In our on-going series of speeches by notable conservatives, Bargain Citizen Media brings you John Fund of the Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Fund has long been a favorite in our camp. A rarity, while operating in the world of talking head establishment types he stays well grounded and seems right at home in the trenches with grass-roots Americans.
He was instrumental in exposing ACORN over the last few years, providing outstanding investigative journalism that contributed to their eventual downfall. For that alone we are grateful.
In this speech from this year’s Americans for Prosperity DAD Summit on July 1, Fund delivers a positive message to grass-roots activists and offers some relevant historical insight on America’s political cycles.
And those are ‘conservative’ critics, too. All I can say is I am glad I’m on Levin’s team. I wouldn’t want to get kicked up one side of the street and down the other by him like this. Listen while he makes the case for a country class lady we need representing the people’s will in the halls of Congress. Hat tip to the awesome guyz at TheRightScoop.
Sarracuda rips the lamestream media here in this audio clip from Sean’s show on September 1. Why not? They started it.
Humility and Honesty About Iraq Can Inspire Trust
by Sarah Palin | Tuesday, August 31, 2010 at 4:01pm | Facebook
Later today, President Obama will speak to the American people about Iraq. No doubt he will laud the “end of major combat operations” by the date he randomly selected some 18 months ago. His press secretary Robert Gibbs also gave us a glimpse of what else he might say, telling the Today Show this morning that ”What is certainly not up for question is that President Obama, then-candidate Obama, said that adding those 20,000 troops into Iraq would, indeed, improve the security situation, and it did.”
Iraq in 2010 is indeed a very long way from Iraq in 2006, when violence and sectarian conflict threatened complete chaos. But then-candidate Obama did not support the course that brought us here as his press secretary now claims. On January 10, 2007, when President Bush announced the surge, Senator Obama insisted that the surge would actually increase sectarian violence: “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq are going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.” Barack Obama was clearly in opposition to the surge strategy.
Had we followed the course advocated by then-candidates Obama and Biden, the Iraq war would be remembered now as a crushing defeat for the United States and our allies. Al Qaeda in Iraq and Iranian supported extremists would have claimed victory over America – with grave implications for us throughout the region and the world. Iraq would have descended into full-scale civil war. Iraq’s neighbor would have likely been drawn into the conflict. Parts of Iraq would have been made a safe haven for terrorists to train and plan for attacks far beyond Iraqi borders.
Fortunately for all of us, these events did not occur. They did not occur because America changed strategy in Iraq. President Bush decided to increase our forces in Iraq and pursue a counterinsurgency strategy – a course long advocated by Republicans in Washington. This “surge” policy in 2007 was opposed by many – most notably and adamantly by Senators Obama and Biden. In October 2006, as the violence was spiraling out of control, Senator Obama actually advocated reducing our troop presence: “It is clear at this point that we cannot, through putting in more troops or maintaining the presence that we have, expect that somehow the situation is going to improve, and we have to do something significant to break the pattern that we’ve been in right now.”
The difference between politics in the west and the middle east: A western politician lies in public and tells the truth privately; a middle eastern one tells the truth in public and lies in private diplomacy meetings.
Official description: GOPYoungGuns | August 30, 2010
On September 14, the Young Guns Book will go on sale. It’s time to move America forward with a clear common sense agenda for the common good. The Young Guns are changing the face of the Republican Party and putting us on the road back to the American dream.
Sibyl West: I like Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan as much as the next person. I would say that I hope they succeed except that Maharushie has reminded me that “Hope is an excuse for doing nothing.” Hope is not a strategy for success.
When I first saw the video above my reaction was an odd mixture of pride and dread; a fear that – for all the hopeful rhetoric – they were destined to fail. There I said it.
My question is: If they are putting us back on the road then where does the road lead? What are the objectives? If you say prosperity I would retort that Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton have prosperity and look where it has gotten them. They are a stain on our national reputation that people in other countries point to with disdain, and rightly so.
Is prosperity the be all and end all of life? Does indulgence of the senses really lead to happiness and success in life? If it were we wouldn’t have so many affluent dead beats and jaded losers being misguided by hysterical pseudo-religions like global climate change (among others) or falling into drug and alcohol abuse.
What if success is something entirely different? What if it is a connection to God and living according to His direction in a fulfilling, meaningful relationship with Him? And how will Cantor and Ryan lead us there if they escew so-called social issues and focus only on fiscal ones? Sorry but I’ve never seen the other fellow before and with his white hair he hardly strikes me as a young gun, with all due respect.
One more thing. Prosperity always attracts thieves. Strong national security has to be an equally big part of the deal.
I’m from Missouri. Show me.
On the same topic:
The Joe Miller Lesson Applied to the GOP Congressional Leadership
By Lee Cary | September 02, 2010 | American Thinker
On the cusp of what is trending toward a significant Republican victory in November, the current GOP congressional leadership has yet to make a compelling case that they’re ready to lead a majority party. They appear satisfied to run as “Not Democrats.” That may be enough to win, and maybe win big, but will it be enough to keep winning in 2012 and beyond?
The current GOP leadership would be wise to heed the lesson of Joe Miller’s victory over Senator Lisa Murkowski in the GOP primary in Alaska and announce that they’ll step aside if Republicans gain a majority in one or both Houses of Congress. Congressman John Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell do not represent the leadership of a GOP with a longer-term future. They are the generals of the last political war, where they lost. And their party, if it wins, will have done so mostly because the Democrats lost support.
You’ve heard the axiom that generals prepare to fight the next war as they fought the last.
[...]
Like McClellan, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have beenhistorical placeholders as the GOP maneuvers through an internal struggle to define what it stands for in opposition to a Democratic Party firmly controlled by its left wing. Let’s face it – McConnell and Boehner are not the leaders of the GOP’s future. They fought and lost the last war against the Democrats, and they appear generally disengaged in the battle underway to define the GOP of the future.
[...]
In comparison, congressional Democrats have a clear plan for America. Their problem is that most Americans don’t support it. Unfortunately, congressional Republicans have a plan for America that many of us don’t clearly perceive. And one of the most important functions of leadership in any endeavor — be it war, business, religion, or politics — is to clarify the objective and make a compelling case for achieving it.
It is a fact that various politically “extremist” imams and Islamist community organizers are often in exile from their home countries but end up happily doing their thing and gaining followers in Britain or America. Fethullah Gulen is one such distinguished character. I have posted about the Harmony Science Academy before and the camouflage they put forward is so effective that even otherwise very intelligent local government people in Texas are fooled by them. You know who you are.
That’s why I was very encouraged to see this article in Texas Insider. Don’t miss this one. And yes, as is usual these days, our tax dollars are funding their nefarious activities to destroy our civil society.
Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN, Texas – In recent months the American public has been made increasingly aware of a secretive foreign network of Islamic radicals that operates dozens of charter schools on U.S. soil. These schools are linked to an extreme Islamist, Fethullah Gülen, who was charged with trying to create an Islamic state when he tried to overthrow his own Turkish government and enforce Sharia Law.
He came to the United States and lives in self-exile in rural Pennsylvania where he controls his transnational empire.
The core of his network is his educational institutions, which include primary and secondary schools, universities, and student dormitories. This vast international network has been instrumental in the advancement of the Islamist political agenda in Turkey.
In a 2006 interview on Kanaltürk TV Nurettin Veren, Gülen’s right hand man for 35 years, said, “These are like shop windows. Recruitment and Islamization activities are carried out through night classes….Children whom we educated in Turkey are now in the highest positions. There are governors, judges, military officers. There are ministers in the government. They consult Gülen before doing anything.”
Are the charter schools Gülen’s shop windows in the U.S.? Why is Fethullah Gülen so dangerous?
PARIS – Friday in Paris. A hidden camera shows streets blocked by huge crowds of Muslim worshippers and enforced by a private security force.
This is all illegal in France: the public worship, the blocked streets, and the private security. But the police have been ordered not to intervene.
It shows that even though some in the French government want to get tough with Muslims and ban the burqa, other parts of the French government continue to give Islam a privileged status.
An ordinary French citizen who has been watching the Islamization of Paris decided that the world needed to see what was happening to his city. He used a hidden camera to start posting videos on YouTube. His life has been threatened and so he uses the alias of “Maxime Lepante. ”
Unemployment is hovering around 9.6%, our national debt is over $13 trillion, one-in-six Americans are receiving some type of government help, and Barack Obama just wrapped his sixth vacation in less than two years as President.
It was a waterfront vacation in Martha’s Vineyard that cost around $50,000 for the rental property alone. (This doesn’t count the cost of staff, of Secret Service protection, or the transport and fuel for the 20-vehicle caravan that traveled with the President all over the island.)
If a sixth vacation of this magnitude seems a bit pretentious to you, you’re not alone. Even David Letterman, the decidedly liberal host of the “Late Night Show,” thought the trip so ostentatious at a time like this that he said: “[Obama will] have plenty of time for vacations after his one term is up.”
Like to go and help out? Pat and the gang are blockwalking this Saturday – breakfast included! Contact Michele (michele@patmcguinness.org) if you would like to get a list for your neighborhood.
You can also put a sign in your yard. Contact Blaine (blaine@patmcguinness.org) and the campaign will deliver a sign to your house.
Joel Brinkley |Sunday, August 29, 2010 | SFGATE.COM
Islamic law also forbids homosexuality. But the pedophiles explain that away. It’s not homosexuality, they aver, because they aren’t in love with their boys.
Western forces fighting in southern Afghanistan had a problem. Too often, soldiers on patrol passed an older man walking hand-in-hand with a pretty young boy. Their behavior suggested he was not the boy’s father. Then, British soldiers found that young Afghan men were actually trying to “touch and fondle them,” military investigator AnnaMaria Cardinalli told me. “The soldiers didn’t understand.”
All of this was so disconcerting that the Defense Department hired Cardinalli, a social scientist, to examine this mystery. Her report, “Pashtun Sexuality,” startled not even one Afghan. But Western forces were shocked – and repulsed.
For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means “boy player.” The men like to boast about it.
“Having a boy has become a custom for us,” Enayatullah, a 42-year-old in Baghlan province, told a Reuters reporter. “Whoever wants to show off should have a boy.”
Baghlan province is in the northeast, but Afghans say pedophilia is most prevalent among Pashtun men in the south. The Pashtun are Afghanistan’s most important tribe. For centuries, the nation’s leaders have been Pashtun.
Analysis and talking points by State Rep. Wayne Christian, Texas District 9 Background: Weaknesses in Texas’ Existing Constitutional Spending Limit Texas’ economy is one of the strongest in the nation, due in large part to the spending restraint of legislators which helps keep taxes low and the private sector vibrant. Fiscally conservative legislators are assisted [...]
Poor Richard: With Thousands of American special forces and support troops still in Iraq, the danger is now a new Iran-Iraq war. Ideologically, Iran sees an opportunity to expand their power and bring Iraq back under “true” Islamic control. Iran’s temptation to invade Iraq will be great. Their temptation to kill remaining “undefended” American support [...]
“I traveled State Highway 71, skirting Columbus, all the way to El Campo. Along the way, I saw at least a dozen large Donna Campbell signs, easily visible and readable from the highway, but only one sign for Doggett!!!!! Don’t you love it? Looks like the constituents are getting real restless and eager to fire [...]
Matt Taibbi should do RADIO, not TV – for obvious reasons. Dana “Slash” the fearless Warrior Princess uses facts and data to unmask her opponent and destroy his pseudo-PC pretention, reminding us all why we habitually avoid CNN. Via Big Government. Hat tip Poor Richard.
Press release from the Texas Veterans Commission AUSTIN, TX – According to the most recent data provided by the Department of Labor, Texas has helped more veterans get jobs than any other state in the country. The Texas Veterans Commission assisted 47,556 veterans enter the workforce in a 12-month period – the highest number of [...]
