Tonight, I saw part of a segment of On the Record with Greta van Susteren where the eponymous hostess was interviewing a reporter at a shelter in Japan.  While that reporter had his arm around a young Japanese man who survived the tsunami (at the Sendai airport), neither he nor Greta ever let the survivor talk about his experiences.

They did let him show his daily ration, one package of crackers and an orange, reporting that survivors aren’t getting much food.  Wonder if that’s because all the media hysteria about radiation levels has been preventing relief services from entering the area devastated by the natural disaster.

Meanwhile, we’re finding out that radiation levels beyond 12 miles of Japanese nuke plant are near normal.

UPDATE:  Maybe the delay in relief is due instead to damaged infrastructure:

Blustery snow, fuel shortages and widespread damage to airports, roads and rails have hampered delivery of badly needed assistance to more than 450,000 homeless trying to stay fed and warm, often without electricity and running water in shelters cobbled together in schools and other public buildings.

Sometimes following Joe Biden’s logic is like trying to find a coherent thread in the ramblings of a man who’s had one too many glasses of gin.  At a Philadelphia fundraiser in Philadelphia Friday, the 38-year Washington veteran “compared Republicans in Congress to people who excuse rapists by blaming their victims“:

“When a woman got raped, blame her because she was wearing a skirt too short, she looked the wrong way or she wasn’t home in time to make the dinner,” Biden said.

“We’ve gotten by that,” he said. “But it’s amazing how these Republicans, the right wing of this party – whose philosophy threw us into this God-awful hole we’re in, gave us the tremendous deficit we’ve inherited – that they’re  now using, now attempting to use, the very economic condition they have created to blame the victim – whether it’s organized labor or ordinary middle-class working men and women. It’s bizarre. It’s bizarre.”

If a Republican had said this, it would lead the evening news.  Oh yeah, I know .  That’s been said before.

And what cheek for Biden to blame the Republican for giving us this tremendous deficit they’ve “inherited.”  The deficit, after increasing in the first three years of the Bush Administration was declining until Biden’s Democrats recaptured Congress in 2006.  And then increased even more rapidly when Biden’s ticket won the White House.  As per Allahpundit:

And so, two years and two months into The One’s presidency, with the new Republican House desperate to get him to slash spending and reform entitlements, somehow even the unfathomably huge deficits he’s running are an intractable problem he’s inherited from the GOP.

So, if Republican are like those who attempt to blame the victim for a rape, what’s Biden doing?  Eschewing blame for himself and his party?   (more…)

When the House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan releases the Republican budget it, unlike that the president prepared, “will deal with entitlements.”

Despite the president’s decision to punt on this matter, even the Senate Democratic leader agrees that entitlements account for the better part of our budget as the indispensable Jennifer Rubin reminds us:

Although the White House has given the suggestion of including taxes and entitlements in the 2011 budget discussions the back of the hand, Reid was at it again: “‘We can’t balance the budget with 12 percent of the budget,’ he said, referring to the size of the non-defense discretionary budget. Reid said that he’s urging Boehner to expand the talks beyond the discretionary budget and include entitlements and revenues.”

Even the president still acknowledges that small cuts hither, thither and yon won’t solve our budget problem, that we need “to have a conversation after we get the short-term budget done about how do we really tackle the problem in a comprehensive way“.  And while he says we need to have that discusion, he hasn’t provided a framework  for doing so.

Now, he was billed in the campaign as having such a marvelous temperament.  Don’t you think such a fellow might be able both to present a budget making those “tough choices” his budget director promised and to explain why he made them to the American people?

On a regular, I receive unsolicited e-mails inviting me to various events at local gay clubs and semi-solicited* information about trips on all-gay cruises. More often than not such e-mails include pictures of well-built young men, either the entertainment at the club or participants in past cruises.

Almost all of them have perfectly smooth chests, some obviously shaved (or otherwise cleared of body hair). Oftentimes these guys look fake as if they’re manikins rather than men. Now, I find that it matters little whether a guy is smooth or hirsute; it’s how he carries himself that matters. And how he looks.

Obviously guys must find this artificial smooth attractive because we’re seeing it more and more. And not just in advertisements.

Have some of you noticed this trend? And what do you make of it?

Will ANSWER be in front of the White House tomorrow yelling “No Blood For Oil!” ????

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

The Administration’s budget hypocrisy practically leaves me speechless.  Via Doug Powers, we learn how the White House Budget director reacted to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) budget estimates saying the administration’s “numbers are at least a couple trillion off“:

White House budget director Jacob Lew said in a blog post that “CBO confirms what we already know: current deficits are unacceptably high and if we stay on our current course and do nothing, the fiscal situation will hurt our recovery and hamstring future growth.”

Instead of serving as a post-partisan president whose policies will yield a “net spending cut,” Barack Obama has become, in the battle of the budget, the most partisan president whose team have directed ever more spending to favored projects.

Now, while paying lip service to the debt (as the NRCC ad below indicates), the president and his fellow Democrats are playing politics with the budget:

Ad via Jim Geraghty.  Instead of offering leadership on budget restraint, Obama, John Fund reports in today’s Wall Street Journal Political Dairy (available by subscription) is hanging backed and waiting for House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan to release a Republican budget:

President Obama has apparently decided to borrow some political plays from Bill Clinton, who after his party’s defeat in the 1994 mid-term elections began running ads attacking Republican plans to reform Medicare. At the same time, Mr. Clinton focused on a series of granular policy initiatives — promoting school uniforms was one memorable example — that were politically safe and popular with independent voters. Mr. Obama appears to be following the same strategy — offering little in terms of policy substance, remaining disengaged in budget negotiations and waiting for Republicans to present a target for him to shoot at.

Democrats are going to attack “heartless” Republicans for wanting to cut popular programs as they pay little heed to Obama’s campaign concern that we’d been “living beyond our means.” Will Americans believe the Democrats’ rhetoric?  Or will they look at the federal balance sheet awash in red ink and understand the need to cut spending?

Let’s hope that Republican legislators in Washington take a page from their counterparts in Madison, Wisconsin and stand firm in the face of, what is sure to be, blistering attacks from the Democrats, their allied interest groups and the media.

Should Republicans hold to their principles, they could both win the debate and finally start cutting federal spending.  But, they have to stand firm.

Looks like instead of growing government and increasing our debt burden, we’d have been better off unshackling enterprise.   Or just doing nothing:

Massive government intervention to save the economy is to blame for the lagging recovery, Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Tuesday.

Greenspan argued for less government intervention to get the recovery rolling and businesses investing in equipment and plants.

“What we need to do now is to calm down; let things move by themselves,” he said at a forum at the Council of Foreign Relations. “And indeed the rate of activism has decreased significantly and the ratio of capital flow has inched back up.”

Emphasis added.

(H/t:  Gateway Pundit)

If you watch nothing else on the Interwebs today, make it THIS!

Great work from Caleb Howe and Benjamin Howe!!!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

After going through my budget, I’ve found that I can donate a little more than I had first thought to help Japanese relief efforts and have made a contribution for relief through the American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

In response to my blog post, a number of our readers have recommended organizations also working to help Japanese people displaced by this disaster.

A reader and a friend, a formerly left-leaning lesbian (formerly left-leaning, still lesbian) suggests Operation USA, a group backed by the silver-tongued Julie Andrews.

SoCalRobert suggests giving to the American Red Cross via Amazon.

Jennifer tells us Samaritan’s Purse is a Christian organization backed by Franklin Graham.

ThatGayConservative recommends Shelter Box.

David in N.O. recommends Doctors Without Borders.

Last night at a GOProud gathering, our reader Leah faulted the media for dwelling on the problems at the Fukushima nuclear plant and ignoring the plight of the Japanese suffering in the wake of the terrible tsunami. “They’re making it sound,” she said, “like a nuclear bomb is about go off.”

Just a glance at Memeorandum shows several stories on nuclear issues with none on other aspects of the devastation.

And then, as our reader Sonicfrog notes in a post on his blog, when reporting on the risks earthquakes pose to nuclear power plants, reporters ofenttimes don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.  A plant manager at Southern California’s San Onofre nuclear power plan was trying to explain to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer . . .

. . . that the San Andreas fault is many miles away [from his plant], and also that they don’t build the reactors to Richter scale standards, but to Peak Ground Acceleration, measured in g’s. If the San Andreas does produce a quake of the same size, because of its distance from the plant, the motion transmitted to the reactors would be less severe than that of the closer fault.

Only the CNN correspondent thought the plant manager was trying to spin him!  Sonic, as “ex geology major, specializing in seismology” unpacks things for us:

They don’t build reactors according to a Richter scale metric… Of course they don’t. The Richter scale relates the size and strength of the quake at the epicenter!!!!! That is the point or focus on the ground directly above the hypocenter of the seismic event… where the pressure released within the earths crust, some miles below the surface. (more…)

Barely a week ago, John Hinderaker pondered anointing President Obama as King:

. . . when it comes to foreign policy–it is a safe bet that Obama will do nothing, because doing something would require a decision.

That got me thinking: Obama enjoys being president, and he especially treasures the symbolic significance of being the first African-American president. That’s how his supporters feel, too. I haven’t heard anyone defend his actual performance in a long time, but there is still widespread satisfaction with the symbolic value of his presidency. So why don’t we make him king? If being the first African-American president has symbolic value, just think what it would mean for the first King of the United States to be African-American!

Now, a week later, more and more pundits and parsing his passivity in the face of multiple world crises.  Some have praised the president’s passivity with Jennifer Rubin finding New York Times columnist David Brooks “glorifying Obama’s paralysis“.  (Read the whole thing.)  Ann Althouse, on the other hand, find Obama “disinclined to take positions or actions with respect to the core responsibilities of the presidency.“

This is a random thought I posted on Twitter yesterday.  I wanted to amplify it for further comment here at the blog….

Did I miss all of the faux progressive concern about nuclear power after al-Qaeda had nuke plants on their target list after 9/11?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Ed Morrissey explains:

If you had to pick the poster child for budgetary irresponsibility over the last few years — and certainly for 2010 — it would have to be former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  Not only did Democrats under her Speakership raise discretionary spending 18% in three years, not only did she pass a Pay-Go law and then fail to adhere to it even once, Pelosi became the first Speaker since Watergate to fail to pass a budget resolution for a fiscal year.  In 2010, despite having a 77-seat majority in the House, a Senate which her party held by 18 seats, and a Democrat in the White House, Pelosi failed — or refused — to pass a budget for FY2011.  Instead, she pushed continuing resolutions in order to hide spending until after the midterms, and failed even then to pass a budget.

Read the whole thing.  (Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE:  Wonder how often our media remind us that it was the failure of Mrs. Pelosi’s (and Mr. Reid’s) 111th Congress that has forced the 112th to pass continual continuing resolutions.

UP-UPDATE:  Jim Hoft reminds us of some facts:

When Speaker Pelosi took over Congress the national deficit was $162 billion. When she exited in January 2011 it was at $1.29 Trillion dollars. Pelosi and Barack Obama even managed to triple the national deficit in his first year after the stimulus passed.

Via Flash Report, we learn that the California General Assembly will be voting tomorrow on Governor Jerry Brown’s budget proposal.  Now while the budget will pass because, thanks to Proposition 25, the package only needs a majority, there is one wrinkle:  legislators still need a two-thirds majority to put the proposed tax increase on the June ballot.  And to get that two-thirds, they’re going to need a few Republican votes.  And well, there is a tax hike proposal in the Democrat’s plan.

And Jon Fleishman doesn’t think any Republican votes are forthcoming:

Oh yes, Brown’s budget has not been revised to accept the political reality, which is that there are no Republican votes to place the largest tax increase in the history of any state on the ballot this June.  And Brown has not responded by putting forward the additional cuts necessary to present a real, balanced budget to the legislature. . . .

Ultimately, however, Democrats can take some consolation.  Once they absorb that they will not be seeing Republican votes for a tax increase on the ballot, they will realize that they will not need one Republican vote for a “no new taxes” budget.

In placing this tax hike on the ballot, Brown is attempting to deliver on his campaign promise not to raise taxes without a vote.  Now, some people probably voted for the Democrat thinking that he wouldn’t do such a thing because Californians had already — overwhelmingly — rejected a variety of tax increases.  He must have known, they assumed, that we’d reject them again.  Despite the failure of the May 2009 measures (backed by the state’s political class), California Republicans, including yours truly, knew that once elected Brown would indeed try to raises taxes.

Now, to be sure, Democrats are billing this as merely extending the current tax rate, but that’s extending an increase that was supposed to be temporary.  And while I do fault the governor for not cutting as deeply as he should in order to balance the budget without raising taxes and for not promoting the kinds of structural reforms that will make it easier for future legislatures to hold the line on state spending, I do appreciate his seriousness of purpose. (more…)

When, last year, I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s for the third or fourth time, I realized that the movie wasn’t all that good, in fact, when Audrey Hepburn wasn’t on screen, it was actually quite dull. It was just her performance which made the movie so engaging. Indeed, while we remember her in any number of films from Funny Face to Sabrina to Roman Holiday to Charade, we realize that the stories serve primarily as vehicles to showcase her incredible screen presence and her elfin beauty — not to mention how fabulous she looked even in some of the strangest fashions of the 1950s and 1960s.

Which brings me to Arthur.  (No, not the federally funded aardvark.)

That 1981 film holds up not so much for the story (which, I’ll grant, is sweet), but the performance. While it may not be Liza Minnelli‘s best performance, it is certainly her most charming, perhaps her most endearing.  Not to mention Sir John Gielgud and Geraldine Fitzgerald.  And of course, Dudley Moore who makes you sympathize from the get-go with this spoiled rich guy who doesn’t seem capable of controlling his appetites.

So, the question arose earlier today as I drove around Los Angeles and saw countless billboards for the remake:  why remake a film when the original succeeded not as much for the story as for the performances, particularly the lead?  Can Russell Brand adopt a role that Dudley Moore — so deliciously — owned?

Or has the original so faded from our consciousness that we will not be contrasting Brand’s zaniness with Moore’s class?

That makes two of us….

From HotAir.com:

Rush Limbaugh offered that off-hand endorsement of Marco Rubio after Florida’s newest Senator announced that he would oppose any more short-term spending bills in Congress.

Meanwhile, Rubio has a few other ideas as well, notably to cut off the EPA’s efforts to expand its regulatory reach. His office announced earlier today that Rubio would attach an amendment to “every major bill” in the Senate to cut off funding for EPA enforcement of “job-destroying numeric nutrients regulations,” as well as rescind authority for spending of any unused stimulus funding.

One could argue that Rubio is too “inexperienced” to be a serious Presidential contender.  Well, I don’t recall the current Oval Office occupant sticking in any job longer than two years.  Rubio has him up on that by a mile.  And, Rubio was the Speaker of the House in the Florida Legislature.  Those two facts are just off the top of my head.

I’ve been wondering when Rubio would begin to flex his leadership muscles in the Senate.  Mark this week as the beginning of the rise of Marco Rubio.

[RELATED:  House Budget Chmn. Paul Ryan explains how America is screwed by our debt problem.]

-Bruce (GayPatriot) 

“Urgent” reads the print on one envelope I received recently.  ”Personal and confidential,” said another.  ”Surprise, Mr. Blatt,” I read, on an large manila envelope, “Here’s something you can really use and enjoy for years to come.”

Was the first an appeal for funds to relieve victims of a recent disaster?  Was the second an important letter from a friend, detailing some trying circumstances in his life that he wanted to share with me, but not trust to e-mail, fearing someone could hack into his account?  Was the third a gift from a good friend or family member who wanted to give me something to better remember him.

The answer is “No” to all three questions.  ”Urgent” was written on an envelope from a charity who regularly sends out appeals to me.  It seems every other missive I receive bears that word suggesting imminent action is necessary to prevent disaster.  Annoyed with the amount of correspondence I receive from that organization, I have long since stopped giving to that organization.  And the appeals keep coming.

The envelope marked “personal” contained a form letter seeking donations for a political campaign in a different state.  The large manila envelope was from another charity which has sent me enough mail and little “gifts” to cover the cost of the $25 I once sent them.   Just today, I received three small writing pads (of various sizes and designs) from three non-profits and a large fancy envelope with about 15 pages of paper from a group I have never supported.  (This was not the first such such mailing I have received from this outfit.)

I receive all this at a time when I’m trying to find a relief organization which devotes the overwhelming amount of its resources to helping the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  And I’ve pretty much eliminated all those groups which sends me regular mail.  Such costly fundraising solicitations surely take a greater bite out of their budget, siphoning money away from the people truly in need and those we should help.

So, please, help me out here.  What organizations do you feel are doing a good job of directing their resources to those truly in need.  Once I get your feedback, I’ll prepare another post, asking our readers to support these groups.  Thanks!

Someone should alert Gary Bauer and others who seek an end to gay pride parades.  Gay activists in the UK want to cancel a march because it might offend members of a particular religious group.  So, maybe ol’ Gary should just follow their lead claim offense; gay groups on this side of the pond will surely capitulate.

Fearing that a gay pride parade in London’s East End “will cause tensions between gay people and Muslims“, some activists want to cancel a march scheduled in response to “to anti-gay stickers plastered around the East End“:

An open letter signed by Out East chair Thierry Schaffauser and Terry Stewart of the Hackney Community Engagement Board claims that the Pride march may “divide our communities” or be used “to oppress other marginalised groups”.

Out East organises Hackney Pride and the letter has also been signed by Denis Fernando of Unite Against Fascism and the Greater London Association of Trade Union Councils.

It says: “We believe that the most appropriate response to the stickers is to liaise with Muslim communities and others to create bridges and communicate with each other.

“We want both homophobia and Islamophobia addressed as a collective problem and not feed one against the other, we do not recognise these as distinct categories.

“We will refuse any attempt to divide our communities or take the risk that an LGBTQ event is used to oppress other marginalised groups, in particular LGBTQ Muslims who will be the most affected by this rising antagonism.”

That’s rich.  These folks have the view that all victims are alike; if you’re an approved victim of Western straight white male hegemony, then we need address animosity (or perceived animosity”) as a “collective problem.”  Wow, just wow.  These guys are more concerned with offending Muslims than they are with speaking out against anti-gay bigotry.

If Muslim groups have a problem with a gay pride march, wouldn’t that indicate that they harbor, um, well, politically incorrect sentiments about gay people?  It seems that some gay activists are so desperate to be part of this coalition of the oppressed that the ignore how many Islamist regimes oppress gays — while other Islamist organizations, even in Western countries, favor our marginalization if not persecution.

Meanwhile back on our own shores,

A group of gay lefty organizations who CLAIM they exist to work on behalf of gay people actually put out a press release on Friday attacking Rep. Peter King’s hearings on Islamic radicalization. Nevermind that radical Islam teaches that the penalty for being gay is DEATH. Honestly, the Onion couldn’t have written this release. (more…)

Jim Geraghty sums its up:

The Obama of 2008 ran on promises. The Obama of 2012 will have to run on a record, and a record that is significantly less appealing than the gauzy hope-and-change vision of his promises. It was one thing to be the blank slate and to be simultaneously be the preferred candidate of Markos Moulitsas and Colin Powell, of Barbara Streisand and Warren Buffett. But the slate is not so blank, and after taking a leap of faith during the tumult of the 2008 financial meltdown, a significant number of independents are recoiling from their decision…

Emphasis added.