Okay, now things are going to get ugly… no matter what the book says…

Via DRUDGE REPORT:

**Exclusive** This year’s high stakes publishing project quietly went to press this week, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

After years of research and digging by the nation’s top private investigators, here it comes:

“WHERE’S THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE? The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President.”

 

The street date is a LONG month away, and author Jerome Corsi, the man who torpedoed John Kerry’s presidential dreams with SWIFT BOAT, has gone underground and is holding his new findings thisclose.

“It’s utterly devastating,” reveals a source close to the publisher. “Obama may learn things he didn’t even know about himself!”

Does Corsi definitively declare the location of Obama’s birth?

Will the president’s attorneys attempt to interfere with the book’s distribution? [The publisher vows to vigorously fight any legal action that may be taken.]

Will the book finally — once and for all — put an end to the growing controversy?

Or will it just ignite new ones!?

“When Donald Trump said he sent PIs to Hawaii to get to the bottom of all this, he meant this book,” declares an insider.

THE CASE ranked #1,341 on AMAZON’s hitparade 

Developing…

 

Oh my……

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Via JammieWearingFool via Instapundit, we get this nugget:

Pres. Obama’s re-election campaign won’t be disclosing how much money is taken in at the individual fundraising events attended by Pres. Obama. Neither will the Democratic National Committee.

An official says it’s the same policy by which the Obama Campaign operated in the 2008 election cycle.

Fundraising numbers have to be filed with the Federal Election Commission, but often not until weeks later – and the FEC documents don’t itemize amounts raised at specific fundraising events.

The Obama Campaign is not the first to adopt such a policy, although Pres. Bush’s re-election operation in 2004 freely disclosed how much money was taken in at individual events.

Emphasis in JWF, but not the original.

This is my first posting via my new iPad. Just so you don’t think I’m a rich millionaire like Obama, I cashed in years of AMEX miles points to get it.

I’ve had it less than 24 hours and already love it. It is the most user friendly computer device I’ve used since I first loaded the game “Lawn” into the cassette player attached to the 60lb PC.

There is a lot of functionality that I hope will allow me to do more frequent blogging on the go. Always remember that if you REALLY need your daily GayPatriot fix … I’m a minor celebrity on Twitter! (@GayPatriot.

The other thing I’m hooked on with the iPad is the quick way to get information. There are a lot of multimedia sources available (think: the “come to life” newspapers in Harry Potter’s world)

And books!!! My Kindle subscriptions can be read in full color and it LOOKS LIKE A BOOK!! By the way, I’m currently reading “Rawhide Down” — the in-depth story of what happened behind the scenes on March 31, 1981.

For now, so long. I’ll be back soon….as long as there’s a free WiFi!!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

According to the “Gallup Daily tracking three-day average,

41% of Americans approving of the job Barack Obama is doing as president. That ties his low as president, which he registered three times previously — twice in August 2010 and once in October 2010.

The current 41% approval rating from April 12-14 polling includes interviews conducted before and after Obama announced his plan for deficit reduction on Wednesday. It also comes in the same week Congress is voting on the 2011 budget deal reached last Friday. The deal did not seem to have an immediate effect on the way Americans viewed Obama, given his 44% approval rating in the three days prior to the agreement and his 46% rating in the initial days after the agreement.

The president has also lost considerable support among independents, only 35% of whom approve of him, “nine points off his average from independents this year.”

Perhaps they’re turning because the speech because most people expected a conciliatory gesture after Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, introduced a serious plan to rein in federal spending.  They may well have been expecting that he the president would acknowledge Ryan’s efforts, praise him on his commitment to reducing the deficits and then offered his plan, explaining why it was the better alternative.

Ryan himself certainly expected the speech would be “a call for common ground on deficit reduction”, but found instead as Allahpundit puts it, “that it was a campaign stemwinder aimed at ambushing him and the GOP.”  Obama, the blogger opines further, “elected as a healing force of post-partisan pragmatism, is willing to turn into Godzilla when there’s an electoral opportunity in front of him.”

Peggy Noonan, once supportive of Obama, thought the speech showed that the president to be an out-of-touch executive: (more…)

Via Legal Insurrection:

The results have just been posted in the Milwaukee County canvass, and nothing much changed from yesterday. AP reports Prosser picked up 11 more votes and is the winner.

I repeat, JoAnne Kloppenburg lost.  David Prosser won.

The vote margin stands at 7316, a virtually insurmountable lead for a recount.  All the hanging chads in the world will not put Kloppenburg on the Supreme Court.

Awwwwww…. and all that money wasted by the public employee unions, too.  Oh wait — that’s taxpayer money they waste on their liberal political agenda.  *facepalm*

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

The long-planned finally-made movie, Atlas Shrugged, is opening tomorrow night.  Although it starts with limited release — we got a viewing in my neighborhood’s Regal Cinema! – hopefully the word will spread and most of the country will be able to see it soon.

In advance of the movie, our friends at FreedomWorks has put together this video suggesting that Ayn Rand’s future might already be here.  My buddy, Ben Howe, made the film.  Great job, Ben!

[RELATED: Atlas Shrugged fan blog site ]

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Is anyone really surprised?  I mean, REALLY? (h/t - Instapundit)

I was traveling most of yesterday, experiencing a story which would warm the cockles of Bruce’s heart, being three hours delayed out of LAX and just missing a connection in Philadelphia, so I also missed all the hullabaloo over the president’s budget speech.

But, what has struck me in reading about it is that instead of making the case for his do-over budget, he had to set it up as an us vs. them scenario, demonizing Republican solutions.  He seems he would have done better to make the case for his plan and then said something like, “I know the Republicans have put forward a different plan.  Yes, we see things differently, but I’m optimistic that we can work together and resolve our differences.”

As law professor William A. Jacobson puts it:

This was a moment when Obama could have proven that he was the uniter he claimed to be not a divider, when he could have set forth an alternative plan without demeaning Republicans.  No one could have expected Obama to stand there and say that he would agree to the Ryan plan, but no one should have expected a full frontal assault on the motives and humanity of those with whom he has policy disagreements.  If Obama had signaled a readiness to reach across the aisle, to seek common ground without guaranteeing an outcome, he would have been presidential.  Instead, there were just a few throw away lines about compromise at the end of a long screed.

The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal were no less harsh:

Did someone move the 2012 election to June 1? We ask because President Obama’s extraordinary response to Paul Ryan’s budget yesterday—with its blistering partisanship and multiple distortions—was the kind Presidents usually outsource to some junior lieutenant. Mr. Obama’s fundamentally political document would have been unusual even for a Vice President in the fervor of a campaign. (more…)

As many of you may know, I have been very active in the alumni association of my alma mater, Williams College, currently serving on the Society of Alumni’s executive committee.  Whenever we discuss the problems of drinking on campus and ways to promote responsible consumption of alcohol, we learn how the drinking age hamstrings the college, making it difficult to develop a sensible policy.

Such discussion have been ongoing at least since I was an undergraduate.

Rather than discouraging the irrational consumption of alcohol, the drinking age actually promotes it.  It turns the types of beverages human beings have been drinking in ritual celebrations as well as social gatherings for as long as we have recorded our history into a kind of forbidden fruit.

Euripides records how the prissy Pentheus was punished for failing to honor Dionysus, the Olympian whose bailiwick included wine (among other things).

When people see wine, beer and other (potentially) intoxicating spirits as beverages to enjoy with their elders, rather than those to consume on the sly, they will be more likely to drink responsibly, particularly by learning about drinking from those who have been drinking responsibly for a generation (at least).  If you start drinking among a group of adolescents, the age at which we are the most irresponsible, you will likely drink more irresponsibly as you’ll be drinking among those with the least capacity to control their actions and with a spirit inclined to excess.

Studying in Germany, I saw many of my Teutonic peers drinking on regularly basis, yet encountered none of the binge drinking I had observed on American campuses.   They grew up drinking beer.  They did not see consumption of their national beverage as something to do just with your peers, but also as an activity to enjoy with your parents–and their peers as well.

In a piece for the Wall Street Journal essay that he links on his blog, Glenn Reynolds addresses this very topic, where he reminds us that

. . . over 130 college presidents, as part of something called the Amethyst Initiative, have called for an end to the drinking age of 21. (more…)

This headline, Despite NATO rift, US holds to limited Libya role, doesn’t make sense. How can there be a rift with our allies given that George W. Bush has long since retired to Texas and Barack Obama, with his commitment to “smart diplomacy” sits in the Oval Office.

If you need any further evidence of how fully politicized public employee unions have become in Califronia, look no further than this story about which Phineas, blogging at Sister Toldjah’s, site reminds us, “At its recent convention, the CFT passed a resolution of support for Mumia Abu-Jamal, a convicted cop-killer:”

Between negotiating for more benefits and teaching their students, the California Federation of Teachers has adopted a resolution of support for convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.At the CFT’s 2011 Convention in late March, the delegates passed 30 resolutions, from solidifying support for anti-bullying legislation to supporting transitional kindergarten. Among the resolutions largely pertaining to education and collective bargaining rights was Resolution 19 – to “Reaffirm support for death row journalist.”

“Therefore, be it resolved, that the California Federation of Teachers reaffirm its support and demand that the courts consider the evidence of innocence of Mumia Abu-Jamal,” the Committee Report reads.

Defense of this convicted cop killer has become a cause célèbre on the left.

One wonders why union officials felt it incumbent upon themselves to take up his cause, one entirely unrelated to their profession.

In his latest column, Michael Barone objects to the use of the terms “bicker” and “squabble” to describe the contentious negotiations between congressional leaders and the White House over the budget:

You’ve seen those verbs often if you’ve been reading about the budget struggles between the Republican-controlled House, the Democratic-majority Senate, and the strangely detached Obama White House.

The implication is negative. Children bicker. Small-minded people squabble. When you use those verbs to describe the actions or words of John Boehner, Harry Reid and Barack Obama you are implying that they are arguing about trifles.

But they’re not. They were arguing about big things, vast flows of money, public policies with real consequences.

. . . .

The fact is that the Obama Democrats increased the size and scope of government beyond anything ever seen except in World War II. The Republicans are trying to reverse this trend. Far from arguing about trivia, both Democrats and Republicans are arguing about the most fundamental issues of domestic public policy.

Read the whole thing; it’s well worth you time.  Barone offers an excellent analysis of the dynamics of negotiations and how such negotiations play out in light of the constitution’s provision for different terms of office for the president, representatives and Senators (those last in staggered terms).

*BTW, this is our 8,000th post since we moved from Blogspot.

The folks at Servicemembers United, a group “which represents gay and lesbian troops and veterans” repotst “that the White House had barred civilian representatives of gay and lesbian military families from” a White House event spearheaded by First Lady Michelle Obama and Second Lady Jill Biden honoring military families:

“It is rather unfortunate that both East Wing and West Wing staff have refused to allow a representative of gay military families to even be in the room at an event that is supposed to honor their commitment and sacrifice,” said Alexander Nicholson, Executive Director of Servicemembers United.

Kristina Schake, Communications Director for the First Lady, explained the decision this way in an email to CBS News.

“The President has been crystal clear that the Administration is moving forward with the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ quickly and efficiently,” she said. “However, it still remains the law. The White House, including the First Lady and Dr. Biden, look forward to working with the families of gay and lesbian service members after certification occurs and repeal goes into effect.”

Nicholson, from Servicemembers United, complained in his statement that “[t]he First Lady’s office has used the continued enforcement of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ as an excuse to exclude us, even though they know that ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ does not apply to the civilians who work at their advocacy and service organizations.”

I’m sure other gay organizations will be rushing to criticize the White House for not including this group.

Today, when returning home from running a quick errand, I had to brake my car when, not twenty yards in front of me (if that), a woman, after looking both ways, starting crossing the street (and not at an intersection).  It seemed she was doing the exact opposite of what we teach kids.  If you see a car, we tell them, wait to cross.  This woman acted as if her mere gesture of looking indicated that cars should stop for her.

At least she looked.

Several months ago, when driving in my neighborhood, I turned onto my street to see a woman crossing a few yards before the next intersection.  I calculated that by the time I reached the place where she was crossing, she would be safely across.  Yet, all of a sudden, without looking up, she pulled out her cellphone and started texting — in the middle of the street.  Her pace slowed.  I had to brake to avoid hitting her.

Another time, a woman, again in the middle of the street (and not at an intersection where she would have had the right of way), emerged from behind a van while walking her dog and looking at her phone.  So oblivious was she to the street, she didn’t give any sign of noticing when I slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting her.

Given that the van was much higher than she was tall, there was no way a driver could have seen her until she was in the middle of the street.  At least with the other two women, I had been able to see them before they crossed into the street.

Today’s experience just got me wondering (and not for the first time):  in a city like LA with very aggressive drivers, why do some pedestrians act as if crossing the street were no different from taking a stroll in their own back yards?

There is something both fascinating and appalling about all this focus, particularly among politicos on the 2012 presidential election.  Most Americans, I would daresay, are barely even paying attention.  And yes already some are reporting that Republicans are wringing their hands in despair at the quality of the field (via Memeorandum).

Shouldn’t we at least wait until the fall of this year to begin speculating about who will be throwing their hat into the ring?

Lately, we have seen a lot of focus on Donald Trump, who, in a recent CNN poll, “tied with Mike Huckabee for first place when Republicans are asked who they support for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012“.  The real estate mogul is also saying that  he “will ‘probably’ run as an independent candidate for U.S. President in 2012 if he does not receive the Republican party’s nomination,” which, as Ed Morrissey puts it, means the all-but-certain reelection an an unpopular incumbent:

Trump has the money (at least for now) to mount a vanity campaign as a third-party alternative to the two major-party nominees.  This would end up splitting the anti-Obama vote and set the President up for an easy re-election through a popular-vote plurality that would translate into an overwhelming Electoral College majority.

Right now, it seems that Trump is as interested in generating headlines as he is in running the country. (more…)

H/t: Gateway Pundit

Somewhat related: Liberal Blogger: Sarah Palin Hatred a “Pathetically Silly Right-Wing Talking Point,” They Know “It’s Bullshit”… (via Instapundit).

I’m sure the editorial board of the New York Times is already on top of this.

You’d think that a group that advocates for gay rights would want to elect a gay Republican to Congress. When his fellow partisans see that a gay man supports them on the key issues of the days, cutting the size and scope of the federal government, increasing individual and economic liberty, securing our borders, Republican legislators would be less likely to see gay people as just another Democratic interest group.

More aware of the diversity of the gay community, Republicans working with a gay man might be more supportive of state recognition of same-sex civil unions and might be willing to move forward on legislation facilitating the immigration of same-sex domestic partners.

But, instead of developing new strategies to sway Republicans, the party likely to hold the House majority at least through the next Congress, gay leaders seem ever eager to prove their allegiance to the Democratic Party. An openly gay man, Mike Gin, the accomplished mayor of Redondo Beach, is running as a Republican to fill the seat vacated by Jane Harman who resigned her South Bay (Los Angeles County) seat “to become president and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars“.

Despite Mike’s sexuality and his record, the gay and lesbian auxiliary of the California Democratic Party Equality California, through its PAC, is backing Democrat Debra BowenALSO

Join me in supporting an accomplished gay civil servant who could help enact real reforms in Washington.  You can support Mike by clicking here.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Benjamin in WeHo offers an important insight:

Mike Gin has been married to his husband for 16 years. EQCA is a marriage-equality organization. How could anyone be more EQCA-y than Mike Gin? Debra Bowen is an ordinary straight woman with no special relationship with gay people. Mike Gin could show social conservatives that gays have family values. They aren’t all Ted Haggards and Roy Ashburns.

All conservatives and Republicans who are concerned about gay rights should support Mike Gin in any way they can. This is a special election that will receive enormous national attention after the primary, and it is one of the first elections ever where a respectable, married gay man has a strong chance of winning a seat in Congress.

ALSO FROM THE COMMENTS:  This comes as no surprise to Mark Noonan who recalls “back in 1980 when liberal Republican Millicent Fenwick was running for re-election the feminist groups backed her male, Democrat opponent. Its all about the party and all liberal groups are mere auxiliaries of the Democrat party.”

Ann Althouse links a post whose author David Blaska claims to have found the “smoking gun” that the teacher sick-out which closed “Madison schools for five days in February” was “an illegal, union-coordinated, illegal strike”:

Now there is proof that the sickout was a premeditated, union-authorized job action  — a phone tree of teachers calling other teachers to close down the schools. This kind of activity is prohibited by the union’s own contract and illegal in WI Statute Chapter 111.84(2)(e):

It is unfair practice for an employee individually or in concert with others: To engage in, induce or encourage any employees to engage in a strike, or a concerted refusal to work or perform their usual duties as employees.

Read the whole thing which includes an e-mail about the call and audio of the call in question.  I’m no expert in Wisconsin law, but Althouse teaches law at the University of Wisconsin — and saw fit to link the post.

You can bet this would get a lot more attention if an interest group allied with the GOP had tried to coordinate similar activity.

While, given the totality of the circumstances, I would score the recent budget deal as a “win” for the GOP and conservatives, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that rather than win this round in the the budget “battle,” conservatives merely gained more than they gave up.

Yes, our federal debt still remains unacceptably high, but two of the three principal parties (President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Reid) are Democrats.  That the sole Republican in the trio, House Speaker John Boehner, managed to secure nearly two-third of the cuts passed by his chamber is quite an achievement.  Given the ratio in the negotiations, it should have been the other way ’round.

That said, this is only the time for a victory lap if that lap serves as a brief respite before preparing for the next “race.”  Over at Patterico, Aaron Worthing blogged that “more than a few” of his readers “noticed that I was a little irritated by the victory dance“:

I wasn’t trying to bash the Republicans for the deal on its merits.  They only control one house of Congress, after all.  But if I had been there, I would not have put up with that celebratory attitude.

Fair point, and Worthing does give the Speaker credit for his statement yesterday where the Ohio Republican acknowledged that “the agreement is far from perfect, and we need to do much more if we’re serious about creating new jobs, fixing our spending-driven debt crisis“.  And that’s exactly where I am—and where I suspect most conservatives are.  A good first step, but only a first step. (more…)

Not all conservatives believe the budget agreement Speaker Boehner negotiated with President Obama and Majority Leader Reid was a “win” for our side.  Mark Levin thinks Beltway Republicans were had (via Instapundit).  David Freddoso reminds us of the “argument that if we can’t even handle small cuts, it bodes poorly for the future debate over large ones.”

He also brings up another argument:  ”Republicans come out of this with a political advantage and an air of responsible governance and adulthood that could help them in the coming debate.”  Until conservatives control both houses of Congress — and the White House — we won’t be able to see the kind of cuts we need to bring the government’s expenditures in line with its income.*

Finding “silliness” on both sides, Jennifer Rubin points out that we have heard . . .

. . . a few hard-line congressmen proclaim that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) didn’t get “enough” or that a shutdown would have been a win for the Republicans. These are the voices of the perpetually aggrieved on the right who will oppose any deal because their aim is not conservative governance but confrontation and incitement of an anti-Washington base. For these folks the “best deal possible” is not a statement of mature leadership, but a sell-out.

Nevertheless, we also know that the cranky voices are a very small minority in the House (only 28 Republicans voted against the short-term CR in the wee hours of the night). Moreover, Tea Partyers whom the Democrats were setting up to take the fall in the event of a shutdown were overwhelmingly positive about the deal. Perhaps the anti-dealmaking right is largely a creation of liberal media and of a few sour conservative pundits.

Look, I agree with these conservatives that these cuts weren’t deep enough, but we all need bear in mind the truth of that old maxim about the city which from its rise in the century before the common era until nearly a millennium after its fall remained the most important jurisdiction in the West.  Rome wasn’t built in a day.  And it will take more than a day — or one campaign cycle — to reduce the power and size of the new Rome on the Potomac.

But, we’ve started removing the bricks from a few of the newer edifices.  And it will take time to cut them — and related institutions — down to size.  And to that, we’re going to need patience, fortitude and the determination to fight entrenched powers.

* (more…)