In just three hours, Barack Obama will take the oath of office as the 44th President of the United States. After he does so, he will deliver his first speech as the nation’s chief executive. That speech, even more than his mostly dignified conduct since the election, will set the tone for his Administration.

This time, his speaking style should serve him well. For the better part of his career in the national spotlight, his speeches have been short on specifics and long on rhetoric. He need not articulate any policy proposals in his address, but speak to the nation he will then lead and not just the partisans who helped elect him.

I am delighted it will be a relatively short speech, “about 15-20 minutes.” All he need do is acknowledge the greatness of this country, perhaps the uniqueness of our history, a nation built on an ideal rather than an ethnicity and even the significance of the moment. To be sure, he can and should offer a broad vision of where he intends to lead us. But, just a broad outline.

Today is not the day for specific policies. Today, is the day to celebrate the greatness of our country and the smoothness of the transition from the Administration of a man from one political party to that of a man from the opposing party. Such a transition first distinguished this nation two-hundred-and-eight years ago, when John Adams peacefully yielded the presidency to his then-political rival, his once and future friend, Thomas Jefferson.

To acknowledge the meaning of such a transition, the new President must pay tribute to his predecessor whose Administration, by all accounts, has helped ensure a smooth transition. That acknowledgment must be so ungrudging that the angriest voices of the left, dedicated for so long to demeaning Bush, will pitch a fit at its generosity.

In recent days, Obama has shown he can rise to the occasion, saying that Bush is “good man who loves his family and loves his country, [who] made the best decisions that he could at times under some very difficult circumstances.” Let us hope he does so again today.

On September 11, 2001, I was working two blocks from the White House when the world came to an end.  Or so it seemed that day.   I have never felt as scared for my life and my family’s lives as I had that day.  And over the following days and months, every time I drove into Washington, DC for work, I expected that day would end with a horrific explosion and thousands dead.

But it never came.  President Bush promised he would take the war declared on America TO the enemy.  Instead of fighting the war on terror as a litigated, criminal enterprise, President Bush realized this was a war and treated it as such.

As he leaves office today, I would like to personally thank President George W. Bush for doing everything he thought was right in order to keep me and my fellow Americans safe since 9/11/2001.  While his decisions on prosecuting the war have been controversial, but the results matter.

No matter what happens, we can always say that America was never attacked again after 9/11 thanks to President Bush.

God Bless you, Mr. President.  Enjoy your time off and know that millions of Americans thank you for your dedication to protecting us from our enemies in a time of war.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

First snow of season hits Charlotte – WCNC.com

Many schools, including Charlotte-Mecklenburg, are closed today and kids are ready to head outside to play in the snow.

Snow continues to fall across the area with the heaviest snowfall in Stanly, Anson and Richmond counties. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools are closed with an optional teacher work day.

A Winter Storm Warning continues for the Piedmont until noon. The rest of the area is under a Winter Storm Watch.

Here’s the view of Global Warming from my house this morning….

Is Algore in the Carolinas today?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Many bloggers, including this one, have written about the legacy of the outgoing President and Vice President. As one of the leading gay conservative blogs, it falls on us to address the legacy of the outgoing Vice-President’s lesbian daughter, Mary.

Since most gay leaders are of the liberal persuasion and believe the (R) after a politician’s name renders him or her repugnant, few will take the time to praise the Vice President or his daughter. Yet, each has contributed significantly to improving the image of gay people in America. Mary lives happily with her partner Heather Poe, and their son Sam, all of whom have been accepted into the Vice President’s family and featured together at public events.

Yet, gay rights’ groups won’t give this impressive young lady much credit. They wanted her to use her prominence as a politician’s daughter to become a professional activist. But, that’s not the kind of person Mary is. She is not an activist, not wishing to be an outspoken public advocate for any cause.

Simply by being herself and eschewing activism, however, she has done more than many activists have done to undermine anti-gay animus in America. In the public eye by dint of her Dad, she has carried herself with class and thus put forward a positive image of a gay person leading an ordinary life (in, until today, extraordinary circumstance). Many social conservatives admire her father. As they see how she carries herself and how he treats her and her partner, they may well reconsider any prejudices they harbor against gay people.

Having met Mary, I sense that on a personal level, she’ll appreciate her Dad’s departure from the public stage. She’ll be less in the spotlight and will have more time to spend with parents whom she loves and who love her, more opportunities to enjoy the great outdoors with her family. And that, I believe, is where her true passion lies.

Her legacy is this: as the first openly gay child of a President or Vice President, she has showed us how such an individual should conduct herself when her father is in office. And her father has shown us how a parent should treat such a gay child. Gay people now know that a prominent Republican can love and accept a gay child without compromising his conservative principles. And so do Republicans.

That’s a lot for one person to accomplish. So, thank you, Mary Cheney. And thank you, Mr. Vice President. You’ve made it a lot easier for a gay person to be open about his sexuality, especially in Republican circles.

Related:  Dick Cheney: The Most Pro-Gay Vice President in History.

Inauguration Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Some things you just have to post twice.

Since they’re trying to recreate Disneyland tomorrow on the Potomac, I thought I’d spare myself the cost of plane fare and go to the real one in Anaheim.  GayPatriot readers in the Southland are welcome to join us!  E-mail me for details.

Ever since I started regularly reading conservative blogs sometime in 2003 or 2004, I loved the level of discourse of my favorite right-of-center sites.  Or maybe, I should say non-leftist.  Then, Andrew Sullivan offered a balanced perspective on President Bush, hailing him for his tenacity in the War on Terror, yet faulting him for his occasional arrogance and political short-sightedness.

Glenn Reynolds thought him a decent man, but berated his big-government conservatism.  Powerline offered a more pro-Bush perspective, yet even those fine fellows took issue with the Bush Administration from time to time, particularly on legal issues.  Hugh Hewitt, while always offering trenchant political analysis could be pollyannish about the president (and the GOP for that matter).  Roger Simon focused on the shenanigans of the Hollywood left, wondered about the influence of social conservatives on the GOP, but took a tough line on terrorism.  And then there are the others, Gateway Pundit, the Anchoress, the Corner, CampaignSpot too many to list here.

Some, like Hugh, may have cut the president a little more slack than he may well deserve, yet none called “Dear Leader” or even treated him as such.  Yet, all too many of our critics and left-wing bloggers assume we so reverence the outgoing president, with many writing in the vein of this commenter, “conservatives have publicly labeled anyone who disagrees with ‘Dear Leader’ as a traitor.”  Or this one:  “When will you all get the idea that patriotism and loyalty to this country is not the same thing as showing loyalty to single person and his cronies?”

Yet, they can find no words to back up their claim, not on this blog, not on any mainstream conservative blog, not even on Hugh’s and, of the thoughtful conservative bloggers, he has been the president’s biggest cheerleader.

A few days ago, while perusing an old post, I caught that latter comment.  And on the day before Bush leaves office, I wanted to share with y’all my reply, my brief attempt to explain left-wingers assumptions about those conservative (and libertarian) bloggers who, from time to time, have defended the outgoing president:

Where, oh, where did liberals get the idea that we so venerate Bush? Or call him Dear Leader? Could it be they drew the notion from their own psyches, given how eagerly these people revere his successor?

Welcome Instapundit Readers!! While you’re here, check out some of our most recent posts, noting that no “O” Keys where missing from White House keyboards when the new Administration took over and wondering if pundits have been projecting their own views onto the “blank screen” of Obama’s inaugural address.

Leah’s coment to my post, Bush-Hatred and the Bush Legacy that “Obama worship is the flip side of Bush hatred,” reminded me how much Obamania ressembles the 1970s teen craze for singer Bobby Sherman.  Like those teenagers (many of whom all but certainly became partisans of the Democratic candidate), Obama’s fans love their man without really knowing what he’s going to do in office.

At a party shortly after the election, a woman who has worked on the Democrat’s campaign told me she supported him because we needed someone to undo the “damage” of the Bush years, yet she couldn’t identify any policies her guy backed, except that he promised to change the way things are done in the nation’s capital.  Only she couldn’t say how he planned to effect that change.  She’s not alone.

But, just as their support for Obama is based more on their own emotions than their candidate’s political philosophy and positions on the issues so too was their Bush-hatred emotionally-based.  At a holiday party in December, a Democratic acquaintance raged against Bush and the “right-wing” for creating the mess we’re in.

What policies, I asked, had he enacted which created this mess?  He couldn’t answer, but just said “they’d” been in power.  I pressed my point.  He replied that he didn’t want to have this conversation with a Republican and stalked away.

Others, when pressed, have cited the deregulation of the Bush years.  So, when I ask them to identify particular laws the Republican Congress enacted and the Republican President signed to deregulate the financial markets, I was met with a similar silence.  Indeed, the claims of Obama and his supporters “notwithstanding, the Bush Administration was hardly about deregulation.”  Bush, according to George Mason University’s Veronique de Rugy “was the biggest regulator since Nixon.”

Which brings me back to Leah’s point that Obama worship is the flip side of Bush hatred.  They love the one without knowing what he stands for and loath the other while mispresenting his record.

In noting additional failures of the Bush Presidency not identified in my Broad Outline of Where W Went Wrong, commenter (and blogger in his own right) V the K points out that president naively expected “the Democrats to put aside partisanship for the good of the country.”

Building on my own first point (how the president took didn’t do “enough to defend his character and promote his programs”), I would offer a similar thought to V the K.  The president naively assumed the MSM would put their liberal leanings aside to do their jobs and report the news.

In the wake of his 2004 reelection victory, the president probably thought the media would be less hard on him because he couldn’t run for election again in 2008. In the run-up to 2004, they had been hard on him because they were doing their utmost to prevent his reelection.

Having failed that, he must have just assumed they would give him a fair shake in his second term.

But, alas, it seems those in the media don’t just want to defeat Republicans, they want to discredit us as well.

Hugh nails it:

The problem for the new Adminstration trying to position itself in the center and extend to the right is the Democratic Congress and especially its very vocal and very left wing leadership

Read the whole thing!

Bwa-ha-ha-ha….

Patrick Range McDonald from LA Weekly reports ….

On Sunday, openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson delivered the opening prayer for Obama’s inaugural celebration at the Lincoln Memorial. Robinson was chosen by Obama after the President-elect outraged the gay community and many liberals for picking Proposition 8 supporter and evangelical minister Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at Tuesday’s presidential inauguration. The choice of Robinson, in other words, was seen as something of an olive branch.

Now gay Web sites Towleroad.com and AfterElton.com report that the decision to cut Robinson’s prayer from HBO’s live coverage of Sunday’s events was made by Obama’s people and not the cable network.The live broadcast began after the bishop’s prayer.

In case the Obama team doesn’t know by now, gays are no longer willing to be a silent underclass, so it’ll be interesting to see how things play out in the coming days, as well as Tuesday when Warren, a man who obviously believes it’s perfectly okay for a group of people to have an existing right taken away by popular vote, blesses the nation.

Obama keeps talking about change, but so far gays have only seen the same old political expediancy. As it stands now, the Robinson/Warren episode is a bright and early warning flag.

It is official — The Gays are at war with Obama and the bloom is off the rose of the Messiah.

Bwa-ha-ha-ha.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

One of the most amusing things about the past eight years has been watching certain people on the left launch into paroxysms of outrage every time the name, “George W. Bush,” is mentioned.  They even got upset that, at the close of his tenure in office, he reminded the American people of his accomplishments instead of apologizing for his mistakes. In their eyes, that good man could do no right.

And yes, despite his many flaws, he is a good man.  Even his Democratic successor has said as much.  But, for many of his supporters, “to trash Bush was to belong,” as if expressing animosity toward the president were the sacrament of their faith.

George W. Bush, however, is anything but the demon or clown of their caricatures.  He was — and remains — a complex man who, to be sure, made many mistakes as president, but, who pretty much got the big things right.  I say, “pretty much,” because while he did shift strategy in Iraq he was slow in doing so.

Above all, he kept us safe.  Since 9/11, there have been no terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

Let us hope the determination in his decisive reaction to the attacks defines his legacy, an example of how a leader should react in time of crisis:

Bush showed America’s enemies a country that does not retreat in fear, does not bomb with impunity, and most important, does not desert civilians or foreign governments that trust us. If you think that doesn’t matter, look at Libya, which disarmed its weapons program. And see how much easier Obama’s presidency will be, because Bush kept the faith.

In the process of looking out for our country, George W. Bush, overthrew two tyrannous regimes and liberated fifty million people.

Just as we remember Harry S Truman today more for his strong stance against the expansion of Communism in the immediate aftermath of World War II rather than his blundering economic policies, notably his attempt to nationalize the steel mills, so will people remember Bush’s resolve against the violent expression of Islamic fanaticism rather than his failure to show similar resolve against the financial shenanigans of unregulated government sponsored enterprises (GSEs).

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When a leading liberal pundit and frequent Bush-critic writes that it’s “no longer a close call: President Bush was right about the surge,” we know that the success of the surge has passed from established fact to conventional wisdom.

Not just that, it says something that distinguishes the outgoing president, that, at least on matters of national security, George W. Bush is a man who learns from his mistakes.  And the two different stories from Iraq, apparent failure in 2005-06 but success in the two years after that helps us see our nation as the land of second chances.

As I read Ancient and European history, I note how many armies forfeited military advantages through strategic or tactical blunders.  Occasionally, they recover from their “self-created” setbacks, but more often than not, these mistakes lead to eventual defeat (and sometimes and even dismemberment of nations or empires).

Just over two years ago, it seemed we were losing in Iraq.  We had won the initial stages of the war, but had not effectively adjusted our strategy to meet the changing circumstances on the ground.  European moralists (or one of their imitators in American universities, think tanks and on liberal editorial boards and blogs) writing about the war (as many of them did) in 2006 (and into 2007 and even ’08), would have defined our “adventure” in Iraq as a failure caused by an arrogant assumption of a bellicose Administration confident that military might alone were enough to secure success.

Americans, however, believe that we can turn a failure into an opportunity and even success.  We are, to be sure, not the only ones to believe this, but it is a defining aspect of our character.  We don’t see one failure as determinant of the final outcome.

Not believing that the deteriorating state of the war ensured defeat, George W. Bush, against great odds and much opposition, shifted course in Iraq, perhaps the boldest move of his Administration.  As a result, his new strategy, dubbed “the surge,” effected in Charles Krauthammer’s words “the most dramatic change in the fortunes of an American war since the summer of 1864.”

There is a lesson in this.  And not just for political leaders.  It applies to our own lives as well.  It suggests that when we’ve made a mistake or suffered a setback, we too can turn things around just as President Bush and General Petraeus did in Iraq.

We’re Americans.  We believe in second chances.  One mistake does not necessarily doom us to failure.  To paraphrase George Eliot’s maxim “It’s never too late to be what you might have been,” it’s as if we believe it’s never too late to succeed where once you have failed.

Related:  We’ve won in Iraq, but will W get any credit? Will McCain?

Welcome Instapundit Readers!! While you’re here, please check out two of my two recent posts on Bush’s Legacy: President Bush, the Surge, America & Second Chances and On Bush-Hatred and the Bush Legacy.

Last Thursday, Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III, demonstrated an essential quality of leadership when he calmly reacted to an unexpected crisis in the plane he was piloting.  When his plane, US Airways flight 1549, hit a flock of geese, he had only few moments to decide how to react. Like Barack Obama in the fall campaign, Sullenberger was “cool, calm and collected” in a crisis.

The difference is that whereas the then-Illinois Senator didn’t change course, Sullenberger had no choice but to.  He acted and decisively so, ditching the plane in the Hudson, saving his passengers and crew. While many have praised Obama (and rightly so) for running a brilliant campaign, we often forget that it was not always so.  Were it not for the crisis (i.e., the financial one) he faced, the conventional wisdom might be that the Democratic nominee crumpled when facing the unexpected.

Recall how off balance he seemed in the weeks after John McCain tapped Sarah Palin to be his running mate, changing the dynamics of the campaign?  Had McCain not seemed even more off balance as the scope of the finanicial meltdown became manifest, we might more readily remember Obama’s floundering in the first weeks of the fall. Thanks to a generous assist from the MSM, Obama was able to counter the Palin pick which had so confounded his campaign.

But, on its own, the Obama campaign did not have the wherewithal to successfully challenge a selection which helped recast Republicans as reformers. To be sure, once he takes office, the new president is likely to continue receiving assists from the media.

Unlike a candidate, however, an executive must do more than give speeches; he must act.  It is a good thing to remain calm in a crisis.  And I’m reassured somewhat that Obama has that quality.  But, what Sullenberger’s success teaches us is that being cool and collected in a crisis is not enough.

In most crises, President Obama will not have to act immediately, to change course as quickly as did that noble pilot, but he will not to act. And he can only learn from our country’s newest hero.
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Should the Democrats’ “Titanic Stimulus” pass (as I expect it will), expect a short-term boost to the economy.

But, I fear the long-term consequences. It will not lead to economic recovery, only prolong our day of fiscal reckoning.

Here’s why. Imagine, if you will, an individual who has all but maxed out his credit cards. As he pays off the minimum balance due each month, he can barely afford anything but the bare necessities. He’s been peitioning the credit card companies to increase his credit line, but to no avail. Finally, one day, with a change in the management at those companies, they agree to his request.

With a new higher line of credit, he can start spending money again, so we see an increase in his “economic activity.” But, as he spends more, he adds to the debt he has already accumulated. He’s going to have to pay it off sometime. And when he does economic activity will slow down.

So, let’s hope our elected officials think about that as they consider a massive increase in the federal credit line at a moment when the federal government is already saddled with trillions of dollars in debt.

I have all these ideas related to the transition that I’d like to write about before the inauguration, thoughts on the outgoing president and his successor, yet my mind constantly wanders to other topics, my interests in world history, my love for the theater and cinema and my own proposed fantasy epic.

I’ve recently begun a pretty good fantasy novel, Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule, the first book of his Sword of Truth series, which I’ve been trying to read while doing cardio. Though a good read, it has some of the flaws I find in much contemporary fantasy fiction.

He seems to be better than most as it appears (and note I say appears as I’ve only just begun it) he has an idea where he’s going with this story, having set up the main conflict which will define his “epic.”  All too many authors seems to just start writing, with the conflict emerging well into the story, thus compromising narrative flow*.

To be sure, when reading Tolkien’s The Return of the Shadow: The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part One, I realized he didn’t have much idea where he was going when he first sat down to write a sequel to The Hobbit.  However, once he figured out where the story was headed, he totally revised the chapters penned before he had defined (given Tolkien’s ideas of creation, “discovered” might be a better word here) the quest and the conflict.

Would it that other fantasy fiction writers followed his lead. But, perhaps, the nature of the publishing business today makes that task difficult. Many writers seem to publish volumes in a particular series before completing the epic.

That may well be one reason I’m waiting to start writing mine (time constraints being another problem). I want to know how it ends before I start writing in earnest. I read somewhere that shortly after beginning writing the Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling wrote out the last chapter of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, what would become the last book in the series. That’s one reason, I believe, the story resonated so well with readers.

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As the price tag for the Democrats’ stimulus packages continues to climb, even as the federal governmetn faces a record budget deficit, I ask Obama supporters, who have such hope that their man will change things in Washington, if they can provide any evidence of such hefty stimuli actually providing anything more than a short-term boost to the economy.

They hem and they haw, perhaps a few will mention the New Deal, but none can come up with more recent examples.  I mean, if additional federal spending stimulated the economy, we’d be enjoying boom times today.  And FDR’s New Deal would have caused a steep drop in unemployment.  Instead, unemployment remained pretty steady through the 1930s, spiking up in 1937 and remaining high until World War II.

If the president-elect and the Democrats really want to “grow the economy,” they need not look so far back for plans to emulate.  They just need look at Ronald Reagan’s record, but alas Democrats are loath to admit the success of Republican ideas and the failure of their own.

Ronald Reagan’s stimulus was simpler than the Democrats’ proposed boondoggle — and successful.  He didn’t increase federal outlays, but instead held the line on them, while returning money to the people:

The difference between Reagan’s and Obama’s policies is striking. Reagan stressed private investment. With Obama, as with FDR, it’s public investment. Reagan cut spending in the worst days of the recession in 1981. Obama favors radically increased spending. Reagan sought to boost employment in general. Obama has particular jobs in mind.

If the Democrats had it within themselves to admit that the policies of one of their icons fail to foster economic growth and bringing down the employment rate and to acknowledge that those of one of their great adversaries succeeded, they would help bring about a new era of prosperity while realigning American politics in their favor.

When Charles Winecoff alerted me to his upcoming coming-out piece on BigHollywood, not only did he draw my attention to his post, but he also reminded me about the recently-launched site. I know (and highly respect) a number of people associated with Big Hollywood, notably my pal John Nolte, its editor-and-chief, and wanted to blog on its recent launch.

John and I have been corresponding for over four years now ever since I discovered his wonderful site, the now-defunct, Stranded on Blue Islands. He’s bounced around on the web a lot since then, but let’s hope he’s found a permanent home on BigHollywood, the perfect site for a guy like him.

John, like me, is a conservative film buff with Midwestern roots. He is one of the few people I know who has a DVD collection larger than mine.

Not only is he a good writer, but he’s also a great guy. And he’s been rewarded by his qualities as a human being with a beautiful and intelligent wife. I highly recommend you check out the site he edits.  It offers a conservative perspective on movies and the entertainment industry.

As I scanned the site today, I recalled my own history in Hollywood, how I had become a film buff in the late 1990s when, after watching As Good As It Gets, I realized movies could convey on screen the ideas I had hoped to express in books. And they did it with an immediacy that literature lacked. In a matter of hours, a great flick could move you and so remind you of the things that mattered.  Human relationships.  Respect for difference.  The need to stand up to evil.

Shortly thereafter, I find myself writing scripts, then moved out here to try to sell them.

I had a certain idealism about the entertainment industry when I came out here, an idealism contradicted by my very conduct.

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I have taken a break from reading books about the two historical periods which most fascinate me of late, the collapse of the Roman Republic and the rise of our own to read Michael Barone’s Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America’s Founding Fathers.

When Barone introduced one man who figured into the British Upheaval, a certain Robert Spencer, the Earl of Sutherland, one of the most remarkable characters of the period,” I thought I was reading about David Gergen. While temperamentally different from the man who now offers bland commentary on CNN, the ill-tempered Sutherland served James II and William III, two kings with very different governing philosophies at the close of the seventeenth century.

He had even voted to exclude the former from the throne.

Similarly, Gergen served two very different presidents (and a few others to boot) at the close of the twentieth. Barone writes that “Sunderland needed office for the money it would bring, and he had learned from his dismissal in 1681 never to oppose a king.”

Maybe Gergen didn’t need the money, but he seemed to long for the prestige of being associated with a President of the United States. And he does seem to have offered some opposition to the outgoing chief executive, though in terms more muted than many of his CNN colleagues.

It seems certain people delight in being close to power, no matter what the purpose of that power.

Sutherland, by the way, is ancestor of Diana, the late Princess of Wales.

For those of you who don’t know, I grew up in Chester County, Pennsylvania.  Home of Longwood Gardens, Valley Forge, the Mushroom Capital of the World (Kennett Square), and for any of us who went to public school in the county — the Brandywine River Museum.

The Museum was THE PLACE for school field trips once a year.  It is such a gem in Southeastern Pennsylvania that I am sure most of its residents, as I did, take it for granted.  We used to groan when we knew the Brandywine River Museum was our “day away from school” destination, instead of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia — or some other “cool” place. 

In reality, the BRM was the place that introduced me to art.  Real art.  Paintings of naked women art.   You know, classy stuff.  Stuff a kid from my background would most likely not appreciate, and perhaps snicker at, at that age.  Timeless pieces of art and beauty created by man.

One of the reasons the BRM was started in 1971 was to honor and hold the collections of the Wyeth family, who made their home in Chester County.   Yesterday, one of the most famous American contemporary artists, Andrew Wyeth, passed away.

Andrew Wyeth was as famous as famous is in Chester County.   His father, N.C. Wyeth, was known around the world as a painter and illustrator.  Andrew learned his craft in his father’s workshop.

As a kid growing up in Chester County, the Wyeth family’s importance in the art world was embedded into our studently consciousness.  And Andrew was mysterious.  It was rumored he came in with the crowd somtimes at the Brandywine River Museum, but no one ever remembers actually seeing him.  He was like our version of the Wizard of Oz.  Really important, all-encompassing, never seen but through his work.

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy honored Andrew Wyeth by giving him the President Medal of Freedom — the first time it had ever been given to an artist.   Amazing.

I just wanted to acknowledge this morning the passing of this great American artist and patriot.  And thank him for opening the world of art to a lot of stupid kids who appreciate him a lot more as they got older.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)