Michigan man bowls third 300 game of life, then dies
Associated PressDec. 30, 2005 12:00 AM
PORTAGE, Mich. - A bowler collapsed and died at a bowling alley shortly after rolling the third perfect game of his life.Ed Lorenz, 69, bowled a 300 on Wednesday in his first league game of the night at Airway Lanes. When the retiree got up to bowl in the fifth frame of his second game, he clutched his chest and fell over, and efforts to revive him failed."If he could have written a way to go out, this would be it," said Johnny D Masters, who was bowling with Lorenz.Friends said Lorenz started bowling in 1957 and ended last season with a 223 average. He rolled his first two 300 games over a one-week period in 2004.In May, Lorenz was inducted into the Kalamazoo Metro Bowling Association Hall of Fame.
Somehow, I feel like I am becoming a geezer. After my bike accident, I have used a cane. I feel like poking a young whipersnapper...
Friday, December 30, 2005
Us geezers just like cool stuff too!
Boomers like cars geared to younger setCross between Hummer, minivan misses mark.
It wasn't until Jim Tudor got his new Honda Element that he noticed a quirk in its design. Why was the boxy vehicle's sunroof over the empty back seat instead of his spot up front?"I found out that it's supposed to be for my surfboard," says Tudor, who's 56, the grandfather of two and never surfs anywhere but the Internet. "It was really only after the fact, when I started doing a little reading on the car, that I found out I wasn't supposed to be the one driving it."It turns out many of the people buying the Element -- which looks like a cross between a minivan and a Hummer -- aren't the young surfers and mountain bikers Honda expected. It's the same for many buyers of Toyota's Scion models.
Those vehicles were designed and pitched by automakers to capture the hearts and dollars of consumers in their 20s or even younger.But a funny thing happened on the cars' way to the youth market -- people in their 40s, 50s, or 60s found the vehicles suited their lifestyles, too. Honda was "hoping to get parents to buy it for their kids. It didn't work out that way," says Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research, which tracks consumer spending. "The parents who bought it decided they wanted it. The whole car got hijacked by the baby boomers."The demand for these cars from older buyers has thrown a small curve to Honda, Toyota and others trying to broaden their appeal and build allegiance with consumers who will be key to their future business. Automakers are hardly upset that boomers are buying their youth-themed cars. On the contrary, they're happy to sell cars to whoever wants one, manufacturers say.But the embrace of the Element, Scion's xB, Pontiac's Vibe and other cars by drivers across the age spectrum reveals some of the unpredictabilities of the marketplace. Mainly, that in this age of highly targeted marketing and myriad product choices, consumers will often make purchases that fit their lifestyles and self-image, even if it's not exactly what manufacturer had in mind.Take Tudor, who lives in Newborn, Ga., and drives 40,000 miles a year for his job running a state trade association. He never opens the sunroof on his Element. He has no intention of sleeping in the vehicle, although the seats are designed to fold back for exactly that purpose.But he loves the car because it has loads of room to fit all the stuff he carts around for work. Tudor, who frequently drinks coffee or eats french fries while behind the wheel, also likes the upholstery and flooring that's easy to clean. "It just met my needs," he says.Those are very different needs than the ones Honda created the Element to fit.The automaker designed the vehicle for college-age men who participate in lots of active, outdoor sports, said Chris Naughton, a Honda spokesman."We also had a name for it during its creation -- that it was a dorm room on wheels," he said.Toyota had similar thoughts when it created its Scion brand. "There are 142 million people in the U.S. who are less than 30 years old," said Mark Templin, vice president of Scion. "They grew up in a different era. There are things going on around them that we didn't grow up with. It's important for Toyota's future to understand those people."The cars are also marketed at younger consumers. The Web site for Scion thumps out a rap beat. Element's site offers a link to an online mountain-biking game.The strategy has, in many ways, succeeded. Toyota and its sister Lexus brand traditionally sell to older consumers. But Scion's average age is the youngest of any brand, analysts say.Not as young as Toyota expected. By one calculation, the average Scion buyer is about 39, according to the Power Information Network, a subsidiary of automotive market research firm J.D. Power & Associates. For the Element, it's 43.Many older buyers of the vehicles were likely drawn to them by their price. Others were probably buying for their children. Still others buy because they think the cars make them look or feel younger, said Tom Libby, a PIN analyst. Other automakers are looking to follow suit with their own stylish compact cars, as a way to bring in new buyers regardless of age, he said.Jack Dear, of San Antonio, long a Ford owner, bought an Element this year, partly to save on gas. But Dear, 55, also was attracted to the vehicle because it reminds him of the VW Microbus he and friend piloted to California in 1971. They drove it right on to the beach and slept in the back until a police officer chased them away. The Element taps into a self-image that hasn't change all that much since then, he says."I think a lot of us never grew up," Dear says. "We cut our hair, but we never grew up."Tudor has already moved on to his second Element, this one bright red. Driving cars whose shape makes it stand out in traffic, he and other Element owners have been quick to spot one another, exchanging honks and friendly waves of solidarity."Then I noticed that everybody I was waving at was my own age," Tudor says. "That's why my kids call it the Elder-ment."
It wasn't until Jim Tudor got his new Honda Element that he noticed a quirk in its design. Why was the boxy vehicle's sunroof over the empty back seat instead of his spot up front?"I found out that it's supposed to be for my surfboard," says Tudor, who's 56, the grandfather of two and never surfs anywhere but the Internet. "It was really only after the fact, when I started doing a little reading on the car, that I found out I wasn't supposed to be the one driving it."It turns out many of the people buying the Element -- which looks like a cross between a minivan and a Hummer -- aren't the young surfers and mountain bikers Honda expected. It's the same for many buyers of Toyota's Scion models.
Those vehicles were designed and pitched by automakers to capture the hearts and dollars of consumers in their 20s or even younger.But a funny thing happened on the cars' way to the youth market -- people in their 40s, 50s, or 60s found the vehicles suited their lifestyles, too. Honda was "hoping to get parents to buy it for their kids. It didn't work out that way," says Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research, which tracks consumer spending. "The parents who bought it decided they wanted it. The whole car got hijacked by the baby boomers."The demand for these cars from older buyers has thrown a small curve to Honda, Toyota and others trying to broaden their appeal and build allegiance with consumers who will be key to their future business. Automakers are hardly upset that boomers are buying their youth-themed cars. On the contrary, they're happy to sell cars to whoever wants one, manufacturers say.But the embrace of the Element, Scion's xB, Pontiac's Vibe and other cars by drivers across the age spectrum reveals some of the unpredictabilities of the marketplace. Mainly, that in this age of highly targeted marketing and myriad product choices, consumers will often make purchases that fit their lifestyles and self-image, even if it's not exactly what manufacturer had in mind.Take Tudor, who lives in Newborn, Ga., and drives 40,000 miles a year for his job running a state trade association. He never opens the sunroof on his Element. He has no intention of sleeping in the vehicle, although the seats are designed to fold back for exactly that purpose.But he loves the car because it has loads of room to fit all the stuff he carts around for work. Tudor, who frequently drinks coffee or eats french fries while behind the wheel, also likes the upholstery and flooring that's easy to clean. "It just met my needs," he says.Those are very different needs than the ones Honda created the Element to fit.The automaker designed the vehicle for college-age men who participate in lots of active, outdoor sports, said Chris Naughton, a Honda spokesman."We also had a name for it during its creation -- that it was a dorm room on wheels," he said.Toyota had similar thoughts when it created its Scion brand. "There are 142 million people in the U.S. who are less than 30 years old," said Mark Templin, vice president of Scion. "They grew up in a different era. There are things going on around them that we didn't grow up with. It's important for Toyota's future to understand those people."The cars are also marketed at younger consumers. The Web site for Scion thumps out a rap beat. Element's site offers a link to an online mountain-biking game.The strategy has, in many ways, succeeded. Toyota and its sister Lexus brand traditionally sell to older consumers. But Scion's average age is the youngest of any brand, analysts say.Not as young as Toyota expected. By one calculation, the average Scion buyer is about 39, according to the Power Information Network, a subsidiary of automotive market research firm J.D. Power & Associates. For the Element, it's 43.Many older buyers of the vehicles were likely drawn to them by their price. Others were probably buying for their children. Still others buy because they think the cars make them look or feel younger, said Tom Libby, a PIN analyst. Other automakers are looking to follow suit with their own stylish compact cars, as a way to bring in new buyers regardless of age, he said.Jack Dear, of San Antonio, long a Ford owner, bought an Element this year, partly to save on gas. But Dear, 55, also was attracted to the vehicle because it reminds him of the VW Microbus he and friend piloted to California in 1971. They drove it right on to the beach and slept in the back until a police officer chased them away. The Element taps into a self-image that hasn't change all that much since then, he says."I think a lot of us never grew up," Dear says. "We cut our hair, but we never grew up."Tudor has already moved on to his second Element, this one bright red. Driving cars whose shape makes it stand out in traffic, he and other Element owners have been quick to spot one another, exchanging honks and friendly waves of solidarity."Then I noticed that everybody I was waving at was my own age," Tudor says. "That's why my kids call it the Elder-ment."
Thursday, December 22, 2005
I guess Richland County did not vote overwhelmingly Bush....
Washington, DC - U.S. Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI) issued the following statement today after receiving news that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has denied the state of Wisconsin's appeal for federal assistance following a string of severe storms and tornados that tore through Vernon and Richland Counties in late August: "I believe today's news that Wisconsin will not receive disaster relief aid has been made in error and at the expense of communities truly in need of federal assistance. The decision is extremely disappointing, especially in light of reports that FEMA has mismanaged relief funds, sending millions intended for disaster victims to areas where there was little to no damage in the wake of severe weather. Despite this news, I remain moved by the unrelenting optimism and resilience of the people of Viola as well as the way people throughout the area came together to roll up their sleeves and help their neighbors in need."
Saturday, December 17, 2005
How santa gets his presents....
Santas go on rampage in New Zealand
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- A group of 40 people dressed in Santa Claus costumes, many of them drunk, rampaged through New Zealand's largest city, robbing stores and assaulting security guards, police said Sunday.
The rampage, dubbed "Santarchy" by local newspapers, began early Saturday afternoon when the men, wearing ill-fitting Santa costumes, threw beer bottles and urinated on cars from an Auckland overpass, said Auckland Central Police spokeswoman Noreen Hegarty.
She said the men then rushed through a central city park, overturning garbage containers, throwing bottles at passing cars and spraying graffiti on buildings.
One man climbed the mooring line of a cruise ship before being ordered down by the captain. Other Santas, objecting when the man was arrested, attacked security staff, Hegarty said.
The remaining Santas entered a downtown convenience store and carried off beer and soft drinks.
"They came in, said 'Merry Christmas' and then helped themselves," store owner Changa Manakynda said.
Alex Dyer, a spokesman for the group, said Santarchy was a worldwide movement designed to protest the commercialization of Christmas.
Three people were arrested and charged with drunkenness and disorderly behavior.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- A group of 40 people dressed in Santa Claus costumes, many of them drunk, rampaged through New Zealand's largest city, robbing stores and assaulting security guards, police said Sunday.
The rampage, dubbed "Santarchy" by local newspapers, began early Saturday afternoon when the men, wearing ill-fitting Santa costumes, threw beer bottles and urinated on cars from an Auckland overpass, said Auckland Central Police spokeswoman Noreen Hegarty.
She said the men then rushed through a central city park, overturning garbage containers, throwing bottles at passing cars and spraying graffiti on buildings.
One man climbed the mooring line of a cruise ship before being ordered down by the captain. Other Santas, objecting when the man was arrested, attacked security staff, Hegarty said.
The remaining Santas entered a downtown convenience store and carried off beer and soft drinks.
"They came in, said 'Merry Christmas' and then helped themselves," store owner Changa Manakynda said.
Alex Dyer, a spokesman for the group, said Santarchy was a worldwide movement designed to protest the commercialization of Christmas.
Three people were arrested and charged with drunkenness and disorderly behavior.
His hair plugs are buried
I always enjoyed shaking his hand at the Wisconsin State Fair. That was one of his main campaign efforts, to shake the hand of fairgoers as they entered the flower exhibit.
One year, he got hair plugs inserted before the fair since he was going bald. It was the talk of the fair. They were literally hair plugs, plugged into his scalp. It looked painful...
rest in peace....
Maverick Sen. Proxmire dies at 90
Associated PressDec. 15, 2005 07:40 AM
WASHINGTON - Former Wisconsin Sen. William Proxmire, a political maverick who became Congress' leading scourge of big spending and government waste, has died, a congressional official said Thursday.The 90-year-old Proxmire, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease, had been living at a convalescent home near Baltimore. The official who told The Associated Press of his death insisted on anonymity because no formal announcement had yet been made on behalf of the family.Over the years, the rebel Democrat developed an image of penny-pinching populism that played well with his homestate voters. But his support of the expensive system of dairy price supports - widely criticized by others as symbolic of government largess gone amuck - won him strong backing from his state's dairy farmers.
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The senator's monthly "Golden Fleece" awards, which he began in 1975 to point out what he thought were frivolous expenditures of taxpayers' money, became a Washington tradition.Proxmire, who also became a familiar face on the television network Sunday news shows, was elected to the Senate in 1957 in a special election to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.He was re-elected in 1958 to his first six-year term and was returned to the same post in 1964, 1970, 1976 and 1982.Long before the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law was a twinkle in the eye of lawmakers, and at a time when millions were spent campaigning for Senate seats, Proxmire made a point of accepting no contributions. In 1982 he registered only $145.10 in campaign costs, yet gleaned 64 percent of the vote.The son of a wealthy physician in Lake Forest, Ill., Proxmire graduated from Yale University and Harvard Business School. He served with military intelligence in World War II and later moved to Wisconsin to begin a career in politics.After three unsuccessful attempts at winning the governorship, Proxmire won McCarthy's vacant seat.Soon he carved out an independent streak on Capitol Hill by introducing amendments without consulting the party heads, filibustering, and even criticizing the dictates of then-Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson.In that respect, he resembled to a certain degree the style of a latter-day maverick and government spending critic, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.Proxmire remained dogged in his determination to represent his constituents as best he might. Despite his attacks against waste in the Pentagon and elsewhere in government, he remained tireless in his defense of milk price supports.But he did vote in 1975 to kill the $50 million Kickapoo Dam in his own state, which he contended was a waste of taxpyers' money.In more than two decades, Proxmire did not travel abroad on Senate business and he returned more than $900,000 from his office allowances to the Treasury.He repeatedly sparked his colleagues' ire by staunchly opposing salary increases, fighting against such Senate 'perks' as a new gym in the Hart office building and keeping the Senate open all night long - at a cost of thousands of dollars - so he alone could argue against increasing the national debt limit.Even so, his reputation was that of a workaholic and even his strongest critics found him to be one the the chamber's most disciplined, intelligent and persistent members.
One year, he got hair plugs inserted before the fair since he was going bald. It was the talk of the fair. They were literally hair plugs, plugged into his scalp. It looked painful...
rest in peace....
Maverick Sen. Proxmire dies at 90
Associated PressDec. 15, 2005 07:40 AM
WASHINGTON - Former Wisconsin Sen. William Proxmire, a political maverick who became Congress' leading scourge of big spending and government waste, has died, a congressional official said Thursday.The 90-year-old Proxmire, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease, had been living at a convalescent home near Baltimore. The official who told The Associated Press of his death insisted on anonymity because no formal announcement had yet been made on behalf of the family.Over the years, the rebel Democrat developed an image of penny-pinching populism that played well with his homestate voters. But his support of the expensive system of dairy price supports - widely criticized by others as symbolic of government largess gone amuck - won him strong backing from his state's dairy farmers.
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The senator's monthly "Golden Fleece" awards, which he began in 1975 to point out what he thought were frivolous expenditures of taxpayers' money, became a Washington tradition.Proxmire, who also became a familiar face on the television network Sunday news shows, was elected to the Senate in 1957 in a special election to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.He was re-elected in 1958 to his first six-year term and was returned to the same post in 1964, 1970, 1976 and 1982.Long before the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law was a twinkle in the eye of lawmakers, and at a time when millions were spent campaigning for Senate seats, Proxmire made a point of accepting no contributions. In 1982 he registered only $145.10 in campaign costs, yet gleaned 64 percent of the vote.The son of a wealthy physician in Lake Forest, Ill., Proxmire graduated from Yale University and Harvard Business School. He served with military intelligence in World War II and later moved to Wisconsin to begin a career in politics.After three unsuccessful attempts at winning the governorship, Proxmire won McCarthy's vacant seat.Soon he carved out an independent streak on Capitol Hill by introducing amendments without consulting the party heads, filibustering, and even criticizing the dictates of then-Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson.In that respect, he resembled to a certain degree the style of a latter-day maverick and government spending critic, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.Proxmire remained dogged in his determination to represent his constituents as best he might. Despite his attacks against waste in the Pentagon and elsewhere in government, he remained tireless in his defense of milk price supports.But he did vote in 1975 to kill the $50 million Kickapoo Dam in his own state, which he contended was a waste of taxpyers' money.In more than two decades, Proxmire did not travel abroad on Senate business and he returned more than $900,000 from his office allowances to the Treasury.He repeatedly sparked his colleagues' ire by staunchly opposing salary increases, fighting against such Senate 'perks' as a new gym in the Hart office building and keeping the Senate open all night long - at a cost of thousands of dollars - so he alone could argue against increasing the national debt limit.Even so, his reputation was that of a workaholic and even his strongest critics found him to be one the the chamber's most disciplined, intelligent and persistent members.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
sad day, he was a nice guy
I got to meet him in Wisconsin during his campaign. He was very nice....we should have elected him President.....
Former Sen. Eugene McCarthy, 89, dies
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, whose insurgent campaign toppled a sitting president in 1968 and forced the Democratic Party to take seriously his message against the Vietnam War, died Saturday. He was 89.
McCarthy died in his sleep at assisted living home in the Georgetown neighborhood where he had lived for the past few years, said his son, Michael.
Eugene McCarthy challenged President Lyndon B. Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination during growing debate over the Vietnam War. The challenge led to Johnson's withdrawal from the race.
The former college professor, who ran for president five times in all, was in some ways an atypical politician, a man with a witty, erudite speaking style who wrote poetry in his spare time and was the author of several books.
"He was thoughtful and he was principled and he was compassionate and he had a good sense of humor," his son said.
When Eugene McCarthy ran for president in 1992, he explained his decision to leave the seclusion of his home in rural Woodville, Va., for the campaign trail by quoting Plutarch, the ancient Greek historian: "They are wrong who think that politics is like an ocean voyage or military campaign, something to be done with some particular end in view."
McCarthy got less than 1 percent of the vote in 1992 in New Hampshire, the state where he helped change history 24 years earlier.
Helped by his legion of idealistic young volunteers known as "clean-for-Gene kids," McCarthy got 42 percent of the vote in the state's 1968 Democratic primary. That showing embarrassed Johnson into withdrawing from the race and throwing his support to his vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey.
Sen. Robert Kennedy of New York also decided to seek the nomination, but was assassinated in June 1968. McCarthy and his followers went to the party convention in Chicago, where fellow Minnesotan Humphrey won the nomination amid bitter strife both on the convention floor and in the streets.
Humphrey went on to narrowly lose the general election to Richard Nixon. The racial, social and political tensions within the Democratic Party in 1968 have continued to affect presidential politics ever since.
"It was a tragic year for the Democratic Party and for responsible politics, in a way," McCarthy said in a 1988 interview.
"There were already forces at work that might have torn the party apart anyway - the growing women's movement, the growing demands for greater racial equality, an inability to incorporate all the demands of a new generation.
"But in 1968, the party became a kind of unrelated bloc of factions ... each refusing accommodation with another, each wanting control at the expense of all the others."
Although he supported the Korean War, McCarthy said he opposed the Vietnam War because "as it went on, you could tell the people running it didn't know what was going on."
Former Sen. George McGovern, D-S.D., said McCarthy's presidential run in 1968 dramatically changed the antiwar movement.
"It was no longer a movement of concerned citizens, but became a national political movement," McGovern said Saturday. "He was an inspiration to me in all of my life in politics." McGovern won the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination, when McCarthy ran a second time.
Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., who ran for vice president in 2004, said McCarthy "was a remarkable American, a man who spoke his conscience, and he was a great leader for my party."
In recent years, McCarthy was critical of campaign finance reform, winning him an unlikely award from the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2000.
In an interview when he got the award, McCarthy said money helped him in the 1968 race. "We had a few big contributors," he said. "And that's true of any liberal movement. In the American Revolution, they didn't get matching funds from George III."
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, McCarthy said the United States was partly to blame for ignoring the plight of Palestinians.
"You let a thing like that fester for 45 years, you have to expect something like this to happen," he said in an interview at the time. "No one at the White House has shown any concern for the Palestinians."
In a 2004 biography, "Eugene McCarthy: The Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism," British historian Dominic Sandbrook painted an unflattering portrait of McCarthy, calling him lazy and jealous, among other things. McCarthy, Sandbrook wrote, "willfully courted the reputation of frivolous maverick."
In McCarthy's 1998 book, "No-Fault Politics," editor Keith C. Burris described McCarthy in the introduction as "a Catholic committed to social justice but a skeptic about reform, about do-gooders, about the power of the state and the competence of government, and about the liberal reliance upon material cures for social problems."
McCarthy was born March 29, 1916, in Watkins, a central Minnesota town of about 750. He earned degrees from St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., and the University of Minnesota.
He was a teacher, a civilian War Department employee and college economics and sociology instructor before turning to politics. He once spent a year in a monastery.
He was elected to the House in 1948. Ten years later he was elected to the Senate and re-elected in 1964. McCarthy left the Senate in 1970 and devoted much of his time to writing poetry, essays and books.
With a sardonic sense of humor, McCarthy needled whatever establishment was in power. In 1980 he endorsed Republican Ronald Reagan with the argument that anyone was better than incumbent Jimmy Carter, a Democrat.
On his 85th birthday in 2001, McCarthy told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis that President Bush was an amateur and said he could not even bear to watch his inauguration.
In an interview a month before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, McCarthy compared the Bush administration with the characters in the William Golding novel "Lord of the Flies," in which a group of boys stranded on an island turn to savagery.
"The bullies are running it," McCarthy said. "Bush is bullying everything."
McCarthy was an advocate for a third-party movement, arguing there was no real difference between Republicans and Democrats.
In 2000, he wrote a political satire called "An American Bestiary," illustrated by Chris Millis, in which high-level advisers are portrayed as park pigeons - "they strut and waddle" - and reporters are compared with black birds who flock together.
He blamed the media for deciding who is and is not a serious candidate and suggested he should have kept his 1992 candidacy a secret, since announcing it publicly did no good.
McCarthy also ran for president in 1972, 1976 and 1988.
For McCarthy, the 1950s and 1960s were the Democratic Party's high points because it pushed the Civil Rights Act through Congress and championed national health insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
"I think he probably would consider his work in civil rights legislation in the 1960s to be his greatest contribution," his son said Saturday.
The bad times, Eugene McCarthy said, began with America's increased involvement in the Vietnam War and the simultaneous failure of some of Johnson's Great Society social programs.
Instead of giving people a chance to earn a living, McCarthy said, the Great Society "became affirmative action and more welfare. It was an admission the New Deal had failed or fallen."
In recent years McCarthy had lived at Georgetown Retirement Residence, an assisted living center in Washington. He and his wife, Abigail, separated after the 1968 election. She died in 2001.
Survivors include daughters Ellen and Margaret and six grandchildren, Michael McCarthy said.
A private burial is planned for next week and a memorial service in Washington will be scheduled, Michael McCarthy said.
Former Sen. Eugene McCarthy, 89, dies
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, whose insurgent campaign toppled a sitting president in 1968 and forced the Democratic Party to take seriously his message against the Vietnam War, died Saturday. He was 89.
McCarthy died in his sleep at assisted living home in the Georgetown neighborhood where he had lived for the past few years, said his son, Michael.
Eugene McCarthy challenged President Lyndon B. Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination during growing debate over the Vietnam War. The challenge led to Johnson's withdrawal from the race.
The former college professor, who ran for president five times in all, was in some ways an atypical politician, a man with a witty, erudite speaking style who wrote poetry in his spare time and was the author of several books.
"He was thoughtful and he was principled and he was compassionate and he had a good sense of humor," his son said.
When Eugene McCarthy ran for president in 1992, he explained his decision to leave the seclusion of his home in rural Woodville, Va., for the campaign trail by quoting Plutarch, the ancient Greek historian: "They are wrong who think that politics is like an ocean voyage or military campaign, something to be done with some particular end in view."
McCarthy got less than 1 percent of the vote in 1992 in New Hampshire, the state where he helped change history 24 years earlier.
Helped by his legion of idealistic young volunteers known as "clean-for-Gene kids," McCarthy got 42 percent of the vote in the state's 1968 Democratic primary. That showing embarrassed Johnson into withdrawing from the race and throwing his support to his vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey.
Sen. Robert Kennedy of New York also decided to seek the nomination, but was assassinated in June 1968. McCarthy and his followers went to the party convention in Chicago, where fellow Minnesotan Humphrey won the nomination amid bitter strife both on the convention floor and in the streets.
Humphrey went on to narrowly lose the general election to Richard Nixon. The racial, social and political tensions within the Democratic Party in 1968 have continued to affect presidential politics ever since.
"It was a tragic year for the Democratic Party and for responsible politics, in a way," McCarthy said in a 1988 interview.
"There were already forces at work that might have torn the party apart anyway - the growing women's movement, the growing demands for greater racial equality, an inability to incorporate all the demands of a new generation.
"But in 1968, the party became a kind of unrelated bloc of factions ... each refusing accommodation with another, each wanting control at the expense of all the others."
Although he supported the Korean War, McCarthy said he opposed the Vietnam War because "as it went on, you could tell the people running it didn't know what was going on."
Former Sen. George McGovern, D-S.D., said McCarthy's presidential run in 1968 dramatically changed the antiwar movement.
"It was no longer a movement of concerned citizens, but became a national political movement," McGovern said Saturday. "He was an inspiration to me in all of my life in politics." McGovern won the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination, when McCarthy ran a second time.
Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., who ran for vice president in 2004, said McCarthy "was a remarkable American, a man who spoke his conscience, and he was a great leader for my party."
In recent years, McCarthy was critical of campaign finance reform, winning him an unlikely award from the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2000.
In an interview when he got the award, McCarthy said money helped him in the 1968 race. "We had a few big contributors," he said. "And that's true of any liberal movement. In the American Revolution, they didn't get matching funds from George III."
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, McCarthy said the United States was partly to blame for ignoring the plight of Palestinians.
"You let a thing like that fester for 45 years, you have to expect something like this to happen," he said in an interview at the time. "No one at the White House has shown any concern for the Palestinians."
In a 2004 biography, "Eugene McCarthy: The Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism," British historian Dominic Sandbrook painted an unflattering portrait of McCarthy, calling him lazy and jealous, among other things. McCarthy, Sandbrook wrote, "willfully courted the reputation of frivolous maverick."
In McCarthy's 1998 book, "No-Fault Politics," editor Keith C. Burris described McCarthy in the introduction as "a Catholic committed to social justice but a skeptic about reform, about do-gooders, about the power of the state and the competence of government, and about the liberal reliance upon material cures for social problems."
McCarthy was born March 29, 1916, in Watkins, a central Minnesota town of about 750. He earned degrees from St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., and the University of Minnesota.
He was a teacher, a civilian War Department employee and college economics and sociology instructor before turning to politics. He once spent a year in a monastery.
He was elected to the House in 1948. Ten years later he was elected to the Senate and re-elected in 1964. McCarthy left the Senate in 1970 and devoted much of his time to writing poetry, essays and books.
With a sardonic sense of humor, McCarthy needled whatever establishment was in power. In 1980 he endorsed Republican Ronald Reagan with the argument that anyone was better than incumbent Jimmy Carter, a Democrat.
On his 85th birthday in 2001, McCarthy told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis that President Bush was an amateur and said he could not even bear to watch his inauguration.
In an interview a month before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, McCarthy compared the Bush administration with the characters in the William Golding novel "Lord of the Flies," in which a group of boys stranded on an island turn to savagery.
"The bullies are running it," McCarthy said. "Bush is bullying everything."
McCarthy was an advocate for a third-party movement, arguing there was no real difference between Republicans and Democrats.
In 2000, he wrote a political satire called "An American Bestiary," illustrated by Chris Millis, in which high-level advisers are portrayed as park pigeons - "they strut and waddle" - and reporters are compared with black birds who flock together.
He blamed the media for deciding who is and is not a serious candidate and suggested he should have kept his 1992 candidacy a secret, since announcing it publicly did no good.
McCarthy also ran for president in 1972, 1976 and 1988.
For McCarthy, the 1950s and 1960s were the Democratic Party's high points because it pushed the Civil Rights Act through Congress and championed national health insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
"I think he probably would consider his work in civil rights legislation in the 1960s to be his greatest contribution," his son said Saturday.
The bad times, Eugene McCarthy said, began with America's increased involvement in the Vietnam War and the simultaneous failure of some of Johnson's Great Society social programs.
Instead of giving people a chance to earn a living, McCarthy said, the Great Society "became affirmative action and more welfare. It was an admission the New Deal had failed or fallen."
In recent years McCarthy had lived at Georgetown Retirement Residence, an assisted living center in Washington. He and his wife, Abigail, separated after the 1968 election. She died in 2001.
Survivors include daughters Ellen and Margaret and six grandchildren, Michael McCarthy said.
A private burial is planned for next week and a memorial service in Washington will be scheduled, Michael McCarthy said.
sad day, he was a nice guy
I got to meet him in Wisconsin during his campaign. He was very nice....we should have elected him President.....
Former Sen. Eugene McCarthy, 89, dies
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, whose insurgent campaign toppled a sitting president in 1968 and forced the Democratic Party to take seriously his message against the Vietnam War, died Saturday. He was 89.
McCarthy died in his sleep at assisted living home in the Georgetown neighborhood where he had lived for the past few years, said his son, Michael.
Eugene McCarthy challenged President Lyndon B. Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination during growing debate over the Vietnam War. The challenge led to Johnson's withdrawal from the race.
The former college professor, who ran for president five times in all, was in some ways an atypical politician, a man with a witty, erudite speaking style who wrote poetry in his spare time and was the author of several books.
"He was thoughtful and he was principled and he was compassionate and he had a good sense of humor," his son said.
When Eugene McCarthy ran for president in 1992, he explained his decision to leave the seclusion of his home in rural Woodville, Va., for the campaign trail by quoting Plutarch, the ancient Greek historian: "They are wrong who think that politics is like an ocean voyage or military campaign, something to be done with some particular end in view."
McCarthy got less than 1 percent of the vote in 1992 in New Hampshire, the state where he helped change history 24 years earlier.
Helped by his legion of idealistic young volunteers known as "clean-for-Gene kids," McCarthy got 42 percent of the vote in the state's 1968 Democratic primary. That showing embarrassed Johnson into withdrawing from the race and throwing his support to his vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey.
Sen. Robert Kennedy of New York also decided to seek the nomination, but was assassinated in June 1968. McCarthy and his followers went to the party convention in Chicago, where fellow Minnesotan Humphrey won the nomination amid bitter strife both on the convention floor and in the streets.
Humphrey went on to narrowly lose the general election to Richard Nixon. The racial, social and political tensions within the Democratic Party in 1968 have continued to affect presidential politics ever since.
"It was a tragic year for the Democratic Party and for responsible politics, in a way," McCarthy said in a 1988 interview.
"There were already forces at work that might have torn the party apart anyway - the growing women's movement, the growing demands for greater racial equality, an inability to incorporate all the demands of a new generation.
"But in 1968, the party became a kind of unrelated bloc of factions ... each refusing accommodation with another, each wanting control at the expense of all the others."
Although he supported the Korean War, McCarthy said he opposed the Vietnam War because "as it went on, you could tell the people running it didn't know what was going on."
Former Sen. George McGovern, D-S.D., said McCarthy's presidential run in 1968 dramatically changed the antiwar movement.
"It was no longer a movement of concerned citizens, but became a national political movement," McGovern said Saturday. "He was an inspiration to me in all of my life in politics." McGovern won the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination, when McCarthy ran a second time.
Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., who ran for vice president in 2004, said McCarthy "was a remarkable American, a man who spoke his conscience, and he was a great leader for my party."
In recent years, McCarthy was critical of campaign finance reform, winning him an unlikely award from the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2000.
In an interview when he got the award, McCarthy said money helped him in the 1968 race. "We had a few big contributors," he said. "And that's true of any liberal movement. In the American Revolution, they didn't get matching funds from George III."
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, McCarthy said the United States was partly to blame for ignoring the plight of Palestinians.
"You let a thing like that fester for 45 years, you have to expect something like this to happen," he said in an interview at the time. "No one at the White House has shown any concern for the Palestinians."
In a 2004 biography, "Eugene McCarthy: The Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism," British historian Dominic Sandbrook painted an unflattering portrait of McCarthy, calling him lazy and jealous, among other things. McCarthy, Sandbrook wrote, "willfully courted the reputation of frivolous maverick."
In McCarthy's 1998 book, "No-Fault Politics," editor Keith C. Burris described McCarthy in the introduction as "a Catholic committed to social justice but a skeptic about reform, about do-gooders, about the power of the state and the competence of government, and about the liberal reliance upon material cures for social problems."
McCarthy was born March 29, 1916, in Watkins, a central Minnesota town of about 750. He earned degrees from St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., and the University of Minnesota.
He was a teacher, a civilian War Department employee and college economics and sociology instructor before turning to politics. He once spent a year in a monastery.
He was elected to the House in 1948. Ten years later he was elected to the Senate and re-elected in 1964. McCarthy left the Senate in 1970 and devoted much of his time to writing poetry, essays and books.
With a sardonic sense of humor, McCarthy needled whatever establishment was in power. In 1980 he endorsed Republican Ronald Reagan with the argument that anyone was better than incumbent Jimmy Carter, a Democrat.
On his 85th birthday in 2001, McCarthy told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis that President Bush was an amateur and said he could not even bear to watch his inauguration.
In an interview a month before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, McCarthy compared the Bush administration with the characters in the William Golding novel "Lord of the Flies," in which a group of boys stranded on an island turn to savagery.
"The bullies are running it," McCarthy said. "Bush is bullying everything."
McCarthy was an advocate for a third-party movement, arguing there was no real difference between Republicans and Democrats.
In 2000, he wrote a political satire called "An American Bestiary," illustrated by Chris Millis, in which high-level advisers are portrayed as park pigeons - "they strut and waddle" - and reporters are compared with black birds who flock together.
He blamed the media for deciding who is and is not a serious candidate and suggested he should have kept his 1992 candidacy a secret, since announcing it publicly did no good.
McCarthy also ran for president in 1972, 1976 and 1988.
For McCarthy, the 1950s and 1960s were the Democratic Party's high points because it pushed the Civil Rights Act through Congress and championed national health insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
"I think he probably would consider his work in civil rights legislation in the 1960s to be his greatest contribution," his son said Saturday.
The bad times, Eugene McCarthy said, began with America's increased involvement in the Vietnam War and the simultaneous failure of some of Johnson's Great Society social programs.
Instead of giving people a chance to earn a living, McCarthy said, the Great Society "became affirmative action and more welfare. It was an admission the New Deal had failed or fallen."
In recent years McCarthy had lived at Georgetown Retirement Residence, an assisted living center in Washington. He and his wife, Abigail, separated after the 1968 election. She died in 2001.
Survivors include daughters Ellen and Margaret and six grandchildren, Michael McCarthy said.
A private burial is planned for next week and a memorial service in Washington will be scheduled, Michael McCarthy said.
Former Sen. Eugene McCarthy, 89, dies
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, whose insurgent campaign toppled a sitting president in 1968 and forced the Democratic Party to take seriously his message against the Vietnam War, died Saturday. He was 89.
McCarthy died in his sleep at assisted living home in the Georgetown neighborhood where he had lived for the past few years, said his son, Michael.
Eugene McCarthy challenged President Lyndon B. Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination during growing debate over the Vietnam War. The challenge led to Johnson's withdrawal from the race.
The former college professor, who ran for president five times in all, was in some ways an atypical politician, a man with a witty, erudite speaking style who wrote poetry in his spare time and was the author of several books.
"He was thoughtful and he was principled and he was compassionate and he had a good sense of humor," his son said.
When Eugene McCarthy ran for president in 1992, he explained his decision to leave the seclusion of his home in rural Woodville, Va., for the campaign trail by quoting Plutarch, the ancient Greek historian: "They are wrong who think that politics is like an ocean voyage or military campaign, something to be done with some particular end in view."
McCarthy got less than 1 percent of the vote in 1992 in New Hampshire, the state where he helped change history 24 years earlier.
Helped by his legion of idealistic young volunteers known as "clean-for-Gene kids," McCarthy got 42 percent of the vote in the state's 1968 Democratic primary. That showing embarrassed Johnson into withdrawing from the race and throwing his support to his vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey.
Sen. Robert Kennedy of New York also decided to seek the nomination, but was assassinated in June 1968. McCarthy and his followers went to the party convention in Chicago, where fellow Minnesotan Humphrey won the nomination amid bitter strife both on the convention floor and in the streets.
Humphrey went on to narrowly lose the general election to Richard Nixon. The racial, social and political tensions within the Democratic Party in 1968 have continued to affect presidential politics ever since.
"It was a tragic year for the Democratic Party and for responsible politics, in a way," McCarthy said in a 1988 interview.
"There were already forces at work that might have torn the party apart anyway - the growing women's movement, the growing demands for greater racial equality, an inability to incorporate all the demands of a new generation.
"But in 1968, the party became a kind of unrelated bloc of factions ... each refusing accommodation with another, each wanting control at the expense of all the others."
Although he supported the Korean War, McCarthy said he opposed the Vietnam War because "as it went on, you could tell the people running it didn't know what was going on."
Former Sen. George McGovern, D-S.D., said McCarthy's presidential run in 1968 dramatically changed the antiwar movement.
"It was no longer a movement of concerned citizens, but became a national political movement," McGovern said Saturday. "He was an inspiration to me in all of my life in politics." McGovern won the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination, when McCarthy ran a second time.
Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., who ran for vice president in 2004, said McCarthy "was a remarkable American, a man who spoke his conscience, and he was a great leader for my party."
In recent years, McCarthy was critical of campaign finance reform, winning him an unlikely award from the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2000.
In an interview when he got the award, McCarthy said money helped him in the 1968 race. "We had a few big contributors," he said. "And that's true of any liberal movement. In the American Revolution, they didn't get matching funds from George III."
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, McCarthy said the United States was partly to blame for ignoring the plight of Palestinians.
"You let a thing like that fester for 45 years, you have to expect something like this to happen," he said in an interview at the time. "No one at the White House has shown any concern for the Palestinians."
In a 2004 biography, "Eugene McCarthy: The Rise and Fall of Postwar American Liberalism," British historian Dominic Sandbrook painted an unflattering portrait of McCarthy, calling him lazy and jealous, among other things. McCarthy, Sandbrook wrote, "willfully courted the reputation of frivolous maverick."
In McCarthy's 1998 book, "No-Fault Politics," editor Keith C. Burris described McCarthy in the introduction as "a Catholic committed to social justice but a skeptic about reform, about do-gooders, about the power of the state and the competence of government, and about the liberal reliance upon material cures for social problems."
McCarthy was born March 29, 1916, in Watkins, a central Minnesota town of about 750. He earned degrees from St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., and the University of Minnesota.
He was a teacher, a civilian War Department employee and college economics and sociology instructor before turning to politics. He once spent a year in a monastery.
He was elected to the House in 1948. Ten years later he was elected to the Senate and re-elected in 1964. McCarthy left the Senate in 1970 and devoted much of his time to writing poetry, essays and books.
With a sardonic sense of humor, McCarthy needled whatever establishment was in power. In 1980 he endorsed Republican Ronald Reagan with the argument that anyone was better than incumbent Jimmy Carter, a Democrat.
On his 85th birthday in 2001, McCarthy told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis that President Bush was an amateur and said he could not even bear to watch his inauguration.
In an interview a month before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, McCarthy compared the Bush administration with the characters in the William Golding novel "Lord of the Flies," in which a group of boys stranded on an island turn to savagery.
"The bullies are running it," McCarthy said. "Bush is bullying everything."
McCarthy was an advocate for a third-party movement, arguing there was no real difference between Republicans and Democrats.
In 2000, he wrote a political satire called "An American Bestiary," illustrated by Chris Millis, in which high-level advisers are portrayed as park pigeons - "they strut and waddle" - and reporters are compared with black birds who flock together.
He blamed the media for deciding who is and is not a serious candidate and suggested he should have kept his 1992 candidacy a secret, since announcing it publicly did no good.
McCarthy also ran for president in 1972, 1976 and 1988.
For McCarthy, the 1950s and 1960s were the Democratic Party's high points because it pushed the Civil Rights Act through Congress and championed national health insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
"I think he probably would consider his work in civil rights legislation in the 1960s to be his greatest contribution," his son said Saturday.
The bad times, Eugene McCarthy said, began with America's increased involvement in the Vietnam War and the simultaneous failure of some of Johnson's Great Society social programs.
Instead of giving people a chance to earn a living, McCarthy said, the Great Society "became affirmative action and more welfare. It was an admission the New Deal had failed or fallen."
In recent years McCarthy had lived at Georgetown Retirement Residence, an assisted living center in Washington. He and his wife, Abigail, separated after the 1968 election. She died in 2001.
Survivors include daughters Ellen and Margaret and six grandchildren, Michael McCarthy said.
A private burial is planned for next week and a memorial service in Washington will be scheduled, Michael McCarthy said.
Friday, December 09, 2005
Hey, I am not a near-elderly
This article is an INSULT to geezers everywhere. Our 95 year old neighbor thinks we are merely children. Certainly, boomers are not NEAR-ELDERLY. Maybe we ain't kids anymore, but give us a break!
Turn up the music, burn some cars, riot! Be in bed by nine.....
Don't mess with my social security!
Many boomers facing health woes
Associated PressDec. 9, 2005 12:00 AM
U.S. life expectancy has hit another all-time high, 77.6 years, and deaths from heart disease, cancer and stroke continue to drop, the government reported Thursday.Nonetheless, the march of medical progress has taken a worrisome turn: Half of Americans in the 55-to-64 age group, including the oldest of the baby boomers, have high blood pressure, and two in five are obese. That means they are in worse shape in some respects than Americans born a decade earlier were when they were that age.The health of this large group of the near-elderly is of major concern to American taxpayers because they are now becoming eligible for Medicare and Social Security.
The report presents data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics and dozens of other health agencies and organizations.Among the new data: Deaths from heart disease, cancer and stroke, the nation's three leading killers, dropped in 2003 between 2 percent and 5 percent.Also, Americans' life expectancy increased again in 2003. According to the government's calculations, a child born in 2003 can expect to live 77.6 years on average, up from 77.3 the year before. In 1990, life expectancy was 75.4.For men, life expectancy in 2003 was 74.8, for women 80.1.Life expectancy in the U.S. has been rising almost without interruption since 1900. Those trends may allow life expectancy to continue to inch up despite the increases in obesity and high blood pressure.
Turn up the music, burn some cars, riot! Be in bed by nine.....
Don't mess with my social security!
Many boomers facing health woes
Associated PressDec. 9, 2005 12:00 AM
U.S. life expectancy has hit another all-time high, 77.6 years, and deaths from heart disease, cancer and stroke continue to drop, the government reported Thursday.Nonetheless, the march of medical progress has taken a worrisome turn: Half of Americans in the 55-to-64 age group, including the oldest of the baby boomers, have high blood pressure, and two in five are obese. That means they are in worse shape in some respects than Americans born a decade earlier were when they were that age.The health of this large group of the near-elderly is of major concern to American taxpayers because they are now becoming eligible for Medicare and Social Security.
The report presents data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics and dozens of other health agencies and organizations.Among the new data: Deaths from heart disease, cancer and stroke, the nation's three leading killers, dropped in 2003 between 2 percent and 5 percent.Also, Americans' life expectancy increased again in 2003. According to the government's calculations, a child born in 2003 can expect to live 77.6 years on average, up from 77.3 the year before. In 1990, life expectancy was 75.4.For men, life expectancy in 2003 was 74.8, for women 80.1.Life expectancy in the U.S. has been rising almost without interruption since 1900. Those trends may allow life expectancy to continue to inch up despite the increases in obesity and high blood pressure.
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