OT: Gerald Ford just Died

[Cajuncowboy]

per foxnews.

Rip. Thank you for your service.

 

[Yeagermeister]

RIP Mr. President

 

[DragonCowboy]

RIP

Mr. Ford

 

[Big Dakota]

From a Dem. RIP Mr. President!!! Not a great Pres. but a good man IMHO. He and Mrs Ford did a LOT of good in their lives.

Here's a star for you Jerry :starspin

 

[bbgun]

There goes the last surviving member of the Warren Commission. I hope he receives a state funeral here in DC. Rest in peace, sir.

 

[Yeagermeister]

Ok let's please keep our political views out of this thread.

 

[Cajuncowboy]

There goes the last surviving member of the Warren Commission. I hope he receives a state funeral here in DC. Rest in peace, sir.

Actually Arlen Spector is still alive and still a Senator, he of the magic bullet theory.

edit: Sorry Yeag. Just getting the facts out there. No political point made.

 

[EastDallasCowboy]

He was a fine man, and a fine President.

Rest in peace, good sir.

 

[Big Dakota]

 

[Big Dakota]

Ok let's please keep our political views out of this thread.

Good thing this isn't Russia.

 

[Cajuncowboy]

Gerald R. Ford

Quotes:

I had a lot of experience with people smarter than I am.

I have had a lot of adversaries in my political life, but no enemies that I can remember.

Even though this is late in an election year, there is no way we can go forward except together and no way anybody can win except by serving the people's urgent needs. We cannot stand still or slip backwards. We must go forward now together.

Our constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws, not of men.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

 

[Cajuncowboy]

I would think a tribute thread to one of our Presidents could have lasted more than 5 minutes on the main forum.

Too bad people have to make political statements at a time like this.

 

[Big Dakota]

Gerald Ford dies at 93

Former president took over during depths of Watergate scandal


getCSS("3088867")

NBC VIDEO

​

• Pres. Gerald Ford dies
Dec. 26: Betty Ford is reporting that former President Gerald Ford has died, at age 93.
MSNBC


var cssList = new Array();getCSS("3053751")

Slide show

​

• Portrait of a president
A look at Gerald Ford’s life – from college football star to leader of the U.S.


var cssList = new Array();getCSS("3053751") TIMELINE: THE LIFE OF GERALD R. FORD
• Click here for a look at a the events in the life of President Ford.



var cssList = new Array();getCSS("3053751")
var cssList = new Array();getCSS("3053751") Most Popular
• Most Viewed<IMG height=1 width=2 scr="/images/cleardot.gif">• Top Rated<IMG height=1 width=2 scr="/images/cleardot.gif">• Most E-mailed• Gerald Ford dies
• U.S. wants polar bears listed as threatened
• Iraqi court upholds Saddam’s death sentence
• Rapist who preys on men sparks fear, interest
• Remembering the Godfather of Soul
• Most viewed on MSNBC.com

• Passengers get $50 bills from bus Santa
• Interior, Pentagon faulted in audits
• The dilemma of over 40 and looking for work
• Lawyer works to expose Saudi legal system
• Wisconsin employer hands out hefty bonuses
• Most viewed on MSNBC.com

• The New Coal Car
• U.S. wants polar bears listed as threatened
• The 21st century immigrant story
• Step By Step
• Sultry Ciara not just another Janet wannabe
• Most viewed on MSNBC.com

pop_pushTabBox('boxB_3053751');


var tcdacmd="dt";

BREAKING NEWS

Updated: 21 minutes ago
function UpdateTimeStamp(pdt) { var n = document.getElementById("udtD"); if(pdt != '' && n && window.DateTime) { var dt = new DateTime(); pdt = dt.T2D(pdt); if(dt.GetTZ(pdt)) {n.innerHTML = dt.D2S(pdt,((''.toLowerCase()=='false')?false:true));} } } UpdateTimeStamp('633027936752200000');

LOS ANGELES - Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon’s scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America’s history, has died, his wife, Betty, said Tuesday. He was 93.
“My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age,” Mrs. Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband’s office in Rancho Mirage. “His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country.”
The statement did not say where Ford died or list a cause of death. Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments — including an angioplasty — in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Story continues below &#8595; advertisement ad_dap(250,300,'&PG=NBCMSN&AP=1089');


He was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. Ford had been living at his desert home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., about 130 miles east of Los Angeles.
Ford was an accidental president, Nixon’s hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straight-forward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.
He took office minutes after Nixon flew off into exile and declared “our long national nightmare is over.” But he revived the debate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president. That single act, it was widely believed, cost Ford election to a term of his own in 1976, but it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.
The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. during his presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the end neared, Ford said: “Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned.” Evoking Abraham Lincoln, he said it was time to “look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the nation’s wounds.”
Ford also earned a place in the history books as the first unelected vice president, chosen by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew who also was forced from office by scandal.
He was in the White House only 895 days, but changed it more than it changed him.
Even after two women tried separately to kill him, the presidency of Jerry Ford remained open and plain.
Not imperial. Not reclusive. And, of greatest satisfaction to a nation numbed by Watergate, not dishonest.
Even to millions of Americans who had voted two years earlier for Richard Nixon, the transition to Ford’s leadership was one of the most welcomed in the history of the democratic process — despite the fact that it occurred without an election.
After the Watergate ordeal, Americans liked their new president — and first lady Betty, whose candor charmed the country.
They liked her for speaking openly about problems of young people, including her own daughter; they admired her for not hiding that she had a mastectomy — in fact, her example caused thousands of women to seek breast examinations.
And she remained one of the country’s most admired women even after the Fords left the White House when she was hospitalized in 1978 and admitted to having become addicted to drugs and alcohol she took for painful arthritis and a pinched nerve in her neck. Four years later she founded the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, a substance abuse facility next to Eisenhower Medical Center.
Ford slowed down in recent years. He had been hospitalized in August 2000 when he suffered one or more small strokes while attending the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.
The following year, he joined former presidents Carter, Bush and Clinton at a memorial service in Washington three days after the Sept. 11 attacks. In June 2004, the four men and their wives joined again at a funeral service in Washington for former President Reagan. But in November 2004, Ford was unable to join the other former presidents at the dedication of the Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, Ark.
In January, Ford was hospitalized with pneumonia for 12 days. He wasn’t seen in public until April 23, when President Bush was in town and paid a visit to the Ford home. Bush, Ford and Betty posed for photographers outside the residence before going inside for a private get-together.
The intensely private couple declined reporter interview requests and were rarely seen outside their home in Rancho Mirage’s gated Thunderbird Estates, other than to attend worship services at the nearby St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Palm Desert.
In a long congressional career in which he rose to be House Republican leader, Ford lit few fires. In the words of Congressional Quarterly, he “built a reputation for being solid, dependable and loyal — a man more comfortable carrying out the programs of others than in initiating things on his own.”
When Agnew resigned in a bribery scandal in October 1973, Ford was one of four finalists to succeed him: Texan John Connally, New York’s Nelson Rockefeller and California’s Ronald Reagan.
“Personal factors enter into such a decision,” Nixon recalled for a Ford biographer in 1991. I knew all of the final four personally and had great respect for each one of then, but I had known Jerry Ford longer and better than any of the rest.
“We had served in Congress together. I had often campaigned for him in his district,” Nixon continued. But Ford had something the others didn’t, he would be easily confirmed by Congress, something that could not be said of Rockefeller, Reagan and Connally.
So Ford it was. He became the first vice president appointed under the 25th amendment to the Constitution.
On Aug. 9, 1974, after seeing Nixon off to exile, Ford assumed the office. The next morning, he still made his own breakfast and padded to the front door in his pajamas to get the newspaper.
Said a ranking Democratic congressman: “Maybe he is a plodder, but right now the advantages of having a plodder in the presidency are enormous.”
It was rare that Ford was ever as eloquent as he was for those dramatic moments of his swearing-in at the White House.
“My fellow Americans,” he said, “our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.”
And, true to his reputation as unassuming Jerry, he added: “I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots. So I ask you to confirm me with your prayers.”
For Ford, a full term was not to be. He survived an intraparty challenge from Ronald Reagan only to lose to Democrat Jimmy Carter in November. In the campaign, he ignored Carter’s record as governor of Georgia and concentrated on his own achievements as president.
Carter won 297 electoral votes to his 240. After Reagan came back to defeat Carter in 1980, the two former presidents became collaborators, working together on joint projects.
Even as president, Ford often talked with reporters several times a day. He averaged 200 outside speeches a year as House Republican leader, a pace he kept up as vice president and diminished, seemingly, only slightly as chief executive. He kept speaking after leaving the White House, generally for fees of $15,000 to $20,000.

 

[bbgun]

Actually Arlen Spector is still alive and still a Senator, he of the magic bullet theory.

edit: Sorry Yeag. Just getting the facts out there. No political point made.

He wasn't a member of the commission; he was a young investigator.

 

[ZeroClub]

CC - Thanks for posting the notice.

 

[Hostile]

So this leaves Carter, Bush Sr. and Clinton as former Presidents still alive.

RIP sir.

Not many know he was a football star at Michigan. He played Center on 2 National Championships. Perhaps the most accomplished former athlete ever in the Oval Office.

 

[StanleySpadowski]

So this leaves Carter, Bush Sr. and Clinton as former Presidents still alive.

RIP sir.

Not many know he was a football star at Michigan. He played Center on 2 National Championships. Perhaps the most accomplished former athlete ever in the Oval Office.

It's a shame that he was painted as a bumbling oaf, especially the Chevy Chase SNL skit. Many are going to think of that when remembering him and that couldn't be farther from the truth.

 

[BrAinPaiNt]

So this leaves Carter, Bush Sr. and Clinton as former Presidents still alive.

RIP sir.

Not many know he was a football star at Michigan. He played Center on 2 National Championships. Perhaps the most accomplished former athlete ever in the Oval Office.

I think he was also offered a contract with a couple of NFL teams but turned it down so he could coach while also getting his degree as a lawyer.

 

[Hostile]

I think he was also offered a contract with a couple of NFL teams but turned it down so he could coach while also getting his degree as a lawyer.

That I did not know. Doesn't surprise me though.

 

[coogrfan]

R I P