The deep, deep-blue state of Oregon is one of those states where, under law, motorists are not allowed to pump their own gas; because the act of putting gasoline into an automobile is one of those highly technical, very tricky tasks that requires a professional to perform it. However, Oregon recently passed a law allowing some gas stations in the hick parts of the state to offer self-service.  Hilarity, in the form of Facebook comments from panicked liberals, ensued.

Not a good idea, there are lots of reason to have an attendant helping, one is they need a job too. Many people are not capable of knowing how to pump gas and the hazards of not doing it correctly. Besides I don’t want to go to work smelling of gas when I get it on my hands or clothes. I agree Very bad idea.”…

Kamala Harris replaced Barbara Boxer as California’s junior senator. Aside from being a left-wing dingbat, Boxer will always be remembered for her rude and condescending treatment an Army General during a senate hearing.

Boxer immediately interrupted him before he could answer one of her questions. “You know, do me a favor,” a clearly agitated Boxer said. “Could you say ‘senator’ instead of ‘ma’am?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Walsh replied.

“It’s just a thing, I worked so hard to get that title, so I’d appreciate it, yes, thank you,” she said.

“Yes, senator,” he answered.

See you next Tuesday, senator.

Anyway, her successor is just a chip off the old entitled socialist block. After rudely interrupting a witness at a senate hearing and refusing to let him answer her question, the Republican chairing the hearing had to cut her off, while she rolled her eyes like a spoiled brat.

“The senator will suspend. The chair is going to exercise his right to allow the witness to answer the question,” Burr said to eye rolls from Harris. “The committee is on notice to provide the witnesses the courtesy, which has not been extended all the way across, extend the courtesy for questions to get answered.”

Madonna left her English castle and flew by private jet to New York to talk to the editors of a magazine about how oppressed she is.

I know a lot of people would go, ‘Oh, that’s ridiculous for you to say that. You’re a successful white, wealthy pop star,’ but I’ve had the s*** kicked out of me for my entire life, and a large part of that is because I’m female and also because I refuse to live a conventional life.

The Trump-voters who lost their jobs to the Obama economy really feel your pain, Sugar lumps.

And then she adds (because I think she desperately wants people to know this).

“I have lovers who are three decades younger than me.”

And, of course, what is a celebrity interview without anti-Trump virtue-signaling. (There’s got to be an upgraded term for when people really go out of their way to show political correctness. Virtue Broadcasting, maybe? Virtue Nova?)

On election night… we were truly praying. We were praying. It was just like watching a horror show. And then she [her friend] was reading from the Quran, and I was reading from the Zohar. We were doing everything: lighting candles, meditating, praying, offering our lives to God forever, if only.

IOW: “I spent election night with a Muslim. You should be blinded by the nuclear flash of virtue I’m signaling.”

If Madge were still young and still relevant, she wouldn’t have to insist that she’s still young and still relevant.

Apparently, there’s a lot of cat-fighting going on behind the scenes at the next Presidential debate. CNN’s Anderson Cooper and ABC’s Martha Radditz have both decided the debate really ought to be about them, and are behaving accordingly.

They are feuding over petty things, such as ‘Who does each particular topic?’ Both Anderson and Martha want to shine, to be tough on the candidates, and not to be accused of bias. There’s a lot at stake. So there’s a lot of turf-grabbing going on — attempts to box each other out to get the territory they are most well-suited for … They are supposed to be deep in rehearsals — the anchors and their teams have met a bunch of times, and the atmosphere has been acrimonious at best, at all levels, from the producers right up to the execs.

Meh, we know they’re both part of Team Hillary. What Donald Trump ought to do is bring a couple “I’m With Hillary” buttons to the debate and the first time Andy or Marty interrupts him, or cuts him off, or softballs Hillary (all of which will happen), he should cross the stage and say, “If you’re going to behave like that, you might as well be wearing these.”

Sometimes people get to a certain age and completely lose their filter. [Video at the link]

Asked by a street reporter whether a gay president or a female president will take office first, Rivers replied, “We already have it with Obama.”

“You know Michelle is a tr*nny,” she went on. “A transgender. Weall know.”

Tammy Bruce has her own ‘Con,’ who knew?

Conservative dynamo Tammy Bruce is also celebrating her 5th anniversary — as the first conservative talk show host to go all-in on new media. The  Tammy Bruce Show is strictly on TalkStreamLive or available on podcast to members who join her “Tammy Army.”

Tammy runs an electronic “Chat Room,” where her fans can exchange observations, humor, and information. To say thanks, and to make these electronic friendships more personal, Tammy hosted a “meet-up” this weekend.

Our table was much like all the other tables, ringing with sharp, poignant and funny conversation.  A few topics:

• Iraq being Obama’s greatest achievement…of failure.
• Dave Brat’s defeat of Eric Cantor and what it means for the 2014 election
• Yes, Dr. Milton Wolfe has a good shot of winning the Kansas senate primary.
• How gold prices are impacted annually by the Indians celebrating the Festival of Lights/Diwali
• The degree of potential criminality behind the “lost” Lois Lerner emails related to the targeting of Tea Party groups by the IRS, and the lack of media coverage of this odious scandal.
• “Good, bad, and ugly” – The politics specific to Texas, Virginia and California.  Of most interest was the news that Virgina’s Republicans checkmated Gov. Terry McAuliffe  by passing a budget excluding the Medicaid expansion the governor sought and forbidding him from unilaterally expanding program.

Sounds like a fun time.

I would bet a Meet-Up of Tammy Bruce fans would be, in general, a much more mentally stable and positive group of people than those who gather at DailyKos’s Nutroots Nation.

It’s been said that homosexuality is like a penis; it’s perfectly fine to have it, but if you’re constantly shoving it in people’s faces, don’t expect them to react well; even humungous gay icons.

In a new interview with the Times’ Patrick Healy, Kramer reveals that Streisand found some of the subject matter in the story uncomfortable, despite her role as an icon in the gay community.

“I said, ‘I really think it’s important that after eons of watching men and women make love in the movies, it’s time to see two men do so,’” Kramer told Healy. “I bought her a book of very beautiful art pictures of two men making love, and she found it very distasteful.”

I guess Babs will have to be sent to Tolerance Camp along with everyone else who was put off by Michael Sam’s televised tonsil hockey with his BF.

When pandering to a group of people so pathetically insecure and high-strung they consider their lives and loves meaningless without a stamp of approval from the Government, it never hurts to go full Drama Queen.

Two years after getting ahead of President Barack Obama in saying he supported gay marriage, Biden on Saturday called LGBT workplace discrimination “close to barbaric” and “bizarre” in a speech to the Human Rights Campaign.

Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” video from 1984 was less over the top.  Has anyone in the Obama regime ever described the actions of the Taliban or Palestinian Terrorists as “barbaric?”

Blogress Ann Althouse who, in 2008, thought Obama “was the better bet, compared to the GOP alternative” recently transcribed this video she watched on Instapundit featuring the sage diva, Camille Paglia, a woman who not just backed, but also contributed to, Barack Obama four years ago:

Not least: I consider him, now, one of the most racially divisive and polarizing figures ever. I think it’s going to take years to undo the damage to relationships between the races.

Read the whole thing. Now, I’m going to watch the video.

UPDATE:  Just watched the video and it’s well worth your time.  Love what she says early on about art.  She’s spot on.  Spot on.  Segment quoted above is just before 12 minute mark.

NB:  In the original version of this post, I neglected to include the name of the person whose remarks Althouse had transcribed.

With just three days until the Dark Knight Rises, we at GayPatriot have been wondering whether Anne Hathaway can hold a candle to the cattiest of Catwomen, Eartha Kitt:

Perhaps we should poll our readers to see who was the cattiest. . . . Was it Miss Kitt, or perhaps Halle Berry or maybe Lee Meriwether, not to mention Julie Newmar or who could forget Michelle Pfeiffer?

Seems my gay friends are torn between Eartha and Julie while my straight male friends gravitate toward Michelle.

At 0:49 below, Audrey Hepburn demonstrates how gay Americans should have responded to President Obama’s statement on gay marriage yesterday:

Like everything with Obama, all we get is “words, words, words.”

This is not just a gay conservative talking.  Several voices on the left have found that there’s not much there there in the president’s sudden shift on same-sex marriage.  At the Gawker, John Cook calls the statement a “cowardly cop-out”:  “it seems fairly clear from the network’s coverage that his announcement amounts to much less than meets the eye. He now believes that gay couples should be able to marry.”

At the far left magazine Mother Jones, Adam Serwer reports that his colleague . . .

. . . David Corn spoke with an administration source and asked whether the president recognized gay marriage as a right. The official replied, “He has always said that it is a state issue, and he’s not suggesting changing that. He did not support the North Carolina amendment, but he’s not saying he will bring up a piece of federal legislation on gay marriage. This is how he feels himself about the issue, and he leaves it to the states.”

Emphasis added.  He’s not bringing up legislation?!?  And all my left-leaning gay friends on Facebook are so giddy about the statement; Obama’s just leaving it to the states.

Shouldn’t they be insisting that he show us he loves us by putting some political capital on the line and backing legislation to make federal recognition of gay relationships a reality?

He’s like the guy who tells his beloved how much he loves her, tells her wants to get married, but refuses to buy a ring or set a date.

I am not entirely comfortable with the term, “catfight” in describing the confrontation between these two Titanesses of the silver screen–but best screen confrontation between women on screen was not as catchy — and quite clunky a title. Well, I found a better; it may lack the punch of the original, but at least I’m comfortable with it.

Here, we see Irene Papas, one of few actresses to actually get the woman whose face launched a thousand ships.  Helen of Argos, later of Troy, finally of Argos is a far more complex woman than the screen beauty portrayed in most screen versions of the Trojan War.  In a man’s world, she knows how to use her feminine charms to win her way, even if it means defying her patron deity, Aphrodite.  I do not say this lightly:  Papas is the greatest living actress.

And when the divine Miss Kate plays Helen’s erstwhile mother-in-law, Hecuba, in The Trojan Women their confrontation just sizzles.

In a war fought over Helen, Hecuba lost her husband and her sons, all that was dear to her. And in the clip above, we believe that when Hepburn, er, Hecuba, asks Menelaus to kill Helen, she really wants to see Papas dead.

The face launched a thousand ships, carrying warriors which would kill thousands of Trojan men.

Before I drove cross country in 2010, I had never heard of Southern cooking diva Paula Deen, but I credit her for the harmony of our readers’ dinner in Atlanta that spring.  You see, when we gathered in that august town, I was concerned; one of our critics (with whom I have corresponded at least since 2006) would be joining us — along with two of our most outspoken conservative readers, one who, two years after the 2008 election, still sported a McCain-Palin sticker (with the Arizona Senator’s name removed) on his truck.

I had feared I might have to play peacemaker.  Well, I didn’t have to.  I don’t know how Paula Deen came up, but as soon as she did, all my Atlanta readers found something to talk about — how they delighted in this diva, enjoying her books, TV show and recipes.  They discussed which ones they had tried and home and celebrated her appreciation for butter.  Paula Deen, in short, bridged the political divide.

Aware of this woman’s capacity to foster harmony, my ears naturally perked up when my correspondent James Richardson alerted me this weekend to an article he wrote, taking to task “Northern” food critics who would bring this Southern diva down:

“Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later,” [New York-based foodie Anthony] Bourdain said Tuesday. He has also previously called Deen the “worst, most dangerous person to America” for her country cooking indulgence. Even 2011 James Beard winner Jose Andres said that Dean should “endorse a vegetable or fruit” instead of a diabetes drug.

But the Bronx cheer for apparent chef-turned-rebel terrorist Deen, a prototypical Southern mother with a lifetime’s recipes of irredeemably deep-fried dishes, is less a reflection of the culinary elitism that runs through Bourdain’s vice-ridden travelogues than the regionalist snobbery that fuels its appeal.

. . . .

From food to faith, the mythic Dixie–soulful and abundant, passionate and insubmissive–has always clashed with the rigidly cosmopolitan north, which keeps an ever watchful eye on we, her unlearned, drawling wards. (more…)

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.

As you know, we here at GayPatriot define a diva as a strong woman who commands the respect of men.  And once again, it’s time to pick that blogress who best defines that quality.  In past years, I’ve linked previous nominees and diva-esque blogresses.  This year, I’ll link those past posts when I get a moment, but for now will leave it up to you to nominate those most deserving of this coveted honor.

We’ll keep nominations open for one week, through December 15 at which point Bruce and I will pick those lucky ladies to appear on the ballot.

Athena likes me:

Announcing Ann Coulter was joining the organization’s Advisory Council as Honorary Chair with the official title of “Gay Icon”, Christopher Barron, Chairman of GOProud’s Board, called the diva best-selling author “a brilliant and fearless leader of the conservative movement”:

. . . we are honored to have her as part of GOProud’s leadership. . . . Ann helped put our organization on the map. Politics is full of the meek, the compromising and the apologists – Ann, like GOProud, is the exact opposite of all of those things.

Indeed she is.  Quite the opposite.  Here’s Ann on C-SPAN.

The lady doesn’t mince words.

RELATED: Reconsidering Ann Coulter

It seems that whenever I fault the news media for going overboard about Sarah Palin, any Palin-hater within earshot will rebuke me for demanding that people refrain from criticizing the accomplished Alaska reformer.  They contend I wish to silence Palin critics. Heck, I don’t even seek to silence the rabid Palin-obsessives, just lament that those who criticize the charismatic conservative celebrity (more often than not) exaggerate her flaws, if not make up (or truncate) comments she has made or views she holds, all while refusing to acknowledge Sarah Palin’s strengths as an individual and her record as an office-holder.

Why can’t some people just express their disagreement with Mrs. Palin in a civil tone — and take the time to familiarize himself with her actual arguments?  Those who question her competence to hold office should at least consider her actual record in office.  But, some in the news media would rather ask gotcha questions than inquire into that record.

Despite the ignorance of many Palin critics of what that Republican woman actually did in Alaska, she was an accomplished reformer who had worked with Republicans and Democrats alike while governor of the Last Frontier.  Before questioning Palin’s qualifications to lead, Ann Althouse did just that when commenting on a movie based on the Alaskan’s accomplishments:

The material — which impresses some people, even to the point of getting confused into thinking that the movie is good — shows Sarah Palin’s rise to power in Alaska and her excellent achievements and immense popularity as governor. The problem is that all of this happened in the context of boldly and bravely challenging the corrupt Republican establishment. This made her very popular with Democrats in Alaska. (more…)

It seems that whenever I hear a TV show is well-written, I learn that a number of its writers are gay.  I would dare say that a number of those who helped provide the set-ups and dialogue for Lucille Ball’s pioneering physical comedy were guys like us.

The funny lady all but confirmed this in a 1980 interview from People magazine quoted in an Advocate article paying tribute yesterday to a woman one man called “the true gay icon”:

Ball was asked her thoughts on a number of subjects, including gay rights. “It’s perfectly all right with me,” she replied. “Some of the most gifted people I’ve ever met or read about are homosexual. How can you knock it?”