaned to Gore, as Perot voters would have otherwise leaned to Bush.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Perot was responsible. Bush had it in the bag as recently as just before the Democratic convention. Then Perot drops out the day Clinton is to give his acceptance speech, saying the Democtratic party is invigorated, so all eyes turn to Clinton that night to see what he will say.
Later he jumps back in to seal the deal.
Perot didn't want to win. He wanted Bush to lose. God only knows why but when Bush was CIA director and Perot helped bail out the NYSE in the 1970s, the sky is the limit.
Continue with your
Re: (Score:3)
Total myth. Perot "took" votes from Democrats as well as Republicans
He took equally from Democrats and Republicans. But the Democrats that voted for Ross were from the centrist "pro-business" wing of the party, and many of them would have drifted to Bush in a two person race.
The Republicans that voted for Ross were those steamed about Bush's reversal on taxes. They would have never voted for Bill Clinton.
Re:A reason to respect him (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.
Re: (Score:3)
Pence is a carbon copy of Quayle with better media handlers...although I tend to think Pence is more of an evangelical nutjob than Quayle.
Re:A reason to respect him (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
There is nothing wrong with single mothers (or fathers) /per se/, but it's not something that should be encouraged or looked on as an ideal situation. At the time that is how I interpreted his message (regardless of what he did or did not actually intend).
Re: (Score:3)
"Read My Lips...." (Score:3, Interesting)
In retrospect, that was a fairly harmless lie compared to what's come since.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
and then raising taxes. Awful liar
Not raised on his initiative or by his choice. At least he didn't promise that every family would save $2500 on their health insurance in order to ram a massive new tax through.
Re: (Score:3)
He chose to sign the bill. What a president signs, a president owns. If he'd been a little smarter about it, he could have vetoed it the first time and then let it pass into law without his signature - and gotten a second term.
Re:"Read My Lips...." (Score:5, Interesting)
He was famous for saying, "Read my lips, no new taxes." and then raising taxes. Awful liar.
This lie, more than anything else, is why he lost in 1992. All politicians lie, but his promise of "no new taxes" was the core of his campaign. This promise was pretty much the only thing he ran on, and he repeated it over and over. Then he won, and immediately abandoned it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:"Read My Lips...." (Score:4, Informative)
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...
Re:"Read My Lips...." (Score:4, Funny)
If you understand redneck fluently (6 years in Florida helped me learn), he clearly said "Read my lips. No new taxis"
And he stood by that 10000%, no matter where I traveled during that era within the US, there wasn't a single new taxi in service. They were falling apart left and right and I believe he double downed on his promise because I'm pretty sure he made it so that absolutely no service would be performed on those taxis either.
I've always though that was unfair of people to falsely interpret his speech impediment to mean taxes instead of taxis.
Golf carts on the other hand, they're not really taxis, so those did receive lots of updates.
Re: (Score:2)
Comparisons and policies... (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
You ignore the Democrats had the majority in the senate (the only reason it was passed) and the Senate version was the bill passed. Just a handful of Republican amendments; it was mostly a creation of the Democrats, and they own it's consequences to this day.
Re:Comparisons and policies... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Comparisons and policies... (Score:5, 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).
Reelect Em All (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
That's probably a good argument in favor of term limits.
We already have term limits for presidents.
22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
I meant it's probably a good thing they're there, and it's an argument in favor of them in general.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
No term limits and all the politician cares about is re-election. Trump has spent more time campaigning and golfing than being the President in his first 2 years.
You say that like it's a bad thing. On evidence, I'd prefer him to spend less time being President, but unfortunately the consequence is that it delegates authority to mostly unelected actors.
Why is this story here? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, there isn't even a hint of a tech or geek angle to post this story on slashdot.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Its not that bad - at least it IS a current news story. Often we get old, not really tech stories.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why is this story here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, there isn't even a hint of a tech or geek angle to post this story on slashdot.
GHWB lived most of his life before computers or the Internet were widespread, but he wore glasses, was socially inept, and few women found him attractive. I always felt he was a geek in his heart, the "Calvin Coolidge" of his time. In many ways, he was "one of us".
Re: (Score:3)
GHWB believed in duty and responsibility, not entitlement, he used his father's power and influence to get into a combat unit.
GHWB had the social grace and interpersonal skills to successfully interact with others, even others from different nations and different cultures and who had very different belief systems than he did.
In short he was very little like "us", "us" being the slashdot community in general. Not performing well for the TV cam
Jumping out of the burning plane ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, there isn't even a hint of a tech or geek angle to post this story on slashdot.
News for Tech? No. News for Geeks? Also no. News for Nerds. Ahhh that was it. Your post reeks of a "no true nerd" fallacy.
He chose Big Oil over the world's future (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [masterresource.org] 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.
Re: (Score:3)
Detailed economic data on China as a whole is hard to come by, but the median wage in Shenzen and Shanghai is comparable to that of Croatia, about $1000/month. A college graduate in China can expect to make ab out 4000 yuan/month, about $574.
China's immense economic power comes from sheer scale. On a per capita GDP basis China is considerably poorer than Croatia; it's poorer than Gabon. Those recent college graduates may only be slightly better off than their compatriots, but there's a lot of them. In fac
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, another one based on lies!
What lies?
Re: (Score:2)
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. ;-)
Re:took the nation to war (Score:4, 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.
Re:took the nation to war (Score:4, Informative)
Well documented propaganda [wikipedia.org], I'm afraid.
Fake news ain't new.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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 off
Re: (Score:3)
The allegation being that it was done under the direction of Lyndon B. Johnson [wikipedia.org] 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
Re: (Score:3)
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.