TalkJunkie

The last in the 2007 series of Freedom Concerts took place where it all began five years ago, at Great Adventure in Jackson Township, New Jersey. The weather semi-cooperated. At least I was reasonably dried off by concert time.

Sean again broadcast his show from the park, rotating the audience each hour to give as many as possible a chance to view the program.

Guests included Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham and of course Oliver North, whose Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund uses the proceeds to endow scholarships for children of service people killed or permanently disabled.

The afternoon also offered book signing opportunities. Ingraham’s new book, “Power To The People”, in the stores as of Tuesday, was available at the show.

Also broadcasting from the park a little earlier in the afternoon, was Andrew Wilkow. He did his show over at the opposite end of Great Adventure, on the arena stage.

Rain Doesn’t Dampen Spirits

Despite a few afternoon downpours the sellout crowd took full advantage of the park’s offerings before filling the arena for the evening concert. As in past years, the weather finally cooperated and cleared out before the show.

WABC morning show host Curtis Sliwa led off the concert guest list. Curtis was followed by Newt Gingrich and then a surprise appearance by the Decider-In-Chief, although it may have been one of his many body doubles. Hannity brought out Elisabeth Hasselbeck to say a few words. She enjoyed some professional competition from her young daughter who accompanied her onstage.

Rousing the Crowd – United We Stand Divided We Fall – What Don’t They Get?

Bob Grant, who just returned to the airwaves at WABC, briefly spoke to the crowd. He was then followed by Rudy Giuliani and Laura Ingraham, and then the show opened with Lee Greenwood.

After Greenwood’s opening performance, Hannity brought out the always shy Mark Levin for some advice on beating back the liberal hordes.

Ann Coulter was one of many who spent the day there, making another appearance on the arena stage.

Rimes Returns to Jackson

The show resumed with the always amazing LeAnn Rimes, who performed at the show two years ago. LeAnn’s set was followed with Lt. Col. Oliver North bringing out his fellow Fox News correspondent and friend Geraldo Rivera.

Actor Jon Voight, who has appeared on Sean’s show a few times, also made a surprise appearance at the concert. North then introduced three of the real stars of the evening. Three of this years scholarship recipients, each told Ollie a little bit about their school progress.

Montgomery Gentry, headlining the show, did a fantastic powerful set to finish off a great night.

Was Hannity Really Singing?

Hannity appeared to join in towards the end of the program, but I think he may have convinced the sound engineer to keep his mike down.Thats about the only time that could happen with the fellow who just asks three hours a day of his fans. Oh and one hour of tv, daily.

And just a little bit more time for his Sunday show too. That’s not too much.

Students and Soldiers the Real Stars of The Show

Ollie and three of the students receiving scholarships for this school year.

“Bush deserves heavy blame for intentionally concealing from the American people the clear nature of Saddam Hussein and his regime, and for convincing himself that friendly relations with such a monster would be possible, and for persisting in this effort far far beyond the point of folly.

Iraq was clandestinely procuring nuclear weapons technology through a global network of front companies. Did all of this make any impression at all on President Bush? . . when he was told that this nation with a record of terrorism, continuing, was making a sustained concerted effort to obtain weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical and biological.”

Monica Crowley posts a great video of the younger slimmer hypocrite charging Bush 41 with ignoring Saddam’s terrorism.

On a weekend where we had one of the nation’s major propaganda networks broadcasting active duty soldiers “questioning their mission,” I discovered a radio program that every week speaks with soldiers executing their mission. Troop Talk Radio, hosted by Captain Trip Bellard III, has taken on a mission of giving “his fellow service members a way to express their views to the American public.”

Bellard, a West Point grad who served in Iraq, brings frontline experiences from the war on terror to listeners in an increasing number of markets. The show is syndicated by Jones Networks and broadcasts live Sunday Mornings. Podcasts of recent shows are available on the show’s website, trooptalkradio.com, as well as a list of current affilliates.

This is a call-in show and offers the live listening audience the opportunity to speak directly with troops in Iraq and elsewhere. The program deals with the daily details of soldiers lives, their tasks, mindsets and war strategies. But the show also spends significant time dealing with how the troops view the political battles at home. One program earlier in the month brought together by phone, a soldier in Iraq, with his wife in the States and talk of how “pissed off” he is at the way the questioning public sometimes speaks to his wife.

Congressman Duncan Hunter, who has declared his candidacy for the presidency, was a recent guest. Hunter, addressing the domestic end of the conflict, spoke of how he mostly sees the public responding very appreciatively of the uniformed forces. His son, a Marine who has served two Iraq tours, joined in later in the show with his own experiences including the controversial aborted assault on Fallujah. It was an interesting multi-generational exchange.

Its a shame that only a fraction of the public that hears the purposely distorted crap from the mainstream media will ever get to hear the great people on this show. Spread the word.

THE topic of discussion on all of next week’s talk programs. This review gives a good account of the two-night film which begins Sunday and also shows why its bound to be controversial.

The review by Govindini Murty is from Accuracy in Media.

Al Qaeda? Not in this case. Its the stinking traitors wearing black robes and carrying ACLU cards. “Disconnected from reality”, Levin called it, a political policy speech in the form of a judicial ruling.

I would normally post this audio in the audio links section above. But this deserves emphasis. These are domestic enemies, so blinded by hate for the Bush administration, that they would do ANYTHING to undermine the defense of this country.

Mark Levin was fantastic in his opening comments Thursday. You can thank the great MarkLevinFan.com for the audio.

Don’t expect to see this General on the weekend news programs. Lt. General John R. Vines, who from January 2005 to January 2006 led all coalition forces in Iraq, has stated that Al Qaeda in Iraq and its leader, Zarqawi may be about to leave Iraq, having conceded defeat.

Vines contends that Zarqawi’s mistakes, including excessive civilian violence discredited him with the Iraqi people. The general said that the terrorist group’s failure to disrupt national elections and a constitutional referendum last year indicates that their strategy had failed, and that “They no longer view Iraq as fertile ground to establish a caliphate and as a place to conduct international terrorism.”

We can’t have generals claiming that the enemy has made mistakes. No, we only want to give credence to the Clinton-era politico-generals who want to undermine and drive out American military leaders, specifically Secretary Rumsfeld. So expect to only see the Zinni gang on the weekend shows. And “If they were so opposed to what Rumsfeld and crew were doing, I wonder if in fact they shouldn’t have put their stars on the line when they served”, says McQ.

Mark Levin spoke about this in depth on his show tonight and referred to a past Victor Davis Hanson column recounting the errors and mistakes of World War II. Hanson deals with the generals and might haves and what ifs in his NRO column of yesterday.

Levin audio now available from MarkLevinFan.com.

On little green footballs we have a story centered around the Council on American Islamic Relations, their defense of the port deal, and the “title holder” to their Washington headquarters. It seems that the individual who put up just under a million dollars for CAIR’s building is UAE defense minister Gen. Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum. The point made in the excerpted article from FrontPage Magazine is that Cair has quite a conflict of interest in their port deal defense. Of course, this also highlights deeper problems with CAIR and who they are truly representing.

What I find interesting is that our good friends in the UAE have another very direct link to al-Qaida.

So we have the UAE Royals as good hunting buddies with Binney, kinda like Cheney and his political soul-mate hunting buddies. Maybe Cheney can give Sheik Maktoum some hunting tips for the general’s next outing with his good-ol pal Bin Laden. You can read the full article at FrontPageMagazine.com.

I’m fed up with the disparate cast of characters portraying anyone opposing the port deal as Islamo-phobic or racist. We’re at war. Why isn’t the standard – what will this deal do to improve security?

The [expletive] port sale that I commented on a few days ago is still being reviewed by the administration. I find it incredible that this issue is getting only scattered attention, though press coverage has picked up over the past two days. Rep. Peter King of New York has expressed his concerns to the White House today.

from Newsday – Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., said, “If our ports are the most vulnerable targets for terrorism and if we are at war, as the president says, we should be overly critical of handing over management of our ports to any foreign countries, post 9/11.”

Mark Levin briefly addressed the issue on his show today saying flat out, “this should not go through . . . this is a clear-cut national security issue.”

today From WEBCommentary by Diane Grassi –

A New York Post opinion piece yesterday began, “Do the feds really want to place the ports of New York and New Jersey in the hands of a Middle East country with ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers?” And in an ironic twist we have Sen. Charles Schumer appearing to take the same side as Mark Levin, saying, “this is a case where it’s better to be safe than sorry.” He added that, “we should be very careful before we outsource such sensitive homeland security duties.” He’s probably been diligently searching for an issue to utilize the recent “outsourcing” talking point.

And the New York Daily News yesterday noted that “ports are considered one of the nation’s weakest security links, with only about 5% of the cargo coming in inspected.’ The article also said that the Port Authority, as landlord, may also have a controlling interest.

Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, and a frequent contributor to the John Batchelor program weighed in today in an article in the New York Sun. Among other considerations, Gaffney addressed the issue of energy security, noting, “a very large proportion of the nation’s oil imports come through the Atlantic and Gulf State ports that the UAE company hopes to take over.”

He also mentions a potential conflict that has been mentioned in earlier articles. It seems a former director of operations for the Dubai company recently became the administrator of the Tansportation Department’s Maritime Administration.

Another Sun article ended with, “The chairman of Dubai Ports World, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, told the Guardian newspaper that references to terrorism at a general meeting of the British company’s shareholders on Monday were “bad,” and that such stereotyping could not be condoned.” Well I don’t give a god damn about political correctness. And what cannot be condoned is placing diplomatic niceties above security. I asked in my last post, does this help our nation’s security or hinder it?

Other comments from the New York area, which is only one of the six ports involved -

“This shouldn’t happen. It really boggles the mind.”

And in better New Yorkese – “On its face, this looks like [expletive] insanity to me,”

Now that is well stated.

What the hell is this? Some, unfortunately, not those in Washington, are concerned about the possibility of WMD coming through sophisticated border tunnels. Now this country is going to cede major US port operations to Mid-Eastern control? This is lunacy. If you wanted to do everything you could possibly do to improve security, would you allow US ports to be operated by a company from the most unstable part of the world with the highest percentage of people that worship death and want to kill Americans?

According to the AP, the United Arab Emirate company Dubai Ports World is poised to take over port operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia. The UAE company’s purchase of British P & O may be approved as soon as Monday.

If this happened during a Democratic administration, the Republicans would be screaming about it just like the transfer of missile technology during the Clinton years. Lets hope the Longshoremen’s union is better at security than the government.

from the Press of Atlantic City -“Does this pose a national security risk? I think that’s pushing the envelope,” said Stephen E. Flynn, who studies maritime security at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s not impossible to imagine one could develop an internal conspiracy, but I’d have to assign it a very low probability.” Okay what probability would he have assigned five years ago for 19 terrorists to hijack four airliners, attack the freaking Pentagon and demolish both towers of the World Trade Center?

We can’t control security leaks in the administration and military. What expectation can there be of any port security measures (if there are any) maintaining confidentiality? Does this help our nation’s security or hinder it? These are not normal times. The worst case scenario is horrific. The best case is simply another question mark. Nuts.

Spot on.

“More Americans should not die because the peace-at-any-cost fringe and antigovernment paranoids still fighting the ghost of Nixon hate George Bush more than they fear al Qaeda.” – Debra Burlingame

Michelle Malkin says, “Debra Burlingame speaks for me.”

And in a totally different type of endorsement – “I wholeheartedly endorse the Cindy Sheehan for Senate campaign.”

Of Mass Destruction

No, I don’t expect to see this astounding photograph or story on the news tonight or in any of the leftstream media publications. Not on their agenda. Gateway Pundit has their tune. Pitiful how the media has spun the election story.

Andrew Sullivan recently had one the best quotes I’ve seen, amazingly from The New York Times, “‘I voted then, for Saddam, of course, because I was afraid,’ said Jabar Ahmed Ismail, 75, living on a $100-a-month pension from a lifetime as an oil pipeline repairman. ‘But this time, I came here by my own choice. I am not afraid anymore. I am a free man.’”

The Ed Schultz Show, “America’s #1 Progressive Talker”, will not debut on Armed Forces Radio today, the military possibly having come to their senses at the very last moment. “In my heart, I’m furious about this” Schultz said at the start of his program today. Schultz, who broadcasts a widely syndicated show out of Fargo, was notified early this morning of the decision by Alison Barber, Assistant Secretary of Defense.

Barber had been the object of derision on Friday’s show, regarding her briefing the participants in the President’s pre-election teleconference. Schultz and other leftists portrayed something sinister in her telling the officers just awful things like take a breath before speaking and who should take which questions. Is it a major “get back” as Ed says? Maybe, but I’d hope it was a more reasoned decision.

“I deserve to be on there” stated Ed today. No Ed, you don’t, not even for “just one hour.” I don’t care how much of a good ol’ boy you portray yourself as. Your hunting and fishing, and the commercial viablility of your show is not more important than the message you would send to the troops. An opposing view as one caller termed the show is wonderful stateside. But you don’t need an opposing view on the battlefield.

We don’t need you preaching to the troops that their commander-in-chief is “the worst president we’ve ever had.” We don’t need your callers portraying our troops as murderers and Bush as Hitler. We don’t need you condemning their mission. We don’t need an opposing view to goals, progress or success. Stateside fine, but not on AFRN. Why not just put Al Jazeera on Armed Forces Radio? Maybe for “just one hour.”

Hannity had a great call yesterday from a serviceman on a two week leave from Afghanistan who said, “This country, I don’t even recognize . . . to use a natural disaster to divide people is disgraceful.” Sean added a brief comment about some of the early people to place blame. The soldier said his wife advised him, “Don’t watch the TV, you’ll only get pissed off.” He then added, “we want to be there. We’re winning.”

Talking about walking through the airport in uniform he described how people would come up to him and say they’re sorry.

That’s something I find disconcerting. What the hell are they sorry about? That he has to be there? That this country sent him there? He’s carrying out a mission that he understands and believes in. Too bad so much of the public does not. That poorly communicated mission is this administration’s biggest failing and something that the President should be sorry for. But this soldier, like most, is a “sheepdog”. (See the prior post by that name) And he quickly set them straight.

“Don’t be sorry,” he advised them. “We want to be there, and we’re winning.”

Our troops in the Pacific found themselves up against a ferocity they had never before encountered . . kamikaze pilots on suicidal missions, soldiers who fought to the last man, commanders animated by a fanatical belief that their nation was ordained to rule the Asian continent.

. . . And in the end, the victorious children of democracy would help their defeated enemies rebuild, and

bring the taste of freedom to millions.

One of the first to recognize this truth was a member of Japan’s surrender delegation aboard the USS Missouri. He went to the ceremony expecting to hear how the allies intended to take their vengeance on the defeated. Instead he heard General MacArthur speak about a future of freedom for Japan, and he realized the true source of America’s military might. He wrote, “We weren’t beaten on the battlefield by the dint of superior arms; we were defeated in the spiritual conquest by virtue of a nobler idea.”

. . . As freedom advances across a troubled part of the world, it is once again opposed by fanatical adherence of a murderous ideology. And once again, the stakes are high.

from SignOnSanDiego.com News Metro — Transcript of President Bush’s speech at North Island