So, we’ve all seen this picture by now:

It’s of the six servicemembers who were protesting Don’t Ask Don’t Tell the other day in front of the White House.

This isn’t a post about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. It’s not even (really) a post about politics. I have a question, though: What’s the deal with protesters handcuffing themselves to stuff? Call me an old fuddy-duddy*, but usually these civil-disobedience stunts make no sense to me.

Reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer is protesting against the Post Office:

Kramer, handing out anti-mail pamphlets, with a dummy dressed as a mailman with a bucket on its head: “Here you go. Mail is evil. Pass it on. Hey, mail blows. Fax it to a friend.”
Woman: “Why does this dummy have a bucket on its head?”
Kramer: “Because we’re blind to their tyranny.”
Woman: “Then shouldn’t you be wearing the bucket?”
Kramer: “Yeah. Move along, Betty.”

Also reminds me of the “NOH8″ campaign in California, marked by these sorts of pictures:

Now, I get the “NOH8″ thing, and admire it from a marketing standpoint (even though I think it’s callously simplistic, unnecessarily antagonistic, and likely part of the reason that side lost, but nevertheless). What I don’t get is the tape over the mouth. Were gays in California being silenced? Their voices not being heard? I could imagine this would make sense if that were the case, but it wasn’t about gays being denied the right to vote or something like that. After all, it was a political campaign in the first place, and gay people were definitely being heard (I could hear them from overseas where I was deployed at the time!). And besides, as I recall, it was those in support of Prop 8 who was shouted down, belittled, called a “hater”, and otherwise shunned from polite conversation. Shouldn’t (as with Kramer) the tape have been on the other side’s mouth? Dunno how you’d put that into an ad campaign, though.

Anyway, nothing monumentous, just a random thought that came into my head today. See what happens on one of those rare Colorado days when it’s not sunny outside?

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

*We all know what happened last time!

Charles Djou, the Republican candidate in the May 22 special election for Hawai’i's 1st congressional district has launched a MoneyWave, which I guess is the Pacific equivalent of a money bomb.  Join me in backing this Honolulu City Councilman who opposes higher taxes and seeks to repeal Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell.

Donate today!

Maybe those GetEQUAL activists were right to handcuff themselves to the White House fence.  Maybe that kind of drastic action is needed.

Up until last week, I was pretty confident we would see Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT) repealed this year.  But, just now via Instapundit, some fears that started taking shape in my mind were realized: “Robert Gibbs finally admits the Obama Admin has no intention of pushing DADT repeal in 2010.”

Those gay activists have every right to be upset.  Obama the candidate made a promise which Obama the president is pushing to the back burner — and turning off the heat.

UPDATE:  (From the link above):  I don’t frequently agree with Pam Spaulding, but she nails it when she writes:

Well it will be interesting tomorrow at the LGBT Town Hall when we get to ask Mr. Solmonese about that bold promise he made at the HRC Carolinas dinner to a bunch of donors with their check books…guess the administration felt it was time to go ahead and toss Joe and Co. under the bus with the rest of us.

Joe, when you make it a practice to fix your lips to the back side of any Democratic politician just because of that fancy (D) after their name, they’re going to take your support for granted, knowing that it’s given for their partisan affiliation and not their record of accomplishment.

Once again, the gay left bloggers deserve a lot of credit for holding the national gay organizations to account on this.

What’s worse?

The fact that Donny Deutsch (please, pronounce it any way you like) is so uncreative and unoriginal that he too is jumping on the bandwagon with his fellow MSNBC shills and dedicating his show this week to “America the Angry”?

The fact that he had the temerity to compare Rush, Glenn, etc., with his own pal, Keith Olbermann?

Clearly to his bosses, it’s that he dared to point out that Olbermann looks and sounds like Howard Beale without the aplomb. He’s been booted off the air.

Good to see MSNBC can be introspective when it needs to be. Hey, Donny: Tough for you to learn the lesson this way, but now you see what we’re all dealing with!

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

President Obama threw out a bone to the pro-infanticide crowd today, when, in comments regarding his upcoming nomination to replace that stalwart of property rights John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, he said:

You know, I am somebody who believes that women should have the ability to make often very difficult decisions about their own bodies … I want somebody who is going to be interpreting our Constitution in a way that takes into account individual rights … And that’s going to be something that’s very important to me, because I think part of what our core constitutional values promote is the notion that individuals are protected in their privacy and their bodily integrity, and women are not exempt from that.”

So you heard it here first, folks! President Obama will nominate someone who will knock down the Stalinization of Health Care Act of 2010!

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

Just a very quick link here to a piece on the New Obama Civility as of 2009. Not much to say* besides, Victor Davis Hanson is brilliant as usual.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

*Except that; to our Leftist readers, Hanson is being ironic in this article, just so you know.

I’ll start taking liberal critics of the supposedly incendiary/racist rhetoric Tea Party protesters spew regularly in their reportedly* raucous rallies when the critic leveling the charge can point to comments he made in the George W. Bush era, to “differentiate themselves” (to borrow an expression from one such critic) from the hateful tone of their ideological confrères opposing that decent Republican.

As Peter Wehner put it in his post on former President Clinton’s attempt to tie Tea Party-type rhetoric to the Oklahoma City bombings:

The problem for Mr. Clinton is that his concern about the dangers of incendiary rhetoric seems to have taken flight during the two terms of the Bush presidency, as well as during his own. Regarding the former, there was, for starters, the 2006 film, The Death of a President, on the assassination of President Bush. Mr. Clinton did not, to my knowledge, condemn the movie in a front-page story in the New York Times or in a major speech.

Moreover, George W. Bush was, during his two terms in office, routinely called a war criminal, an international terrorist, and compared to Hitler [see a photo gallery here and here]. Signs with bullet holes in Bush’s forehead, with blood running down his face, were all part of the fun and games. The president was accused of moral cowardice by Al Gore, of being a liar and the anti-Christ, and of being a totalitarian and dictatorial leader. Members of Congress such as Keith Ellison compared the attacks on September 11 to the Reichstag fire.

This was all pretty common fare during the Bush presidency. Yet Bush’s predecessor, Bill Clinton, remained silent, apparently unconcerned that such words would fall on the serious and the delirious, the connected and the unhinged, at the same time. And many of Mr. Clinton’s fellow Democrats, including his vice president, said words that encouraged the worst elements and instincts of the haters and the loons. (more…)

Far be it from me, someone who calls ObamaCare the Stalinization of Health Care Act of 2010, to impugn somebody else’s hyperbolic references to the dictator-under-glass.*

That said, what is wrong with Chris Matthews?

He recently characterized the primary challenge of Governor Charlie Crist for Florida’s Republican Senatorial nomination by former Speaker of that state’s House of Representatives, Marco Rubio—a challenge Crist has basically no way of winning at this point—”Stalinesque”, and a “purging” of the party. Really?

First of all, Chris, it’s not as though Rubio is trying to run Crist out of the office he holds, like Ned Lamont tried to do to Joe Liebermann in 2006. That wasn’t an attempt at a “Stalinesque purge” either, as the party allowed the primary to unfold before ultimately endorsing Lamont after he won the primary.

But let’s see what, to Matthews, a “Stalinesque purge” looks like:

In an open primary to replace a Senator who was installed by Crist himself (ostensibly as a place-holder till he could run for the seat himself), the Republican National Senatorial Committee has endorsed Crist. So has the Senate Minority Leader.

But when a grass-roots organization rises up within the Republican party, demands its leaders hear them, and supports somebody besides that of the established party elites (Dede Scozzafava, please call your office), it’s considered a “Stalinesque purge” by Chris Matthews.

I suppose, if you’re a socialist like Chris Matthews, perhaps you might buy into Stalin’s rhetoric that he was all about “The People”. In that sense, when “The People” actually do take action to overthrow an inefficient and centralized party structure that’s overbearing on the citizenry, it’s reminiscent of the bearded-one.

But it almost sounds, to hear Matthews say it, like a bad thing.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

*Just as clarification, I reference Stalin in describing ObamaCare becuase it’s, essentially, a take-over of an industry; the means of production, if you will.

Before I realized that Bruce had written about the police closing down Lafayette Park yesterday in response to a juvenile stunt by gay activists supporting repeal of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT), I had written a quick post on the matter which appeared briefly on the blog.  I removed after seeing Bruce’s post.

Seems we offered a similar argument and there was no reason to have two such posts.

It has kind of surprised me that the mainstream media has picked up on this.  Didn’t think they wanted a story which would put the Obama Administration in a bad light.  To their credit, many media outlets have covered the story.  A leftist with integrity has discovered some folks who haven’t taken notice:

Why am I so critical of the Gay Inc orgs GLAAD, HRC and NGLTF, other than the usual reasons of they have miserably failed to deliver much-promised change and fierce advocacy?

It is for things like their silence today over the courageous disruption of activists from the GetEqual org last night demanding President Obama spend some political capital repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Click here to check out LA reporter and blogger Karen Ocamb’s comprehensive coverage, with lots of text, some pics and vids, of the action.

Then there is the same silence from the orgs regarding the arrest today of six gay military personnel, both veteran and current active, at the fence of the White House. Click here for some mainstream news coverage, and here for blogosphere coverage.

Now, we may quibble about whether or not the disruption was courageous.  But, we do agree that it is newsworthy.

Agree or disagree with the folks at GetEQUAL, you gotta admire their spunk.  They have organized independently of the main gay organizations, believing they’re not working aggressively enough to promote gay interests, with some seeing them as toadies to the Democratic Party.  They are, to be sure, far to the left of us, but at least they’re true to their principles.

And from Instapundit who also picked up on the story:

Police chase reporters away from covering protest outside White House. “Exit question: On a scale of one to 10, where would this rate on the Crushing-of-Dissent-o-meter if it had happened under Bush? (Exit answer: Eight!)”

Related: Park Police, Secret Service give contradictory accounts of why Lafayette Park was ”closed” during White House protest by present and former servicemembers.

Commenting on the President’s trip to Los Angeles earlier this week to raise money for Barbara Boxer’s faltering Senate campaign, my gal Carly Fiorina quipped:

Of course the president is out here today because Barbara Boxer is vulnerable, and the Democratic establishment is working overtime to prop her up in a way they have never done before. . . We are witnessing a rescue mission in action.

And quite a rescue mission is needed, with polls showing Mrs. Boxer running more than fifteen points behind the Democratic presidential candidate’s 2008 tally in the state.  Her approval rating is slipping faster than his.

No wonder Obama warned people at the fundraiser that the hyperpartisan California Democrat might lose:

President Barack Obama is telling California Democrats that their liberal Sen. Barbara Boxer might lose her re-election race unless they work hard for her campaign.

And Mrs. Boxer wants us to “get excited like the tea party people.”  Just not quite sure though how having her supporters dress well is going to help her electoral prospects.

In the forty-eight hours (and then some) since I issued my challenge to those who tar us with the self-hating smear, not a single person has risen to meet it.  Oh, yes, a few have offered screeds and called them arguments, but in none of their comments do they address things we actually said.  Instead, they just recited the prejudices  (about conservatives) they already hold.

Now, one guy did link three of my posts, “summarizing” their contents to show just how self-hating I was:

Defending calling Barney Frank a “fag”

Gay people shouldn’t be around children

Gays don’t deserve marriage because they are rude

Problem is none of these posts says what he says they said as I noted in one comment and ILoveCapitalism in subsequent comments.  In other words, in order to demonize me, this fellow had to twist my words to claim I said things I never said.

It seems that for so many on the left (and indeed some on the fringes of the right), they see politics as an exercise in venting their spleen.  They define an adversary as worthy of opprobrium based not on his own beliefs and qualities, but those they project onto him.

It’s as if they have the need of someone to vilify, an individual — or group of individuals with one shared characteristic of belief — to hate.

Those who level the charge against us aren’t interested in debating our ideas or even understanding the apparent oxymoron of gay conservatism, but in treating us as some extreme social conservatives treat gay people, as a group onto whom they can target their own insecurities and deepest animosities.

*NB:  I changed the title, making it more succinct.

When I read that former President Clinton’s had said that it was “legitimate” to draw “parallels to the time running up to Oklahoma City and a lot of the political discord that exists in our country today.“, I recalled a comment from Frank Rich that I had quoted just over a year ago.

The head of the Family Research Council is Gary Bauer, a G.O.P. power broker and putative Presidential candidate, who disingenuously goes on talk shows to say that his organization hates no one and deplores violence. But if you wage a well-financed media air war in which people with an innate difference in sexual orientation are ceaselessly branded as sinful and diseased and un-American seekers of ‘’special rights,” ground war will follow. It’s a story as old as history. Once any group is successfully scapegoated as a subhuman threat to ”normal” values by a propaganda machine, emboldened thugs take over.

Without any evidence that the thugs who murdered Matthew Shepard had ever even heard of Gary Bauer or his social conservative cohorts, Rich was blaming them for the young man’s murder.  Now, to paraphrase what I wrote last year, I agree Gary Bauer is kind of loopy, but advocate of violence he clearly is not.

Back in 1995, Clinton had no evidence to tie Timothy McVeigh to the talk radio hosts against whom he then inveighed, but that didn’t prevent him from leveling accusations against his critics in that medium, then the vanguard of conservative opposition to his policies.

In calling the Democrat’s comments “unconscionable,” the Sooner State’s senior Senator reminds us of an inconvenient truth, inconvenient that is to those peddling the left-wing narrative that conservative activism breeds violent reaction:  “Now, we know that even McVeigh himself said upon his execution that it was Waco that motivated him. There’s no evidence he even listened to conservative radio.”

Just as there’s no evidence Shepherd’s killers had even heard of Gary Bauer.  Guess, for columnists like Rich and Democrats like Clinton, you just don’t facts to make a narrative, prejudices will suffice.

UPDATE:  Heck, McVeigh even “perpetrated the attack in Oklahoma City on the two-year anniversary of” Waco.

UP-UPDATE:  Via Glenn, “ILYA SOMIN: Timothy McVeigh Was No Libertarian: The Fallacy of Conflating Two Very Different Types of “Anti-Government” Movements. It’s not so much a fallacy as a malicious lie, but yeah.”  As the master says, “Those dangerous libertarians — they want to take over the government, and then leave you alone! Read the whole thing.”