Due to the bigoted, bullying, anti-Christian tirade of the Obama Administration’s partner in “anti-bullying”….

…this blog has had its highest traffic in 2 years.

BWAHAHAHA.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I just noticed this quote from Savage’s wild-eyed bullying tirade…

“There is no effort to amend state constitutions to make it legal to stone women to death on their wedding nights if they’re not virgins — at least not yet,” Savage said. “We don’t know where the GOP is going these days.”

“People are dying because people can’t clear this one last hurdle,” he said. “They can’t get past this one last thing in the Bible — about homosexuality.

If I didn’t know better, I would think he was criticizing Islamic governments around the world that routinely stone women & hang gays NOW. I don’t recall an American government official doing anything of the sort in at least 50 years. And back then, it would have most likely been a Democrat.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

So, if a man working in the “news” industry (who happens to be gay) concedes a conservative’s point about the president’s whining he is betraying gay people?

Earlier today, Bruce e-mailed me, alerting me to Ed Morrisey’s post where that one-time CPAC blogger of the year reports:

On Sunday evening, CNN’s Don Lemon told viewers that “people like Sarah Palin have a point” when they say that Barack Obama needs to stop blaming everyone else for the shortcomings in his own performance, including the economy.

Read the whole thing.  Note that the telegenic CNN anchor was not conceding a conservative’s point on a gay-specific issue. Still, as Morrissey reports, several bloggers to reference his sexuality in attacking him for his concession:

@donlemoncnn If you think the Right will make you their Pet Gay, they won’t. Obama is standing up 4 U & don’t forget who you are.—
Kees Valderol (@keesvalderol) April 24, 2012

@theosmelek @Lezlie61 @DonLemonCNN He’s a black gay man and a RW tool for a buck. His boyfriend is a CNN higher up too.—
Annie Lawton (@CurlynDoris) April 23, 2012

@donlemoncnn Little Gay kids are committing suicide because of the Right Wing. You could make an impact. You’re a wimp.—
Fritz Alverez (@FritzAlverez) April 24, 2012

Guess to these folks when you acknowledge a conservative critique of Obama you are somehow betraying gay people.  We gay conservatives have heard such notions before.  Seems that’s what happens when you have so politicized your sexuality — that any departure from left-wing ideology must needs make a gay man a “tool.”

Caught this poster on the electrical post at the corner of Melrose and Highland in Los Angeles:

Seems some folks just don’t want to move on from this story.

. . . is a battle being waged exclusively in the minds of individuals who hate Republicans.

There comes a moment in the lives of most gay conservative when the outrage we feel at intolerant attitudes toward and mean-spirted reaction to our politics becomes amusement at the narrow-mindedness and short-sightedness of our left-of-center gay peers unable to understand the ideas of their ideological adversaries.  I receive reports on a near daily basis from gay Republican peers about Facebook “friends” “defriending” them for daring to disagree with their opinions of the president — or registering their own as Republicans.

Not to mention the nasty response we often hear when we offer opinions at odd with gay orthodoxy.  And sometimes we don’t even need identify ourselves as gay Republicans to experience the hatred some gay liberals feel for gay conservatives.  Just yesterday, I quipped that we “must always be suspicious of anyone who spends his life defining himself by what he is not — or making much of those he dislikes” in response to a liberal friend’s link to a blog post about an “ex-gay” video.

Shortly after my comment, a gay liberal chimed in, “self loathing gay men [Log Cabin?] are a bit strange!”  Another would offer (all caps in original, “REPUBLICAN –GAY = OXYMORON…OR IS IT JUST MORON? I FORGET.”

Do wonder why these guys hate so much.  And wonder as well if some of them have joined campaigns against H8, i.e., those opposing state recognition of same-sex marriage.

You look at these people, smile in amusement at their smallness, shake your head and feel sorry for them — for lacking the capacity to realize that someone can have different opinions from their own for sound reasons — and without harboring sinister motives.

Just caught this from David Axelrod:

Everyone should have stood up and said this was inappropriate as apparently many of Maher’s supporters now have said it was inappropriate.

I was kind of shocked, Anderson, when President Obama, all he had — all he had to say about the thing was, well, that isn’t language I would have used. What about the spirit of what was said? I thought that was a cowardly answer and it was a test of leadership and one that he failed.

. . . .

So I don’t excuse any of it. Now I will say this. There are very few entertainers who are as outspoken in attacking Republicans as Bill Maher does so regularly on his shown. I think one of the reasons why President Obama and others were so timid in speaking out is because Maher is the de facto spokesman for the Democratic Party, so to take him on would be to risk your own standing within the party’s left-wing base. And so that separates him from the others.

Oh, wait, sorry, I just substituted Maher for Rush, President Obama for Governor Romney and Democrat for Republican (with a few other minor changes to improve the flow).

Meanwhile, Axelrod still keeps making excuses for Maher who has yet to apologize for his “inappropriate” language–as Rush has done.  The president couldn’t even bring himself to criticize Maher as Romney criticized Rush, not even in allegedly anodyne language Axelrod called cowardly.

If Romney’s response were cowardly, then Obama’s was more so (by Axelrod’s standard).

Indeed, in his news conference, the Democrat dodged the question on double standards. He would have been wise, Athena writes, to discuss the coarsening of our discourse: (more…)

In his interview with Bill Maher posted this morning, ABC News’ senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper offering a bit of commentary in posing his first question to the former funny man:

So with all the criticism of Rush Limbaugh for his comments about the Georgetown Law student, conservatives claim that there’s a double standard, with President Obama, Democrats and the media far more tolerant of offensive language when wielded by liberal or progressive media figures against conservative women. Is that a fair comparison? You have certainly used offensive words to describe some politicians you don’t like.

A leading journalist (and a good one) in the legacy media addresses an issue long reserved to right-of-center editorial pages and conservative blogs.  Bill Maher, perhaps for the first time, has been been forced to defend his mean-spirited anti-Republican rhetoric — for more than just one news cycle.  Instead of acknowledging that he may have overstepped the line or apologized (as Rush did) for an error of judgment, he whines that he’s just a comedian, trying to score a few laughs

Hugh Hewitt finds that Maher’s conclusion where the HBO host claims he had defended Rush’s “right to stay on the air” reeks of “self-importance” and “smashes Maher’s ‘comedian’ defense if it had any substance for anyone to begin with.  Simple comedians don’t take to the ramparts to defend anything.  They tell jokes.”

In playing defense, however, Maher reveals the hypocrisy of his position.   (more…)

In the wake of slut-gate, David Axelrod has has to put off an appearance on Bill Maher’s HBO show and “comedian Louis CK recently pulled out as entertainer at the Radio-TV Correspondents Dinner.”  In short, the standard some of the left set up to destroy Rush has backfired.

Some might say that Rush himself laid the trap, but Ann Althouse disagrees:

Rush Limbaugh is a media genius, but I don’t think he’s enough of a genius to have laid this trap. It has worked as a trap. By going too far, on one well-chosen occasion — picking on a young woman about sex — he got an immense reaction from Rush haters, who smelled blood and imagined that they could use this incident to drive Rush off the air. In making their strong argument, Rush’s opponents articulated a rule demonizing those who use offensive language to describe a woman.

Pretty much sums it up.  Read the whole thing.

Those who sought to drive Rush off the air were not yet accustomed to the power of a fully armed and operational right-wing blogosphere, able to track down and publicize. left-wing name-calling with just a few keystrokes and compare it to Rush’s language (for which the talker has since apologized) that had caused fainting fits in news rooms and Democratic offices.

George Stephanopolous may not have followed up when Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) failed to condemn Bill Maher for a slur that self-described “potty mouth” used when describing Sarah Palin, but the former Clinton staffer did at least ask his fellow partisan “whether Democrats should return” the uncouth man’s money.

The current ABCNews anchor even showed clips of Mr. Maher’s trash talk.  Schumer himself may not have criticized Mr. Maher on ABC’s “This Week,” but as Madeleine Morgenstern reported, a “Schumer spokesman later told Politico he ‘thinks those comments [made by Maher] are inappropriate and wrong.’”  (Wonder if Obama strategist David Axelrod would call Mr. Schumer’s manner of critique a failed “test of leadership“; he dispatched a staffer to do what he failed to do in person.)  Schumer was forced to criticize the liberal entertainer.

As Rush Limbaugh himself put it, everything the Democrats

. . . hoped to accomplish this week, they’ve not accomplished. They might have 25 years ago, but they haven’t. They, on the left, are now being forced by an army of people on the right to comport themselves to the same standards that they are demanding of others, and that’s going to put a real crimp in their style. Remember, when I apologized I said one aspect of what I had done wrong was I descended to their level. And I meant to emphasize that. I descended to their level. That’s what was, among other things, wrong about it. But it was a one-time thing for me. They live there. Now they’ve been called on it.

(Via Tom Blumer via Powerline picks.)  He’s right; 25 years ago, there was no conservative media to dig up and publicize videos of liberals engaging in the type of name-calling that earns excoriation for the rare conservative who stoops to that level.  Stephanopolous would have been able to avoid the question.

As he built on the point cited above, Rush gives one hint about what has changed in the past 25 years:  ”It might have been Breitbart people, I forget who it was, with camera and microphone — and they would not condemn any of the language from any of their favorite people on the left.” (more…)

If a story on conservatives or Republicans appears in the New York Times, you must first verify it with a more reliable source before you can determine its accuracy.  No wonder a blogress who voted for Obama in 2008 had a bit of fun with a Times article about centrist women’s supposed disenchantment with the GOP.

The old gray lady quoted some woman claiming to have voted for McCain the year Ann Althouse voted for Obama who was so offended by how busy Republicans were telling us how we should act in our bedrooms, that it appears writer Susan Saulny had to whip out the smelling salts to prevent her from fainting.  This supposed McCain supporter getting her news about the GOP not from the candidates themselves, but from the candidates as filtered through such sources as the Times or CNN.

As Althouse reminds us, it’s not the Republicans who started the “ridiculous talk” about contraception:

Of course, Democrats started the conversation, but it was a good conversation to start if the goal was to get some Republicans to say some things that could be used against them. Fortunately, Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate who is going to be the nominee, had the sense not to say much. He was “tepid.” Good! We don’t want the government in our bedroom, so we don’t need a passionate President. Let him stay in his office and coolly and calmly do his job, which shouldn’t have anything to do with sex. He’s not our boyfriend.

Exactly.  Read the whole thing.  Althouse sounds skeptical (about the political affiliation of the women quoted).  And she’s right to be; the Times article does little more than repeat a Democratic talking point.

(If “some” of these women were, as Miss Saulny claimed, “critical of Mr. Romney’s tepid response,” wonder how they feel about Mr. Obama’s non-response to the misogynistic language used by a man who gave $1 million to his Super PAC.)

OH, AND, ONE MORE THING:   (more…)

Once again the parody just writes itself.  Kudos to Jim Geraghty for putting it together, quoting Senator Patty Murray, chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as she tells us in the highest of possible dudgeon that Republicans “made a very calculated decision to change the focus away from our economic recovery and focus instead on divisive social issues“.  Did they now, Patty?

Well, Jim visited the DSCC’s site and found yesterday the same thing I found today (4:20 PST; 7:20 GayPatriot blog time)(screen capture below the “jump”):

The current top news items on the DSCC web page right now, as of 11:10 a.m. Eastern time:

Demand Republican Leaders Denounce Rush Limbaugh

Stop the Republican War on Women!

Demand that Republicans End the Planned Parenthood Witch Hunt

Wonder if House Speaker John Boehner or the Republican presidential candidates, even Mr. Santorum, have focused as much on social issues as has the president and the various Democratic outfits trying to raise money over Rush’s ugly and intemperate language (for which he has since apologized).  No evidence yet that the National Republican Senatorial Committee is trying to raise money of Bill Maher’s ugly rhetoric.  And that former funnyman has donated $1 Million to the president’s Super PAC.

Their website currently features more stuff on the budget than on Obamacare’s mandate.

And here’s what we find on Ms.  Murray’s: (more…)

Below is a screen capture of an image a Facebook friend shared on his wall:

The individual branded, “fool,” is of course the accomplished and determined reformer currently governing the great state of Wisconsin.  This image, however, mis characterizes Governor Scott Walker’s reforms.  The legislation that Republicans signed would not deprive any working man or woman of his right to join a union.

Indeed if anything, his reforms do quite the opposite; they give individual public employees greater freedom, with provisions preventing state and local governments from collecting union dues, requiring annual certification via secret ballot, and allowing employees to “opt out of paying union dues.”  (Last link via Moe Lane who has more.)

Just as Scott Walker has not conducted a “War on Unions” (as some on the left claim), Republicans haven’t conducted as “War on Women” as many on the left claim.  They haven’t even declared a war on contraception.

Rather than engage Republicans on the actual issues, e.g., the specifics of Walker’s reforms or the federal government mandating the employment policies of a private institution, our friends on the left, with a generous assist from the legacy media (and some undisciplined Republicans), prefer to cast Republicans conducting a war on the various constituencies Democrats need to rally to win votes.

And they fault our side for our uncivil discourse.  No wonder they obsess about a slur Rush Limbaugh recently uttered.  (And for which he has apologized.)

Decided to take yesterday afternoon and the better part of the evening off from politics.  Don’t get those who spend their entire day reading about it and obsessing about it.

When I did check the blogs as I ate my late-night snack, I caught a few things of interest, one which led me to contemplate a post which, well, Glenn Reynolds had already written by the time I beganmy morning blog read.

Last night, I read this on Instapundit:

Limbaugh Not So Hot To Get Faithless Advertisers Back: “The rift between Sleep Train Mattress Centers and Rush Limbaugh apparently became permanent today after Limbaugh reportedly turned aside the Sacramento retailer’s attempt at a truce. Limbaugh rebuffed Sleep Train’s request that the controversial radio host resume his duties as a paid spokesman for the company.”

This led me to ponder the notion of the Democrats’ overreach on Rush’s rhetoric.  Several of my left-of-center Facebook friends have made comments or shared links telling us that Limbaugh wasn’t sincere in his apology.  (The real test of his sincerity is not his words but his deeds.  If he doesn’t again use that — or a similar — slur again to describe a woman who publicly expresses opinions different from his own, then we can be relatively certain of his sincerity.)

This morning, Glenn posted this:

OVERREACH: Limbaugh Attack Boomerangs On White House. And on Bill Maher. “This is one issue on which the mainstream media is offering the White House no cover. As National Journal put it: ‘[E]ven the most ardent Obama supporter would have to admit that if Limbaugh crossed the line on acceptable discourse, then Maher obliterated that line, even acknowledging the difference between a political talkmeister and a comedian.’”

Pretty much says it all.  Democrats won the first round of this fight, by TKO, according to John Hinderaker, but by not leaving the field once they won the game, they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Even after Rush Limbaugh apologized for the harsh language he used to describe a law student flacking for Obamacare’s mandates, a good number of liberals just can’t let the story go.  Just check your own Facebook page.   Or click on over to some left-wing blogs — or left-of-center editorial pages.

“While Republican leaders owe no apology for Mr. Limbaugh’s comments,” inveigh the editors of the Washington Post in highest dudgeon, “they do have a responsibility to repudiate them — and him.”   Just as soon as the pro-Obama SuperPAC, Priorities USA Action, returns the one-million dollar check Bill Maher sent them — and as soon as Democrats, including the president himself, repudiate this mean-spirited former funny man.

As Dan Riehl reminds us, “in March of 2011, Maher called Palin a “dumb tw*t,” as reported here by the Daily Caller. On March 29, 2011, the Caller also reported that Maher called Palin the “C-word.” (more…)

Just shy of two years ago, the then-Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, insisted that his Republican colleagues needed “to do more to ‘differentiate themselves’ from the hateful speech spewed in the healthcare debate’s final hours.”

Nearly a year later, even after learning that the man who shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords had ties neither to the Tea Party nor the GOP, the editors of the New York Times told us that it was

. . . legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats.

When some on the left learned of the death of Andrew Breitbart, they reacted in the manner the Old Gray Lady attributed to virulent Republican supporters with a gale of anger and expressions of hatred, demonizing a man who dared challenge their most cherished shibboleths.

Michelle Malkin reported that one leftie had tweeted, “It is very hard to have sympathy for an evil person like Andrew Breitbart!”  The Tatler collected more Tweets, including this particularly telling one, “Andrew Breitbart died? Is it wrong that I’m happier about that than when they got bin Laden and Saddam?”  At the Washington Examiner, Charlie Spiering reports that one liberal call Breitbart, “a vile excuse for a human being” and yet another alleged he “was a racist, sexist, homophobe.”

Always the same litany, lefties?  Guess they just assume that if someone is conservative, he must fit their narrow view of what a right-winger must be, someone who hates people who differ from the white male norm. (more…)

Now I’ve seen everything…

Three women identified by their lawyers as lesbians were arraigned yesterday on a hate crime charge for allegedly beating a gay man at the Forest Hills T station in an unusual case that experts say exposes the law’s flawed logic. (emphasis added)

“My guess is that no sane jury would convict them under those circumstances, but what this really demonstrates is the idiocy of the hate-crime legislation,” said civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate. “If you beat someone up, you’re guilty of assault and battery of a human being. Period. The idea of trying to break down human beings into categories is doomed to failure.”

Prosecutors and the ACLU of Massachusetts said no matter the defendants’ sexual orientation, they can still face the crime of assault and battery with intent to intimidate, which carries up to a 10-year prison sentence, by using hateful language.

Are you KIDDING me?!?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Sometimes you read a column by a liberal that seems it was written by a conservative to caricature his ideological adversaries. And when you realize it’s probably legitimate, you wonder at the editors who approve this piece for publication.  Are they so contained within their liberal bubble that they’re blind to how narrow their ideological confrère might comes across to someone with a broader perspective?

Such were my thoughts when I chanced upon this Op-Ed in a paper I used to receive every morning on my doorstep.  The author writes about a political argument that changed her feelings for neighbors she describes as “the best neighbors in the world. Always ready with a tool, an ingredient or a jump-start for the car. Whatever you need, if they have it, they will give it. They are a lovely family: husband, wife and four smart, funny, polite children. I was sure they were Democrats.”

Already there, we see her prejudice, assuming that nice people must be Democrats.

When while playing poker and drinking with the author and her spouse, the aforementioned husband, a white man married to a black woman announced that that tea party was not racist, indeed, that he was part of that dynamic grassroots movement. The argument became heated.  Insults exchanged.

The following morning, the tea party conservative came over with his wife to apologize.  His contrition, however, could not soften the hardened heart of his erstwhile hostess:

But my feelings about them are changed. I cannot respect them as I did before. And as they headed back across the street, I saw the look they gave each other: They don’t like us anymore either.

How does she know what that look meant?  Well, we do know what she feels.  She spells it out pretty clearly

I don’t want to be friends with someone who is a member of the tea party or is a Newt Gingrich Republican. We are not the same. I equate their political views with thoughtlessness, intolerance and narcissism. (more…)

Rick Santorum may choose to focus more on a social issues at a time of fiscal peril for this nation. Others seem determined not to criticize him for his stands, but instead to engage in petty antics which say more about them than about the flawed candidate. As our reader, ChrisH pointed out in a comment to my post on the Senator’s discipline problem:

Saw a couple people post a portrait of Rick Santorum on Facebook made up of gay pornography. One person called it “brilliant.”

More like childish and immature.

I had seen similar images in my Facebook thread with similar commentary.  Santorum has many problems and, like all presidential candidates, should be subject to a thorough vetting by his opponents, pundits and other journalists.  But, there’s no need to resort to such pettiness to get a point across.

They would do well to follow the lead of John Podhoretz who wonders at the hysteria, but at the same time points out just how un-Reaganesque the contender is:

Moreover, the hysterical and wildly distorted mass onslaught against Santorum over the past few days — which must be understood as an example of the nearly overt way the mainstream media have declared war on the Republican Party in the run-up to the election — is certain to provoke a backlash among voters who’ll know they’re being fed Democratic campaign propaganda.

No, Santorum’s problem is — forgive the technical graduate-school political-science terminology here — that he’s a sourpuss, and sourpusses don’t get elected president. (more…)

As gay conservatives, we know all too well about many liberals’ ignorance of (or is it willful blindness to) the basic tenets of modern conservative and the underlying philosophy of Reagan Republicanism. All too many lefties (but fortunately not all and maybe not even most) seem to believe that the essence of conservative ideology involves suppressing the “Other,” you know, people who differ from the norm because of their race, religion, “gender” or sexuality.

So many of these folks, many with college educations, indeed, a good number on college faculties, have a prejudiced view of conservatives in general and Republicans in particular. Yesterday, Sarah Hoyt offered an extended rant on a recent manifestation of a related ignorance, something many of us have witnessed as well:

Over the last few days it’s been impossible for me to log on to Face Book without being assaulted by postings on the “Republicans War On Women” from my female Face Book Friends most of whom are educated and many of whom work in a profession that, at least in broad theory, requires them to have the capacity for original or individual thought.
. . . .

But no one is discussing banning contraceptives or even abortion. The contraceptive issue was introduced in a Republican debate by George “Supine” Stephanopoulos as a means of painting Republicans as being against contraceptives.

. . . .

What kind of enormous, unyielding, painful daddy issues have you got to have to think that Uncle Sam has to force a CHURCH to pay for your contraception?
. . . .

A war on women – a war on everyone – means forcing people to pay for things they believe are a sin, and which they think will cost them eternal torment.

Via Glenn Reynolds who quips, “Democrats are worried, so they’re playing the Republicans Will Steal Your Ladyparts!!!! card. And the knees are jerking as hoped. Women, you’re being played. Again.”

Why do some very intelligent people spend so much time venting against idea, policies and arguments they just don’t understand — or deliberately misrepresent?

* (more…)