Nancy Reagan, wife of former US President Ronald Reagan, passed away today at the age of 94 of congestive heart failure.
The New York Times reports:
Nancy Reagan, the influential and stylish wife of the 40th president of the United States who unabashedly put Ronald Reagan at the center of her life but who became a political figure in her own right, died on Sunday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 94.
[...] "Without Nancy, there would have been no Governor Reagan, no President Reagan," said Michael K. Deaver, the longtime aide and close friend of the Reagans who died in 2007.
President Obama said on Sunday that Mrs. Reagan "had redefined the role" of first lady, adding, "Later, in her long goodbye with President Reagan, she became a voice on behalf of millions of families going through the depleting, aching reality of Alzheimer's, and took on a new role, as advocate, on behalf of treatments that hold the potential and the promise to improve and save lives."
Australian Broadcasting Corporation News reports:
Nancy Reagan, devoted wife and trusted confidante to late president Ronald Reagan who after his death became the most ardent guardian of his political legacy, has died aged 94.
The former first lady died at her home in Los Angeles from congestive heart failure, her spokeswoman Joanne Drake said.
She will be buried next to her husband at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, Ms Drake said.
"She is once again with the man she loved," her stepson Michael Reagan wrote on Twitter.
One tech-related aspect of Ronald Reagan's presidency was his championing of the Strategic Defense Initiative aka "Star Wars":
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons (Intercontinental ballistic missiles and Submarine-launched ballistic missiles).
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Sunday March 06 2016, @08:27PM
The New York Times link seems seriously broken. Seems until now I misunderstood the term "breaking news"! :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2016, @08:38PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/us/nancy-reagan-a-stylish-and-influential-first-lady-dies-at-94.html?_r=0 [nytimes.com]
https://archive.is/LHUmN [archive.is]
(Score: 1) by martyb on Sunday March 06 2016, @10:02PM
I apologize. It seems that there is still an intermittent bug pertaining to URLs in stories/comments. In my rush to get the story out, I failed to notice the error. Corrected the story link using the one you provided. THANKS!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2016, @08:36PM
Especially at the local arcade.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday March 06 2016, @09:02PM
Yes, the administration of good family values and the war on drugs was a good time for ultra-violent video games like NARC [wikipedia.org] in which shooting people, running them over with a sports-car, and blowing them to flaming pieces was quite alright as long as they were involved with drugs somehow.
The sexual deviant clown Kinky Pinky [ew.com] and his stage background of porn shops [somethingawful.com] really drove the point home that pornography turns men into knife-wielding rapist clowns.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday March 07 2016, @01:27AM
Winners DON'T use drugs... they use 'trickle down economics' to make each other richer. Then they find all kinds of ways to make each other even richer (H1b-visas, TPP, on and on and on and)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday March 07 2016, @01:16PM
The Local arcade was the best place to DO DRUGS.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2016, @08:37PM
Ronald Reagan's father was a drunk.
Had it not been for employment provided by the New Deal, Reagan's family would have starved.
At MGM, actor/dancer and Right Winger George Murphy was a major influence on Ronnie. [google.com]
Ronnie acknowledged that influence. [google.com]
A union buster during his stint as Chief Executive, Ronald Reagan had been President of a labor union (the Screen Actors Guild) for 5 years.
George Murphy had previously held that position.
As Ronnie wanted to get in her pants, Nancy Davis was another Right Winger who influenced Saint Ronald's shift toward the Reactionary fringe.
Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis was invited to a White House dinner during the Reagan administration.
Nancy Reagan asked him what he had done to warrant an invitation.
He pointed out that he had changed the course of music several times.
Miles asked what she had done to be worthy of attending besides sleeping with the President.
Word is, when asked if Mr. Davis would be invited back, Mrs. Reagan just said "No".
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday March 06 2016, @09:03PM
Interestingly in Reagan's 1400 odd page autobiography, Reagan's first wife Jane Wyman gets one line.
Nine years of marriage and she only warrants one line?
(Score: 3, Touché) by frojack on Sunday March 06 2016, @10:38PM
If you can't say anything nice.....
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday March 06 2016, @09:08PM
The part about Miles Davis comes as a surprise because Miles Davis was a racist who hated White Devils and Ronnie was the biggest White Devil of them all at that time.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2016, @10:10PM
Miles Davis included a lot of whites in his bands. Guys like Chick Corea, Dave Holland, Gerry Mulligan, John Scofield and Bill Evans. His most frequent collaborator was the arranger Gil Evans.
Like any black man who has had to face enormous racism to reach success Davis had more than a few choice words to say about whites' racism. But his actions are what matters.
Contrast that to e-fueld who constantly whines about jews and mexicans and women holding him back leaving him to a life where his greatest successes are getting bigotted posts up-voted on an obscure little website that is becoming more and more like stormfront every day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2016, @10:28PM
"an obscure little website that is becoming more and more like stormfront every day."
Vocal minority, and most of the posts are yours, coward.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2016, @10:12PM
If what you say was true, Miles' bands would be all-black.
Once again, you have shown yourself to be full of shit.
1948 band [wikipedia.org]
Lee Konitz [google.com]
Bill Barber [google.com]
Mike Zwerin [google.com]
Gerry Mulligan [google.com]
Kai Winding [google.com]
Al Haig [google.com]
...and acknowledging that your oppressor is, in fact, an oppressor isn't racism.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @04:05AM
Snopes seems to think the Miles Davies story is false:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/milesdavis.asp [snopes.com]
But Snopes could be wrong of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @10:05PM
...kinda like the "real-life accounts" that Ronnie would use to "add reality" to his points.
Y'know, the stuff that only existed [google.com] in Hollywood movies. [google.com]
...and Nancy's "Just say no" nonsense ignores the fact that crows crush ants to get high [google.com] and monkeys et al get drunk [google.com] and creatures of all kinds get buzzed. [bbc.com]
The use of intoxicants appears to be quite common.
Not acknowledging that fact shows you to simply be naive.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 07 2016, @01:17PM
shift toward the Reactionary fringe
You have to be realistic about Overton window shifts and "ancient" history.
He was just a 50s era democrat, thats all. There are real alt-right monarchist types and such that deserve the reactionary label, but not Reagan.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @08:32PM
When Reagan was governor of California in the 1960s, he got rid of free higher education of the type still available in the Liberal Democracies of northern Europe.
As President, his obliteration of The Fairness Doctrine destroyed the country, replacing responsible, fact-based journalism with for-profit opinion mongering.
His union busting has already been mentioned.
He isn't thought of as Saint Ronald by Right^W Wrong Wingers for no reason.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2016, @09:16PM
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2016, @09:17PM
3 decades later, we still don't have the technology required to hit a bullet with a bullet--but we sure did manage to piss away a whole bunch of money on that.
Never mind that positioning weapons in space--specifically, lasers driven by nuclear explosions--would break every treaty ever signed and violate all norms of human decency.
Another of Reagan's expensive aggressions was the "Peacekeeper" missile, tipped with 10 nuclear warheads each.
Don't forget the obsolete-before-it-was-ever-built B-1 bomber.
...then there was Reagan's monstrously expensive 600-ship Navy.
It was due to Reagan's profligate behavior that USA went from the largest lender nation to the largest borrower.
Bitch about tax-and-spend Democrats if you like; borrow-and-spend Republicans are worse.
Some say that USA "won" the Cold War.
From my viewpoint, there was no winner.
We spent ourselves into a giant hole (and a ridiculous level of militarist thinking) from which we are unlikely to recover (unless we elect the likes of Jill Stein).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2016, @10:15PM
> 3 decades later, we still don't have the technology required to hit a bullet with a bullet--but we sure did manage to piss away a whole bunch of money on that.
Sorry dude, but that's no longer true. They were able to hit a single target over 5 years ago (under ideal conditions) which wasn't that useful. But a few months ago they were able to hit three simultaneous targets. [lockheedmartin.com] Much of that is due to computing power increases over the last decade. The available flops have increased a couple of magnitude.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2016, @10:22PM
Putting a homing beacon on your target then hitting it isn't called "success".
That's commonly called "cheating".
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2016, @10:38PM
You are right. But since that is not what happened in November, it is irrelevant.
Don't let your passion get ahead of your intellect gweg.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday March 07 2016, @01:23PM
I'm sure the defence contractors viewpoint from that giant mountain of money is much better than yours.
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Sunday March 06 2016, @10:04PM
To think that gems like this [youtu.be] didn't entirely wipe out illicit drug use in America.
If you're under 30 watch it and be warned!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2016, @10:25PM
The funny thing is, we actually did build the Star Wars system... With it we can also cause heart attacks and all sorts of other effects via coherent microwave beams from space.
Not saying this happened, but there's a small chance that Nancy's heart was nuked by the very Strategic Defense system that her husband greenlit. Go research the declassified government report on "Bioeffects of Selected Energy Weapons" and realize that we had that since the 70's, and that the state of the art is beyond belief today. Imagine what you can do when that stuff is linked to a live ground penetrating radar.
If the US citizenry ever found out exactly the degree that spy satellites are being used against them, there would be no more USA the revolt would be so fierce. It would make MKULTRA seem like a stimulus package.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2016, @10:51PM
Really? Seriously? Come on. The filthy majority couldn't care less. That news could wash over them for a few weeks or months but then it's back to their TV, phone, tablet, computer screens. THEY DON'T CARE! As long as they are well fed, warm and entertained, nothing is going to change!
Most people don't know or care about Project Mk-ultra and several of the other related "projects". Many publications continue to talk about how many Nazi war criminals were prosecuted but they don't know or care about Project Paper-clip. I'm surprised TPTB haven't shipped us (or at least many of us) unknowingly off to Mars. Far fetched? Just read about the many "projects" which are known. Think of the amount of human experimentation in many countries and there has to be several dark "projects" in existence today!
The public is weak, divided, and any worthwhile patriot groups are compromised and worthless.
Drink up the fluoridated water and aspartame soft drinks while you can. And stock up on tobacco seeds now as this will be something they will outlaw in the future - you can bet on it!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 07 2016, @05:42AM
"I'm surprised TPTB haven't shipped us (or at least many of us) unknowingly off to Mars."
I'm fairly sure that if TPTB had shipped me to Mars, I would be aware of it.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Monday March 07 2016, @12:18AM
Satellites are thoroughly monitored and catalogued. Which one(s) do you suspect of carrying this weapon?
(link to report mentioned in parent post [wired.com])
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Sunday March 06 2016, @10:52PM
We're all not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but fuck that. Glad she croaked -- the harm she caused with her war-on-some-drugs support is almost immeasurable. We can probably add up the wasted trillions of dollars, but the millions of people harmed over the decades, the incarceration, broken families, inability to participate in the regular economy once labeled a felon, the lost opportunity costs in infrastructure and education wasted instead on this useless drug war -- no, I feel only joy at the news. Ding dong the witch is dead.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 07 2016, @05:50AM
Yes, Nancy was single handedly responsible for all of that. In fact, Nancy funded the DEA out of her own pocket, right? At personal expense, she had all those prisons built to warehouse all those dope feinds locked up for heinous drug offenses.
You may have made a point, if you hadn't gone overboard.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday March 07 2016, @06:19AM
A very important cog in the wheel. Obviously there was a whole bureaucracy built up around that so that no one person would ever have to take blame. Just so you know, I'll be reading any obituary of such cogs with great satisfaction.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Magic Oddball on Monday March 07 2016, @06:50AM
If Nancy Regan had been among the politicians that had declared the drugs illegal in the 1960s, or that began throwing funding at the DEA to go after everyone carrying even a single joint, increased the punishments for people caught using/carrying, redirected funds away from rehabilitating addicts over to punishing them, or similar things, then that would make sense.
Except she didn't. She inadvertently created the "Just Say No" slogan by answering a girl's question about what to do if offered drugs, then gave talks, wrote articles, etc. to publicize the need to give kids information & tools that might keep some from taking drugs.
So she's not responsible for the War on Drugs, DARE, the overall Just Say No campaign, the existence of the DEA, or whatever else you're attributing to her. Saying she was is even further off than it would have been if Al Gore really had claimed to have invented the Internet when he'd just voted for the telecom projects that built up to it.
FWIW I'm not a particular fan of Nancy Regan or her husband... I just feel people should be blamed for what they actually did, not for related things they weren't responsible for.
(Score: 1) by bitstream on Monday March 07 2016, @07:58AM
The point must be to collect feel-good-points then. Because any real action on drugs would make people have a decent life so they don't have to numb their minds with drugs, make other sources of income possible than drugs, inform school children of the dangers, rehabilitate those that fall for it anyway and incarcerate those that insist on dealing it for a limited time.
Seems way to much politics is about feel good and uninformed opinions rather than finding out and act on facts. Oh well let's not forget.. greed! ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2016, @11:56PM
She drew attention to the idea that drug abuse wasn't an issue confined to minorities or to the poor, it affected every strata of society. And it was killing people and wrecking homes.
For the past 2-3 years we've been hearing that again about opiod addiction. Well, she was talking about that 30 years ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @03:06AM
and guess who were/are bringing the drugs into the US? Think hard, real hard now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @03:30AM
The problem is on the demand side; it can't be solved by interdiction and stepped up law enforcement alone. Nancy Reagan understood this better than you do. That was the basis of her campaign.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @04:00AM
When Scott Walker was still in the GOP race for President, he started hearing from cops on the campaign trail that a lot of the heroin supply was coming in from Canada (perhaps flown up or shipped from Latin America). Walker then proposed that we build two walls, one on each border.
Walker dropped out of the race a few weeks later. Even by Republican standards, he is a dim bulb.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @08:47PM
We have discussed this previously.
Portugal Cut Drug Addiction Rates in Half by Rejecting Criminalization [soylentnews.org]
The countries of western Europe have demonstrated that your brand of "logic" is just dumb.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @08:54PM
Replied 1 comment too far down the (sub)thread.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @12:04AM
Just Say Know
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @02:45AM
Nancy Reagan dies, and there is a mention of SDI?? What the hell?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @04:06AM
The Witch is Dead
(Score: 2, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 07 2016, @05:52AM
Hillary died too?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @05:48AM
to bad rubbish. BIH Nancy.