George W. Bush Visits Africa & Hugs BLACK Children; Romney Would NEVER Do That!

Former President Bush and wife Laura visit Africa to promote initiative to fight cervical, breast cancer

George W. Bush and Laura Bush wrapped up a week-long trip to Africa Friday, where they visited Zambia and Botswana promoting an initiative to fight cervical cancer and breast cancer in the countries.

As part of the charity initiative the Bushes helped open medical centers providing cancer screenings, visited sick children at an orphanage, and met with Peace Corps members, according to the George W. Bush Presidential Center.

The couple returned to Texas on Friday, Bush's 66th birthday. Dozens of photos from the trip were recently released on the Center's website.

The Bushes spent Independence Day in Lusaka, Zambia at the University Teaching Hospital, announcing a new health research center. "On our country's birthday, it is important to remember the blessings of freedom and the blessings of being an American, and to give back," Bush said during remarks at the hospital, according to the website.

The $3 million women's health initiative, called Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon, is a partnership between the George W. Bush Institute, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, UNAIDS and Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Since leaving office the former president has turned his attention to health issues in Africa -- which he calls a "labor of love" -- raising some $85 million for cervical cancer programs, Catholic Online reported.

Zambia has the second highest number of cervical cancer cases in the world, and many of the women are also living with HIV.

"The saddest thing of all is to know a lady's life has been saved from AIDS but died from cervical cancer," Bush said in a statement announcing the health program.

During his presidency, Bush launched an initiative to fight HIV/AIDS in sub-Sahara Africa.


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Sources: NY Daily News, Political Articles, The Bush Center, TV2Africa, US News, Youtube, Google Maps

George W. Bush & His Texas-Sized White House Portrait (Videos)

Bush thanks Obama for inviting his "rowdy friends" to portrait hanging

Former President George W. Bush brought a light-hearted tone to the unveiling of his official White House portrait on Thursday, winning over an audience of friends, family and former colleagues with jokes.

Standing beside his portrait after its unveiling in the White House East Room, Mr. Bush chided the cheering audience to quiet down and thanked President Obama "for inviting our rowdy friends to my hanging."

The new portrait "brings an interesting symmetry to the White House collection," the former president said. "It now starts and ends with a George W."

A portrait of former First Lady Laura Bush was also unveiled. Both will become part of the permanent White House collection.

It is a tradition for the sitting U.S. president to host a portrait unveiling for his immediate predecessor, and on Thursday, Mr. Obama had some jokes of his own.
Mr. Obama said he would always remember the kind words Mr. Bush had for him during the transition from one administration to the next. "Plus, you left me a really good TV sports package," the president said to laughs. "I use it."

Mr. Obama and Mr. Bush had only kind remarks for one another, with Mr. Obama noting, "We have our problems politically, but the presidency transcends these differences."

The current president noted that after three and a half years in office, he has "a deeper understanding" of the challenges his predecessor faced. He commended Mr. Bush for "conveying extraordinary strength and resolve" after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and for understanding that issues of national security and economic stability transcend partisan politics.

First Lady Michelle Obama thanked Laura Bush for serving as "a wonderful model of strength and grace" as first lady and as a mother. Mrs. Bush thanked the first family and joked, "Nothing makes a house a home like having portraits of its former occupants staring down at you."

Those in attendance for the unveiling included Vice President Joe Biden, Mr. Bush's daughters Jenna and Barbara, former President George H.W. Bush and former First Lady Barbara Bush, Mr. Bush's former adviser Karl Rove, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The portrait of Mr. Bush shows the former president standing in the center of the Oval Office with his right hand resting on an armchair that was made for the White House in 1818. Over his right shoulder hangs a 1929 western painting, A Charge to Keep, by William H. D. Koerner. Mr. Bush used the same title for his 1999 memoir.

The portrait of Laura Bush shows the former first lady in the White House Green Room, which she helped refurbish in 2007.

The portraits were painted by John Howard Sanden, who received the first John Singer Sargent Medal for Lifetime Achievement from the American Society of Portrait Artists in 1994.


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Sources: CBS News, Google Maps

Laura Bush Reveals She Was Poisoned, Talks Pelosi & Reid

Laura Bush Says She, Former Pres. George W. Bush May Have Been Poisoned


Former First Lady Laura Bush is suggesting she, her husband, and several aides were poisoned during a 2007 visit to Germany for the G8 summit -- one of several new details in the former first lady's forthcoming memoir, "Spoken from the Heart."

Due to be released May 4 but acquired early by The New York Times, Mrs. Bush says she and former President George W. Bush became mysteriously sick on the Germany trip to such a degree that the president became bedridden. According to Mrs. Bush, doctors and the Secret Service investigated the possibility that a poisoning had occurred but were unable to make a definitive conclusion.

News reports filed during the event show that the White House did disclose that Bush missed a series of morning sessions at the summit because he had contracted an apparent virus, but White House officials did not provide further details at the time.

"We never learned if any other delegations became ill, or if ours, mysteriously, was the only one," Mrs. Bush writes in the new book, according to the New York Times excerpts.

The memoir also covers Mrs. Bush's involvement in a tragic 1963 car collision in Midland, Texas, that killed a schoolmate. The spotty details surrounding the accident became fodder for Bush's opponents during his first run for the White House, and Mrs. Bush rarely addressed the matter in public.

But Mrs. Bush covers the accident extensively in the new memoir, revealing that it occurred after she ran a stop sign in a rush to a drive-in theater. She was 17 years old when her car collided with that of Mike Douglas, who was pronounced dead when he arrived at a hospital.

"In those awful seconds, the car door must have been flung open by the impact and my body rose in the air until gravity took over and I was pulled, hard and fast, back to earth," she writes, according to the Times.

"The whole time ... I was praying that the person in the other car was alive. In my mind, I was calling 'Please, God. Please, God. Please, God,' over and over and over again," Bush also writes.

According to The New York Times, Mrs. Bush writes that she and her friends were talking when she ran the stop sign, but she also says the intersection was highly dangerous, the road was dark and the stop sign was small.

Bush says she was guilt-ridden and lost her faith for "many, many years."

"It was the first time that I had prayed to God for something, begged him for something, not the simple childhood wishing on a star but humbly begging for another human life. And it was as if no one heard. My begging, to my seventeen-year-old mind, had made no difference. The only answer was the sound of Mrs. Douglas's sobs on the other side of that thin emergency room curtain."

Mrs. Bush also takes aim at some of the former president's most vocal congressional critics, specifically Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Reid once called Bush a "loser," while Pelosi said he was an "incompetent leader."

"The comments were uncalled for and graceless," Bush writes. "While a president's political opponents, as well as his supporters, are entitled to make what they see as legitimate criticisms, and while our national debates should be spirited, these particular worlds revealed the petty and parochial nature of some who serve in Congress."


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Sources: ABC News, AP, CNN, Google Maps

Laura Bush Praises Pres. Obama's SCOTUS Nominee Sonia Sotomayor

Huffington Post----

WASHINGTON — Former first lady Laura Bush says she's pleased that President Barack Obama nominated a woman for the Supreme Court.

"I think she sounds like a winner and a good nominee," Bush said of Sonia Sotomayor, the federal appeals judge Obama picked.

Mrs. Bush said in an interview broadcast Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America" that "as a woman, I'm proud that there might be another woman on the court. I wish her well." She was interviewed in Dallas, where the Bushes moved after their White House tenure.

On another subject, Mrs. Bush said her husband will have no comment on any Obama decisions. He feels that as a former president, "he owes President Obama his silence on issues and there's no reason to second-guess any decisions he makes," Mrs. Bush said.


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Sources: Huffington Post, Wikipedia, Google Maps