I didn’t want to minimize Dan or John’s individual postings, so I figured I’d sandwich myself in between. (ahem)

Anyway, last Friday — at long last — I heard the words “liberal blogger” used to describe Andrew Sullivan by Bret Baier on FNC’s “Special Report”.  It was personally gratifying since Andrew has not been a conservative blogger since he went off the deep end over the marriage issue.

So, I am proud to declare that GayPatriot is the preeminent gay conservative voice in the blogosphere.

Woot!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I very rarely find myself agreeing with Andrew Sullivan, but on this post of his from yesterday I have little choice (hyperbole excluded):

Here’s the latest ad from the Christianist right opposing Washington state’s domestic partnership law. It’s a useful reminder that it doesn’t matter what equality is called – civil unions, domestic partnerships, civil partnerships, or civil marriage – the GOP believes in no rights for gay couples whatsoever. And in this ad, the argument is explicitly religious and has no secular case to make whatever. It also implies that gays are child-molesters.

He’s still an idiot for the “Christianist” crack and claiming that the whole GOP rejects “civil unions, domestic partnerships, civil partnerships, or civil marriage”. I didn’t get his complaint about this ad supposedly implying gays are child molesters. It had enough to object to without raising this.

Whether Sullivan wishes to acknowledge it or not quite a number of Republicans support civil unions or domestic partnerships, though it is fair to say that a majority do not agree with same-sex marriage. Nevertheless, he is correct about one wing of the GOP. They do not support any of these arrangements. Religion should have no role whatsoever with Washington State’s domestic partnerships.

I can only imagine the loud complaints from this cadre of the self-righteous when other religious groups, like say Muslims, start running ads they disagree with that blatantly appeal for votes because of what is taught in the Qur’an.

– John (Average Gay Joe)

(H/t: Drudge) I don’t know how to imbed video from Politico.com, so I’ll just provide the creepy link here of a dozen gradeschool kids singing an ode to Chairman (and I mean that) Obama. No, it’s not the creepy New Jersey one that made the rounds last week.

This one is much more creepy because it’s being performed not in an obscure gradeschool. This, as James Earl Jones would say, is CNN!

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

UPDATE: Duh. Thanks, to American Elephant (who hopefully didn’t have as mind-numbing of a day as I did). He suggested I just imbed the YouTube video. Here you go:

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.

Nancy Pelosi, November 7, 2008

Democrats defeat GOP attempt to remove Rangel.

Glenn Reynolds, Today.

RELATED: GALLUP: Approval of Congress Falls to 21%.

A short summary of Mr. Rangel’s personal culture of corruption.  Defending Rangel, Rep Maxine Waters says “Many members” of Congress suffer from the same disclosure issues as Rangel.  Guess that culture is not just personal to Mr. Rangel.

Perhaps the greatest difficulty for conservatives during the better part of the George W. Bush era was that we had a president who was nominally a conservative, but, save for Social Security, he showed little enthusiasm for genuine conservative reforms.  Re-elected in 2004 with increased Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, Bush had a winning hand, but let the Democrats bluff him.  And, well, it seems he didn’t much have the appetite for reform.

As health insurance premiums rose faster than inflation, Republicans were oblivious to popular cries to address health care.  Even the party’s nominee in the 2008 election, while putting together a package embodying sensible conservative ideas for reform, didn’t promote his proposal in his campaign — and let his opponent misrepresent that plan.  To the Democrat’s credit, he recognized reform as a winning issue, so made it a centerpiece of his campaign.  (Of course, he obscured the cost of his proposal and did not stress the details which have now made his current plan so unpopular.)

It is to the great discredit of the GOP that when they had majorities in Congress, they did not move any of the major conservative ideas for health care reform.  Had they done so, it would have shown a commitment both to reform and to free market principles.  While promoting such a proposal may not have kept Congress in Republican hands, it would certainly show that the GOP was not devoid of new ideas.

Now, that we’re out of power, Republicans should redouble our efforts to show that ours is indeed a reform party.

Jennifer Rubin points to a one-page summary that  Jeffrey Anderson has prepared, culling the best of the conservative ideas for health-care reform and putting them on a single page.  It behooves Republican candidates and leaders to familiarize themselves with these proposals and promote them in public fora. (more…)

As I was preparing part of my dinner last night, I switched on FoxNews and heard Sean Hannity interviewing a familiar voice.  Unable immediately to put a face (or name) to that voice, I looked up at the TV and was surprised to see left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore.  What impressed man was the respect the conservative talk show host extended to the socialist propagandist.

I wondered if Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann had ever shown such courtesy to a similarly prominent conservative like Rush Limbaugh,  Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin.

Oh, wait a second, I don’t think those MSNBC hosts ever invited such a guest onto their show, much less treated him in a civil manner.  And some people accuse FoxNews of only offering the conservative point of view!

Oh, and one more thing, despite all the publicity Moore’s latest movie has been getting, it doesn’t seem to be doing very well at the box office.

*But then a teeter totter with Michael Moore on on end and Michelle Malkin on the other is more balanced than MSNBC.

I didn’t paid much heed to Jack Cashill’s post last fall where he finds “evidence” making Bill Ayers “a much more likely candidate than [Barack] Obama to have written the best parts of” the latter’s best-selling memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.  The notion just seemed too far-fetched.

I did read the piece, but thought it far too speculative to rely upon it as proving that Ayers ghostwrote the President’s memoir.  I return to it now, only because information has come forward suggesting that that radical may have helped the President with his book.  Cashill has since, in the word of Ronald Radosh who wrote about this last month, “played literary detective,” uncovering

. . . strange similarities in the metaphors used in both Ayers’ Fugitive Days and in Obama’s Dreams. One of them [Cashill's contributors] found 759 striking similarities. Cashill found one of his contributor’s analysis to be “systematic, comprehensive, and utterly, totally, damning.” You can read his article and judge for yourself.

And now, Cashill picked up the new bestseller about Obama and his wife, Christopher Andersen’s Barack and Michelle:Portrait of an American Marriage. What he found simply threw him for a loop because, I suspect, it was the last thing Cashill expected to find. Andersen writes in his book that after Obama finally got a new contract to write a book, Michelle Obama suggested that her husband get advice “from his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.”

Chancing upon the unrepentant terrorist while passing through Washington, DC’s Reagan National Airport on Monday, blogress Anne Leary heard him confirm that suggestion:

Then, unprompted he said–I wrote Dreams From My Father. I said, oh, so you admit it. He said–Michelle asked me to.

Patterico asks the question that came to my mind when first I read the story:  ”Sarcasm?”   (more…)

According to the Plum Line’s Eric Sargent, the House Speaker has ripped General “McChrystal For Publicly Airing His Views On Afghanistan”

Towards the end of an interview with Charlie Rose that ran late last night, Pelosi took a surprisingly hard shot at General Stanley McChrystal for publicly airing his views on Afghanistan, and called on him to stop.

“Let me say this about about General McChrystal, with all due respect,” Pelosi said, according to a transcript sent my way by a Pelosi aide. “His recommendations to the president should go up the line of command. They shouldn’t be in press conferences.”

McChrystal warned in a speech last week that pursuing a narrower mission in Afghanistan than the one he outlined in a recent assessment envisioning a broad counterinsurgency strategy would be “shortsighted.”

Wonder what Mrs. Pelosi had to say about Gen. Eric K. Shinseki who, back in 2003, faulted the Bush Administration for not sending more troops to Iraq.  His behavior must not have offended the President too much who tapped him as his Secretary Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

RELATED (from Glenn Reynolds): “THE MANTRA USED TO BE ‘LISTEN TO THE GENERALS!‘ Now it’s how dare those generals speak!“

With the FTC set to regulate blogging, requiring bloggers endorsing particular products to disclose whether or not they were paid (or otherwise compensated) for said endorsement, some bloggers are wondering about the selective nature of the enforcement.

Well, this disclosure requirement led one smart young blogger,* who doesn’t doesn’t think this is such “a horrible idea,” to muse about other situations where disclosure would be warranted:

I was thinking if bloggers have to disclose what they are compensated for when doing reviews, what about disclosure rules for Obama’s cronies in the UAW who now own 55% of Chrysler or for the bailouts and economic control and political positions that Goldman Sachs gets for their political support?

Well, we do know what they say about sauces and geese.

*IN CASE THE FTC IS READING THIS, that smart young blogger is my nephew Mitchell.  And his parents have hosted me on numerous occasions, providing hospitality and meals, with his mother recently showing me around Denver and his father, when they lived in Nashville, taking me to the Bluebird Café.

One of the reasons I would rather not blog on the Kevin Jennings story is that, I believe, some social conservatives are using it to reinforce stereotypes about gay people.  Yeah, there are gay people who have sex with minors.  But, they’re also straight men who do the same thing–and women as well. as we know from a number of recent publicized cases of teachers seducing their students.

Despite misconceptions in some social conservative circles, most gay men don’t pursue teenagers.  Indeed, of all the gay men I’ve met in the eighteen years that I’ve been out, I can only think of one who expressed an interest in teens and he gave no indication of ever acting on that particular desire.

A number of gay groups have also condemned NAMBLA. In 1994,

GLAAD “adopted a “Position Statement Regarding NAMBLA” saying GLAAD “deplores the North American Man Boy Love Association’s (NAMBLA) goals, which include advocacy for sex between adult men and boys and the removal of legal protections for children. These goals constitute a form of child abuse and are repugnant to GLAAD.” Also in 1994 the Board of Directors of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) adopted a resolution on NAMBLA that said: “NGLTF condemns all abuse of minors, both sexual and any other kind, perpetrated by adults. Accordingly, NGLTF condemns the organizational goals of NAMBLA and any other such organization.”

I recall that about that time, Log Cabin also condemned the group (though I could find no record online).

And yet despite this condemnation, many gay people seem reluctant to talk about the problem (as, I would dare say, do many straights).  When they hear of such conduct, they look the other way, rather than look out for the minor.

We should use this story as to borrow an expression from the President, a “teaching moment.”  If we learn of an adult having sex with a child, we should act–and quickly–to stop it.

(more…)

“Just words” is pretty much all President Obama has offered gay people. With the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) announcing that the Democrat would address their black-tie dinner in Washington, D.C. this coming Saturday, Jimmy LaSalvia, Executive Director of GOProud thought it time time that the President Obama come “clean with gay Americans“:

Talk is cheap, but unfortunately with this administration talk is all you get. It’s time President Obama told gay Americans just how unimportant they are to him and his administration.

To remind people that the President is all talk, his organization released a video highlighting the Democrat’s failure to fulfill the promises he made on the campaign trail:

My sense is that guests at the dinner will give the Democrat a long and enthusiastic standing ovation, after all, there is that (D) after his name which all too many gay activists believe stands for “divine.”  Given the president’s partisan affiliation, the mere fact that he blesses the left-leaning organization with his presence will obviate the need for action.  He’s a Democrat after all!

Recall this past summer when, as Charles Winecoff writes, “many of His supporters in the LGBT tribe were growing restless with His neglect, it only took one White House cocktail party to get them eating right out of His palm again.”  President Obama knows one thing:  if you want to curry favor with certain gay activists, you don’t need to do anything, you just need invite them to a party or come to their own.

Last night, while doing my cardio, I was struck by a segment on Larry King Live where the eponymous host and his guests commented on a recent Saturday Night Live mocking the President of the United States.  ”SNL Skit Slams Obama,” read the chyron (as beat as I can remember).

It shouldn’t be news that a program known for its satire mocks the President for such is the stuff of the show.  Indeed, such has been the stuff of American politics at least as far back as Lincoln (and indeed probably further).  People have always made fun of the President.  And that’s a good thing, a sign we don’t take our leaders too seriously, that we see them as human beings capable of foibles and folly.  Making fun of our leaders is the stuff of freedom and a sign that no one should be immune from mockery.

But, it is news (to CNN) when a show which has mocked all previous Presidents back to (and including) Gerald R. Ford devotes an entire sketch to mocking the incumbent (to be sure, this has not been the first time they have made fun of the Democrat).

King’s statement was only a taste of CNN’s worshipful attitude toward Obama.  In his Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer, in Mary Katharine Ham’s words, has treated the comedy sketch as “as an attack ad“:

Sycophancy you can believe in, right this way.

In other news, upon further investigation, CNN has discovered that those two guys weren’t “wild and crazy,” but merely socially awkward and Eastern European. For more goofs on CNN, which would make for a superb SNL follow-up spoof of Wolf Blitzer, check the Twitter tag, #CNNFactCheck.

I’m just guessing Blitzer never produced a segment fact-checking Tina Fey’s grossly inaccurate representation of Sarah Palin.  She may have looked the part, but, well, put words into that good, but much-maligned, woman’s mouth.

With Zombietime posting a major piece detailing the extensive involvement of Harry Hay, a man who “inspired” the president’s safe schools “czar” Kevin Jennings, in the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) “a group which advocates for legalization of sexual relations between adult men and underage boys,” right-of-center bloggers are again writing about the story.

Now, let me first say that just because Hay inspired Jennings does not mean that that latter agreed with everything the pioneering gay activist said or did.  Indeed, well aware of Hay’s activism, I had been unaware of his support for NAMBLA until bloggers brought it out in stories about Jennings.  Maybe Jennings didn’t know either.

But, combined with his reaction to the student (who told him he was having sex with a man he met in a bathroom) there is increasing evidence that Jennings countenanced (or at least did not disapprove of) sexual relations between adults and minors.  I commend Zombietime for his thorough investigation and for inviting the Obama Administration official to do something to show that he does not countenance the type of relationships Hay so regularly encouraged.  (The blogger offers several suggestions of the actions Jennings might take).

Please let me know if you have evidence that Jennings was unaware of Hay’s involvement in NAMBLA or has distanced himself from that aspect of a man on whom he has lavished much praise.

As it is now, Jennings’s prominence only helps reinforce certain stereotypes about gay people.  And that is why, I believe, he should resign.

Commenting to post yesterday wondering why the left has lost interest in the death of Kentucky census worker Bill Sparkman, Pamela Troy defended the sudden silence of the left (on an issue about which they couldn’t shut up toward the end of September):

What exactly is your point? That Maddow isn’t commenting because no new information has come out?

I have no idea what happened to Bill Sparkman, but suspecting some anti-Government nut is hardly out of line, given that his body was set out nude with the word “fed” written on it.

Well, Ms. Maddow did play it (as did a number of her ideological fellow travelers) as if some anti-Government nut (who regularly tuned in to Glenn Beck when not following Congresswoman Michelle Bachman’s tweets) was all but certainly the culprit.  Given their incredible interest when the story broke, their current silence is telling.  Remember, they’re the ones whose outrage made Sparkman’s death a national issue.

As I noted in that post, libertarian blogger R.S. McCain (with whom I occasionally correspond) “trekked over to the Bluegrass State to find out while he could,” doing so on his time, on his own dime (and with what he could rustle up from readers).  So, I’m wondering if any left-wing bloggers have followed in his footsteps, heading to Kentucky to investigate this story–about which they made much when they seemed so certain that the murderer read right-wing blogs and participated in anti-big government tea parties.

If they were so certain Sparkman was murdered by a right-winger, why didn’t they go down their to test prove their hypothesis?  And heck, doesn’t Ms. Maddow’s network have a few more resources than that Kia-driving blogger?

That question came to mind when I read in Politico that:

White House senior adviser David Axelrod met with Fox News chairman and chief executive officer Roger Ailes two weeks ago . . . over coffee while the president was in [New York].

Apparently, the Obama aide was upset with the network’s “heavy coverage of Obama critics by opinion shows.”  Wonder if Karl Rove so expressed his concern about the heavy coverage of Bush critics on the aforementioned networks.  Not to mention in such newspapers as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post.

Did Rove meet with their editors or publishers to complain about their coverage?

When President Obama flew to Copenhagen to try to bring the Olympic to his home town in 2016, he hoped to translate his personal popularity abroad into a real accomplishment.  And now that wavering Democratic Congressmen and Senators see what little clout that popularity brings, will the President be able to strong arm them into backing an increasingly unpopular proposal when a final bill emerges?

In Europe where the President is more popular than he is here, his political capital doesn’t seem to yield results.  And with many of their seats in jeopardy, legislators aren’t likely to go out on a limb for a leader who can’t deliver.

Seems the New York Times is beginning to learn from the mistakes its public editor Clark Hoyt addressed when he acknowledged the Old Gray Lady’s sloth in in reporting scandal swirling around ACORN.  The paper reported yesterday (and on Page A19 of its New York section today) that:

An internal review at Acorn, the embattled community organizing group, revealed that its founder’s brother had embezzled $5 million from the group, five times more than the amount disclosed, according to a subpoena served Monday by the Louisiana attorney general. But the organization’s chief executive denied that any internal review had revealed that figure.

The article seems relatively even-handed, until the end where reporter Campbell Robertson writes, “workers at Acorn were caught on videotape offering business advice to two conservative activists posing as a prostitute and a pimp.”  (Emphasis added.)  Um, wonder if the Times uses a comparable adjective to describe left-wing organizations investigating conservative groups or corporations.  (Robertson, for example, identified ACORN as a “community organizing group,” but does not indicate its left-wing inclinations.)

Michelle Malkin finds the story more slanted toward ACORN than I did, perhaps because she’s aware of what the Times left out:

Former ACORN/Project Vote worker Anita MonCrief — the independent whistleblower who worked closely with NYTimes reporter Stephanie Strom on exposing ACORN financial shenanigans last year before Times editors “cut bait” just weeks before Election Day — informed Strom that the true figure was $5 million.

MonCrief also reported the $5 million figure to Warner Todd Huston in April 2009.

Maybe Michelle is right.  I do think it’s entirely appropriate to quote the head of the organization embroiled in scandal, but it does seem that Robertson took ACORN chief executive Bertha Lewis’s statements disputing the amount embezzled at face value. (more…)

Yesterday, I was researching the deeds of Theseus for my dissertation, fascinated by how frequently the goddess Athena stands behind the hero in vase paintings depicting his deeds, despite the paucity of references (indeed, one could say absence) of her support in the surviving narratives.  One of his triumphs most frequently depicted in classical art was his match with Procrustes.

Living near the road at Erineus, not far from Eleusis, this son of Poseidon invited travelers in to stay the night.  He put each traveler in one of his two beds, the first quite short, the other long.  To make sure his guests were perfectly comfortable, he thought each should fit the particular bed perfectly.  If his legs dangled a bit over, well, the host would just chop them off.  If the guest were too short, well, Procrustes would stretch him out.

Not much different from the Democrats’ proposed health care plans, with their insistence that each American have an “acceptable” level of coverage.  So, if your current plan doesn’t mean the government’s requirement, well, they’ll have to stretch it out a bit, requiring your employer perhaps to drop coverage or you to pay a little more.  As Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) observes:

Unfortunately, this bill makes things worse rather than better by imposing federal government mandates on coverage that, for example, in the Whole Foods in Austin, Texas, headquartered in Austin, Texas, they won’t be able to keep their current health coverage now because it doesn’t meet the minimum—minimum actuarial value because it’s a health high-deductible plan with wellness accounts that people like, but they won’t be able to keep it. Millions of people won’t be able to keep what they have.

Well, when Procruste invited the son of Aegeus in, that great hero gave the punctilious host a taste of his own medicine, forcing him to abide by his own rules of hospitality.  And certainly Republicans have tried to treat proponents of the government overhaul of health care in the same way, proposing amendments requiring members of Congress to participant in the public plan of their crafting.

For as long as our forebears have heard the tale of Procrustes, we know that one size does not fit all, despite the attempts of well-meaning statists over the years to make it so.

Remember, oh, about a week or so ago, all those left-wing “bloggers . . . engag[ing] in widespread speculation about the motive” (as R.S McCain put it) for the death of Kentucky census worker Bill Sparkman.  Well, while, that diligent blogger trekked over to the Bluegrass State to find out while he could, the leftie blogs (and their favorite TV hostess) have, well, gone dark, that is, in covering this story.

I just did a few google searches and couldn’t find any new information coming from the left.  Rachel Maddow, the aforementioned hostess, doesn’t seem to have touched the issue for a week.

Seems she’s lost interest.  Maybe that’s because “law-enforcement authorities have yet to announce any leads, suspects, or potential motives.”  And without any evidence to back up their case, their own prejudices can only fan the flames of conspiracy theories for so long.  (Given how the accusations leveled at the immediate past President of the United States, I may have to reconsider that last statement.)

Indeed, that other McCain quotes a Kentucky journalist who exclaimed to him, ”We don’t know anything. Hell, we don’t even know what we don’t know.”

Speculation continues to abound.  While McCain throws out a number of possible theories, he is careful not to rush to any conclusions. For example, as to intimations that Sparkman may have been gay, he offers:

. . . the problem is that we have no idea whether Sparkman’s sexuality (whatever it was, and all I know is what people in Kentucky told me) had anything to do with his disappearance and death. It might be relevant or not. At any rate,that Tampa story is full of very strong suggestions that my Kentucky sources have reasonbly accurate “gaydar.”

He doesn’t do as Newsweek does (indeed he takes that magazine to task for doing so) and chalk Sparkman’s death up to anti-census sentiment.   It would be nice if those who rushed to presume that right-wingers had created the climate which led to the murder of Sparkman would at least acknowledge how little they really knew, instead of abandoning the issue in droves without learning from their recent rush to judgment.

* (more…)

As I was sorting through my notes this weekend, I happened upon a few pages of blog ideas left over from last fall’s campaign.  While most are no longer particularly relevant, some ideas stood out, notably this one:

Obama “Cool”/He gets that by avoiding making decisions, yielding to congressional Democrats.

And this seem particularly relevant in two of the issues dominating the headlines these past few weeks, health care and Afghanistan.  On health care, Democrats in Congress, particularly on the Senate Finance Committee, have been trying to cobble together a bill while the President watches supportively from the sidelines.

On Afghanistan, he has given no clear signals about which path he plans on taking.

Jennifer Rubin believes his dithering has led to “a remarkable and widespread loss of confidence in the president’s handling of national security” as indicated in recent polls:  ”This should actually come as no surprise. Neither his rhetoric or his decision-making to date has projected strength.”