Several years ago, when I was running with a recently boyfriended fellow member of the DC Front Runners, our heads turned for a better view of a rather fetching fellow who crossed our path.

“Hey,” I said to my running partner, “What are you doing?   You’ve got a boyfriend!”

“My hubby,” he replied, “doesn’t care where I get my appetite so long as I eat at home.”

And like us gay guys, straight men also check out the objects of their attraction (in their case members of the opposite sex) even when happily married.  (I’ve seen my straight married friends check out women at my gym.)  We’re men.  It happens.  We’re drawn to physically attractive people.  And so long as acknowledging that attraction doesn’t prevent those partnered among us from being faithful to their spouses, well, then so what?

And such was my response when I heard tell that the Presidents of the United States and France were caught ogling a rather fetching female.  I mean, what’s the fuss?  Neither called this attractive young woman his soul-mate or arranged clever means to pay for her “services.”  She just crossed their path and they, well, they just enjoyed the view (as would I suspect countless other men similarly “inclined”*).  (Okay, okay, if they did go out and pay for such a view, they would not be so innocent.)

Any anyway, Michelle watched the video and lo and behold found that the President

. . . wasn’t even paying attention to the young girl in the wine-colored dress. Obama was helping another young woman down the stairs and glancing down to grab her hand.

So, there’s really not any there there.  But, if there were, all it would be would be evidence that Barack Obama and Nicholas Sarkozy are just red-blooded heterosexual males.  Ain’t nothing wrong with that.

* (more…)

While President Obama and his team may be trying to undo the work of the president with the most successful economic record of the century just concluded, their rhetoric shows how much they recognize the appeal of that great man’s ideas.

Obama the candidate praised the Gipper during the campaign.  And like his Republican predecessor, the Democratic nominee called for a “net spending cut” and promising a tax cut for over 90% of Americans.  After his election, he held firm to his Reaganite record, vowing to go line by line through the federal budget, rooting out waste and inefficiency.

And it seems that whenever I hear Administration officials (or other Obama defenders) on FoxNews when pressed about the cost of his proposals and the tax cuts they will require, the spokespeople reply that, “Well, the president has already delivered on his promise to give a tax cut to 95% of Americans earning less than $200,000 a year” (or some such).

Yup, they’ve been reading the polls and know that small government ideas resonate with the American people, something Ronald Reagan recognized back in the 1960s–if not before.

When then are they acted at odds with their rhetoric and proposing an ever larger scope for an ever larger federal government, intruding increasingly into our lives, limiting our freedom and hamstringing our capacity to innovate and improve and limiting the abilty of private enterprise to expand, create jobs and increase opprotunity?

With the “stimulus” failing to work as advertised, Democrats having two primary ideas when it comes to economic difficulties, “borrow and spend,” are considering a second such package, despite a paucity of economists’ supporting such a proposal.

With “only 14 percent of the [package's] $787 billion has been spent so far,” however, some of its defenders claim it hasn’t had time to work.  If the President and congressional Democrats really believe that government spending will help lift the economy out of its doldrums, why then did they so calibrate the “stimulus” so that only a paltry percentage would be spent in the nearly five months since its passage?

I mean wasn’t the spending supposed to be “timely” (in addition to temporary and targeted)?  So, here’s a plan, instead of doling out just a quarter of the “stimulus” money this year and instead of passing another plan to increase the national debt, why don’t Democrats just recalibrate the legislation already in place–and release the balance of the money this year?

Congress has already appropriated the money.  If they believe spending is the key, well, then, just spend the money they’ve allocated.  Shouldn’t that then provide the economy the needed shot in the arm, spurring it back to health and obviating any need for future such stimuli?

Obama, like so many on the Left, is predisposed to see his country’s faults rather than its virtues,  its failures rather than its triumphs. In this he reminds me of some parents. They love their children, they just expect perfection from them. Therefore praise is never called for and criticism is constant.

JOHN STEELE GORDON

The death of the Republican Party and the dominance of the Democrats for the rest of time is now being challenged by the reality of our world.  Americans are saying, “um… maybe we got it wrong last year.”

Voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on eight out of 10 key electoral issues, including, for the second straight month, the top issue of the economy. They’ve also narrowed the gap on the remaining two issues, the traditionally Democratic strong suits of health care and education.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that voters trust the GOP more on economic issues 46% to 41%, showing little change from the six-point lead the party held last month. This is just the second time in over two years of polling the GOP has held the advantage on economic issues. The parties were close on the issue in May, with the Democrats holding a one-point lead.

Voters not affiliated with either party trust Republicans more to handle the economy by a 46% to 32% margin.

Just 39% now say President Obama is doing a good or an excellent job on the economy while 43% rate his performance as poor. Those are by far the weakest numbers yet for the president.

The president’s approval ratings also have fallen to new lows in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

This certainly proves that America has NOT become a ‘center-left’ nation at all.  And we are now seeing the actual results of this shift in the public.  Cap & Trade – stalled.  Healthcare Reform – stalled.  Second Stimulus – not a chance in Hell.

Pelosi – a lying failure.  Reid – incompetent failure.  Obama – don’t know where to begin with that one.

The only problem for the Republican Party is how to channel this Democrat-rejection into a positive vision going into 2010.  One idea: campaign on reversing the Porkulus legislation before it fully bankrupts the nation.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

It has been a week since Sarah Palin announced her intention to resign as Governor of Alaska later this month.  As a Palin supporter, while somewhat sympathetic to her situation given the continuing assault from the media and their allies on the left, I am disappointed that this good woman decided not to tough it out and show her courage, her resilience under fire–as she did during last fall’s campaign.

While appreciating the many accomplishments of Sarah Palin (many more than the incumbent US President when he launched his first bid for national office), she was not my choice to be the GOP standard bearer in 2012.  I believe she should wait until 2020–after she had completed two terms as Governor — and perhaps had moved out to the Senate, defeating the Last Frontier’s accidental Democratic Senator Mark Begich.

On several occasions, I have compared Sarah Palin to Ronald Reagan.  Like the Gipper, she has a natural stage presence and energizes conservatives.  Unlike her, however, when he made his successful bid for the White House, he had completed two full terms as Govenor of a state — and “served” for sixteen years as the de facto head of the conservativce movement.  Not just that, he had spent several years educating himself, studying conservative ideas and economic theory.

Yes, we conservatives all love her energy and appreciate how she, just by her very existence, enrages the heads of left-wingers to “explode,” but that is not enough to make her a successful presidential nominee or Commander-in-Chief.  She has the raw talent to lead this great nation, she’s just not there yet.  If she had stayed on as Governor, she could have better developed her talents, turning that potential into leadership on a daily basis.

She can still do that in other roles, as did the Gipper before he made his first bid for public office.  But, she won’t be ready in 2012, though she will surely be more ready than the man she would succeed should she win that year.  And his first six months in office have shown how we don’t want a chief executive who needs on the job training.

Sarah Palin has it within her to be as Ronald Reagan was both to the GOP and to the nation, galvanizing conservatives into an effective political force and restoring the nation’s greatness and economic health.  I fear, however, that the choice she made last week takes her one more step away from that goal.

But, elective office is not he only path to leadership.  She could yet take on the mantle of the Gipper.

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