…if that’s what you call this nightmare we are living in. The following stats are provided by Investors Business Daily, but they are courtesy of the Obama Regime:

There are 2 million fewer private-sector jobs now than when Obama was sworn in, and the unemployment rate is 1.5 percentage points higher.

• There are now more long-term unemployed than at any time since the government started keeping records.

• The U.S. dollar is more than 12% weaker.

• The number of Americans on food stamps has climbed 37%.

• The Misery Index (unemployment plus inflation) is up 62%.

• And the national debt is about 40% higher than it was in January 2009.

In fact, reporters who bother to look will discover that Obama has managed to produce the worst recovery on record.

Hope and Change continues to ruin our nation…

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Good heavens. Wish I’d have seen this great Iowahawk post yesterday when I posted on the president’s embarrassing Freudian slip during his Twitter Town Hall.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Instead of making cars get 62 mpg, why not 62 million mpg? Also, do something about the gravitational constant.
Are you smart enough to create a problem so big that even you could not solve it?
Is this question racist?
Are strawmen cheaper when you buy them by the gross?
Who are these “those who say”?
If punishing employers results in more employment, can you also punish beer makers?

Enjoy!

-Nick (ColoradoPatrtiot, from HQ)

Perhaps, the Southern background (or, in Bruce’s case, residence) of many of my gay friends makes Dolly Parton appear to rank with Judy, Barbra and Ethel in our diva pantheon. And it seems nearly all (yes, I said that right, nearly all) of my gay conservative friends love Dolly.

In sixteen days, she’s appearing for the first time ever at the Hollywood Bowl. And two films at Outfest (opening tonight) feature this country diva. On Saturday, July 16, you can catch Hollywood to Dollywood, a documentary about gay twins who, in an RV named Jolene, set out on a cross country trek to get their script to the buxom blond.

And on Wednesday, July 13, you can singalong with Dolly (et al.) in the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas on a very big screen at the John Anson Ford Amphitheater.

Click on the movie titles for ticket information; (more…)

At the capital area Pride festivities last month, a gay libertarian wanting to see some symbol to remind us that not all gay people toe the statist agenda of the national gay groups, that some of us value freedom and just want the state to leave us alone to live our lives as we choose.  To that end, he wants to craete a Gadsden Pride flag those free-loving homosexuals like us to hoist.

You can buy just such a T-shirt now at Cafe Press. If you’re interested in helping support this enterprising individual in his plan to produce such flags, please e-mail him. The greater the order he makes, the less cost it will be for each individual flag.

Let’s hope this one inspires a spirited non-political discussion without polemic or ad hominem.

In the past few weeks, I have become increasingly friendly, in the sense of stopping to chat with three fetching young men in the course of living my life, but none in environments which are specifically gay.  I am pretty certain (but not entirely so) that one of the three is gay.

With the other two, I get very mixed signals.  A gay friend is convinced that one of them is straight, but each time I become so convinced, he gives some sign suggesting he might prefer, um, well, shall we say “intimate” relationships with his own sex.

A straight friend agrees that it is hard to tell with the last individual.  And I asked him the other day if he thought it was okay just to go up to him and ask if he were gay.

He suggested instead I should ask if he’s dating anyone and see how he responds to that.

Did my straight friend give me good advice?  How would you handle these situations?  Do you think it’s appropriate to ask someone if he’s gay?

(In the comment thread, I will address how I handled another recent situation when I learned that my interlocutor was indeed gay.)

Whoa. Jim Geraghty at NRO (and hopefully you’re subscribing to his newsletter like I do) offers the tidbit of the day from President Obama’s Twitter Town Hall yesterday (and Moe Lane provides the cued-up video):

We’re still gonna have to make some tough decisions about Defense spending, or even on programs that I like but we may not need.

Ladies and Gentlemen: I give you your Commander in Chief.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

I realize I’m coming to this a couple days late, but does Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid not understand the irony of calling for “shared sacrifice” (by way of higher taxes on ‘the rich’) in a Nation wherein one percent of the population covers nearly half of the entire income tax bill, and one tenth pays about three-quarters of it?

For that matter, all this talk of reaching a “deal” between the Republicans in the House and the ever-absent leading-from-the-rear Administration seems to me to be pretty overly done: I always thought the “deal” was that the president would be given the authority to continue to spend money we don’t have and cannot afford in exchange for, well, simply spending less of it. What am I missing? And why should that deal be so hard for him and the likes of Reid to accept?

Wouldn’t it be nice if the concept of “sacrifice” extended to those in Washington for whom the ultimate sacrifice would be to not spend other peoples’ money?

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

UPDATE (from Dan):  Nick, good points.  Do wonder if Reid will ask public employee unions to share in the sacrifice.   And while we’re at it, what about White House staffers?

If I worked out in the afternoon, it seemed almost inevitable that I would catch Eliot Spitzer’s “In the Arena” on one of the TV monitors in my gym.  I often noted how few conservatives he had on the show.  Frequently, the former Democratic governor would “moderate” panel discussions between two liberals, from time to time CNN’s own in-house liberal, Jeffrey Toobin, the man Andrew Breitbart bills as “a pompous, morally compromised legal expert” facing off against another left-of-center pundit (maybe even a fellow Journolister?).  Last night, it was Obama adviser Fareed Zakaria and liberal historian Simon Schama (though, to be sure, the latter is, by and large, an honest historian).

Now, CNN is a private enterprise and has every right to provide leftist pundits a platform.  And is under no obligation to present the conservative point of view.  We have the right to change the channel.

Seems quite a lot of people did just that when Mr. Spitzer’s show came on.   Guess they didn’t resign themselves to their workout facility’s choice of channel.  CNN is canceling the show.

But, this leads me to ponder something.  The preponderance of pundits on CNN lean left.  Yet, on FoxNews, even on Sean Hannity’s show, panels almost almost include liberal pundits.  Why then do so many mainstream media critics so eager to criticize Fox for its bias while ignoring that of CNN?

Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter anyway.  Audiences seem to be voting with their remote. (more…)

Over at the Daily Caller, Rob Bluey describes how the new kind of politics Barack Obama promised in his 2008 presidential campaign has manifested itself now that that post-partisan president is in the White House:

Veteran reporter Keith Koffler, who writes for White House Dossier, noted recently the “Obama White House has long practiced the tactic of bullying reporters who write stories it doesn’t like.” When [White House Director of Progressive Media and Online Response Jesse] Lee first got the job in May, Koffler predicted it would “formalize the strategy and signals that such behavior is likely to escalate as the campaign begins.”

And that’s exactly what has happened. Over the past three months, there has been a high-profile incident involving the White House and journalists on at least three occasions.

Bluey goes on to detail this bullying.  Ed Morrissey, who initially defended the Lee appointment as the White House exercising its “right to respond to criticism” even though he thought the task was “better left to the DNC,” thinks that now Lee is making the White House look bad: (more…)

News this evening coming down that the 9th Circuit Court has, once again, decided it knows better how to defend America than do our own Armed Forces, elected officials, or duly appointed and confirmed leaders of the DoD.

Still looking online for something official from the court, but the short story is that they’ve decided that, since DADT repeal is chugging along just fine, it’s time to screw up the entire process.

It seems that the court has used the continuing success of an orderly process combined with a lawless Administration which refuses to do its job to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” with respect to DOMA as its basis for deciding to run the US military regardless of what’s best for National Defense.

With former SecDef Gates predicting certification (the needed step for implementation of the end of DADT) occurring within the month, and current Secretary Panetta stating in his confirmation process that he supports repeal and will work to implement it upon certification, I’m still puzzled why LCR continued their suit.

No, I’m not puzzled as to why they said they were continuing: Because they don’t trust, apparently, the military and/or the Administration to actually do what they said they’d do (let alone follow the law). Naturally, having witnessed the current Commander in Chief in action lo these two long years, I can understand why you’d want to see the cash first. But there have been zero indications that there would be any problems with the repeal coming to fruition. Even the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps told his troops to “get over it” and press on with our duties to implement the new policy.

It boggles the mind, then, why anybody who respects the military and our mission would insist on pressing forward with this case. Let’s review the facts:

The whole purpose of passing the law last December was because everybody (except, apparently the 9th Circuit Court and the glory hounds at LCR) realized that we needed an orderly transition from the DADT world to the non-DADT world. As that process continues, it’s not any less important that it take place orderly. Any disruption is unnecessary and needlessly dangerous. (more…)

Today, we celebrate the 90th birthday of the woman who made Ronald Wilson Reagan great, his beloved Nancy.

As I’ve said before, he was born good; she made him great.


Mrs. Reagan’s favorite color was red. Let’s wear red in honor of her day.

When asked in his twitter townhall “what mistakes he had made on the economy and what he would do differently“, the president, Andrew Cline reports, replied that

. . . his biggest mistake was not communicating effectively that recovery will take a really long time. Same “mistake” he made with health-care reform, it turns out. Isn’t it interesting that Obama, this celebrated communicator, claims to believe that he doesn’t communicate well?

* (more…)

For Jefferson’s congenital suspicion of Hamilton’s cavalier way with budgets merely hinted at his much deeper suspicion that Hamilton’s real intention was to increase the national debt in order to justify expanding federal power over the economy, including the power to tax, manipulate credit rates and establish all the accoutrements of a modern nation-state along English lines.  (On this score he was not entirely wrong.)  Debt, then, was the key device that made the whole Hamiltonian scheme possible.

Emphasis addeed.

Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

Seems I inspired a reader to start his own blog.

The Statue of Liberty

Stride Toward Freedom

Battle Cry of Freedom

“. . . land of the free. . . ”

“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?”

“. . . the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. ”

“ . . . secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity . . . ”

” . . . with liberty’s lamp guiding your way . . .”

“. . .  a new nation, conceived in liberty . . .”

“. . . one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

“Let us swear allegiance to a land that’s free,”

“A thoroughfare for freedom beat“

Glenn linked a post last week which really got at the economic problem of the president’s class-warfare rhetoric and his insistence on taxing the “rich”.  Jim Tynen quotes an observer as finding the president “unaware of the link between job creation and the level of taxation on businesses and business owners.”  That former liberal responds:

Look, the rich already have their money. And, duh, they’re good with it. And money is darned handy. Especially when elections season rolls around. They’ll protect the money they have, and they’ll enjoy it.

What we want them to do, however, is invest it so the economy grows again.

Demonizing the “rich” is not a means to create jobs.  Doesn’t the president listen to his own rhetoric?  He has said, “Small businesses produce most of the new jobs in this country.”  And he wants to tax these folks.  If he taxes them more, then they will have less to spend on innovation and expansion and will so create fewer jobs.

Blogress diva Ann Althouse has a smart post on U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin’s “likely” run for Joe McCarthy’s seat in the United States Senate.  The Madison-based law professor wonders at her Congressman’s fund-raising appeal where said Democrat chided those “cynical voices” who doubted her “from the very beginning”, dismissing her as an outspoken lesbian:

I think the problem is that she’s too liberal. But I understand the strategy of disparaging those terrible voters by calling them homophobic and sexist instead of facing the reality that they aren’t as far left as she is. Speaking of “cynical voices.”

Does seem Ms. Baldwin is aping the strategy of all too many gay Democrats.  It’s all about her sexuality, not her policies.  Note, she’s the one bringing up her sexuality.

We don’t need another big-spender in the U.S. Senate, another politician enamored with Obama’s big-government policies.  We need someone committed to cutting the size and limiting the scope of the federal government.  And that individual is not the Obama loyalist from Madison.

To be sure, it would be great to have a lesbian in the Senate.  So, let’s draft Cynthia Yockey to take on Ben Cardin and Tammy Bruce to take on Dianne Feinstein.  Both women would be vast improvements on the incumbents.

I’m LOVING the “new civility,”, aren’t you?

Last Friday, the 47th Vice-President of the United F’ing States, Joseph Robinette “Joe” Biden, Jr., openly and unabashedly said the following at a Teamsters convention in Las Vegas:

“And don’t any of you, by the way, any of you guys vote Republican,” Biden said. “I’m not supposed to say, this isn’t political. …don’t come to me if you do! You’re on your own, Jack!”

Breathtaking, isn’t it? Remember the good old days when the worst thing a VP did was misspell “potato?”

This should pretty much clear up any lingering doubts we may have about the Democrat’s view of the majority of this country after last November. They were ushered into office in 2008 like the Second Coming, only to be stomped like narcs at a biker rally, so of course, no reasonable conservative ever really believed they’d learned anything other than bloody constraint.

That said, to call this man’s outburst a textbook example of petulant impertinence is an understatement. Yes, Biden has a long, notorious history of over-exuberant, emotional outbursts and impulsive rhetoric, but for the life of me, I cannot recall a single instance where an elected official of such stature has so blatantly informed the public that if they dare oppose him, they can go kick rocks.

“Audacious” isn’t nearly the right word for these people. Halperin nailed it…he just needed to widen his target.

ADDENDUM (from Dan):  Imagine if, as part of his official duties, a Republican vice president said when, speaking to an NRA meeting as part of his official duties (i.e., not a campaign function) and said, “And don’t any of you, by the way, any of you guys vote Democrat.”

While we know HRC’s Joe Solmonese endorsed Obama’s campaign so early to show just how besotted he and his associates are with the Democratic Party, we also wonder why the Democrat was so eager to secure the endorsement so early in the cycle.

Well, in Jim Geraghty’s piece on a teachers’ union similarly premature endorsement, we find an explanation:

Number-Cruncher writes in, “I’m under no illusion the NEA will ever endorse a Republican candidate…but why this early? There is no GOP candidate yet, wouldn’t the union membership best be served by at least giving the GOP candidate ‘a chance’ to hear out his or her proposals, thus trying to win the appeal on a bi-partisan manner? I can only think of one reason for this move, the Obama people are going into over drive to get as much into Obama’s coffers as possible, and thus asked for this explicitly.  These are action of a very desperate campaign…on both sides. The Obama administration obviously is not raising enough money; the NEA is losing friends on the Democrat side of the aisle (see Cuomo).”

Emphasis added.  It’s all about the money.  You know all the media bellyaching about the corrupting influence of special interests and campaign cash we here when Republican candidates and conservative organizations raise a lot of money to promote, respectively, themselves and their causes, wonder how much we’ll hear with all the Obama campaign’s shenanigans in order to increase its haul.

Do wonder if any intrepid reporters for the MSM, as part of a renewed commitment to accountability journalism, will investigate to see just how explicitly — and aggressively — the Obama campaign (and maybe the president himself) sought out these endorsements and their concomitant cash.

Lost in last month’s Weinergate nonsense was Obama’s June 9th signing of Executive Order 13575, which bears eerily close resemblance to a United Nations program known as “Agenda 21.”

For those of you unfamiliar, Agenda 21 is a two-decade old, grand plan for global ’Sustainable Development,’ brought to you by the good people over at the UN. George H.W. Bush (thanks a bunch, George) and 177 world leaders agreed to it back in 1992, and in 1995, Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12858, creating a Presidential Council on ‘Sustainable Development.’ This effectively injected the central planning virus into America’s large, churning government machine without the need for any review or discussion by Congress or the American people.

Now, “sustainable development,” on it’s face, sounds harmless enough, until you consider just what it is Agenda 21 purports to accomplish, given the UN’s long-held hostility to the idea of “private property:”

Land… cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes. (more…)