Video on Loretta Nall Speech at VFW Candidate Forum (58:43 Windows Media Video)

Invocation:

Good evening everyone good evening and thank you for being here with me tonight in beautiful Wetumpka, Alabama so that we might exercise our right to participate in the political process.

What good are rights after all if you don't exercise them?

I know that I for one am grateful for the right to engage and participate in the political process and to openly discuss what I think are much needed changes to our state government without having to worry that someone is going to blow us up.

It isn't everywhere in the world that you can do such a thing.

Let's hear it for our veterans that brave band of brothers, who have fought for that right and who have so graciously given their time, resources and effort so that we might gather here at the VFW Post this evening and talk a little Alabama politics.

I am a native Alabamian. I was born in historic Talladega, Alabama, home of the fastest racetrack in the world, and I later moved next-door to Ashland in Clay County, which is also the home of Governor Riley.
In my humble opinion, Ashland is one of the most beautiful places in the entire state.

I have traveled a great deal over the course of my lifetime. My husband was stationed in Germany in the early 1990's and our young son and I joined him there. While Europe is nice to visit I wouldn't want to live there again. It's just a little too far from home.

Later we were stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, TX and while Texas is a lovely state with many people who reminded me of the good folks back home and, it is closer to Alabama than Germany is, it was still too far away. So when my husband's tour of service ended in 1996 we packed up our family and struck out for the house.

In the last few years I have traversed the US, Canada and I even spent 10 days in the war-torn jungles of Colombia, South America studying US foreign policy.
There are some beautiful places in this world but there is no place on earth more beautiful to me than Alabama.

From her rolling Appalachian foothills to her beautiful waters of the Mobile Bay she offers everything you could want in a place to raise a family.

If you like the fast pace of a city life there is Huntsville with her Space and Rocket center, Birmingham with its with world-class universities and medical institutes, the historic capitol of Montgomery, richly steeped in southern tradition and political history, and the beautiful sparkling gem of Mobile and her bustling seaports on the Gulf of Mexico.

Or, if you are like me and prefer to live in a place where you can pee off the back porch without your neighbor spotting you then Alabama offers that in abundance. She is home to the greatest small towns in America.

Towns where we still know everybody we see walking down the sidewalk or we know someone they are related to. Towns where everyone throws up their hand in greeting when they pass each other driving down the road, unless of course it's college football season and your cars are decked in opposing fan gear.

No other place I have ever traveled to offers that and it is one of the things I love most about Alabama. There is no place like my native home.

Alabama has seen her share of troubled times. From the civil war to the civil rights movement and her sacrifice and strength cannot be questioned.

She and her great citizens have always met challenges head-on, overcome them and become a better place and people for it. I am confident that this trend will continue as we address the challenges that are facing us today.

In order to effectively meet challenges we must know what they are so lets talk about some of the most important ones facing Alabama today.

The problems Alabama faces today can be summed up in three words.

Republicans and Democrats.

I call them the "twins" because there is virtually no difference between them anymore. Anyone trying to squeeze into the space that separates the twins is likely to be crushed to death.

Under Republicans and Democrats government has grown to enormous proportions. This has resulted in the increasing intrusion into the most personal details of our private lives and the creeping erosion of our constitutional rights and civil liberties.