Funeral For Nancy Davis Reagan, A Story of Love

Nancy Reagan holding the Reagans’ pet Rex, a King Charles spaniel, as she and Ronald Reagan walk on the White House South Lawn in 1986.

Photo: AP

http://www.c-span.org/video/?406302-1/funeral-service-nancy-reagan

[Complete broadcast. Service actually begins about one hour into this video]
[4 hours 23 minutes]
MARCH 11, 2016
Nancy Reagan Funeral Service A funeral service for former first lady Nancy Reagan was held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. She died Sunday, March 6, 2016, at her home in Los Angeles at the age of 94.

* * *

[From article]
Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney read an adoring letter Ronald Reagan wrote Nancy on their first Christmas in the White House in 1981.
Reagan wrote her about “several much beloved women in his life,” including my “First Lady.”
“She brings so much grace and charm to whatever she does that even stuffy, formal functions sparkle and turn into fun times. Everything is done with class. All I have to do is wash up and show up,” the former president wrote.
“Fortunately, all these women in my life are you – fortunately for me that is, for there could be no life for me without you,” he wrote, lovingly.He then described “the girl” who went to the ranch with him, a “sentimental lady” whose laughter is like “tinkling bells” and a “gal who is a nest builder.”
TV host Melissa Rivers recalled the many conversations her mother, Joan Rivers, had with Nancy.
“One of the last great grand dames,” Rivers said, the Washington Post reported. “She was an elegant, wonderful woman.”

[. . .]

A stickler for detail, the former first lady planned much of the memorial service before her death, including the roses and white peonies on her mahogany coffin, which was made by Marsellus Casket Co. in Syracuse, the paper reported.
The service, which reflected her sense of elegance from a bygone era, featured a photo of her dressed in one of her signature red gowns.
The pair had two children, Patti Davis and Ron, both of whom smiled at reminiscences during the funeral.
Davis told mourners her folks were “two halves of a circle,” recalling a distant memory of seeing them sitting on a Southern California beach at sunset in what she called an impenetrable “island for two.”

http://nypost.com/2016/03/11/political-dignitaries-celebrities-say-goodbye-to-nancy-reagan/

Political dignitaries, celebrities say goodbye to Nancy Reagan
By Yaron Steinbuch
New York Post
March 11, 2016 | 4:08pm | Updated

http://nyp.st/1TTfvIc

* * *

Peggy Noonan remembers Nancy Reagan

https://youtu.be/4X559oBwpKU



* * *

[From article]

Former first lady Nancy Reagan was celebrated in a stately funeral Friday that evoked the majestic splendor of her eight years in the White House and a Washington era that she and her husband defined.
Political, business and Hollywood potentates, a thousand in all, came to pay their respects. Her eulogists spoke of her signature elegance, political influence and withering contempt for those who dared cross her. Most of all, they spoke of the Reagans’ marriage as both an abiding love affair and a partnership in power, with Mrs. Reagan serving as her husband’s chief protector and a leading architect of his legacy.
“My life began when I met my husband,” Nancy Davis Reagan once said, and several mourners noted that the same may have been said of him.
The Reagans were “defined by their love for each other,” said former secretary of state James A. Baker III, speaking in a tent erected on the south lawn of the Reagan Presidential Library high on a hill facing the Topatopa Mountains. “Without her, he wouldn’t have been president.”
Their son agreed. “There likely wouldn’t have been a President Ronald Reagan without a Nancy Reagan,” said Ronald Prescott Reagan of his mother, who died Sunday at 94 of congestive heart failure.
While her husband was alive, Mrs. Reagan kept watch over every aspect of his life. Willing to play the heavy and often acknowledged by her husband and his key aides as a the sharper assessor of loyalty and character, she became a polarizing figure in national politics.
“Her determination was ferocious,” said their daughter Patti Davis, remembering a conversation they had when her mother was personally lobbying members of Congress to approve stem-cell research into Alzheimer’s disease, against the Republican Party position. “Even God might not have the guts to argue with Nancy Reagan.”
[. . .]
Much of the guest list harkened back to the ’80s, the Reagan decade, including Wayne Newton, Anjelica Huston, Tina Sinatra, Bo Derek (“we shared horse stories”) and Ralph Lauren. Mr. T — a stalwart ally in Mrs. Reagan’s “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign (she famously sat on his lap at a Christmas event) arrived through a side entrance dressed in full camouflage attire, combat boots and an American flag wrapped around his head.
[. . .]
Mrs. Reagan’s funeral brought together under one immense tent notable Democrats and Republicans at a deeply divisive time — from Newt Gingrich and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Television producer Norman Lear, a major funder of liberal causes, recalled that “she had a civility and appreciation for other people’s points of view.” Also, that Mrs. Reagan “danced well.”
[. . .]
The service reflected her sense of unapologetically old-world elegance but also revealed the more playful side of Mrs. Reagan, a woman known for her steely reserve. She enjoyed the company of dashing men — like Selleck, Warren Beatty, her husband — and a delight for gossip. “She told wicked stories of old Hollywood,” Diane Sawyer observed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/03/11/nancy-reagan-funeral-draws-political-heavyweights-stars-from-bygone-era/

Nancy Reagan funeral draws political heavyweights, stars from bygone era
Washington Post
Karen Heller and William Wan March 11, 2016 at 5:21 PM

Truman Over The Clintons With His Hands Tied and Blindfolded

This blog post recognizes what I did a few months ago. How pathetic both Clintons are compared to Truman, who came with extensive common sense and extraordinary integrity.

[From article]
‘[Former President] Truman had numerous offers from large corporations for work, but turned them all down, stating:
“I knew that they were not interested in hiring Harry Truman, the person, but what they wanted to hire was the former President of the United States. I could never lend myself to any transaction, however respectable, that would commercialize on the prestige and the dignity of the office of the Presidency.”’
When reading this passage, one cannot help but think of the stark contrast set by Bill Clinton and his wife as Secretary of State. Clinton has coarsened grievously both the American Presidency and Post-Presidency. Truman was truly from another era of honor and respectability. Today, half the country wants to return Bill and Hillary to the White House despite their overt faults and derelictions.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/01/clinton_fails_the_truman_test.html

January 17, 2016
Clinton fails the Truman Test
By Jerome J. Schmitt

Bill Clinton's Sexual Antics Apply To Hillary's Campaign

Clinton Feeling Your Pain

[From article]
Bill Clinton was not just a workplace harasser, or even a serial adulterer; he was, and remains, someone credibly accused of sexual assault. And what goes unmentioned—for this obviously could be catastrophic for Hillary’s campaign—is that she has been his willing cohort, the energetic enabler who sought to destroy his accusers to protect their joint political and financial interests.
[. . .]
Never mind that progressives continue to see (and often define) themselves as morally and ethically superior: in the fight to save Bill Clinton’s presidency there could be no adherence to larger truths, or moral consistency, or commitment to time-tested standards; all were sacrificed in defense of Clinton’s political survival.
[. . .]
Hopelessly naïve in that peculiarly American way, ordinary citizens actually expected more of their president.
[. . .]
The Clintons have systematically attempted to blacken the accusers’ names and otherwise destroy their credibility. Yet, at the height of the 1998 crisis, Hillary’s pose as the aggrieved yet forgiving wife allowed the Clinton partisans, starting with those in the media, to push the line that this was a private matter, unworthy of the attention it was receiving. After all, if his wife didn’t care, why should anyone else?
[. . .]
In any case, wrote Steinem, what ultimately mattered most were the president’s policy positions—especially his solid support for abortion.
[. . .]
Here are just a handful of the jokes which became ubiquitous on late-night TV, circa 1998:
Q: What is Bill’s definition of safe sex?
A: When Hillary is out of town.
Q: What is the difference between Clinton and the Titanic?
A: Only 200 women went down on the Titanic.
Q: How does Bill keep Monica Lewinsky away from the White House?
A: He keeps offering to send Ted Kennedy over to give her a ride.
Q: How can a woman tell she’s just had sex with Bill Clinton?
A: She’s got French fries in her hair, and Vernon Jordan is handing her a job application.
[. . .]
—there were reports on the difficulties American parents were having trying to explain to their young children things they wished they didn’t have to.
[. . .]
 Is it coincidence that millions of Millennials maintain, along with the president of their formative years, that fellatio does not actually constitute sex? If America has indeed lost much of its former innocence, who can doubt that the 42nd president accelerated the process?
[. . .]
“Things aren’t looking good for Hillary,” joked Jay Leno in 1998. “Like a lot of women in Washington, I think she’s just starting to realize she may have slept with Bill Clinton for nothing.”
[. . .]
The real issue in this election is how much of this history the American people will be willing to ignore, shrug off, or decide doesn’t matter. The real question will be how much the Clintons have changed America.

http://www.city-journal.org/2016/eon0104hs.html

HARRY STEIN
How the Clintons Changed America
Sex, culture, and the presidency
January 4, 2016

Separation Of Powers Abused By White House

[From article]
One virtue possessed by all bad presidents, whether they’re evil, venal, lazy, or incompetent, is that they always reveal the weakness of the political system at the time of their tenure. In this, Obama is no different than any other bozo that has inhabited the White House.
Separation of powers is the one element that distinguishes the United States from previous democratic systems. (And before people hurt themselves in their rush to point out that “the U.S. is a republic and not a democracy” -- a “republic” is any governmental system that’s not a monarchy. Nazi Germany and the USSR were “republics.” The U.S. is a republic utilizing a system of representative democracy.)
[. . .]
Montesquieu’s understand of history informed him that concentration of power leads inevitably to despotism -- no matter how solidly a democratic system was founded, eventually an Augustus or a Lorenzo would show up, concentrate all power in his own person and eventually undermine senate or council. From that point on, whatever it might call itself, the state was a simple autocracy. There was never a way back, and the usual sequel was degeneration and collapse.
Montesquieu’s solution was separation of powers:
[. . .]
Though often criticized -- largely by progressives who knew what had to be done and wanted what amounted to a temporary dictatorship to do it -- separation of powers has been a great success. At no point, even during the Civil War, has the United States ever been in danger of the deterioration into autocracy that plagued previous republics. But as the Obama administration has clearly revealed, separation of powers has been crippled for the better part of a century through the metastasis of the executive branch.
[. . .]
The explosion of agencies under the New Deal, each of which was touted as necessary for the salvation of the country and most of which accomplished absolutely nothing, introduced a factor unforeseen by the Founders: concentration of power in the executive through organizational hyperdevelopment. All those agencies are under direct presidential control, and subject to his orders with no effective oversight from the other branches.
[. . .]
To keep a neverending story short, this is how, eighty years later, we’ve attained our current state of a government overburdened with agencies that solve nothing while constantly spinning off sub-organizations.
This has badly skewed the balance of powers toward the executive, something that Obama has been quick to seize on in his effort at permanent transformation of the American system.
No president has more abused the power of the executive. Obama was raised in Indonesia during key formative years, a nation that in the 1960s was run as a strict military autocracy. At the time that Obama was attending school there, the state’s founder Achmed Sukarno had just been overthrown by Gen. Mohammed Suharto. Accompanying this transfer of power had been a nationwide purge that murdered at least 100,000.
[. . .]
In the privacy of his head, Obama is not a president at all -- he’s a pemimpin, the Indonesian term for führer. (This can also be seen in his constant vacations, golf rounds, etc.
[. . .]
One of the major techniques he learned is rule by decree -- to give orders without any effort at gaining consensus. How does he get away with it? In large part because he controls the agencies. Obama has discovered that the bloated hypertrophy of the bureaucracy has effectively put him beyond the reach of our system’s constitutional safeguards.
His decrees range from the idiotic to the grotesque -- his order to the EPA to shut down the coal industry, the repurposing of NASA as a Muslim PR effort, the post-legislative changes to ObamaCare
[. . .]
It’s long been understood that agencies such as the EPA, the Department of Education, and the Department of Energy are useless. It’s now clear that they are a threat to the commonwealth.
[. . .]
The Democrats [. . .] create these structures, these methods of short-circuiting the political process, and are shocked -- shocked -- when somebody else takes advantage of them.
[. . .]
The real problem here is that the progressives -- and possibly a much larger segment of the country -- have simply forgotten how the American system is supposed to work. And that may well be the most lethal aspect of all.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/obama_versus_the_separation_of_powers.html

December 7, 2015
Obama Versus the Separation of Powers
By J.R. Dunn

Trump Makes Business While Politicians Flounder

[From article]
our resident elites resolutely refuse to take Trump seriously.
They should. Not because he will be nominated, but because the Trump constituency will represent a vote of no confidence in the Beltway ruling class of politicians and press.
Votes for Trump will be votes to repudiate that class, whole and entire, and dump it onto the ash heap of history.
[. . .]
A vote for Trump is a vote to say that both parties have failed America and none of the current crop of candidates offers real hope of a better future.
The first book in Arthur Schlesinger’s trilogy about FDR’s ascent to power was “The Crisis of the Old Order.” That title is relevant to our time. For there is today a crisis of the regime in America — a crisis of confidence, a crisis of competence, a crisis of legitimacy.
[. . .]
Trump says America is becoming a “dumping ground” for mass immigration from the failed states of the Third World, that Mexico is not “sending us her best and finest,” that China is stealing American jobs, that invading Iraq was a blunder.
Politically incorrect and socially insensitive certainly, but is he entirely wrong?
[. . .]
Do Americans not have the right to decide who shall come to our country, how many, and whence they shall come?
[. . .]
As in America, dominant parties like the Tories and Labour in Britain are losing loyalists to the “a-plague-on-both-your-houses” dissident parties.
[. . .]
If Trump wants to stake his claim as a different kind of Republican, he will go to Washington and pound the Boehner-McConnell Congress until it gives up on Obamatrade and fast track.

http://buchanan.org/blog/the-anti-politician-16164

The Anti-Politician

Friday - June 19, 2015 at 12:09 am
By Patrick J. Buchanan

George Bush (long) Interview About His Book

"I admire our military a lot," says former U.S. President George W. Bush, seen here posing with U.S. troops in Iraq in 2008 Photo credit: Reuters

[From interview]

Q: You mentioned ISIS, you spoke about defeating terror. Is it possible to defeat ISIS in Syria and Iraq without boots on the ground?

"The president will have to make that determination. My position was that you need to have boots on the ground. As you know, I made a very difficult decision. A fair number of people in our country were saying that it was impossible to defeat al-Qaida -- which is ISIS as far as I am concerned. They said I must get out of Iraq. But I chose the opposite -- I sent 30,000 more troops as opposed to 30,000 fewer. I think history will show that al-Qaida in Iraq was defeated. And so I chose the path of boots on the ground. We will see whether or not our government adjusts to the realities on the ground."

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=26127

'My position was: you need to have boots on the ground'
Former U.S. President George W. Bush tells Israel Hayom in an exclusive interview, "My strategy, the Bush doctrine, was to vigorously pursue those who do us harm and bring them to justice" • "America has been very supportive of Israel," he remarks.
Amos Regev and Boaz Bismuth

King Obama?

[From article]
President Obama will be spending Valentine's Day with the one he loves the most. Michelle and the kids will be vacationing separately.
Sound familiar? The president and first lady spent Presidents Day weekend in separate vacations last year as well. That, you might remember, was when the White House itself was closed to schoolchildren who had saved up all year for their trips to D.C. only to find out the administration could no longer afford to give tours. But Congress somehow managed to fully fund tours of the U.S. Capitol.
You might also recall that during Presidents Day weekend last year America's celebrity in chief had taxpayers pick up the tab for his trip to play golf with Tiger Woods at the exclusive Floridian golf resort in Palm City, Fla.
[. . .]
The president's golf trip alone would have funded the White House tours for a year.
[. . .]
But as president, Obama reminded us recently, you "can do whatever you want." It's good to be king.

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-viewpoint/021314-690044-obama-travels-without-michelle-to-rancho-mirage.htm

Is Barack Obama Our First American King?
By MICHAEL RAMIREZ
Posted 06:41 PM ET

Brilliant Prudence Of Eisenhower

In his January 18, 1961, farewell speech, Eisenhower coined the term "military-industrial complex." (Associated Press)

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/09/the-brilliant-prudence-of-dwight-eisenhower/262556/

The Brilliant Prudence of Dwight Eisenhower
By Evan Thomas
12 Sep 19 2012, 8:01 AM ET
The Atlantic

Florida Judge Seeks Evidence From Obama

http://www.wnd.com/2012/05/bush-v-gore-judge-your-evidence-mr-obama/


WND EXCLUSIVE
BUSH V. GORE JUDGE: YOUR EVIDENCE, MR. OBAMA?
Schedules hearing on what precedent White House has on 'natural born citizen'
Bob Unruh
May 31, 2012

Obama The Affirmative Action President

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/obama_the_affirmative_action_president.html

August 18, 2011
Obama: The Affirmative Action President
By Matt Patterson
American Thinker

Obama Has Misguided Idea About Presidency

[From article]
"Then he asks, "What's the particular requirement of the president that no one else can do?" He answers: "What the president can do, that nobody else can do, is tell a story to the American people" about where we are as a nation and should be.

Tell a story to the American people? That's your job? Not adopting good policies? Not defending the nation? Storytelling?

The interview reflects the weird inability of so many in political leadership now to acknowledge the role in life of . . . reality."

http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html

Once Upon a Time in America
A troubled nation needs a real leader, not a storyteller.
Wall Street Journal
Peggy Noonan
October 1, 2011

Obama Disgraces Himself and The Presidency

Obama stated that he did not see the Beck-Palin rally to honor American values. But having his Education Secretary urge employees to attend the hate rally promoted by Race-baiter Al Sharpton shows that Obama encourages divisiveness and animosity toward persons who disagree with him. The citizens who attended the Beck rally traveled to the Capitol on their own money to exercise their First Amendment rights. Sharpton rally was filled with personal attack signs.

Obama openly stated that he ignored 100,000 to 500,000 citizens who expressed their respect for the American system. It makes Obama's objectives questionable.

Compare this with how the President illegally exercised his immense power in 2008 to disrespect the Cambridge MA police when his friend was arrested for disorderly conduct. What are the values of this President? He needs to demonstrate that what he says has meaning beyond what his PR flack advises him to say. He loses the respect of more citizens every day he fails to stand up for the Constitutional power that he holds under law. Instead he shows his infantile political abuses demeaning ordinary citizens for exercising their rights. Shame on Obama and those who protect his disgraceful actions.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Education-secretary-urged-his-employees-to-go-to-Sharpton_s-rally-651280-101839293.html

Education secretary urged his employees to go to Sharpton's rally
By: Lisa Gartner
Washington Examiner Staff Writer
August 30, 2010

Democrats Unable to Benefit from Control of DC

[From article]
"They act like a forlorn minority at the same time they control every lever of elective power in Washington.
[. . .]
The majority is not just wrong on immigration enforcement and the Ground Zero mosque, it's contemptible. Who knew that the American public would get accused of bigotry more often after electing an African-American president than before?"

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/how_the_democrats_lost_the_middle_3u3hnE956CNz1BxRA05E0K

How the Democrats lost the middle
Rich Lowry
New York Post
Last Updated: 4:01 AM, August 27, 2010
Posted: 1:03 AM, August 27, 2010

Harry Truman sin Harvard Degree

On the pork barrel express in DC. Everybody gets the same amount for elections, no "Info-ads" and term limits. If two TERMS IS ENOUGH FOR A PRESIDENT IT IS ENOUGH FOR CONGRESS. Career politicians only care about reelection because they can't make that much anywhere else.

Harry & Bess

Harry Truman was a different kind of President. He probably made as many, or more important decisions regarding our nation's history as any of the other 42 Presidents preceding him. However, a measure of his greatness may rest on what he did after he left the White House.

The only asset he had when he died was the house he lived in, which was in Independence Missouri. His wife had inherited the house from her mother and father and other than their years in the White House, they lived their entire lives there.

When he retired from office in 1952, his income was a U.S. Army pension reported to have been $13,507.72 a year. Congress, noting that he was paying for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an 'allowance' and, later, a retroactive pension of $25,000 per year.

After President Eisenhower was inaugurated, Harry and Bess drove home to Missouri by themselves. There was no Secret Service following them.

When offered corporate positions at large salaries, he declined, stating, "You don't want me. You want the office of the President, and that doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it's not for sale.."

Even later, on May 6, 1971, when Congress was preparing to award him the Medal of Honor on his 87th birthday, he refused to accept it, writing, "I don't consider that I have done anything which should be the reason for any award, Congressional or otherwise."

As president he paid for all of his own travel expenses and food.

Modern politicians have found a new level of success in cashing in on the Presidency, resulting in untold wealth. Today, many in Congress also have found a way to become quite wealthy while enjoying the fruits of their offices. Political offices are now for sale.

Harry Truman was correct when he observed, "My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!

Palin Can be President

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/powerless_against_palin.html

February 26, 2010

Powerless Against Palin

By Gene Schwimmer
American Thinker