An article leading Yahoo! as I checked my e-mail late Wednesday night, Obama calls for $250 payments to seniors, suggests the President has not yet fathomed just how much the national debt has increased under his watch.  I mean, in an ideal world, it’s all well and good to offer checks to seniors to make up for the absence of increase in Social Security payments this year as “increases are pegged to inflation, which has been negative this year.”

And it would be well and good if the money came from some rich benefactor who had a stash of cash lying around the house. Problem is, the President doesn’t have such a stash. And any cash he doles out comes not from reserves he earned or inherited, but from taxpayers currently living, their children and our descendants. Indeed,

Obama did not offer any alternatives to finance the payments. A senior administration official said Obama was open to borrowing the money, increasing the federal budget deficit. The official, who requested anonymity, was not authorized to speak on the record.

Not authorized to speak on the record? Hmmm . . .

And increasing the budget deficit? That does seem to be one thing this President excels at:

Methinks this is a political maneuver designed to force Republicans to choose between standing firm for their fiscal principles, potentially offending a segment of the population moving away from the Democrats and caving to the President. And he himself is trying to buy win back the support of seniors who have soured on him because of their opposition to Obamacare.

It’s been well over a year since I ended a vow of celibacy I undertook just over three years ago.  I wanted to see what it was like not to have sex for a period of time.  Fortunately, I was single (as I am now), so didn’t have to disappoint a boyfriend.  :-)

One thing which struck me when I talked about my decision with my gay male peers was how, while some commended my choice, most criticized it.  I certainly understand the drive which underlies their criticism (now perhaps better than I did back then).  And while I appreciate their standpoint, one thing which troubled me about many of these conversations was how all too many of my gay peers (and it oftentimes seems men in general) have limited the conversations on sexual restrictions to playing safe.

As if there should be no further limitations.

That idea struck me again when I read about how twenty-one years ago, Kevin Jennings handled his meeting with “Brewster.”  He wanted to make sure the teen used condoms for intercourse.  That’s a good thing, a very good thing, to tell sexually active individuals.  But, it’s not all we should be saying.  It seems most of us are like Jennings.  We don’t want to discourage any sexual expression, provided, of course, it’s “safe.” (more…)

In announcing her intention yesterday to vote for the Baucus legislative concepts on health care reform, the senior Senator from Maine, Republican Olympia Snowe, said that while the bill was “far from” all that she wanted, she would be voting for it anyway:

When history calls, history calls. . . . I happen to think the consequences of inaction dictate the urgency of Congress to take every opportunity … to solve the monumental issues of our time.

But, just because this is the major bill on the table doesn’t mean it’s the action that is necessary to address the flaws in our health care system.  Indeed, some of the provisions in the Baucus bill could actually make things worse, increasing costs and cuting Medicare payments.  Still, Snowe indicated that her vote in the Finance Committee yesterday does not guarantee that she will vote for the final bill on the Senate floor.  Eric Zimmerman of the Hill reports:

In a number of interviews this morning, Snowe, whose vote is seen as crucial for passing legislation, said she would not vote for a final bill that contains a government-run insurance plan.

“The public option would be problematic,” Snowe told MSNBC’s Morning Joe when asked what changes to the bill could cost Democrats her vote. “As I’ve said I’m against a public option because I think the government would be another vast new bureaucracy, and also create a disproportionate advantage in the marketplace. And inevitably government’s not going to do it better.”

At least she recognizes the perils of a “vast new” federal bureaucracy.  Given the numerous caveats she has offered, I’m wondering if Mrs. Snowe voted  ”yes” yesterday just so she could become the darling of the media today.   (more…)

Perhaps I have been particularly fascinated by Kevin Jennings’ contention that, as a boy, he learned about the American ideal of masculinity from his adolescent older brother because I chanced upon it (if chance it was) the same week I’ve been studying the adolescent rage of various mythological heroes as part of my dissertation research.  Each of those heroes—and not just the Greeks—must learn to tame his rage, to control his passions, before accomplishing the truly great deeds of his life.

Indeed, Herakles had to complete his celebrated twelve labors, in large part, because of his murderous rage.  The murder was not seen as the apotheosis of his heroism, but as a hindrance to it.  He needed purify himself of his wicked deeds.

It is striking that Jennings would suggest an adolescent boy could pass on the cultural ideal of masculinity.  In fact, adolescent boys are those most in need of an education in mature masculinity.  Anyone who has studied myth or rudimentary male adolescent psychology understands the seemingly untamable energy of boys on the cusp of adulthood.

And it is the taming of the energy which signals their our advancement into adulthood.

American males are not brought up to kill our fellows in order to prove our masculinity, but to stand up for ourselves in the face of obloquy and adversity, replying to our attackers in just measure and to our misfortunes with calm forbearance.

Had we greater access to myth, we might better be able to articulate this masculine ideal.

Calling the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) “the nation’s largest gay Democratic Party front group,” left-of-center gay blogger Michael Petrelis echoes Andrew Sullivan’s criticism of its president, Joe Solmonese, and calls on the Obama Administration shill to resign:

I cannot accept the notion that Solmonese is among the best and the brightest gay leaders, worthy of following in any political battle before us. He was just okay during the Bush/Cheney years, but is totally unequipped to get assertive with President Barack Obama and his advisors.

Let Solmonese step down from HRC and go back to working on abortion rights. And, please, dear Gay Gods, let HRC find a new leader with a backbone and real pride, someone non-HRC donors can respect.

And someone who is more interested on advancing gay interests than denigrating Republican ones.  Solmonese, a former “CEO of EMILY’s List, where he oversaw the effort to elect progressive [read: Democratic], pro-choice women across the country,” sees more interested in building “partnerships” with his erstwhile (and ever) allies on the left than in reaching out beyond the narrow confines of left-wing circles.

Now even left-wingers are finding Solmonese’s strategy to be a fail.

On Sunday in a Page A1 piece (above the fold) in the Washington Post, Ann Gerhart reported that after Michell Malkin blogged about Charisse Carney-Nunes uploading* “the video of schoolchildren reciting a Barack Obama song/rap at Bernice Young elementary school in June“,

voice mails on her [Carney-Nunes'] home phone and cellphone were clogged with the furious voices of strangers. The e-mails kept pouring in, by the hundreds, crammed with words spam filters try to catch: She was a “nappy-headed” traitor; she would lose her job and go to jail; she was Leni Riefenstahl, the filmmaker who glorified Hitler.

Well, now after MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann accused Malkin of possessing “fascistic hatred,” and comparing her to a “mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it,” that blogress has once again** received a raft of hate-mail.  She was called “pig with no morals or any redeeming values” and a “sick BITCH.”  And subject to sexual innuendo.

I’m sure Ms. Gerhart is busy at work on piece for next Sunday’s Post on the vitriolic nature of many left-wing attacks on prominent conservative women.

* (more…)

While gay left bloggers including Michael Petrelis as well as the folks at Towleroad and Queerty have stayed on top of events in Iran, reporting on the persecution and execution of our fellows in that troubled land, the major gay groups have, for the most part, been silent.

The fledgling GOProud, however, has just released a web ad calling on the President to end his silence and stand up to the oppressive regime:

The organization’s Executive Director Jimmy LaSalvia offered:

Our allies are willing to stand up for basic human rights and stand up to Iran. Indeed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke before the United Nations General Assembly eloquently and with powerful moral clarity about the treatment of gays and lesbians under Ahmadinejad. . . .  All across the Muslim world, gays and lesbians, along with women and religious minorities, are denied basic civil rights.  Indeed, the penalty for simply being gay in Muslim countries like Iran is death. . .  Yet, President Obama refuses to stand up to Iran and refuses to speak out against their barbaric treatment of gays and lesbians.

His colleague Christopher Barron, Chairman of GOProud’s Board of Directors, added that if the President’s statement at the HRC dinner this past weekend that he was “with gays and lesbians in our fight” mean anything at all, he must “speak out against the government-sanctioned murder of gay people in Ahmadinejad’s Iran.”

As on most issues with this President, a little less talk and a lot more action are in order.

There is something both petty and pathetic in watching the White House going on the warpath against FoxNews, with White House communications director Anita Dunn calling the network ”a wing of the Republican Party“.  And this isn’t the first time she’s whined about FoxNews.  Even the President has joined in the attacks.

Guess they’re upset they’re not getting the same fawning treatment from Fox they got from the rest of the news media.*  And it does seem a strange use of the  White House Communications Director’s time to lead an attack on a news network.  I mean, I thought her job was to communicate the President’s message, not malign independent messengers.

But, then, maybe this White House does seem to need an enemy to vilify.  You know how Obama did so well by running against Bush.  (Hey, it does seem to have worked, he won election and even won a Nobel Peace Prize for not being that much maligned Texas Republican.)

I mean, by any normal stretch on the imagination, the White House’s assault is counterproductive and without merit.  The treatment Obama gets from FoxNews is no worse, if not slightly better (indeed, I would say, in some cases, significantly better) than his predecessor got from the other networks.  And then there’s that veneration he receives from the rest of the news media.

(Not just that, of the three major news network, FoxNews provided the most balanced coverage of last fall’s Presidential election and had the politically most diverse audience.)

Seems the President is quite “thin-skinned” and really just doesn’t like criticism.  Even leftists have taken notice.  Michael Barone points out that John Nichols of the left-wing Nation called the President the “Whiner-in-Chief.”  A newspaper bloggers who voted against Nixon in 1972. thinks “President Obama is positively Nixonian in its repeated, juvenile and dangerous in its personal attacks on critics.”

I wonder if the incumbent is wrestling with inner demons similar to those with whom Nixon wrestled.  Both seem to have a need to attack adversaries.  Maybe it’s not psychological, but just part of a campaign governing political strategy.

RELATED: Right, Left… Obama fires in all directions

* (more…)

Since George W. Bush left the White House, save perhaps for Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh has become the conservative target of choice of unhinged leftists.  They have rushed to revile the right-of-center talk show host and don’t let facts get in their way in their eagerness to demonize the entertainer.

Recently, many left-wing bloggers (and “journalists”) were quick to seize on remarks the entertainer allegedly made about slavery as evidence of that good man’s unfitness to own the St. Louis Rams.  They didn’t bother to authenticate the quote because it corresponded with their image of the talk show host, an image which has absolutely nothing to do with the reality of the man.   (Seems we’ve heard a similar story somewhere before.)

The Rush in their minds hates black people, incites violence and believes “Martin Luther King’s assassin James Earl Ray should get the Medal of Honor“.  I would dare say that those making that claim have never actually listened to his program, what they’ve heard having come from snippets of his monologues taken out of context on left-wing blogs.

They really do want to believe that Rush is as horrible, no good, very bad and extremely racist as they imagine him to be.

According to Gateway Pundit, earlier this week,

MSNBC and CNN slandered Rush Limbaugh today crediting him with a fabricated slavery quote. . . .

“I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back. I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

Problem is, Rush never said that (nor has he ever praised James Earl Ray), saying on his show: (more…)

Yesterday, I did a segment on Pajamas TV with John Aravosis of Americablog.  We pretty much agreed in our criticism of the gay establishment.  After that, though, he did make a point which I, on further reflection, realized I addressed very poorly.  I may well have made a good point in response, but I didn’t respond to his point.  No wonder he said that he “didn’t understand your point.”

John had said:

Republicans have held us [gay people] hostage by not giving us a choice . . . . [They] have not offered a viable alternative.  Gay people don’t have a choice and the worst thing is the [Democratic] Party knows that.

His last point gets at why the President has been slow to act on the promises he made to the gay community.  The party elders are likely asking the same question (as they did in the Clinton era) which Moe Lane recently articulated:  ”I mean, really: what are you going to do about it?  Vote Republican?”

Responding to the first part (of John’s comment above), I offered my standard line on how the lives of gay people have improved even in the George W. Bush era.  Social conservatives have not been able to block the social changes which have made it easier for us to live our lives openly.  And these social changes have continued apace, even with a supposedly hostile Administration in the White House.

Now, that may well be a good point, but in making it, I failed to address John’s point.  And he’s right to a certain extent.  Those who believe we need more government action to address the concerns of the gay community haven’t found a viable alternative in the GOP.  Still, were the GOP to offer alternatives (on gay issues) suitable to liberals like John, I doubt all but a handful of them would vote Republican.   Many (if not, most) already harbor a deep-seated animus to the party–which has more to do with their own prejudices than the GOP’s ideology.  John McCain’s outreach to gay people last fall all but fell on deaf ears.

Unfortunately, the GOP doesn’t have much to gain by reaching out to gay people.

It does, however, have much to lose if it is perceived as an anti-gay party.  That perception will cost (indeed, likely has cost) the GOP the support of socially liberal, but fiscally conservative voters (particularly in northeastern, midwestern and Pacific Coast suburbs).  Should the party once again, as notably in 1980, 1984, 1988 and 1994 become the party of fiscal discipline (with social issues relegated to a far back burner), Republican candidates will win back those suburban votes–including many gay votes.  Many of us don’t vote primarily on gay issues, but won’t vote for anti-gay candidates (with some not voting even for those perceived as anti-gay). (more…)

Last night, when I tracked down the Gallup poll showing increasing number of conservatives favoring repealing the ban on gays serving openly in the military, I saw in the margin a link to poll finding a Majority of Americans Continue[s] to Oppose Gay Marriage. This in line with Pew’s recent findings.

Indeed, while the number supporting state recognition of same-sex civil unions has steadily increased over the past six years, the number opposing gay marriage has remained relatively constant, hovering between 55 and 59 percent (it’s nowat 57).

So, while the President expressed a commitment to repeal both the military’s Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT) policy as well as the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in his speech Saturday night to the Human Rights Campaign, the smarter move politically might be to put the latter on the back burner and concentrate on repealing the former.

That’s why I commended the Administration for reaching out to Senator Lieberman.  He can help frame this as a national security issue, making it more difficult for the military from reacting as they did when, in 1993, Clinton first introduced the idea of lifting the ban.  The Democrat announced the move with Barney Frank, a longtime foe of a robust military, standing by his side.  And many in the military saw this as a move to enlist them in a social experiment crafted by legislators they did not trust.

That President Obama’s team has been working with the Connecticut Senator suggests the incumbent is aware of his predecessor’s mistakes and wishes to avoid them.  With ever larger majorities supporting repeal, the time is ripe for action.  But, he shouldn’t dither and should come forward with a time framer move forward on the issue or his promises will be for naught.

So, gay groups should focus on moving repeal, indeed, making this issue their priority, given that the chances of success are high.  And to increase those chances, they need end their suspicion of conservatives and build partnerships with those on the right side of the political aisle who have shifted their views on the ban in recent years. (more…)

In the wake of the growing discontent among the president’s erstwhile gay supporters over the Democrat’s failure to fulfill his campaign promises, the folks at Pajamas Media asked me to write a piece for them on that very issue.  Here are the first few paragraphs; you can find the rest on their home page:

Perhaps the easiest thing about being a gay conservative is that we expect less from our elected leaders than do our left-of-center counterparts.  Republicans politicians don’t promise us the moon and stars in their campaigns, so we’re not disappointed when they don’t bestow such lofty gifts on our community once elected.

For gay Democrats, however, it’s a different story.  They are repeatedly disappointed when their politicians do not follow through on the campaign pledges they make to our community.

In 1992, then-Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton promised to repeal the ban on gays in the military, but just a year later, he backpedaled on that promise.  After he clumsily tried to act on that promise in the first few days of his Administration, that Democrat realized he might suffer politically should he sign an Executive Order repealing the ban.  At the time, the President’s signature was all that was required to allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military.

Facing a firestorm of opposition from the military and Congress, the Democratic President relented and signed a supposedly compromise policy, the legislation which became known as Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT).  Gays could now serve, provided they just didn’t self-identify as gay.  Now, the ban on open service is codified, requiring an act of Congress to be repealed.

This would not be the last time Clinton would sign legislation upsetting gay people who so enthusiastically backed him in 1992.

You can read the rest over at Pajamas.

Well, maybe the White House is finally taking the first steps toward repealing Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell.  According to the Advocate,

Shortly after President Barack Obama pledged Saturday to end “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the Administration’s highest-ranking LGBT official said the White House is speaking with certain senators about strategies for repealing the policy — specifically Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“On ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ this administration is talking directly to the Hill — we are in direct discussions with Senator Lieberman,” John Berry, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, told The Advocate.

A spokesman for Senator Lieberman confirmed that the senator had been speaking to the White House about the bill.  “Senator Lieberman has had discussions with representatives of the Administration and others on the best way to reverse this policy, which he has opposed since it was first proposed in 1993,” said Marshall Wittmann, Lieberman’s press secretary.

Smart move to work with Lieberman.  Given the Connecticut Senator’s long-time support for a robust military, it’s makes a lot of sense to have him lead the effort to repeal this counterproductive measure.  More perhaps than any other member of the Democratic caucus, Lieberman enjoys the respect of the military and Republicans.  He can better frame repeal not as a gay rights’ issue but as a military issue, that the ban reduces the pool of recruits from which our armed services can draw.

That the Administration is in talk with Lieberman suggests a real commitment to repealing the ban.  It would be better if they had a timetable, to prompt more expeditious action.  With a solid majority even of conservatives favoring repeal, the time to act is now. (more…)

While I generally found that Barack Obama filled his campaign manifesto, the Audacity of Hope, with standard issue liberal explanations of and statist solutions to America’s problems, he did occasionally part company with his ideological confrères.  For example, while his section on education was short, a few of his suggestions put him at odds with the teachers’ unions, a key Democratic constituency.

He seemed to favor merit pay for better teachers and even advocated alternative means of teacher certification which might open up the profession to allow people competent in certain subjects to each without undergoing the tedious process of teacher training (in Education schools).  In speeches, he often championed charter schools, schools which are part of the public education system, but do not have to adhere to many of the rules and regulations of traditional public schools.

While most recent stories on the Administration’s education policy have focused on Kevin Jennings, few have focused on Jennings’s boss, the very competent Education Secretary, Arne Duncan.  As CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, Duncan implemented a number of reforms, some of which put him at odds with teachers’ unions.

As Education, Duncan is continuing that effort, standing up for one type of reform which has shown real results even as it upsets the teachers’ unions:

Obama and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, are using federal stimulus funds and their respective bully pulpits to force states into spurring the growth of public charter schools, the government-funded-yet-privately-operated schools that are the nation’s most prominent and successful version of choice. And proving the adage that money talks, cash-hungry states are scaling back or eliminating restrictions on the growth of charter schools in order to qualify for the money.

Teachers unions, who expected more from Obama, feel betrayed. Complains AFT [American Federation of Teachers] President Randi Weingarten: “It looks like the only strategies they have are charter schools… That’s Bush III.”

Duncan has been a particularly zealous advocate of charter schools.  Indeed, it seems to be one reason the President tapped the former pro-basketball player for his cabinet:  ”Duncan (along with predecessor Paul Vallas) authorized more than 92 schools as part of Mayor Richard Daley’s Renaissance 2010 initiative.” (more…)

Commenting to my post expressing my determination to read Kevin Jennings’s published books to see if he really advocates “a radical revisioning of school curricula to fit his ideological agenda,” one reader offered “Including ‘LGBT themes’ in school curriculum is hardly radical.”  I responded that “it all depends on how those themes are introduced.”

If he subscribes to the politically correct nostrums that define much of gay discourse today, then his advocacy would indeed be radical.  And now a blogger has unearthed a 1998 essay Jennings wrote that strongly suggests he does indeed subscribe to such nostrums, having such a twisted idea of the Western idea of masculinity that he must have stopped reading the Iliad at line 228 of its first book (if he ever got to the book at all).  Or never studied why Herakles had to undertake his celebrated twelve labors.

You see, Jennings seems to believe that an adolescent older brother was capable of “passing down the code of masculinity he’d been taught”

We need to own up to the fact that our culture teaches boys that being “a man” is the most important thing in life, even if you have to kill someone to prove it. Killing someone who calls you a faggot is not aberrant behavior but merely the most extreme expression of a belief that is beaten (sometimes literally) into boys at an early age in this country: Be a man—don’t be a faggot.

No, Kevin, it’s not.  When you think it’s not “aberrant behavior” to kill someone who calls you names, you miss the whole point of Western masculinity.  The lesson which the Greek heroes needed learn (many of whom through the actions and words of the goddess Athena) is not to react with disproportionate force, but to react in just measure.  At the outset the Iliad, Achilles, filled with youthful braggadocio (likely similar to that of Jennings’s brother) draws his sword to strike Agamemnon dead in outrage at the disrespect the Mycenaen King showed him.  But, the owl-eyed goddess sweeps down from the heavens in order to restrain him.

To become a man and realize his destiny, a hero must learn to restrain his battle fury, channeling it into just causes.  And that is the essence of Western masculinity.  A frenzied reaction (like that of Achilles before Athena’s intervention is the antithesis of the Western ideal.) (more…)

While working on a piece on Obama and gays for Pajamas, I had the chance to read a transcript of the President’s speech this past Saturday to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).  While he uses the word, “equality,” five times.  He never once speaks either the word, “freedom,” or its synonym, “liberty.”

With a number of conservative bloggers and editorialists embattled safe schools “czar” Kevin Jennings’ various books in their pieces critical of the embattled Obama Administration official, I have been debating ordering have decided to order some of his books myself, so I might consider his words, unfiltered by straight pundits.

On Friday, Byron York cited Jennings’ writings as a means of outlining “other objections to his role as head of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools“:

There is his authorship of the foreword to the 1999 book Queering Elementary Education. There is a life’s work singularly focused on bringing the topic of homosexuality into the nation’s classrooms, including elementary schools. (In his 2002 book, Always My Child, Jennings advocated schools adopting a “diversity policy that mandates including LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered] themes into the curriculum.”)

In an editorial today, the Washington Times cites the Democrat’s books to show the “numerous inconsistencies in Mr. Jennings’ record of his own life“:

In his 2006 autobiography, “Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son,” Mr. Jennings has a completely different explanation for what happened at his first teaching job at the Quaker Moses Brown School in Providence, R.I. Contrary to being fired for being a homosexual, Mr. Jennings concludes the chapter discussing his time at the school by writing, “My days at Moses Brown ended, without my ever having been asked or having answered the Question [about whether he was homosexual]. For two years I have lied, letting my students and myself down in the process. I vowed I would never do it again.”

But, are such inconsistencies really there?  Does he really advocate a radical revisioning of school curricula to fit his ideological agenda?

I am debating ordering a two of his books just ordered three of his books from amazon because I could get them from a total of $4.30 and will get the remainder from the library.  With shipping, my total outlay is $16.27.  I encourage readers to help defray my costs (and contribute to the clutter of my apartment) by donating to the blog.

From what I’ve read so far from his writings, Jennings seem to advocate an extreme form of gay identity politics.  But, once I get a chance to read his stuff, I should be able to discern how accurate is that initial assessment.

Yesterday, the Washington Post ran a Page A1 story which, one blogger claims, connects conservative blogress Michelle “Malkin and her fans with anti-Semitic radio host Father Charles Coughlin, railing against Roosevelt in the 1930s.”  Now that some conservatives have reacted to the Democratic Administration with venom and vitriol, the Post has suddenly discovered that the internet is home to some pretty nasty rhetoric.

To be fair to the paper, writer Ann Gerhart does acknowledge that the decline of civility in a “viral world” did not begin with conservative reaction to the incumbent President:

The nation’s political discourse seems sour, angry, even dangerous; “uglier than it’s ever been” is a phrase often volunteered — as if President George W. Bush had never been depicted as Hitler, declared a dunce and heckled by Code Pink during his second inaugural address.

She may acknowledge it today, but did the Post ever run a Page A1 article (on a Sunday no less) where they lamented the decline of civility in the Bush era?

Yesterday’s story focuses on the woes of Charisse Carney-Nunes, author of a children’s book, I Am Barack Obama, recently subject to a raft of hate e-mail after Malkin reported that she “uploaded the video of schoolchildren reciting a Barack Obama song/rap at Bernice Young elementary school in June“:

Carney-Nunes, who writes children’s books and was a year behind Obama at Harvard Law School, watched as strangers posted her personal information on the Internet. She read, “You’re a dirtbag commie propagandist trying to infect children with your failed Marxist ideology.” And “your Obama chant is right out of Africa.” And “get ready for a massive attack!!!” And “my friend GLENN BECK will also shove this in your face until justice is served.”

Michelle, for the record, never encouraged this type of discourse (while the article intimates she did).  The epithets above are disgusting and juvenile, discrediting those who who penned them (and send them on the object of their revilement).  The senders should have known better and acted differently.  No matter how silly and syrupy her book may have been in praising the President, it is wrong to send her this kind of e-mails.

But, this left-of-center woman is not the first person to receive such blog-generated hate mail.  We received our share of it during the Bush era–as did other conservative bloggers.  And I highly doubt that the Post covered those attacks. (more…)

TIME MAGAZINE trashes Obama over his empty promises….

Saturday night President Obama charmingly delivered a rather bleak message to the gay community on the eve of its latest march on Washington. In a speech to the world’s largest gay political group, the Human Rights Campaign, Obama essentially said two things: I’m with you. But I can’t do much for you.

As usual with this President, all the cadences were right. “It is a privilege to be here tonight to open for Lady Gaga,” he ad-libbed, again a deft and knowing line for an audience probably as eager to hear her performance as his. During one clamorous ovation, Obama said, simply, “I love you back.”

Obama patted himself on the back for his party’s passage earlier in the week of a a hate-crimes bill that, for the first time, includes gay and transgender people. And he used the opportunity to tell gay critics who have expected so much of him to express what he expects of them. The hate-crimes bill, he said, had become law only because those who believed in it had thoroughly educated the public about why it was important. “Countless activists and organizers never gave up,” he said. “You held vigils. You spoke out year after year, Congress after Congress.”

Obama is right, in a civics-class sort of way, because social change can’t occur if it’s forced from the top down. But that’s also a convenient argument for him, since it defers responsibility from his office.

Obama did pledge — as he has before — to end the Pentagon’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. But once again he said nothing specific about how he plans to do that and didn’t acknowledge that he already has the statutory power to instruct the Pentagon that investigating service members’ sexuality is not in the best interest of the armed forces. Also, he said that gay relationships can be “just as real and admirable” as straight relationships, but he did not say gay couples should be treated equally. Obama, after all, still opposes equal marriage rights.

“Obama lost me,” said Zach Rosen, 28, who came to Washington from Philadelphia. “He took a lot of gay dollars and gay votes, and then it was like Clinton — unkept promises.”

I’m sorry, who is surprised by this exactly?  I mean there is a trail of bodies behind the bus that Obama drives over those who are politically expedient in his career (or lack thereof).  Why wouldn’t The Gays be another victim?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

That’s what Jim Geraghty thinks a recent New York Times piece reveals about the confidence of the President’s party in its successes:

What’s interesting about John Harwood’s item in the New York Times, entitled, “Democrats Must Attack to Win in 2010, Strategists Say,” is the unanimity that the Democrats will not have a successful record to run on come autumn of next year.