2016 Political Obituaries

[Indeependent]

Appropriate timing...dead man walking is giving a speech.

Jeb! is on television?

He said, "dead", not "dull".

 

[waltky]

Melvin Laird passes on at 94...

Melvin Laird, Vietnam War Defense Secretary, Dies at 94
Nov 16, 2016 — Melvin Laird, a former Wisconsin congressman and U.S. defense secretary during years when President Nixon struggled to find a way to withdraw troops from an unpopular war in Vietnam, died on Wednesday, his family said. He was 94. His grandson, Raymond Dennis Large III, said that Laird died in Florida.

Laird left a legacy that included a telephone call that eventually played a role in one of the biggest political stories of the century — the Watergate scandal that drove Nixon from office. Laird was Nixon's counselor on domestic affairs in October 1973 when Nixon had to replace Vice President Spiro Agnew, who had resigned in scandal. Laird called his good friend, Michigan Rep. Gerald Ford, to ask if he would be interested in replacing Agnew. "Frankly, the question came like a bolt out of the blue," Ford said in 1997, recalling his conversation with the "can-do conservative" from Wisconsin.

Ford accepted. About a year later, Nixon resigned because of Watergate and Ford became president. Ford pardoned Nixon, and two years later, Ford lost the presidential election to Jimmy Carter. "I thought Ford was the right person to bring the country together after the Watergate fiasco," Laird once said, taking credit with Bryce Harlow for persuading Nixon to pick Ford. Ford once praised Laird as a patriot before a partisan. His grandson Large, who is the son of Alison Laird Large, called his grandfather "one of the lions of our republic." "He truly was someone that worked across party lines," Large said. "He was a very dedicated Republican but he was able to see the human in everyone. His work speaks for itself."

Former Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington.​

Former Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, is married to Laird's niece Jessica. He said that Laird remained engaged with public issues until the end of his life. "Even at the end Jessica would get two, sometimes more, letters a week from him, handwritten letters. I think last week she had one discussing the election, public issues, his views of things." Laird, the son of a Presbyterian minister, was 30 when he was elected to the U.S. House in 1952. He represented Wisconsin's 7th District — mostly dairy-farming or lumber-producing counties in central Wisconsin — for nine terms, and was credited with helping spearhead the vast expansion of medical research and health facilities in the U.S.

Nixon appointed Laird as the nation's 10th defense secretary in 1969 and the first to come from Congress. The Vietnam War raged, with no end in sight for the 550,000 troops stationed in the Southeast Asian country as America lost its resolve for the fighting. Laird coined the term "Vietnamization" to describe Nixon's policy of assigning an ever-increasing combat role to South Vietnamese troops, allowing the pullout of U.S. forces. When Laird stepped down as defense secretary in January 1973, there were about 69,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam. "As a consequence of the success of the military aspects of Vietnamization, the South Vietnamese people today, in my view, are fully capable of providing for their own in-country security against the North Vietnamese," he said at the time.

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[waltky]

Fidel Castro passes at 90...

Cuba's Fidel Castro, who defied US for 50 years, dies at 90
Nov 26,`16 -- Former President Fidel Castro, who led a rebel army to improbable victory in Cuba, embraced Soviet-style communism and defied the power of 10 U.S. presidents during his half century rule, has died at age 90.

With a shaking voice, President Raul Castro said on state television that his older brother died at 10:29 p.m. Friday. He ended the announcement by shouting the revolutionary slogan: "Toward victory, always!" Castro's reign over the island-nation 90 miles (145 kilometers) from Florida was marked by the U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. The bearded revolutionary, who survived a crippling U.S. trade embargo as well as dozens, possibly hundreds, of assassination plots, died 10 years after ill health forced him to hand power over to Raul.

Castro overcame imprisonment at the hands of dictator Fulgencio Batista, exile in Mexico and a disastrous start to his rebellion before triumphantly riding into Havana in January 1959 to become, at age 32, the youngest leader in Latin America. For decades, he served as an inspiration and source of support to revolutionaries from Latin America to Africa. His commitment to socialism was unwavering, though his power finally began to fade in mid-2006 when a gastrointestinal ailment forced him to hand over the presidency to Raul in 2008, provisionally at first and then permanently. His defiant image lingered long after he gave up his trademark Cohiba cigars for health reasons and his tall frame grew stooped. "Socialism or death" remained Castro's rallying cry even as Western-style democracy swept the globe and other communist regimes in China and Vietnam embraced capitalism, leaving this island of 11 million people an economically crippled Marxist curiosity.

Cuban President, Fidel Castro, points during his lengthy speech before the United Nations General Assembly, in New York. Cuban President Raul Castro has announced the death of his brother Fidel Castro at age 90 on Cuban state media on Friday, Nov. 25, 2016.​

He survived long enough to see Raul Castro negotiate an opening with U.S. President Barack Obama on Dec. 17, 2014, when Washington and Havana announced they would move to restore diplomatic ties for the first time since they were severed in 1961. He cautiously blessed the historic deal with his lifelong enemy in a letter published after a month-long silence. Carlos Rodriguez, 15, was sitting in Havana's Miramar neighborhood when he heard that Fidel Castro had died. "Fidel? Fidel?" he said as he slapped his head with his hand in shock. "That's not what I was expecting. One always thought that he would last forever. It doesn't seem true." "It's a tragedy," said 22-year-old nurse Dayan Montalvo. "We all grew up with him. I feel really hurt by the news that we just heard."

Fidel Castro Ruz was born Aug. 13, 1926, in eastern Cuba's sugar country, where his Spanish immigrant father worked first recruiting labor for U.S. sugar companies and later built up a prosperous plantation of his own. Castro attended Jesuit schools, then the University of Havana, where he received law and social science degrees. His life as a rebel began in 1953 with a reckless attack on the Moncada military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago. Most of his comrades were killed and Fidel and his brother Raul went to prison. Fidel turned his trial defense into a manifesto that he smuggled out of jail, famously declaring, "History will absolve me."

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[easyt65]

Bill-Hillary Clinton's Political Careers
Clinton Foundation Donations
R*I*P - 2016

 

[waltky]

Former astronaut and senator John Glenn passes away at 95...

John Glenn, the 1st American to orbit Earth, has died at 95
Dec 8,`16 | WASHINGTON (AP) -- John Glenn, whose 1962 flight as the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth made him an all-American hero and propelled him to a long career in the U.S. Senate, died Thursday. The last survivor of the original Mercury 7 astronauts was 95.

Glenn died at the James Cancer Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, where he was hospitalized for more than a week, said Hank Wilson, communications director for the John Glenn School of Public Affairs. John Herschel Glenn Jr. had two major career paths that often intersected: flying and politics, and he soared in both of them. Before he gained fame orbiting the world, he was a fighter pilot in two wars, and as a test pilot, he set a transcontinental speed record. He later served 24 years in the Senate from Ohio. A rare setback was a failed 1984 run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

His long political career enabled him to return to space in the shuttle Discovery at age 77 in 1998, a cosmic victory lap that he relished and turned into a teachable moment about growing old. He holds the record for the oldest person in space. More than anything, Glenn was the ultimate and uniquely American space hero: a combat veteran with an easy smile, a strong marriage of 70 years and nerves of steel. Schools, a space center and the Columbus airport were named after him. So were children.

U.S. Sen. John Glenn talks with astronauts on the International Space Station via satellite before a discussion titled "Learning from the Past to Innovate for the Future" in Columbus, Ohio. Glenn, who was the first U.S. astronaut to orbit Earth and later spent 24 years representing Ohio in the Senate, has died at 95.​

The Soviet Union leaped ahead in space exploration by putting the Sputnik 1 satellite in orbit in 1957, and then launched the first man in space, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, in a 108-minute orbital flight on April 12, 1961. After two suborbital flights by Alan Shepard Jr. and Gus Grissom, it was up to Glenn to be the first American to orbit the Earth. "Godspeed, John Glenn," fellow astronaut Scott Carpenter radioed just before Glenn thundered off a Cape Canaveral launch pad, now a National Historic Landmark, to a place America had never been. At the time of that Feb. 20, 1962, flight, Glenn was 40 years old.

With the all-business phrase, "Roger, the clock is operating, we're underway," Glenn radioed to Earth as he started his 4 hours, 55 minutes and 23 seconds in space. Years later, he explained he said that because he didn't feel like he had lifted off and it was the only way he knew he had launched. During the flight, Glenn uttered a phrase that he would repeat frequently throughout life: "Zero G, and I feel fine." "It still seems so vivid to me," Glenn said in a 2012 interview with The Associated Press on the 50th anniversary of the flight. "I still can sort of pseudo feel some of those same sensations I had back in those days during launch and all."

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