A reader alerted me to an article contending that GOP presidential candidate “Newt Gingrich told a gay man and longtime resident of Oskaloosa[, Iowa] here today that he should vote for President Obama.”  According to Memeorandum, the story is generating quite the buzz in the blogosphere.

Only problem is that the spin of the Democrat who posed the question is at odds with the reality of what the former House Speaker actually said.  He left out a lot of context as the actual video of their encounter reveals:

Here’s what Gingrich actually said:

I think for those for whom the only issue that really matters is the definition of marriage, I won’t get their support and I accept that that’s the reality. On the other hand for those for whom it’s not the central issue in their lives, if they care about job creation, if they care about national security, if they care about a better future for the country at large, then I think I’ll get their support.

Emphasis added.  The Republican is not saying to vote for Obama because he’s gay, but to vote for Obama if gay  marriage is the only issue that really matters to him.  As my friend Rick Sincere (who posted the initial article on Facebook) put it:

The man who asked the question spun Gingrich’s response as quite a lot broader than just the marriage issue. Why he would say vote for Obama is a mystery, though, since Obama has said he’s opposed to gay marriage. (Except in 1996, when he was for it.) (more…)

During his “60 MInutes” interview last week, the most humble new kind of politician to occupy the White House since George W. Bush compared his accomplishments to some of his predecessors:

As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln — just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do. And we’re gonna keep on at it.

More work to do on the economy? Why, Mr. President, have you waited so long to address the sluggish economy?  In his insightful piece on the Democrat’s reelection prospects, Jay Cost observes how unlike FDR, the incumbent spent so little time in his first two years in office on the economy:

Obama turned his attention away from the economy far too quickly. This points to another difference between Obama and Roosevelt. FDR essentially threw everything at the Depression, including the kitchen sink; the legislating of 1933 and 1934 was relentlessly focused on the economy, and voters had no choice but to conclude that Roosevelt was, at the very least, doing everything he could think of. Not so with Obama. Having passed their stimulus, this president and his allies in Congress turned their attention to grander social welfare ambitions, something FDR did not begin to do until 1935, when the economy had already started growing at a robust rate.

Via Instapundit.  Emphasis added.  Interesting how quickly Obama, who won election largely because voters trusted him more to face the financial crisis and fix the economy, turned away after his “stimulus” (er, Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed).  It’s as if he believed that his economic team’s forecasts.

Seems Obama is just not interested in matters economic.  His “Jobs Bill” of 2011 shows little imagination, being basically a scaled-back version of the stimulus of 2009.

Due to an unusually busy December, I have not yet had the chance to finalize the ballot for the most coveted crown in the blogosphere, the diamond tiara bestowed upon that distinguished blogress who commands the respect of gay conservatives, the Grande Conservative Blogress Diva.

Last year, Robin of Berkeley won the coveted tiara with her American Thinker colleague Clarice Feldman joining Neo-neocon in the high-heeled slippers that mark the Regent.

Nominees in that contest included:

• Fausta
• Pam Meister
• Jill of Pundit & Pundette (also at Potluck)
• No Sheeples Here
• Elizabeth Scalia (AKA The Anchoress)
• Ann Althouse
• Sister Toldjah
• Dr. Helen (AKA the Instawife)
• Michelle Malkin
• Tammy Bruce
• Cassy Fiano
• Mary Katherine Ham
• Melissa Clouthier

MeredithAncret nominated http://www.dirtysexandpolitics.com/ but methink she might qualify as a diva herself.  Please feel free to second the above nominees or submit your own either in the comments or in an e-mail.

Two years ago at this time, I identified three of the charities I support every year and do so again at the end of this post.  In that post and this, I lamented how I am inundated with solicitations from various worthy organizations, often receiving ten solicitations a day in my “snail mail,” many from organizations to which I have never donated, some advocating for causes about which I’d never heard.

Today, as I began the process of making my end of the year contributions, I started sorting through the solicitations I had saved in a pile behind my desk.  What struck me was how certain groups sent out numerous missives (some nearly identical) over a very short period of time.  Many offered free gifts, others defined every letter as “urgent,” a handful told me to renew my annual membership to organizations I had never joined.

Some offered free gifts.  Now, I understand that in this world, a group often needs a gimmick to call attention to itself.  And groups that are excessively aggressive in their fundraising do do good work with the funds they receive.  Once again, I wish to highlight three of the groups I support largely because they, unlike so many organizations aren’t that aggressive.

Each does good work in its own way, so, as your finances allow, please join me in supporting these organizations:

1. “The Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund provides immediate financial support for injured and critically ill members of the U.S. Armed Forces and their families. We direct urgently needed resources to post 9-11 Marines and Sailors, as well as members of the Army, Air Force or Coast Guard who serve in support of Marine forces. .”  Click here to donate.
2. The Lamp Community helps “people living with severe mental illness move from streets to homes. Lamp offers immediate access to affordable, safe and permanent housing without requiring sobriety or participation in treatment.”  Click here to donate.
3. “The mission of the Cato Institute is to increase the understanding of public policies based on the principles of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and peace.”  They’ve done yeoman’s work on healthcare reform, promoting free market alternatives and challenging what was once the conventional wisdom on global warming.  Click here to donate.

Two years ago, I wrote, “strive to be generous throughout the year. Even if you don’t support these groups, please find a worthy cause to support. Or a lonely friend to visit. It’s not just through our donations that we can show our generosity.” I repeat that plea today.

Yesterday, when writing about candidate Barack Obama’s pledge, if elected to meet, the then-leader of North Korea, Jim Geraghty quipped that many

. . . of us are pleased that this promise reached its expiration date . . . but one would like to think that any future presidents would not need to be disabused of the notion that their personal charisma and reasonableness could win over unhinged hostile dictators.

Geraghty’s quip reminds us yet again that part of the Democrat’s appeal was that his supposedly superior temperament would provide the cornerstone for the change his election would herald.  Only problem is, save for the reactions of those to the charismatic candidate’s speeches, no one could provide much, if any, evidence that this man had ever used the power of his personality to reconcile opposing parties or effect real reform.

And his charm and reasonableness certainly haven’t helped transform hostile dictators threatening the United States and oppressing their citizens into benign despots making peace with the U.S. and relinquishing their control over their societies.

Yesterday and today, the conservatives blogosphere has been abuzz about an op-ed a successful former governor of a large swing state penned in the Wall Street Journal.  In the Washington Examiner, noting Republican “unhappiness” with presidential field, Byron York wrote that “there is new speculation focusing on [Jeb] Bush after the former Florida governor turned heads [with his] a campaign-like economic manifesto headlined ‘Capitalism and the Right to Rise.’”

Rush Limbaugh, York reports, loved the piece, quipping that he could have written it himself.

Although Jeb Bush e-mailed Karl Rove saying that he’s not running, Jim Geraghty writes that “among those who thought it was too late for anybody to jump in, but . . . boy, what made Jeb Bush decide to write an op-ed like that for the Journal? He has to know that lots of people will interpret that as a trial balloon for a presidential bid . . .”

Rush is right to praise the editorial.  It’s a nice succinct case for capitalism.  Jeb understands rights.  He understands freedom:

We talk about the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to assembly. The right to rise doesn’t seem like something we should have to protect.

But we do. We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise. We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business. We need to let people take risks. We need to let people fail. We need to let people suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And we need to let people enjoy the fruits of good decisions, even good luck.

That is what economic freedom looks like. Freedom to succeed as well as to fail, freedom to do something or nothing. People understand this. Freedom of speech, for example, means that we put up with a lot of verbal and visual garbage in order to make sure that individuals have the right to say what needs to be said, even when it is inconvenient or unpopular. We forgive the sacrifices of free speech because we value its blessings.

But when it comes to economic freedom, we are less forgiving of the cycles of growth and loss, of trial and error, and of failure and success that are part of the realities of the marketplace and life itself. (more…)

In his post last week on Time magazine’s decision to name the Protestor as its “Person of the Year,” Ed Morrissey thought the magazine a “little late to ‘the protester’ story in terms of real impact“:

In 2009, Time had the same opportunity to pick “the protester” when the protests were the Tea Party and Iran’s Green Revolution, which followed from Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, and so on.  Who did they pick?  Ben Bernanke.  When the Tea Party movement actually delivered results at the ballot box in 2010 in a historic midterm drubbing of Barack Obama’s Democrats — they lost 68 seats, the worst outing since 1938 — they could have hailed The Protester then, too.  Who did they pick?  Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

What impact, he wonders, “has ‘the protester’ actually had in 2011?  Has the Occupy Movement, such as it is, had any kind of ground-breaking impact on politics in the way the Tea Party did in 2010 and still does in this cycle?  Not even close, and even people on the Left have begun washing their hands of the literally pointless display.”

Well, the folks in the various Occupy movements did chant the right (er, left) slogans (at least according to our friends in the MSM).

As she closes out her first year in office, Susana Martinez, the first female governor of the Land of Enchantment enjoys sky-high approval ratings, earning “a 65 percent job approval rating from the people of” her state, up from an initial rating just nine months ago.

This according to a Public Opinion Strategies poll which had Martinez leading Diane Denish 50% to 42% justt before the November 2010 election — within one point of the final result. Independents approve of this free-market loving woman by an over 2-to-1 margin (62/39).

She’s even above water among Democrats 49/44. Oh yea, Governor Martinez is a Republican.

UPDATE:   Forget to mention that the Democratic Whip in the state’s House of Representatives called this proud American woman “the Mexican.“

Lori Heine, a frequent commenter on Gay Patriot, believes there must be more like her out in Goldwater country. She’d like to help get together a gay conservative and libertarian group in the Phoenix area. If you live in the vicinity and are tired of being “in the closet” as a Right-of-center gay American, just drop Lori a line.

“Don’t expect the media to make a big deal of it,” writes Rand Simberg about the passing of an artist who devoted much of  theatrical career to challenging Communism.

Although Vaclev Havel stood up for artistic freedom and defended the political systems which allowed for freedom of expression, he never achieved the accolades as did many with fewer accomplishments and a smaller vision.  He was, as Simberg put it,

. . . the wrong kind of dissenter, being too American for Europe. The fact that he never won a Peace Prize, while Yasser Arafat and Barack Obama did, says something very fundamental about the corruption and uselessness of that once-honorable achievement.

(Via Insapundit.)  Why do so many on the left so often champion those voices dissenting not just the systems which oppressed them, but also the Western ideals which promote the very idea of dissent?

Bruce Bawer thinks we need more leaders like Havel.   More on this great man, anon.  Much more.

*from Western intellectuals.

The late Vaclav Havel was a voice of moral clarity on a continent confused by the various ideologies which arose as the threat of communism receded, indeed, which became chic even as those totalitarian regimes oppressed the citizens of nations in eastern and central Europe and challenged democratic republics in the western and southern regions of the continent.

There was a time when such men were commonplace in our society. Or at least when we honored men like him and the ideas they so eloquently expressed. We knew to call out oppressive ideologies for what they were — and warn our fellows of the threats followers of such ideologies posed to free societies like our own — and to men and women across the world.

During World War II, those who produced our entertainment understood the threat of fascism and called it what it was. In Watch on the Rhine, for example, Paul Lukas‘s Kurt Muller “I fight against fascism. That is my trade.”  And he wins and Oscar.

How many other films were produced in that era which had strong characters exposing the evils of that system, with characters like Lukas’s Muller who had suffered under it.  He was a German.  The system was evil and not the people (nor the nation itself).  (Am now watching Keeper of the Flame which seems to have a simlilar theme.)

So, this leads me to wonder where are the films where strong characters take a strong stand against Islamofascism?  And where are the characters, say an Iranian gay man, who suffered under such regimes and speak out strongly for their overthrow as they tell us how that system oppresses their fellow Persians.

Or a film depicting an Arab heroine fighting the ideology which prevents her from reaching her full potential while refusing to punish the men who rape her sisters..

Earlier today, Bruce reported that one of the truly great liberators, a voice of  moral clarity on a confused continent, passed.

Just moments ago, on Facebook, Glenn Reynolds reported that on the other side of the Eurasian landmass, a man who was very much the opposite of Vaclev Havel met his reward:  ”Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s mercurial and enigmatic leader, has died.”

Havel was one of the first leaders of a nation that has long languished under communism.  Kim is a leader of one of the last nations still beholden to the communist ideology.  For the sake of the people on the northern half of the Korean peninsula, let us hope the regime he headed will suffer the fate of the regime Havel helped bring down.

In a letter to the New York Times explaining why Israeli Prime Minister Binnyamin Netanyahu “respectfully declined” to write an op-ed piece for the old gray lady, his senior advisor Ron Dermer provides his correspondent with many examples of the paper’s bias, including this one:

Yet instead of trying to balance these views with a different opinion, it would seem as if the surest way to get an op-ed published in the New York Times these days, no matter how obscure the writer or the viewpoint, is to attack Israel. Even so, the recent piece on “Pinkwashing,” in which Israel is vilified for having the temerity to champion its record on gay-rights, set a new bar that will be hard for you to lower in the future.

Pinkwashing, as Matthew Ackerman reported last month

. . . refers to the efforts by the state of Israel and Israel advocacy organizations to promote Israel’s liberal treatment of its gay population, which is certainly the freest, by an extreme long shot, in its region and perhaps in the entire Western world, where even San Francisco may not be as welcoming to gays as Tel Aviv.

The attractiveness of this kind of argument is easy to see. Because Israel is seen most harshly in the West by the left, it is the “progressive” case for Israel that must be made. (Evangelicals and conservatives, presumably, will go on loving the Jewish state no matter how large or, shall we say, exuberant, the Tel Aviv gay pride parade becomes.) Since the left today reflexively voices its concern over gay rights, the thinking goes, highlight sexual freedom in Israel.

Despite the facts on the ground, many “progressive” voices, including those otherwise sympathetic to gay causes, bend over backwards to fault Israel, even creating the term “pinkwashing” to fault those who would highlight the rights openly gay people enjoy in the Jewish State, freedoms denied them in most nations in the Middle East. (more…)

To see just one reason why fewer and fewer right-of-center Angelenos subscribe to the Los Angeles Times, take a gander at this front page puff piece on a left-wing playwright’s revisioning of Charles Dickens’s Christmas Carol. The story is not even about a play that has been produced, but merely about a script a man has written:

Ebenezer Scrooge is a corporate banker, busy foreclosing on the hapless masses. Bob Cratchit and his beleaguered family live in a chilly tent in an anonymous Occupy encampment. The ghost of Christmas future sports a flowing black robe of taped-together trash bags and plastic sheeting. Tiny Tim dies.

At least that’s how the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s resident playwright, Michael Gene Sullivan, has re-imagined “A Christmas Carol” for the troubled 21st century.

Truth be told, it wasn’t much of a stretch to place Charles Dickens‘ Victorian classic into today’s Occupy world. And that, as Sullivan would be the first to tell you, is exactly the point. Dickens’ novella was written in the heart of the “Hungry ’40s,” a time of labor unrest, unemployment and starvation across 19th century Europe.

Not much of a stretch to place this in today’s Occupy world?  Um, what?  Hate to inform Mr. Sullivan or Miss La Ganga, the writer of the column, but the folks shivering in Occupy encampments chose to “suffer” in such circumstances.  At least those who actually occupied the tents in the various Occupy encampments.

Despite all we’ve learned about these movements and the costs its Los Angeles manifestation incurred on the city Miss La Ganga’s paper serves (which her own paper reported), she still has a rosy few of this outfit.  Nowhere in her article does she question the playwright’s idealistic view.

Do wonder if the Times has ever run a front-page puff piece on an unproduced play — or offered such favorable coverage to a conservative artist’s revisioning of a classic work.  Perhaps, there is purpose to the paper’s editors choice to feature this play on their front-page–to alert deep-pocketed movers and shakers in the entertainment business to this left-wing script.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Reader T finds another flaw in the script, “Also, Bob Cratchit WORKED for Ebenezer Scrooge. The fact that he WORKED disqualifies Cratchit as being an occupy protestor.”

From the NY Times:

Vaclav Havel, the writer and dissident whose eloquent dissections of Communist rule helped to destroy it in revolutions that brought down the Berlin Wall and swept Havel himself into power, died on Sunday. He was 75.

A shy yet resilient, unfailingly polite but dogged man who articulated the power of the powerless, Mr. Havel spent five years in and out of Communist prisons, lived for two decades under close secret-police surveillance and endured the suppression of his plays and essays. He served 14 years as president, wrote 19 plays, inspired a film and a rap song and remained one of his generation’s most seductively nonconformist writers.

All the while, he came to personify the soul of the Czech nation. His moral authority and his moving use of the Czech language cast him as the dominant figure during Prague street demonstrations in 1989 and as the chief behind-the-scenes negotiator who brought about the peaceful transfer of power known as the Velvet Revolution, a revolt so smooth that it took just weeks to complete, without a single bullet fired.

He was chosen as democratic Czechoslovakia’s first president — a role he insisted was more duty than aspiration — and after the country split in January 1993, he became president of the Czech Republic. He linked the country firmly to the west, clearing the way for the Czech Republic to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1999 and the European Union five years later.

All free people and those desiring to be free weep at the passing of an important moral voice to our cause.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

UPDATE (from Dan): A great man has fallen.

According to AP, the soldier “accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive items to” WikiLeaks, is using his sexual orientation as a defense:

The young Army intelligence specialist accused of passing government secrets spent his 24th birthday in court Saturday as his lawyers argued his status as a gay soldier before the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” played an important role in his actions.

Lawyers for Pfc. Bradley Manning began laying out a defense to show that his struggles as a gay soldier in an environment hostile to homosexuality contributed to mental and emotional problems that should have barred him from having access to sensitive material.

Gay groups should join us in denouncing this tactic.  It makes gay people out to be not just victims, but individuals lacking any kind of moral fiber, willing to betray their country when the going gets tough.  Tens of thousands of gay man and women served in the military in similarly “hostile” environments and did not break under pressure.  Indeed, many, if not most, of these individuals distinguished themselves in our nation’s armed forces.

We should not stand by when a man uses his homosexuality as an excuse for betraying his country.

Those who want to improve the image of gay people should join us in denouncing Mr. Manning and in faulting his defense team for using his sexuality to excuse his criminal acts.  What he did was wrong.  And just as there have long been bad apples among our number (a Mr. K. Philby comes to mind), so too have long been similarly rotten straight people (see A. Hiss).

Gay people (and those who presume to represent us) should not make excuses for the bad apples among us — particularly when they claim their sexuality made them rotten.  It speaks poorly of people like us if we accept this man’s defense.

And we at GayPatriot do not.

On Thursday, Glenn Reynolds linked a post from Daniel Mitchell which, like most posts from that libertarian scholar, merit your attention.  Mitchell corrected a New York Times reporter eager to peddle the notion of horrible, no good, very bad Republicans unwilling to raise taxes, reminding her that the “only budget agreement that actually produced a balanced budget was the 1997 deal, and that deal contained tax cuts rather than tax increases!”

Guess she just didn’t learn the lesson the Gipper did in 1982 when you negotiate to raise one dollar of taxes for every three dollars of cuts, you get the higher tax rates, but you don’t get the lower spending.  He also reminds us of the “dishonest Washington definition” of “spending cut” as something which “occurs any time politicians increase spending by less than previously planned.”

Something to bear in mind for those gnashing their teeth at Republican attempts to reduce federal spending.  It might help if Congress did away with the “baseline budgeting” that began with the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Having exposed the flaw in the reporter’s wistful musings about the days when both parties considered tax hikes (as a means to balance the budget, Mitchell then asks those who think “the 1993 tax hike was successful” to “read this post and you’ll see that the Clinton White House admitted it was a failure in early 1995.”

Last night, I finally got around to watching A Single Man and wish I had seen it on the big screen.  Although the script had a numerous problems, the art direction and cinematography made the flick a real treat.  And Colin Firth‘s portrayal of the solitude of gay man in the early 1960s struggling with the recent death of his life-companion paralleled Katharine Hepburn‘s portrayal of the solitude of a woman in middle age in the mid-1950s confronting her emotional longings (in Summertime).  It really was that good.

Perhaps, it is unfair to fault the film for lacking a traditional narrative.  Perhaps that was not its purpose.  It sought instead to show what it was like for a man to bear the grief of such a significant loss in a time much different from our own.

Visually it was absolutely stunning.

It did make me feel — as good movies tend to do.  And think — as better ones do.

Had I been awake enough last night to write a review, I would have offered a less enthusiastic appreciation of the film than I do today.  The plot seem contrived, the ending relationship too ambiguous, some of the dialogue (when Firth’s Falconer was teaching) too politically correct.  And it’s tiresome to see gay movies where the filmmakers portray a same-sex relationship in a good light while showing straight ones as flawed (his neighbor/close friend Julianne Moore‘s recollections of her marriage).

All that said, like the Hepburn movie, it does remind us of the power of human relationships. As George says to the Nicholas Hoult‘s Kenny, a student infatuated with him:

You know the only thing that’s made the whole thing worthwhile has been those few times when I’ve been able to really, truly connect with another human being.

Perhaps it was the power of the imagery that has caused the movie to leave such a sweet impression now nearly twenty-four hours after first I saw it.  Last night, I considered more its flaws.  Today, I remember the images.

And in a visual medium, perhaps that is paramount.  And the flick once again does remind us of the importance of relationships.

On Tuesday, several left-of-center Facebook friends linked posts from a left-wing blog contending that Mitt Romney had adopted a Ku Klux Klan slogan to guide his presidential campaign.  Quickly as charges leveled against conservatives and Republicans on such blogs are wont to do, that allegation was soon repeated unexamined on such news outlets as The Washington Post and on MSNBC.

By Thursday, even the New York Times was reporting that Mr. Romney had not indeed repeated the KKK slogan:

MSNBC apparently did not contact the Romney campaign for comment before it briefly reported on Wednesday morning that  “you may not hear Mitt Romney say ‘Keep America American’ anymore, because it was a rallying cry for the K.K.K. group.” The anchor credited AMERICAblog; the graphic on the screen read, “Romney’s KKK Slogan?”

Conservative blogs called out MSNBC for the report, and when executives at MSNBC and NBC News saw that, they were disturbed that the blog’s observation was reported as fact, without any added reporting. In a statement on Wednesday evening MSNBC said its report was “irresponsible and incendiary” and “showed an appalling lack of judgment.” A Romney campaign spokeswoman said it was pleased that MSNBC had “issued a correction and apology.”

The Washington Post also issued an apology on Thursday for factual mistakes in its blog post about the phrase. The correction stated that it “should have contacted the Romney campaign for comment before publication.”

Via Instapundit.  Emphasis added.  Fascinating the alacrity of such supposedly non-partisan purveyors of the news to pick up stories from left-wing blogs — and to repeat them without contacting the conservative criticized.