C’mon, Cthulu is pro-choice. 
Yes. You can be eaten now … or you can be eaten later.
Well, I can thank Ronny Ray-gun for dying because I get a paid day off Friday!
Woo-hoo!
Bereavement leave? 
I shudder to imagine what the (well-deserved) security is going to be like at the funeral. Anyone who reaches in their pocket for a cigarette or piece of gum is likely to wind up at the bottom of a pile of Secret Service and/or D.C. cops.
It’s all well and good to know that all your friends are abruptly dying of cancer; with little in the way of public, widespread, intensive information campaigns about transmission, prevention, and testing, it won’t do you a heap of a lot of good.
The gay community had to kick and scream for six years after the epidemic began for any government response to the disease that was killing us. Even then, when information began to be available, the gay community itself had to take charge of the balance of this education.
Ha, as if!
Dubya declared Friday a day of mourning and gave federal employees the day off. Because my company’s leave schedule is tied to the federal government, I get a paid day off as well.
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Oy, tell me about it. People at my job are talking about going because want to be part of an historic event. I think they have to be high to even think about going to DC during the Reagan hysteria.
I wonder if they’ll embalm Ronny and then put him in an enclosed glass case like the Chinese did Mao. Visiting Mao’s mausoleum was creepy because the guards took segments of the people waiting in line and rushed us through the room at a jog trot, and Mao’s face had the same color and texture as Double Bubble gum.
James Lileks wrote a moving column that definitely resonates with me.
Mmmm…Secret Service pile-on…
Showtime pre-empted a showing of The Day Reagan Was Shot that was scheduled for last night. Presumably the Reagan bio-pic is off the air forever.
Turner Classic Movies has a showing of Ada scheduled for later today. I’ll be interested to see if it gets pre-empted, since the main couple has been said by some to be a prescient anticipation of Ron and Nancy.
Reagan appeared as a character in over a dozen movies and TV movies and the real guy outlived at least two of the guys who played him.
This all strikes me as sort of interesting.
William Blum and Phil Gasper wrote two that resonate with me.
Hey, I’m all about the day off thang, though.
Yeah, but Clinton actually proposed a seried of balanced budgets. When was the last time we saw that (hint - it was before 2001).
Hell, 20 years ago I could have written those articles, so you can tell I’m a tad conflicted.
But I have a question nobody has answered yet–now that Reagan is definitely dead, is Al Haig finally in charge? 
Nope. GHW Bush is still alive.
Or like the Soviets did to Lenin. Now wouldn’t that be ironic?
Seriously, the only former President who died while I was old enough to remember what was going on was Nixon. Has there ever been this degree of fanfare (closure of Federal government, etc.) for the death of any other former President?
In Nixon’s case it was comparatively brief, being confined to the “Pounding of the Stake” Ceremony.
I don’t recall the government shutting down for the deaths of any other former Presidents (that’s not to say it didn’t happen - I just don’t remember it, and can’t find any references to it). However, most ex-Presidents’ funerals are fairly elaborate affairs, involving lying in state in the Capitol rotunda, state funerals attended by everyone who is anyone in Washington, and so on. That was certainly the case for the funerals of Hoover, Ike, and LBJ.
The exception was Truman, whose family requested that the state funeral be very abbreviated - I believe he was buried the day after he died, in Missouri. No trip to DC, a minimum of pomp and circumstance (appropriate, given the kind of man he was).
(eludicator, you’re a very twisted man - I love it!)
Somehow, I can see Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice brushing off and revising some old songs"
Yup. Still bitchin’ things up even now that he’s dead.
First, they announce they’re shutting the government down for a day to mourn him, and now my wife’s soap has been preempted while newscasters solemnly watch a black van that apparently contains the presidential corpse cruise around Washington.
Is there no END to the guy?
Then again, the way things have been going lately, shutting down the government for a day simply means a day in which the government postpones screwing things up even worse.
Perhaps this is our silver lining…
Of course there is; he met it on Saturday. The national rending of the lapel, on the other hand…
No, he was a leader who stood up for what he thought was right. He didnt bend under pressure and his being an 'arrogant bastard' was probably the best thing for the country at the time. Would you rather have a leader whos a waivering, poll-watching coward or one that sticks to his guns (even if he turns out to be wrong). I’m not saying that everything he touched turned to gold, but the man was more of a leader than most of the presidents in the last 50 years.
Most Americans thought they were better off after his first four years than they were before he was elected.
Just a momentary Rorschach, would anyone be surprised if Reagan’s passing was treated (in the main) with more respect and human compassion on the avowedly partisan Democratic Underground message board than for the most part it received here. I’ll grant that I haven’t slogged through each and every related thread on both boards but my impression is that it in fact did. Perhaps we should consider tradeing names.