The House will vote later today on repealing ObamaCare, one of the most unpopular big-ticket bills ever passed by Congress.  Jennifer Rubin contends, it “will pass overwhelmingly, with more Democratic votes in favor of repeal than there were Republican votes to pass it originally.”

For that to happen, Republicans will need just two Democratic votes (if by original passage, she is referring to the bill then-Rep. Joseph Cao (R-La) supported).  I expect at least a dozen Democrats to vote with a unanimous Republican caucus for repeal.  Other Democrats will follow the lead the president took when serving in the Illinois Senate.

There will be about 25 (perhaps as many as 40) more votes to repeal Obamacare than there were votes to pass it (219) last March (219).  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who, when Speaker last year, was masterful as rounding up Democratic votes to get to a bare majority will have trouble wrangling as many votes as there were Republicans in the House at the time (178).  Methinks that, in the end, only about 170 members, all Democrats, will vote against repeal.  (But, as per the above, a good number of Democrats will either vote present or will have trouble making it to Capitol Hill at the time of the vote.) (more…)

Gallup reports that while “one in three Americans are still unfamiliar with [House Speaker John] Boehner, his ratings are now much more positive than negative, a shift from prior to the election, when they were about equally positive and negative“:

Of those familiar with the Republican Speaker, nearly two-thirds hold a favorable view of the Ohioan.  By contrast, only 33% view his predecessor favorably with 54% holding an unfavorable opinion of Minority Leader Pelosi.  (Of those who have an opinion, that is, just 38% think highly of the San Francisco Democrat, 62% unfavorably.)

And his victory last year in Nevada has done little to change the popular opinion nationwide of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.  His numbers are almost exactly the opposite of Boehner’s with a 41% unfavorable rating and 25% favorable.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

I want to apologize to our readers (and foes) for my lack of blogging (or inconsistent) over the past 12 months.  You all know that I don’t like to talk about “me” much — but let me explain a bit.

My job expanded significantly last year and I now manage ten people across the entire Eastern USA.  I’m not complaining; I love it!  It just takes a LOT more time. 

In addition, last year I experienced increased problems with my chronic lower back issues.  I still go to physical therapy regularly in addition to being on pain and anti-inflammatory medicines.

Finally, and something I have never blogged about before, I have battled clinical depression for about 10 years.  Last year something “clicked” which sent me into a downward trend.  Nothing serious or life-threatening — but I just wasn’t myself for much of 2010 and didn’t realize it for quite a long time.

So with all that being said — I’ve made three resolutions for 2011.  First, exercise more.  Second, blog more.  Third, do more podcasts.  The good news is — I got back into my exercise routine today!   Second piece of good news — I’m attending CPAC again and will be blogging a LOT that week.

I know that people have it a LOT MORE worse off than I do.  I’m struggling more with a time deficit rather than crippling financial problems.  I love to write here at GayPatriot and don’t want my lack of blogging to suggest my lack of intent or desire.

I hope to do better.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

In an interview with the Daily Caller’s Jamie Weinstein, Harry Stein, author of, I Can’t Believe I’m Sitting Next To A Republican, recently released in paperback, offers an anecdote which corresponds with the experience of this blogger — and many of our readers.  Answering the question, ”What is it like being a Republican in San Francisco?“, he offers

Well, as one (gay) Republican I spoke to out there put it, it’s a lot easier to be gay in San Francisco than a Republican, adding that when he came out as a Republican “friends abandoned me. I got called a fascist, traitor, crazy, insane, a racist.” In the Bizarro World that is San Francisco, fascism is always around the corner and that great bogeyman, the Christian Right, is just waiting to pounce.

Our experience has shown, it’s far easier to be openly gay in conservative circles than it is to be openly conservative in gay circles.  To be sure, we have also met many dyed-in-the-wool left-wingers who treat us with dignity despite our political differences, but there is a common thread running through the anecdotes of our interactions with our fellow gays, stories of individuals insulting, attacking or otherwise avoiding us because of our political opinions.  And they tell us as much to our faces.  Often in the nastiest terms.

Via reader Viking the Kitten.

I was hoping this might happen:  Kent Conrad to retire.  (Via Instapundit.)  Even though the North Dakota Democrat has spent his career grandstanding on fiscal discipline, he voted for the “stimulus” and Obamacare.  Methinks, with an energized Tea Party, he would have had a tough job defending those votes in a state no Democratic presidential nominee has won since 1964.

Question now is what does Jack Dalrymple do.  The newly sworn-in governor of the Peace Garden State ran to succeed Conrad in the Senate in 1992 and lost to Byron Dorgan who most recently retired rather than face popular Governor John Hoeven whose election last fall to said Senate seat allowed the then-Lt. Governor (Mr. Dalrymple) to become governor.

Given how well Republicans did in 2010 in North Dakota, electing a Republican Senator and easily ousting a nine-term Democratic incumbent Congressman, expect the GOP to do as well in the state next fall as it did last November.

Last night, for the first time perhaps since I moved to LA, I watched two one-hour dramas back to back.  Indeed, this may well have been the first time I watched an one-hour drama alone since Northern Exposure was cancelled, save when I tuned in to see an acting friend who snagged a part on a show.

I watched The Cape tonight for a similar reason, a friend of mine helped produced the show and Harry’s Law for another reason altogether, one of my favorite actresses, the accomplished Kathy Bates, headlined the program.  It’s great to see someone so talented on screen (big or small), but sad that she hasn’t had much screen time as she deserves.  If this show succeeds, then, on that score at least, justice will be served.

And it was nice to see a TV show set in my home town, Cincinnati, Ohio.

I liked both shows, but admit being a little confused by The Cape. It seemed there were too many threads, but there was a lot of great dialogue and the pleasure of seeing Keith David on screen as the mentor to the young hero possessing the title garment.  Like Kathy Bates, he hasn’t had as much screen time as he deserves.  And whoah, what a voice.  What a voice.  Great casting choice.  He so works as the aging wise man.

And both shows were very well-written with snappy dialogue and well-conceived plots.  

The latter show, however, seemed to be trying a bit too hard to push Democratic talking points with Kathy Bates’s Harry, while engaging the prosecutor in a debate on drug legalization, added an aside on how while conservatives were the first to propose ending the “drug war,” the party has since been hijacked by Rush Limbaugh and his ilk.  As if series creator David Kelley just had to promote the narrative that the GOP has lost its libertarian moorings.  And even though Bates’s Harry later acknowledged her ambivalence on said war, when she took on her courtroom rival, she articulated arguments which warm the heart of many a libertarian.

Had they cut that one line about Limbaugh, I would have no objection to the show.  That debate on the drug war coupled with the trial of another character, Johnny Ray Gill‘s Damien Winslow, who runs a protection racket in a “bad neighborhood” (didn’t the writers do any research on Cincinnati so they would know to call it “Over-the-Rhine”?), helped create a show with a very libertarian theme. (more…)

Despite the president delivering a well-received (even by conservatives) speech in Tucson last week and once again demonstrating that he can deliver a unifying address, he still has a problem with his agenda. People may like him as a person, but they don’t like the big-government, policies he is pushing, er, has pushed.  

That’s why former vice president Cheney thinks the Democrat will be a one-termer:

Former vice president Dick Cheney, back in the public eye after a major heart operation, predicts that President Obama will be a one-term president because of health care and other big government programs.

In an interview to air Tuesday on NBC’s Today show, Cheney cited Obama’s “overall approach to expanding the size of government, expanding the deficit, and giving more and more authority and power to the government over the private sector.”

As for health care, Cheney said Obama has “enacted a program that a great many people are very worried about. And that there’s a lot of support out there for the effort to repeal that health care package.”

The Wyoming Republican also lauded the Illinois Democrat for taking a page from former president Bush and adopting many of his counter-terrorism policies (policies he once criticized).

I’m not yet as sanguine as Cheney about Obama’s 2012 prospects, but do think this sterling public servant has a point.  Unlike 2012, Obama can’t run on the amorphous slogan of “change” and rope in, as he did in 2008, conservatives and libertarians disgruntled with the incumbent Republican president and more ready to take him at his word when he paid lip service to their concerns.

Now, we see that lip service for what it is. (more…)

Serendipitously, while reading a book by a leader today of the American conservative movement, I came to her discussion of the greatness of Martin Luther King, Jr. whose day it is:

Famously, Dr. King called not for a rejection of America’s founding principles, but for American to “rise up to live out the true meaning of its creed.”

. . . .

It’s a shame not everyone wants to quote Dr. King these days. What made Martin Luther King, Jr., a great and effective leader is that he appealed to our better angels. (more…)

Perhaps the best way to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on his day is simply to quote from his greatest speech, one of the greatest speeches in American history:

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

. . . .

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

. . . .

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

. . . .

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

. . . .

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

According to a poll which has been shown to Governor Brown, a significant majority of our fellow Californians oppose increasing taxes to balance the state’s budget: “Asked whether they’d prefer ‘less government and lower taxes’ or ‘slightly higher taxes for better government services,’ 57% opted for lower taxes.”

This “voter survey,” according to the Los Angeles Times was “conducted by veteran Democratic pollster Jim Moore.”  So, it’s a Democratic poll for a Democratic governor.

The article did indicate that Brown is not entirely following in the footsteps of his counterpart in the Land of Lincoln as he is proposing “cutting employees’ take-home pay by 8% to 10%.”  (I’m assuming this refers to public employees.)  But, the report hints that he may indeed pull a page from Illinois Governor Quinn since reporter George Skelton claims he’ll need to ”Persuade voters that stanching the red ink in Sacramento is necessary to rebuild the California economy and create jobs.”

Um, that sounds like a tax increase is in the offing (or Skelton wants one to be).  Yet, stanching the red ink alone won’t be enough to rebuild the California economy and create jobs.

If the governor wants to do that, he’s going to have to cut taxes and reduce regulations.  Hey, it’s what a majority of Californians want, at least as concerns the tax cuts.

So writes the Charleston Daily Mail’s Don Surber about the sudden calls on the left for “civil discourse.”

Perhaps, I’ll take these making such cries seriously if they making them can point to statements they made between December 12, 2000 and January 20, 2009 calling for civil discourse and chiding Bush-haters for their calumny against the then-Republican chief executive (or, for the first 40 days of that time-frame chief executive-elect).  Did Paul Krugman denounce left-wingers for coarsening the level of debate?

Did any of those on the left of the political spectrum do so?  I’m sure there were a few, maybe even among the editors of the New York Times.  We should take seriously only those who provide evidence that they criticized the calumny and lambasted leftists who cried, “Bush lied.”

“The left,” Surber writes, summing it up, “wants us to be civil — after being so uncivil for a decade.”

Read the whole thing.  It’ll help you understand why some conservatives do not want civil discourse.  Seems they just want to give certain voices on the left a taste of their own medicine.

I don’t share their view, but do sympathize with their sentiment.   Why should they be civil to those who refused to show the same courtesy to conservatives and elected Republicans.

RELATED:   Pam Meister, ‘Civil’ Discourse: A One-Way Street?

UPDATE:  On the debates “that journalists only have with themselves“:

Obviously, even The New York Times eventually got the story right, and the facts eventually won out (though apologies have yet to materialize). But it is also abundantly clear that many of the people and institutions piously speechifying about the desperate need to moderate the political discourse had no problem falsely indicting others in a horrendous murder, not because they knew the charge was true but solely because they desperately wanted it to be.

(Via Instapundit.)

Kudos to Bruce Drake for another report getting at the real problem posed by the Tucson shooting:

A top official in the Pima County sheriff’s office said Sunday that his department did not begin an investigation or take earlier action regarding Jared Lee Loughner despite his history of erratic behavior because his contacts with police were “relatively benign” and did “not rise to the level of causing us to be necessarily concerned about him committing a violent act.”

Richard J. Kastigar, chief of the sheriff’s Operations Bureau, acknowledged the controversy over the question of whether authorities should have moved earlier to look into the case of Loughner, who gunned down 20 people Sept. 8 outside a Tucson supermarket, killing six and critically wounding Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

“A lot of folks have suggested that there were clues to his mental stability,” Kastigar said on ABC’s “This Week. “But we’re governed by laws. And the laws allow us to do certain things and restrict us from doing other things.”

Kastigar may well be right.   (This bears investigation.)  Do existing Arizona laws grant the sheriff’s department in Pima County (or other law enforcement body for that matter) the tools they needed to detain and/or incarcerate the disturbed young man who would become the shooter?

If this Pima County official is right, this then is the real problem for the Arizona legisalture:  how to craft a law that would facilitate the detention of mentally unbalance individuals who pose a danger to society without threatening the liberty of eccentric or otherwise moderately troubled individuals who pose no such danger.

In a piece on John McCain’s recent commentary on the president’s Tucson speech, Bruce Drake offers a helpful bit of commentary of his own:

The shootings in Arizona have prompted much introspection about the tone and tenor of American politics even though the reasons why the suspected gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, carried out the massacre remain obscured by his history of bizarre behavior.

Well said.  Nice synopsis.

I welcome this discussion about the “tone and tenor of American politics,” but wonder why those engaging in such introspeciton now didn’t do so earlier, particularly during the George W. Bush era when the organs of “mainstream” opinion rarely (if ever) scolded their ideological confreres for their excesses.

Will those concerned with this tone and tenor take to task those who rushed to blame the Tea Party in general and Sarah Palin in particular for creating a climate of hate or some such?  Will they wonder at their own failure to take on those who advertised their animus for George W. Bush when he was in the White House or dishonestly accused him of lying?

It is good to promote civil discourse, but in putting the focus on civil discourse in the wake of the Tucson shooting, will we lose sight of the real problem exposed as the evidence trickles out — of the failure of authorities in Pima County to detain a mentally imbalanced man whose actions provided numerous warning signs?

The real issue raised the the shooting is not the tone and tenor of American politics, but how we should act to prevent individuals with serious mental health problems from posing a threat to their fellow citizens.

Via Doug Powers (blogging @ Michelle Malkin) comes this about “J. Eric Fuller, who was shot in the knee” last weekend in Tucson:

When Tucson Tea Party founder Trent Humphries rose to suggest that any conversation about gun control should be put off until after the funerals for all the victims, witnesses say Fuller became agitated.  Two told KGUN9 News that finally, Fuller took a picture of Humphries, and said, “You’re dead.”

Fuller, as law professor William A. Jacobson reminds us, blamed Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Sharron Angle for the shooting.

Mr. Fuller must be upset that the evidence does not support his accusations.  According to the Phoenix ABC affiliate, he has been “taken for a psychiatric evaluation”:

Fuller was arrested on misdemeanor disorderly conduct and threat charges, [Pima County sheriff's spokesman Jason] Ogan said. While Fuller was being escorted out, deputies decided he needed a mental health evaluation and he was taken to a hospital, where he remained Saturday evening. 

The hospital will determine when he will be released, Ogan said. 

Ed Driscoll has more.

RELATED:  The hatred they discern in conservatives is the hatred they feel in their own hearts

In response to the shooting in Tucson, a number of Democrats (and a handful of Republicans) have put forward the notion of bi-partisan seating for the State of the Union address, as if that shooting were a product of the supposedly poisonous political climate.

Now, I’m wondering if any of those Democrats proposing this idea proposed it when a Republican was president subject to the vile vilification from the left.  How many of these Democrats have confronted the nastiness on their side of the political aisle, asking their ideological confreres to tone down their rhetoric?

Over at Ace, Slublog offers the best rejoinder (I have read) to these proposed seating arrangement:

After spending days watching their base accuse Sarah Palin and the tea party of encouraging a murderer, while saying nothing to stop the slander, Senator Udall and his fellow Democrats think all of this ugliness can be whisked away by encouraging members of each party to sit next to each other during a speech. With this meaningless gesture, the Democrats are trying to enjoy the benefits of calling for unity without having to criticize fellow members of Congress or their base for the repulsive slanders of the past week. Why apologize for the behavior of one’s party when you can just plant your butt next to a Republican for an hour-long speech and look good on camera while doing it?

Read the whole thing.

This is rich:

After 25 years, Canada has officially banned the Dire Straits song “Money For Nothing” because it’s extremely offensive! You Know, it has the word “Faggot” in it. Blog Pals and Facebook Friends, Please link to the offensive song and lets offend Canada like never before!!!!

Here you go, Sonic:

Doug Powers notes that while the “original version has been banned . . . it can be played provided the offending word is edited.”

Give me a break.

Guess those bureaucrats up north just think if we ban an offensive word, then presto chango, not only will people not feel offended, but bad people will change their ways, the sun will stream through the clouds and we’ll all sing kumbaya.

Taking no prisoners in his response (as is his wont), blogger R. S. McCain bold challenges those Americans labeling their ideological adversaries as haters:

Somebody call Mark Potok at the SPLC. Tell him I played this homophobic anti-Canadian anthem and demand to be denounced for it!

(Via Instapundit.) Oh, and if you’re offended by that blogger’s style, well, understand he’s doing it to make a point. So too may have been a certain band.

I agree that the word is offensive, but also believe sunlight to be the best disinfectant.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Throbert McGee offers a “much better” US analogy:

. . . bleeping-out every instance of the word “nigger” in edited-for-TV versions of Blazing Saddles — even though the movie’s script very pointedly puts the word ONLY in the mouths of characters who are idiots, villains, or both.

Blogress Divas Regent do have a way of zeroing on those afflicted with Palin Derangement Syndrome (PDS).   Here’s Clarice Feldman on the Atlantic’s Andrew Cohen commentary on the charismatic former Alaska governor:

Read the skewering in its entirety and marvel with me at how this gorgeous backwoods gal is felling a whole forest of  hypocritical and under- educated men and women who have been posing as professional writers worthy of our respectful attention to their views.

Via Instapundit.

Study: Climate change contributed to rise and fall of Roman empire

FROM THE COMMENTS: gastorgrab quips, “When will Roman Centurions learn that a single horse chariot is enough, and that they need not compete with the Maximus family?”

Glenn Reynolds links:

NARRATIVE FAIL (CONT’D): Quinnipiac Poll: More Americans Say Left Contributes to Heated Rhetoric Than Right.

Even a compliant media can’t make the Democratic narrative stick.

Democrats are up to their old games again, or perhaps I should say in thrall to their old illusions.  If we just do a better job of explaining Obamacare this time, they contend, we’ll finally win the American people over.

Now, in the House Minority, in large part because while in the majority, they pushed through the unpopular health care overhaul, they have decided to “rebrand” the Republican bill to overturn their signature legislation as “The Patient’s Rights Repeal Act“:

At a House Dem leadership meeting last week, Dem leaders decided that this is the phrase they will officially use to brand the House GOP’s push to repeal health reform, aides tell me.

With House Republicans set to press forward with repeal next week, the idea behind the Dem talking point is to emphasize what repeal would take away from you — and to position the plight of the patient in the center of this battle.

Dems are gearing up for a major campaign against repeal, in hopes that it will give them another crack at selling the American public on the law by highlighting its most popular provisions and arguing that repeal would do away with them.

Another crack at selling the American public on the law?  Um, wow, how often did we hear that or similar expressions last year — even after the bill was passed.  And despite countless such cracks, the bill as a whole remains unpopular.