Although my co-blogger voted for Newt Gingrich for President in the recent South Carolina primary, I would only vote for the former Speaker were he the Republican nominee running against the failed incumbent.

I expect I will have more to say about his candidacy in due time — about a testiness similar to that of the man who seeks to replace (which said Democrat manifested most recently in Arizona).  Or his commitment to Reaganite conservatism — at least in the abstract, he very much supports the ideals the Gipper espoused (but his criticism Mitt Romney’s professional endeavors calls that into question).

Having interned for Newt, I have seen him up close, having gained, as a result, a great respect for his intellect and his energy.  He is very much a man of ideas and that is perhaps his greatest strength — and his greatest weakness.

It is a strength because it shows his imagination, his ability to think outside the box, to believe things possible that others see as figments of an optimistic conservatives’ imagination.  He doesn’t just repeat ideas, like some politicians repeating talking points.  He speaks from the heart.

Not all his ideas, however, are good ones.  And he’ll often bounce those off whatever audience he can find, be it his congressional staff, a reporter, on a panel discussion or at a campaign event.  And sometimes those, well, apparently loony* ideas, make him appear a little, well, eccentric.

Writing about last night’s debate, Michael Barone pretty much summed it up:

Gingrich seemed to me to morph into his expansive “grandiose” mode, which he enjoys immensely and in which he tends to say many interesting things. Interesting, but not necessarily vote-winning. His proposal advanced on the stump yesterday for a moon colony and admission to the Union as a state if it reaches a population of 13,000—kind of interesting to think about . . .

Interesting to think about yes, but not beneficial to his public image.  Or his presidential campaign.

* (more…)

Religion of Peace Alert! (via @BillyHallowell)

A disturbing trial came to a close this week in London, England, after three men were convicted of distributing pamphlets that called for gays and lesbians to be murdered. The hateful fliers were disturbing at best. One of them, titled, “Death Penalty?,” showed a mannequin that was hanging from a noose and said that gays should be sent to hell.

“The death sentence is the only way this immoral crime can be erased from corrupting society and act as a deterrent for any other ill person who is remotely inclined in this bent way.”

The leaflet continues: “The only dispute amongst the classical authorities was the method employed in carrying out the penal code.”

It goes on to offer burning, being flung from a high point such as a mountain or building, or being stoned to death as suitable methods.

It’s okay, the real threat to gays (according to American gay leftist/progressive types) is Rick Santorum. 

Move along, nothing to see here.  Except the truth.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Our friends at GOProud get the nature of Ron Paul’s appeal. In his critique of the president’s State of the Union address, Christopher R. Barron, Co-Founder and Chief Strategist for the group offered a nice synopsis of what kind of leader libertarian Republicans want:

The American people – gay and straight – deserve a President who will encourage free enterprise to grow the American economy and create jobs. We need a President who understands that government doesn’t have all the answers – indeed often government is the problem. We need a President who will defend individual liberty and keep Americans safe, at home and abroad. In short, we need a new President.

Nice to see the leader of a gay group commend free enterprise and the ideal which allows it to flourish — individual liberty. And to make clear that we need replace a failed incumbent.

If the eventual Republican nominee succeeds in making clear the libertarian nature of Reaganite conservatism — and runs on that platform, he could do as well among young voters as the Gipper did in the 1980s.  Bear in mind that twenty somethings today as in the Reagan era seem to have a thing for septuagenarians who talk about freedom.

Ron Paul may be a flawed messenger, but his message resonates.  College students, Glenn reports, are becoming more libertarian.  They may calls themselves “liberal”, but that may be because it’s just “cool” to be liberal in college.  They tend to support a live-and-let-live attitude that defines the Reagan wing of the GOP.

It behooves the GOP to make clear to young voters (indeed to all voters) that is the party of individual party — and to support policies to that end.  And to remind people that Democrats favor policies which limit the choices individuals can make.

Caught this last night on their home page:

UPDATE: It’s not just AOL; NYT quotes “retired Cuban leader” Castro.  What is it with liberal journalists who quote this tyrant as if he is some wise old man?  (Could he be his views of the GOP correspond with their own?)

. . . why didn’t he submit legislation to the 111th Congress when the Democrats had a majority in the House and a super-duper majority in the Senate (filibuster-proof for six months)?

And why aren’t our friends in the legacy media asking him about this oversight?

Question came to mind as I was reading Rush’s response to Obama using Warren Buffet’s secretary as a prop:  ”There’s something inherently unfair about the Republican tax code, as though Warren Buffett’s secretary is eating pork and beans while sitting in the sewer grate, while her boss is flying around on his NetJets planes. And, lo and behold, she was up there!”  Read the whole thing.

Republican tax code?  Democrats had full power for two full years and didn’t try to reform it.  So, shouldn’t we be calling it a Democratic tax code?

FROM THE COMMENTS: chad writes:

Republicans need to do a better job explaining double-taxation with dividends and capital gains. The way it is now, people hear about how so-and-so made all this money and only paid 15% while some much poorer person paid 20% or more, never getting the explanation as to how this is an apples-to-oranges comparison so long as we have high corporate income taxes that take a huge cut of profits before they become dividends or capital gains.

Indeed.

“Can you imagine,” Hugh Hewitt asks, “if George Bush had told Karl Rove to get Howard Dean nominated and to spend millions to do so?”

The blogger cites a story in the Orlando Sentinel which would have gotten national attention had the incumbent’s much maligned predecessor done just that:

The Democrats are targeting Mitt Romney as if he were already the Republican nominee running against President Barack Obama, with campaign ads, Internet videos, daily news conferences and dozens of news releases attacking the former Massachusetts governor.

Traditional Democratic partners are jumping in, too. Both theAmerican Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’ and Service Employees International Union’s political-action committees are running their own TV commercials in Florida this week — attacking Romney.

Gingrich and the other two Republican candidates, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Texas U.S.Rep.Ron Paul, are being all but ignored by the DNC and its allies. Instead, they’re hammering Romney harder even than his rivals are, paying for TV and radio ads saying that Romney changes his positions on issues such as abortion; that his hard-line positions on immigration would be “devastating” to Hispanics in a state full of them; that his business record was characterized by “greed.”

Hugh contends that “Obama fears Romney so he is trying to eliminate him early“, adding that “In the old days it would be called a ‘dirty trick,’ but MSM loves the president and won’t criticize his operation.”

Via Powerline where Scott Johnson observes that Sentinel reporter Scott Powers compares this tactic to Richard Nixon’s reelection strategy in 1972, quipping that “When the shenanigans of Nixon’s crew were exposed . . . , I seem to recall that they were held out as something of a scandal“.  Scott, that’s because when Republicans do such thing, they are scandals.   When Democrats do them, well, they’re just not newsworthy.

Before I drove cross country in 2010, I had never heard of Southern cooking diva Paula Deen, but I credit her for the harmony of our readers’ dinner in Atlanta that spring.  You see, when we gathered in that august town, I was concerned; one of our critics (with whom I have corresponded at least since 2006) would be joining us — along with two of our most outspoken conservative readers, one who, two years after the 2008 election, still sported a McCain-Palin sticker (with the Arizona Senator’s name removed) on his truck.

I had feared I might have to play peacemaker.  Well, I didn’t have to.  I don’t know how Paula Deen came up, but as soon as she did, all my Atlanta readers found something to talk about — how they delighted in this diva, enjoying her books, TV show and recipes.  They discussed which ones they had tried and home and celebrated her appreciation for butter.  Paula Deen, in short, bridged the political divide.

Aware of this woman’s capacity to foster harmony, my ears naturally perked up when my correspondent James Richardson alerted me this weekend to an article he wrote, taking to task “Northern” food critics who would bring this Southern diva down:

“Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later,” [New York-based foodie Anthony] Bourdain said Tuesday. He has also previously called Deen the “worst, most dangerous person to America” for her country cooking indulgence. Even 2011 James Beard winner Jose Andres said that Dean should “endorse a vegetable or fruit” instead of a diabetes drug.

But the Bronx cheer for apparent chef-turned-rebel terrorist Deen, a prototypical Southern mother with a lifetime’s recipes of irredeemably deep-fried dishes, is less a reflection of the culinary elitism that runs through Bourdain’s vice-ridden travelogues than the regionalist snobbery that fuels its appeal.

. . . .

From food to faith, the mythic Dixie–soulful and abundant, passionate and insubmissive–has always clashed with the rigidly cosmopolitan north, which keeps an ever watchful eye on we, her unlearned, drawling wards. (more…)

Maybe it’s just that he’s waiting for others to craft the reforms so he can see how people react before signing on to anything. This way, he accrues the benefit of supporting a popular reform without the political risk of backing a proposal which might alienate his base.

I endorsed Jon Huntsman for President, in part, because of his bold tax reform plan. In his speech last night, the man the former Utah Governor once sought to replace addressed the issue thusly: “It’s time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America. Send me these tax reforms, and I’ll sign them right away.” He went on to repeat his mantra about having the rich pay more.

Note how in the passage cited above, the president asked someone else to write the reforms and send them to him.  He failed to offer a plan of his own.

In a similar vein, here’s how he addressed entitlement reform:  ”I’m prepared to make more reforms that rein in the long term costs of Medicare and Medicaid, and strengthen Social Security, so long as those programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors.”

Prepared to make?  Prepared to make, Mr. President?  The President of the United States should be doing more than just make preparations, he should be proposing solutions. (more…)

Conservative pundits/politicians who claim to know what’s best for We, The People are no less heinous than the liberal ones.

You can surmise who I’m referring to. Hint: More than one person.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Like Mickey Kaus, I didn’t watch the president’s campaign speech State of the Union last night and am finding the text actual quite “boring” with standard Obama tropes repeated so often, you’d think his speechwriters merely cut and paste passages from previous addresses into this one, adding a few references to events of the past year.

Instead of reading the entire speech, I searched instead for a few words, like “obstruction.”  Sure enough, it’s there, “But I intend to fight obstruction with action, and I will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place.”  There you go again, Mr. President, Republicans aren’t proposing to return to those policies which created the crisis.  That’s just another one of your false choices.

When I searched for other words like “cut”, “Medicare”, “Social Security” and “entitlement”, it became clear that the Democrat has no plan to address some of the nation’s pressing fiscal issues.  As Jennifer Rubin asked, “Where is his entitlement reform? Where is his tax-reform plan? He can’t be bothered with actual governance.”

Sure, he says “we’ve agreed to cut the deficit by more than $2 trillion.”  But, he didn’t specify how he plans to “cut through the maze of confusing training programs” nor identify particular domestic programs he wishes to scale back.

He even proposed new government programs, offering only to fund them through higher taxes on millionaires.  If you’re trying to cut the deficit, you should use any revenue you bring in to pay that off rather than any new liabilities.  As William W. Beach put it in National Review’s symposium on the speech:

. . . among the litany of programs he announced, he promised little action on the driver of economic decay: the blooming debt of governments at all levels, but particularly the government that President Obama runs. (more…)

I did not watch the State of the Union last night.  Instead of hearing a speech by a man of little accomplishment and great acclaim, I went to see a movie about men of great accomplishment and little acclaim, Red Tails, about the Tuskegee Airmen and their valor in World War II.

All I can saw is get yourself to the cinema and see this movie (and make sure to bring a handkerchief).

It’s cheesy and has, particularly at the outset, some really clunky dialogue, but later on, there are also some great lines.  And some amazing scenes.  In the end, you forget cheesiness and focus on the story, the hotshot pilot who just wants to shoot down Nazis, his commanding officer who has trouble with the booze.

Some of the film’s flaws, like those in our friends, make the film more endearing, like the imprisoned American officer who can’t disguise his Australian accent — or Cuba Gooding Jr.‘s attempt to imitate Douglas MacArthur by dramatically clenching his teeth on a curved pipe.  (Perhaps because Gooding is such a likable guy, he can get away with this — and, in my eyes, he does.)  In the end, it’s just a feel-good story about a group Americans who want to serve the country even as some in their country’s leadership question their ability to serve.

The pacing of the film is such that you’re drawn into the story and easily forget its shortcomings.  Director Anthony Hemingway focused on making it an action film, starting in the air rather than tell us about the Tuskegee program.  It is not as great a film as Glory to which I’m sure it’s been compared, but it doesn’t need to be.  It entertains us, it moves us — and reminds us of some forgotten men of the greatest generation, men who helped defeat one of the greatest evils of all time.

This is why they make movies.

Four years ago, Barack Obama ran for the presidency promising a new era of hope and change.   He would bring us together with a new kind of politics that transcended partisan differences.

Since starting working in the Oval Office, however, he has adopted a much different tone.  When a Republican Senator challenged the Democratic president “over the contents” of the stimulus, the Democratic President, instead of acknowledging the point, snapped, “I won” as if his electoral victory obviated the need for argument.

Last year, after failing to find much support for the budget he had released, he claimed he was going to offer a different approach and instead of gave a speech excoriating the Republican plan without offering an alternative of his own.  The headline of the Washington Post report on the address read that it had a “partisan tone.”  The Annenberg Center reported that the Democrat “misrepresented the House Republicans’ budget plan at times and exaggerated its impact on U.S. residents“.  Hardly the way to begin a serious dialogue on federal fiscal priorities.

Will his State of the Union address tonight be less partisan?  Will he honestly address his opponents’ proposals?  Will he offer plan to cut deficit?  ”The current fiscal year,”  as John Hinderaker reminds us, “will be the fourth in a row in which the Obama administration racks up a $1 trillion-plus deficit.”

Will he propose sweeping tax reform as some Republican presidential candidates have done — and his own deficit reduction committee recommended?  Will he put forward tonight a plan to reform entitlements and rein in federal spending or will he return to the same old song and dance and repeat the tired refrain about increasing taxes on millionaires and billionaires?

Most signs, however, indicate that instead of attempting to bridge partisan differences, the speech will accent them.  Over at Politico, Carrie Budoff Brown and Glenn Thrush report that Obama “gave the first detailed look at Tuesday’s address in a video message Saturday dispatched through his campaign, not the White House, which is usually the origin for previews.”

No wonder, Ed Morrissey asks a more cynical question than the ones I posed, “What empty promises will Obama offer tonight?”  He reports that Obama failed to deliver on over 70% of the promises he made in last year’s SOTU.

(more…)

President Obama, reports Dwvin Dwyer this morning on ABCNews, “has spent the past three months railing against a ‘do-nothing Congress,” and tonight he has the opportunity to deliver his message face to face.”   As the Democrat demagogues a legislature that won’t rubberstamp his priorities, he will certainly obscure one fact:  Congress is not a completely Republican, but a divided, institution.  The House, to be sure, is Republican, but the Senate remains Democratic.

And it’s that Senate that hasn’t been doing much of anything.  Speaker John Boehner reports, for example, that “Thirty jobs bills passed over the last year in a Republican House of Representatives that are sitting in the United States Senate“.   And “today marks the 1,000th day since the Senate Democratic majority . . .  approved a federal budget.”  One thousand days.  That’s about as long as Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife, reigned as Queen of England.

“The federal government“, observe the editors of the Washington Examiner

. . . still managed to pile nearly $4 trillion onto the national debt as the Senate dithered during those 1,000 days. The Senate forced the federal government to function piecemeal for three years through a series of haphazardly stitched-together omnibus bills and continuing resolutions. These bring together in one massive document trillions in spending and borrowing that can then be jammed through Congress with one convenient up-or-down vote, with only token debate and few if any amendments allowed. It’s Washington’s nice and tidy way of handing voters a take-it-or-leave-it approach to federal spending.

Wonder if Obama will fault his fellow partisan Harry Reid for leading a do-nothing legislative chamber?  Wonder if our friends in the legacy media will even note the thousand days.*

As usual, Democrats will try to blame Republicans for their mistakes as John Hinderaker reports:

Democrats like Dick Durbin and Nancy Pelosi have tried to blame their dereliction of duty on the Republicans, claiming that it would be futile to propose a budget since the Republicans would filibuster it. As usual, the Democrats rely on ignorance: under the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, budgets pass the Senate by a simple majority and cannot be filibustered.

In contrast to the Democratic Senate, the current Republican House passed a budget just over 100 days after being sworn in.  This year, the president will again miss the statutory deadline for submitting a budget.  Last year, his budget couldn’t even garner a single Democratic vote in the Senate. (more…)

Sunlight, I’ve always believed, is the best disinfectant.

We should not hinder people from voicing their opinions, no matter how hateful because only when they voice them can we counter them.  Today, in her inimitable style, Amy Alkon, an Angelena diva who quips that if she “were any more gay-friendly,” she’d “have a girlfriend instead of a boyfriend”*, takes a school superintendent to task for labeling “a column in a school newspaper that criticized homosexuality as ‘bullying.”

Why should people be scared of someone voicing such an opinion?  Shouldn’t their silly commentary provide an easy target, a jumping off point for an argument in defense of homosexuality?   Why do some folks wish to suppress opposing opinions?

Basically, Amy tells this superintendant to grow a pair:

Look, I was bullied. Girls followed me through the halls in junior high and taunted me with anti-Semitic epithets. When it started to get serious (when they started throwing chairs in my path), I told my dad, and he went to the principal and it stopped.

The point is, there are measures that can be taken before we start crumpling up the Constitution. And sorry, but you don’t have a right to not be offended, not even if you’re in high school. What you should learn to do is think and write and debate well so you can see that your point of view wins the day. And if somebody throws a chair at you, and there’s nobody to go to the principal’s office for you…maybe that’s the real problem we should be dealing with, but…

Emphasis added.  Seems Amy’s got more balls than the school superintendant who has a man’s name (Todd Carlson).

A gay couple had called the school and complained after they had read the “offensive” column.  Carlson responded to their complaint.  They would have done better to have written a strongly worded letter intended for publication in the journal.

Via Instapundit.

* (more…)

“Of the 10 metropolitan areas with the toughest job situations, seven are in California“, reports Danielle Kurtzleben in U.S.News & World Report

Wonder if this is related to the flight of business from the Golden State.

Hey, Ma’am, what are you doing to keep those businesses from fleeing the state? And, Jerry, you may want to talk to the Governor of Texas; he has a little more free time than he did last week. Seems a lot of California jobs are headed his way.

Kudos, Governor:

Gov. Chris Christie today nominated an openly gay African-American Republican mayor and an assistant state attorney general to the state’s highest court.

Christie nominated Phil Kwon, who worked under Christie when he was U.S. attorney, and Bruce Harris, who was elected mayor of Chatham Borough in November. Kwon, of Bergen County, would be the first Asian-American to sit on the state Supreme Court.

. . . .

Harris graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College, and with honors from Boston University Graduate School of Management. He earned a law degree from Yale. In addition to serving as mayor of Chatham, he most recently worked at the law firm of Greenberg Traurig and previously at Riker, Danzi, Scherer, Hyland and Perretti.

Impressive that Harris overcame the obstacles of an inferior undergraduate education to achieve what he has.

Democrats often talk about hiking taxes on the rich so they pay their “fair share“. So what about the 47% who currently don’t pay any federal taxes? Is their fair share zero?

UPDATE:  Does this mean Obama plans to ask the 47% to do their part.  From his fund-raiser last week in Harlem:

And if we are going to do all that without leaving a mountain of debt for our kids, while still maintaining the strongest military on Earth, while still making sure that Social Security and Medicare are there for future generations, that our seniors are protected –then all of us have to do our part.  (Applause.)

And that should not be a Democratic idea or a Republican idea.  It’s about responsibility.  It’s about taking responsibility for the country.

Emphasis added. He did say, “all of us”, but it sure seems he meant what the Occupiers call “the 1%.”

Repeat after me:  “Hope and Change.”

<audience chant>

Now this: “Mmm, mmm, mmm… Barack Hussein Obama.”

<audience chant>

Now read this:

Exactly three years after Aretha Franklin’s hat launched the Obama administration, the Democrat’s annual job approval rating has sunk to his lowest level.

That’s not normally a good sign after 1,095 days in office. But who’s counting? Heading into reelection years, pols want to be at least at the 50% level. A new Gallup Poll just out reveals that the ex-state senator’s job approval for his third full year is 44%.

That’s down from 47% in his second year.

That’s down from 57% in his first year.

It’s also down from the 69% approval he enjoyed on Inauguration Day.

So, the better Americans have come to know the guy and to watch his record, the less they seem to think of him. Of course, what really matters is what they think of him starting with early voting this October and ending the night of Nov. 6.

Gallup’s 2012 results are based on about 175,000 adult interviews during the year, showing a brief high for Obama of 53% in May (can you say Navy SEALs’ success?) and a low two times of 38% in both August and October.

In terms of historical patterns, Obama’s third-year average is the lowest of any modern president except the doomed Democrat Jimmy Carter, who had 37.4%. The highest approval at this stage of a first term was Dwight Eisenhower with 72.1% and George H.W. Bush with just under 70%.

According to Gallup’s analysis:

“Comparing Obama’s third-year numbers with all presidential years in Gallup records, Obama’s 44% average job approval rating is well below average, ranking 53rd of the 68 presidential years measured.”

But this conflicts with what They all tell me: Barack Obama is The Smartest President EVAH!” 

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Been reading a book on the Big Easy, Tom Piazza’s Why New Orleans Matters.  Reflecting on his surprise at learning that a musician read philosophy, the author philosophizes himself:

It is an old American situation, of course—anyone interested in an extended essay on the subject should read Ralph Ellison’s “The Little Man at Chehaw Station,” in his collection Going to the Territory, or Constance Rourke’s American Humor, both extended meditations on the masks not just that we put on for others but that we put on others, that surprises that lurk so often around the corner of someone’s seemingly straightforward identity.  It is a lesson that one has to learn continually in New Orleans.  Things are always more complex than they seem.

Bold added.  Italics in original.

The masks that we put on others.  To our commenters, think about that before you reply to someone who offers an opinion different from your own.  Don’t make assumptions about who they are.  You may be surprised how much you have in common.  (Reminder to self:  do need write that post on how Paula Deen brings together GayPatriot readers with contrasting political views.)

The masks that we put on others.  The masks some of our ideological adversaries place on gay conservatives when they make assumptions about our motives.

Read the passage above, then re-read it.  There’s much wisdom there.  And not just about New Orleans.