Author: Mark Noonan

I’ve Been Busy Open Thread

Mark Noonan37 Comments

Sorry about not much posting of late – but I’ve got a lot on my plate! Got the 2nd draft of the novel done and off to be reviewed by a publisher. We’ll see how that goes. Have I mentioned the title? Mirrors, it will be. I’m writing up the outline of Book II…prospectively to be titled Secrets. I’ve also started some research on another political book, and came up with a smashing idea for a science fiction book series. In addition, lots of other things going on in the personal life: all good, but taking a lot of time.

So, what have you guys been up to?

The American economy is now the most competitive in the world, according to the IMD World Competitiveness Center. The bottom line is that tax and regulatory reform is freeing up our economy after 8 years of Obama shackles. I think we’re about to have a boom like that of the early 80’s, and maybe a lot better.

I got on Gab back in November, but really didn’t do too much with it until recently. Just be prepared to mute one heck of a lot of Nazis…but once you’ve got that done, you’ve got a platform like Twitter was before the SJW’s took over. You can find me listed under @Mark_Noonan. I’ve also joined the Ace of Spades Moron Horde…which is already beating most Twitter for fun, and looks to become ever better. You can actually speak your mind there without worrying about some snowflake taking offense and getting all huffy.

Don Surber points out that the Republicans just might not blow it. Of course, give them time! But, seriously, things are flowing the GOP’s way, mostly because of Trump. The anti-Trump element in the GOP is still there, but I think if the GOP comes out on top this November, that will pretty much end it. The GOP will learn that Conservatism tinged with full-throated patriotism, disdain for Political Correctness and making a few bows to Populism is the way to go.

Byron York neatly encapsulates the entire Mueller Probe.

Have you heard of Tommy Robinson? I have – though I don’t know too much about him. Fundamentally, I don’t care about him, as a person. Lots of people – everyone on the left, but with some hand-wringing Fredocons as well – hate him; but that isn’t important. What is important is that he’s in a British jail, apparently for the crime of reporting about a trial the British government would rather keep quiet. There’s not much we can do about Britain – the so-called “Conservative” government there just congratulated Ireland for voting in favor of abortion – but the object lesson should sink in: what is going on in Britain is precisely what the Left wants to do here.

As regards that Irish vote – seems that only about 1/3 of the Irish remain Christian. The whole program of Irish independence has been shown to be a waste of time. Why be independent from Britain when you’re just going to go on and do what they do? The problem with Europe is that they seem to want to die.

Coverage of President Trump’s Memorial Day speech. He’s really starting to get this whole Presidenting thing.

Trump Demands

Mark Noonan67 Comments

Back around August of 2016, I was talking over the election with the Mrs and, at that time, was figuring that Trump had a real chance of winning. But I was also thinking that the Establishment would pull out all the stops to prevent this. Not, by the way, because of the policies Trump proposed, nor even because of their false claims that he was a racist or any such thing. No, they were afraid of him winning simply because he would be the first President we’ve ever had who owed nothing to the Establishment. That is the key to understanding the amazing level of hatred directed Trump’s way. He doesn’t care what happens to the Establishment.

And the Establishment is corrupt to the bone – and gets away with it simply because no one does anything about it. They can’t – either they are personally compromised, or fearful that their closest allies will be caught up in an anti-corruption sweep. So, everyone just pretends its all good…with only the odd, egregious violator sent up the river, and even then only if such an action won’t harm the Masters of the Establishment, the Democrats. Trump comes rolling in and, being on the right side of the law, himself, sees no reason to worry about investigations…regardless of where they lead.

I don’t know why, exactly, Trump has allowed the Mueller fiasco to continue as long as it has – I can only assume he’s got his own plan, on his own timeline, and has made the calculation that it isn’t the right time to shut Mueller down. But his demand over the weekend that the DOJ look into Obama Administration spying is clearly a shot across the bow. We don’t know what Trump knows – what he has been able to obtain on his authority as President detailing just what happened. We can count on it that many bureaucrats would do all they can to thwart Trump in getting information…but at least some percentage of them still hold to the old, non-partisan ethic of the bureaucracy and so will obey Presidential orders. Trump likely knows a lot about who was doing what and under who’s orders.

But he can’t act precipitously on such information. It is going to be a lot harder to get convictions than most suspect. First off, Justice is riddled with people who will do all they can to blow cases. Secondly, any trials in the DC area would have a juries packed full of anti-Trump people who could easily be lead to saying “not guilty” no matter what. Also, when it all comes out, it has to come in a way very easy for the broad mass of the American people to understand. The MSM will just flat lie about it, of course…but if it is very obvious, even the most blatant lies won’t keep people from understanding the truth.

Big things are about to happen, I think – and what I think they’ll amount to is a full attack on a corrupt Ruling Class. Stay tuned.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan38 Comments

We officially opened up our embassy in Jerusalem – naturally, the Palestinian leadership decided that it was time for some Palestinians to die, and so sent a bunch of them to the border to cause enough ruckus to force the IDF to open fire. This is par for the course – but I don’t think it matters much, except to the poor people forced to die for Hamas. For the larger issue, it shows that Trump really does keep his promises.

Trump has shut down a NASA program to track greenhouse gasses. This is great – if Gore, et al really believe in it, let them pony up the money to prove it. As for me, I want NASA working on space exploration…manned and unmanned missions in deep space (I figure the private companies can take the load on communications launches and low Earth orbit stuff). We should be working, in my view, for a manned mission to Mars no later than 2024. Let’s go!

Millions of dollars are being shipped out of our country – and a lot of it appears to be the proceeds of welfare fraud. It has long been my belief that our slackness in all areas of government social spending has produced massive fraud. My guess – I don’t know – is that one in three dollars (at least) is fraud. This has to be stopped.

Mueller’s absurd Russian indictment – could it be his undoing?

We’re getting more and more of these reports which indicate Comey was not exactly forthcoming about the Flynn case. My thinking has always been that Flynn plead guilty to a minor process crime in order to spare himself a horrible ordeal with bankruptcy tacked on to the end of it. This, as an aside, means we simply must reform our criminal justice system – it isn’t fair that the whole power of government can be brought to bear and even if you’re innocent, you lose. But outside of that, I’m pretty confident that everything out of the FBI and the SC regarding Trump and his people is likely false.

The Middle East is Changing

Mark Noonan24 Comments

So, Iranian forces in Syria attacked Israeli targets and Israel, naturally, responded – a big thing and important in itself, but this struck me:

Bahrain has backed Israel’s right to “defend itself”, following dozens of Israeli airstrikes on Iranian military targets in Syria overnight.

Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid al-Khalifa said on Thursday that it backed Tel Aviv’s military response to attempted Iranian missile strikes on an Israeli army base, early Thursday morning, in the occupied Golan Heights.

“As long as Iran has breached the status quo in the region and invaded countries with its forces and missiles, so any state in the region, including Israel, is entitled to defend itself by destroying sources of danger,” the minister, whose country is a close ally of Saudi Arabia, said on his official Twitter account…

Bahrain is a tiny country and is allied with Saudi Arabia mostly for protection against Iran. So, no surprise that Bahrain would be pleased to see Iran harmed, but it is massively surprising that an official of the Bahrain government would publicly declare Israel – which, officially in most Muslim countries, doesn’t even exist – has a right to self-defense. This is a sea-change in Arab attitudes.

What I think has really broken the log-jam here is the fact that Trump pretty much dropped the Palestinian issue like a bad habit. As long as our actions in the Middle East were always tied to a theory that we had to remain somewhat neutral in the Arab-Israeli conflict – and thus had to pretend that the Palestinian leadership was a key element – we were tied to a false idea, and thus couldn’t really move. Trump moved; now, everyone is moving. Its been a couple decades since anyone in the Arab world really gave a darn about the Palestinians and while no one would object to a permanent peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians, everyone with any sense at all knows the Palestinian leadership has staked out an impossible position (return to the 1967 border, return of “refugees” to Israel and, of course, still rhetoric about marching on Tel Aviv one day), and so there’s no chance of it right now. So, let’s move on until the Palestinian leadership changes.

And as people are able to move on – as people no longer have to pretend that a few fanatics in Gaza have to be appeased in order to do anything – the political realities which have existed at least since the Iranian revolution are rising to the surface…and are being dealt with. I’m not saying they are being dealt with properly – there’s a lot of confusion and an outsider like me really can’t judge all that well – but they are being dealt with. Saudi Arabia is determined to check Iran (wise move, Saudi Arabia) and in that effort, ignoring a powerful Israel which is also determined to check Iran would be foolish. I think we’re still a ways away from an Israeli Embassy in Riyadh…but I don’t think that far away. The times, they are a-changing…and it is Trump, the Agent of Change on Steroids, who is making it happen.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan34 Comments

There have been reports floating about that Saudi Arabia and the Vatican have agreed to build churches for Christians in Saudi Arabia. These reports are currently being denied by the Vatican:

The Vatican has denied making a deal with Saudi Arabia to build churches for Christian worshippers in the Arab country.

Reports in Middle Eastern media claimed a historic agreement had been made between Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran and Mohammed bin Abdel Karim Al-Issa of the Muslim World League.

But a spokesperson for the Vatican said the report was ‘false’…

But the fact that even rumors of such a thing exist indicate the sea-change which is currently taking place in Saudi Arabia under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. We can’t say for sure where all this is going, but it seems pretty clear to me that bin Salman wants to reform his Kingdom. Don’t expect pluralist democracy and casinos in Riyadh any time soon, folks. The Saudi people, themselves, are very conservative in outlook. But I think we will see ever more relaxation of the extremist Islamist activity which has ruled to social and political roost in Saudi Arabia for some decades now. It appears that once upon a time the Saudi monarchy cut a deal with the Islamists (ie, don’t try to overthrow the monarchy, we’ll let you be as Islamist as you like)…now, it seems that this deal is being undone.

There are quite a large number of Christians in Saudi Arabia. I once knew a priest who had actually said Mass for them. All very, very quiet – the Christians keep their heads down and as long as nothing is out in the open, the authorities look the other way. Most Christians there are foreign or children of foreigners…Saudi Arabia having quite a lot of immigrants who do the more difficult and dirty work of living. But, I also understand that even some Saudi natives have converted – which is something almost unheard of in history. Any attempt to actually open a Church in Saudi Arabia will be done with great care on both sides, to prevent an overt reaction. I’ve long said that the cure of Islamism is to have a Church in Saudi Arabia (a Synagogue, too…but let’s take it one step at a time). Once that happens, then there can be real peace between Islam and the West. I hope this all works. I think it will work; but, we’ll just have to see.

Rosie O’Donnell is alleged to have done the same sort of campaign finance violations that got Dinesh D’Souza arrested. We’ll see if there’s equal justice under law.

You know me and polls – but some recent polling indicates that Trump and the GOP are starting to rise against the Democrats. My view remains that the number of GOPers now exceeds the number of Democrats in the United States for the first time since the 1920’s. If I’m right, then the pundit class will be shocked in November. If I’m wrong…so, what? I don’t make my living by punditry.

You might have missed Judge Ellis ripping Mueller’s team a new one:

A federal judge on Friday sharply criticized Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s criminal case in Virginia against President Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and openly questioned whether Mueller exceeded his prosecutorial powers by bringing it.

“I don’t see what relationship this indictment has with anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III in the Eastern District of Virginia said.

There’s nothing to investigate so, yes, Mueller is exceeding his authority – which was to investigate the paranoid delusion of Trump-Russia. So, anything he’s done is going to be outside the scope of that. Nice to see some judicial push back against Mueller’s flailing investigation.

Baghdad isn’t doing so badly these days. We did have a hand in this…and it shows what the Middle East still might become.

UPDATE: NY’s Attorney General has resigned over allegations of sexual misconduct. If you don’t have a Twitter account, you’re really missing out…we’ve got Tweets from Trump from years ago slamming the guy, we’ve got the AG’s Tweets about how he fights for women’s rights…and everyone is having a ball with it. More importantly, this is one of the guys who was supposed to get Trump. Seems to me that everyone who goes after Trump ends up losing.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan23 Comments

I don’t put much stock in polls, but it is interesting that this poll shows Millenials moving away from the Democrats. Makes sense – when all you offer is identity politics and outragey outrage, kinda gets dull. Now, I know a lot of my fellow Conservatives will attack me on this, but let’s nail these kids down for our side for a generation: annul the student loan debt. Or, at least allow kids to go bankrupt on it. The whole thing was merely a scam to get utra-liberal Colleges rolling in dough which they would then use against us. Get rid of it – and get the kids out of debt.

The Israeli Mossad apparently carried out the intelligence coup of all time – getting a massive amount of documents detailing Iran’s nuclear program. The most important thing about it is that it shows Obama was either a fool or an idiot to enter the Iran Deal (but, you already knew that).

Seems that FDR was also looking for a settlement of the “Jewish Question.” Now, to be sure, FDR didn’t even imagine anything along the lines of Hitler’s settlement, but it is interesting to note just how Progressives viewed (and continue to view) things…how eerily akin it all is to the worst aspects of fascist and Communist thinking. For those of us on the right, there never was a “Jewish Question”. Jews are people and are entitled to all the rights and privileges of everyone else…the only “settlement” is to ensure that Jews, and everyone else, enjoys their God-given rights. What they do with them, after that, is up to them. But Progressives don’t look at it like that – people are a “problem” that needs solution. Naturally, they are the only people equipped to solve the problem.

With the possibility of peace looming in Korea, it is important that you get to North Korea before Capitalism ruins it: Kim Jong-un wants a McDonald’s in Pyongyang. To me, this is a disastrously bad idea that only a Communist tyrant could think of. McDonald’s being just terrible! Joking aside, I don’t know how this Korea peace move will work out. I’ve just gotta figure that the North Korean’s are working an angle. But in and among that angle there just might be a desire to no longer be poor and miserable. Reports over the past couple years indicate that even the elites are not getting as much as they used to. Kim Jong-un may believe he can pull off what Deng Xiaoping did in China back in the 70s: keep his regime firmly in control while allowing sufficient economic openness to allow for real growth. South Korea, on the other hand, would be willing to give up a lot, I think, to permanently remove the North Korean threat to their own prosperity. As an America, I’m willing to also give up quite a lot if it really means no nuclear weapons in North Korea. Let’s hope for the best.

Donald Surber takes a look at the upcoming West Virginia Senate battle…and notes that Manchin may end up having trouble against a GOP candidate who was blamed for the deaths of 29 miners. If so, it would indicate the Democrat party is dead in West Virginia.

Ace looks at Jake Tapper’s new novel and it is rather brutal. I hope mine comes off better. Doing the second draft, now, with some extremely valuable input from some people I highly respect. To me, its a good story about to become a great story. But, we’ll see. Hope Ace likes it.

Kanye West and the Great Awokening

Mark Noonan19 Comments

Yes, Awokening. Because we’re getting “woke”, you see? Or, at least, that’s what the hip, young people say. Or, so I’m told.

You might have heard that Kanye West got himself into a bit of controversy. It started when he rose to the defense of Candace Owens; a black Conservative lady. It wasn’t so much an endorsement of her views so much as just a firm defense of her right to have her views. Kanye got a lot of flack for doing that, and then instead of doing the usual celebrity mealy-mouthed apology, he doubled down by Tweeting out a picture of his MAGA hat, signed by Donald Trump. The meltdown among the social media SJW’s has been epic – and enormously entertaining. But there is a more important issue at stake here. It is about people finally waking up to what is really happening.

I don’t really know Kanye West beyond knowing he’s a rap star, apparently of gigantic proportions. But as my musical tastes stopped being hip by about 1990 or so, I’m just not familiar with his work. It could be the best stuff ever, could be the worst – I just don’t know. His fans love him, and on the level of being a performer, that is the only test he has to meet. Plenty of voices on the right are warning people off from embracing Kanye West – I can’t fully determine if this is based on fears that he isn’t truly Conservative or over distaste for his music. As for me, I suspect Kanye is most emphatically not a Conservative and given what I know of rap, I’m fully prepared to find out that he’s done some songs I’d find objectionable. So, what? This is America and you get to put out whatever you want in music, books, movies, etc. Also, I don’t have to limit myself to alliances with Conservatives. If there’s a non-Conservative out there who wants to do something I agree with, I’m ok with that. The only people I absolutely can’t work with are the SJW types…because they hate me and want me destroyed; so, that makes working with them a little difficult.

Outside of all that, the more important thing here is that Kanye understands that there is a group in America which wants to limit him. They are saying to him that because he is black, he can’t hold certain opinions. Kanye rejects that. So does Candace Owens. So, I think, will more and more African-Americans now that someone with the pop-culture stature of Kanye West has shown it to be possible. That is what is important. Additionally, there are tens of millions of people out there who don’t care too much about politics but are entirely ok with people holding different views about politics…and they are watching the left trying to destroy Kanye because he spoke out of turn and they don’t like it. That is what is going to prove revolutionary.

For the longest time, we on the right have not been able to make a dent in popular culture because hardly anyone – and no one at the top of the heap – has been willing to step out of the prescribed, PC requirements of popular culture. James Woods, for instance, is a great actor and he’s overtly right, but he’s also not a major player in the Hollywood game at this time. Kanye coming out and saying, in essence, “you can be black and have different opinions, and even be friendly with Trump” is as if John Lennon had endorsed Richard Nixon in 1968. The massive pushback against it is an indicator of how gigantic this can be: the left is fearful that African-Americans and other Democrat-heavy voting blocs will now start to re-assess their political allegiance. Remember, if just 20% of the African-American vote were to go GOP, there’d be no chance the Democrats could win in 2018 or 2020. They’d be crushed.

But I think we also have to take a step beyond that. We, too, need our Awokening. Everyone does. Nothing in this country is quite as it should be. The rot has gone very deep. We on our side have let a lot of things slide, as well. Yesterday, I came across a Tweet series from a lady describing the interaction her boyfriend had with the police. Read it, it is horrifying. There are things we are completely right about, but also things we’ve been ignoring, likely because they don’t directly affect us all too often, or at all. But that isn’t good enough. We have to be on guard for all. There are some these days advocating an amicable divorce between the Red and Blue Americas. I won’t have anything to do with such talk. First off, because I won’t consign part of my fellow Americans to the unfettered rule of SJW tyrants; secondly, because economic and strategic reasons compel us to remain together. But they also compel us to build a just society – doing so requires that we remove the left from power and keep them removed. Doing that will require a pretty consistent level of political support north of 55% for an extended period of time…and that means we need a lot more people on our side, and to get them we’re going have to start caring about things we haven’t cared about: as noted at the link, we’ll have to start carrying about the phenomena described as “driving while black”. Sure, a lot of SJW nonsense has been put out under that phrase…but I know POC who say they have run afoul of it. And even if it is hard to quantify, it is there…and we should find out why, and seek to remedy it.

Ultimately, everyone of good will is in this together with us, even if they don’t agree with us on every issue. But everyone who has a sense of fairness; who has a desire for liberty; who doesn’t want anyone running their lives – all such people are our allies. And all of us must band together.

Alfie Evans: Moloch Demands Another Sacrifice

Mark Noonan20 Comments

You might have heard of the case, but if you haven’t, Alfie Evans is a British toddler suffering a terrible disease from birth. He’s been on life support and the government has decided that further efforts should not be taken to treat the boy and so have decreed that it is time for him to die – the parents take exception to this, but they don’t count. The kid has gotta die: the government says so…and even if it would cost the government nothing (or, in this case, cost the government even more to prevent health care from being applied), the death must happen.

Where did this come from? The first moment someone said that abortion should be legal. There’s a rather bright line here, folks: we’re not supposed to kill people. Even killing in self defense is still in the nature of “least bad” rather than “good”. Once you cross that line and say that some killing is good, then you have broken down the barrier…and in a short time, all killing will be good.

Remember: abortion was only supposed to be used in the most extreme cases: hundreds of millions of deaths later, we see where that went. We were told at the start of the “death with dignity” push that it would only apply to fully conscious adults who were incurable and suffering untreatable pain. Now, we see it being applied to some poor kid who, though ill, is not apparently at death’s door, given the fact that he didn’t die when they took him off life support. But, the government is resourceful: since the kid didn’t cooperate by dying immediately, I’ll bet they’ll eventually come up with the Schiavo Alternative and just let the kid starve to death. Now, just to get it out of the way: yes, some times health care is pointless. If a person can’t breath on their own, it may be time to die. If they can’t metabolize food and water, it is definitely time for them to die. But in each case, on their own time…if you can’t breath, you’ll suffocate…and if you don’t suffocate in a few minutes, it isn’t moral to have a pillow put over your head to hurry matters along. Can’t eat? Well, try – see if it digests. If it does, you get to live…if it doesn’t, you’ll die. But don’t refuse to give food to a sick person on the theory they can’t digest and/or can’t live much longer anyway.

They will decree our deaths for any and all reasons if we keep down this route. Addict? Die. Not too smart? Die. A little bit too smart? Die. Believe in silly superstitions like Christianity? Die. You think they won’t? You think these people who are killing a little kid – having 30 police in place to prevent the parents from taking the kid out of the hospital – won’t do that as soon as they have the power? What is to prevent them? Moral conscience?

Our only path back from this is to re-affirm that life is sacred – that each, individual human being has dignity and must be treated as such from conception to natural death. Abortion must be banned. The end. If we don’t do that, then these murderers masked in false mercy will eventually sit in judgement on our lives and decide if we get to live, or not.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan28 Comments

I finished the first draft of the novel – will be working on revisions to it for a while, maybe weeks, perhaps a few months. It has been a lot of fun writing it.

Meanwhile, Matt notes that Hogg got himself a book deal:

Just how much fame can one person milk simply for witnessing a tragic event? As if countless television interviews, a nationwide rally, and a highly publicized boycott effort weren’t enough to satisfy the apparently inflated ego of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student David Hogg, he has now scored himself a book deal. The book, titled #NeverAgain, will be published in June by Penguin Random House—one of the biggest publishers in the world.

A lot of people go gleeful when Hannity’s name came up in the wake of the Cohen raid – and nothing better illustrates how stupid our opponents are than this. First off, in thinking there would be anything legally incriminating about Trump in that office and, secondly, in their blind inability to see that if the attorney-client privileged can be violated in one case, it can be in others. It’s like they don’t realize that carefully filed away in law offices across the nation is enough information to destroy the entire Ruling Class.

Luntz did a focus group on Comey and found that a lot of people don’t like his actions. This is the difference, guys: 20 years ago, the MSM – as much a tool of the DNC then as now – would be able to drive a Narrative and make it stick. If this were 1988, Comey would have 75% approval ratings and everyone would consider him a national hero. But that just doesn’t work any longer. The ability of the non-left to get the word out if vastly superior…and the MSM squandered its credibility defending the indefensible. The MSM is still able to have a large effect, of course…but it doesn’t dominate like it used to, and it is getting weaker all the time.

Looks like Trump and Pompeo may have an shot of bringing a semblance of actual peace to the Korean peninsula. Naturally, the left and Never Trump is giving Trump no credit for this – in fact, some are condemning it outright. But, to me, it is a good thing…maybe it doesn’t work and, of course, North Korea will try to cheat. But if something could be done to take down the nuke threat and allow a sense of long-term security there, I’m for it. I’ll even say an agreement to withdraw our forces in return for verified termination of NK’s nuke program will be a good deal. At all events, our foreign policy under Trump is going in a very different direction from Obama…and even from previous Republican Administrations. I don’t know if it will all work – but it can’t possibly be worse than what we’ve done in foreign policy for a century.

Along these lines, David Goldman has an interesting analysis of the foreign policy issues we face vis a vis Russia, Iran, China and the Middle East. It is a good read.

Don Surber notes that in keeping with the rule that if you clash with Trump, you lose, erstwhile Trump opponent Evan McMullin is in some hot water:

McMullin is more qualified to run a McDonald’s than he is to be president.

His campaign for president may be his undoing.

“The Federal Election Commission sent numerous letters to the McMullin For President Committee over the last year warning that the organization risks fines for failing to file and for making errors on financial statements it did manage to submit,” the Daily Caller reported.

Wanted to save us from Trump, can’t even keep his books in order…

Barbara Bush, RIP

Mark Noonan14 Comments

The sad news:

Barbara Bush, in what her spokesman called failing health, had traded further medical treatments for comfort care at home —that included the “alert” 92-year-old former first lady enjoying phone calls, conversation and bourbon.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Office of George H. W. Bush confirmed her death, saying in a statement, “A former First Lady of the United States of America and relentless proponent of family literacy, Barbara Pierce Bush passed away Tuesday, April 17, 2018 at the age of 92.”

Hours before her death, the Bushes’ longtime friend Ambassador C. Boyden Gray, who was White House counsel to Barbara’s husband of 73 years, former president George H.W. Bush, told PEOPLE: “Some of the recent emails indicate she is not quite ready to sign off. She’s answering all of her phone calls herself.”

Now that reminds me of mom – a few weeks before she died, we had all been called out because it was thought she was dying at that time. By the time I had driven from Vegas to LA, she had already stamped and shouted enough to be taken home that my brother was just getting her back into her bed when I arrived. I went in to see her and she looked like death warmed over. I – everyone – thought it was the end. So, we started the vigil…which mostly worked out to sitting around the kitchen table not talking. After a couple hours, I hear a rustle down the hall and there was mom, staggering a bit as she walked into the kitchen. She said not a word, but went to the cabinet, grabbed a large cup and topped it off with vodka. She then looked around at all of us with a “what the F are you guys doing here?” look and then tottered off to her room.

Barbara Bush was a great, strong lady – an excellent First Lady and a credit to the name “American”. My prayers for the repose of her soul and the comfort of the Bush family.