I could talk about Lance Armstrong’s recent shameless exploitation of his prior shameless lying, but y’all know I like the economic topics. And one aspect of honesty is, calling things by their right name. To his credit, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey recently called Obamacare by its right name:

Mackey told NPR[,] “Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. In fascism, the government doesn’t own the means of production, but they do control it — and that’s what’s happening with our health care programs and these reforms.”

Of course that set off the howling spree, and now we have a partial climbdown:

“I made a bad choice of language,” Mackey said on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show… I was trying to distinguish it between socialism so I took the dictionary definition of fascism, which is when the means of production are still owned privately but the government controls it — that’s a type of fascism. However, I realize that that word has so much baggage associated with it…So I do regret using that word…

Funny: Leftists never seem to regret it, when they use the word.

But Mackey rightly emphasizes the positive: “What I do believe in is free enterprise capitalism, and I’d like to see our healthcare system really unleash [its] power…” – Nice to hear that.

From GOProud today:

(Washington, D.C.) – “Words fail to describe the horror of the massacre at Sandy Hook. Our hearts and prayers go out to the family and friends of the victims of this incomprehensible attack.

“As policy makers begin to look at how we can prevent further tragedies like this, we felt that it was important for us to weigh in as an organization. GOProud is an organization of constitutional conservatives – gay and straight alike. We believe that our Constitution is a sacred document and that the rights it grants should be protected and defended.

“In the weeks and months ahead, policy makers in Washington and in state capitols around the country will look to find ways to prevent another Sandy Hook from happening – these will be important and necessary debates. We hope that as they debate issues like preventing gun deaths, the impact of violent video games, and the role of our mental health system in this country that they will also remember our 1st Amendment right to free speech, our 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, and our 5th Amendment right to due process.

“We urge lawmakers to heed the words of Benjamin Franklin, who cautioned: Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)

Bruce and I have similar worldviews, but very different ways of expressing them.  Yesterday, shortly after reading Glenn Reynolds’s post saying Obama should resign for dispatching law enforcement to arrest* the man who made a crude film attacking the Muslim prophet Mohammed, I shared the link with some conservative Facebook friends, asking if they agreed with Glenn’s conclusion.

At the time, I wasn’t ready to post on the topic, wanted to sort out my thoughts a bit before I did.  A few moments after I posed my question on Facebook, I checked the blog and found that Bruce has already run with the story; he, however, did not include as question mark as I had.  My co-blogger agrees with Glenn; Barack Obama should resign.

Now, given that Mr. Obama’s resignation would mean the inauguration of Joe Biden as President of the United States, I tend to be wary of resignation as an option, preferring instead defeat at the ballot box.  And the Democrat’s actions this past week (not to mention what we’ve learned in the past two weeks) show him to be a most ineffective chief executive, leading from behind, as it were, particularly in regards to this crude and offensive film.

The White House dispatched the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to call a crackpot preacher with a tiny congregation and ask him to end his mean-spirited diatribes.  The Obama team asked YouTube to remove the film.  And now, they’ve gone and gotten the filmmaker arrested.  He may have misrepresented the Muslim prophet in a mean-spirited manner, but the First Amendment protects his right to say offensive things.

The First Amendment also protects the rights of others to criticize the film for its flaws and defend the faith he faults.  That is how critics should respond.

And that is how the President of the United States should have responded to those, including Egypt’s President, who demanded the United States prosecute the filmmaker and/or censor the film.

Eugene Volokh thinks “suppression” of such films “would likely lead to more riots and more deaths, not less. Here’s why”:

Behavior that gets rewarded, gets repeated.  (more…)

Disgraceful. 

I agree with Glenn Reynolds:  Obama should resign.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

As some gay activists are planning a “kiss-in” at Chick-fil-A franchises across the country today, the LA Times reports that a number of activists are “questioning whether such outward displays of affection will ultimately help or hurt their cause“:

But even among LGBT supporters, some wonder whether such an in-your-face act might be too provocative, or amount to taunting.

“I respect not patronizing their establishment … but by taunting them in their establishment is hate-filled and inciting anger and hate,” said one commenter on a Causes.com page urging people to participate in the kiss-in.

Suggested another: “Its okay to disagree but its not okay to confront a person on their views in such an aggressive and provocative manner. There are forums for that.”

Via Instapundit.  Well, I did kiss a guy at Chick-fil-A Wednesday night and had he been more boyfriend, the kiss would have been, well, a little more affectionate.  Anyway, I’m with Ed Morrissey (and Mike Huckabee!) on this one:

. . . there is nothing wrong with protesting over Chick-fil-A’s political connections or ownership’s political views, as long as protestors obey the law in doing so.  That is a perfectly acceptable free-speech, free-market approach to disagreement within commerce.  I’d rather see kiss-ins than lawsuits, for instance, and certainly more than seeing politicians extort businessmen to support their political agendas, as is exactly what Thomas Menino and Rahm Emanuel attempted to do in Boston and Chicago, respectively.  Protests that don’t block customers from accessing the business or act violently are a good release valve for a free society.

Now, there is a difference between kissing someone out of affection and kissing someone to make a statement. And the latter seems to serve only to politicize an intimate gesture.  So, the question we should ask is how will the kiss-in be seen? (more…)

Our reader V the K linked this report about Sandra Fluke’s distaste for opposing points of view:

As a student at Cornell and treasurer of a pro-choice organization at the school, Sandra Fluke, helped shut down a pro-life speech on Cornell’s campus by counter protesting. She argued that a pro-life organization at Cornell was about “manipulating [students'] emotions” with misleading statistics about abortion.

So, if this organization offered misleading statistics, why then didn’t Ms. Fluke take it upon herself to demonstrate their inaccuracy and argue the merits of her own position?  If this story is true [and it appears it may not be*], this woman is not much interested in debating ideas, but in preventing the airing of views with which she disagrees.

In this, she has much in common with her ideological confrères in the Occupy Movement.

Just over a week ago, “unruly Occupy students at American University in Washington, D.C., shouted down Republican governor Jan Brewer of Arizona on Friday, forcing her to flee the room with aid from security guards.”  H/t:  Instapundit.

This week, they disrupted “a panel discussion [at AIPAC] led by Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami, FL led a discussion about Stopping Iran: Can the West End Iran’s Nuclear Drive?”

In the fall of 1964, liberal students at the University of California/Berkeley launched the “Free Speech Movement”; they wanted to end the school policy preventing student groups from operating “on campus if they engaged in any kind of off-campus politics, whether electoral, protest or even oratorical.”  Now, liberal students want to prevent their ideological adversaries from expressing their views.

They times, they are a-changing.

* (more…)

Sunlight, I’ve always believed, is the best disinfectant.

We should not hinder people from voicing their opinions, no matter how hateful because only when they voice them can we counter them.  Today, in her inimitable style, Amy Alkon, an Angelena diva who quips that if she “were any more gay-friendly,” she’d “have a girlfriend instead of a boyfriend”*, takes a school superintendent to task for labeling “a column in a school newspaper that criticized homosexuality as ‘bullying.”

Why should people be scared of someone voicing such an opinion?  Shouldn’t their silly commentary provide an easy target, a jumping off point for an argument in defense of homosexuality?   Why do some folks wish to suppress opposing opinions?

Basically, Amy tells this superintendant to grow a pair:

Look, I was bullied. Girls followed me through the halls in junior high and taunted me with anti-Semitic epithets. When it started to get serious (when they started throwing chairs in my path), I told my dad, and he went to the principal and it stopped.

The point is, there are measures that can be taken before we start crumpling up the Constitution. And sorry, but you don’t have a right to not be offended, not even if you’re in high school. What you should learn to do is think and write and debate well so you can see that your point of view wins the day. And if somebody throws a chair at you, and there’s nobody to go to the principal’s office for you…maybe that’s the real problem we should be dealing with, but…

Emphasis added.  Seems Amy’s got more balls than the school superintendant who has a man’s name (Todd Carlson).

A gay couple had called the school and complained after they had read the “offensive” column.  Carlson responded to their complaint.  They would have done better to have written a strongly worded letter intended for publication in the journal.

Via Instapundit.

* (more…)

Ed Morrissey doesn’t think so:

Do teachers in public-school systems have a “special ethics” code that prevents them from publicly speaking on policy issues?  Lake County Schools in Florida suspended Jerry Buell, a high-school teacher with a reportedly impeccable record for 22 years, for posting his opposition to New York’s new gay-marriage law, and will start termination proceedings against him.  The case will test First Amendment rights and encroaching political correctness . . . .

The school district suspended Buell, who had been the school’s Teacher of the Year in 2010-11, because they are concerned that gay students might be “frightened or intimidated” in his class.  That’s a pretty thin rationale for punishing someone over what appears to be more or less mainstream opposition to the gay-marriage law.  Even saying the above in a classroom would be a thin rationale for disciplinary action, unless school districts will be taking action against all teachers who talk politics in the classroom, and a Facebook posting is not a classroom speech.

If this were at a private school, then the school would entirely be within its rights to dismiss the man.  But, a public school should only be able to dismiss him if it holds all its teachers to a similar standard, suspending them from publicly speaking out on political issues.

Could Christian students be intimidated if they heard a teacher speak out against the public expression of their faith?

Oh, and one more thing, my favorite political science professor is college was a Marxist who regularly denounced Ronald Reagan and his policies, yet I wasn’t frightened or intimidated in his class, despite my open support of the Gipper.  That professor may have been wrong about politics (and economics), but he could still teach in an even-handed manner — and show respect for those with whom he disagreed.

Do hope the PC police in Lake County, Florida bear that mind as they weigh the case of Mr. Buell.

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…)

Every year at LA’s Gay Pride festival, a handful of unhappy extreme social conservatives religious fanatics protest the parade. This year, I counted six. Wrong as I believe them to be, I have always supported their right to assemble peacefully and express their grievances. We should be able to be strong enough to face their criticism.

This year, I was pleased to see some counter-protesters standing in front of them brandishing their own signs.

Ain’t free speech grand?

Here’s another piece of wisdom the Gipper recorded on one of his many note cards, included in the wonderful recent release, The Notes: Ronald Reagan’s Private Collection of Stories and Wisdom:

One way to distinguish truth from all its counterfeits is by its modesty:  truth demands only to be heard among others while its counterfeiters demand that others be silenced.

He attributes this bit of wisdom to Sydney Harris.

Every now and again, I’ll meet a man (or woman) who technically qualifies as an “ex-gay.”  Yet, even though these individuals once slept with members of their own sex and now have chosen life partners of the opposite sex, they don’t identify as such.  Some, usually the men, only reluctantly acknowledge their homosexual past.  The women occasionally do — oftentimes to their husbands’ amusement.

Those who dwell on their past seem as if they’re trying to convince themselves they’re no longer attracted to men.  The more they protest (to borrow an expression), the more we doubt their sincerity.  While most people who change rarely mention their past attitudes, ex-gays seems obsessed with theirs, as if their entire identity is tied up in not being gay.

Indeed, as reader ThatGayConservative informed me in an e-mail, one ex-gay group has even come up with an app for their obsession:

Exodus International, the notorious “ex-gay” organization, has just released an iPhone app that, according to its website, is “designed to be a useful resource for men, women, parents, students, and ministry leaders.” The Exodus website further boasts that its app received a 4+ rating from Apple, meaning that it contains “no objectionable content.”

Those who have successfully pushed to have Apple pull the app have called ”Exodus’ message is hateful and bigoted” (emphasis in original), might want to examine their own prejudices.  Just because someone is obsessive does not mean he is hateful or bigoted.  (Why must every attitude which does not correspond with the ideology of the gay left be defined as some form of hate?)

Now, Apple is a private company and should be free to pull — or provide — the app.  But, one wonders at the intolerance of the anti-ex-gays, why are they so committed to suppressing this obsessive group.  If they were truly confident of their own ideas, wouldn’t they welcome opportunities to contest ex-gays’ contentions in public fora and in open debate? (more…)

“THE TWELVE WORST COLLEGES FOR FREE SPEECH. Syracuse is No. 1.”

Via Instapundit.

(With apologies to Bobbie McGee for the headline….)  (And h/t to Instapundit for the articles that inspired this post)

You may recall that in the early days following Jaren Loughner’s (the pot-smoking anarchist) shoot-up in Tucson, I joined with Glenn Beck in his challenge.  I ask you to read it again carefully.  What I am about to write, in my opinion, does not violate that challenge.  But I’m open to interpretation.

Ladies and gents, this call from the Progressives and the liberal media for “civility” is total bullshit.  Please note I rarely use profanity in my posts or comments here.  But yes, I call total and utter bullshit.  This is a ploy by the Left to silence the 40% of Americans who told Gallup last year that they hold conservative principles.

It is easy for Progressives and Democrats to ask for “civility” when they are the ones who call for violent revolution and have been since their halcyon flower-sniffing, pot-smoking, anti-American days of yore.  Us GenXer’s refer to those days as The Sixties.  When we say “The Sixties” — it is with the derisive tone of voice usually reserved for the phrase: “um… this is escargot?”

Oh yeah, and “civility” is easy to call for when your Marxist-taught President’s best buddies are an admitted terrorist (William Ayers) and a black liberation preacher who repeatedly damns this nation (Rev. Whose-Name-Must-Never-Be-Uttered-By-Media).

One calls for “civility” when one’s ideas are soundly rejected in an historic legislative landslide the likes of which few living Americans are cogent enough to remember.

Now those same people are asking that the free peoples of the United States of America disarm themselves in favor of the tyranny of “civility”.  Well, I say HELL NO!  I don’t want violence, but I certainly don’t want these people dictating the terms of my Constitutional surrender.

So I invoke THIS passage of Glenn’s challenge:

I denounce those from the Left, the Right or middle that sees violence as a viable alternative to our long established system of change made within the constraints of our constitutional Republic.

There can be, in my view, nothing more violent in the long-term than straying from the limited government principles of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.  What the Left has systematically proposed to do since the Progressive movement was born is to violently shred our American Republic and tell you to shut up while they do it.

Not on my watch.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

UPDATE:  Here’s the podcast!

Tonight on the Gay Patriot’s America BlogTalkRadio show, I’ll be joined by conservative news guru AndrewBreitbart.

The show will air live tonight at 9PM Eastern Time.

Join the show online at this link —>
GayPatriot’s America

I’m looking forward to the show!

This is rich:

After 25 years, Canada has officially banned the Dire Straits song “Money For Nothing” because it’s extremely offensive! You Know, it has the word “Faggot” in it. Blog Pals and Facebook Friends, Please link to the offensive song and lets offend Canada like never before!!!!

Here you go, Sonic:

Doug Powers notes that while the “original version has been banned . . . it can be played provided the offending word is edited.”

Give me a break.

Guess those bureaucrats up north just think if we ban an offensive word, then presto chango, not only will people not feel offended, but bad people will change their ways, the sun will stream through the clouds and we’ll all sing kumbaya.

Taking no prisoners in his response (as is his wont), blogger R. S. McCain bold challenges those Americans labeling their ideological adversaries as haters:

Somebody call Mark Potok at the SPLC. Tell him I played this homophobic anti-Canadian anthem and demand to be denounced for it!

(Via Instapundit.) Oh, and if you’re offended by that blogger’s style, well, understand he’s doing it to make a point. So too may have been a certain band.

I agree that the word is offensive, but also believe sunlight to be the best disinfectant.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Throbert McGee offers a “much better” US analogy:

. . . bleeping-out every instance of the word “nigger” in edited-for-TV versions of Blazing Saddles — even though the movie’s script very pointedly puts the word ONLY in the mouths of characters who are idiots, villains, or both.

Readers of this blog know that I’m a big fan of Juan Williams.  He’s one of the smartest liberal pundits out there, able to concisely summarize the Democratic position on any given issue; he also has a great deal of admiration for the president.  Listening to him, we conservatives can learn what the “other side” thinks.  And he shows respect for his conservative sparring partners.

Michelle Malkin who has debated him “vigorously . . . many times over the years“, points out that he argues with “respect and cordiality”.

Now, NPR has fired him because, as Ed Morrissey put it, he “made the unpardonable sin of admitting that people boarding flights in ‘Muslim garb’ makes him nervous“.  According to the New York Times:

The move came after Mr. Williams, who is also a Fox News political analyst, appeared on the “The O’Reilly Factor” on Monday. On the show, the host, Bill O’Reilly, asked him to respond to the notion that the United States was facing a “Muslim dilemma.” Mr. O’Reilly said, “The cold truth is that in the world today jihad, aided and abetted by some Muslim nations, is the biggest threat on the planet.”

Mr. Williams said he concurred with Mr. O’Reilly.

He continued: “I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

How PC have we become when the government-subsided radio network fires a man for admitting his own fears, fears shared by many Americans in a post-9/11 world?

This is a real loss to journalism, when a liberal with integrity can’t keep a job on a liberal network.  Maybe it wasn’t that comment, but the fact that he offers commentary on (and supposedly thus lends legitimacy to) FoxNews.

PatriotPartner and I have arrived in Manhattan for the weekend. The Homocon event is Saturday night. Tonight, we are having a pre-GOProud dinner with some fellow homocons.

We are fulfilling a foodie desire and eating tonight at one of Gordon Ramsey’s restaurants in NYC.

Any suggestions for something fun to do in the city tomorrow?

Oh, the photo…. I can see the Republican Election in November from the window.

So, some extremist Florida pastor has now had his “15 minutes of fame“.  Pastor Terry Jones who had been planning to burn a “Koran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks said [today] he would not go forward with the event, adding he would meet with the imam planning to build an Islamic center near ground zero.”

You know, I wonder if fringe figure had gone forward with his publicity stunt if it would have attracted more media than the miniscule membership of his congregation.

Would anyone even know who this guy was if, as Mike Thomas asks in the Orlando Sentinel, the “media had ignored” him?

James Taranto contends that the media helped make this crazy pastor’s stunt successful:

. . . a fringe Florida pastor’s announcement that he would observe 9/11 by burning the Islamic holy book was not, in itself, news. It was a mere publicity stunt–which the media, by treating it as news, made into a successful publicity stunt.

It is a publicity stunt that fits a pernicious media narrative, exemplified by a New York Times story we quoted yesterday titled “American Muslims Ask, Will We Ever Belong,” which cited the Koran burning as evidence of widespread anti-Muslim bigotry.

Anti-Muslim bigotry is a problem, but it is only exacerbated by the media’s tendency to exaggerate and sensationalize it–and by the adversarial and snobbish attitude many journalists and some politicians have adopted toward the vast majority of Americans, who are not bigoted and who see the Ground Zero mosque as an affront.

While the media sensationalize this story, Sarah Palin takes notes of a story that media are ignoring “Book burning is bad. But the Muslim cleric who is running for parliament in Afghanistan is calling for the murder of American children in response to scorched Korans, which is worse. Where is the media’s focus?”   (more…)

Simple, yet effective country song about the state of our nation and how fed up most Americans are. (h/t – GP reader Spartann)

Unfortunately, standing up against the Obama Administration carries a heavy price. 

Bryan Glover, an assistant coach at Grassland Middle School near Nashville, co-wrote the country music song, “When You’re Holding a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail.”

It was co-written by a parent who has a child on the team. Glover, 26, said he emailed a copy of the song to friends, family members and player’s parents through his personal email account.

And that’s when all the trouble started for the self-described independent conservative.

“The coach called me and said parents were upset – that I was being politically incorrect and the song had racial overtones,” Glover told FOX News Radio. “An hour and a half later I was told I was being terminated.”

“I was informed that I was being let go because of the song,” he said, denying claims there were any racial overtones in the song.

Racial overtones?  Good lord.  Hasn’t the “race card” expired already for overuse?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)