One things which makes it so much fun to be an “out” Republican at Gay Pride events is to see the expressions on Democratic officials’ faces when you challenge them on their policies.  I mean, they basically expect gays to fawn all over them because they assume we’re all left-wingers and just googly-eyed to have them marching in the Pride Parade.

I caused my State Assemblyman, the tax-hike-favoring Mike Feuer, to do a double take on Sunday.  As others cheered, I cried out, “Cut My Taxes.”  He turned at me and asked, “Just your taxes?”

“No,” I replied, “Cut taxes across the board.  We have the highest taxes* in the nation and the highest unemployment rate**.  There’s a correlation.”

Instead of responding, with a tight smile, he looked away and waved at someone else, oblivious to what he and his fellow Democrats are doing to discourage economic growth in the Golden State.

No wonder he didn’t consider my observation, he and his fellow Sacramento Democrats are determined to raise our taxes.  (Just the thing we need in an economic downturn.)  I have a better idea:  cut the salaries of public employees.

While I should have said that the state taxes are among the highest (as is our unemployment rate), it seems Feuer et al. are determined to make sure the Golden State has the highest tax burden among the fifty states.  And should state Democrats get their way and hike taxes, well, then we will have the highest unemployment in the nation.

And with the Obama Administration refusing to bail out our profligate General Assembly, state Democrats have to make tough choices, either stand up to their political patrons or raise taxes on their fellow citizens.

—

*According to the Tax Foundation, California has the fourth highest tax burden after Connecticut, New Jersey and New York.

**Well, the Golden State has one of the highest unemployment rates, the rates in Rhode Island and South Carolina are curently slightly higher and in Michigan significantly higher.

There is much to fault in the President’s speech yesterday to the American Medical Association (AMA).  But, to me, the most objectionable aspect was its tone. The President seemed to suggest that “if you’re not on board with the reforms I’m proposing, you’re against reform altogether.”

And yet, as clear as it is that our system badly needs reform, reform is not inevitable. There’s a sense out there among some that, as bad as our current system may be, the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t. There is a fear of change – a worry that we may lose what works about our health care system while trying to fix what doesn’t.

He all but ignored the free market reforms put forward by Republicans.

He, like his fellow partisan, the unhappy Barney Frank attempts to dismiss objections to Democratic plans by contending that the alternative would be doing nothing.  This is where the President and the Democrats really beginning to irritate me.  They act as if they’re the only one with ideas to reform various over-regulated sectors of the economy.

Couldn’t they at least be honest and have some intellectual courage to defend their policies by showing why their policies are better than the Republican altnernatives instead of suggesting, as they do, that their ideological adversaries have no alternatives whatsoever?

As Bruce pointed out earlier today, gay groups have been astonishgly silent as millions of citizens rise up against electoral fraud in quite possibly the most oppressively anti-gay regime in the world.  And this electoral fraud serves to keep in power Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a man, whom gay leftie blogger Michael Petrelis reports, ” used “Homosexuals to Undercut Rivals.”

I guess that’s only bad when Karl Rove does it.

Human Rights Campaign (HRC) President Joe Solmonese last week condemned the shooting at the Holocaust Museum, yet has nothing to say about the protests in Iran.  And I could find no references to the events in Iran on the web-pages of the other gay groups.

Petrelis doesn’t mince his words in comparing HRC’s response to the Obama Administration’s support of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) to the reaction of the protestors in Iran:

At a time when thousands and thousands of brave Iranian democracy-fighters are justifiably upset with their president stealing an election from them and the opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, and they’re taking to the streets to visibily and loudly demand change, I am appalled at how the gay bloggers have praised a letter from HRC. Why accept just a crumb from the $41 million organization?

Well, at least Solomonese wrote a letter to the President.  He didn’t even issue a statement in solidarity with the Iranian people protesting their anti-gay regime.  It seems it’s only when Republicans do something which is (or could remotely be perceived as) adverse to the interests of gay people does it raise the hackles of the leadership of the various gay organizations, particularly HRC. (more…)

All but lost amidst David Letterman’s half-hearted apology to the Governor of Alaska for his crude references to he daughter was the late night talk show host’s failure to address his description of her look as that of a “slutty flight attendant“.

Back in 1992 when then-journalist David Brock called law professor Anita Hill (who herself rose to fame for her slander of then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas) “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty,” politically correct pundits worked themselves up into a lather.  They had a point.  So, if it’s inappropriate and deserving of censure to calla female law professor “slutty,” wouldn’t it then be inappropriate to so describe the appearance of a female Governor as such?

Has any conservative pundit (or other public figure) called a prominent left-of-center woman “slutty” since Brock so described Ms. Hill?  If so, was he (or she) called on it?

David Letterman still has some apologizing to do.

So, perhaps it is time for CBS to let the talk show host go.

*Since 1992

**(in deference to bob below:) Or Comedien.

In one of her many (all worth your attention) posts on David Letterman, Cynthia Yockey recalls an episode of the 1970s TV series Happy Days which made a “lasting impression” on her:

It encapsulates why all of us who are outraged at David Letterman’s vile rape jokes about 14-year-old Willow Palin and his unfunny, degrading remarks about her mother, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, must get this bully fired from his show on CBS.

In that episode, the Fonz (Henry Winkler) attempts to teach Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard) how to stand up to bullies. Yesterday, after reading David Letterman’s apology to Sarah Palin, another episode came to mind, this one where instead of teaching a lesson, the Fonz needed to be taught a lesson.  You see, the Fonz did something he had never previously done; he made a mistake.  He had to admit he was wrong.

It took him the whole episode to do so, but, finally while struggling over the saying the word, “wrong,” as if he had a stammer, he did indeed say it.  It just didn’t come naturally to him.  It doesn’t seem to occur to David Letterman to say as much.  Yes, he did take “full responsibility.”  That is, to be sure, certainly a step (a very big one) in the right direction.  He did apologize.

But, he should have shown a little more class and said something like,

I was wrong to make a joke about Governor Palin’s daughter.  It is not appropriate to make jokes, particularly prurient ones, about the children of politicians, even if they are of legal age.  I compounded my error by not checking to confirm that the Governor’s took her 18-year-old daugther to the Yankee game.

Had he uttered these or similar words, it may well be appropriate to let the matter drop.  He did do the right thing, but he didn’t go far enough.  He needed to say, “I was wrong.” And as one of our readers noted in commenting on his failure to speak  those three words, he should also have added that he would “not do it again“.  For his purposes, however, this should do the trick.  The MSM will drop the issue.  Cynthia Yockey explains why we should not. (more…)

Aside from Andrew Sullivan and Michael Petrelis, The Gays(tm) have been stunningly silent on the Iranian election.  Almost as silent and stand-offish as President Obama has been.

While I haven’t blogged about it (admittedly), I have been Twittering my ass off throughout the weekend on the subject!  After all, shouldn’t gays be MORE invested in the outcome of Iran’s future than almost anyone?  They hang gays there after all.

Frank Fleming made an excellent observation on Twitter over the weekend:

You’d think liberals could put at least half the anger they aim at Prop 8 supporters towards someone who has executed gay people.

Amen.  It is the big inconvenient truth for The Gays(tm).  Life in America for us is ashamedly better than nearly every other country on earth.  But there always has to be something for The Gays(tm) to attack America and Christians about so they can raise money to keep themselves going.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

“Improved” apology does no include three words he really needed to say, “I was wrong.”

More on this anon.

Given how readily lesbian rush to defend prominent women attacked by men in the media, you’d like that more lesbians would join Camille Paglia and Endora-award winning blogress Tammy Bruce in standing up for Sarah Palin.  I mean, here you have a woman who almost single-handedly brought down three corrupt white male Republican politicians (the type of politicians left-wing feminists most love to hate).  Had she had a (D) after her name instead of and (R), she would be made a folk hero to feminists.  There were be awards named in her honor.

Well, another lesbian, who while she doesn’t always see eye to eye with us GayPatriot, does have a blog that’s well worth your attention, Cynthia Yockey has been unstinting in her criticism of David Letterman for the way he treated the Governor of Alaska.  Indeed, she has called on CBS to fire David Letterman.  In this post, she documents his offenses against that strong woman.

If CBS fired Don Imus who took less time to apologie that did Letterman, why then shouldn’t they treat the late-night TV talk show host similarly?

In her latest post, Yockey says that Letterman’s apology to air tonight is too little and too late and wants people to redouble their efforts to press CBS to fire him, contending that “If we don’t take out this bully, we’ll be swarmed by the millions who will follow his example.”

She’s onto something.  If Letterman can get away with this, it will only embolden other liberal entertainers to lower the bar even further than they have already when talking about other prominent conservatives.

Yockey believes that “getting David Letterman fired is our version of scaring off future bullies by having once hit someone.”

Read the whole thing.  And while you’re over at her blog, make sure to take a look round and check out some of her other posts.

She offers more tips on getting Letterman fired here and here.

I just learned that quite recently a detail of the private life of a prominent gay person (very likely not a Republican) was made public.  I had always thought it was primarily for political reasons that such things were exposed.  But, I guess people’s prurient obsessions transcend politics.

It does seem that in this internet age there is no privacy any more.  And that’s unfortunate.

So, we often learn the private details of public figures lives and sometimes those details reflect only tiny fraction of his or her life.  Because of the sensational nature of journalism today, sometimes that detail gets repeated over and over again, so that it seems a few minor “indiscretions” comes to define an individual’s public image.  At least they are to the media–and those who get their information about this person from the media.

And since most people don’t know this person personally, their perspective becomes skewed by the sensational coverage.  We hear so much about these indiscretions and nothing say about his regular visits to his grandmother or some other kind deed he has done more often than that indiscretion.  And yet the visits he makes to Grandma may say far more about his nature than one radio act captured on video and posted on the web.

Even our readers have such interests, with one person offering in a comment the details about the private life of another blogger.  We quickly deleted it (as I will detail any attempt by readers to identify the person at issue in the first paragraph of the post).

For any of you who think it’s a good thing to publish such information, examine your own life and realize that you, as have we all, done some things you would not wish to be made public.  They happened only a few times.  Those things are not who you are, but just one part–and maybe only a small part.

Perhaps, I am thinking of this because in the wake of the passing of actor David Carradine, I’ve been hearing much about his manner of death and little about his career.    We should focus more on his accomplishments (and he had many) and downplay his indiscretions — as we should with all people, including that individual mentioned at the outset of this post.

Make the case for gay marriage, not against social conservatives.

UPDATE from Bruce:  Conservative Brawler has a related perspective on this topic. 

When looking at the gay marriage issue, one has to ponder… what is this really all about? Gays can already have any relationship they wish, what they’re fighting for here is state-recognized status. Why? They can call themselves “married” until they’re blue in the face, why do they need to the state to recognize their union? Because with state-recognition comes state benefits. And here we find the crux of the issue for the intellectual conservative – the reason the intellectual conservative wants gay marriage to be decided state-by-state isn’t because he has some vehement hatred for gays, but because he believes that a state’s citizens should have the autonomy to decide what they will and will not subsidize.

It is such a fine posting that I could have chosen any paragraph of it to highlight.  So please, read the whole thing!

In an article on the “near total lack of coverage of the story on CNN” of the growing protests in Iran against election irregularities, we read:

“The Obama administration is determined to press on with efforts to engage the Iranian government,” The New York Times cited senior officials as having said Saturday, “despite misgivings about irregularities in the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”

Glenn, who linked the article offers, “When CNN isn’t covering, I always suspect an Eason Jordan-style deal now.“  Wonder if CNN’s paucity of coverage is a way to give cover for the President’s policies.

Still I wonder, how CNN might have covered the protests during the previous administration’s tenure had the President’s predecessor favored engagement with the Iranian government.

UPDATE:  While at the gym on Monday, saw pretty extensive CNN coverage of protests.  Seems they got the message.  Too bad President Obama does not even make rhetorical gestures in favor of the Iranians getting the kind of hope and change he campaigne on for America, a country in far less dire straights than Iran.  And he’s still vowing talks with the Iranian regime.  And many of his supporters accused his predecessor of stubbornly sticking to his policies, even as they were failing.

Perhaps the greatest irony of the campaign last fall against Proposition 8 was how readily opponents of the initiative used the most hateful language to slur their opponents as haters. So self-righteous were they in their cause that they assumed that only those with malicious motives could support the measure.

In the course of the campaign, however, those promoting the proposition rarely attacked the opponents with the vehemence of those opponents used against them.

I was reminded of this at our GayPatriot dinner earlier this week.  A reader (whom I had not previously met) joined us and recalled their rhetoric exactly as I had. He too reported how vicious opponents of the initiative had been, nearly bringing him (a young gay man) to vote in favor. 

Yet, this reader’s words reminded me of my thoughts last fall when I voted against Prop 8. While I didn’t think it was appropriate for the state constitution to define marriage, I also didn’t want the haters to win. From all the hateful e-mails I received from the “No” side* and the speeches and conversations I heard, the hatred came primarily from the gay marriage side, those how like me, opposed the constitutional amendment.

I was no alone. In hist post on wavering before voting “No,” Wesley says he had wanted to “punish” those who had made an anti-Mormon ad (ostensibly to oppose 8).  He too was offended by the rhetoric of Prop 8 opponents. (more…)

Sorry in advance for the quick hit-and-git. I’m out the door to a Rockies game and this just crossed on Drudge.

Seems Barack Obama may have fired an IG (and inso doing, even violated the law he helped craft about the procedures for such) because he was investigating a big supporter of the president.

Read through all of this. It may be the beginning of something big:

AP: Ousted AmeriCorps watchdog defends waste probe

And a more thorough detailing from the Washington Examiner: What’s behind Obama’s sudden attempt to fire the AmeriCorps inspector general?

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot) from HQ

Mark McKinnon and Jon Henke get at the essence of our party’s problem:

Sure, there are plenty of Republicans mumbling the standard talking points, but few, if any, are capturing the public imagination.

That’s a problem. It’s not enough to argue that Democrats are wrong. If Republicans cannot express a compelling vision for America that actually persuades Americans that Republicans are right, then it’s hard to see how Republicans can recover.

As Glenn Reynolds who linked this might say, read the whole thing*;  they put forward the names of several Republican who have, in the past, done a good job articulating the conservative message.  Some of them may well be capable of capturing the public imagination.

While Obama’s message may have been little more than pablum, he did capture the imagination of a large segment of the population.  As did Sarah Palin soon after John McCain tapped her as his running mate.  It’s why, I believe, Democrats and the MSM were so eager to destroy her.  They wanted to prevent a Republican, especially a Republican woman, who could connect with voters, from succeeding.

While poll after poll suggests that Americans are opposed the bulk of Obama’s ideas, Republican ideas resonate.  But, people don’t vote for ideas (well, except on initiatives and referenda), they vote for candidates, hence the need to get some candidates out there who can make a compelling ccase for conservatism.

Once we do, not only will we recapture Congress, but we’ll win back the White House as well–and sooner than most people think.  Just so long as articulate and charismastic conservatives step up to the plate and put their hats in the ring.  (How’s that for mixing metaphors?)

*While you’re at it, make sure to check out Jon’s blog, The Next Right, a good source for ideas on rebuilding the GOP and recapturing the majority.

As many of you know, Carrie Prejean was dethroned earlier this week as Miss California and replaced by someone whose name will be forgotten as soon as the publicity over her recent crowning subsides.  If it is true that Miss Prejean breached her contractual obligations, as pageant executives contend, then this action was entirely justified.

Given, however, that the pageant executive quoted in most news reports, Keith Lewis, has not concealed his animus against Miss Prejean, I was initially skeptical of his claim that, “This was a decision based solely on contract violations.” Methinks he may have been a bit overeager to find such violations.  That said, Donald Trump who has shown himself to be incredibly even-handed in this hullabaloo, did sign off on the dethronement, saying that Prejean did not honor her contract.

If she wasn’t doing her job, she deserved the boot.

Lewis seemed determined to dethrone Prejean.  And if Trump is right, then she gave her adversary the proverbial robe he used to hang her.  He did seem to have a vendetta against her.  When I saw him on Larry King Live with the new Miss California, he was practically gloating.  He had to wreak vengeance because she hurt his feelings when offering a different point of view on gay marriage at odds with his own.

Well, it looks like he won’t be too happy with Prejean’s replacement, Tami Farrell, as she also believes marriage is between a man and a woman.  But, to Miss Prejean’s advesaries, they probably won’t matter too much.  They had made it all about her.  And she just had to be defeated.

So, they got their pound of flesh.  And the former Miss California may well have made it easier for them to take.

The abundance of evidence that the Holocaust shooter harbored strong animosities against the two most recent Republican presidents and  had little in common ideologically with the mainstream of modern American conservatism notwithstanding, certain left-of-center pundits and bloggers have attributed his murderous actions to (what they define as) “hateful” conservative rhetoric.

And yet, as they make the jump from the shooter’s actions to their ideological adversaries, they do little to illuminate his motivations, exposing only their own prejudices against conseratives.  Because, they believe, the shooter hated Jews, he had to be a “right-winger” because the right wing is the source for anti-Semitism in America.  Such an attitude shows that while they accuse those of us on the right of living in the past, their understanding of anti-Semitism dates back at least forty years.

Their views of conservatives have little to do with the reality of the conservative movement in America today, indeed, with the conservative movement as it has been evolving at least since William F. Buckely, Jr. launched the National Review in 1955.  And yet, all too many in the MSM, equally clueless about the ideas undergirding American conservatism, don’t challenge them on their misunderstanding.

And when they do get challenged, well, they don’t know how to react.  Witness Barney Frank earlier this week.   When the unhappy Massachusetts Democrat accused CNBC host Mark Haines of “wanting to do ‘nothing’ about the economic crisis, which isn’t at all what Haines said,” the host tried to correct the record.  Instead of acknowledging his error, the Congressman “played victim and whined his way off the stage.”

It seems this mean-spirited liberal has bought into the propaganda his party has used to discredit the opposition, believing critics of Democratic plans just want to “do nothing.”  When faced with evidence to the contrary, he becomes disoriented, lashing out at the misrepresented party and refusing to engage in any kind of dialogue.

Thus, since conservatives don’t fit their narrative of what we’re supposed to be, they have to resort to name-calling because arguing with us would mean acknowledging our ideas.  And by dint of acknowledging our ideas, they undercut their (at that point, previously) prejudiced worldview.

They might find it easier to talk to us, if they tried to see us as we are and not as their prejudices define us.

Just talked to the YoungestPatriotBrotherWest who worries about how the President’s policies will impact his business.

The father to two of the world’s seven most beautiful (& intelligent) girls pointed out in the same time frame that Conan O’Brien is taking over at the Tonight Show, Letterman is all over the news.  He mocked Palin as a publicity stunt.  He knew it would garner headlines (and possibly boost his ratings).

But, I wonder if this stunt to attract attetion may be akin to other such media stunts which signal that an etnertainer is past his prime.  Even Matt Lauer thinks the talk show host went too far and will suffer for his ribald humor.

Let’s hope he’s right.

Cornell University Law Professor William A. Jacobson contends that by Paul Krugman’s own logic in blaming “conservatives for the shooting at the Holocaust Museum” since they “have had the audacity to harshly criticize the Obama administration“, the New York Times columnist implies that his very rhetoric promotes terrorism:

While Krugman places the blame on conservatives for the museum [and Tiller] shooter[s], Krugman fails to consider the implications of his own logic. Since Krugman has been one of the harshest critics of the Bush policies (as continued by the Obama administration), then using his own logic Krugman himself is “winding up” the next Islamist terrorist attack. Or maybe Krugman wound up the last Islamist attack, just days before the museum shooting, when a convert to Islam upset over U.S. policies in Iraq and Afghanistan killed an Army recruiter.

Read the whole thing

Hmmm. . . so harsh criticism leads to terrorism? Guess that indicts a lot of left-wing blogs then. But, Krugman’s not going after them. Guess to lefties like Krugman, when conservatives engage in overheated rhetoric, it leads to violence, but when liberals do it, it’s part of the natural order of things and only leads to civilized discourse.

it seems the only problem David Letterman finds with his derogatory reference to the Governor of Alaska and his joke about an athlete raping her fourteen-year-old daughter was not that he may have said something inappropriate, but that it caused some people to get upset with him.

In his brilliant dissection of Letterman’s non-apology, Victor Davis Hanson looks into that pronoun Letterman used to describe the offended parties:

. . . he evokes the now common straw man “they” who are apparently “upset” with him, hoping to play the victim card. Then he dribbles out something about his “last show” as if we are to weep that some mob is out to silence him. (But the reason he picked the Palins, and not the Obamas, Gores, Bidens, or Kerrys, was precisely because he knew it would not equate to his “last show”).

I just watched the entire segment where the talk show host addresses, but does not apologize for his crude humor.  I’m not going to post the video here;  if you really want to watch, Fausta has it up on her blog (along with a good post).

But, while saying that “Of course we make mistakes, left and right,” Letterman never acknowledged any particular mistake he made.  Instead he acts as if he’s the wrong party. (Endora-Award winning blogress Tammy Bruce might call him a “malignant narcissist.”)  Steve Chapman, no Palin fan he, says the talk show host needs to apologize:

Instead of acting as though he’s the victim of someone else’s misunderstanding, as he did last night, Letterman ought to simply admit he blew it, big time, and personally apologize to the Palins and his viewers.

He also should to keep in mind that if you’re going to ridicule someone’s sex life, you might pick on someone your own size. And  make very sure you have the right person.

But, Letterman, as Jim Treacher who also has the video up, points out, didn’t offer an apology, he gave us “an angry, insincere, self-pitying (“Get yourself a talk show, folks”), self-justifying whine.”  (more…)

The more we learn about the deranged neo-Nazi who went on a shooting spree Wednesday at the Holocaust Museum, the clearer it becomes that he is neither of the left nor the right.  Some on the left are still describing him as a right-winger. They seem to be dwelling not of the murderer’s own problems, but instead on his supposed right-wing ideology:

Of course, the slander has already begun. Not of [the shooter], but of “right-wingers” and “conservatives.” The standard media template — that he was a white Christian “right-winger” — has been trotted out, and the DHS report from last January has supposedly been vindicated. I just heard Ralph Peters, who I would have thought knew better, call the guy a “right-winger” on Cavuto.

He was anything but a conservative, as Rand Simberg, who wrote those words quoted above, found when he took the time to read the shooter’s writings: he doesn’t fit the “the traditional DHS/MSM notion of the deranged right-wing extremist“.   The more we learn about him, the more we find that the reality of his life “doesn’t fit the narrative” of the left-wing blogs.

He was anything but a conservative.

All that said, I think my fellow conservatives are wrong  to associate him with left-wing blogs.

Yeah, they had a few common notions, but the guy praised a few things conservative bloggers had done.

I also think it’s wrong to link the Holocaust shooter to the President’s former Pastor.  Yeah, Rev. Wright keeps making deranged comments about Jews, er, scratch that, Zionists, but he has never advocated violence against us. (more…)