She had quite a career, and if she’d retired gracefully a few years ago, I’d have nothing but good things to say about her. But she didn’t, so I don’t, and I’ll shut up there.
I’ve been planning my own retirement, so it hits close to home. I’m still fine and I think I’m doing an OK job at my profession, but I think I should make room for new blood before those things aren’t true anymore.
I linked to this in the Infinite Thread one day ago, I think it is appropriate to talk about planning for The End, to make it easier for the next of kin.
The Guardian:
“When should you start Swedish ‘death cleaning’ ? Forty-seven sounds about right”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/28/ronnie-osullivans-spin-on-preparing-for-death-is-a-lesson-for-all-of-us
Wholeheartedly agree.
You mean I have to clean up my office and lab of 25 years of accumulated clutter now?
Naah. Leave it as a shrine.
But document everything, while your memory is still sharp.
When Ingmar Bergman’s daughter wanted to ask him about his early career and write it down, he could not recall the details (unlike Michael Cain, whose memory of his escapades in the 1960s is razor-sharp). Not dementa, just the natural slow fading.
PZ Myers @ 3, that’s crazy talk! Out of respect for the Dearly Departed, one must wait for at least three days after one dies to clean out the clutter.
After you’ve been deceased for three days, then it’s culturally acceptable for you to declutter.
I’ll be cleaning up a full week after I die, as I will be far too upset with my loss to be able to do so sooner.
If you examine your contract, you’ll also notice that you’re required to continue working until your replacement is brought in and fully up to speed, as is standard in modern contracts. And death is not considered a valid excuse for tardiness.
It’s not difficult to find things other than good to say about her, but, meh, there’s no point. So, who’s next?
I’ll say it: ding dong.
Not everyone is like Feinstein at 90.
I will cheer you up with this piece about Michael Caine and John Standing.
If I don’t bork the link again.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/film/2023/sep/29/im-90-i-worry-if-im-gonna-make-it-to-lunch-michael-caine-and-john-standing-on-wives-war-and-feeling-like-the-queen
Eric Loomis’s accurate comments on Feinstein:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/09/feinstein-2
wzrd1 @ # 5: … one must wait for at least three days after one dies to clean out the clutter.
Some take more than eight months.
btw bcw @ 9
“…she oversaw a crackdown on gay rights”.
OK. I’ll join in.
Ding dong, the ☆▪︎ich is dead.
True.
One of the people I go kayaking with in the summer is now 85.
He is still a good paddler.
His mind is still sharp as well with a good memory for the distant past and the recent past.
Pierce R Butler @ 10
If you have read the Garrett, P.I. novels you will be familiar with The Dead Man, a Loghyr (a species whose souls sometimes choose to remain in the body for decades after death. As they are telepathic, they can be both useful businesses partners and annoying housemates).
Me, @ 13
I recall a cyberpunk novel where even the dead are reanimated by nanotech, so they can work to repay the infinitely growing debts they owe the oligarchy.
So what happens now? Does Gavin Newsom appoint a replacement until a special election can be held? Who is a good candidate? Someone Progressive I hope.
I was living in San Francisco when she became mayor, so I might find some things to be critical of, and in her role as senator. But overall she wasn’t as horrible as some politicians we see now. Of course, she was part of the American oligarchy. Richard Bloom, her late husband, was enormously wealthy…something to do with Nepal I was told bazillions of years ago…but probably all kinds of things. And as is natural for royalty, the children (step-siblings) are fighting over his estate.
Artor — I’m looking into that. Maybe Gavin can appoint himself.
Artor — per the LA Times, Gavin gets to appointment her replacement.
bcw bcw@9,
One of the comments on the article at your link:
<
blockquote>I think that Senator Feinstein needs to seriously consider stepping down at this point.</blockquote.
In Charles Stross’s Laundry Files novels, dead employees are called “residual assets”.
They are reanimated by low level entities to become Zombies doing jobs that don’t require a lot of thinking.
OK, so she was not Republican-level evil. But as part of “EMILYs list” she helped block more progressive women politicians.
@ 14
The book was “Noir” by K. W. Jeter. Not a very good book, but it had some interesting ideas. Like in the future, even as dead, The Man won’t let you escape your debts.
One notch more horrible than the world of Neuromancer.
If I was the protagonist in the manga “Death Note” I would start hanging around Mitch McConnell right now.
It’s certainly not disrespectful to criticize Feinstein among other geriatric lawmakers for turning the Senate into a gerontocracy. It’s supremely arrogant to continue to believe you are the best person for the job when your physical and especially your mental abilities are well past their peak, not to mention how out of touch with the most important generation for the future of the US you become.
There will always be the exceptional elderly senator, but I’d far rather that the occasional exception be forced into retirement too soon than dozens in decline (many of which were not exceptional to start with) clinging onto power for far too long.
Yes, there is some risk in finding a suitable younger successor, but there’s also opportunity to find someone better and more effective. Incumbency leads to atrophy, and no legislative body has atrophied more in the last 40 years than the US Senate.
Further info on her Senate replacement: Newsom says he will appoint a temporary to hold the seat until the election next year. There are several Democrats already running for the seat, but not one of those.
#9: Wow. That is the best and most well deserved obituary for her yet.
It’s honestly always incredibly depressing to me how little, even people like you and the people commenting here care about the lives murdered, ruined, maimed and displaced by the US. There are so many truly awful things the power brokers in the Democratic and Republican Parties have done. Among other things, Feinstein voted for the authorization that allowed the Bush admin to launch the Iraq War, which killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi people, and Feinstein knew better. https://twitter.com/RealScottRitter/status/1707760992300490794
If there were any sort of real, just, reckoning these people would all be tried and convicted for crimes against humanity.
@26:Ostergren
If you’re going to condemn anyone for their past and present behavior, then quoting Scott Ritter, a convicted pedophile, tankie and shameless apologist for the genocidal regime of war criminal (many times over), Vladimir Putin, wasn’t your best choice, to say the least.
What the US did in Iraq was shameful, but what Russia is doing in Ukraine right now is far worse — the abduction of a hundred thousand Ukrainian children, the deliberate targeting of civilians, razing entire cities to the ground, annexing Ukrainian territory, and attempting to wipe out the Ukrainian identity entirely — with the full support of Scott Ritter and his ilk.
Your credibility is shot.
It is even more depressing that lying trolls like you exist.
This must be lying troll day. We’ve got a Trans people hater on another thread.
.1. Who said we don’t care about the lives murdered by the US in Iraq.
This is an accusation without proof or data and may be dismissed without proof or data.
You are simply wrong here.
Proof.
Most of us cared enough to oppose the war in Vietnam and Iraq II.
I’ve got an FBI file from the Vietnam war for Cthulhu’s sake. I’m proud of it and regard it as one my major life accomplishments.
I also opposed Iraq II at some personal cost to myself, mostly insults from far right wingnuts.
I also lost two friends, both killed in Iraq for nothing worthwhile.
I/we really don’t need a sick in the head troll to tell us how pathetic we are after we spent decades opposing the wrong wars of the USA.
Chances are Matthew Ostergren did nothing himself except send out gibberish on mom’s computer from her basement.
This guy has hypocrite written all over him.
Most of these people were dupes or misinformed. It was right after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and emotions were running high enough to override a lot of reasoning.
The real war criminals would be the leadership of the USA at that time.
That would be Bush and Cheney, Rumsfeld, and a few neocons.
Even some of the US military leadership opposed going into Iraq and one key general resigned first.
Not going to happen in the Real World that we live in though.
If it did, we would be having Crimes Against Humanity trials for the current US GOP, Donald Trump, Syria, Iraq of Saddam Hussein who started two wars himself and nerve gassed the Kurds, the Afghan Taliban, the Chinese leadership for Tibet and the Uygers, the Serbs for Bosnia, and a whole lot of other leaderships.
And of course, the current champions of pointless genocide and mass murder, Putin and the Russians.
@26. Yeah but there’s not and they won’t. So 🤷♀️
If you are going to condemn the US for Iraq you can add a whole lot more of the world with it.
We didn’t go into Iraq alone.
Our allies were the UK, Australia, Poland, and Canada.
I suppose in Matthew Ostergren’s fantasy world they will be with the US leadership in the Crimes Against Humanity trials. And all of the British, Australians, Canadians, and Polish are also pathetic losers and supporters of pointless wars.
More people for Matthew Ostergren to insult and accuse of being war criminals.
It turns out that 62 countries supported the US invasion of Iraq.
It’s a big chunk of the world at that time.
I guess it is war criminals all the way down and in Ostergren’s fantasy world, the leading industry is Crimes Against Humanity trials. They are however, having a very hard time finding anyone who wasn’t at least a citizen of a Crimes Against Humanity country to actually run them.
The woman who was most likely to be appointed as a replacement for Feinstein got into a snit with Newsom two weeks ago. Newsom is buddies with many of the people who are running to replace her, so he has been loath to say who he will appoint and was hoping Feinstein would hold on. Him describing the appointment -as a placeholder- was a strong nasty statement. It meant that the woman he chose to replace her (promise was that it would be a woman) was a cruel political shot across the bow because it meant he would not support her or endorse her for office when the actual election comes around.
Pelosi shittily declared about a week before that that people who wanted Feinstein to resign were sexist. Kinda true? It’s part of the gerontology of the Senate that incompetent worthless elderly MEN were allowed to die in office. I have heard her say similar things about RBG.
Here in California, Senators Cranston and Hayakawa were both criticized for being elderly incompetent men. They were not seriously challenged. Cranston retired? I may or may not have agreed with him but he seemed coherent and active the entire time. I know he didn’t die in office, I wanna say Boxer took his place. Hayakawa would pretend to sleep in committee and then wake up to cast the deciding vote in opposition to the old boys club and in favor of California interests, he was known for this. I think he did die in-office.
PZ Myers @ 25
Yet, the legacy Democrats will of course praise her, as if she was the second coming of Eleanor Roosevelt.
And when the awful, awful Henry Kissinger finally dies any day now, the same politicians and newspapers will praise him, while keeping their eyes wide shut about his crimes.
Because f☆ck accountability.
And the obituary reminded me of Strom Thurmond… now my temper will be too foul to allow me any sleep.
Another war criminal escapes justice. Another congressperson takes full advantage of the shield of incumbency and accumulates power through antidemocratic means for so long she basically becomes a walking corpse.
Can’t say I’m sad to see her go, but I have no faith in the Democrats to choose anyone other than a protege with a fresh face and the same old, murderous ideas.
She wasn’t well, and hadn’t been for some time. I hope her passing was peaceful, and that her family can find comfort.
@beholder # 36
Did you think this of Boxer, Harris, or Padilla?
@9- bcw bcw
I hadn’t followed Feinstein hardly at all, but two side points from that article you posted stood out for SF oddities. I think people here would prefer religious people who have a progressive bent, but sometimes things can take a dark turn even in that direction: “For Feinstein, the counterculture was the problem. Just a few days before White murdered Milk and Moscone, Jim Jones and his followers had committed mass suicide in Guyana, but that was a San Francisco-based cult. Feinstein took a lesson out of all of this—the counterculture caused problems and so did leftists”
It’s all to easy to pin the tail on right wing religious loons these days especially given their love of Christian Nationalism, but Jim Jones was a bona fide social justice guy. Pretty far left.
And I had to struggle a bit to grok this: “[Feinstein] served as one of Jimmy Carter’s major surrogates to resist Ted Kennedy’s 1980 primary challenge. She was considered a frontrunner for the 1984 VP slot, but Walter Mondale went with Geraldine Ferraro instead. Amazingly, he managed to pick an even worse Democrat than Feinstein. When she proposed to ban handguns in the city, the White Panther Party attempted to recall her, but she won the recall election and served her two full terms that ended at the beginning of 1988. She was most certainly a strong mayor, if nothing else.”
The White Panther Party was antiracist and pro-gun I gather. I think the Black Panthers had famously freaked Californians out by toting firearms.
seachange @ # 33: Cranston retired?
Cranston chose not to run for re-election in 1992, primarily because he was caught in the Charles Keating/Lincoln Savings & Loan scandal (which knocked out four Democratic senators, but the one Republican involved – Sen. John McCain – skated with minimal reputation damage).
Alan Cranston was – otherwise – one of the best Senators we had at the time.
Senator Hayakawa may have “pretend[ed] to sleep in committee”, but he certainly didn’t fake sleeping in numerous meetings, as repeatedly reported at the time.
He served one term in the Senate and dropped his attempt at re-election in 1982 due to lack of support, but dabbled in right-wing causes (such as making English the official US language and resisting compensation for Japanese-Americans sent to detention camps during World War II) until he died ten years later.
@ 31 raven
We didn’t go into Iraq alone.
Our allies were the UK, Australia, Poland, and Canada.
Nope, we, Canada were definitely not there in term of official forces. Some Canadian Forces personnel, on endorsement, may have been. IIRC, a Canadian, on secondment, commanded a US brigade.
@41- Pierce R. Butler
I dated a Brazilian woman who knew Spanish but resented it being spoken. Why not speak Portuguese was her argument. In Florida Haitian Creole might be accommodated but Chinese, Vietnamese, and German not so much. I can see resentment from other languaged immigrants, but in Miami and Orlando Spanish speakers are far more common so that’s a better argument I guess.
Weird someone of Japanese descent would opine that way about internment camp victims, but a friend of mine who is of Mexican descent and I would lament Merkins (of Mexican descent) who are pro-Trump or disparage Latin Americans crossing the border. There is that I got mine mentality. Plus the US broke Honduras, Guatemala and other North American nations, so…
@ravem
It was quite clear how wrong the war was before it started. Given how much manipulation had to be employed, all these powerful people in the US and from the coalition of the willing knew better (I remember the EU perspective at the time and the people in Congress knew it, too). I guess a lot of the alies simply thought it’s better to be on America’s side. Given the sentiment in the US at the time, I don’t really blame most politicians for their cowardice.
To many of us that was true.
There was a lot more opposition to the Iraq war before it started than I even remember.
The majority of US congresspeople voted for the war but it was a close vote.
Almost all of the GOP voted for the war and more than half of the Democrats voted against it.
The tl;dr version.
The majority of Democratic US congresspeople voted against the war.
The majority of GOP US congresspeople voted for the war.
House
GOP 2.7% against the war
Democrats 60.3% against the war
Senate
GOP 2% against the war
Democrats 42% against the war
No, the GOP and the Democrats were not the same.
What really surprised me and not in a good way is how Bush won a second term, even after it was obvious that Iraq was a disaster for everyone including the USA. It took a long time for a lot of people to realize how pointless it was.
BTW, I’m not arguing for War Crime Trials for our 62 allies.
That is the logical conclusion to troll Ostergren’s claims, which are mostly fiction anyway.
Good fucking riddance. Hope the rest of the political fossils are next. You guys really did well with climate change and other disasters that won’t impact you or won’t get in the way of money. Speaking of money, this is from 9:
Feinstein was fundamentally a rich centrist who legislated for other rich centrists. She might “forget” to report her husband’s stock earnings.[3] Let’s remember that not only did she personally have assets of $58 million in 2020, but her husband, Richard Blum, was listed as worth around $1 billion. Effectively, Dianne Feinstein was a billionaire. That came in part from her own personal work as a senator. Much of her husband’s wealth came from business with China. Will it shock you to know that Feinstein consistently worked to expand American business relationships with that nation? No, I don’t suppose it would. Hell, Jiang Zemin was the personal houseguest of Feinstein and Blum at Thanksgiving one year! Feinstein always claimed her finances and her politics were above the level with a sharp “firewall” between the two, but who does she think she’s kidding her? Maybe herself, actually.[4]
Did she truly do nothing good ever in her long, long life?
(‘The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.’
Billy spearshaker)
@ ^
With the disclaimer this is not a comment on the dear departed; I hear Hitler loved animals.
…
such a pity his good will be interred with his bones.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/786214/Adolf-Hitler-dogs-animal-lover-photos-soft-side-Nazi-propoganda-Austria
@ ^
Given this comment could be taken out of context, let it be clear I am making fun of Morales idiocy.
Sullenbub, your obsession is showing.
Three consecutive comments about me, nothing of substance there other than your jaundiced perception. Shit-coloured glasses, I get it.
So. The inevitable retort to your spurty ejaculation:
Um, we’ve recently heard about a dude that also loved animals. To death.
(https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/09/26/awful-personand-he-was-a-scientist-too/)
Apparently, in your mind, that’s an example of doing good in one’s life.
Like Hitler.
It kinda bemuses me that you imagine you’re somehow mocking me by this.
PZ: “Dianne Feinstein is dead”
Soylentblob: “Hitler loved animals, by which I mean dogs”
Me: heh.
<snicker>
Still, if you still want to pretend you truly did not get what my comment was about, go for it.
Greetings war criminals of Freethoughtblogs Pharyngula. (This is sarcasm.)
This morning we are going to beat a dead horse some more. Because why not, it is already dead.
If you read this thread, no one had much good to say about Feinstein, no one defended her vote for the war in Iraq, and no one defended the US invasion of Iraq.
.1. Ostergren is just lying here.
He has no idea and no way of knowing what all of us were doing and thought in 2003 when the US invaded Iraq.
It’s possible that some people on this thread weren’t even born then or were in kindergarten when that happened 20 years ago.
.2. I had to look it up.
I was opposed to the invasion and said so at the time in public many times and got a fair amount of abuse from neocon trolls for it.
Which wasn’t that unusual or particularly noteworthy.
Opposition to the invasion was by almost half of the US population at the time.
And, we never did get that UN approval.
.3. I would guess that most or all people on this thread that were old enough to have an informed opinion in 2003 weren’t invasion supporters based on their current viewpoints.
Ostergren is just a driveby troll who slimed an entire blog of people based on absolutely no data whatsoever.
@52 raven
Eh, he made a cogent observation. Premature, perhaps, based on a few subsequent comments, but certainly aimed at people who are giving Feinstein the complete identity politics treatment and are choosing to ignore her crimes.
If you’re hung up on the “these people would all be tried and convicted for crimes against humanity” part, I would hazard a guess he meant the Team Coke and Team Pepsi power brokers (many of whom are still in power), not the commenters on this blog.
Indeed. If you’re interested in doing Nuremberg Trials 2 Electric Boogaloo properly, you gotta round ’em all up.