This morning I attended the Veterans Day tribute at the Titan Student Union at CSU, Fullerton.  It lasted for about two hours. 

There were traditional ceremonies and songs at the beginning and end, with some speeches in between.  A Scottish bagpipe player served up a good rendition of "Amazing Grace" and Taps at the conclusion.  CSUF Pres. Milton Gordon made some fine remarks, as did an Orange County judge who was master of ceremonies.

Amazingly, the large room was half empty, even though the main speaker was Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez (retired), who gave a good speech.  He's been in Orange County the last few days.  Perhaps the turnout was limited because it was announced as an event to primarily honor Latino veterans who have served during Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.  A few brief tributes were given to other living veterans.

I was a bit surprised that so much emphasis was placed on Latino veterans, instead of just American veterans, regardless of ethnicity.  Isn't that what America is all about?  Folks from a variety of ethnicities have honorably served in the armed forces throughout our history. 

While it's fine to be proud of one's ancestry and original culture, shouldn't we move beyond cultural categories as we honor current and past veterans for their service on Veterans Day and Memorial Day?

Although the celebration was good overall, it would have been far better if there had been fewer references to ethnicity, and more references to liberty and our shared vision of American ideals.  We are all Americans, regardless of our cultural backgrounds.  God bless America and all of our American veterans.   

Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove, District 46) just went from Yes vote to Undecided column on the Health Care debate in the U.S. House of Representatives according to Capitol Hill newspaper "The Hill".

How much pressure and phone calls did the Congresswoman get in her district and Capitol Hill offices?  Is she afraid of a tough re-election against Assemblyman Van Tran (R-Costa Mesa, District 68)?

Over at the Press Release Juice blog, proprietor Admin Pedroza galloped fancifully down the conspiracy trail, speculating that Democratic Anaheim Councilwoman Lorri Galloway is behind the 34th Senate District candidacy of Republican Sue Perez. Challenging OC's tax-hiking state Senator is simply impermissible to Correa's Renfield.

Dan Chmielewski over at TheLiberalOC.com helpfully dialed a few digits and asked Lorri Galloway directly if she had anything to do with Perez runnning:

“The speculation that I was involved in recruiting Sue Perez to run against Senator Correa is absolutely untrue. I was just as surprised as others when I heard she was a candidate. Although, Sue and her husband Ed are friends whom I hold in high regard, I have not had a conversation with them about her candidacy.”

As Dan points out in his post, it toook him less time to track down Admin Pedroza's rumor than it did for Admin to cook it up.

I found this bit of news in the Local section of the OCR yesterday.  On Saturday, Nov. 7th, at 10:00 a.m., Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez (retired) will be speaking at the Student Union building at CSUF.  He will make the keynote speech at the event to honor veterans that have served in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Following the speeches, the General will be available to sign his book starting at noon.  The book is entitled, "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story."  Sanchez was the first coalition forces commander in Iraq following the invasion and liberation of Iraq.  He was succeeded by Gen. Casey, then Gen. Petraeus, and now Gen. Odierno is the current commander.

Latino Advocates for Education and CSUF are jointly sponsoring this event.  For more info, call 714-225-2499, or you can research the event at latinoadvocates.org.  The Student Union is located at 800 N. State College Blvd., in Fullerton.  God bless our military veterans.

Yes, THAT Jeff Flint! The founder of Red County Placer... you see, Jeff is a partner in the leading political consulting firm in America defending family values.

The MSM gives Schubert-Flint PA (the 2009 Winner of some consultant award - the equivalent of the MVP in Baseball, though) some grudging praise.

Their article points out repeatedly that people really believe in Gay marriage until Frank Schubert figured out in some right-wing focus group that running ads depicting the homosexual children's books was the ticket.

You can read the article here

Far be it from me to say - but the people that wrote/edited this article seemed irritated. I wish I could have been there when they finally decided to include the sentence about how Gay Marriage has lost all 31 times it has gone to the ballot. Of course, they leave out that the Courts (again, like with abortion, rights that nenver existed before for criminals/terrorists/illegal aliens) were and are the only way to force Gay Marriage on society.

But, I digress - oh and notice that this article gets buried in the late friday wire.

Thank you Schubert-Flint for defending the fabric of society.

It's a long-time member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, it has been pushing hard to join the European Union, it has been viewed as a model for secularism in the Muslim world, and it's .... planning to host an indicted war criminal next week.  It's Turkey.  This morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, wanted for war crimes over the genocide in Darfur, will visit Turkey ("Turkey Set to Host President of Sudan").  I can assure you Turkey won't be pressuring Bashir to stop the killing in Darfur.   

Turkey and Sudan say their relationship is all about their economies.  And trade has quadrupled over the past three years.  But deeper currents are connecting.  Next week's visit is the latest sign of Turkey's shift away from the West and towards political Islam.  Radical Islam is integral to the ruling party in Khartoum, Sudan.  Last month, Turkey pulled the plug on a routine military exercise with NATO and Israel's air force.  Exercises with Syria are planned though.  Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose Islamist AKP party came to power in 2003, recently called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "our friend."  Ahmadinejad will be in Istanbul too, by the way, as part of the one day Organization of the Islamic Conference meeting.  As Darfur will be ignored, so too will Iran's nuclear drive.    

This isn't just my hunch.  One Middle East analyst recently noted, "the AKP's foreign policy has not promoted sympathy toward all Muslim states.  Rather, the party has promoted solidarity with Islamist, anti-Western regimes (Qatar and Sudan, for example) while dismissing secular, pro-Western Muslim governments (Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia)." (WSJ editorial: "The Turkish Temptation").  Present-day Turkey's embrace of rogues abroad shouldn't surprise, given that Ankara has moved to "tax" domestic independent media and jail political opponents.  Readers of this space know that aggressive attitudes abroad and bad behavior at home closely track (see North Korea, Iran).

This isn't some two-bit country with a growing radical population.  This is Turkey: a country of 77 million strategically sitting between east and west.  This is a NATO ally, with the accompanying security commitments and access to military technology.  We don't need any more foreign policy headaches, but Turkey's political and social trends are quite troubling indeed.