Today, the White House confirmed the wisdom of a piece Jennifer Rubin posted yesterday on Commentary’s Contentions.  Not learning from experience, she wrote, the President “lacks judgment“, remaining unable

to assess events, make adjustments, and correct course promptly may be attributable to a lack of life experience (e.g., he has never seen his ideological assumptions rejected so thoroughly, nor has he had to shift course so abruptly). It may also stem from arrogance – the belief that he has a monopoly on virtue and wisdom and that his opponents are rubes and/or operate out of bad faith. And then again, he may simply be weighed down by silly ideas (e.g., government can create jobs) and a lack of executive acumen.

Today, we learned that the White House intends to press ahead on a radical overhaul of our nation’s health care system, despite increasing (and overwhelming) majorities of Americans opposed to such plans:

In the course of unveiling Obama’s new health reform proposal on a conference call with reporters this morning, White House advisers made it clearer than ever before: If the GOP filibusters health reform, Dems will move forward on their own and pass it via reconciliation.

Guess their upcoming summit is just window dressing.  The Democrats will push forward on their form of “reform” no matter what even as more than two-thirds of Americans believe Congress should either start all over on health care reform or do nothing.

It’s not starting over when you’re coming to the table with a “a $950 billion health care proposal bridging the differences between the House and Senate health care bills.”  And a trillion dollar federal program is anything but doing nothing.

Sounds like the president prefers pushing his ideology to forging a consensus in the national interest.

ZERO cheers for the Senate’s newest member spendthrift pig! After only 18 days in office, Senator Scott Brown has already sided with fellow New England Republicans embarrassments Susan Collins and Olympia Snow (along, this time, with pork-lover Kit Bond of Missouri) in voting to saddle us with yet another $15,000,000,000 in deficit spending.

That bloom is quickly fading.

For a man who was swept into office based on his self-described distaste for an out-of-control government recklessly spending our money, he is off to a very, VERY bad start.

I welcome you, as I have in past such instances to contact these Senators:

Kit Bond
Scott Brown (hopefully coming soon, phone number is (202) 224-4543)
Susan Collins
Olympia Snowe

For my part, I am looking right now at the thank-you letter I received just this week from Senator Brown for the donation I made to his campaign. I have choice words for him and will be formulating a reply over the next couple days.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

UPDATE My apologies. In my haste, I had missed that another Republican embarrassment George Voinovich is also responsible for the boondoggle with his “Yea” vote.

And by the way, YES, I prefer Brown to having Coakley in his stead. By now, Stalinized Health Care would already be the law of the land without him. And YES, I realize that his election was a shot across the bow at the socialist Democractic party and thier overreaches, and so in a sense he has already served that purpose (and nobly). But the rose-colored days ended on the day he was elected and he now has to be held responsible for how he performs his duties (sound familiar?). I treat him no better or worse than I do with the other robber-barons of the Republican party (see links in my original post above to see historical proof of this). It is a greater let-down considering I donated to him because of certain things that are still posted on his campaign website:

Why I’m Running… I want to ensure that we leave them an America that is financially stronger and independent: minus a national debt that we can never repay.

I have been a fiscal watchdog in the state legislature fighting bigger government, higher taxes and wasteful spending.

(Emphases mine)

These proclamations, now can clearly be seen in practice to have been only campaign rhetoric. And we’re the hypocrites the Lefties who troll our Comments section say we are if we don’t shine an especially harsh the light on the ones we support when they let us down.

Remember that law that President Obama signed last May to shields credit card “users from sudden interest rate hikes, excessive fees and other gimmicks that card companies have used to drive up profits“?  Guess what?  It’s not working out as planned.

During the past nine months, credit card companies jacked up interest rates, created new fees and cut credit lines. They also closed down millions of accounts. So a law hailed as the most sweeping piece of consumer legislation in decades has helped make it more difficult for millions of Americans to get credit, and made that credit more expensive.

You see, credit “companies had nine months to prepare while certain rules were clarified by the Federal Reserve. They used that time to take actions that ended up hurting the same customers who were supposed to be helped.”  Kind of what always happens when private companies prepare to shield themselves from federal laws designed to “protect” consumers from market forces.

No, the world wouldn’t be perfect if the government got out of the way, but, well, when it does try to help, it only ends up making things worse, much worse.

As yet another example that while Democrats in today’s Washington may be out of the loop on any number of issues, at least they do get it in when it comes to repealing Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT).

Our pal James Kirchick reports that Joe Lieberman will become the “chief sponsor” of legislation to repeal DADT:

Next week, the Connecticut senator will announce that he’s taking the lead on repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the 1993 law that prohibits gay people from serving openly in the armed forces. Since implementation of the statute nearly 20 years ago, the military has discharged some 14,000 qualified men and women, many of them serving in critical jobs like Arabic and Persian translation.

Nice to have a man well-regarded by the military at the forefront of this effort.

On June 3, 2008, when then-candidate Barack Obama declared victory in the campaign for the Democratic nomination, he declared that “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal“.

Well, looks like the rise of the ocean has stopped: “Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.”

Seventeen years ago, when then-President Bill Clinton tried to repeal the then-ban on gays serving in the military, few military leaders were at te forefront of the effort for repeal.  The issue was one of “social justice” and not military effectiveness.

Today, by contrast, the President is wisely working with the top military brass to repeal the ban which Clinton and the then-Democratic Congress codified in 1993.  Leaders of our military are now talking about howto repeal the ban while maintaining unit cohesion and morale.  They seem favorably disposed to the idea.  It seems it is now the moment to repeal the ban.

The latest to appear to be leaning toward repeal is perhaps the greatest military leader still on active duty in our armed forces, General David Petraeus, Commander, U.S. Central Command.

Saying he supports the “year-long review process which will determine if the ban on gay and lesbian troops serving openly in the military should be lifted“, while appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, he added that he has served with gay people:

“We have experienced certainly in the FBI and the CIA… I know. I’ve served in combat with individuals who were gay and who were lesbian in combat situations, and frankly, over time, you say, ‘How is his shooting?,’ or, ‘How is her analysis?’”

And that’s the way it should be–whether or not gay people can do what the military requires of them while contributing to the work of their units.

Perhaps due to Bruce’s extensive coverage of his experience at CPAC this past weekend, the volume of hate comments increased dramatically, particularly those caught in our spam filters.  Once again, left-wingers hurled the familiar epithets of “self-hating”, “Jewish Nazi”, etc., etc., etc., to describe us gay conservatives.

They seem to harbor the viewpoint that harboring animus against homosexuals is one of the mainstays of modern American conservatives, yet this prejudice is just part of their ignorance of the conservative movement.  They keep this imaginary conservative in their head, one who, to be sure, resembles some of the extremists on the fringe of our movement, but not the main current of its philosophy nor its adherents.

Even as we detail our experiences as openly gay people on the right, they seem little interested in these real-life experiences, preferring instead the imagined troglodyte that exists inside their heads.

I guess the image of a conservative movement not hostile to gay people just doesn’t fit their narrative.

In his piece on an exchange between Fred Barnes and Craig Shirley (author of the recent release, Rendezvous with Destiny:  Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America) at CPAC, my friend Rick Sincere pointed out how Shirley responded to the question why he, in his book, he referred to the Gipper as the “sometime leader of the conservative movement”:

He gave the example of the 1978 initiative in California, Proposition 6 (better known as the “Briggs Amendment,” named for its principal sponsor, state Senator John Briggs, which aimed to prohibit gay people from serving as teachers or staff members in government schools.  Reagan opposed the measure, and Briggs gave Reagan full credit or, from Briggs’ point of view, blame for the proposition’s defeat at the polls.  (Shirley says the defeat was overwhelming, 57 percent to 43 percent.)

While we’ve blogged about this before here, we can’t repeat this anecdote enough to those blind to the Gipper’s political courage.  That great and good man risked antagonizing his base by so publicly opposing the Briggs Initiative.  And he did so in order to defeat an anti-gay initiative.  And even back in 1980, conservatives didn’t desert the Gipper even after he had help defeat that pernicious proposal.

Telling also that Shirley would select that one to illustrate his point.