The first in a series of profiles of black American conservatives who have stepped up to run for Congress in Republican primaries putting the lie to Keith Olbermann’s racist rants about Tea Party activism and participation across America.
Les Phillip is a Republican candidate for the Fifth Congressional District of Alabama.
Les Phillip was born May 29, 1963, to Randolph and Elvina Phillip in the tiny Caribbean country of Trinidad – Tobago. The Family moved to St. Croix before immigrating to the United States.
After the plane ride from Trinidad to St. Croix, young Les was given a glimpse into his future. While traveling, he told his mother that he wanted to be a pilot. His mother accommodated her son’s aspiration by requesting that the pilot of their aircraft meet Les and explain to him what it would take to become a pilot someday. The pilot told Les to excel in math and science and fly in one of the branches of the U.S. military.
In 1971, the Phillip family came to the United States and settled in Baltimore, Maryland. Les graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, a public school, in the spring of 1981. That summer, he would pursue his childhood dream and enter the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he met his wife, the former Merle Ford of Montclair, New Jersey. At the age of 26, Les achieved his goal and earned his Naval Aviator wings.
One primary challenger is Les Phillip. He is running against Republican Parker Griffith in Alabama’s fifth congressional district. Mr. Phillip, a black businessman and Navy veteran who immigrated with his parents from Trinidad in his youth, got his start in politics speaking at a tea-party protest in Decatur, Ala., last year.
“Somebody had to speak,” he told me, “so I stepped up.” He did well enough that he was invited to speak at another protest in Trussville, Ala., after which things sort of snowballed. Of the tea partiers, he says, “Their values are pretty much mine. I live in a town in North Alabama where there are plenty of blacks driving Mercedes and living in big houses. Only in America can someone come from a little island and live the dream. I’ve liked it, and that’s what I want for my children. [But] I saw the window closing for my own kids.”
Mr. Phillip has gotten tea-party endorsements, as well as one from Mike Huckabee. The Republican establishment is siding with Mr. Griffith, who only recently switched from Democrat to Republican. That support is perhaps understandable as realpolitik, but it’s not the sort of thing that sits well with tea partiers, who think that too much realpolitik is what rendered the Republican Party corrupt and ossified over the past decade.
The Kamikaze pilot of the second World War was this nation’s first confrontation with the terrifying specter of a suicide cult, but it was an aspect of an elite military culture perpetrated by uniformed, armed members of a national combat force in a declared war. America has never faced the equivalent situation of Canadians or Mexican or her own citizens mingling as civilians in public places with bombs surreptitiously strapped to their bodies.
It is the meaning of all-consuming terror in full.
Rachel Abrams responds to this by first quoting a Palestinian Authority school textbook:
“O heroes, Allah has promised you victory. . . . Do not talk yourselves into flight. . . .
Your enemies seek life while you seek death.
They seek spoils to fill their empty stomachs while you seek a Garden [Paradise] as wide as are the heavens and the earth. . . .
Death is not bitter in the mouth of the believers. These drops of blood that gush from your bodies will be transformed tomorrow into blazing red meteors that will fall down upon the heads of your enemies.”
[Reading and Texts Part II, Grade 8, p. 16. Schoolbook currently in use in PA schools.]
There it is—the deep, the fundamental nightmare of the Israelis: “Your enemies seek life while you seek death.”
How are the citizens of the Jewish State—for whom, as for all Jews, the essential (if difficult to fulfill) demand from God is Choose Life And Be Grateful For It (see Jerusalem Girl below); who’d desperately love to be sending their children off to grapple with literature, or physics, or even macramé after high school, but must send them off to grapple instead with an adversary that hides in hospitals and mosques and uses women and children as shields; who mourn as a nation every child of Israel killed in action; who cherish every drop of shed Jewish blood as if it were the living breathing person; whose enemies slosh through the blood of their own fallen brothers as if it were so much rain water—how are Israelis ever going to make peace with people whose death-worship is so wide and so deep that they’ve turned mothers—who’ve felt unborn life fluttering, hiccupping, kicking; and later the indescribable pleasure of the scent and feel of their babies heavy with sleep in their arms; the first enthralling toothless smiles; the first glorious infant belly laughs; heard the أمي, “Ommy!” for the first thrilling time; and wiped away the first tears of hurt—into zombies who seek and celebrate the deaths of their own children?
Jennifer Rubin of Commentary brought this to my attention and she makes reference to the fact 54 U.S. House members just delivered a letter to President Obama requesting he pressure the Netanyahu government in Israel to open the border with Gaza releasing into Israel all manner of terrorist factions like Hamas. This sort of vile and disgusting behavior on the part of American politicians is deeply embarrassing. Rubin also notes many of these congressmen either voted nay or present when the most important chamber of our legislative branch resolved to emphatically reject the repugnant Goldstone Report resulting from the United Nations’ ongoing kangaroo court of Middle Eastern affairs.
I was invited to be the opening speaker at Saturday’s CPAC session. I had accepted but then, to my amazement, I learned that the John Birch Society would be one of many co-sponsors. This takes the big-tent idea many steps too far for me. So, I withdrew. Apparently, others were not so moved. That’s fine. But it wasn’t for me. Bill Buckley and Barry Goldwater, among others, chased the Birchers from the movement decades ago. And they’re not a part of the movement. So, to give them a booth at CPAC was boneheaded.
and this on Glenn Beck:
Moreover, when he does discuss politics, which, ironically, is often, how can he claim today that there is no difference between the two parties when, but for the Republicans in Congress, government-run health care, cap-and-trade, card check, and a long list of other disastrous policies would already be law? The GOP is becoming more conservative thanks to the grass-roots movement and a political uprising across the country, which has even reached into New Jersey and Massachusetts. Why keep pretending otherwise? My only conclusion is that he is promoting a third party or some third way, which is counter-productive to defeating Obama and the Democrat Congress. These are perilous times and this kind of an approach will keep the statists in power for decades.
as well as the trap newcomers’ often fall into:
Finally, Beck is fond of congratulating himself for being the only or the first host to criticize George Bush’s spending. This is demonstrably false. I not only attacked his spending, but the creation of the Homeland Security Department, the prescription drug add-on for Medicare, his “moderate” tax cuts, as well as his nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, “comprehensive immigration reform,” and so forth. And I was not alone — Rush and Sean did the same, for example. And as someone who fought liberal Republicans in the trenches when campaigning for Reagan in 1976 and 1980, I don’t need lectures from Beck, who was nowhere to be found, about big-spending Republicans. But this is not about me, or Beck, or Beck’s past drunkenness (which he endlessly wears as some kind of badge of honor). It is about preserving our society for our children and grandchildren. Beck spent precious little time aiming fire at Obama-Pelosi-Reid in his speech, and it is they who are destroying our country.
After being slammed for not disavowing the 911 conspiracies, it seems Debra Medina is being a little cautious when responding to questions about people driving airplanes into buildings.
(dallasnews.com) Republican Debra Medina said Friday that the decision of a man fighting the IRS to crash his airplane into a building in Austin reflects “the hopelessness many in our society feel.”
“There is a sense in all of our country that we are not on the right path,” she told San Antonio radio host Jack Riccardi. “That’s why this race is so important.”
Medina said she did not sympathize with the pilot of the plane.
“I grieve for him. I’m very sympathetic for his family, for the families of those innocent victims in that building,” she said.
Okay, that is fair enough but:
When Medina did not initially condemn the suicide crash, Riccardi asked whether she agreed that the pilot’s decision was wrong, whatever someone thought about the abuses of government.
“Absolutely,” she said. “You cannot excuse that kind of behavior.”
C’mon Debra get out there and do some condemning huh? It’ll make people like Beck and Riccardi happy.
A true American hero died Saturady. Controversial, irascible, but always American, one of the men who I most wish I had met passed at the age of 85. I will not debate his “I am in charge” comments after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, but I will quote the words of former Secretary of State George Schultz:
“I think of him as a patriot’s patriot . . .. No matter how you sliced him it came out red, white and blue. He was always willing to serve.”
President Obama praised Haig on Saturday as a public servant who ”exemplified our finest warrior-diplomat tradition of those who dedicate their lives to public service.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Haig ‘’served his country in many capacities for many years, earning honor on the battlefield, the confidence of presidents and prime ministers, and the thanks of a grateful nation.”
The Jerusalem Post noted that Haig “considered himself a friend of Israel and understood its geo-security predicament as we moved through the years.”
The Post added:
Later in his life, Haig evolved into a firm believer in Israel as a powerful deterrent to terrorism. In 2001, he told the Post that it might not be a bad thing for Israel to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
“If the Israelis do launch a preemptive strike [on Iran], it may be saving the world a lot of trouble,” he said.
The four-star general’s career led former Secretary of Staste Madeleine Albright to state:
”Alexander Haig devoted his career to serving our country, both as a soldier and as a diplomat. He was a great American patriot and an inspiration to all who defend and cherish freedom.”
Ultimately an advisor that Henry Kissinger found “indispensible,” Haig became a target for some of his rivals in the Reagan Administration, who apparently felt him too strong-willed, and perhaps not political enough. Personally, among other things, I will remember Haig for possibly saving American from even more trauma in the closing days of the Nixon Administration, when he reportedly not only guided the government during those tumultuous days, but prevailed upon Nixon to resign, and convinced Gerald Ford to pardon his predecessor, truly putting an end to “our national nightmare.”
There will surely be those who will revile Haig in death, and ridicule his efforts on behalf of this country. As for me, I can only hope we have more Alexander Haigs in our future.
It is well known Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Charles Darwin and Stephen Jay Gould belong to the Seventh Realm of Panglossian Princes.
Who or why would anyone believe them ?
It is obvious Man did not evolve from apes.
Everyone knows he evolved from a dog.
I love to read Mark Steyn. I appreciate his sense of humor, and his command of the English language. I also generally agree with his point of view.
Such is the case in his recent column concerning Iran’s growing nuclear threat. Here Steyn compares our governments seemingly endless ability to foment new rules governing every minor [...]
When asked by the press, in what they must have considered a certain gotcha moment, President Ronald Reagan responded to a question about Log Cabin Republicans announcing their support of his administration by answering, to paraphrase, ” But they chose to support me, I didn’t announce my support for them “.
I have never understood why [...]
