Back when I was a lad, every summer our family loaded up the Chevy Suburban (or Ford Van which replaced it) and headed West or Northeast for a camping trip.  One year, we visited Wyoming, Montana and Alberta.  After hiking i Yellowstone National Park, our parents planned to take us to Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness, but one of my younger brothers took ill. They changed the plans, we headed to Great Falls to seek medical attention.

A visit to a doctor and a few days rest at a local Holiday Inn and soon my brother was back to normal.

The lesson of this anecdote should be familiar to anyone who has found himself in a position of responsibility.  When the circumstances change, you need to change your plans.  My parents recognized that with my brother’s illness, we could not continue the trip as planned.

So too should Obama recognize that with increasing evidence of a growing terror threat and continuing uncertainty about the economy, he has to turn his attention from regulatory schemes like health care and cap and trade and focus on jobs and national security.

Sometimes, I wonder if the president pushed through such a massive “stimulus” at the outset of his Administration, assuming that releasing so much cash would be certain to create jobs.  The economy would pick up, allowing Democrats to focus on their pet big-government projects.

But, things didn’t work out as planned.

That’s why this Democrat needs to learn from FDR.  Had it not been for the wars in Europe and the Far East, had that Democrat bid for a third term in 1940, he likely would have lost the presidential contest that fall, to be known to history as an inspiring failure.  But, as the threat to Western Civilization grew, he pivoted to meet the emerging challenges.  Magazine covers notwithstanding, the latest Democrat to occupy the White House shows few signs of following in his illustrious predecessor’s footsteps.

The “stimulus” hasn’t worked.  He needs develop new and different programs to increase employment.

His national security team offered a ham-handed response to the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253.  He needs shake up that team and devote greater attention to the terrorist threat.   Obama, as Rudy Giuliani contends, may have “turned the corner” in his understanding of that threat, but he needs show that he has made countering it a priority. (more…)

When I read Charlie Cook’s assessment of the 201o electoral landscape (via Jim Geraghty), I wondered if Republicans could win the Senate back 10 months hence:

Come November, Senate Democrats’ 60-vote supermajority is toast. It is difficult, if not impossible, to see how Democrats could lose the Senate this year. But they have a 50-50 chance of ending up with fewer than 55 seats in the next Congress.

Difficult, possibly impossible for Democrats to lose the Senate.  But, at this point thirty years ago, no one was talking about the GOP winning the Senate, but riding Reagan’s coattails, 12 Republicans were elected in states previously represented by Republicans.

I looked at the 18 Democratic seats up this fall and realized that while it was unlikely the GOP could recapture the Senate, it is possible should the GOP recruit or nominate strong candidates against seven incumbents and in one seat made open this week (Connecticut).

First, let’s look at the seats that are out of  play, the three unbeatable Democrats, alas that two (New York’s Schumer and Vermont’s Leahy) are among the Senate’s most obnoxious partisans.  The other, Hawai’i's Daniel Inouye, turns 86 this fall.  If he should retire, Governor Lingle might have a chance should she throw her hat in the ring.  But, the eight-term incumbent has given no indication that he intends to step down.

Then, let’s look at the bright side, the four likely GOP pickups, Arkansas, Nevada, North Dakota and Pennsylvania.  In a subsequent post, I will detail how I have become more bullish on the Keystone State in the past few days.

Now, we move to the two tossups which lean Republican Delaware (because of Mike Castle’s popularity) and Colorado.  That brings us to 46.  With a good campaign, Mark Kirk should flip the Land of Lincoln.  Recall that in Democratic year (’06 and ’08), he held a seat which Obama won by a margin nearly identical to his statewide margin.  Kirk’s is a suburban seat and the Chicago suburbs shift to the Democrats in recent years accounts for their dominance in the state.  The ’09 elections showed Republicans doing well in Northeastern suburbs.  Should they extend that to the Midwest, a Republican win easily win the seat once held by the president.

Should Carly Fiorina win the GOP primary and raise $25 million, she will certainly give Ma’am a run for her money.  The state economy should put voters in a throw-the bums-out mood.  That brings us to 48 (presuming no GOP losses). (more…)

Remember now nearly a year when the newly inaugurated president and his fellow partisans in Congress were lecturing us on the need to act swiftly and pass a multi-hundred trillion dollar stimulus to prevent future job losses?

Well, it’s been nearly 11 months since Obama signed said legislation–and approximately six since the Democrat promised us unemployment would peak at less than 8% and today we learn that unemployment remains at 10% with employers continuing to lay off employees:

Lack of confidence in the economic recovery led employers to shed a more-than-expected 85,000 net jobs in December even as the unemployment rate held at 10 percent. The rate would have been higher if more people had been looking for work instead of leaving the labor force because they can’t find jobs.

The sharp drop in the work force — 661,000 fewer people — showed that more of the jobless are giving up.

Guess they’re giving up because they don’t have much confidence that there will be jobs available.   Seems the president need develop a plan which will hope enterprises which create jobs to do just that.

But, I don’t think increasing the burdens on small businesses with his massive health care overhaul will make it any easier for employers to innovate and expand.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

The typical lie that liberals present to “really defeat” terrorism is this: “If we stop the poverty, famine and despair of Muslim youth, they will stop blowing us up.”  This line of crap specifically comes from one of American’s chief Islamic terror apologist groups – CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations)

Enough of this bull Can someone please name one Muslim terrorist who was impoverished, starving, poor or underprivileged??

The 9/11 crew gambled in Vegas and hired whores.  The London transit bombers were living in the UK and were not poor.  And our buddy, The Crotch Bomber, comes from a very wealthy family.

So enough. This is an idelogical and political war launched against the Western liberal democracies.  Unless we come to grips with the facts, more Americans will die at the hands of wealthy Islamic terrorists.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

This week I was pleased to write an op ed explaining GOProud’s sponsorship of CPAC in Metro Weekly. The op ed can be found here and below.

In mid-February thousands of conservatives will descend on D.C. for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference — better known as CPAC — the premiere political event for conservative leaders and activists. CPAC sponsors represent the broad spectrum of conservatives and libertarians: economic conservatives, foreign policy conservatives, social conservatives and traditional libertarian groups. This year, gay conservatives will have also have a voice at CPAC thanks to GOProud.

-30-

So late today the Senate in New Jersey, one of the blueist of blue states (based on recent Prez elections), defeated a gay marriage proposal.

Gay rights advocates were confident of a legislative win and they pushed for passage while defeated Gov. Corzine was still holding his bill-signing pen.

So WTF? What has happened to the gay marriage movement? If you lose in CA and NJ, where do you go now?

I think it is a dead issue. Dead.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Just five days ago, I blogged that “anti-gay” has become an “all purpose slur to silence politically incorrect opinions on gay issues“.  We’ve seen that in the current contest to fill the Massachusetts Senate seat.  Last month, a reader from New England alerted me to an article on gay Boston website identifying Scott Brown, the Republican nominee in that contest, as “anti-gay“.

The editors of the site did not respond to my e-mail requesting information on how they reached that conclusion.  And my research turned up no evidence to support their claim.  To be sure, Brown “opposes gay marriage and supports the Defense of Marriage Act”, but so too do a lot of Americans who do not harbor animus against homosexuals.  They just believe marriage is an institution (which should be) reserved for couples of different sexes.

Indeed, despite his opposition to gay marriage, Brown has not dwelled on the issue in his campaign, telling editors of the Boston Herald that gay marriage in the Bay State is “settled law“:

Gay marriage, which he once wanted to put up for a referendum? “This is settled law” in Massachusetts, he said. “People have moved on.”

Just the other day, in fact, he chatted up two lesbians at Doyle’s in Jamaica Plain. They were so wowed, they asked for a “Brown for Senate” sign.

Doesn’t sound like an anti-gay fellow to me.   Guess the editors at the Edge believe any Republican opposing gay marriage must necessarily be anti-gay.

In most of the “blue islands” which dominate our nation’s coastal regions (and are scattered throughout its interior), we openly conservative gay folks regularly experience the prejudice of our gay peers and other well-educated leftie types.  Seems their undergraduate (and postgraduate) education (coupled with a healthy dose of media bias) has given them a skewed view of the American right.

As one of our readers offered in a comment to a recent post:

While you are busy supporting conservatives, they are busy trying to take away your civil rights as a gay American. I am certain that you are aware that the forces on the right side of the aisle have as a centerpiece of their attempts to conserve traditional values a certain contempt for people who, in their words, “choose the gay lifestyle”

Yeah, there are folks like that on the right, but they hardly define the conservative movement.  An aversion to homosexuality, however, is hardly the centerpiece of American conservatism, even of those social conservatives promoting traditional values.

It would be nice if our ideological adversaries could at least take the time to understand those they claim to know so well, but about whom they maintain an incredible ignorance.

UPDATE: AllahPundit notes that this level of conservative self-identification is “back to same level as post-9/11.”  Interesting.  Perhaps a one-night stand with Obama was enough to give America The Hangover Of The Century?

STILL. From Gallup today:

PRINCETON, NJ — The increased conservatism that Gallup first identified among Americans last June persisted throughout the year, so that the final year-end political ideology figures confirm Gallup’s initial reporting: conservatives (40%) outnumbered both moderates (36%) and liberals (21%) across the nation in 2009.

More broadly, the percentage of Americans calling themselves either conservative or liberal has increased over the last decade, while the percentage of moderates has declined.  [GP Ed. Note: So much for Obama being "post-partisan" and a "uniter", eh?]

<..>

Thus far in 2009, Gallup has found an average of 36% of Americans considering themselves Democratic, 28% Republican, and 37% independent. When independents are pressed to say which party they lean toward, 51% of Americans identify as Democrats, 39% as Republicans, and only 9% as pure independents.

Ideological tendencies by leaned party affiliation are very similar to those of straight partisan groups.  However, it is worth noting the views of pure independents — a group usually too small to analyze in individual surveys but potentially important in deciding elections. Exactly half of pure independents describe their views as moderate, 30% say they are conservative, and 17% liberal.

Conservative Republicans hold the mainstream views in America.  The governing coalition in the US has been, since 1980, Conservative Republicans, Conservative Democrats, Conservative-Leaning Independents.  That all adds up to the magic 40% Conservative.  Then all you need is two swing 11% moderate Independents and you have your governing coalition.

Liberals had their wad shot in 2008.  Now the Conservative Governing Coalition of America is coming back and uniting around our Founding Principles.  Obama had better wake up and realize he ain’t the Premier of the United Soviet States of America anymore.

The problem of course is that liberals have infested the academic and media worlds and they whine, shriek and holler louder than the other 79% of America.  We need to change that.  NOW.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Today, Michelle Malkin is making much of Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker “unprecedented ruling” to videotape the federal trial challenging California’s Proposition 8.

Michael Kirk, the lawyer for Prop 8 proponents “argued that allowing the proceedings to be viewed outside the courthouse would violate their right to a fair trial by intimidating their witnesses.” Citing former federal district judge Paul Cassell, who finds it “highly unusual for a judge to authorize televised proceedings for this particular case as part of some new ‘pilot’ project to see how televised proceedings work“, Michelle contends:

This isn’t a sincere educational effort to provide transparency to the public. It’s a flagrant attempt at making Prop. 8 a show trial — and intimidating Prop. 8 backers who will be called to testify.

Just based on the antics of those Michelle dubs the “anti-Prop. 8 mob,” there is much merit to her argument. Members of this “mob” seem more interested in political theater than in rational argument. Among the advocates of gay marriage, Jonathan Rauch stands out, largely because he prefers level-headed persuasion to self-righteous chest-thumping.

Just yesterday, “Equality California” sent out an e-mail blast encouraging people to rally at a San Diego hotel owned by a man who made a generous contribution to the campaign to put Prop 8 on the ballot. They’ve even chartered vehicles to bus people from West Hollywood to the rally. Yeah, that’ll help.

Instead of engaging in political theater, they could better use their resources by taking the time to understand the arguments of gay marriage opponents and developing counter-arguments.  There’s no need to televise this trial nor to boycott a hotel, but there is a need to argue effectively. As the gay leadership has repeatedly demonstrated its inability to do just that.

Remember all the left-wing bellyaching about the supposed bias of the poll liberal blogger Nate Silver ranked as “the third-most accurate pollster in predicting outcomes of elections“?  Well, those folks might want to reconsider their attacks.  In a batch of polls Jim Geraghty linked this morning, Rasmussen (along with CNN) registered the highest support for the Democrats’ proposed health care overhaul:  42%:

Rasmussen: 52 percent oppose the health care plan, 42 percent support it.

CNN: 56 percent oppose the health care plan, 42 percent support it.

Quinnipiac: 53 percent oppose the health care plan, 36 percent support it.

NBC/WSJ: 46 percent oppose the health care plan, 32 percent support it.

Like yours truly, Martha Coakley is a graduate of the college currently ranked (by U.S. News and World Report) as the nation’s top liberal arts college.  But, unlike our fellow alum and her fellow Democrat, Chris Murphy, she doesn’t seem very interested in the concerns of her constituents who do not share her political point of view.

The Massachusetts Democrat, her party’s nominee for the Senate seat formerly held by Teddy Kennedy, has so far refused a one-on-one debate with her Republican opponent Scott Brown.   You’d think a Williams graduate would relish the chance to debate an ideological adversary.   After all, in many of our classes, class participation counted toward our grade.

Not just that, as a former District Attorney of Middlesex County and current state Attorney General, she should have perfected the art of public speaking and debate.

Even Brian McGrory of the liberal Boston Globe is asking, “Where’s Martha Coakley?”

Coakley, in exquisitely diva-like form, is refusing all invitations to debate her Republican opponent in the race, Scott Brown, unless a third-party candidate with no apparent credentials is included on the stage. She may also require a crystal bowl of orange-only M&Ms in her dressing room, but we haven’t gotten that far yet. Her demands have led to an astonishing result: there will be just one — that’s one — live televised debate in the Boston media market this general election season. . . .

This is all part of a Coakley pattern. When she ran for attorney general, she didn’t allow even the Republican candidate on a debate stage. In fact, she refused to debate at all. . . .

Here’s one problem with all this: When you’re a United States senator, you’re expected to get up on the Senate floor and forcefully debate the issues of the day. You’re expected to be a strong voice in hearings.

Both the man she’d like to succeed (the late Teddy Kennedy) and the man with whom she’d like serve (John Kerry) debated their Republican opponents.  If Mrs. Coakley can’t stand up to the Republican challenging her for the chance to represent the Bay State in the United States Senate, how will she be able to stand up for the Bay State in the United States Senate?

A Williams alumna should have the guts to take on a challenger in a battle of wits.  Now, she’s following in the footsteps of the most ignominious man in our college history.  Like Zephaniah Swift Moore, she’d rather turn tail than face the challenges of her job.

* (more…)

Perhaps, it was because I so enjoyed Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side that I snapped up Two Weeks Notice in Costco on Sunday.  While the script is uneven at best, I liked the film when first I saw it on the big screen.  Bullock is outstanding throughout and she and Hugh Grant have great chemistry so we believe their romance.  It held up reasonably well on a second viewing.

The flaws in the screenplay are too numerous to mention, notably that Grant plays the heir to a New York real estate magnate without losing his English charm, manner or accent.

While Bullock’s Lucy Kelson has left-wing politics, the film tones them down so they never really become offensive and a conservative can enjoy the film without feeling the filmmakers are making fun of our politics.  Still, Kelson is a liberal type of activist who cried when Bush was elected.

It seems that liberal activists are a staple of films made since the 1970s and almost always portrayed in a sympathetic light as was Miss Bullock’s Lucy.  So that got me wondering:  can anyone recall a movie where a conservative activist is portrayed in a positive light–even if his conservative politics are only incidental to his character?

The Governor of the Golden State calls out Obamacare for what it is:

Health care reform, which started as noble and needed legislation, has become a trough of bribes, deals and loopholes. You’ve heard of the bridge to nowhere. This is health care to nowhere. California’s congressional delegation should either vote against this bill that is a disaster for California or get in there and fight for the same sweetheart deal Senator Nelson of Nebraska got for the Cornhusker State. He got the corn; we got the husk.

For some reason, I just don’t think either of California’s Senators will be listening.  Nor for that matter will the great majority of our House delegation pay much heed to his sound advice.  So beholden are these Democrats to pass “historic” legislation that they overlook those provisions calling on cash-strapped Golden State citizens to fit the Medicare bill of the citizens of Nebraska, a state in far better economic shape than the one Mesdames Feinstein and Boxer were elected to represent.

(Via Gateway Pundit.)

A former state chair of the Massachusetts College Republicans, I’ve long been bullish on the GOP’s prospects in the Bay State.  State voters have shown an aversion to state Democrats’ affection for high taxes.  In four consecutive gubernatorial election at the end of the last century and the beginning of this, they elected a Republican Governor.   In the 198os, they twice delivered the state to the Gipper.

And yet the state hasn’t elected a Republican to Congress since 1992.  Part of the problem has been a moribund state GOP.  Its leadership hasn’t responded effectively to the state’s shifting demographics, not understanding that the urban ethnic citizens once a mainstay of the Democratic Party when it was the state’s opposition party through the 1940s and as it gained majority status in the 1950s and 60s were becoming increasingly disenchanted with the cultural liberalism of the party in the 1970s.

This year, however, with economic issues coming to the fore, could Republican senatorial candidate Scott Brown capitalize on popular discontent with Democratic policies and win the race to serve out the remainder of Teddy Kennedy’s Senate term?

He has a tough row to hoe in a state where registered Democrats outnumber their Republican counterparts by a margin of 3 to 1.  Still, even in this state which sends 10 Democrats (and zero Republicans) to the U.S. House of Representatives, over half the voters choose not to register with either of the major parties.  And all evidence shows that Brown is not just winning the lion’s share of those voters, he’s winning the lion king’s share, leading his Democratic opponent (whose refusal to debate Brown one-on-one shows she lacks the confidence her superior undergraduate education should afford) among independents by the same margin registered Democrats lead registered Republicans in the state.

That’s an even better margin than Governor-elect Chris Christie enjoyed in the Garden State and Governor-elect McDonnell enjoyed in the Old Dominion.   (more…)

Despite the failure of big government schemes to foster innovation or create wealth, Democrats here and leftists worldwide continue to promote them as Stephen Moore points out in How Barack Obama is Bankrupting the U.S. Economy:

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about one of my last conversations with [Milton] Friedman when he warned that “even though socialism is a discredited economic model and capitalism is raising living standards to new heights, the left intellectuals continue to push for bigger government everywhere I look.”  He predicted that people would be seduced by collectivist ideas again. He was right.

Many thanks to Bruce who has given me such a wonderful forum to scratch my political itch and post cartoons. I’ve been a (quiet) fan of Gay Patriot for quite a while…his voice helping me feel not quite so alone.  I’m glad to be here!

Like the cartoons?  Support the artist!

Soon-to-be former Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark) “on Tuesday said a political deal that benefits Nebraska and may have clinched a lawmaker’s support for health care legislation should be removed from the bill“:

The Democratic senator from Arkansas said she was disappointed about a provision in the Senate’s health care bill that will require the federal government to permanently pay the entire cost of Medicaid expansion in Nebraska, while only paying the costs of expansion in the other 49 states for three years.

Um, Blanche, so, why, pray tell, did you vote for the provision?  You could have insisted it be removed before you voted for Harry Reid’s health care bill.

Seems like this lady says one thing in Arkansas and votes another way in Washington.

(H/t: Gateway Pundit.)

I have an exclusive story here folks!  My sources within the government have informed me that thanks to the intrepid hard work and intelligence gathered earlier this week in Costa Rica, a deadly and widespread terror sleeper cell has been disrupted.

It appears that a band of Joan Rivers impersonators had been deployed to conduct a campaign of terror by disrupting sleep patterns throughout the United States.  The Joan Rivers look-alikes talk with voices that interfere with the normal wavelengths of human perception.  The cackling and screeching being uttered across the nation would have resulted in mass insomnia from coast to coast.

Thank God our CIA, TSA and worldwide intelligence officials were on the look out for these dangerous suspects and picked up their leader before she had a chance to deploy this evil plot.  White House Spokesperson Robert Gibbs was quick to point out today that the Joan Rivers Sleeper Cell was a direct result of GITMO being used as a recruiting tool with drag queens.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)