March 28, 2006, Big Republican Obituary Day
A strange day... they say it comes in threes (well, someone says that)... in this case, two temporal deaths (Weinberger and Nofziger) and one political death (Card)... We'll start with the political career death (apparently)...
White House Chief of Staff Andy Card announced his resignation after five years of holding the President's pee pee and cutting his food and otherwise pretending he worked for a functioning human being, who, most unfortunately for the rest of us, managed to attain the Presidency of the United States. Card had been Transportation Secretary in Poppy's government. Card took s**t for the President's failures at Katrina, and it was Card who whispered something about planes crashing into the WTC that resulted in the President's decision to read a book about goats.
And it is Card who will now spearhead the non-shake-up shake-up as the President's approval ratings hover in the 30's. So he will be replaced with the Budget Director who presided over the largest expansion of any country's deficit in human history, Josh "Yosh" Bolten (no relation... and spelled differently!)
And as we write Card's political obituary (maybe), we see two actual obituaries, of rather substantial figures from the Reagan era. We'll start with former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger, who died at 88. Among Weinberger's accomplishments were service as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (and OMB Director) in the Nixon White House (and HEW Secretary for Ford), and then coming back to be St. Ron's DOD chief; Poppy pardoned him for his role in Iran-Contra just as the trial on a felony obstruction charge was about to begin, an ignominious end to a political career that involved helping set up the military industrial complex that is so big on "industrial" and "complex" and less big on "military", at least in terms of how the dollars are spent... indeed, he was part of helping create the myth that St. Ron spent the Soviet Union into oblivion. (Correct answer: he spent the United States into oblivion, as his ideological heir is doing; only some level of budgetary responsibility by Poppy and a Democratic Congreses and later by Clinton and a Republican Congress prevented... well... you'll see... but I digress.) Anyway, Weinberger worked for Bechtel before St. Ron, just as Cheney worked for Halliburton before coming to be Junior's veep. Get the picture?
And onto the other Republican big to pass today, Lynn Nofziger passed away. Nofziger ran Reagan's press operations when St. Ron was governor of California, and served as Deputy Communications Director in the early days of the Reagan Presidency. He is noted historically for stepping up when St. Ron himself and press secretary James Brady were gunned down by a scion of a family with close ties to the then vice-president. Nofziger is also credited with a good deal of the image manufacturing that make many people look back fondly on St. Ron.
So there you have it.