(Note: This came to me from “The Party Crasher” in New York City…. but he’s still a Georgia Boy at heart!)

Fifteen Ways To Avoid A Good Southern Ass Whuppin – (Issued by the Southern Tourism Bureau to ALL visiting Northerners And Northeastern Urbanites)

1) Don’t order filet mignon or pasta primavera at Waffle House. It’s just a diner. They serve breakfast 24 hours a day. Let them cook something they know.  If you confuse them, they’ll kick your ass.

2) Don’t laugh at our Southern names (Merlene, Bodie, Ovine, Luther Ray, Tammy Lynn, Darla Beth, Laura Jo Inez, Billy Joe, Sissy, Clovis, Perky, Becky Sue, etc.). Or we will just HAVE to kick your ass.

3) Don’t order a bottle of pop or a can of soda down here.  Down here it’s called Coke. Nobody gives a flying damn whether it’s Pepsi, RC, Dr. Pepper, 7-Up or whatever-  it’s still a Coke. Accept it. Doing otherwise can lead to an ass kicking.

4) We know our heritage. Most of us are more literate than you (e.g.,Welty, Williams, Faulkner). We are also better educated and generally a lot nicer. Don’t refer to us as a bunch of hillbillies, or we’ll kick your ass.

5) We have plenty of business sense (e.g., Fred Smith of Fed Ex, Turner Broadcasting, MCI WorldCom, MTV, Netscape). Naturally, we do, sometimes, have small lapses in judgment (e.g., Carter, Edwards, Duke, Barnes, Clinton). We don’t care if you think we are dumb. We are not dumb enough to let someone move to our state in order to run for the Senate. If someone tried to do that, we would kick their ass.

6) Don’t laugh at our Civil War monuments. If Lee had listened to Longstreet and flanked Meade at Gettysburg instead of sending Pickett up the middle, you’d be paying taxes to Richmond instead of Washington. If you visit Stone Mountain and complain about the carving, we’ll kick your ass.

7) We are fully aware of how high the humidity is, so shut the hell up. Just spend your money and get the hell out of here, or we’ll kick your ass.
Don’t order wheat toast at Cracker Barrel. Everyone will instantly know that you’re a Yankee. Eat your biscuits like God intended – with gravy. And don’t EVER put sugar on your grits, or we’ll kick your ass.

9) Don’t fake a Southern accent. This will incite a riot, and you will get your ass kicked.

10) Don’t talk about how much better things are at home because we know better. Many of us have visited Northern shitholes like Detroit, Chicago , and DC, and we have the scars to prove it. If you don’t like it here, Delta is ready when you are. Move your ass on home before it gets kicked.

11) Yes, we know how to speak proper English. We talk this way because we don’t want to sound like you. We don’t care if you don’t understand what we are saying. All other Southerners understand what we are saying,  and that’s all that matters. Now, go away and leave us alone, or we’ll kick your ass.

12) Don’t complain that the South is dirty and polluted.  None of OUR lakes or rivers have caught fire recently. If you whine about OUR scenic beauty, we’ll kick your ass all the way back to Boston Harbor.

13) Don’t ridicule our Southern manners. We say sir and ma’am. We hold doors open for others. We offer our seats to old folks because such things are expected of civilized people. Behave yourselves around our sweet little gray-haired grandmothers or they’ll kick some manners into your ass just like they did ours.

14) So you think we’re quaint or losers because most of us live in the countryside? That’s because we have enough sense to not live in filthy, smelly, crime-infested cesspools like New York or Baltimore. Make fun of our fresh air, and we’ll kick your ass.

15) Last, but not least, DO NOT DARE to come down here and tell us how to cook barbecue. This will get your ass shot (right after it is kicked).  You’re lucky we let you come down here at all. Criticize our barbecue, and you will go home in a pine box.. . . Minus your ass.

Yeehaw!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

If it were not for the intense animosity Democratic congressional leaders (and prospective committee chairs) harbored for the President of the United States, I would not be so concerned about a Democratic takeover of Congress. While there have been signs of improvement in the Republican caucus in recent days, it still has not fully embraced the Reaganite agenda of The Contract with America, the series of policy proposals which helped the GOP win a majority in Congress in 1994.

Perhaps, a term in the minority might remind them of the limited government principles which animated the Gipper’s policies, still define much Republican rhetoric and inspired rank-and-file Republicans for over a quarter-century. But, given the Bush-hatred which animates the Democrats, it seems clear they would use their majority not to govern, but to obstruct.

Indeed, this past week has provided much evidence that if the Democrats took control of Congress this fall, they would have a hard time uniting around any legislative priorities. On Friday, House Democrats failed to unite in opposition to a resolution opposing setting a date for “withdrawal or redeployment” of our troops in Iraq. Today, Senate Democrats showed a similar division. While Democrats did present their “New Directions” agenda, even liberal Washington Post columnist David Broder found it to be “as meager as it was unimaginative“

While House Republicans in 1994 offered a comprehensive proposal with draft legislation, the Democrat’s “New Direction for America” is nothing more than a campaign flyer offering broad policy goals rather than specific means to accomplish those goals. A full half (one-page of a two-page document (available here)) is devoted to attacks on President Bush. That animosity seems to be what’s really animating congressional Democrats.

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For more than two years now, Andrew Sullivan has been launching a war against a civil discussion of gay marriage and the Administration’s policies on the treatment of terrorists captured on the battlefield. And just as importantly, he launched a war to besmirch the president’s policies to win the War on Terror. Rather than promote debate of these difficult and oftentimes contentious issues, rather than respect the opinions of his intellectual adversaries, rather than evaluate each issue on its merits, Andrew wants to drag the brave servicemen fighting for our country into his campaign to smear the President of the United States, his aides and supporters.*

That’s exactly what he did in his post yesterday when he attempted to link the brutal torture and murder of two U.S. servicemen to what he calls “the logic of torture-reciprocity endorsed by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Gonzales.” On this blog, Bruce found Andrew’s post “outrageous” while the Conjecturer’s Joshua Foust called it “revolting.” In a comment to Joshua’s post, the Malcontent said that Andrew “has gone from respectable to reprehensible.” Dan Riehl responded with a stronger one-word rejoinder.

It is striking that Andrew’s response to the barbaric murder of two servicemen is neither to offer sympathy for their families or to condemn the sadists who took their lives, but to make a mean-spirited snarky comment about the President and his top advisors.

That’s because since February 24, 2004, Andrew Sullivan has been more interested in attacking President Bush than dispassionately commenting on Administration policy. He has, as in the linked post, accused the Administration of sanctioning torture, focusing on uncorroborated reports and leaving out key details. As Heather MacDonald has shown, Andrew’s “torture narrative’ ignores some inconvenient facts.”

A serious person can hardly compare what Al Qaeda did to those two soldiers to the policies the Administration has considered (and adopted). Al Qaeda wasn’t trying to get information from these soldiers, but was inflicting pain merely for the sake of inflicting pain. When the Administration sanctions the use of interrogation techniques (that Andrew considers torture), they’re interested not in inflicting pain but in getting information from terrorists in order to stop their cohorts from committing atrocities like the one committed this week and others that are far worse, far, far, far, far worse.

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While the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) finds it inappropriate for Christians to profess their faith in public schools, they do want to make sure that children in Miami elementary schools are exposed to Communist propaganda. They’re filing suit “to stop the Miami-Dade County school district from removing a series of children’s books from its libraries, including a volume about Cuba which depicts smiling kids in communist uniforms.“

Now, if this were a high school, I might be more sympathetic to the ACLU’s argument “that the school board should add materials with alternate viewpoints rather than remove books that could be offensive.” But, we’re talking about books targeted to children aged 5 to 7.

The school board voted 6-3 to remove the books after “a parent who said he had been a political prisoner in Cuba complained about the books’ depiction of life under communist rule.” While the ACLU may call this censorship, a quick search of the web that the book is still available in the United States. So, all that’s happening is a local school district is deciding which books it wants in its libraries. And that’s where the decision should be made, not in a federal court as the ACLU would have it.

In demanding that the school libraries shelve these books, the “ACLU noted the books have received favorable reviews in nationally recognized publications including Publishers Weekly and the School Library Journal.” These journals review favorably children’s books presenting a favorable opinion of the Communist tyranny in the Caribbean?! A sad commentary on the state of the publishing world.

The school staff favors keeping the books. That’s no wonder, given that the American Library Association “refused to pass a resolution condemning Fidel Castro for jailing librarians.” (via Michelle Malkin.) Maybe those Cuban librarians hadn’t read the School Library Journal.

I guess we should be grateful public school libraries (in most states) are under the supervision of elected school boards which answer to the people.

-Dan (AKA GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com

UPDATE: Since first posting this piece, I have added a link to its first clause.

If Louisiana’s Democratic Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco could grant New Orleans’ Mayor Ray Nagin’s (also a Democrat) request to send in the National Guard to respond to a crime wave in the Big Easy, why didn’t the Mayor didn’t file a similar request for the Guard’s assistance in evacuating the city last summer as Hurricane Katrina approached?

UPDATE: Michelle finds “interesting . . . the total silence of civil liberties Chicken Littles” while in comment #6 Vera Charles asks:

Is this a war zone with semi automatic weapons? A quagmire?

Isn’t the left concerned the National Guard is being spread too thin?

Has anyone out there forgotten that we are the good guys in this Global War on Terror? Andrew Sullivan thinks we are the same as our enemies, apparently.

I doubt whether even Donald Rumsfeld will describe what has been done to two young American soldiers as a “coercive interrogation technique.” But you never know. Some people wonder why I remain so concerned about torture, and the surrender of our moral standing with respect to this unmitigated evil. Maybe the news of captured, tortured and murdered Americans will jog their conscience. Or maybe it will simply reinforce the logic of torture-reciprocity endorsed by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Gonzales.

Yeah, war is hell. But for crying out loud! Our side is on the right one in the fight against Islamic fascism and terror. Sullivan, like many in the news media, now equates the American struggle to the terrorists. It is just outrageous.

**UPDATE** – Since I wrote this item, I’ve had some additional thoughts.

The terrorists use torture and barbaric beheadings as a way to kill as many people as possible. It is their rule, not their exception.

The USA and its allies may use torture as an exception, not the rule. But we engage in those interregation techniques in order to keep alive as many people as possible. There is a moral difference.

Are we all forgetting Osama bin Laden’s revealing mantra?

“We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us.”

Gateway Pundit adds:

America is feeling raw, enraged, confused, saddened and unsettled by this inhumanity.

So, where is President George W. Bush? Where is the comforting or determined speech that you would expect from a leader at this time?

It doesn’t have to be an 30 minute address with an aircraft carrier in the backdrop, but how about using this “coincidental” information from Tuesday to define to the Free World and America what we are up against?

The terrorists pushed the moral argument back on the side of freedom, yesterday.

It doesn’t have to be a Gettysburg Address, President Bush, but please, throw out a bone.

Yes, Mr. President. Where art thou in this crucial time to rally your nation?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

UP-UPDATE (from GPW): I may have more to say on this later in the day, but concerning Andrew Sullivan’s remarks (which Bruce quotes above), I can’t improve upon Dan Riehl’s one word rejoinder to Andrew’s outburst. And over at the Conjecturer, Joshua Foust has another one-word rejoinder for Andrew’s post: “revolting.” A bit more diplomatic than the other Dan’s.

I’m assuming the former dictator sees his days are numbered and realized his defense attorney wouldn’t be sparing him the noose.

Saddam Lawyer Killed – The Corner @ NRO

One of Saddam Hussein’s lawyers was shot to death Wednesday after he was abducted from his home by men wearing police uniforms in Baghdad, court and police officials said.

Khamis al-Obeidi, who represented Saddam and his half brother Barzan Ibrahim in their eight-month-old trial, was abducted from his house at 7 a.m., said Saddam’s top lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi. His body was found shot to death on a street near the Shiite slum of Sadr City, police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said.

It just all seems so…. Baghdad 1993.  You know, the golden years when CNN covered up all of the Hussein-era atrocities so they could keep their digs in the Iraqi capital.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Since I first learned of the murder of the two U.S. soldiers whose booby-trapped bodies were recovered earlier today, I’ve been trying to find words to express my outrage at this atrocity. Simply put, it shows the barbarity of our adversary, thugs who use the cloak of a religious ideology to mask their sadism.

Terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda kidnapped the men at a checkpoint south of Iraq. When recovered, “ the bodies showed signs of having been tortured.” More evidence of what we have long known about Al Qaeda: it is not a typical foe. Its followers show no regard for the Geneva Convention, indeed, have no regard for human life, even that of the people for whom it is ostensibly fighting — Iraqis and other Muslims.

As horrible as these murders are, it is important to note that it is one of the few times Al Qaeda has succeeded in directly attacking coalition soldiers in Iraq. Normally, they do not directly attack our troops, but instead use Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) to target them. It is a sign of their weakness that they have largely been targeting civilians, murdering innocent Muslims.

They’re killing their own people to make it appear that we are losing. And the Western media is helping them make their case. In the very AP article on the murder of the U.S. soldiers, the reporter writes that “Violence was unabated Tuesday, with at least 18 people killed in attacks nationwide, including a suicide bombing of a home for the elderly in the southern city of Basra.“

As one military officer wrote in to Best of the Web:

The media manipulation by the insurgents is brilliant and extremely effective. The press has become a puppet for the insurgents; the insurgents know exactly what they are doing with these “massacres” (quoted here because the investigation has not been completed, nor have any charges been filed) and the political nightmare they will cause the current administration. Bodies are produced for film, and there is zero fact-checking by the media–the media eat up this “news” like there is no tomorrow.

To the terrorists’ fighting our troops and the Iraq people, indiscriminate murder is merely a means of manipulating the media.

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As I research a paper for my Native American class on the berdache or “Two-Spirit” people, that is, individuals of one gender (primarily men) who assume the roles of the other gender in public, I am struck at the amount of jargon I encounter in some of the articles and books I’ve been reading. Rather than learn about the traditions of the peoples indigenous to this continent, I’m learning instead more about the writers’ theories of gender — and their antipathy to things Western.

I believe that by looking to myths and attitudes toward homosexuality in cultures more open to homosexuality than the Western world has been since the advent of Christianity, we can better develop means to address homosexuality in our own culture. In order to do this, we need to study the myths and traditions as best as we can reconstruct them, rather than see them as data which prove (or disprove) the latest trendy sociological theories. And too many scholars, alas, seem more committed to the latter end.

To be sure, I’ve discovered at least one book which, despite some sociological jargon and a few politically correct asides, looks at the subject in a reasonably dispassionate manner, Will Roscoe’s well-written, The Zuni Man-Woman, the story of We’wha, a Zuni Man who lived as a woman, even meeting President Grover Cleveland in that guise.

As I was wading through the turgid prose of other writers, I received a book I had ordered from Amazon, Willian N. Eskridge and Darren R. Spedale’s Gay Marriage: for Better or for Worse? : What We’ve Learned from the Evidence. In paging through the book, the prose seems a lot more straight-forward than that I have been reading for my paper. And given that it takes seriously an issue that I unlike all too many gay activists believe merits serious debate, I’m finding myself turning to it rather than returning to those scholarly articles.

This heavily-foototed book appears to provide essential information for a serious discussion of gay marriage, with chapters on the debate here and lessons from sixteen years of same-sex unions in Scandinavia. Unlike other advocates of gay marriage, Eskridge and Spedale acknowledge the Vice President’s opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment and even commend his wife Lynne:

This is not self-serving sympathy on their part, for Lynne Cheney is one of the toughest-minded policy analysts in Washington. We believe that her prounion, and potentially promarriage, stance is a consequence of her attention to the facts: lesbian and gay men are decent citizens; they from committed relationships that work well for them and contribute to the larger family and community.

I’m not yet in a position to offer a thorough review of this book, but on first glance it seems quite well-written and devoid of much of the jargon I’m accustomed to find in books and articles on gay topics (at least in those I’ve been reading on Native American traditions). And, unlike some advocates of gay marriage, these writers at least acknowledges the pro-civil unions stances of the Vice President — and his wife.

-Dan (AKA GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com

It seems that the posts where I reference the Senate Intelligence Committee;s discrediting of angry left hero Joe Wilson, a good number of that dishonest Democrat’s defenders rush to accuse me of distorting the record. They write long comments, some with a basis in fact, others filled with invective, most tinged with bitterness and animosity. How dare I take issue with this courageous man who dares speak truth to power!

Perhaps, the main reason Bush-haters so love Wilson and are reluctant to accept the evidence discrediting him is that he has provided (what he claims) is a specific example of the president saying something which he knew at the time to be false as he made the case for the war in Iraq.

While Wilson offered evidence (later discredited), most of the president’s critics merely repeat the mantra, “Bush Lied” as if it were an established fact (or if by repeating 27 times every day they could make it a fact). They fail to provide specific instances where the president (before the war) made a claim about Iraq’s WMDs which he knew (at the time) be false.

For the most part, their claims are like those of John Kerry in his speech to the “Take Back America 2006″ conference last week (where he looked presidential but sounded pathetic). “We were misled,” claimed the junior Senator from Massachusetts. “We were given evidence that was not true. It was wrong and I was wrong to vote for that Iraqi war resolution.”

Instead of offering specifics to show exactly how he was “misled” (note his use of the passive), Kerry moves on in his speech to offer more angry bromides.* But, as the Vice President put it, Kerry “wasn’t misled. He saw the same intelligence all the rest of us saw. He knew what an evil actor Saddam Hussein was.” Cheney’s remarks merely confirm what those familiar with the findings of the bipartisan Robb-Silberman Commission already know, that the intelligence the president saw (before the war) was not “markedly different” from that provided to Congress.

Even if we “put aside the questions of weapons of mass destruction,” as Victor Davis Hanson has done, we wonder how the Administration misled us:

. . . was the senator suggesting that Iraq did not violate the 1991 armistice accords?

Or that Saddam Hussein did not really gas and murder his own people?

Perhaps he was “misled” into thinking Iraqi agents did not really plan to murder former President George Bush?

Or postfacto have we learned that Saddam did not really shield terrorists?

No wonder Kerry failed to offer any specifics to back up his claim. Because if he did, he’d have to address the numerous reasons (in this speech, for example) the president offered for liberating Iraq.

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Interestingly, right after I read Dan’s post I happened onto another poll that suggest Hillary’s dreams of living at 1600 Penna Avenue are a bit premature.

Clinton Gets High “NO” Vote for 2008 – CNN.com (so it must be true!)

Regarding potential Democratic candidates, 47 percent of respondents said they would “definitely vote against” both Clinton, the junior senator from New York who is running for re-election this year, and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the party’s candidate in 2004.

Forty-eight percent said the same of former Vice President Al Gore, who has repeatedly denied he intends to run again for president.

Among the Republicans, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani fared better than the Democrats, and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush fared worse.

Only 30 percent said they would “definitely vote against” Giuliani; 34 percent said that of McCain.

For all of you who think I am out of the American mainstream (a.k.a. – “right wing nut job”), I’ll have you know that I guessed the results of this poll exactly the way they came out before I read the article.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Despite his graceful concession speech after the 2000 election was decided, Al Gore has proven himself to be one of the most classless politicians in the United States today. He rants against the man who defeated him and badmouths his policies abroad. He subscribes to some of the looniest theories of the angry left.

In 2003, he joined those on the angry left in endorsing Howard Dean, then surging in pre-primary Democratic polls — and quite possibly helping promote Dean’s subsequent implosion. It was that very endorsement which made clear what a classless man the former Vice President is. Joe Lieberman, his 2000 running mate, whose presence on the ticket helped account for Gore’s strong showing that year, said that he would wait on his former running-mate’s decision before entering the 2004 presidential contest. If Gore ran, he said, he wouldn’t.

Only after Gore decided not to run did Lieberman throw his hat into the ring.

Gore did not even offer Lieberman the courtesy of a phone call to tell him that he was endorsing Dean, leaving the Connecticut Democrat to learn about it from the media. Now, he’s refusing to back Lieberman in his former running mate’s primary contest against Ned Lamont. (Via–The Corner via Instapundit.)

It seems Gore’s 2000 concession speech was a rare moment of class from an otherwise petty and ungrateful man.

I didn’t fully “get” Bill Clinton’s appeal until 1999 when watching him deliver his State of the Union address. The phone rang soon after that Democrat started speaking, so I put the TV on mute and took the call. As I spoke to my friend, I watched the then-president and was captivated by his performance. I had to admit that the man whom I often mocked looked presidential.

But, when I ended the conversation with my friend and turned the volume back on, I found that Clinton’s speech was little more than well-delivered platitudes, devoid of substance. I turned the volume up when I went into the kitchen (I was thus unable to see the TV) to do the dishes and found his speech increasingly vapid.

I had a similar experience last week while doing cardio at the gym. I saw clips of Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) speaking to the Take Back America Conference. Lacking headphones, I could not hear their remarks. With his chiseled face, Kerry, the erstwhile Democratic presidential nominee, looked presidential. Hillary, a prospective Democratic presidential nominee, looked like an angry divorcée* addressing the PTA. She doesn’t have the presidential presence of her husband. No wonder the latest Iowa poll showed her slipping. That survey may well be harbinger of her performance in the Democratic primaries and caucuses in ’08.

A few days later when I saw clips of the speech with audio, both Kerry and Clinton sounded the same, whiny, bitter, angry. Given the way Kerry looked, it was no wonder he bounced back after the first presidential debate in 2004. Given the way Hillary looked, it’s hard to see how she can convince those skeptical about her leadership qualities that she has the gravitas of a Chief Executive.

Contrast Hillary’s presence with that of a female conservative icon — Lady Margaret Thatcher. While against her husband, Hillary fades into obscurity. (Just as Denis Thatcher seemed to disappear when in the presence of his wife.) Next to Ronald Reagan, Mrs. Thatcher held her own, two great leaders standing strong and confident.

Or contrast Hillary with her more accomplished California colleague, Dianne Feinstein. One day in the 1990s when was working on Capitol Hill, I walked over to the Senate side just as a vote was being called. As I passed through an elevator lobby, I saw a number of Senators (whose faces I recognized from the news). Mrs. Feinstein was the only one who stood out.

After watching those images from the conference, I became increasingly certain that Hillary is going to have a much tougher time than people think winning the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. To be sure, her husband may pull out all the stops to help her win the nomination — and the election. But, standing next to him at the Democratic convention in ’08, her lack of gravitas will be made increasingly manifest. People will become less confident of her ability to lead.

It’s no wonder Hillary’s gradually losing her status as the Democratic frontrunner for 2008. She seems to be as Peggy (AKA My Athena) described her 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention, “full of certitude and lacking in sincerity.” She appears to stand only for whatever is politically expedient, and lacks the presence of a leader, the sense that she could take charge the moment she takes the Oath of Office. Lacking particularly the wherewithal to stand strong in a crisis.

-Dan (AKA GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com

*My Athena once wrote that when Hillary “speaks to a sympathetic audience eager for red meat her voice becomes high, harsh, grating–the first wife that your nice husband fled.”

You remember Jesus Jones? They were a one-hit wonder back when I was in college who hit with a song called “Right Here, Right Now”. It was written in the wake of Ronald Reagan’s greatest successes, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and with it, the prominence of what it symbolized, Soviet Communism.

The lyrics of that song go something like:

Bob Dylan didn’t have this to sing about
You know it feels good to be alive

and

I saw the decade end, when it seemed
The world could change at the blink of an eye
And if anything
Then there’s your sign of the times

Similarly, The Scorpions‘ Klaus Meine penned “Winds of Change“, reflecting on a walk he had taken through freshly-liberated Moscow.

One striking stanza:

The wind of change
Blows straight into the face of time
Like a stormwind that will ring the freedom bell
For peace of mind
Let your balalaika sing
What my guitar wants to say

By contrast, the other night, walking through Capitol Hill here in Denver, I passed by a car with a bumper sticker which read simply, “FUCK BUSH”.
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On Father’s Day this year, we have decided to pay tribute to a Republican leader who, by loving and accepting his lesbian daughter for who she is and welcoming her life-partner into his family, has become a role model for all parents of gay children, indeed, has helped define what it means to be a good father.

When we read in his daughter Mary’s most excellent book, Now It’s My Turn: A Daughter’s Chronicle of Political Life about his paternal qualities, the Vice President reminds us of our own Dads. Thus, in honoring Dick Cheney on Father’s Day this year, we are also honoring all fathers who are devoted to their children, those good men who take seriously their parental responsibilities and through their affection and even their goofiness, have earned places in our hearts.

On an Instapundit podcast last month, Mary said she was “so incredibly fortunate to have the parents I do,” adding that the Vice President “is a great Dad!!“** The anecdotes she provides in her book provide further evidence of his qualities as a man — and a father. When his daughter came out to him, he responded exactly as she had hoped he would, telling Mary he loved her and wanted her to be happy. A few years later, he was concerned how his nomination as the GOP Vice Presidential candidate in 2000 might affect her.

By continuing to love his daughter after she came out as he had before, the Vice President showed a quality that all fathers should have, even those without gay children — that of accepting and loving their offspring as they are.

But, it’s not just his acceptance of his younger daughter’s difference that defines the Vice President as an exemplary father. It’s also that even after his daughters have grown up, he continues to spend time with them, whether for hunting and fishing trips or for such traditional family gatherings as Thanksgiving dinners — which Mary’s Dad cooks (almost) every year. A picture from Mary’s book of her and her sister Liz on a fishing trip with their father reminds me of one of my favorite pictures of me and my Dad (on a hike in Colorado).

It’s not just in his personal life where the Vice President has distinguished himself as a father. He has both welcomed Mary’s partner Heather into his family and included her in public events. Heather joined Mary on stage when the president declared victory after the 2004 election, causing even then-HRC President Cheryl Jacques to take heart. And Heather sat beside Mary when George W. Bush was sworn in for a second term as president. The Vice President promised to go to bat for a man if his supervisors gave him trouble for coming out.

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It seems that two of the primary articles of faith of the Bush-hating left are that “Bush Lied!” and that Joe Wilson is a noble, courageous truth-teller. And while there have been signs lately that some on the left are backing away from this one-time Kerry campaign official, that dishonest Democrat still receives hefty fees to speak at college campuses.

Outside of the right-wing fringes, I wonder if any conservative similarly discredited has ever won the accolades of mainstream Republicans while being paid excessive amounts to speak around the country. Because Wilson has been at the forefront of those alleging that “Bush Lied” in leading the nation to war in Iraq, many on the left celebrate the man, despite the fact that a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Panel discredited him.

Similarly, that panel and two others (Robb-Silberman here and the Butler Report in Great Britain) found no evidence to substantiate the claim that “Bush Lied!” Those conclusions, however, don’t matter to Bush-haters, they’re going to go on believing that the president is the dishonest demon defined by their ideology. Because, as I’ve said before, hating Bush means never having to prove your point.

These people aren’t interested in the truth, but in badmouthing the President of the United States, his top advisors and their supporters. Yet, even though they rarely rely on facts* in making their allegations, they claim they’re the voices of truth.

The most delicious irony of this past week is that a left-wing web-site which calls itself truthout found itself in an odd position when a month after “reporting” that Karl Rove was about to be indicted, Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald informed the president’s top political aide that he won’t be charged in the CIA leak case.

It seems that in the Orwellian world of the Bush-haters, truth is a euphemism for animosity against the Bush Administration.

-Dan (AKA GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com

*O.K., sometimes they do use facts, but they pull them out of context, à la Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11 such that they misrepresent the actual situation they’re describing.

For the second time this year, PatriotPartner and I will be attending the awesome Brad Paisley concert.   Back in April we drove to Knoxville, but tonight Brad comes to us!

Sara Evans is opening….which has me almost excited as hearing Brad again.  Sara and Billy Currington opened for Brad in Knoxville.

It is nice to enjoy our new hometown of Charlotte in the ways that we have.  Maybe Washington, DC has more things to do…. but in Charlotte you can actually get there without sitting in traffic for an hour to go 5 miles.

Welcome Brad & Sara!  We will see you tonight!!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Back in 1992, the two major English-speaking democracies (the United Kingdom and the United States) held elections which, while they went different ways, the more conservative party holding on in the UK while being voted out here, offered a similar lesson — that when times are tough, people are only willing to change course when they have confidence in the opposing party. In both nations, the opposition party led in polls in the immediate run-up to the general election.

While Neil Kinnock’s Labour Party picked up seats that year, substantially reducing the Conservative majority in Parliament, voters deciding at the last minute opted for the incumbent party, not confident that the Kinnock, from Labour’s left wing, could pull the UK out of its then-lingering recession. Thus, even in a recession, British voters preferred the mundane Major and his incumbent Conservatives to his more colorful challenger.

In our country, however, also suffering under a recession, Bill Clinton presented himself as “New Democrat.” And while he was critical of then-President George H.W. Bush’s policies, he, unlike the Democrats of today, did not oppose everything a President Bush proposed. He was mealy-mouthed on the First Gulf War, eventually coming out in favor and agreed with the incumbent on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). So well did he put forward his in that campaign that I can still remember it fourteen years later. That Democrat promised a middle-class tax cut and to “end welfare as we know it.”

In short, Clinton won in 1992, not merely because things were not as good as they had been in the 1980s, but because he put forward a more moderate agenda than had previous Democratic nominees. More importantly, he used his charm to present his platform in a positive manner. Unlike his Republican opponent that year, he had learned from Ronald Reagan and knew to be optimistic, playing to people’s hopes.

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While many gay activists accuse Republicans of being anti-gay, some leading Republicans, including my great Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, sign pro-gay legislation and reach out to gay citizens. As Mayor of New York, my man for ’08, Rudy Giuliani signed a domestic partnership policy into law — one of the first in the nation. While other Republican leaders do not live up to the examples of these two fine leaders, some are often doing good in smaller ways.

Such was the case yesterday when Maryland’s Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich fired Robert J. Smith “his state’s representative on the board of directors of the D.C. area Metro subway and bus system” when he learned that Smith had “referred to gay men and lesbians as ‘sexual deviants.’” In a statement, Ehrlich said:

Robert Smith’s comments were highly inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable. . . . They are in direct conflict to my administration’s commitment to inclusiveness, tolerance and opportunity.

Ehrlich fired Smith fewer than four hours after openly-gay D.C. Council member Jim Graham, who also serves on the Metro Board, “demanded Smith’s resignation.” Later, Graham said that, “Governor Ehrlich got it. . . . He recognized the seriousness of this situation.“

Kudos, Governor Ehrlich. Let’s hope that, like Jim Graham, other Democrats acknowledge this Republican’s swift response to a mean-spiritied remark.

(H/t: Washington Blade)

…And for those of you who think you have it sooooo bad as a gay person here in the United States. 

Via Little Green Footballs:

Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, founder of the IslamOnline web site and head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, is a very influential Islamic cleric often described as a “moderate.”

From our pals at Al Jazeera, broadcast on June 5, 2005, here’s the moderate sheikh on the subject of gay marriage.

Actually, he never reaches the marriage part, because al-Qaradawi gets stuck at the issue of whether to throw gays off buildings or burn them alive.

Here’s a partial transcript of the interview.

Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: Kerry, who ran against Bush, was supported by homosexuals and nudists. But it was Bush who won [the elections], because he is Christian, right-wing, tenacious, and unyielding. In other words, the religious overcame the perverted. So we cannot blame all Americans and Westerners.

But unfortunately, because the Westerners – Americans and others – want to flatter these people on account of the elections, a disaster occurs. In order to succeed and win the elections, he flatters these people, rather than saying to them: No, you are sinning against yourselves, against society, and against humanity. This is forbidden. Instead of leveling with them, people flatter them to win their votes. This is the disaster that has befallen humanity.

Interviewer: How should a homosexual or a lesbian be punished? We mentioned the story of the people of Sodom and how Allah punished them, but how should someone who commits this abomination be punished today?

Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: The same punishment as any sexual pervert – the same as the fornicator.

The schools of thought disagree about the punishment. Some say they should be punished like fornicators, and then we distinguish between married and unmarried men, and between married and unmarried women. Some say both should be punished the same way. Some say we should throw them from a high place, like God did with the people of Sodom. Some say we should burn them, and so on. There is disagreement.

The important thing is to treat this act as a crime.

Now some of you have been convinced by The Advocate and the HRC for all of your lives that there are gay concentration camps with your name on them in Idaho.  But it is sad if you can’t see the stark truth of how good we have it here in the United States.  I’d rather not have the “right” to marry and be free to debate that issue in public, than live in a Islamic country that debates on how to kill gays and lesbians.

Which side are YOU on in the War On Terror?

[Related Story - Self-Loathing and the Denial of Terrorism] (A must read for many of our moonbat commenters)

-Bruce (GayPatriot)