NOW [the National Organization for Women] inducts Letterman into its “Media Hall of Shame”

It’s nice to see the left-of-center feminist organization condem the late night talk show host for the crude jokes he made about Sarah Palin.  Let’s hope this is a harbinger of things to come and other left-of center feminist groups will criticize Letterman for his harsh attacks.  I daresay they might have responded more quickly had the women under attack had a (D) rather than an (R) after her name.

But, the feminist organization deserves credit for calling Letterman out for his juvenile references to an elected Governor and his locker-room barbs about a minor:

Letterman also joked about what he called Palin’s “slutty flight attendant look” — yet another example of how the media love to focus on a woman politician’s appearance, especially as it relates to her sexual appeal to men. Someone of Letterman’s stature, who appears on what used to be known as “the Tiffany Network” (CBS), should be above wallowing in the juvenile, sexist mud that other comedians and broadcasters seem to prefer.

Let us hope this and other feminist organizations remain ever vigilant against such barbs against Republican women just as they are vigilant for barbs made against women in general and liberal women in particular.

R.A. Mansour at Conservatives4Palin has a good roundup on the reaction to the Letterman insult; it’s worth your attention.

Over at Blue Crab Boulevard, Gaius has some kind words for NOW and harsh ones for Letterman:

CBS now has a major problem on its hands. Letterman is radioactive if NOW has come out against him. Will they do the right thing and dump him? We’ll see. But kudos to NOW for refusing any cover for Letterman.

I don’t know how radioactive he has become, but given his non-apology, it’ll be interesting to see if an effort mounts to push CBS to fire him as we saw mounted against Don Imus.

(H/t Memeorandum.)

Cher’s daughter Chastity Bono is changing gender from female to male

But, then again, Chastity, er, sorry, Chaz, has a Republican father and here in Hollywood, they’re the ones who get blamed for all manner of ills.

As an illustration of the difference between Democratic words and deeds, take a look at the two charts in the post. In the first, we see the Administration’s projection of the unemployment rate with their recovery plan (AKA “stimulus”) (darker line) and without (lighter line). The red line represents the actual unemployment figures since that the President signed the Democratic proposal. Unemployment is “now higher than the White House forecast it would have been without any stimulus at all.”

We’ve posted the next chart before. As has Glenn Reynolds (on multiple occasions). He challenges “Obama shills to explain why — if the Bush spending was so bad — the much-bigger Obama spending isn’t much worse.”

When Beowulf slew the foul monster Grendel who had been ravishing the Hall of Hrothgar, King of the Danes, he showed he understood what the first man to welcome him to Denmark met when that diligent harbor guard reminded the brave hero of the distinction between words and deeds.

With those words and that hero’s record in mind, take a gander at the words of the two most prominent Democrats in our country today and ask if their actions in office have matched up to the words they spoke as they prepared for higher office.

Here’s Nancy Pelosi, currently Speaker of the House, commenting on her party’s winning control of Congress in 2006:

The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.

Barack Obama, currently President of the United States, making the case why he would be a good steward of our nation’s finances as he campaigned for the office he now holds;

But there is no doubt that we’ve been living beyond our means and we’re going to have to make some adjustments. Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.

(Emphasis added.) Given their record so far and the policies they have put forward, don’t you think that great Geatish hero could teach them a thing or two?

Whenever he can, the unhappy Barney Frank attacks his political adversaries, accusing them of blaming black people, hating gays and having psychological disorders. But, so used is this career politician to fawning attention from the media that he just doesn’t know how to respond when he faces tough questions.

But, I thought, he seems to whine, only Republicans get tough questions. The should get tough questions because they’re meanies.  But, I’m so smart and I’m doing good and I’m always right, so they’re not allowed to pick on me. I’m special.

In the clip below,the mean-spirited man from Massachusetts mispresents his questioner’s position, then gets all testy and ends the interview. Poor Barney, he just can’t take it.  It’s just not fair when someone tries to correct his distortions!

Can you imagine how the media would react if a Republican acted the way Barney does? He’s be subject to regular editorial excoriation.

(H/t: Instapundit.)

UPDATE:  Commenting on Barney’s adolescent behavior, Endora-Award winning blogress Tammy Bruce calls the Massachusetts Democrat “a continuing embarrassment.”

UP-UPDATE:  Pundette (via Michelle) offers “Having a civil exchange of ideas isn’t something this bully is interested in.“  I agree. Barney just wants to blame right-wingers.

UP-UP-UPDATE:  Michelle calls it a “snit fit“:  “When Barney Frank doesn’t get to blubber uninterrupted on TV like he does in committee hearings and on the House floor, Barney Frank stomps off the set.”

UP-UP-UP-UPDATE: Ed Morrissey wonders if this is this is the man we “want in charge of executive compensation” and adds:

Frank whines about getting cut off, but he trotted out an old Obama strawman — he accused the host, Mark Haines, of wanting to do “nothing” about the economic crisis, which isn’t at all what Haines said.  When Haines tried correcting the record, Franks (sic) played victim and whined his way off the stage.

Read the whole thing as the man formerly known as Cap’n Ed gets at the substance of the issues Barney refused to address.  Read the whole thing!

As a Jew, I am painfully aware of the persecution my people have endured for at least two millenia, perhaps longer.  It seems we have been singled out throughout history.

The periods of tolerance and acceptance our ancestors have enjoyed all too often gave way to eras of renewed discrimination and increased marginalization.  While Jew-hatred hss become commonplace in the Muslim world today, our people flourished in Moorish Spain and played a prominent role in the intellectual and cultural life of Baghdad during and after the turn of the Second Millennium (when that city served the function Athens did in the Classical Era).  We would be welcomed into Poland in one era, to be persecuted in another, with the nation in yet another serving as the locale where millions of our fellows would be murdered.

And while anti-Semitism is on the rise worldwide, America still seems a safe haven where only a few isolated quacks and extremists wish to do us harm.  Yes, there are growing signs of anti-Semitic sentiment in certain segments of the political left, even the gay left, but it has not developed into any kind of organized movement.  So, when we learn of the vile attitudes of the man* who shot up the Holocaust Museum yesterday, murdering security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns, we hope and pray that he was operated on his own, now on a mission from a growing cadre of neo-Nazis.

So, amidst the barbarity of his actions, we take some comfort, small though it may be, in learning that he was not indeed part of a growing movement.  He acted on his own. Feeling powerless, he blamed the people whom all too many have, throughout the centuries, blamed for all manner of the world’s ills and their personal misfortunes.   He targeted an institution commemorating the worst atrocity ever committed against us, a people used to such atrocities, but never previously of such a scale.

it is unfortunate that all too many, mostly on the left but some on the right, wish to politicize this terrible act by treating their political adversaries as the murderers’ ideological forebears treated the Jews.  (more…)

Welcome Instapundit Readers!!

With the unhappy Barney Frank “leaning on GM” to keep a facility open in his district, we can see how decisions at the troubled auto manufacturer will be subject to political pressures at the expense of legitimate busines conerns.  Would a company effectively owned by the government want to antagonize the chairman of a powerful House committee, even if he is a career politician with zero experience in the private sector?

What does this mean-spirited Massachusetts Congressman know about running a business?  He’s spent his professional life trying to regulate them without considering the consequences of his actions.  He has never working in an enterprise which produces things, creates wealth, expands opportunity and fosters innovation.  And yet he has a say in how GM runs its business.

This is what happens when government takes control of private enterprise.  Political considerations replace economic ones.

Those who want to give people like Barney a say in the running of General Motors (and Chrysler for that matter), that is those who favor Obama’s Auto Plan, can show that they really believe this is the right way to manufacture automobiles by putting their money where their mouths are.  When it comes time for them to buy a new car, they should buy a GM (or Chrysler) model.  Heck, why wait?  Show your confidence in this plan by buying one now.

But, something tells me that Obama’s actions notwitstanding, his strongest supporters will be driving BMWs, Audis, Lexises (Lexi?) and Saabs, at least those who live in my neck of the woods.  In these parts, it does seem that a great number of those makes continue to sport Obama stickers on their bumpers.

UPDATE:  Moe Lane contends I’m not taking this “nearly far enough“:

We’ve already established that this administration considers falling in with its policy positions to be ‘patriotic‘: and clearly, supporting the GM/Chrysler takeover is falling in with its policy positions.  Considering that – as usual – the Political Class is wildly divergent from mainstream America when it comes to this issue, it is clearly their patriotic duty to make certain that the GM/Chysler bailout succeeds.  That means selling that hybrid made by a foreign auto company and buying an American car*.  And since it’s a crisis, well, they need to do that right now.  Everything else has to be, so this should be, too.

It should come as no surprise to those who follow left-wing blogs that some were quick to blame mainstream conservatives for the actions of the lone, loony extremist who opened fire earlier today at the Holocaust Museum in our nation’s capital, murdering security guard Stephen Tyrone.

At present, there is little (if any) evidence that this anti-Semitic white supremacist read, or was even familiar with mainstream conservative blogs, web-sites or ideas.  He drew his inspiration from ideologies which we conservatives have regularly criticized.  Indeed, he was critical of Republican presidents and the ideology left-wingers ascribed to the previous president’s foreign policy:

For example, he unleashed his hatred of both Presidents Bush and other “neo-conservatives” in online essays. As even some “progressives” such as the influential Adbusters magazine publicly admit, “neoconservative” is often used as a derogatory code word for “Jews”. As well, even a cursory glance at “white supremacist” writings reveals a hatred of, say, big corporations that is virtually indistinguishable from that of anti-globalization activists.

This is not to say he was a a man of the left.  He definitely was not.  He is a hateful extremist, steeped in ideologies condemned by those on both sides of the political aisle.

Today’s shooting remind us of the persistence of anti-Semitism, a hateful ideology which has found a home among extremists of all political and partisan perspectives.  It is neither a phenomenon of the right or the left, but of certain deranged individuals looking for a group to blame for their own sufferings and on whom to project their own insecurities.

Those who would blame conservatives (with whom the shooter had no philosophical kinship whatsoever) for the shooting manifest a preference of blaming us for all manner of ills while ignoring the reality of the situation at hand.  They would do better to condemn the man for his murderous deeds and acknowledge that in doing so, they are making common ground with others holding different political views and with different partisan labels than their own.

It was a disgusting deed.  The shooter should be dispatched to the nether regions as quickly as the law allows.  And we must redouble our efforts to root out and condemn anti-Semitism and other hateful ideologies wherever they occur.

Taking issue with critiques that Bruce and I leveled against President Obama for his silence on the plight of gays living under Islam in his celebrated (by his acolytes) Cairo speech to the Muslim world and the failure of the gay groups to fault that silence, one of our critics contended the President did speak out on behalf of gays in Islamic nations in his general defense of the ideals of Western society (even if that Democrat did not define them as such):

[The President said:] ‘But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.’

[And our critic pointed out:] Yeah, its not a big fanfare, but homosexual lifestyles fall underneath that category. if you’re mad at obama for being diplomatic instead of combative in his language, then so be it.

By that very argument, George W. Bush was a regular defender of the rights of gay people.  While he did not identify us as group, he did frequently point out the benefits of democracy to nations suffering under radical Islamic and other totalitarian ideologies, in terms stronger than his successor used in the speech cited above.

In a subsequent comment, reader ILoveCapitalism quoted several examples of such rhetoric.  If it weren’t for our reader, I would not have realized to what extent George W. Bush had spoken out in favor of rights for gays living in Islamic nations.  Now, that we’re aware of his advocacy on behalf of our fellows, let’s hope gay groups acknowledge his efforts.

We here at GayPatriot have long believed the Second Amendment offers a particular benefit to gay Americans, protecting our rights to bear arms so we can defend ourselves against those who would do us harm because of our sexuality.  Just under a year ago, we contended the that the U.S. Supreme Court’s Heller decision was a gay rights’ victory:  “With this ruling, gay people will have greater and more ready access to handguns and so be better able to defend ourselves against gay-bashers.”

Over at the Huffington Post (yes, the Huffington Post), GOProud’s Christopher Barron builds on this notion, holding that Concealed Carry Laws do a better job of protecting gay people against hate crimes than do Hate Crimes laws:

This summer, the Senate will consider the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, more commonly know as Hate Crimes legislation. Unfortunately, the bill, as currently written, will do little to actually prevent violent hate crimes from occurring. There is, however, a way to stop hate crimes before they happen: help law-abiding Americans at risk of hate crimes defend themselves from predators. . . .

A bill in the Senate, S. 845, co-sponsored by Senator John Thune (R-SD) and Senator David Vitter (R-LA), allows for reciprocity among all the states that currently allow citizens to lawfully carry a concealed firearm.

This common sense legislation would allow an individual who is lawfully licensed to carry a concealed weapon in his home state, to also carry a concealed weapon in another state – as long as that state permits conceal carry and as long as the individual complies with the concealed carry law of that state. . . .

According to a comprehensive study which reviewed crime statistics in every county in the United States from 1977 to 1992, states that passed concealed carry law reduced their rate of murder by 8.5%, rape by 5%, aggravated assault by 7%, and robbery by 3%.

And I would wager that states with concealed carry laws don’t have as comprehensive hate crimes legislation as do those without laws furthering Second Amendment protections.

Knowing that the gay man or lesbian may be concealing a fire arm would cause a potential gay basher to think twice before assaulting him or her.  The legislation that Senators Thuna and Vitter have introduced would give gay people one more tool to protect ourselves against thugs meaning to do us harm.  Let us hope that other gay organizations join GOProud in lobbying for this bill would protect the rights of gay Americans–as well as those of all Americans.

Kudos to GOProud for pointing out the gay rights advanced by Concealed Carry Laws.

PatriotPartner and I are in Nashville for the annual CMA Country Music Festival. Last night was our first ever visit to Grand Ole Opry for a great show: Carrie Underwood, Little Big Town, Ricky Skaggs, Trace Adkins, Charlie Daniels Band and a few others. Quite an event!

All week there are concerts and events, many free, in downtown Nashville.

I’ll be having more regular updates with photos at Twitter: GayPatriot on Twitter.

That’s all for now!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Now that I know that some left-of-center gay activists have lobbied their more intransigent confrères to include Republicans in conferences to oppose Prop 8 (last year) and to repeal it (this year), I realize the difficulty of promoting inclusion at gay confabs and campaigns.

There are those averse to working with Republicans in any situation, even if our support would help them achieve their ostensible objectives.  They won’t yield even to colleagues like-minded on most political issues, yet more broad-minded on the issue of including partisan adversaries.

Given the intolerance and prejudice of certain leading gay activists, it would require an almost herculean effort to secure the regular inclusion of Republicans in gay political confabs.  I don’t know that I’m up to that fight.  But, I do know that some liberal gay men and lesbians have worked behind the scenes on behalf of their ideological and partisan adversaries.  I appreciate their efforts and commend them for their diligence on our behalf.

I had hoped to work with some of these people to secure our inclusion.  I know that many are up to the task, but it might be asking too much of them to press them to work for inclusion of people that some gay activists perceive as representatives of their greatest enemy and whom they define as self-hating.  The time they would devote to fighting for inclusion within gay organizations is time they could not spend fighting for greater tolerance of gay people in society at large.

it’s unfortunate that there are some really hateful gay activists out there.  But, it’s important for us gay Republicans to realize that those narrow-minded zealots are not the universe of gay activists.  There are also some really good folks whose politics we do not share, but who do believe gay conservatives deserve a place at the table, even if they plan on disagreeing with us as soon as we are seated.

If the late-night TV host had referred to a female Democratic politician as he did to a prominent Republican governor, then joked about her fourteen-year-old daughter being raped, feminists would be calling on CBS to do to him what they did to Don Imus.

Wonder if this will cause any prominent to Democrats to bellow “have you no decency, Dave?”

At our GayPatriot LA dinner last night, a reader told me that earlier in the day she had heard conservative talk radio host Mike Gallagher, a staunch opponent of gay marriage, call or the repeal of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT), the Clinton-era policy banning gay people from serving openly in the military.

It’ll be interesting to see if, in the coming days, any of the gay groups highlight Gallagher’s support of gay people serving openly in the military.  The Service Members Legal Defense Nework (SLDN), perhaps the least partisan of the gay organizations, did issue a release yesterday touting a Gallup poll showing that a majority of conservatives favor gays serving openly in the military:

Majorities of weekly churchgoers (60 percent), conservatives (58 percent), and Republicans (58 percent) now favor repealing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law, up 11 to 12 percentage points from 2004.

While my reader reported that many of Gallagher’s listeners called in to criticize his position, in coming out against the ban, he does represent a majority of conservatives.

Let us hope gay leaders reach out to Gallagher and get him to speak out more often on this issue.  They may not like all of his stands, but he may be able to do something to help repeal the ban.  And he does have credibility on the right and, as from what I understand, among the military.

This goes to show that just because someone holds a position at odds with the gay establishment on one issue doesn’t mean he will disagree on every issue.  “Opinion,” as Michael Barone obseves,”is not arrayed on a single dimension, but flies all over the place in two or three or even four dimensions (which is to say it changes over time).“  And so it is on gay issues, where someone can oppose state recognition of gay marriage, yet support the open service of gay men and lesbians in our armed forces.

Let’s hope gay groups give Gallagher some credit for publicly speaking out against DADT and find ways to work with this outspoken conservative to repeal that gratuitous legislation.

Perhaps, it happened because in hitting on an idea for a new screenplay, my creative mind had come alive, pushing aside everyday details.

On Monday, after working out, while spinning the dial on my lock, I could no longer remember the combination.  When I had stopped at 27, I knew that wasn’t the second number, but had forgotten just what was.  I kept trying different numbers, “knowing” the first number was 9, the second something in the high 20s and the third in the high 30s.  I tried to turn my thoughts away from it, wondering that maybe by thinking too hard, I was preventing myself from recovering the number.  I went back on the elliptical trainer for more cardio.  i tried again.  I couldn’t open it.  Realizing that locks weren’t too expensive and needing to get on with my day, I asked the gym management to break it open for me.

Walking back to my car, with the burden of opening my locker behind me, the three numbers in this post’s title came to me.  I knew that was the combination. I tried them on the broken lock, the little piece remaining popped right out.

Somehow when ‘transposing” the 7 from the final number into the second digit of the second (number), I caused myself to forget the combination pushed the actual combination out of my mind (for a moment).

The whole experience made me wonder (yet again) at how our memory works–how we can remember perfectly one day fifteen years ago, yet forget a whole week just six months ago.  I occasionally get e-mails form people who have chanced upon this blog and write me, having remembered me from college, law school or perhaps from the time I spent in DC.  Most I remember, but I have drawn blanks on a few. In at least two of those cases, I remembered the guys when they reminded me how we met–naming the person who introduced us–or identifying a gathering which we both attended. (more…)

There is something comical in the effrontery of liberal pundits offering conservative politicians’ electoral advice.  I’m sure these are the same sort of people who would have cautioned the GOP against nominating Ronald Reagan in 1980 and promoting the Contract with America fourteen years later.

Now, we’ve got Jacob Weisberg telling us to dump Cheney and emulate David Cameron.  Funny that the same guy who contended that racism was the only reason Obama could lose would presume to offer Repubicans advise.  And to suggest that the GOP should seek advise from David Cameron, the head of Britain’s Tories, who have only benefited from the collapse of Gordon Brown’s Labour by dint of being the leading opposition party.  In recent elections in Britain, they have hardly gained any ground over previous showings:

Yet, while the Labour Party is shriveling before our eyes, David Cameron’s Tories are not obviously the beneficiaries. In the English council elections the Conservatives got a lower percentage of the vote than last time round, and, insofar as there was a (one percent) swing to the Tories in the European elections, in the end their vote was only a handful of points higher than the combined tally of the two beyond-the-pale parties.  . . . If Gordon Brown’s rotting zombie of a ministry can’t drive voters into the embrace of David Cameron, what can? The Conservatives should have been the beneficiary of both the broader two-party electoral cycle and the more immediate internecine warfare in Brown’s cabinet. But they weren’t.

I have no clue why it is Weisberg presumes he is in any position to offer advise to Republicans.  To be sure, he raises some good points about the party becoming more Internet savvy, but we’d be better served by others who understand the power of ideas and the political process better than he.

Moving to the center won’t do the GOP much good if we offer policies from the mushy middle of only slightly higher government spending.   We’d be better served by following Michael Barone’s advise and moving away from the center: (more…)

Well this is a disturbing article from NPR:

[T]hat is exactly what Obama administration officials plan to do: By taking account of human psychology, they hope to save you from yourself.

This is the story of how obscure psychological research into human decision-making first revolutionized economics and now appears poised to remake the relationship between the government and its citizens.

I like a scary story now and then, but this one really is a bit much. So much for personal freedoms, why Big Daddy Government knows what’s good for us and will see to it that we like it – or else!

– John (Average Gay Joe)

“Barack Obama invokes Jesus more than George W. Bush did.”

DRUDGE: “CBS EVENING NEWS FALLS TO ALL-TIME LOW; 5,180,000 VIEWERS FOR COURIC .”

In March, I compared columnist George Will to a “Titan, one who reigned supreme in a previous era, but has seen been overthrown by [a] new generation of deities “.  I said as much because while I had loved his columns in the 1980s, the 1990s and well into the current decade, I found his campaign coverage last fall less insightful than his past punditry.  He seemed harsher on the more conservative of the candidates (John McCain) than the more liberal (Barack Obama).

Perhaps, I should revisit thse columns again, maybe he did offer some insight in the Democraitc nominee for Will’s columns, these past three months, have been nothing short of brilliant.  To borrow a metaphor from his favorite past time, nearly every time he steps up to the plate, he has not just been hitting home runs, he’s been sending the ball out of the park.

It’s why I decided to attend a dinner celebrating the Claremont Review of Books last night in Santa Monica featuring the conservative columnist.  I even took a date, a gay Jewish actor/producer who wanted to learn more about the conservative ideas which have increasingly appealed to him in recent years.  And while he proudly sported a name tag with his real name at this shindig, he asked that I not include his name here, lest the revelation of his conservative politics hurt him professionally.

Once again, it was easier for us to be “out” as gay at a conservative event than to be out as conservatives in Hollywood circles.

My friend appreciated the evening; it helped deepen his knowledge of conservative ideas.  I only wish there had been a transcript of Will’s talk for while it was punctuated by his pessimism, he did, in criticizing the current Administration, articulate some of the fundamental tenets of conservatism.  I scribbled notes as best i could, but Will was a captivating speaker and it was more pleasant to listen than to write (especially on two glasses of wine).  Though he seemed shy and somewhat nervous when he started, but the more he spoke, them more engaging he became.

He faulted the President for creating policies which will institutionalize slow economic growth, creating a “dependency agenda” and fostering an “entitlement mentality.” (more…)