Former Colorado Governer John Love died the other day. He was the first three term governer in Colorado history, and served from 1962 to 1972, he third term cut short when Nixon tapped him as the U.S. "Energy Czar."
But Colorado always came first for him. He will be missed.
RIP Byron "Whizzer" White.
RIP Jonathan Dooley Hampton - 1943-2002
He will be sorely missed.
Democrat Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, 58, died today in a plane crash, along with his wife and one of their daughters.
Gov. Ventura has ordered all flags flown at half-mast till Election Day.
I know I can be called crass and uncaring when the funeral is not even set yet. Assuming Wellstone doesn't get the sympathy vote does that change the Green candidate as the only known alternative to the Republican? (I have not been following the race but I hear the Republican is running as the anti-Wellstone.) If he does get the sympathy vote, his wife died in that crash too so the Missouri solution is out. Jesse Ventura will appoint a completely different person. If Ventura (who says he is leaving politics before anyone says he’ll appoint himself) goes for another Democrat and wants to make a splash on his way out I think he should name Garrison Keillor.
RIP Rudolf Augstein 1923-2002. The legendary German publicist and democrat died today two days after his 79th birthday.
So farewell then, Lord Jenkins - co-founder of the ambitious but long-defunct Social Democratic Party.
Famous cartoonist Al Hirschfeld died today at age 99 at home.
••••. I've always loved Hirschfeld's art. I envied his ability to suggest form with so very few lines. Al was truly an artistic genuis. Just one thing, Mark: why post this here? Hirschfeld's forte was not politcal cartooning. Al was known for his celebrity caricatures in general and his work in theatre in particular.
Nina Nina Nina Nina Nina Nina Nina Nina Nina
BTW, for those who didn't know, the number that appeared after Hirschfeld's signature indicated how many times he hid the name of his daughter, Nina in the work. Nina Nina Nina Nina Nina Nina Nina Nina Nina
Well, silly me! It was early, I had to leave for work in a few minutes and I wasn't sure which post I should've put it on but oh, well. I copied and pasted it on the R.I.P board under Movies now.
Ron Ziegler, White House Press Secretary under Richard Nixon, died Monday of a heart attack. It was Ziegler who referred to the Watergate break-in as a "third rate burglary".
So farewell then, Dolly the Sheep.
The Prime Minister of Serbia Zoran Djindjic has been assassinated. It is still unclear who's responsible - nationalists, followers of Milosevic or the organized crime.
Former Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, on March 26, of infection from a ruptured appendix.
So farewell then, Sir Denis Thatcher - husband of former PM Margaret.
Confederate flags should be flown at half-mast, as former South Carolina Senator, Strom Thurmund has died Thursday. He was 100 years old.
http://www.go2net.com/headlines/ap/general/1056687309_news_top.html
Watergate Figure Chesterfield Smith Dies
"A pure son of Africa" has died: former Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin passed away at the age of 80 due to kidney failure on Saturday, August 16th, 2003. For his victims, his death comes much too late and much too easily.
http://www.dead-or-alive.org/dead.nsf/anames-nf/Amin+Idi
I forget: Did he prefer white meat or dark?
Sergio Vieira de Mello, U.N. envoy in Iraq, was killed in a car bomb blast against his offices in Baghdad. He was 55.
RIP Anna Lindh, Swedish foreign secretary. Just a few days before the referendum deciding whether Sweden will join the Euro zone or not she was stabbed while shopping and later died of her internal injuries.
Not sure where else to post this but author George Plimpton died Thursday at age 76.
I was floored by this news. I saw Plimpton just last Sunday at the "Paper Lion" reunion before a Detroit Lions football game. He was mobile and looked great; he had aged much better than Alex Karras, whom he was standing next to.
He also was the spokesman for the Intelevision Game Systems (Atari 2600's competition)
Senator Paul Simon, 75. He just had heart surgery the day before.
Yassir Arafat 1929-2004.
No tears here.
Yasser.
Yes, sir! 
Yasser. - MikeC
Actually, it's neither, technically.
Yasser, Yassir, even Yasir are all phonetic iterations of his name... basically "translating" it into English. So none of those spellings is wrong... neither are they correct.
The same holds true for Osama/Usama bin Laden... Muammar Qaddafi/Qadhafi and Hanukkah/Hanukah/Chanukah.
I think 'Yasir' is the most accurate based on trying to transliterate Arabic into English (in the same way that 'Qadhafi' is the most accurate of the other example you mentioned, but the Egyptian/Libyan accent makes it sound like 'Gaddafi') but 'Yasser' has been used so much that now it seems to be the expected spelling.
(Turns from keyboard to find that the CIA have arrived because I know too much about Arabic...)
From a vaguely remembered SNL sketch:
That Arab fellow?
Yassir.
Who? (Hu)
No, he's, the Chinese Prime Minister.
I believe that was a Johnny Carson sketch. He was impersonating Ronald Reagan.
John's right. It was a dialogue between Reagan and his secretary of state, Jim Baker, which also hinged on the name of the secretary of the interior, James Watt...
Reagan: "I'll need the first name of the head of the PLO, that... that Arafat guy."
Baker: "Yassir."
Reagan: "I said I'll need the first name of the head of the PLO."
Baker: "Yassir."
Reagan: "Well, Jim, it's nice of you to be polite, but... what is his name..."
Baker: "No sir, Yassir."
Reagan: "Now you're giving me two different bad answers, Jim! What is his name?"
and so on, and so on, and then Prime Minister Hu calls...
Baker: "Mr. President?"
Reagan: "Yes?"
Baker: "Hu's on the phone."
Reagan: "Well, Jim, I... I don't know who's on the phone."
Baker: "That is correct."
Reagan: "What's correct?"
Baker: "No, he's your secretary of the interior."
Reagan: "Now Jim, let's just start over here, very very quietly, now tell me, Jim, who is on the phone?"
Baker: "Hu is on the phone."
Reagan: "Who?"
Baker: "Yes sir."
Reagan: "That Arafat guy is on the phone, Jim?"
Thank you.
Rose Mary Woods...the woman who was paid to say that she erased the 18 1/2 on the Watergate Tapes died this week. (ANYBODY who has any intelligence knows it was Nixon himself who erased the tape.)
Hey, has anyone else died lately?
Earl Wilson did.
Former Israeli President Ezer Weizman died Sunday.
The Dworkin thread is now on its own board in Political Figures.
Kenneth B. Clark the anti-segregationist and educator died. A great man who fought against the evils of segregation and help show how seperate is not always equal.
Retired Vice Adm. James Stockdale Dies
From the Guardian Unlimited: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-5121264,00.html
Love him or hate him, Supreme Court Cheif Justice William Renquist has died today at the age of 80 after a bout with thyroid cancer. Full story can be found here.
"The president and Mrs. Bush are deeply saddened by the passing of the chief justice," according to a written statement.
Oh, sure he is. He probably almost creamed himself over this, knowing that now he can start trying to put two extremely hardcore judges on the SC to replace Rehnquist and O'Connor ASAP. He's either too stupid to realize how much he's screwing up this country or else it's been his (and his cronies') plans all along and he just doesn't care, or all of the above. I just hope that whoever gets it turns out to be a total 180 from what he expected or wanted, as has sometimes happened before, so maybe there's a tiny bit of a chance that if he does get two hardcore judges that they'll be a lot more liberal than he figured on, at least on some of the issues he'd prefer they be conservative on. However, I'm not holding my breath.
RIP - Rosa Parks
Apparently for the past few years her mind had been going hopefully she has now found peace.
Eugene McCarthy the Anti-Vietnam war senator and presidential hopeful died today. He died of complications from Parkinson's.
(Not Joseph McCarthy the anti-red witch-hunting senator and presidential hopeful hes been dead a bit already)
It Was E.J. McCarthy's entrance into the race and his politcal popularity (even apparently among the college crowd) caused LBJ to not seek re-election and made the race for the primaries a bit more interesting. Unfortunately he lost the nomination ot Humphrey who later lost to Nixon.
Clean for Gene!
Columnist Jack Anderson of complications from Parkinson's disease. He was 83.
Coretta Scott King dies.
http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=1152199
Johannes Rau, former President, died on Friday.
Wiki article about him.
He was greatly admired and respected for his character and impartiality. He also had deep personal protestant faith, leading to his nickname of Bruder Johannes (Brother John).
In the last years, he was suffering from health problems. He will be greatly missed. Another politican with a true personality and character gone.
Slobodan Milosevic died in his jail cell Saturday.
Awwwwww. Bummer. Oh well moment of silence over.
Former Texas governor, Ann Richards, died of esophageal cancer. She was 73.
Former President Gerald Ford has died at the age of 93. More details here.
DANG! And he was the last suriving member of The Warren Commission. GAWD! What secrets that man took to his grave!
He's not really dead, it's just a conspiracy 
TRIVIA: Gerald Ford is the ONLY president to be never elected to the Office of President.
As you recall, he became President when Nixon resigned.
Actually, there are a string of presidents who first took office without having elected to that office, starting with John Tyler and including Harry Truman, Teddy Roosevelt and both Johnsons. Ford's uniqueness is not that he was not elected president, but that neither had he been elected to the vice-presidency, which he'd assumed when Agnew resigned.
It's official. Saddam Hussein is dead.
Ding dong dell may he rot in hell......
Of course, how do you really know Saddam Hussein is dead...
Maybe they executed one of his body doubles. 
Well I gues they just need to get busy and keep going.
Technically, isn't George W. Bush another President who wasn't elected? Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000.
The news coverage of Gerald Ford brought up a lot of issues. Chief among them, is how rare a truly moderate Republican (such as Ford) is today. I have to admit a grudging respect for Ford. He seemed like a very decent man.
Technically, isn't George W. Bush another President who wasn't elected? Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000.
So? The Constitution says that the candidate with the most Electoral votes wins. He won. Get over it.
Poor Karl Rove, he was so sure his usual "smear and fear" tactics would work again in 2006.
Howard Hunt...one of the "plumbers" from Watergate died. I think he was 88
Lady Bird Johnson, widow of President Lyndon Johnson died today. She was 94.
Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto assassinated
Obviously no one in Pakistan remembers the assassination of JFK, because if they did, they would've learned something from it....like...NEVER LET YOUR POLITICAL FIGURES RIDE IN AN OPEN-AIR VEHICLE!
Chicago Politician John H. Stroger, Jr. (May 19, 1929 – January 18, 2008)
Former Chicago Mayor Eugene Sawyer (September 3, 1934 – January 19, 2008)
William F. Buckley, 82.
Jack Kemp, Congressman, VP Candidate, and pro football Quarterback, dead at 73.
(Cross-posted to "The Final Whistle")
General Alexander Haig, former Secretary of State and advisor to three presidents, died this morning, at the age of 85, due to complications from an infection. More here.
Haig arrives in Heaven: "I'm in charge now."
Robert Byrd, Senator from West Virginia, died at age 92.
Ted Stevens, former Senator from Alaska, Died in a plane crash.
Stevens became infamous among Internet afficionados when he referred to the Internet as a "series of tubes".
[NY Times link, may require DNA sample].
I wonder if George Carlin had a field day with that comment.
"What tubes? You see any friggin' tubes? Where are they?"
The Daily Show and The Colbert Report ran with those crazy comments.
I wonder if they have those new-fangled internet tubes where Stevens is right now?
Geraldine Ferraro...VP Candidate under Walter Mondale died recently.
Betty Ford, outspoken wife of the late President Gerald Ford, died yesterday; she was 93. More here.
RIP Vaclav Havel, who helped overthrow the communist government in Czechoslovikia, dead at 75.
Havel then became the President of Czechoslovakia.
Good riddance. Kim Jon-il, ruler of North Korea, dead at 70* from a heart attack.
Wonder if his son, Kim Jong-un (hard to believe a world leader born in 1984) will be better or worse than him.
(*Age approximate)
His first official act will be to nuke Disneyland Tokyo.
"Stormin'" Norman Schwarzkopf has apparently died:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ap-source-retired-gen-norman-schwarzkopf-has-died-in-tampa-fla/2012/12/27/ec648c10-5083-11e2-835b-02f92c0daa43_story.html
No details yet.
RIP C. Everett Koop, former Surgeon General.
http://news.yahoo.com/c-everett-koop-ex-surgeon-general-dies-nh-215926071.html
I hear instead of a coffin, they're just going to bury him in a giant condom.
R.I.P., the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher.
Wow. She's gone, huh? It's always hard to believe when a figure you've grown up with dies.
RIP Tom Foley, former Speaker of the House, at age 84, from complications from a stroke.
Former New York Governor (and father of Andrew Cuomo, the current governor) Mario Cuomo passed away on 1/1/2015 at age 82.
Former Toronto mayor Rob Ford, who was caught on video smoking crack, and who was also caught urinating in public, (both done when Ford may have been drunk) has died of cancer at age 46. More here.
Issue One: John McLaughlin, former Jesuit priest and moderator of The McLaughlin Group since 1982, passed away at the age of 89. More here. Bye Bye.
Former Attorney General Janet Reno has passed away from Parkinson's disease at the age of 78. More here.
PBS anchor and political reporter Gwen Ifill has passed away from uterine cancer at age 61. More here.
Fifty three years ago today. RIP John F. Kennedy
Norma McCorvey passed away today, at the age of 69. You may ask "Who's she?" She was the "Jane Roe" of "Roe V. Wade". The case dragged on from 1969 until the decision of 1/22/73. In that time, McCorvey never had the abortion; she gave birth to a baby girl. Who she gave up for adoption. More here.
Didn't the feminists turn on her because she dared to become pro-life in her old age?
I'm not sure about that. But, my guess would be yes. IMHO, in this day and age, with all the methods to safely prevent conception (thank you, "Mark of Gideon") available, abortion should pretty much be a non-issue.
Former Fox News host Alan Colmes has passed away at the age of 67, after a brief illness. More here.
Billy Graham, preacher extraordinaire and adviser to almost every president since Truman, has passed away at age 99. More here.
Barbara Bush, wife of 41st President George H.W. Bush, and mother of 43rd President George W. Bush, has passed away at age 92. She's the only person who witnessed both her husband and son sworn in as President. More here.
Commentator Charles Krauthammer has passed away from intestinal cancer at the age of 68. More here.
Although Krauthammer was a hard conservative, AFAIK, he could not stand Trump.
Senator John McCain passed away today, a day after he discontinued his treatment for brain cancer. He was 81.
One of the great "what ifs" of recent American politics concerns what might have happened if McCain had won the Republican nomination in 2000 instead of George W Bush and gone on to be elected President. Obviously, 9/11 would still most likely have happened and there'd still have been an aggressive US response (since doing nothing would have been politically impossible), but I suspect an experienced military man like McCain - who, crucially, could hardly be more personally aware of the downside of campaigns going wrong - would have approached it rather more intelligently.
Politically, McCain and I are poles apart, but he was demonstrably a man of honour and principle right to the end. And anyone who could effectively sentence himself to five years' incarceration in appalling conditions with more or less daily beatings because he stood by his principles (famously, he could have been freed if he'd played the card that his father was a four-star admiral, but he refused to do so unless other PoWs were released too) was clearly a pretty formidable human being. RIP.
Lyndon LaRouche, conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, has died at age 96.
Lyndon LaRouche - extremist crackpot, ex-Trotskyist-turned-fascist, anti-Semite, convicted swindler, Trump fan - has died at last, aged 96. While it's easy to laugh at a cult that claims the Queen is a drug-dealer and that AIDS is a plot to wipe out the White race, LaRouche's followers are also nasty anti-Semites and racists and capable of violence. It's not surprising that LaRouche in his last years hailed Trump as the saviour of civilisation. With any luck his cult will fade away without him.
Ross Perot has died at the age of 89.
During the 1992 U.S. Presidential Election, he was God's gift to stand up comics everywhere (because they loved to imitate him).
Robert Mugabe was a revolutionary who fought white colonial oppression but he was also an dictator who trashed the economy and murdered and terrorized thousands of his own people.
As George Walden (British negotiator at the original Lancaster House Agreement) told "Today" on Radio 4 “One mustn’t speak ill of the dead, except when they killed as many people as Mugabe did."
RIP Javier Perez de Cuellar. The former two term UN Secretary General, who later came out of retirement to help restore democracy in Peru has died at age 100.
Political writer and columnist Richard Reeves passed away 3/25/20 from cardiac arrest at the age of 83.
Linda Tripp, whose recording of her phone calls with Monica Lewinsky led to Pres. Clinton's impeachment, passed away today at the age of 70.
Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis has passed away at the age of 80. More on Rep. Lewis here.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died at the age of 87.
Who the hell is Ruth Bader Ginsburg?
*Googles*
Oh.
Well that sucks.
But.. but...
You're the guy that knows everything!!
Ross Perot
I feel sorry for his running mate Admrl. Stockdale. He was way out of his depth on the national stage. Stockdale was a navyman, not a politician and later he cruelly fell victim to Alzheimer's.
RIP to Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Aged 90.
Another good man gone.
Here's one that sorta went under the radar. Former, and last Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev died on august 30 2022, at the age of 91.
He lived just long enough to see everything he had accomplished being wiped out.
Sad.
Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State in Richard Nixon's administration, and National Security Advisor in Gerald Ford's administration, has died at the age of 100.
All the history Kissinger witnessed.
He also made a lot of it, not always in a good way.
Was he the last of the Nixon Administration?
Former Canadian Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, has died at the age of 84.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/brian-mulroney-former-prime-minister-230746383.html
Let's just say he was one our most controversial PM's.
I'm probably a little too young to truly remember him. I'm 45, almost 46. I remember him but not that well. Though, it has been a long time since he was PM (30 years now since he stepped down iirc). So, it could be more the passage of time then me being too young at the time. I remember hearing about him back then but I don't remember too many specific things. So, I'm not sure how to feel.
He combined sales tax to become the GST (Goods and services tax) and Canadians were NOT happy about it, because it made more things more expensive.
Quebec threw a referendum to ask it's people if they wanted to separate from Canada.
His pretty wife, Mila, also liked to spend taxpayer money, seemingly living the high life.
What he probably thought of was self-confidence came off as arrogant narcissism, as far as I was concerned.
And Mulroney was so buddy-buddy with Reagan that some of us wondered if Canada was going to become the 51st state!
I happily voted for the guy in 1984 to help end 16 years of Liberal control, but 4 years later he lost my vote.
So I'm no fan of the guy, but I note the end of a major politician.
At least we still have Joe Clark (age 85), Jean Chretien (age 90) and Paul Martin (age 86) from the old days still with us.
Quebec threw a referendum to ask it's people if they wanted to separate from Canada.
That was in 1995, after Mulroney and under Jean Chretien. The referendum you are thinking about must be the one about the Charlottetown Accord in 1992, about an accord to finally get Québec's signature on the rapatriated Constitution. The referendum failed, and the matter has not been addressed again since.
At least we still have Joe Clark (age 85), Jean Chretien (age 90) and Paul Martin (age 86) from the old days still with us.
You forgot Kim Campbell (age 76). Yes, I know she didn't last very long, but she still counts. She was the first (and so far only) female Prime Minister of Canada after all.
I always felt bad for Kim Campbell.
She was put in command of the Titanic after it had hit the iceberg.
She's 76? They were talking to her on CP24 yesterday (a 24 hour news station). I admit she looks pretty good for 76.
I remember that referendum and how close it came to being yes. Not a proud moment for the country.
Yea, I purposefully left her out because I'm not a fan.
Fine, first and only female Canadian prime minister, but thanks to our Parliamentary rules, she was given that post WITHOUT an election. Mulroney turned tail and ran from an election he knew he was going to lose and Campbell was given the Prime Ministership because...what? I'd never heard of her prior.
And she served for only 132 days and accomplished...what? She spent most of the time campaigning for a job that was given to her without Canadians having a say in it. She never faced Parliament, either, because her tenure took place mainly during the summer break.
No doubt, Mulroney left her out to dry and take the blame for the Conservatives horrendous loss-- they were reduced to just TWO seats in Parliament! Meanwhile, the Bloc Quebecois won 54 seats to become the Official Opposition, the Reform Party won 52, and the NDP won just 9 seats.
Joe Clark only lasted 273 days, but at least he earned the post by winning an election.
Steve, you're oversimplifying things.
Kim Campbell wasn't just "given the job" of PM. The Tories had a leadership convention (SOP when a party leader quits) and she was one of several Tories in the running:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Progressive_Conservative_leadership_election
Ms. Campbell just happened to win it.
But, in the end it didn't matter. The Tories were doomed either way. I doubt Jesus himself could have saved them.
This was not the first this happened, a PM who wasn't elected. When Pierre Trudeau (father of our current PM, Justin), retired in 1984, John Turner ended up as leader of the Liberal Party and PM. However, he only had the job for 79 days, before being defeated in the 1984 Federal Election by, ironically, Brian Mulroney.
I hate that part of our Parliamentary system. The post should have been left vacant, the Tories have a leadership campaign (and Campbell wins, in this case) and THEN she runs for the Prime Ministership in the following federal election.
NOBODY except the Conservative party voted for her. 28 million Canadians woke up the following day and said, "Kim who?" Unfortunately, Mulroney's ego wouldn't allow him to remain and take the loss for his team.
Steve, we don't elect Prime Ministers. We elect MPs, the party who elects the most gets to be the government and then they decide who is Prime Minister, usually the leader of the party. There are exceptions, but they do not apply here. Campbell had been elected as an MP fair and square, she then became the Party leader fair and square after Mulroney left, and therefore had every right to be the next Prime Minister.
Nah. Fair and square Parliamentary rules and not Joe from Kitchener electing her. That's what I mean by how I hate our Parliamentary system.
You might want so-and-so to be prime minister, but first you have to elect some shleb to represent that party in your community.
Still prefer our system to that of a certain republic south of us.