Ladies and gentlemen, thank you.  Sometime shortly before midnight, GayPatriot got its 3,000,000th unique visitor.  It is quite fitting that this milestone came on the day that The American Patriot was reborn in the 9/12 Tea Parties across the USA.  I believe in fate, and this one I can’t ignore.

In addition to thanking all of our readers, supporters and detractors — I must thank my co-blogger Dan Blatt.  For much of the past year Dan has carried GayPatriot on his own and I am so very grateful. My real job has taken a lot of my time and I’ve had other personal matters that I’ve focused on rather than blogging.

Thank you Dan. For me, you will always be “GayPatriotWest” 

I announced a “3 Million” contest back in May.  The contest was who could come closest to guessing the date & time we would get our 3,000,000th visitor.

Rob (aka That Gay Conservative) guessed September 1st and is the winner!  He came within 11 days.  Congrats, Rob. I should note that Rob also won the 2,000,000 contest last year.  Remind me not to play cards with you, Rob! 

Our next best guess was from GP reader Beverly who picked September 28.  Because I am in a giving mood, I will be sending the “John Adams” DVD to both of them.

Finally, a personal note which is rare for me to do here.  This blog was started in response to the outrageous violation of civil liberties upon gay Republican Congressional staffers by left-wing activists.  I didn’t know what I was doing in 2004 when I started writing “GayPatriot” — all I knew was the “outings” were wrong and anti-American behavior and I wanted to shine a light on the practice.

We have evolved over time into the first-stop on the Internet for gay conservatives & supporters in the USA and in many countries around the world.  Over the past year, I have thought repeatedly of giving up writing at GayPatriot.  The lies, vitriol and malice of our opponents wears me down.  But for every “Tano/Ian/Raj”, there are many more Leahs, NorthDallas30s, ThatGayConservatives & ILoveCapitalisms. Thank you, my friends.

Most of our readers are not gay and many never knew that there were such things as patriotic, pro-capitalist, pro-military gay Americans until this blog was born.  And finally, I feel a kinship with our Founding Fathers and those who have had to stand up against the forces of freedom and liberty.  With the current Administration’s plans and tactics laid bare, I simply will not be silenced in my opposition.  I shouldn’t speak for Dan, but I believe he and I both feel a responsibility to continue doing the best we can here to dispel the myths about gay Americans and stand up for what we believe in.

Thanks again everyone.  Let’s shoot for another million soon!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Unlike some conservatives, I did not celebrate South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst on the House floor, crying, “You Lie!” while the President delivered his health care address.  While I share his opinion about the President’s dishonesty (as does apparently the White House), I don’t think it appropriate for a Member of Congress (or any individual for that matter) to shout out during a presidential address.

Show respect for the office, even when you disagree with the man who occupies it.

But, now that the media and House Democrats are giving Wilson the Carrie Prejean treatment, I’m beginning to fall into the camp of the Palmetto State Republican.  I never would have heard of the socially conservative California beauty queen had it not been for the media obsession with her response to a question, offering her honest opinion on marriage (which happens to be that of a majority of voters in her home state as well as that of the President of the United States).

I only began to sympathize with her as left-wingers (particularly gay left-wingers) began to demonize her.

And now with Democrats threatening to “censure Wilson” unless he apologizes “on the House floor in front of his colleagues,” they’re making a martyr of a man for his boorish behavior.*  He apologized, the president accepted his apology.  Since Mr. Obama was the one interrupted, shouldn’t this acceptance end the matter?  Shouldn’t we, as the Democratic chief executive asks, move on and focus “on the issues at hand”?

Yet, Democrats don’t want to move on; they just can’t let go of Joe Wilson (just as some gay activists couldn’t let go of Carrie Prejean.)

These Democrats seem far more thin-skinned than Republicans (or perhaps just far more eager to score political points).  While they demand this one, lone Republican apologize on the House floor for his boorish behavior, four years ago, Republicans didn’t demand Democrats apologize (or face censure) for booing the the then-Republican President during his constitutionally sanctioned State of the Union address.   Unlike Wilson, those Democrats didn’t even apologize privately to the President (through his representative) nor did any of them release a statement indicating they regretted their ill-manner outbursts.

Tell you what, if they want to censure Wilson, let them reprimand him together with those Democrats who failed to apologize for booing Bush.  At least that would show some consistency.

* (more…)

Like Allahpundt, I’ve been trying to get an actual number of people who rallied in Washington yesterday against big government.  It seems the two million figure in one British paper was off the mark.  It seems the turnout was easily in the “healthy six figures.”

No matter what the final total turns out to be, you can bet that the MSM and left-wing blogs will do many a story and many a post on how the right-wing blogs overestimated the crowd size and therefore the movement isn’t as big as they claim it is.  And therefore should not be taken seriously.

Just a thought.

UPDATE from Bruce (GayPatriot): Astonishingly, the NY Times shoots down two liberal myths & strawmen about the Tea Parties in their coverage of the 9/12 protests!

The demonstrators numbered well into the tens of thousands, though the police declined to estimate the size of the crowd. [1] Many came on their own and were not part of an organization or group. But [2] the magnitude of the rally took the authorities by surprise, with throngs of people streaming from the White House to Capitol Hill for more than three hours.

When Jim Geraghty typed “’9/11′ into the search box on Google video,” yesterday “seven of the first ten videos” turned out out be “Truther or conspiracy-related.”

Just as “trutherism” (the belief than 9/11 was an inside job) has become prevalent on the web, so too has it come to pervade large segments of the American left.  And while Charles Krauthammer “can’t get too excited” about a number of the chages against former White House green jobs Czar Van Jones that have worked some of his ideological confrères into a lather, he finds it appropriate that the Obama appointee lost his job for identifying with the “truthers” and troubling that the Administration (and its left-wing allies in general) haven’t done a better job of policing their extremes:

He’s gone for one reason and one reason only.  You can’t sign a petition demanding not one but four investigations of the charge that the Bush administration deliberately allowed Sept. 11, 2001 — i.e., collaborated in the worst massacre ever perpetrated on American soil — and be permitted in polite society, let alone have a high-level job in the White House.

Unlike the other stuff, . . .  this is no trivial matter. It’s beyond radicalism, beyond partisanship. It takes us into the realm of political psychosis, a malignant paranoia that, unlike the Marxist posturing, is not amusing. It’s dangerous. In America, movements and parties are required to police their extremes. Bill Buckley did that with Birchers. Liberals need to do that with ‘truthers.’

You can no more have a truther in the White House than you can have a Holocaust denier — a person who creates a hallucinatory alternative reality in the service of a fathomless malice.

But reality doesn’t daunt Jones’s defenders. One Obama administration source told ABC that Jones hadn’t read the 2004 petition carefully enough, an excuse echoed by Howard Dean.

Carefully enough? It demanded the investigation of charges “that people within the current [Bush] administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”

And left-wingers whip themselves into a frenzy about “birthers,” suggesting they represented the mainstream of conservative opinion or Republican opposition, they seem eager to ignore or are reluctant to criticize the truthers in their midst.

(H/t: Jennifer Rubin.)

Over the past hour or so, I’ve been regularly checking Yahoo!’s homepage to see if they offer any news or link any headlines about the massive Tea Party protest against big government in our nation’s capital.  With as many as two million people attending, you’d think it would merit more attention than a petition with only 150 signatures against naming a center in honor of former Vice President Cheney.

And this multi-million person multitude gathered in just one day whereas it took the petition organizer a year to gather all those signatures.

UPDATE:  On its homepage, Yahoo! does provide a link to an article on the President’s health care speech in Al Franken’s home state where he drew a crowd, approximately 1% the size of the crowd in Washington (that is, of the smallest estimate of the crowd’s size):

“I will not accept the status quo. Not this time. Not now,” the president told an estimated 15,000 people during a rally that had every feel of a campaign event, right down to chants of “Fired up, ready to go!” and “Yes, we can!”

Feel of a campaign event?  Hmmm. .  . . not the greatest way to govern.  That aricle gave just one paragraph to the much larger protest in the nation’s capital:

While the president cleared out of town, thousands of people marched along Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol to protest Obama’s approach on health care and what they say is out-of-control federal spending. At the protest, people chanted “enough, enough” and “We the people” and carried signs that said “Obamacare makes me sick” and “I’m Not Your ATM.”

“Thousands of people?”  Technically, that’s accurate as 1.2 million is thousands of people, but I’d bet this were an pro-Obama rally, the AP would be using the actual estimate.

Oh, and, Obama keeps misrepresenting his critics.  Since he says we should call out those who represent what’s in his plan (which he still has not released), can’t we call him out too on saying his critics want to do nothing.  And the media for not telling how large the protest against big governmnt really is.

UP-UPDATE:   Finding a CNN reporter at the rally asking about Joe Wilson, John Hinderaker writes, “Why that made sense I’m not sure, apart from the liberal media’s determination to deflect attention toward Wilson and away from Americans’ widespread dissatisfaction with the Obama administration.”  Then, he offers this telling comment (emphasis added): “We are living in a weird era, in which news organizations studiously avert their eyes from the news.”

UP-UP-UPDATE:  If one million people rally against big government and the MSM pays their protest no heed, does it still make a sound?

I suppose it’s because I’m a gay conservative blogger and because Andrew Sullivan is a gay blogger who claims to be conservative that people expect me to blog on his latest indiscretion.  I see that my co-blogger has already tapped into the topic.

I do understand that most bloggers who have addressed this have focused on the special treatment Sullivan received.  Indeed, by juxtaposing the left-wing blogger’s remark on different standards of justice and the news item on the dismissal of the charges, my co-blogger shows that ex-conservative’s hypocrisy.  Others have weighed in in a similar vein; blogger Dan Riehl (and others) points out that a federal “judge believes the dismissal raises equal protection issues.”

I confess that I can’t really get worked up over the issue.  Maybe had he been peddling pot to teenagers or toking in front of an old folks’ home might there be an issue, but, well, since I believe marijuana should be decriminalized, I don’t have a problem with an angry blogger carrying around a bag of Mary Jane.  Heck, it might even calm this easily excitable blogger.

It’s a freedom issue.  Yeah, it does show Sullivan’s hypocrisy, but, well, since I don’t think people should be prosecuted for possessing or smoking weed, it follows that I don’t have a problem if a left-winger gets off for possessing the stuff in the public.

There are many issues for which one can—and should–fault Andrew Sullivan.  This isn’t one of them. (more…)

(h/t – Instapundit & Internet Scofflaw)

My view is that no one is above the law, and that when a society based on law prosecutes the powerless and excuses the powerful, it is corroding its own soul.

Andrew Sullivan – April 17, 2009

I wonder why Andrew changed his mind so quickly?

Political commentator, author and writer for The Atlantic magazine Andrew M. Sullivan won’t have to face charges stemming from a recent pot bust at the Cape Cod National Seashore — but a federal judge isn’t happy about it.

U. S. Magistrate Judge Robert B. Collings says in his decision that the case is an example of how sometimes “small cases raise issues of fundamental importance in our system of justice.”

While marijuana possession may have been decriminalized, Sullivan, who owns a home in Provincetown, made the mistake of being caught by a park ranger with a controlled substance on National Park Service lands, a federal misdemeanor.

The ranger issued Sullivan a citation, which required him either to appear in U.S. District Court or, in essence, pay a $125 fine.

But the U.S. Attorney’s Office sought to dismiss the case. Both the federal prosecutor and Sullivan’s attorney said it would have resulted in an “adverse effect” on an unspecified “immigration status” that Sullivan, a British citizen, is applying for.

Stupid is as stupid does, I suppose.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I’m in awe watching over 2 million people gather on the National Mall in Washington, DC.  It is too bad that the mainstream media isn’t treating this protest as they did the lesser-attended Anti-Bush Iraq War Protests or even the “Million Man March” (which didn’t reach 1 million).

UPDATE: VodkaPundit is live-blogging from DC.

There are also hundreds of thousands of folks in other cities all around the USA in similar Tea Parties today.

This is a very inspiring day.  We need to join together and make our politicians in Washington more afraid of We, The People than they are of entrenched special interests.

Since most of the mainstream news media is ignoring Two Million Americans today, follow the developments all day long at www.twitter.com at #912 or #912DC.

I’m proud to be a Constitutional American today.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Today, eight years after the terror attacks on America, I once again dedicate this space to my lost friend, James Joe Ferguson, who was killed aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when that plane was used as a weapon and crashed into the Pentagon.  This posting goes up at the exact time that plane was flown into the Pentagon eight years ago this morning.

We miss you, Joe.
-Bruce and John

********************

The last time we had dinner, Joe told my partner John and I about how much he was looking forward to being a part of the bicentennial of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Typically, I found myself jealous of him. In his role as Director of Geographic Education at the National Geographic Society, Joe had one of the most unique and rewarding jobs I can ever imagine having.

He traveled around the world, bringing American school children face-to-face with the natural wonders of our Earth.   He was not only a teacher but also provided a critical turning point for these kids, many of whom had never before left their own neighborhoods.  Joe provided the path for these students to experience things that many of us never will in our entire lives.

In addition, he got to travel to the four corners of the globe. How rewarding that must have been. How do I sign up for that job?

I got an email from Joe on Thursday, September 6, 2001.   ”Hi cutie” it started — typical opening line for Joe to any of his friends.  He had just returned from Alaska and wanted to tell show me all the pictures, but the following week he said he was headed to California for another work trip.  I printed out and kept that email for many months in my briefcase as a way to keep Joe alive.

As dawn broke on September 11, 2001, Joe called his Mom in Mississippi to give her a wake up call as he always did when he traveled.  He said to her, “I’ll call you when I get to California. Have a good day.”  He was that kind of person.  The kind of person, who, no matter where he was and how busy he was, dropped a postcard to his friends so we could share a part of his experiences throughout the world.

At Dulles International Airport, Joe stood with his group traveling to California and took some last minute photos.  He and another colleague were scheduled passengers on American Airlines Flight 77, accompanying three D.C. public school teachers and three students on a National Geographic-sponsored field trip to the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara, Calif. After the photos were taken, they bid farewell to the children’s parents and proceeded to their gate.

At 9:37AM, Joe lost his life at the young age of thirty-nine when terrorists slammed the plane into the side of the Pentagon at 500 mph.  A teacher and positive role model to young Americans was taken from the world in an act of sheer violence and viciousness.

As I was dealing with the many emotions of the events of September 11, a thought crossed my mind the next day.  Gosh, I thought, Joe had said he was traveling and now he’s stuck somewhere until the airlines are allowed to fly again.   So I called his work number in DC and left a message.  After I heard his voice for the last time, I said “Give me a call if you are checking messages.”  ”I hope you make it home soon,” I concluded.  When I called that day, I had no idea.

It wasn’t until Friday, September 14 that I found out that one of my dearest friends had become a casualty of the attacks on America.  Suddenly, this war was personal  – it had hit home.  I wasn’t expecting to have to go to two memorial services and walk around in a state of numbness for many weeks.

At Joe’s memorial service, there were lots of tears and lots of laughs as well.  One of Joe’s friends told the gathering that Joe had this way of making you feel as if you were his best friend in the world. I knew exactly what he meant.  I saw Joe every once in a while.  We would have lunch, or more likely trade emails or phone calls.  But every time we talked, I felt like Joe’s best friend.  Joe still has a lot of best friends all around the world.

Perhaps Joe’s death hit me so hard because it was the first death of someone close to me that I had experienced as an adult.  I am still surprised by the impact that his death has had, and in many ways continues to have, on my life.

In fact, I did a lot of personal reflecting in the months following 9/11.  I questioned how important my job and even my life were in a time of war where terrorists could invade your workplace or your school and slaughter you with no remorse.  I questioned what value and worth my own career had in comparison with a man who had chosen to teach and change the lives of young people.   I felt trapped in a good job that was giving me no personal satisfaction.

All I could remember was how happy Joe always was and how that cheer was infectious to all of his friends and colleagues.  I would miss that cheerful influence on me.   Joe had made the choice to live life to the fullest extent possible.   He was the model of the optimistic American who knows no frontiers and no bounds.  He was doing more than his fair share of contributing to a better society.

My partner John and I took a trip to the American West in the summer of 2003 and followed some of the Lewis & Clark Trail.  I know Joe would have loved the scenery and spirit of America that lives and breathes in the land of Montana and Wyoming.  The IMAX film about the “Corps of Discovery” produced by the National Geographic Society — Lewis & Clark: The Great Journey West — was dedicated to the memory of Joe Ferguson.  It is available on DVD and I strongly recommend watching it.

One day in early 2002, I heard a song on the radio that I don’t remember hearing before 9/11/2001.  I didn’t even know it was LeeAnn Womack voice, because the words are the soul and essence of Joe Ferguson.  The words are an expression of his personal passion and love of life.  And the words are also an inspiration for all of us to get through the many trying days of our post-9/11 world.

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder.
Get your fill to eat, but always keep that hunger.
May you never take one single breath for granted.
God forbid love ever leave you empty-handed.
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean.
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens.
Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance.
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.
I hope you dance.

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance.
Never settle for the path of least resistance.
Livin’ might mean takin’ chances, but they’re worth takin.
Lovin’ might be a mistake, but its worth makin.
Don’t let some hell bent heart leave you bitter.
When you come close to sellin’ out, reconsider.
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance.
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.
I hope you dance.

It was a Democrat named Harry who said, “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.”

Now another Democrat with less fortitude, but with the same first name as our 33rd President is feeling a little heat, so he’s asking for a court order to turn off the stoves and ovens.  The Chairman of the Democratic Party in the home state of Senate Majority Harry Reid “filed a complaint” yesterday with the Federal Election Commissions (FEC) in an effort to shut down Dump Reid PAC, an outfit set up by Chuck Muth, a libertarian activist In Nevada working to reform the GOP.

The nub of the complaint is that the PAC failed to include a disclaimer on its mailings while including “the name of a candidate in their committee name in violation of” a federal statute.  The Democrat requests the FEC enjoin the PAC from using Reid’s name and “be fined the maximum amount permitted by law.” Don’t think the attempt of a powerful politician’s allies to silence his critics will help lift his anemic approval ratings in the Silver State.

Maybe Harry’ll win this one on the legal merits of the case, but it would be a Pyrrhic Victory.  I’ve met Chuck Muth; he won’t be silenced.  Indeed, reporter Benjamin Spillman of the Las Vegas Review Journal (you know the paper Reid wants to “go out of business“) quips:

It’s unlikely the Democrats’ move will take the edge off Muth, a longtime Nevada conservative consultant whose Web site refers to him as “no better friend, no worse enemy.”

Jon Ralston of the Las Vegas Sun agress, offering that this suit may well “create the loudest martyr you have heard.” Chuck’ll just set up shop under a different name, with Nevada Democrats’ legal shenanigans against him drawing more attention to his efforts.

ADDENDUM:  Spillman’s article covers the issue pretty thoroughly; I highly recommend it, notably the comments of election law expert Rob Keiner who finds the violations technical and the allegations trivial.

Last night, while doing my cardio, I looked up to see James Carville on Larry King Live, making much of U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburts during the President’s health care address on Wednesday.  The Democratic consultant/commentator faulted the South Carolina Republican for not apologizing directly to the President, without noting that he had tried to do just that, phoning the White House and talking to Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel as he tried to get through to the President.

Despite the apology, the uproar continues.  The media didn’t seem nearly as concerned when Democrats shouted and booed Obama’s Republican predecessor during his 2005 State of the Union Address (via Instapundit).  At that time, a multitude of Democrats loudly registered their disapproval.

It seems Democrats are using this one Republican’s outburst to rally their troops around the President.  Fascinating how they get their panties all in a bundle over a single disgruntled Republican who acted boorishly and apologized almost immediately.  The apology notwithanding, expect the left to gin up their attack machine to make as much of this two-second (if that) outburst as they possibly can.

It’s a lot easier to attack a rude Republican than to defend the details a complicated overhaul of our nation’s health care system.

It seems Democrats would rather malign this Congressman than address his (and other Republicans’) objections.  But, then, isn’t that their game plan?  Make an issue of their adversaries’ imperfections, ignore the content of their criticism.

The President, to his credit, accepted Wilson’s apology and encouraged the media to focus on the issues:

I’m a big believer that we all make mistakes. He apologized quickly and without equivocation, and I’m appreciative of that. . . . The media can always be helpful by not giving all the attention to the loudest or shrillest voices, and try to stay a little bit more focused on the issues at hand.

Let’s hope they — and the President’s fellow partisans — take heed to this sound advice.

On Tuesday, Ed Morrissey offered a synopsis of conservative criticism of the President’s back-to-school speech:

First, there’s a question of incompetence in this study guide.  Who produces a study guide for a document or lesson that has yet to be created? Had the White House included the speech with the study guide, a lot of the criticism could have been avoided right from the beginning.  It took six days for the White House to produce the speech after releasing the study guide and creating the firestorm of criticism.  Help the President do what, exactly?  Without the speech, who knew?

In her health care post (which I cited yesterday) Obama supporter Camille Paglia also addressed the school speech, faulting the Administration officials along similar lines:

An example of the provincial amateurism of current White House operations was the way the president’s innocuous back-to-school pep talk got sandbagged by imbecilic support materials soliciting students to write fantasy letters to “help” the president (a coercive directive quickly withdrawn under pressure). Even worse, the entire project was stupidly scheduled to conflict with the busy opening days of class this week, when harried teachers already have their hands full. Comically, some major school districts, including New York City, were not even open yet. And this is the gang who wants to revamp national healthcare?

As I organized my thoughts about the President’s speech on health care last night, what struck me more than anything was the utter disingenuousness of the address.  Even as he engaged in harsh attacks on his critics, he spoke in conciliatory terms about listening to Republican ideas and working in a bipartisan manner.

But, his biggest whopper was his contention that the debate over health care which has erupted in congressional town halls and spilled over into the streets has increased distrust in government:

But what we’ve also seen in these last months is the same partisan spectacle that only hardens the disdain many Americans have towards their own government.  Instead of honest debate, we’ve seen scare tactics.

As I put it earlier today in a passage which, I believe, deserved greater prominence that at the end of a long post below the jump:

But, the president can’t act as if only those criticizing his plan are contributing to the disdain Americans have toward government.  He — and his allies– have contributed to the growing anti-government sentiment far more than any of his political adversaries.  They didn’t create that disdain.   They tapped into it.

His critics didn’t create the disdain for government.  Obama and the Democrats didn’t either, but the President, like his predecessor, contributed to it by his spendthrift policies, vastly increasing the size and scope of the federal government.  And the incumbent has made a far greater contribution than the man he succeeded, largely in the contradiction (manifest even in his speech last night) between his words and his deeds.

He decried the spendthrift policies of the Bush Administration,telling us in the campaign that we were “living beyond our means” and having voting in 2006 against raising the debt limit, contending that the need for the increase was “a sign of leadership failure.“  But, as President, he increased federal spending at a far more rapid clip than his predecessor; he recently asked Congress to raise the “debt ceiling” even further.

No, the Tea Parties –and other protests against the President’s spendthrift policies—did not harden the disdain Americans feel for their government.  They merely tapped into what the President called last night Americans’ “fierce defense of freedom and our healthy skepticism of government.” The President might have succeeded in softening our disdain had he not proposed policies which spend liberally from the treasury and and interfere inordinately in our lives.

Whenever I read Camille Paglia’s criticism of the actions in the White House of the man she backed on the campaign trail, I am stunned that this wise woman still considers herself an Obama-supporter.  From her passion for the President, I can only derive that the Barack Obama has such a powerful presence, causing even very intelligent people to be swayed by his image and rhetoric.

In her latest piece, penned before the President’s speech last night, she continued to lash out against his team for bungled his various initiatives and demonizing their adversaries.  She even anticipated (and questioned) her man’s claim that his health care overhaul wouldn’t add a dime to the deficit:

Who is naive enough to believe that Obama’s plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?

She reserved her harshest criticism for Democrats who malign critics of the President’s plan and misrepresent the grassroots opposition emerging to his statist schemes:

By foolishly trying to reduce all objections to healthcare reform to the malevolence of obstructionist Republicans, Democrats have managed to destroy the national coalition that elected Obama and that is unlikely to be repaired. If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis. It is theoretically possible that Obama could turn the situation around with a strong speech on healthcare to Congress this week, but after a summer of grisly hemorrhaging, too much damage has been done. . . .

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year’s tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators?

She goes on to question the Democratic Party’s detachment “from ordinary Americans.”  And there’s more as she praises talk radio and the web for their “truly transformative political energy.”  As with anything from this diva, just read the whole thing.

And wonder yet at the Democrats’ disposition to demonize rather than engage their adversaries.

If there is just a hint, even if two decades old, that a Republican official or prominent conservative may not hold perfectly politically correct views of gay people, expect the MSM to feature it prominently, but if a Democrat does not toe the gay rights’ line, expect the MSM (and even the gay media and gay advocacy groups) to ignore or downplay the issue.

The Washington Post has done in several articles about Virginia GOP gubernatorial nominee Robert F. McDonnell, with many on its front page. The paper reported repeatedly on the Republican’s “1989 graduate school thesis in which the 14-year lawmaker and former attorney general had criticized working mothers and homosexuals and urged the promotion of traditional values through government.”

While McDonnell’s attitudes toward gay people have shifted over the past twenty years, Michael Barone believes the Post‘s article on a hearing he chaired, when in the Viginia legislature, on the reappointment of a lesbian judge accused of sexual harassment had the “obvious message. . .: this candidate thinks it’s all right to penalize people, in some unspecified way, for homosexual conduct.”

Meanwhile the conservative Weekly Standard has unearthed a statement from McDonnell’s Democratic opponent Creigh Deeds “of a more recent vintage” than McDonnell’s thesis.  In a 1999 campaign ad, that Democrat said he didn’t believe in “special rights for gays.“  (This wasn’t the only time Deeds (or his spokesman) said he opposed gay rights.) I doubt that will get the same coverage in the Post as have McDonnell’s comments made a decade earlier. (more…)

While driving across the desert and mountain Southwest to visit friends and family, I listened to the better part of David Hackett Fischer’s Washington’s Crossing.  In the penultimate chapter, that Pulitzer Prize-winning historian quotes John Adams on the uprisings of the people of New Jersey after Washington’s victories at Trenton and Princeton:

[They] begin to raise their Spirits exceedingly, and to be firmer than ever.  They are actuated by Resentment now, and Resentment coinciding with Principle is a very powerful motive.

We resent how President Obama is attempting to increase the size and scope of government while promising to hold the line on spending.  The principle, now as then, is freedom–liberty.

* (more…)

I had not intended to watch the President’s speech last night because I knew I would want to blog on it as I did–and there are other things I’d rather address in these pages.  When I flipped on FoxNews, I had hoped to hear Charles Krauthammer offering his opinion on the address and then turn to other pressing matters related to my recent return from my travels.

But, the speech started late, leaving Dennis Miller to quip (on The O’Reilly Factor), “When a 6:00 speech starts at 6:15, that says it all” [about the government running things].  So, I started watching the speech in medias res.  And as I feared, after watching the second half and reading the entire text, I have many, many thoughts about the speech.  And perhaps the only good ones are an appreciation for the rhetorical crescendo with which the President concluded his remarks, trying to put his plans in a larger context.

While his language was stirring, his remarks were disingenuous.  After staffing his White House with partisan political operatives, Barack Obama can no longer even pretend to claim to float above the bitter partisan battles which divide our nation.  He may have offered conciliatory rhetoric in his speech, but he also offered gratuitous attacks.  And he has allied himself with some of the most divisive figures and organizations in our nation’s capitol.

Not just that, he refused to fault their mean-spirited rhetoric in his speech.  While it was his fellow partisans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who called their adversaries “un-American,” he took issue only with opponents of a government measure (presumably he means those who opposed the statist aspects of his program) who used the term:

And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter — that at that point we don’t merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges.

It was this type of rhetoric, albeit aspiring to appeal to the best in us, which, even more than his dishonesty and claims that his plan won’t add “one dime to the deficit, now or in the future” which defined what I have called “the hypocrisy at the heart of the Obama Administration.” (more…)

This speech helps cement Barack Obama’s image as one of the most divisive figures in American politics.  Instead of addressing the arguments offered by his political adversaries, he attacked imaginary critics as if in a campaign stump speech.  At the same time, he pretended to extend an olive branch to Republicans and other opponents of his plan.

The essential contradiction of the speech was its excess of attack amidst please for conciliation.  There was no need for him to repeat the left-wing canard about “the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration.“  Such language, dishonest and more appropriate to the campaign trail than in a presidential address, only serves to divide.  (Reading the speech, I found more such examples of such divisive campaign rhetoric.)

It wasn’t just in dredging up old political battles where he was divisive.  He also demonized his opponents by using his well-worn tactic of creating straw men, suggested that those who opposed him were the adversaries of his imagination. “Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost.” Many (if not most) of his adversaries don’t want to kill reform, they just favor different (and less costly) reforms.

Instead of such harsh rhetoric, he would hae done better to say something like, “I understand people’s concerns” and explained his plan would better serve our common goals than those Republicans have put forward (and waved frequently during the address).

And then there was the question of cost.  To claim that a program that “will cost around $900 billion over 10 years. . . will not add to our deficit” is simply ludicrous.  He may have gotten away with such claims before he took office, but with his own officials acknowledging recently last month that his policies will add an addition $2 trillion to the deficit (despite previous claims that they wouldn’t be so costly), only the most committed partisans will believe him now.

Unlike Dan (below), I did watch the president’s speech to Congress tonight and couldn’t have been more disappointed in his choices.

While there is a lot to say that I’ll address when I get a chance to reflect a bit more on the text of the speech, I didn’t want to go to bed tonight before making the following observation and getting something off my chest:

The last time a Joint Session of Congress was addressed by a president for other than the State of the Union (and a SotU-lite after being Innaugurated) was September 20, 2001 when President George W. Bush addressed the Nation as being “a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom.” We were about to enter a war that persists to this day.

Nearly eight years to the day after terrorists attacked defenseless civilians in the most dispicable act of destruction on the United States by a foreign entity in history, following the deadliest month so far in the war that ensued, and as a weary Nation begins anew to waver on the necessity of the battle, our current president decided that matters were so dire that another Joint Session needed to be called for an address by him. Things indeed are so grave, that, in his own words, if we do not act, “more will die”.

Only problem is that what was so dire to him is not the very existence of our Nation at the hands of these terrorists, nor the desperately needed pep-talk to reinvigorate the spirit that led us once to nearly unanimously support the need for action in this battle.

No, it was the need he feels to Stalinize the most productive and effective health care industry in the world.

In fact, so unimportant are our troops’ current efforts to defeat the terrorist threat to their Commander in Chief that the words “Afganistan” and “Iraq” passed his lips exactly one time each, and in the same breath, and only to dismiss them as having cost more (in dollars, mind you, not lives) than his (erroneous) projection for this government take-over. What’s more, his use of the present perfect sense (to nit-pick) makes it seem as though he’s speaking of a war already over, not currently being waged.

I have given this man incredible credit over the past 8 months for correct positions he has taken on (some) national defense issues and military concerns. His timing and explicit avoidance of those of us who are fighting and dying daily in the war he did support on the eve of this solemn anniversary and on the heels of such a devastating month of losses is completely inexcusable.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

If there were money to be made in green jobs, private investors would be creating them already.

Michael Barone