Former First Lady Barbara Bush Hospitalized at Methodist Hospital in Houston, TX with Pneumonia (Update: Realeased from Hospital)

88 year old, former first lady Barbara Bush was hospitalized at Methodist Hospital in Houston’s Texas Medical Center for a respiratory condition and early signs of pneumonia. The office of former President George H.W. Bush said in a written statement: “She is in great spirits, has already received visits from her husband and family, and is receiving fantastic care. Updates will be issued when warranted.”

Former first lady Barbara Bush was hospitalized today for early signs of pneumonia, but the family said she was “in great spirits.”

“Former first lady Barbara Bush was admitted to Methodist Hospital in Houston’s Texas Medical Center yesterday for treatment on a respiratory related issue,” family spokesman Jim McGrath said. “She has already received visits from her husband and family, and is receiving fantastic care.”

Bush, 88, whose husband George H.W. Bush was president from 1989 to 1993, used her prominence as first lady to champion numerous civic and charitable causes, primarily as an advocate for global literacy.

We wish her a speedy recovery!

UPDATE I: Former First Lady Barbara Bush Released from Hospital.

“I cannot thank the doctors and nurses at Houston Methodist enough for making sure I got the best treatment and got back to George and our dogs as quickly as possible,” the former first lady said in a statement Saturday.

LOL … Jay Leno Makes Fun of Barack Obama’s Falling Approval Ratings Comparing Them to Nixon

How ironic that Jay Leno has never been funnier and NBC is parting ways with him …

Barack Obama is now the nightly fodder for late night comedy and the other night was no different. Jay Leno just shreds Obama’s falling job approval numbers and compares them to that of Ricard Nixon. OUCH! But wait, Jimmy Carter says, that’s not fair, if he had a 5th year, he is sure that he would be lower, ha, ha, ha!!! Many feel that Obama’s second term is Carter’s third term in office.

VIDEO via Free Beacon

Obama’s Current Approval Rating Is The Ugliest Since Nixon:

President Barack Obama is ending his fifth year in office with the lowest approval ratings at this point in the presidency since President Richard Nixon, according to a new Washington Post/ABC poll released Tuesday.

Obama’s approval rating in the poll stands at 43%. By comparison, President George W. Bush had a 47% approval rating at the end of the fifth year of his presidency. And all other Post-World War II presidents had approval ratings above 50% — with the exception of Nixon, who, amid the Watergate scandal, had a dreadful 29% approval rating.

Mavericky RINO Senator John McCain Says Republicans Voting Against Budget Deal Lack ‘Intellectual Integrity’ … Um, President Ronald Reagan Would Disagree

So this is what the Republican party has become in 2013, and this sorry, mavericky RINO was nominated the GOP’s presidential candidate in 2008, ever wonder why you lost?

RINO John McCain (R-AZ) called out Republicans who would dare oppose a bad budget deal that does nothing to reduce the out of control spending and the +$17 trillion debt. McCain said that Republicans who vote against the budget deal lack “intellectual integrity”. Really sir, you may want to look up that definition as you are exactly what is wrong with the GOP and the lack of any integrity to stand for the American people, the catastrophic escalating debt and our hero soldiers. So this is about some gutless GOP Senators worried about a government shutdown, rather than the collapse of the USA with unsustainable spending?  A bunch of establishment RINO’s are more concerned on how a shut down will effect them, rather than being statesmen and doing the right thing for the American people? UNREAL … sadly we have become a government of, by and for the American People establishment government class.

Spending is increased; however, the budget comes at the expense of our heroes, injured veterans who have given of their body and mind to the defense of this nation to have their benefits reduced. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!! Civilian workers do not face the same benefit cuts, it is on the backs of our wounded warriors. You should all be ashamed of yourself. So this is what bi-partisanship looks like, agreeing on crap? And a note to the GOP … I am sick of your excuse that you only control the House, these gutless RINO’s would have done the same if they controlled the Senate.

Senate Democrats actually block an amendment to restore veteran benefits by closing illegal immigrant welfare loophole and still these treasonous 12 Republican Senators voted for this rotten bill. So illegal immigrants were just treated better than the men and women who have givens arms, legs, mind body and soul to defend America. That my GOP turncoats would be the definition of a lack of “Intellectual Integrity”. As stated at The Right Wing News, we all know that the Dems prefer illegals to our military vets, but my issue is with the GOP traitors. I expect this kind of crap from the LEFT, I do not expect it from Republicans. And we wonder why establishment Republicans are being primary challenged.

Senate Republicans were unable to stop military pension cuts when Senate Democrats blocked a vote on an amendment to prevent the cuts by closing a welfare loophole for illegal immigrants Tuesday evening.

The two-year budget deal brokered by Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, would cut military pensions by $6 billion over ten years, leaving some Senate Republicans scrambling to stop the cuts.

The US Senate voted 67-33 with

RONALD REGAN WOULD DISAGREE WITH MC RINO. For all of those who have said that Reagan would not agree with the Tea Party, you have no clue. Reagan left the Democrat party, stating, I did not leave the Democrat party, the party left me. Sadly, the Dutch would probably say the same thing today and leave the GOP.

I want you to listen to what Ronald Reagan said during a 1975 interview with Johnny Carson on ‘The Tonight Show” and his brilliance of what he spoke of then, that is even more applicable today. Reagan had it right, government was not the solution, it was the problem. The US, its people, business and the economy would work gang-busters if the government got out of the way. The VIDEO below is a must watch.

“If government would shut the doors and sneak away for about three  weeks, we would never miss them” – Ronald Reagan (1975)

Remember when Ronald Reagan responded to Johnny Carson in 1975 on how do you balance the budget? Reagan said, “balance the budget is like protecting your virtue, you just have to learn to say no.” I guess we now know where Nancy Reagan got her idea against drugs to “Just Say No”.

Daily Commentary – Wednesday, December 11, 2013 – President Obama Shakes the Hand of Raul Castro

• Obama shakes hands with the Cuban ruler Raul Castro at the Memorial service for Nelson Mandela

Former South African President and Anti-Apartheid Icon Nelson Mandela Has Died at the Age of 95 … Rest in Peace

The father of modern South Africa has passed …

Nelson Mandela, the former President of South Africa and anti-apartheid leader who spent 27 years in a South African prison, , first on Robben Island, and later in Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison,has died at the age of 95. Nelson Mandela had been battling several illnesses for quite some time and had been hospitalized. Sadly, current South African President Jacob Zuma announced late Thursday the death of the man who freed his people from an oppressive minority rule and united a country. Nelson Mandela and his one time enemy president F. W. de Klerk, who preceded him, both shared and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

Mandela is a perfect example that one does not have to be a fan of one’s politics in order to admire him as a leader and his leadership skills that brought a completely fragmented and racially divided society back together … ONE TEAM, ONE COUNTRY!!!

Nelson Mandela: July 18, 1918 – December 5, 2013

“I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.”
“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

CNN:

Nelson Mandela, the revered statesman who emerged from prison after 27 years to lead South Africa out of decades of apartheid, has died, South African President Jacob Zuma announced late Thursday.

Mandela was 95.

“He is now resting. He is now at peace,” Zuma said. “Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father.”

“What made Nelson Mandela great was precisely what made him human,” the president said in his late-night address. “We saw in him what we seek in ourselves.”

Mandela will have a state funeral. Zuma ordered all flags in the nation to be flown at half-staff from Friday through that funeral.

Mandela, a former president, battled health issues in recent months, including a recurring lung infection that led to numerous hospitalizations.

With advancing age and bouts of illness, Mandela retreated to a quiet life at his boyhood home in the nation’s Eastern Cape Province, where he said he was most at peace.

Nelson Mandela’s Life Story

UPDATE I: NY Times Obit

The question most often asked about Mr. Mandela was how, after whites had systematically humiliated his people, tortured and murdered many of his friends, and cast him into prison for 27 years, he could be so evidently free of spite.

The government he formed when he finally won the chance was an improbable fusion of races and beliefs, including many of his former oppressors. When he became president, he invited one of his white wardens to the inauguration. Mr. Mandela overcame a personal mistrust bordering on loathing to share both power and a Nobel Peace Prize with the white president who preceded him, F. W. de Klerk.

And as president, from 1994 to 1999, he devoted much energy to moderating the bitterness of his black electorate and to reassuring whites against their fears of vengeance.

The explanation for his absence of rancor, at least in part, is that Mr. Mandela was that rarity among revolutionaries and moral dissidents: a capable statesman, comfortable with compromise and impatient with the doctrinaire.

When the question was put to Mr. Mandela in an interview for this obituary in 2007 — after such barbarous torment, how do you keep hatred in check? — his answer was almost dismissive: Hating clouds the mind. It gets in the way of strategy. Leaders cannot afford to hate.

ESPY Awards – Nelson Mandela

A truly amazing video … Like I have previously said, like him or not, Mandela was a leader and knew what it took to bring people together, not tear them further apart.

UPDATE II: NBC News – 7 ways Nelson Mandela changed South Africa.

Mandela’s biggest influence on the new South Africa was his personal determination that anger over the crimes of the past, including his 27 years as a political prisoner, should not motivate future laws and actions. Key to this was his 1995 establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that investigated historic human rights violations and gave vent to grievances.

That same year, South Africa hosted the Rugby World Cup – the first event of its kind to be held there since the end of the apartheid-era sporting boycott. Along with cricket, rugby was a game played and enjoyed almost exclusively by whites, making the event tough for Mandela’s fledgling democratic government to “sell” to a wider population.

Despite resistance on both sides, Mandela swung the rainbow nation behind both the team – the Springboks – and the tournament, which South Africa won (VIDEO). That achievement, documented in the 2009 film “Invictus” starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, illustrated the extent of South Africa’s rehabilitation and also set the country back on the path of sporting success.

Invictus – Poem That Inspired A Nation

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

UPDATE III: Comments from former South African president F.W. de Klerk.

Nelson Mandela’s greatest accomplishment was to unify South Africa and push for reconciliation between blacks and whites in the post-apartheid era, F.W. de Klerk, the country’s last white president, said on Thursday.

“He was a great unifier and a very, very special man in this regard beyond everything else he did. This emphasis on reconciliation was his biggest legacy,” de Klerk said in an interview with CNN after the announcement of Mandela’s death.

De Klerk, who released Mandela from prison in 1990 and then negotiated the end of apartheid, called Mandela a “humane” and “compassionate” man who was able to understand the fears of South Africa’s white minority in the transition to democracy.

UPDATE IV: South Africans mourn, celebrate life of Nelson Mandela.

As flags were lowered to half mast, people across South Africa commemorated Nelson Mandela with song, tears and prayers on Friday as the government prepared funeral ceremonies that will draw leaders and other dignitaries from around the globe.

A black SUV-type vehicle containing Mandela’s coffin, draped in South Africa’s flag, pulled away from Mandela’s home after midnight, escorted by military motorcycle outriders, to take the body to a military morgue in Pretoria, the capital.

Many South Africans heard the news of his death, which was announced just before midnight, upon waking Friday, and they flocked to his home in Johannesburg’s leafy Houghton neighborhood. One woman hugged her two sons over a floral tribute.