Now that I’m about to dine with some Atlanta readers, I wanted to remind y’all of our next dinner on my journey, a week from today, Wednesday, June 9 in Boston. 

I intend to arrive in Boston on June 8 so I can do something I’ve never done before in Beantown (though have long wanted to do it) — take a walk along the Freedom Trail.  If any of you are free during the day on June 9, it would be great to trace the path of the original American patriots with some GayPatriot fans.

And don’t forget Brattleboro, Vermont on Sunday, June 13.

E-mail me to RSVP for either or both of those dinners (as well as the walk along Freedom Trail).

GOProud joins this blog in endorsing Carly Fiorina for the United States Senate.  While we have not yet made it official (well, my enthusiasm should have made it obvious), I have long since convinced Bruce that we should back my gal.  

Bruce agreed with me that Carly was the best candidate on the key issues facing our country at this time, notably out-of-control federal spending.  Like Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Senator who has also endorsed the former Silicon Valley executive, Fiorina wants to hold the line on federal spending and reduce regulation which chokes private industry.

Echoing those views, Jimmy LaSalvia, Executive Director of GOProud said that unlike her leading rival for the GOP nomination,  ”Fiorina has signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge; supports a strong, confident foreign policy; and will defend our 2^nd Amendment rights.”

 Earlier this spring, GOP proud ran an ad questioning that rival’s commitment to fiscal conservatism:

LaSalvia concluded, “GOProud enthusiastically endorses Carly Fiorina for US Senate and urges our members and allies to support her conservative campaign”.

After a very pleasant lunch with an old friend from College Republicans, I’m taking a brief break to do some blogging in a Borders in downtown Atlanta.  Given my bibliophilia, I’m amazed that I have gone this long without spending more than a few minutes on this journey in a bookstore (and then only in a small speciality shop at the Jung Institute in New York).

That old friend was none another that Ralph Reed, former leader of the Christian Coalition.  I’ve always liked Ralph.  When I was a College Republican (CR) state chairman, he was a most able executive director, keeping the lines of communication open between the national office and various state federations.

If ever we needed something done in Washington, we just needed to call Ralph and it would get done.  He was a superior organizer, getting information out to the states and offering good counsel to CR officers.  And he was a fun person to be around — even when he was sober.

Well, today, we had a wide-ranging conversation, sharing war stories and discussing Republican prospects for the current electoral cycle (among other things).  Oh, and, I came out to Ralph.  I say this almost as an afterthought because it didn’t change his regard for me — or affect the tenor of our conversation.

Ralph remains opposed to state recognition of same-sex marriage, but not to the participation of gay people in the GOP.  Still, he’s a nice guy, a great storyteller with a puckish sense of humor (even if he has long since given up drinking).

Another illustration of the greater facility we gay conservatives have coming out to our conservative colleagues, even the social conservative ones (than we do coming out as conservative to our gay peers).  And a reminder that many opponents of gay marriage base their opposition not on animosity to gay people, but on their religious principles.

Perhaps if not for then-Vice President’s little piece of political theater at the Democratic National Convention in 2000, he would not have leapt ahead in polls for the presidential contest that fall, setting the stage for the long recount in November and December.

To those who have forgotten the stunt, that little piece of theater designed to showcase a more passionate candidate was a very public smooch of his soon-to-be former wife Tipper just prior to his acceptance speech.  That he so used his wife as a prop in his presidential campaign, it takes some nerve for him to “ask for respect for our privacy and that of our family“.

Now, I do believe the media should leave Gore and his wife Tipper alone at what must be a very difficult time for their family.  For my part, save for this post, I will refrain from commenting.

All that said, as Sonicfrog reminds us, it’s fascinating to watch the media turn to their all-purpose bogeyman to explain the divorce.  It’s all because of George W. Bush that the Gores are splitting!  

Give me a break.

If anyone is making an issue of this divorce, it’s the MSM.  They would have done better to announce the divorce and then move on, without casting aspersion on the Gores or that Democrat’s 2000 presidential rival.

One sign of the biased media coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign was that one major outlets took the Democratic nominee’s claims of being a new kind of post-partisan at face value while failing to wonder how someone could be such a reform-minded politician having cut his political teeth in one of the greatest political cesspools in the United States today, the Chicago Democratic machine.

Over at the Washington Examiner, the ever-insightful Michael Barone looks into the Chicago roots of Barack Obama:

An interesting thing about Barack Obama is that he chose, on two occasions, to live in Chicago — even though he didn’t grow up there, had no family ties there, never went to school there.

It was a curious choice. Chicago has a civic culture all its own and one that is particularly insular. Family ties and personal connections are hugely important. Professionals who have lived and worked there for a quarter-century are brusquely reminded, “You’re not from here.”

It’s Barone.  Read the whole thing.

The last American investigative journalist, James O’Keefe, didn’t let moss grow under his feet after the Feds’ case against him collapsed last week.  O’Keefe went from busting up one criminal enterprise (ACORN) to looking into another (US Census bureaucracy).

On April 27, 2010, I got a job with the United States Census Bureau in New Jersey. With a hidden camera, I caught four Census supervisors encouraging enumerators to falsify information on their time sheets. Over the course of two days of training, I was paid for four hours of work I never did. I was told to take a 70 minute lunch break, was given an hour of travel time to drive 10 minutes, and was told to leave work at 3:30pm. I resigned prior to doing any data collection but confronted Census supervisors who assured me, “no one is going to be auditing that that level,” and “nobody is going to be questioning it except for you.” Another Census supervisor only said he’d adjust my pay after I gave him a letter recanting my hours.

Exposing corruption requires standing up to power, because power hates sunlight. We should have known they would try and ruin the reputations of those who try and expose them. But in response, we are going to build an army of citizen investigators. There’s hundreds more where I came from.  You have awakened a sleeping giant. And you can’t ruin us all. In fact, in the coming months you will see this army expanding into every state, every statehouse, every city council, every school board, and everywhere people are conspiring to keep themselves in power, practice favoritism, or line their pockets with tax dollars.

James O’Keefe is doing the work that Thomas Paine & Edward R. Murrow would be proud of. Meantime, Katie Couric blames the Gores’ marital problems on…. wait for it…. George W. Bush. Priceless.

RELATED STORY:  US Employment Numbers To Artificially Spike Due to Census “Hiring” – The Hill.com

Economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s.com projects the economy will add 575,000 jobs in May, while the Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) rough projection is for 560,000 jobs.

Either figure would represent the largest number of jobs created in any month since the dot-com crash of 2000.

Vice President Joe Biden, speaking at a Democratic fundraiser on Tuesday, touted what he said would be a positive report for Democrats, who are hoping a revitalized economy will help them in this fall’s elections. He said the May report would be “well beyond” the 290,000 jobs created in April, according to Reuters.

The numbers pose a problem for the administration, however, in terms of their reflection of economic growth.

Zandi expects that only 150,000 of the jobs created in May will come from the private sector, while 425,000 new jobs are sparked by the once-a-decade census.

Those jobs are temporary ones that will disappear as the Census completes the process of collecting data from people who did not mail in their forms.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Please join on Wednesday June 2 for a dinner in Atlanta.  E-mail me to RSVP.

Other upcoming dinners include Boston one week later on Wednesday June 9 or Brattleboro, Vermont on Sunday, June 13.

I will also be passing through Cincinnati over the first weekend of June and would be delighted to get together with any readers who live in or near the town of my birth.  And will be in St. Louis on or about June 16.

NB: Bumped

Today is the 500th Day of the Obama Presidency. 

He owns it all, but chooses to golf.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)