….despite near silence from the news media, and trashing by the Democrats.

Home Sales Rise, Factory Orders Up – AP

Sales of new homes perked up, while factory orders took off in July, raising hopes that the economy can safely weather financial turmoil that has shaken Wall Street.

The Commerce Department reported Friday that new-home sales rose 2.8 percent in July, after falling 4 percent in June. The increase in July lifted sales to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 870,000 units. A second report showed that orders to factories for big-ticket goods jumped 5.9 percent in July, the most in 10 months.

Both reports were better than analysts had expected. They were forecasting home sales to fall and were calling for a much smaller, 1 percent gain in factory orders.

<….>

In the manufacturing report, the 5.9 percent increases in new orders for “durable” goods followed a 1.9 percent rise in June. Durable goods are costly manufactured items expected to last at least three years.

Gains were widespread. Orders went up for machinery, automobiles, metal products, airplanes and communications equipment. That blunted a drop in demand for computers, as well as electrical equipment and appliances.

The pickup in demand for manufactured goods comes against a backdrop of a growing global economy, which has produced a bigger appetite for some U.S. exports.

I believe Larry Kudlow has called this the “Chicken Little Economy” — the economic fundamentals are fine…. but everyone is running around hoping looking to have the sky fall in on it.

Hmmmm….. maybe the Democrat Party should change their mascot from an ass to a chicken?   Naaaaah.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

As I was reading Anne Baring and Jules Cashford’s The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image for background information as I look forward to writing my dissertation about one of the most celebrated godesses in Western civilization, I was struck by the vehemence of their criticisms of the “patriarchal” traditions of the West, particularly the records of its two primary monotheistic faiths, Judaism and Christianity.

This is not to say that our traditions have had a spotless record, especially in regards to the treatment of women and ideas of the feminine divine, but to wonder at this tendency of contemporary Western intellectuals to be so critical of their own traditions.

And it’s not just intellectuals who are critical of the West.

In a recent post, Glenn Reynolds (AKA Instapundit) wrote that it seems the BBC “reflexively sides with the enemies of Western Civilization.” He cites a Little Green Footballs’ post finding that government-owned broadcasting agency “in trouble . . . for once again allowing ugly antisemitic and anti-Christian slurs to remain posted at the BBC 5 message boards, while instantly deleting any criticism of Islam.” Anti-Semitc remarks where allowed to “remain for a week” while the BBC “immediately deleted” an individual’s comment that “No one can surpass the Muslims for denial of their role in Terrorism and Suicide bombing.”

It is the very openness of the Western tradition which has allowed writers like Baring and Cashford to criticize its doctrines. At the same time, Western governments, by and large, protect the rights of journalists to report information critical of or embarrassing to the government and those of individuals to offer opinions at odds with state policy.

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In an interesting post linked this morning in the e-newsletter of Log Cabin of California, blogger Timothy Kincaid dissects a Youtube video by a group calling itself Gays for Giuliani. I had seen the video and assumed that those who made did not actually support the former New York City Mayor’s White House bid. It presents stereotypical images of effeminate gay men, including one man boasting of his five domestic partners.

In using some of the worst stereotypes of gay men, it seemed an attempt to undermine the Republican candidate with the best record on gay issues. I thought the filmmakers were using these stereotypes to make the GOP frontrunner less appealing to social conservatives.

Kincaid confirms my suspicion, finding that Ryan Davis, a “Democratic Party activist” created the video. Why I doubt the video will have make impact on the 2008 race, the Advocate did run an interview with Davis. I wonder at the magazine’s choice to single out this Demorat out. His video shows his willingness “to trash his community” in order to hurt a Republican.

Davis has said that his goal is to “keep Rudy from getting the Republican nomination and becoming president.”

I guess it’s okay for Democrats to present stereotypical images of gay people if the goal is to harm a Republican.

While Kincaid does a good job of taking Davis to task, unfortunately he overall view on gay issues is similar to that of the gay left. He writes, “Achieving a society in which we have equality is my goal.” Most conservatives recognize that equality cannot be achieved through legislation, but believe that governments have been “instituted among Men” to secure the rights of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

It would be nice if more critics of the anti-Republican agenda of gay activists could articulate a more conservative approach to politics. Instead of echoing the empty equality rhetoric of the left, they might forward a freedom agenda, one consistent with the ideas of the founders of our great nation — and of the GOP.

UPDATE: Calling the ad “blatantly homophobic,” blogress diva Ann Althouse writes that Davis has shown “his contempt for Republicans by revealing a despicable belief that they hate gay people and that their hatred can be stoked by images of actors behaving according to gay stereotypes. Decent Democrats should condemn Davis’s video campaign.” Let me repeat her last line, Decent Democrats should condemn Davis’s video campaign.

I’m waiting.

UP-UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds has also picked up on the story, commenting, “sometimes it’s necessary to save the homophobia in order to destroy it.”

In May, I noted how the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as President of France helped debunk myths about the President’s foreign policy. While many on the left (& in the MSM) claim that his policies antagonized our allies and lowered our standing in the world, recent news indicate “dramatically” improved relations between the United States and Europe.

Our problems with “Old Europe” were not so much the actions of George W. Bush, but the determination of former French President Jacques Chirac and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (and, to some extent, former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien) to undermine the American president’s foreign policy initiatives.

Now, with leaders more favorably disposed to the United States in power in each of those nations, we no longer see the transatlantic tension we saw earlier in the decade. While acknowledging that there will be disagreements from time to time, the President of France, the nation once most overtly opposed to the president, said on the eve of his departure from his American vacation: “France is back, there are no problems between France and the United States, or between the French people and the American people.”

Now he’s working to “‘correct’ foreign policy ‘mistakes’ made by his predecessor Jacques Chirac.” And the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Socialist Bernard Kouchner travels to Iraq where he says that “we have to face the reality, including the American view.” (Via Instapundit.)

By sending his foreign minister to Baghdad and making clear his nation’s willingness to work with the United States, “Sarkozy has already repaired part of the damage done by Chirac and his entourage.” The very actions and words of Sarkozy–and his Administration–make clear that they, the leaders of France, recognize that it was not the current President of the United States who was largely responsible for the damage done to Franco-American relations, but the immediate past President of France (and members of his Administration).

As that the American media begin to take note of that, they undermine one of their principle mantras of the past five years.

Today, in The New Republic, a man who made The Case for Bush Hatred penned a piece accusing a fellow opinion journalist of thuggery.

Well, I guess it’s not thuggery when you hate a Republican president, but it is when you challenge the veracity of a piece published by a soldier skeptical of the war.

Dean Barnett, Roger Simon and Scott Johnson and Pajamas have more.

UPDATE: Charles Johnson Calls Chait’s “hit piece . . .the usual leftist smokescreen; we can summarize it in one whiny sentence: ‘Only a right-wing thug would ever dare suggest we don’t support the troops!” (Via Pajamas).

UP-UPDATE: Ed Morrissey wonders why “the editors of The New Republic” aren’t using “their energy to investigate the collapse of their credibility after publishing a fabulist for at least the second time in the last few years” and suggests Chait “first address the decrepit state of editorial control at TNR before attacking anyone else’s decrepit intellectual state.” Read the whole thing! (Via Pajamas.)

UP-UP-UPDATE: In his post on the Chait piece, not only does Confederate Yankee provide a recapitulation of the criticism of The New Republic for running Beauchamp’s piece, but he also writes that Chait’s attack:

is written with the obvious intent of distracting TNR readers from the editors’ compromised ethics by attacking an ideological opposite.

It is perhaps not the oldest trick in psychology or politics, but it is close: attack a common enemy to shore up your own faltering base.

Now just read the whole thing.

“Would that all believed in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and were ready to die a thousand times for him.” – Blessed Antonio Primaldo

On August 14, 1480, 800 survivors of the Siege of Otranto were martyred by the Muslim armies of Mohammed II (also known as Mehmed II), the Ottoman leader who had conquered Constantinople 28 years earlier. Their crime? They refused to renounce their faith in Christ. It is amazing how much of our own history that we in the West are ignorant of, even geeks like myself. I know the story of the fall of Constantinople and the seemingly miraculous victories at Lepanto and Vienna, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard of Otranto. Thanks to Alfredo Mantovano‘s article this story of how Muslim armies invaded Italy seeking to capture Rome and crush Christendom in the West gives me something to start with for further study on my own. Otranto appears to have been the Thermopylae or Alamo of the late 15th century. Picture this: a very large Muslim army lands at the city gates bent on conquest. Only 400 guards man the walls, most of whom slip away and flee in terror leaving the city’s inhabitants to defend themselves which they did quite spiritedly. After a long siege, the Muslims successfully breech the walls and slaughter most of the people left inside. The surviving males above the age of 15 are given the choice of converting — tempted to do so by an apostate Catholic priest who abandoned the faith to save his skin — or death. 800 souls chose the latter and were martyred. Their sacrifice gave the bickering and divided Italians the time to regroup and save their own lands, arguably all of Christian Europe as well, from being conquered. A fascinating and inspiring story and while some folks might find the comparison to be extreme, Mantovano compellingly exhorts the West to draw a lesson from this massacre:

When the inhabitants of Otranto found themselves facing the Ottoman scimitars, they did not find in the disinterest of their kings a reason to quit themselves; strong in the culture in which they had been raised, although many of them had never learned the alphabet, they were convinced that resisting and not abjuring the faith was the most natural choice. Try talking today with a Western soldier who has returned from a mission in Iraq or Afghanistan: what one hears most frequently is their amazement at the discussions and the endless disagreements over our presence in those regions. For these soldiers, it is natural that they should go to help those in need of support, and guarantee the security of reconstruction against terrorist attacks.

In Otranto in 1480, no one displayed rainbow pacifist flags, nor invoked international resolutions, nor asked for a meeting of the municipal council so that the zone might be declared as demilitarized; no one chained himself beneath the city walls to “construct peace.”

For two weeks, the fifteen thousand inhabitants of the city boiled oil and water, until they had none left, and poured it over the walls onto the assailants. And when the eight hundred adult men still alive were captured, they went willingly to meet the same fate that the Iraqis, Afghans, Americans, English, Italians, and others meet in Iraq and Afghanistan when they are kidnapped by terrorists. Eight hundred heads were cut off one after another, with no politically correct newsmen to censor the account. If today we have thorough knowledge of this extraordinary event, it is because those who described it were objective and rigorous. (Chiesa)

– John (Average Gay Joe)

Just over two months ago, I noted how Log Cabin’s reaction to the Massachusetts’ legislature’s decision to block a referendum on gay marriage echoed those of the other gay groups. Log Cabin seems so eager to be liked by the national gay groups that I have dubbed them Sally Field Republicans.

Last week, with the president announcing the retirement of Karl Rove, we saw this once again. Log Cabin’s leadership criticized this Republican political strategist’s record in terms nearly identical to those of the leaders of left-wing gay organizations.

Human Rights Campaign (HRC) President Joe Solmonese told the Washington Blade:

Karl Rove perfected the political strategy of distort and divide and too often the lives of gay Americans were used as fodder for that strategy. . . . . Rove earned his legacy as a hero of the anti-equality, anti-gay right wing, and will forever be remembered for that.

Echoing Solmonese’s remarks, Log Cabin president Patrick Sammon said:

It’s disappointing and unfortunate that Karl Rove pursued the strategy he did in 2004. . . . He went down that course and divided the country and it was a mistake, and I think history will judge him harshly because of it.

While the latter’s rhetoric wasn’t nearly as mean-spirited as those of the HRC chief, his reaction was nearly identical.

It seems sometimes that the leaders of gay organizations, just like their counterparts in the Democratic party and liberal punditry, blame all manner of ills on Rove (when they’re not blaming them on his soon-to-be former boss). Were it not for his diabolical machinations, they claim, the marriage initiatives would not have appeared on state ballots in 2004.

Yet, while there is some evidence that Rove was not averse to using the initiatives (once on state ballots) to drive evangelical turnout (even if that doesn’t seem to have increased the president’s margin in 2004), there is no evidence he was responsible for putting these pernicious proposals on state ballots.

It’s absurd to blame Rove for using this issue to divide the country. It was not Rove who created the division, but those who would use the courts to decide an issue without giving the people a say in the matter.

Those who pin the blame on Rove for spearheading these initiatives ignore the reality of the grass-roots efforts to put them on state ballots — and the margins by which they passed, even Oregon and Michigan, margins which, in 2004, exceeded the president’s own margin of victory in every state where they appeared on the ballot.

No, Rove did not use gay marriage to divide the country. The issue was already dividing the country. To be sure, we can (and should) criticize him for exploiting that division. And fault the president and other leading politicians for failing to promote a strategy to heal the divisions, addressing both the need to recognize same-sex unions as well as the concerns of the opponents of gay marriage.

(more…)

One reason I study myth is because I believe these ancient stories (told and retold over millenia) can help us better understand ourselves. And as a gay man, seeking stories which allow us to make better sense of our situation, seeking intimate relationships with those of our own gender, rather than with those of a different gender as do the great majority of our species.

I have studied the so-called berdache tradition of the Native American Indians, only to find that while many of these traditions allowed same-sex unions, they always required one of the partners to assume the role, including costume and social obligations, of the other gender–and not always by choice.

As I study the role of the goddess Athena in the lives of the Greek (male) heroes, I am doing some background reading on the goddess culture that supposedly held sway in pre-literate Europe. In reading one such book, Jean Markale’s The Great Goddess: Reverence of the Divine Feminine from the Paleolithic to the Present.* In his introduction, he makes an interesting observation which leads me to wonder about ancient attitudes toward sexuality:

It is plausible, though not certain, that the first humans were unaware of the exact role of the male in procreation, not having established a causal relationship between coitus and parturition.

Assuming that this conjecture is accurate, would our preliterate forebears then have accepted homosexual relations as natural when they occurred or did they already have fixed notions of gender?

Once our ancestors discovered the link between heterosexual intercourse and progeny, perhaps they began to devalue same-sex relationships, relegating homosexuality to a variety of initiation rituals, some of which were still practiced in the last century in a Melanesian cultures. (And may well still be followed in some isolated tribes.) For it does seem that many of the proscriptions against homosexuality serve to promote procreation.

Perhaps anthropologists have studied this and have provided research to support their theories. And given this blog, I can post an idea that came to me while reading the book. That said, we’ll never really know how our primitive ancestors treated sexual difference. But, we can wonder.

******

*The book seems to lose focus after its solid introduction. Not only that, he discusses numerous archeological artifacts without providing any illustrations.

In an exhaustive post on l’affaire Beauchamp, my old friend from Washington, D.C., Rich Miniter who has spent a good deal of time talking to the key players, exploring why the editors and fact-checkers at The New Republic failed to uncover Beauchamp’s lies.

In his extensive research, Rich found that the “magazine was at least as consumed by finding the whistle-blower [Robert McGee] than in presenting a full accounting to its readers.” That is, they were as devoted (if not more so) to finding the person leaking some facts about Beauchamp’s relation to the magazine as they were to checking the facts of Beauchamp’s various pieces for their publication.

As if in an attempt to deflect attention from the discrediting of an article providing a perspective consistent with a liberal narrative, the Huffington Post‘s Max Blumenthal focuses on the story’s gay angle, including the revelation that McGee is gay. Liberals seem to be obsessed with the supposed hypocrisy of gay conservatives.

Thus, once McGee did something which questioned the agenda of the left, he experienced reactions similar to those that many of us have encountered when we question liberal ideas and/or assumptions and the left-wing gay orthodoxy. Out “since college, he:

noted that few on the Right had raised any issues about his interest in men. He sometimes openly mentioned it on posts on Little Green Footballs. “No one ever made a big deal out of it,” he says, until the Huffington Post did.

And while many on the left (including readers of this blog) call us hypocrites, equating being a gay Republican with being a Jewish Nazi or black Klansman, most of us have discovered that gays on the left–and not just gays–give us more grief for being conservative than conservatives give us for being gay.

Why, I wonder yet again, do they hate us so?

I apologize for not blogging much in the past week, but after a hectic two weeks of classes and travel, I’ve been busy getting caught up (including getting through about 300 accumulated e-mails) and beginning the background reading for my dissertation. Not only that, but for the past two days, have been devoting much of the time I would normally spend to writing blog posts to researching one.

In the wake of the departure of Karl Rove from the White House, I’ve been trying to find evidence to back up the “conventional wisdom” that the man whom the president called the architect of his 2004 re-election victory encouraged putting “marriage referenda on state ballots” in order to increase evangelical turnout and thus guarantee the president victory that year.

And while I have found many bloggers (and even reporters) repeating this claim, I have yet to find one scrap of evidence substantiating it. To be sure, I have found enough articles confirming that he was behind the president’s support of the Federal Marriage Amendment, but nothing linking him conclusively to the state referenda.

I did find confirmation of something I had read shortly after the 2004 election–that the marriage initiatives on state ballots that year didn’t really help the president:

As Hunter College political scientist Kenneth Sherrill noted in a study for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, “the election returns indicate that President Bush did less well in these battleground states with anti-same-sex marriage ballot initiatives than in battleground states that did not have referenda on same-sex marriage” 

So, if Rove were behind these initiatives, they didn’t really serve to advance the president’s reelection.

It was amazing (well, not really given the nature of the anti-Bush left today) how much bile and mean-spirited rhetoric I encountered in researching this piece — and how little evidence I uncovered to document allegations leveled against Rove (not limited to his alleged involvement in these referenda). It seems their animus against him is based more on their own feelings than actual facts.

I expect to do a followup on this piece, but would appreciate if any of you could help me in my research. Do you have evidence to support the oft-repeated claim that Karl Rove was behind the marriage initiatives in the various states in the 2004 campaign? Please e-mail me with links to articles which could confirm (or disprove) this. Thanks.

Welcome Powerline readers!!! While you’re here, feel free to check out what’s been called “probably the most reliably conservative gay blog on the Internet.“

UPDATE: And for those who haven’t yet seen it, make sure to check out Powerline’s post on Bill Moyers’ anti-Rove rant which also lacks “actual facts . . . that one can take hold of and declare to be false.” Moyers’ rant, in the words of Powerline’s John Hinderaker, like much of what I’ve read in researching this, was “just a pure, undifferentiated expression of hatred of a political opponent.”

It is one of my earliest and clearest childhood memories…. 30 years ago today, Elvis Presley died and his death stunned America and changed popular culture forever more.

I remember watching our local TV news (Philadelphia suburbs) where the other big story that day was a state budget impasse in Harrisburg.  Like now, back then our “mainstream media” didn’t seem to “get it” either — our local NBC affiliate pre-empted network coverage of Elvis’ death in favor of “Special Reports” on the state budget.  As now, the media seems to think the end-all-and-be-all of America is our Government.   Wrong… it is our People.

And one of our most searing American icons was one of We, The People:  Elvis Presley.

Yes, he got caught up in the fame (many of our fellow We, The People have also suffered that fate throughout our history) and he isn’t exactly a role model of good living for our youth.   But my goodness…. talk about the “small town boy makes it” story coming true!!   The man individually changed American music and many of our current artists in many genres have been inspired by, or pay homage to, Elvis Presley.

I think there is another reason Elvis’ music and memory are linked to my childhood.   My Mom was (is) an adoring Elvis fan and she introduced me to his music and life story.   Thanks Mom!

So, I had to pause a moment to acknowledge this important American historical and pop culture moment.  For more on “Elvis Week” and marking the “Summer of Elvis”, CLICK HERE.

Elvis Presley would have been 72 had he lived.  Some say he is 72. 

Long live The King.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Back during the budget standoff of 1995, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich faulted then-President Clinton for not meeting with him while both traveled together on Air Force One to (and from) the funeral of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, commenting, “This is petty. . . . You’ve been on the plane for 25 hours and nobody has talked to you and they ask you to get off the plane by the back ramp.”

His criticism notwithstanding, the Speaker’s own words made him look petty. Instead of fuming about the exit he was required to use, he should simply have said, “If the president were serious about ending the budget impasse, he would have talked to Senator Dole and myself while we were together on the plane for such a long time.” Gingrich’s ill-considered remark not only helped Clinton strengthen his hand in the budget negotiations, but also allowed that Democrat to better position himself for his reelection campaign the following year.

Because of Gingrich’s remarks, no one (outside conservative political and media circles) paid much attention to Clinton’s intransigence, his failure to negotiate with Republican leaders in good faith — or even to meet with them while on the plane. One unfortunate remark would come to define the Republican position in the contentious budget negotiations that year.

So, I fear will New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson’s comment that homosexuality is a “choice” come to define his attitude on gay issues. Despite the Democrat’s efforts at “damage control,” as the Wall Street Journal‘s John Fund wrote in OpinionJournal Political Diary (available by subscription),”the damage is done.” The Washington Post reports that gay rights’ activists were “frustrated” by the comment. Blogger Pam Spaulding believes Richardson “self-immolated . . . on live TV.”

It’s too bad because Richardson otherwise seemed to be the “most impressive” of the six candidates. Instead of offering empty platitudes as did most of his rivals for the Democratic nomination, he talked about his record as Governor–what he has done–and promised to do what is “achievable” to promote inclusion of gay people.

Even the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force‘s (NGLTF) Executive Director Matt Foreman singles out Richardson for praise, noting, according to Newsday, that he has “won passage of non-discrimination and hate-crime laws in his state.” And Steve Rails of the Service Members Legal Defense Network writes that on the vote that was “considered the key sign of support for or against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” [,] Richardson voted the right way.”

Despite this solid record on gay issues, Richardson won’t be remembered as much for what he has done in office over a period of years–but for what he did say in a minute’s time during one presidential forum. It’s a sad sign of the way politics works in today’s media that one unfortunate remark counts for more than a politician’s entire record. In preparing for last week’s debate, the New Mexico Governor should perhaps have considered the history of his former Georgia colleague in the U.S. House of Representatives.

- B. Daniel Blatt (GayPatriotWest@aol.com)

I’m not sure the results of this survey come as any big surprise to any American with a brain and clear vision (corrected or not). (h/t – Drudge Report)

Happy Days Are Here Again – NY Post

A surprising 94 percent of Americans say they are satisfied with their lives – although far fewer in New York and other Eastern states think they’re better off than they were five years ago, according to a new survey.

The Harris Poll of more than 1,000 people reported the overall “satisfaction” level, defined as people who said they were either very or somewhat satisfied with their lot, was up 4 percentage points, from 90 percent two years ago.

But only 42 percent of people in the Eastern U.S. said things had improved since 2002. By contrast, 60 percent of Southerners and 62 percent of Westerners said their lives had improved.

How can Easterners think their lives are improving?  After all, their taxes are always going up… their roads are clogged… they are the main targets for al-Qaeda… and their Democrat politicians tell them there’s nothing they can do about it because everything is George W. Bush’s fault.  If we would just let the United Nations run everything…. it would all be great.

Oh those Blue Staters….. always “Glass Half Empty” kinda folk, ain’t they?  Yes, John Edwards there ARE “Two Americas” — one optimistic and happy, the other grumpy and conspiratorial.

I’m glad to be in Carolina, baby!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

First of all…I’m a really bad PajamasMedia blogger.  (*hangs head*)   I promised to do a “pre-Gay Debate” posting for the PJM gang as exclusive content.   But then the podcast thing happened…. and there’s some work stuff going on right now – you, know the REAL the job that pays the mortgage.

Anyway, on the scribbled notes I wrote to use in my now outdated “pre-debate” piece… I predicted that there would be several questions NOT ASKED by the HRC/LOGO panel to the Democratic Presidential candidates.

At the top of the list of “Questions We Cannot Speak Of” was some iteration of the following:  “How would you, as President, aggressively confront the specific and growing threat to the existence of gay community in America, Western Europe and throughout the world due to the targeting of gays by Islamic fundamentalists.”    And just as I thought, the topic was completely ignored in the same way that questions about Bill Clinton sexually harassing women and John Edwards’ fake war on poverty were avoided.

In fact, we discussed the “Topic The American Gay Community Doesn’t Speak Of” thoroughly on our post-Gay Debate podcast with Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff.   Kevin and I agreed:  the lack of attention to the threat by Islamic fundamentalism by the Human Rights Campaign and other American gay groups is a human rights malpractice (my words).

Roger Simon, CEO of Pajamas Media also agrees… and beat me to the punch with this spot-on reflection of the “Topic The Gay Community Doesn’t Speak Of.”

So I would like to ask if anyone mentioned the huge elephant in the room and I don’t mean Republicans. I mean Islamic fascism and its outright assault on gays and women beyond anything that has ever been conceived in our culture. Did Melissa Etheridge and her fellow and gal panelists show any interest in that? Did the candidates?

Of course not, Melissa Etheridge was too busy fawning over Dennis Kucinich and expressing concern about some New Mexico version of “spotted owls” to be worried about her head being severed simply for being a lesbian.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Okay, so for some of you this is snooze-city, so I’ll put the jump pretty high on this one. But I’ve received quite a bit of passionate mail on the subject, and those who have commented seemed pretty excited, so on to another phase of this saga:

(more…)

Since every single hurricane forecast for the past two years has been completely wrong…. I’m going to appeal to our favorite (and most sinister) villain of our times:  Global Warming (his black cape flowing behind).

Please… please, Global Warming.   Do what you can to steer Tropical Storm Dean to the Carolinas.   No need for Category Five or anything like that.   But damn, we need the rain.  All of our hurricane forecasters said that, because of you, we’d be drenched in hurricanes by now… and perhaps life as we know it would be over.   So give us some slack in our dry weather condition, would ya?

And Pat Robertson.. listen here:  You just stay out of this!   This is between me and Global Warming.  None of your fancy hurricane-deflecting tricks, you hear?    I just simply do not want to hear another weatherprop person on my TV say the word “drought” anymore!

[Related Story:  Red Faces at NASA Over Climate Change Blunder.   According to the figures released last week, four of America's 10 warmest years are now in the 1930s, during the Dust Bowl era.  Just three years from the past decade remain among the top 10, with 2001 having fallen out entirely.      Oh...just an inconvenient truth.]

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Hey gang.. pretty cool news for you tonight.  

I just learned that “GayPatriot’s America” hosted at BlogTalkRadio is now also a podcast available for a free subscription at the iTunes Store.

Yeee-haw!

A new installment will be coming soon…. hopefully all the technical bugs will be ironed out!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Further showing his unfitness to be Commander in Chief (by the way, Democrats, that’s a big part of being President), Barack Obama today further disparaged us. In what seems to be a toss-away line buried in a story about his spats with fellow surrenderists his Democratic rivals for that party’s nomination, he has this to say about troop levels in Iraq:

“…that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.”

Perhaps I’m splitting hairs, but his use of the present tense here (“which is causing…”) certainly makes it sound like he’s accusing the military of “air-raiding villiages and killing civilians”. Does he have any idea what’s going on over there?

Or does it depend on the definition of the word “is“?

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot)

Breaking news this morning….

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Karl Rove, President Bush’s senior political adviser, will voluntarily step down from his White House post at the end of the month, senior administration officials said Monday.

“Obviously its big loss to us, said Deputy White House press secretary Dana Perino. “He is a great colleague, good friend and a brilliant mind.”

Perino said Rove “wouldn’t be going if he wasn’t sure this is the right time to be giving more time to his family.”

Rove, who has held a top position in the White House since Bush took office in January 2001, is to stand down on August 31.

“Stand down”?   What kind of editorializing is that???

“I just think it’s time,” Rove told the Wall Street Journal. “There’s always something that can keep you here, and as much as I’d like to be here, I’ve got to do this for the sake of my family.”

He told the newspaper that he would leave Washington to return to Texas and that he had first suggested the idea of leaving a year ago.

However a series of problems for the Bush administration, starting when the Democrats took control of Congress and then as immigration and the Iraq war topped the agenda, made the enormously powerful Rove stay on.

But one of Bush’s most trusted advisors claimed his hand was forced when White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten announced that any senior staff that were working past Labor Day (September 3) would be expected to stay on until the end of Bush’s term in January 2007. [sic]

This will be the big blogo-news of the day…. so have at it.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I have to admit that the passing of Merv Griffin caused me to pause a bit to remember my own childhood.  Probably most of our younger generation may know Merv as the kingpin behind Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.  But for those of us growing up in the 1970s, Merv was kind of like a hip-rat packish Oprah Winfrey of the day. 

Pat Sajak remembers his friend and mentor on his passing this weekend.

When Merv sold Wheel (and Jeopardy!) in 1986, he became my ex-boss, and that’s when the fun really began. He was a dear friend to me and my family, and there was no better friend to have. First of all, Merv knew everyone. When you were with him, you rubbed shoulders with the most exciting and famous people on the planet. We vacationed together in some of the most glamorous spots in the world, and we stayed up very late laughing as long and hard as I’ve ever laughed in my life. No one ever told a story better, and no one ever had better stories to tell. And he was a great audience. That much-imitated laugh of his was completely genuine, and it breaks my heart that I will never hear it from him again.

Merv, of course, will live on through video tapes and through all the projects he created and the careers he furthered. There will be tributes to his show business savvy and stories of his warmth and generosity. But none of that will really be able to capture the bigger-than-life person that was Merv. The solar system of which he was the center was filled with bright stars who seemed to gravitate toward him. Whether on a TV show or in a living room, no one could make you feel more alive than Merv Griffin. His life was a celebration, and those of us who participated in it can’t help but feel blessed.

Merv would be very upset that his friends should be as sad as they are. He didn’t believe in sadness. He was upbeat, forward-looking and optimistic to the end. There will come a time, I suppose, when the sadness will give way to the wonderful memories, but I have trouble imagining that time right now. The man who changed my life, and then became such an important part of it, is gone.

I do know this: the conversation in heaven has gotten a lot more lively.

For me, Merv represented something so lacking in today’s Hollywood and entertainment figures:   class, humility and decency.

G’bye Merv.  God Bless you.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)