Um… apparently the pro-democracy protestors in Kyrgyzstan go to the gym a lot…

Revolution in Kyrgystan – FOXNews.com

Nothing is hitting my nerve this morning so I just thought I’d write a bunch of small thoughts this morning….
PUBLIC BROADCASTING PONZI SCHEME
First, it is getting very scary how GPW and I seem to channel each other. Throughout the course of last week, after a conversation I had with PatriotPartner, I had started to do some research into how much taxpayer dollars are used to prop up the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. And lo and behold, GPW did this posting over the weekend. Scary!
I’ll go even further. I want NO taxpayer money used for ANY public financing of television OR radio. NPR is nothing more than an outlet for liberal-only opinions using MY tax money. There is no reason for this dinosaur of the “Big Three Network” days. We have XM Satellite and SIRIUS Satellite radio, and of course we have “Air America.” If liberals want an outlet for their point of view, then they need to get their rich Hollywood friends to finance such an outlet in the private sector.
My guess is that they are too afraid to play in the marketplace, so instead they want to continue this extortion of the American public to subsidize their outdated opinions.
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Kudos to BoiFromTroy for pointing this out on his site….Blogads, the service which sells ads to blogs is conducting its second annual survey of blog readers.
Please CLICK HERE to take the survey and please make sure to type in “gaypatriot.org” under question 16 where they ask who referred you. It will help me learn more about the readers of this blog.
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JOB-RELATED STORY
I tend to be the one who cracks dry, sarcastic jokes at meetings and conference calls. This morning we were discussing the fact that, despite all odds and pundit predictions, private insurance plans are actually now rushing to participate in the new Medicare drug benefit which goes into effect in January 2006. My response: “Well, of course they are stepping up to the plate… they saw the Iraqis voting. After all, isn’t that the answer for everything good these days?”
Heh, heh.

Ladies and gentleman, I’m about to board a plane in Seattle to take a day-long flight over “fly over” country (see top banner of GP site!). So as I enjoy taking in the beauty of Red State America, I turn the site over to you. Just be nice to each other, please! *grin*

I have noticed a disturbing rash of anti-American sentiment, and blind academic acceptance of that sentiment, growing on our college campuses.
Everyone is familiar with the outrageous Ward Churchill controversy where he equated the victims of 9/11 as the same as Nazi bureaucrats. But there is much more going on in our nation’s liberal bastions of knowledge.
There is this somewhat dated item from Michigan. The speaker, author Walter Mosley, said at a Martin Luther King symposium that thousands of black people he talked to after the attacks of 9/11 said they understood why the terrorists attacked us because they too had been oppressed by the US government like the hijackers.
[Read more…]

If I were an Oscar voter, I would, like Roger Simon have voted for Don Cheadle for Best Actor and Sophie Okonedo for Best Supporting Actress for their work in “HOTEL RWANDA.” Had that movie been up for Best Picture, I would be rooting for it in Sunday’s ceremony.
While the movie does have a Hollywood moment toward the end, it is far from a Hollywood movie. Indeed, not since “THE PIANIST” have I seen a movie this good that is this difficult to watch. The movie highlights the heroism of Paul Rusesabagina (played by Cheadle) who, in 1994, sheltered hundreds of his fellow Rwandans in a hotel, saving many of them from almost certain slaughter by a radical Hutu militia, allied with the then-Rwandan government.
The world stood silently by as this militia murdered at least 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in three months. Reflecting on the movie in today’s Opinion Journal, Daniel Henninger writes:

The Rwandan genocide was not spontaneous. It was organized, its intent knowable at an early stage. It is plausible, in retrospect, that a limited military intervention in Rwanda–by European or African nations–would have forestalled that genocide. Was there a moment when we could have stopped Milosevic’s militias?

Many of my fellow conservatives fault President Clinton for his failure to act, yet too few of them suggest what we could have done to stop the genocide.
[Read more…]

Powerline has a great post celebrating the greatness of our nation’s First President on the 273rd anniversary of his birth.

After reading my post wondering why gay men continue to have unsafe sex, a reader wrote in:

I’m sure you know the power of words and how the choice of vocabulary can hide what people are really talking about. Are you pro-abortion or pro-choice, for example.
I applaud you for promoting monogamy. I would like you to go even further by not promoting licentious sexual activities as “playing”. How are gay people to be taken seriously when we treat what is potentially the most intimate expression of love between two people as a method of entertainment? Yes, many straight people do the same thing, but it seems to be almost taken-for-granted that all gay people have sex indiscriminately. Let’s not hide the facts by using euphemisms.

The writer, a gay man in his 40s, gave me his permission to reprint this.
I had read it on Friday just before I took the day off from going online. I printed it out and have pondered his words since then. I had wanted to add some wise and insightful comment of my own and may do that at a later date. For now, I will say, he’s got a point.
At first blush, it does not appear he answered the question I posed in the title of that post which I rephrase (as per his comments), “Why, knowing what we know about AIDS, do gay men continue to have unsafe sex?” But, in revisiting his words, in thinking about them, I think he may have answered it without even trying.
-Dan (aka GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com

For those of us lacking a schweetie (my term for significant other) on Valentine’s Day, I ask that those partnered Patriot fans to write in and share stories of how they met their schweetie. Register a comment below or drop me a line here.
I have found that it is difficult to meet other gay men who seek long-term monogamous relationships and want to learn ways to face this challenge. What can those single ones of us do so that we will not be celebrating Valentine’s Day alone again next year?
Thanks and Happy Valentine’s Day!

Once again, I am grateful to Christian Grantham’s blog for alerting me to important happenings in the gay world. Just last week, he posted two items on conflicting attitudes of two different Republican parents of lesbians. Fortunately, the one with the better attitude has an office in the White House, while the other ran well behind the president in his bid for elective office in a “blue state.”
Christian reported that Alan Keyes, a three-time loser in his bid for Senate seats in Maryland and Illinois, kicked his lesbian daughter out of the house. He also noted that America’s Second Lady, the wise and classy Lynne Cheney, opposes an amendment to the constitution banning gay marriage.
While in my previous post, I agreed strongly with one of Christian’s, this time I’m afraid I have to disagree with that hard-working blogger and web guru. He suggests that Dr. Keyes who ran 17 points behind the president in Illinois represents the “compassionate conservatism of Republicans.” While I believe the president is wrong to back a constitutional amendment defining marriage, he better represents the face of the real Republican party than does Alan Keyes.
This president has refused to cave in to the demands of social conservatives that he rescind a Clinton-era Executive Order barring discrimination against gays in the federal workforce. He believes states should be left alone to decide whether or not to recognize same-sex civil unions. His Vice President (and some say, his closest political advisor) has been open about his disagreement with the president on the marriage amendment. And once again, the Vice President’s wife has made public her opposition to the amendment.
Not only that. This president allowed the Vice President’s daughter to bring her same-sex partner on stage with him when he declared victory in the presidential election. That young woman sat in the presidential box at the Republican National Convention. And she sat right behind the Vice President’s daughter, her beloved, at the inauguration last month.
It is reprehensible what Alan Keyes has done. There are few worse things that a parent could do than to reject his own child. His daughter must be one remarkable woman for, despite her father’s inexcusable behavior, the “WASHINGTON POST” reports that she still loves him.
A man who rejects his own children is not the face of the GOP. I condemn Mr. Keyes strongly for this action and encourage him to show true love and to welcome his daughter back into his family even if he opposes what he might call her “lifestyle.” And I note that many Republicans have rejected Dr. Keyes as well. Nearly one million Bush-voters in Illinois refused to cast a ballot for Dr. Keyes last fall in his bid for the U.S. Senate.
No, that three-time loser is not the face of the GOP. The Vice President presents a better image of compassionate conservatism than does that conservative firebrand. We must always remember that our president, the standard-bearer of the Republican party, picked as his second in command and closest advisor a man who cherishes his lesbian daughter and welcomes her partner into his family.
-Dan (aka GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com

Happy V-Day everyone. I know it is early…. but I’m spending the weekend off-line as much as possible and with PatriotPartner. We haven’t seen each other in a while, due to our travel schedules. And I leave for a week in Key West tomorrow for another business trip.
So enjoy your significant other today and tomorrow. GayPatriot, PatriotPartner and PatriotPooches wish you all a great and loving day. (Man… that was borderline puke-ville, huh? *grin*)
-GayPatriot: gaypatriot2004@aol.com

What on earth!?!

Ga. trans woman sentenced for ?pumping party? death
ALBANY, Ga. ? The death of a woman who suffered complications after a ?pumping party? in late 2003 led to last week?s sentencing of a Georgia transgendered woman to five years in prison, according to media reports. Myasha Thomas pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges in the woman?s death at such a party, an underground event in which people, often transgendered, pump industrial-grade silicone into each other to achieve more feminine figures, news outlets reported. Police said Thomas injected the victim, 23, in her face and chest with silicone on Dec. 10, 2003, in Albany, Ga., and the woman later fell into a coma, according to media reports. The victim, whose birth name was Andre Jeter, also was transgendered and died a month later, news outlets reported.

From Washington Blade.
And this is the community that is trying to “mainstream” itself and convince America it can handle gay marriage!?! What kind of message does this send?
-GayPatriot: gaypatriot2004@aol.com