Results 1 to 22 of 22

Thread: Harry Reid, former Senate Majority Leader, dead at 82

  1. #1

    Exclamation Harry Reid, former Senate Majority Leader, dead at 82

    Harry Reid, former Senate majority leader, dies at 82

    https://www.breitbart.com/news/harry...er-dies-at-82/

    AP 28 Dec 2021

    LAS VEGAS (AP) — Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader and Nevada’s longest-serving member of Congress, has died. He was 82.

    Reid died Tuesday, “peacefully” and surrounded by friends “following a courageous, four-year battle with pancreatic cancer,” Landra Reid said of her husband in a statement.

    “Harry was a devout family man and deeply loyal friend,” she said. “We greatly appreciate the outpouring of support from so many over these past few years. We are especially grateful for the doctors and nurses that cared for him. Please know that meant the world to him.”

    Funeral arrangements would be announced in coming days, she said.

    The combative former boxer-turned-lawyer was widely-acknowledged as one of toughest dealmakers in Congress, a conservative Democrat in an increasingly polarized chamber who vexed lawmakers of both parties with a brusque manner and this motto:

    “I would rather dance than fight, but I know how to fight.”

    Over a 34-year career in Washington, Reid thrived on behind-the-scenes wrangling and kept the Senate controlled by his party through two presidents — Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama — a crippling recession and the Republican takeover of the House after the 2010 elections.

    He retired in 2016 after an accident left him blind in one eye.

    Reid in May 2018 revealed he’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was undergoing treatment.

    Less than two weeks ago, officials and one of his sons, Rory Reid, marked the renaming of the busy Las Vegas airport as Harry Reid International Airport. Rory Reid is a former Clark County Commission chairman and Democratic Nevada gubernatorial candidate.

    Neither Harry nor Landra Reid attended the Dec. 14 ceremony held at the facility that had been known since 1948 as McCarran International Airport, after a former U.S. senator from Nevada, Pat McCarran, and today ranks as one of the 10 busiest airports in the U.S.

    He was known in Washington for his abrupt style, typified by his habit of unceremoniously hanging up the phone without saying goodbye.

    “Even when I was president, he would hang up on me,” Obama said in a 2019 tribute video to Reid.

    He was frequently underestimated, most recently in the 2010 elections when he looked like the underdog to tea party favorite Sharron Angle. Ambitious Democrats, assuming his defeat, began angling for his leadership post. But Reid defeated Angle, 50 percent to 45 percent, and returned to the pinnacle of his power. For Reid, it was legacy time.

    “I don’t have people saying ‘he’s the greatest speaker,’ ‘he’s handsome,’ ‘he’s a man about town,’” Reid told The New York Times in December that year. “But I don’t really care. I feel very comfortable with my place in history.”

    Born in Searchlight, Nevada, to an alcoholic father who killed himself at 58 and a mother who served as a laundress in a bordello, Reid grew up in a small cabin without indoor plumbing and swam with other children at a pool at a local brothel. He hitchhiked to Basic High School in Henderson, Nev., 40 miles from home, where he met the wife he would marry in 1959, Landra Gould. At Utah State University, the couple became members of The Church of Latter-Day Saints.

    The future senator put himself through George Washington University law school by working nights as a U.S. Capitol police officer.

    At age 28, Reid was elected to the Nevada Assembly and at age 30 became the youngest lieutenant governor in Nevada history as Gov. Mike O’Callaghan’s running mate in 1970.

    Elected to the U.S. House in 1982, Reid served in Congress longer than anyone else in Nevada history. He narrowly avoided defeat in a 1998 Senate race when he held off Republican John Ensign, then a House member, by 428 votes in a recount that stretched into January.

    After his election as Senate majority leader in 2007, he was credited with putting Nevada on the political map by pushing to move the state’s caucuses to February, at the start of presidential nominating season. That forced each national party to pour resources into a state which, while home to the country’s fastest growth over the past two decades, still only had six votes in the Electoral College. Reid’s extensive network of campaign workers and volunteers twice helped deliver the state for Obama.

    Obama in 2016 lauded Reid for his work in the Senate, declaring, “I could not have accomplished what I accomplished without him being at my side.”

    The most influential politician in Nevada for more than a decade, Reid steered hundreds of millions of dollars to the state and was credited with almost single-handedly blocking construction of a nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain outside Las Vegas. He often went out of his way to defend social programs that make easy political targets, calling Social Security “one of the great government programs in history.″

    Reid championed suicide prevention, often telling the story of his father, a hard-rock miner who took his own life. He stirred controversy in 2010 when he said in a speech on the floor of the Nevada legislature it was time to end legal prostitution in the state.

    Reid’s political moderation meant he was never politically secure in his home state, or entirely trusted in the increasingly polarized Senate. Democrats grumbled about his votes for a ban on so-called partial-birth abortion and the Iraq war resolution in 2002, something Reid later said it was his biggest regret in Congress.

    He voted against most gun control bills and in 2013 after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, dropped a proposed ban on assault weapons from the Democrats’ gun control legislation. The package, he said, would not pass with the ban attached.

    Reid’s Senate particularly chafed members of the House, both Republicans and Democrats. When then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, muscled Obama’s health care overhaul through the House in 2009, a different version passed the Senate and the reconciliation process floundered long enough for Republicans to turn it into an election-year weapon they used to demonize the California Democrat and cast the legislation as a big-government power grab. Obama signed the measure into law in March 2010. But angered by the recession and inspired by the small-government tea party, voters the next year swept Democrats from the House majority.

    Reid hand-picked a Democratic candidate who won the election to replace him in 2016, former Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, and built a political machine in the state that helped Democrats win a series of key elections in 2016 and 2018.

    On his way out of office, he repeatedly lambasted Donald Trump, calling him at one point “a sociopath” and “a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate.”

    Reid, after all, had faced one of those before he ever got to Washington. Then head of the Nevada Gaming Commission investigating organized crime, Reid became the target of a car bomb in 1980. Police called it an attempted homicide. Reid blamed Jack Gordon, who went to prison for trying to bribe him in a sting operation Reid participated in over illegal efforts to bring new games to casinos in 1978.

    Following Reid’s lengthy farewell address on the Senate floor in 2016, his Nevada colleague Republican Dean Heller declared: “It’s been said that it’s better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both. And as me and my colleagues here today and those in the gallery probably agree with me, no individual in American politics embodies that sentiment today more than my colleague from Nevada, Harry Mason Reid.”
    Another mark of a tyrant is that he likes foreigners better than citizens, and lives with them and invites them to his table; for the one are enemies, but the Others enter into no rivalry with him. - Aristotle's Politics Book 5 Part 11



  2. Remove this section of ads by registering.
  3. #2
    Hope he repented for his sins...At least Cliven Bundy outlived him.

    Bombshell: Documents Show Harry Reid, Chinese Company Behind Nevada Ranch Standoff
    https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/b...ranch-standoff
    “The spirits of darkness are now among us. We have to be on guard so that we may realize what is happening when we encounter them and gain a real idea of where they are to be found. The most dangerous thing you can do in the immediate future will be to give yourself up unconsciously to the influences which are definitely present.” ~ Rudolf Steiner

  4. #3

    Harry Reid dead

    Here’s real life exchange between him (Nevada gaming commissioner) & Lefty Rosenthal (similar scene was in movie casino)

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2m1wJNft4OE

  5. #4
    "An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government" - Ron Paul.

    "To learn who rules over you simply find out who you arent allowed to criticize."

  6. #5
    Good riddance.
    "Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration is minding my own business."

    Calvin Coolidge

  7. #6
    Good to know I'll be sleeping tonight knowing that one traitor is dead.
    "Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration is minding my own business."

    Calvin Coolidge

  8. #7
    Rest in piss.
    "An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government" - Ron Paul.

    "To learn who rules over you simply find out who you arent allowed to criticize."

  9. #8



  10. Remove this section of ads by registering.
  11. #9
    Roast In Purgatory.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  12. #10
    In modern times , probably one of the seven most influencal people when it comes to devaluing the dollar and running up debt . Bye harry.
    Do something Danke

  13. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by unknown View Post
    Rest in piss.
    LOL

    We're being governed ruled by a geriatric Alzheimer patient/puppet whose strings are being pulled by an elitist oligarchy who believe they can manage the world... imagine the utter maniacal, sociopathic hubris!

  14. #12
    Awww I'll miss him. He was one of the few with the balls to admit on camera that federal income taxes are voluntary and by consent. Eye-opening for me at the time.
    "Let it not be said that we did nothing."-Ron Paul

    "We have set them on the hobby-horse of an idea about the absorption of individuality by the symbolic unit of COLLECTIVISM. They have never yet and they never will have the sense to reflect that this hobby-horse is a manifest violation of the most important law of nature, which has established from the very creation of the world one unit unlike another and precisely for the purpose of instituting individuality."- A Quote From Some Old Book

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...

  16. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by devil21 View Post
    Awww I'll miss him. He was one of the few with the balls to admit on camera that federal income taxes are voluntary and by consent. Eye-opening for me at the time.
    I guess his opinion differed on federal grazing fees.
    "He's talkin' to his gut like it's a person!!" -me
    "dumpster diving isn't professional." - angelatc
    "You don't need a medical degree to spot obvious bullshit, that's actually a separate skill." -Scott Adams
    "When you are divided, and angry, and controlled, you target those 'different' from you, not those responsible [controllers]" -Q

    "Each of us must choose which course of action we should take: education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes. But let it not be said that we did nothing." - Ron Paul

    "Paul said "the wave of the future" is a coalition of anti-authoritarian progressive Democrats and libertarian Republicans in Congress opposed to domestic surveillance, opposed to starting new wars and in favor of ending the so-called War on Drugs."

  17. #15
    I do not know the content of the man's heart. I'm no one to judge - that's not my job in this life.

    I believe he committed sins, just like the rest of us. I hope he repented before his death. May God have mercy on his soul.

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by A Son of Liberty View Post
    I do not know the content of the man's heart. I'm no one to judge - that's not my job in this life.

    I believe he committed sins, just like the rest of us. I hope he repented before his death. May God have mercy on his soul.
    I'm always conflicted on threads like this when the old ones die. Always hate reading the venom but I understand it, though I've made a couple of exceptions myself (ahem, that Senator from Arizona being one of them). Jesus reached out to the sinners, not the righteous, didn't he?
    "Let it not be said that we did nothing."-Ron Paul

    "We have set them on the hobby-horse of an idea about the absorption of individuality by the symbolic unit of COLLECTIVISM. They have never yet and they never will have the sense to reflect that this hobby-horse is a manifest violation of the most important law of nature, which has established from the very creation of the world one unit unlike another and precisely for the purpose of instituting individuality."- A Quote From Some Old Book



  19. Remove this section of ads by registering.
  20. #17
    The Old Democrats

    FJB

  21. #18
    That was some good stuff, he was in deep, that's for sure.

    Quote Originally Posted by vita3 View Post
    Here’s real life exchange between him (Nevada gaming commissioner) & Lefty Rosenthal (similar scene was in movie casino)

    Last edited by Mach; 12-29-2021 at 06:57 PM.
    FJB

  22. #19
    And the air seems a little cleaner.

    And the world seems just a little bit brighter.
    Chris

    "Government ... does not exist of necessity, but rather by virtue of a tragic, almost comical combination of klutzy, opportunistic terrorism against sitting ducks whom it pretends to shelter, plus our childish phobia of responsibility, praying to be exempted from the hard reality of life on life's terms." Wolf DeVoon

    "...Make America Great Again. I'm interested in making American FREE again. Then the greatness will come automatically."Ron Paul

  23. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by devil21 View Post
    I'm always conflicted on threads like this when the old ones die. Always hate reading the venom but I understand it, though I've made a couple of exceptions myself (ahem, that Senator from Arizona being one of them). Jesus reached out to the sinners, not the righteous, didn't he?
    He did, specifically.

    I do not wish anyone to burn in the fires of Hell. I hope he repented of his sins. I do every morning.

  24. #21
    Lets hope he has found peace.
    Last edited by helenpaul; 12-29-2021 at 08:11 PM.

  25. #22
    I hope he was resurrected as a sewer gnat
    It's all about taking action and not being lazy. So you do the work, whether it's fitness or whatever. It's about getting up, motivating yourself and just doing it.
    - Kim Kardashian

    Donald Trump / Crenshaw 2024!!!!

    My pronouns are he/him/his



Similar Threads

  1. Replies: 8
    Last Post: 03-21-2013, 06:11 PM
  2. Replies: 8
    Last Post: 01-18-2012, 04:35 PM
  3. Replies: 0
    Last Post: 12-22-2010, 06:47 PM
  4. Replies: 2
    Last Post: 10-26-2010, 05:08 AM
  5. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says income tax is VOLUNTARY!!!
    By MN Patriot in forum U.S. Political News
    Replies: 10
    Last Post: 04-11-2008, 04:18 PM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •