With a mistake like that, how can Perry be president? He'll never be perfect (like me).

Posted by TobyToons (Diary)

Thursday, November 10th at 9:30PM EST

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Why can't the Republicans nominate a genuine right-wing nut?

Verne Strickland Blogmaster / November 12, 2011

CONSERVATIVES JUST NEED TO COME TO GRIPS WITH THE FACT THAT IT'S ALWAYS GOING TO BE A MITT ROMNEY TYPE WHO LEADS THE TICKET.

By Frank J. Fleming

November 10, 2011 - 12:00 am

Conservatives are fired up. Thanks to the Tea Party and Obama’s general left-wing bungling, we’re mad and ready to go for the throat on government spending.

So who does Intrade show as having a 70% chance of winning the Republican nomination for president? Mitt “Social Security is just fine” Romney.

The left is always shrieking that the Republicans are going to nominate some right-wing nut for the presidency; if only that were true. The Republican base’s perfect candidate would be someone who emerged from his bomb shelter toting a shotgun with the sole purpose of dismantling government.

We want someone who can barely restrain himself from violence when talking to the normal useless, arrogant, tax-and-spend politician. Someone who, when given a bill to raise taxes, wouldn’t only veto it but would also publicly burn it and then hunt down the perpetrators who wrote it.

So who have the we nominated for president in the past? John McCain. George W. Bush with his “compassionate” conservatism — not that mean old conservatism that holds people responsible for their actions. Bob Dole. Exciting, right?

Obviously there is some sort of disconnect between what the conservative base of the Republican party wants and who the party ends up nominating for president. The states that go first in the primary and thus hold the most influence — New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, Florida — seem random, but from the results in past elections one has to conclude they were chosen by some sort of RINO genius to ensure that only a milquetoast right-of-center candidate will win the nomination.

Right now the country is a car speeding towards a cliff due to out-of- control spending, and conservatives want a president who will seize the wheel of that car and turn it around. But the Republican we nominate is always someone who only promises to ease up on the gas a little.

The left don’t have this problem. They nominate impractical left-wing nuts for president all the time. In fact, their more centrist candidates like Bill Clinton are the exceptions, not the rule. So why is that? Are the left just more devoted to their cause than we are?

The problem is that at the end of the day, conservatives are just practical people. Why do we have the bomb shelters? We like to survive. And you don’t survive by getting caught up in wild-eyed fantasies.

While we want to nominate some crazed anti-politician, at the end of the day we can’t pull the trigger when we know it just means we’re guaranteeing four more years of having a far left Democrat in charge. Sure, we’d love to send an extreme right-winger to the White House screaming about how Gardasil makes you retarded — if for no other reason than to make the left apoplectic — but we know that’s not going to happen.That’s why we always end up with someone like Mitt Romney, the creator of Obamacare’s predecessor.

Yes, conservatives loathe him, and he loathes us, but he seems like the best chance to win.
And maybe it’s best that there is some loathing between conservatives and our presidential nominee. The last thing we want to do is fall in love with a politician. Because what type of people become skilled politicians? People who hate government? No, those people never learn to work in the system. The people who succeed in politics are those who kinda like government and see it as a great tool for change — i.e., they’re the enemy.

No one gets to the level of being able to run a skilled campaign for president and remains a true conservative. So that’s why conservatives holding onto Reagan as the ideal politician hurts us in the end. We have this fantasy that the move to reduce government will one day be led from the top, but it’s just not going to happen. Anyone who makes it to that level is no longer one of us.

Conservatives just need to come to grips with the fact that it’s always going to be a Mitt Romney-type who leads the ticket, which is why we can’t make the president the standard bearer for conservatism.

When the car is speeding towards the cliff, we have to be on the hood of that car, screaming at the driver, “TURN THIS THING AROUND!” So the ideal candidate for conservatives isn’t some extreme right-winger. It’s a skilled politician we know we can bully.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/why-cant-the-republicans-nominate-a-genuine-right-wing-nut/?singlepage=true

Frank J. Fleming is the author of the ebook "Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything" (coming out November 15th from HarperCollins), writes columns for PJ Media and the New York Post, blogs at IMAO.us, and knows that true conservatives never emerge from their bomb shelters when a Democrat is president.

Veterans Day 2011: Former Marine combat officer Ilario Pantano saddened by renegotiation of veterans' benefits.

From an interview by Verne Strickland with combat veteran Ilario Pantano

Veterans Day is a very hard day for me, as is Memorial Day, or any day when I’m reflecting on service with sacrifice. I’m not thinking about myself but I am thinking about my men and I’m thinking about some of the men who are not with us anymore. That’s always very hard for me, and very somber. 

Veterans Day 2011 is a decade after the beginning of what we know now as the War on Terror. There’s one person who stands out to me, and I think you’ll be writing about in the near future – Michael Spann. In the days after 9/11 I remember watching the TV and breathlessly waiting for news about what we were going to do with this Taliban deal in Afghanistan, and I recall seeing this face of a clean-cut young gentleman who had been a former Marine officer who later was a CIA Special Operations officer, and I was thinking, here was the first American killed in the War on Terror in the search for bin Laden. 


Marine Lieutenant Ilario Pantano with Staff Sergeant Jason Glew, his senior
NCO in Al Anbar

I remember how that affected me, and how it pulled a trigger for me, like I needed to do more. And I was already committed to going back into the Marines and getting back into the fight. Do you know that today people talk about the one percent and the ninety-nine percent? I’m part of the .045 percent –- less than half a percent is the percent of our population that served in some capacity in the War on Terror over the last ten years. That is quite a burden. I think that maybe there was one member of Congress who actually had a son who was in the War on Terror.

I feel that increasingly we have moved away from a society that understands and fully shares the sacrifice. We are quick to give a lot of lip service to the guys and gals in uniform, buy them a free lunch and all of these things. But the bad news is that we are a little bit disconnected from the real cost and the real sacrifices. That’s going to have consequences for us during the next ten, twenty or thirty years. 

My concern is what it’s going to be within our electoral leadership, and in our communities. There are so many things that you know, Verne – consider the wonderful friendship that you shared with me through a dear friend of yours, a pillar of the community, high achiever and a man of strong faith, Mr. Ray McCauley of Wilmington, and by the way he had been a veteran in a foreign war. He chose to take his experiences and make the best of them and make them a force for good in his community, and this is played out in many towns and cities across America.

 But, following up on the percentage of Americans involved in wars we have fought – in the Second World War it was eleven percent, in Viet Nam it was nine percent, then in more recent history, as I said, it was less than half a percent only in this fight in the War on Terror. So if we then raise a warrior class that is populated by such a small percentage of our citizens, it becomes much easier to marginalize things like the promise we made to veterans about their benefits, for example. 

As citizens and taxpayers, we have some measure of obligation to try and help and assist when they need it and provide care when they’re down. But a veteran makes a promise to you and me and all Americans, and what that veteran says is he is willing to serve even to the extent of sacrifice of his life and these are the conditions under which he agrees to make the trade. 

Often what he is getting is next to nothing, it’s low pay, it’s uniform allowance, and a couple of hot meals. But sometimes folks make a decision that they’re going to go and stay in and retire and miss a lot of Christmases and a lot of birthdays and a lot of Thanksgiving turkeys and a lot of time while they’re out somewhere protecting our country. We made a promise to them that we were going to provide them medical benefits, provide them with a basic subsistence for retirement. So that’s the trade-off – some needed benefits after service, and in that service they vowed to risk their lives time and time and time again

The truth is that risk may have happened thousands of times within the course of a single combat tour. Multiply that times many tours, and you know what we’re asking them to do? They’re asking them to hear us and believe us when we say we love you, we honor you for service, now go fight for us and maybe die, or like 30,000 of your brothers, come back traumatically wounded so that they have an impaired ability to work for the rest of your life, or like thousands of others who will experience some sort of terrible psychological trauma, and, oh – sorry, but we’re going to renegotiate the terms of that deal now. You’ve already gone to war, but we are going to renegotiate our solemn contract. 

I’m not talking about pension for someone working in an auto factory that the taxpayer frankly has no business coming to bail out anyway. I’m talking about taking care of patriotic men and women who have been willing to die for you and for me, and we turn our backs on them and we marginalize their sacrifice and their efforts, and frankly it’s not acceptable to me, Verne. What we’re doing now is disgusting, and we should be embarrassed. We should be embarrassed. That’s candidly what I feel.

Pantano's new book out: "WARLORD, BROKEN BY WAR -- SAVED BY GRACE" -- Purchase now to support campaign.

 November 4, 2011

Fellow American Patriot,

President Obama is wagering the success we've achieved in Iraq, the sacrifice made by thousands of American troops, and our diplomatic ties in the region on a "Hail Mary Pass" to save his job.

Last month, the president allowed negotiations with the Iraqi government to collapse, forcing our withdrawal from Iraq despite the advice of our generals on the ground. With his poll numbers plummeting as we head into his re-election year, President Obama saw an opportunity to appease the liberal base that elected him and he took it at the expense of our national defense.

As a former Marine Corps officer who served in this war, I am appalled and dismayed by the president's decision. Not only does it compromise the progress we've made in Iraq, it all but hands Iran the keys to the entire Middle East on a silver platter and jeopardizes America's interests at home and abroad.

America must be protected at all costs. That's why I'm running for Congress against an 8-term incumbent who voted to cut and run from Iraq 7 times. But I need you to stand with me against the liberal defeatism that is systematically crippling our national security.

I've written a book, Warlord: Broken by War, Saved by Grace, about my experience in Iraq in 2004 that will be released in just a few weeks. But this story of love of country, duty, honor and sacrifice is timelier than ever right now, so I'd like you to have it right away. That's why I'll rush you an autographed copy of Warlord for  your immediate donation of $40 or more to my campaign. 

Warlord is more than a war story. It's an unapologetic love story with America and her values. It's a story of God's redemptive Grace saving the life of a grief-stricken battle field commander; it's a story of healing through faith after the war; it's a story of why Obama's decision to quit in Iraq will empower terrorists and enemies of the United States. It's also a story that shows why I am uniquely qualified to defend America in the halls of Congress.

Warlord tells of my dramatic experience that became the subject of national news and leftist attacks on the U.S. military. While I was leading men in some of the fiercest fighting of the war outside Fallujah in 2004, I was forced to open fire and kill two insurgents. The liberal media distorted this act of protecting my men into accusations of premeditated murder. So for killing terrorists on the battlefield I faced criminal charges and a possible death sentence!Fortunately justice was on my side, and after a thorough investigation, the truth prevailed and I was cleared of all charges.

My struggle in Iraq strengthened the importance of my faith and family in my life, and prepared me for the most important fight yet: the battle for the soul of our country. We need men and women in Washington who have the courage to stay true to their values and provide desperately needed leadership. I will do both, but I need you to give me that chance.

So will you stand with me as I prepare for this battle by following this link to make a contribution of $40 or more to my campaign to receive an autographed copy of Warlord?

I know better than most how painful the price of defending our liberty can be. But more importantly, I know with every fiber of my being it's worth it. I am proud to have served my country honorably, and I look forward to doing it again as a member of Congress.

Semper fi,

Ilario Pantano Candidate for Congress, NC-7

P.S. My book, Warlord: Broken by War, Saved by Grace, shows why I am uniquely qualified to lead the battle for the soul of our country in Congress. Barack Obama and his cronies on the left are risking our national security for political gain and they must be stopped. That's why I'm asking you to stand with me for our shared conservative values by making a donation of $40 or more to my campaign. In return, I'll rush you a personalized copy of Warlord before it is available to the public. I remain Always Faithful (Semper Fidelis) to God, Corps, and Country.—Ilario 

Pantano HQ to serve as call center for conservative candidates in municipal elections

Verne Strickland Blogmaster / November 3, 2011

Anyone wishing to make volunteer Get Out the Vote Calls on behalf of GOP Candidates for Local Municipal Offices is encouraged to come to the Pantano for Congress HQ this Friday through Election Day.

***********

Wilmington, NC:  Ilario Pantano, the Conservative Republican for North Carolina’s 7^th Congressional District, announced today that he and his staff will be turning the Pantano for Congress Grassroots Headquarters into a Call Center dedicated to turning out the vote for all local GOP municipal candidates starting tomorrow and going through Election Day.

“It’s time for all of us to work together in unity to promote our local Republican candidates,” Pantano said when announcing the Call Center today.  “We must elect Conservative leaders from City Hall to the White House if we want to get our Country back on the right path.   Our victories in the municipal elections next week will lay the ground work for more victories next fall.”

The Call Center located at 8207 Market St Unit H in Wilmington will be open for volunteer calls from 9:00am to 9:00pm on Friday and Saturday, from Noon until 5:00pm on Sunday, from 9:00am to 9:00pm on Monday, and from 9:00am to 3:00pm on Tuesday, Election Day.  

Volunteers wishing to make calls may stop by during any of these times on these days.  Calls will be focused on turning out the vote for  GOP candidates running in Wilmington such as Justin LaNasa, Republican nominee for Mayor, and the Republican nominees for Wilmington City Council, Frank Meares, Josh Fulton, Napier Fuller and Neil Anderson as well as any other GOP municipal candidates from across the 7^th District who would like to use the Center to make calls.

“I would like to encourage everyone to get out and vote in next Tuesday’s municipal elections,” Pantano said.  “We have some great Conservative candidates running here in Wilmington and across the 7^th District and they deserve our support.”

Contact:
Andy Yates
(704) 467-0795
andy@pantanoforcongress.com

###

ACORN officials scramble, firing workers and shredding documents, after exposed as players behind Occupy Wall Street protests.

Published November 03, 2011
By Jana Winter
FoxNews.com

• 
  FOX News
  Nov. 1, 2011: Jonathan Westin, organizing director, New York Communities for Change, sneers as he attends a protest in New York City.
  
  
  Officials with the revamped ACORN office in New York -- operating as New York Communities for Change -- have fired staff, shredded reams of documents and told workers to blame disgruntled ex-employees for leaking information in an effort to explain away a FoxNews.com report last week on the group’s involvement in Occupy Wall Street protests, according to sources.

NYCC also is installing surveillance cameras and recording devices at its Brooklyn offices, removing or packing away supplies bearing the name ACORN and handing out photos of Fox News staff with a stern warning not to talk to the media, the sources said.

“They’re doing serious damage control right now,” said an NYCC source.

NYCC Executive Director Jon Kest has been calling a series of emergency meetings to discuss last week’s report—and taking extreme measures to identify the sources in their office and to prevent further damage, a source within NYCC told FoxNews.com.

Two staffers were fired after NYCC officials suspected them as the source of the leaks, a source told FoxNews.com. “One was fired the day the story came out, the other was fired on Friday. (NYCC senior staff) told everyone that they were fired because they talked to you,” a source said.

NYCC spokesman Scott Levenson denied that anyone was fired for talking to the press.

FoxNews.com’s report identified NYCC as a key organizing force behind the Occupy Wall Street protests. Sources within the group also told FoxNews.com NYCC was hiring people to carry signs and join the protests. NYCC -- a nonprofit organization run almost entirely by former ACORN officials and employees --did not reply for comment prior to the publication of the initial article, but later posted a statement on its website dismissing the article and denying that it pays protesters.

A source said that immediately following publication of the FoxNews.com report staff were called into the Brooklyn office for meetings headed by NYCC’s organizing director, Jonathan Westin. Westin handed out copies of the article and went through it line-by-line, the source said.

Staffers were also given copies of photos of Senior Fox News Correspondent Eric Shawn and three other Fox News staff members, including this reporter.

“They reminded us that we can get fired, sued, arrested for talking to the press,” the source said. “Then they went through the article point-by-point and said that the allegation that we pay people to protest isn’t true. That’s the story that we’re sticking to,’” Westin said, according to the source.

The source said staffers at the meeting contested Westin’s denial:

“It was pretty funny. Jonathan told staff they don’t pay for protesters, but the people in the meeting  who work there objected and said, ‘Wait, you pay us to go to the protests every day?’ Then Jonathan said  ‘No, but that’s your job,’ and staffers were like, ‘Yeah, our job is to protest,’ and Westin said, ‘No your job is to fight for economic and social justice. We just send you to protest.’

“Staff said, ‘Yes, you pay us to carry signs.’ Then Jonathan says, ‘That’s your job.’ It went on like that back and forth for a while.”

During the meetings, NYCC Deputy Director Greg Basta provided Westin with the copied photos of Fox News reporters to hand out to staff members, the source said. Basta told staffers they might be asked about the article when out in communities working on campaigns or when calling people by phone, the source said.

“They told us if people bring up the article, we’re supposed to say the source and all the stuff in there came from a disgruntled ex-employee who’s not working with us anymore.”

NYCC is also monitoring its staff’s behavior, cracking down on phone use and socialization. Officials have ordered all papers -- even scraps -- to be shredded every night, the source said.

“And all the supplies—everything around the office that said ‘ACORN’ -- is now all in storage until this blows over,” the source said. “People literally have to cover up the cameras on the back of their cellphones in the office. Now there’s no texting in the office, no phone calls in the office. They tell us to take our phone calls out into the waiting room where there’s an intercom, and then they turn on the intercom to hear our conversations. They’re installing new cameras and speakers around the building so they can hear everything. It’s almost like working at Fort Knox.”

NYCC officials declined repeated requests to respond to specific questions about the organization’s response to last week’s story. The group on Wednesday instead sent this statement, attributed to NYCC board member Jean Sassine:

"New York Communities for Change participates in protests, direct action, social activism and campaigns that promote social and economic justice.  We see FOX as the enemy to those efforts.

"For the record, this is consistent with Fox attacks on Van Jones, Shirley Sherrod, George Soros, Citizen Action, Planned Parenthood and all those who stand for social justice.  Once again, FOX entertainment poses as FOX News. Once again, FOX makes a series of false, unsubstantiated claims and accusations which have no basis in fact. Once again, through a series of sources FOX structures a story which is nothing but a series of lies."

Westin did respond to some questions a day earlier, when approached by FoxNews.com at an NYCC event in Manhattan."

When asked if a staff member was fired because people thought he’d talked to the press, Westin said, “I have no idea.” When asked about handing out photos of Fox News employees, he said, “I have been? No, I don’t think I have been. That wasn’t me.”

Westin did acknowledge NYCC staff have met to discuss last week’s report. “People talked about it,” he said. “People are interested.”

He also deflected a question about the allegation that staffers were being told to blame the report on disgruntled staffers, telling this reporter to contact him later via email.

Responding to reports of pushback from staffers who said they were being paid to go to the protests, and reports NYCC had recently hired people as canvassers or organizers and then sent them to the protests, Westin replied repeatedly “We don’t pay people to protest.”

Westin later did not reply to two emails asking for follow-up.

Anti-Christian bias in Obama's Health and Human Services? Oh yeah!

Verne Strickland Blogmaster / November 3, 2011

Cardinal O'Malley of Boston greets President Obama.

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

By William Donohue / SperoForum

 

In September, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ended funding to a program operated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) that helps victims of human trafficking. Their decision followed a lawsuit by the ACLU contesting the right of the USCCB not to refer trafficking victims to abortion and contraceptive services. The USCCB maintains that this entire episode evinces an anti-Catholic bias. The Catholic League agrees.

 Many HHS career staffers recommended that the USCCB program be funded; they cited scores by an independent review board. But in a highly politicized ruling, Obama appointees rejected the advice of these veteran civil servants.

It is imperative that others follow the lead of disgruntled HHS staffers and contact the HHS Inspector General’s office with their complaints [click here].

This comes on the heels of several assaults on religious liberty. The administration said Obamacare wouldn’t threaten religious liberty, yet it wants to mandate that Catholic healthcare providers offer sterilization and contraceptive services. It also showed its stripes when earlier this year it decided it would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act, a bill that defines marriage as being between a man and a woman. And just recently, the administration argued before the Supreme Court that government shouldn’t be barred from policing the hiring policies of any church.

The lust for abortion is so thoroughly ingrained with many in the Obama administration that they will use any means possible to force the pro-life community to accept its radical agenda. They must be resisted. At stake is the right of a world religious body to practice its tenets with impunity. Moreover, the campaign to kill babies in the wombs of women who have already been victimized is doubling down on death.

http://www.speroforum.com/a/APFVLDNKJO43/AntiChristian-bias-in-Obamas-Health-and-Human-Services?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email11-3-2011

http://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/report-fraud/index.asp

Filed under christianophobia, usccb, abortion, adoption, politics, barack obama