Here, in the heart of Obamaland, Californians don’t seem too enthusiastic about their choices for Senator and Govrrnor.  LIving just over two miles from the center of Hollywood. I often drive through some of the most liberal jurisdictions of the country. Henry Waxman is my Congressman. He’s going to have a close election this year. He’ll edge his opponent by just 25 points.

Yet, despite the overwhelmingly Democratic makeup of this area,I have seen a total of three bumper stickers for the statewide elections, two on the same car, one for Jerry Brown, the other for his soon-to-be septuagenarian sidekick, a Ma’am Barbara Boxer.  On another car, I saw one for the unsmiling Senator. If Democrats aren’t slapping bumper stickers on their cars in this area (where such signs of support are considered a status symbol), where would they be doing it?

As a point of comparison. When I drove to the grocery store earlier this week, I passed more cars with Obama stickers than the number of cars I have seen with Boxer stickers during the entire campaign.  Indeed, in the average parking lot, I see more Obama stickers on cars than the number of Boxer and Brown stickers combined I have seen in this entire campaign.

A lesbian friend who lives in Venice (another very liberal jurisdiction) reports the same thing, “I have seen only 1. And I am [on the] road almost all day.”

Doesn’t sound like Southern California voters are too enthusiastic about their choices this time around.  How that will impact turnout is anybody’s guess.

UPDATE:  Just returned from the post office where I mailed the first draft of the last chapter of my dissertation and saw a car with Carly and Meg stickers.  So, I’ve almost seen as many Republican bumper stickers in this left-wing bailiwick as I have seen Democratic ones.

Well before I posted last night on the “It Gets Better” video, I had received e-mails from several readers alerting me to Dan Savage’s project, each with an almost identical recommendation, “Even though Savage is a partisan jerk,” they said is in so many words, “this is a good idea.”

I write today, fearing some might misconstrue that prior post on the project.  I’m not calling it a bad idea, merely questioning its effectiveness (as I believe Sady Doyle was also doing).

Simply put, I don’t know how effective this project will be.  To be sure, it does no harm  – and has the potential to do some good.  It sets exactly the right tone — an optimistic, upbeat one, that instead of gnashing their teeth and bewailing their fate, young gay people can look forward to a brighter future.

That’s not the only good thing about the video.  It doesn’t dwell on the evil of our oppressors (as do so many of the missives and ministrations of the various gay organizations), but on promoting a forward-looking attitude.

All that said, what teens need most is nurturing human contact.  And we must never lose sight of that.

Charles Krauthammer has the details:

For the first time since modern budgeting was introduced with the Budget Act of 1974, the House failed to even write a budget. This in a year of extraordinary deficits, rising uncertainty and jittery financial markets. Gold is going through the roof. Confidence in the dollar and the American economy is falling — largely because of massive overhanging debt. Yet no budget emerged from Congress to give guidance, let alone reassurance, about future U.S. revenues and spending.

That’s not all. Congress has not passed a single appropriations bill. To keep the government going, Congress passed a so-called continuing resolution (CR) before adjourning to campaign. The problem with continuing to spend at the current level is that the last two years have seen a huge 28 percent jump in non-defense discretionary spending. The CR continues this profligacy, aggravating an already serious debt problem.

Democrats haven’t passed a budget while they spent so much time forcing through an unpopular measure to overhaul our nation’s health care system!?!?  Do they think their job is to appease their base clamoring for reform while ignoring their basic obligations?

I wonder what one of Mr. Reid’s most loyal acolytes, a Mrs. B. Boxer of California, has to say about this.  Instead of waiting for her response, just send her a message by supporting the woman seeking to restore some fiscal sanity to the United States Senate.

With government spending rising by 9%, you’d think our politicians might be able to create a job here or there.  But, when, as Linda McMahon learned when questioning her rival for the U.S. Senate seat from Connecticut, Democratic Senatorial candidates are pretty clueless when it comes to creating jobs.  They just don’t know how it’s done.

Well, that hasn’t stopped some Democrats from trying.  And three-termer Barbara Boxer was all abuzz about the president’s stimulus plan she supported so slavishly.  More government spending, she said, it’s certain to create jobs because it is, because it is, because it is.  400,000 jobs were coming to the Golden State.

Well, Mrs. Boxer, the latest job figures are out and it just doesn’t look pretty:

A wave of government layoffs in September outpaced weak hiring in the private sector, pushing down the nation’s payrolls by a net total of 95,000 jobs.

The unemployment rate held at 9.6 percent last month, the LaborDepartment said Friday. The jobless rate has now topped 9.5 percent for 14 straight months, the longest stretch since the 1930s.

Let’s emphasize that line, the longest stretch of a high unemployment rate since the 1930s.  And that rate’s even higher here in the Golden State.

Unlike the 28-year Washington veteran, Boxer’s challenger Carly Fiorina has a plan to create jobs.  Instead of growing government, she wants to reduce the burdens it imposes on entrepreneurs, the people, whom even the president has acknowledged, create jobs.  Boxer’s plan? More of the same.  Back in Washington a few months ago, she and her fellow Democrat were even considering another “stimulus.”

You can support the woman who’ll change the way things are being done in Washington here.

It speaks for itself.  I’m honored that John Schwarzman, the artist, emailed me to make me aware of his work!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

“Remember,” Dan Riehl asks, “when a Joe Miller staffer said something about the oldest profession in reference to Lisa Murkowski seeking endorsement from the Libertarian Party? Well, this looks to be far worse to me.”

He’s referring to a recording that memeorandum has signaled as an emerging issue and to which a reader also alerted me.  Jerry Brown agrees with a staff member’s assessment that Meg Whitman is a whore:

In a private conversation that was inadvertently taped by a voicemail machine, an associate of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown can be heard referring to his Republican opponent Meg Whitman as a “whore” for cutting a deal protecting law enforcement pensions as the two candidates competed for police endorsements.

The comment came after Brown called the Los Angeles Police Protective League in early September to ask for its endorsement. He left a voicemail message for Scott Rate, a union official. Brown apparently believed he had hung up the phone, but the connection remained intact and the voice mail machine captured an ensuing conversation between Brown and his aides.

With evident frustration, Brown discussed the pressure he was under to refuse to reduce public safety pensions or lose law enforcement endorsements to Whitman. Months earlier, Whitman had agreed to exempt public safety officials from key parts of her pension reform plan.

“Do we want to put an ad out? … That I have been warned if I crack down on pensions, I will be – that they’ll go to Whitman, and that’s where they’ll go because they know Whitman will give ‘em, will cut them a deal, but I won’t,” Brown said.

At that point, what appears to be a second voice interjects: “What about saying she’s a whore?”

“Well, I’m going to use that,” Brown responds. “It proves you’ve cut a secret deal to protect the pensions.”

Now,this is far more newsworthy that a partisan Democratic attorney claiming Meg Whitman knowingly hired an illegal alien while waving a letter which said explicitly that it “makes no statement about your employee’s immigration status.”

Having listened to the recording, my reader believes “the voice mail sounds like Jerry saying it,” and indicates that a “‘major’ media source will say that it is Jerry Brown who says it.”  Interesting insight.

UPDATE:  From my source comes word that KCAL is saying that it was Jerry Brown who called Meg a “whore.”

UP-UPDATE: Dana Perino asks where’s the outrage:

One of Jerry Brown’s aides called Meg Whitman a whore. Outrageous? Yes. But don’t expect a slew of women’s-rights groups to come to her defense. They rarely do stick up for Republican and conservative women. I think that Whitman should put up an ad saying, “Stop the name-calling now. I have a singular focus — I want to bring jobs back to California. I want to make sure our beautiful state is as prosperous as it can be. I have a plan to do just that. I will be a leader you can be proud of.”

You’d think that Gloria Allred, with all her concern for supposedly wronged women, would be leading the charge to castigate men like Brown who think this is the way to refer to an ambitious women.

If Sady Doyle had not decided to use a word other than “queer” to describe gay youth at the end of her essay addressing the question, “Does [the Web Video] ‘It Gets Better’ Make Life Better for Gay Teens?“, I would highly recommend her piece.   Semantics aside, it remains a thoughtful contribution to the conversation on what to do in the wake of the suicides of Tyler Clementi and other young gay people.

So, let me just recommend the piece, wondering at the same time if the use of the term, “queer”, to describe people like us, increases the sense of marginalization that young people in our situation feel when they start coming to terms with their difference.

In considering the benefits of the video, Doyle gets at the issue which has been at the top of my mind since I first read of Clementi’s suicide:

However, if we keep telling suicidal people that their situation will “get better” without actually taking any steps to improve it—if we don’t provide support and medical care for people with depression; if we don’t help people who are being abused to find a safe place; if we don’t make sure that the systematic, community-wide abuse of GLBT youth is eliminated—then belief alone can wear thin. And this seems to be one of the main contentions of Savage’s critics.

“There is actually no path to change in this vision,” alleges blogger Zoe Melisa, in a post from her personal blog which was re-published at Queerwatch. “Promoting the illusion that things just ‘get better,’ enables privileged folks to do nothing and just rely on the imaginary mechanics of the American Dream to fix the world.”

Now, much as as I’d like to see the disappearance “the systematic, community-wide abuse of GLBT youth”, I don’t know that we can ever eliminate it.  More on this anon.

That said, I particularly like her focus on providing support to young people in need.  I believe that if such young people find a place where they belong and mentors and friends who can help them find their own inner strength, they will be better situated to deal with their difference, even in a hostile environment.

Her left-wing class rhetoric notwithstanding, Melisa is also onto something.  Is promoting this video merely a feel-good project for well-being people?  It is nice to tell a kid that it’ll get better; it’s better to help him find the means to make it so, that is, to take the time to listen to troubled teens. (more…)

Don’t think Nevada Democratic gubernatorial nominee Rory Reid helped his Dad Harry’s campaign when, in a debate with the next Governor of the Silver State, he acknowledged that “President Obama’s signature achievement could negatively affect Nevada“:

“I don’t deny, however,” Rory Reid said, “that Nevada needs to be vigilant on this issue. The law that was passed gives time for the new system to go into effect, but there is potential for it to put significant pressure on states because Medicaid rates could go up significantly.”

The elder Reid, reporter Bob Cusack reminds us, “played a leading role in the passage of healthcare reform.”  He even kept Senators in Washington until the Eve of Christmas.

Someone I don’t like ol’ Harry likes the fact that his son is reminding Nevada voters about the issue on which he made the Senate work overtime.  While the Democrat made it his signature issue on the Senate floor, he doesn’t seem to be making it much of an issue on the hustings.  Wonder why that is.

And  now junior’s gone and injected the issue into the campaign.  Don’t think this’ll help the outgoing Majority Leader’s plummeting polls.

This morning as I speculated that Obama’s arrogance might lead to enduring Republican majorities, I anticipated a followup post, indicating that two perceptive psephologists offer an opposing view.  In setting up his point, Barone distinguishes “periods of trench warfare politics and periods of open field politics“:

Periods of trench warfare politics are times when the lines of political conflict remain relatively fixed, with little change in partisan preference or issue focus. Periods of open field politics are when the lines of political conflict oscillate wildly, with vast changes in partisan preference and issue focus.

Calling this an era of “open field politics,” the sage statistician contends “it’s possible that this year’s Republican percentages will prove to be no more permanent than I believe the 2006–2008 Democratic percentages will have been proven to be.”

Jay Cost echoes that view:

It is my strong belief that 2010 is not going to be a “realigning” election. This is not an electorate that is rediscovering its long-lost Republicanism. It is a frustrated, angry electorate turning back to the GOP simply because there are only two parties to choose from.

Both men may well be right, but two things could make this a realigning election, a prospect, I believe, Barone accounts for with the cautionary concluding line to his essay, “You don’t know a period of open field politics has been transformed into a period of trench warfare politics until several years after it has happened—or at least so has been my experience.”

If the Republicans of the 112th Congress act like their counterparts in the 104th and don’t backslide as they did in the early Congresses of this century, they could well keep their majorities for the balance of the decade.  They would have to eschew earmarks, repeal Obamacare and cut, then hold the line on, domestic spending while promoting real free-market reforms in health care as the fix the congressional budgeting process and find a way to privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (among other things). (more…)

Help Mick Mulvaney GET RID of John Spratt and Nancy Pelosi.  DONATE NOW!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

The unhappy Barney Frank may be trying to make nice, but this mean-spirited man from Massachusetts just can’t stop whining.  I mean, he dishes out barbs to Republicans on a regular basis, yet whenever a conservative fires back, he runs to Mommy the media and cries, “homophobia“:

House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank on Monday accused conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh of launching a “vicious, homophobic attack” on him in the lead-up to the midterm elections.

Rush denies the charges, saying he was just engaging in a little mockery, spoofing the big-spending liberal in a variety of parodies — as he does with a number of left-wing politicians,

Yeah? I’m trying to figure out what homophobic attack did we launch on him? We’ve never launched a homophobic attack on anybody.  I never launched a “homophobic attack” on anybody!  I mean, we played this song — Banking Queen.

(playing of Banking Queen parody song)  . . .

You think it’s My Boy Lollipop?  We’ve only doing that since the earlier nineties.

Seems the thirty-year veteran of Congress just doesn’t want anybody paying attention to his record, like his proposal to cut $1 trillion from the defense department, with the “nation’s top uniformed officer” warning  that such “massive cuts to the Pentagon budget would be ‘dangerous’ in the face of the military’s multiple national-security requirements.”

Barney would rather whine to left-wing talk show hosts than debate his opponent before his constituents:  ”With just 32 days left until the mid-term election, Barney Frank has yet to confirm a single debate with his opponent Sean Bielat.”  Last month, Barney said, “I think debating is an obligation any candidate for office has“.  So, why is the career politician unwilling to confirm any debates?  Someone’s scared of a face-to-face with his challenger.

You can support the man who wants to debate and seeks to defeat Barney here.

If they held Joe Biden to the Sarah Palin standard, new casts would begin every hour on the hour, with details of his latest gaffe.  And now we have him calling an audience dull.  That’s a sure way to get them out to vote next month:

“You’re the dullest audience I’ve ever spoken to,” at which point he got applause and laughs. “Do you realize how many jobs Wisconsin lost? It’s staggering!”

Until we see the tape, we won’t be able to tell if they’re laughing with him — or at him.  Still, can you imagine what the talking heads would be saying if Sarah Palin said such a thing — even in jest?

Glenn Reynolds is ”ASKING THE REALLY IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: ‘After sex, would you rather have deep conversation, or a deep-dish pizza?’”

Just sayin’.

You know, enjoy a deep conversation over deep dish pizza.  :-)

Oh dear….

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Democrats spent the better part of George W. Bush’s tenure in the White House waiting for the market meltdown on September 15, 2008.  They — and their allies — in the mainstream media really believed that his policies would destroy the economy, even as it hummed along after a mild recession early in his term.

It took the election of a Democratic Congress to help pave the way for the collapse, but no matter, they believed all along it was going to happen and so when it happened, it just had to be entirely W’s fault because they said it was.

And so it was with Obama’s election.  Democrats kept telling us Republicans won elections not because of the merits of their ideas or the quality of their candidates, but because of their dirty tricks, angry voters, or just plain meanness and/or luck.  Deep down, the people really supported the Democrats’ ideology and wanted bigger government with greater federal intrusion into the private sector.

So, when Obama won, with big Democratic gains in 2008, they finally, after 36 years, had evidence to prove what they believed all along.  And that arrogance, Victor Davis Hanson believes, has led to their current predicament:

Had the Obamites been sober and circumspect after the 2008 election they would have realized that Obama had pulled off what McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, and Kerry had not, due to a once-in-a-century perfect storm of about six events

[he then lists them]

Instead, Obama — egged on by obsequious advisers, an out-of-touch, hard-left base, and a toady media — decided that he had done what other Northern liberals had not, either because (a) the country was at last ready for European-style socialism, or (b) his singular charisma and talents could convince it that it was even when it was clearly not.

The result was that our Oedipus/Pentheus rushed headlong into socialized medicine, mega-deficits, needlessly polarizing appointments of the Van Jones type, and various federal takeovers, coupled with quite unnecessary editorializing about largely local matters — from the Skip Gates mess to the Arizona immigration law and Ground Zero mosque.

In each case, the supposed uniter deliberately weighed in on these controversies to quite unfairly demonize his opponents — “stupidly” acting police, Arizona xenophobes picking up children on the way to buy ice cream, Islamophobes wanting to deny religious liberty, etc (more…)

It’s no wonder Gloria Allred wants Californians to think the letter Meg Whitman’s husband says what the Democrat wants it to have said — and not what it actually says. She wants to distract us from the real problems facing the (once-)Golden State will have to face, problems that her candidate for governor, Jerry Brown, as I pointed out on Tuesday, helped create when, in 1978, he signed the Dill Act, giving powers to public employee unions that even the father of the modern Democratic Party opposed.

And due, in large part, to that power, public employee pension, in the words of the Foundation for Educational Choice are “Drowning State/Local Taxpayers” in California:

California’s public retirement systems are more than three times underfunded than state officials projected, a total of $326.6 billion when combining the state’s teachers’ and public employee programs, according to a new study released today by the Foundation for Educational Choice. . . .

“These numbers are mind-boggling,” said Robert Enlow, President and CEO of the Foundation for Educational Choice. “It’s a pipe dream to think that California can provide a quality education, keep prisoners behind bars, pave roads and meet other obligations when such enormous bills are coming due.”

The state of California reports a $75.5 billion pension shortfall — $40.5 billion to the California State Teachers’ Retirement System or CalSTRS and $35 billion to the California Public Employee Retirement System or Cal PERS.

But the Foundation’s study found that if more accurate, private-sector accounting measures were used to determine outstanding pension obligations, the total pension shortfall would be an astounding $326.6 billion with an additional $51.8 billion in unfunded employee health benefits.

The state of California faces real fiscal problems which can’t be swept under the rug about a news media eager to demonize a Republican and powerful state public employee unions eager to keep the Democrats in power.

While reporters are obsessed with how much money Meg Whitman has been spending on her campaign, they seem entirely disinterested in the amount public employee unions have been spending on behalf of Brown — and other Democrats.  And their spending is far more consequential, given that such special interest spending indicates influence. (more…)

Ace reminds us that the unhappy Barney Frank is running scared this year, so scared that he’s cutting the condescension and trying to make nice.  But, we know that, when mean-spirited guys like Barney make nice, it’s a sign not of confidence, but of desperation:

He was unchallenged forever. And acted that way. Acerbic, nasty. Not caring what his actual constituents thought. No, freed of the need to respond to constituent wishes, he could instead cater to the national liberal audience — his real constituency, even though they don’t live in his district. . . .

Well. Looks like all Barney Frank needed to remind him of his manners was a Marine insisting he mind his p’s and q’s.

Jonathan Strong reminds us that the real Barney doesn’t normally mind his manners.  At a town hall meeting in August 2009, the 15-term incumbent

. . . relied on condescension for crowd control. “I’m just curious,” he said to one voter, “Do you really think that’s thoughtful conversation? Do you really think that advances your argument?”

“What’s the matter with you all?”

“What’s the matter with you all?”  That’s how this career politician treats his constituents when he assumes they’re not going to vote him out?

The real question is what’s the matter with Barney?  Why can’t he show a modicum of respect for his constituents and his adversaries.  But, let’s not consider ourselves overmuch with Barney’s problems.  Let’s support his opponent and send the unhappy Democrat packing.

In his must-read column on the rise of black Republicans, Jack Kelly notes something interesting:

Of the 39 black Democrats in the House, all but two represent districts where blacks are a majority or plurality. One other black Democratic contender is running in a white majority district. So in this election, Republicans are running more blacks in white majority districts than the Democrats are. Shouldn’t that be taken into consideration when accusations of racism are being hurled about?

The three candidates with the greatest shot at winning seats in Congress, Tim Scott, Allen West or Ryan Frazier, all hail from districts with white majorities, with Frazier running in a district where Hispanics alone outnumber blacks by a margin of 4 to 1.

Via Powerline.

The latest Wikio ratings have us at 77 in the category of top political blogs.

Nice Deb writes that a Poll Shows 11% Of Obama Voters Don’t Remember Voting For Him.*  She cites an article in The Hill which reports:

Two-thirds of voters in key battleground districts will be thinking about President Obama when they choose their next member of Congress, according to a 2010 midterm election poll from The Hill and ANGA.The poll surveyed likely voters in 12 competitive congressional districts held by first-term Democratic lawmakers who came into office with the president in 2008. . . .

One telling finding is that only 42 percent of respondents said they recalled voting for Obama in 2008 even though the president received, on average, 53 percent of the vote in those districts.

11% of American voters don’t remember voting for Obama, but if we look at Obama voters, we divide that 11 (53 minus 42) by 53 to get 20.75.

*UPDATE:  Due, in part to this post, she has since corrected her error.  :-)