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Libertarians, Hear Them Roar?

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Today will be “guest blogger” day at GayPatriot as I suffer with my back ailment and trudge through Dulles Airport, O’Hare, and points beyond.
Our first installment comes from Ted at Charging Rhino with his posting “Libertarians? Or just the Silly-Hat Party?”

My complaint with the “Libertarians” is that there is such a ideological and operational-gap between those who consider themselves to “be libertarian”, and those who are members and leaders of the Libertarian Party. In my experience, most libertarians are progressive or conservative Republicans; while the Libertarian Party-ites are left-wing whack-jobs with no real-world credentials and pathetic, questionable backgrounds whom I would not trust over a long weekend with a cat….No less a government.
As with the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither “holy” nor “Roman”; the Libertarian Party uses the word, but not it’s scope of meaning. They might as well be the Silly-Hat Party, it would coincide with their use of aluminum-foil linings.

-Bruce (GayPatriot on painkillers)

Goodbye, Old Europe!

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The famous Rhein-Main Air Force Base was turned back over to Germany today as US forces are redeployed in our post-9/11 world.

The airstrip south of Frankfurt airport was used to keep West Berlin from the Soviets during the 1948 blockade and served as a major staging point for later conflicts, including Vietnam, the 1990 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
U.S. hostages held captive in Iran and throughout the Middle East during the 1980s and 1990s also passed through Rhein-Main on their way to freedom back home and Elvis Presley went through the air base after finishing his military service in 1960.
Washington said last year that a total of 30,000 troops would leave Germany as part of plans to bring forces back from Europe and Asia over the next decade, reflecting revised priorities after the end of the Cold War.

Goodbye, Old Europe! You are either with us or against us in the war against Islamic fundamentalism. I’m happy to take our economic-generating bases to one of our true allies in this new world war.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Germany Will Have A Female Chancellor

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Deal Would Make Merkel German Chancellor – Yahoo.com

BERLIN – Conservative leader Angela Merkel said Monday she had reached a “good and fair” deal that will make her Germany’s first female chancellor in a power-sharing agreement that would end Gerhard Schroeder’s seven years in office.

Post 9/11 Election Scorecard now stands at….

Bush War On Terror Coalition: – 7 (Bush, Blair, Howard, Merkel, Koizumi – Japan, Karzai – Afghanistan, Talabani – Iraq)
Al-Qaeda: – 1 (Spain’s post 3/11 election)
-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Mondays Stink

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I’m sorry I haven’t written this morning so far…. just not having a great day. I’ve had a herniated disc problem in my neck for about 15 years. Physicial therapy and massage therapy have helped until the past week. Now I’m in the same kind of pain I was in about 7 years ago when I seriously considered bone fusion therapy. I’m not going that way again, but I am going to a chiropractor again….. they are covered by my insurance!
Anyway, my neck and upper shoulders are in a lot of pain and all the muscles are very tense. So as you can imagine, typing on the computer ain’t no fun. Plus, I’m about to leave for the rest of the week for a business trip. Slogging through airports…. and waiting…. is also not something I’m looking forward to.
So, I’m hoping some of you will give me some inspiration to write. Or, more preferably, if you would like to act as a “guestblogger” this week, please feel free to email me your draft postings.
That’s not to say if the mood strikes me this week that I may still not opine about the state of the universe. But I’m eager to have some of you write this week as well.
-Bruce (GayPatriot) – gaypatriot2004@aol.com

Al-Qaeda Leaders Want Iraq To Be Center of Islamic Empire

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No, Iraq has nothing to do with the War on Terror.
U.S. Snags Al Qaeda No. 2’s Letter to Zarqawi – FOX News

The United States has intercepted a letter from the No. 2 Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri (search) to the terror network’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Pentagon officials told FOX News. The letter says that Muslim terrorists have developed a detailed plan for creating an Islamic state centered on Iraq and including neighboring countries as well as the destruction of Israel.

But the following is the attitude of one of our nation’s supposed leaders about Iraq.

“Today was an opportunity for the President to be candid with the American people about the status of democracy in Iraq, and when he will bring our troops home. Instead, the President offered little more than empty rhetoric, claiming that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror — a position that is simply not supported by the facts.” — Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), would-be Speaker of the House.

A reminder of what the President said yesterday.

The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. And we must recognize Iraq as the central front in our war on terror.
[T]he militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia. With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation.

The letter from al-Zawahiri shows that President Bush knows the stakes in this global war and has the facts on his side. Yet the “loyal opposition” would rather criticize and demean the war effort than outline a plan to protect Americans against the worldwide threat of Islamic fascism.
Again I ask, is the Democratic Party an “enabler” of our enemy, just as they were with the Communists during the Cold War? So far that is the only clear message the LibDems are giving to the public.
UPDATE: Third suspect in NYC subway terror plot arrested…. in Iraq – ABC News.com

Alarmed by the informant’s report of a plot to attack city subways with as many as 19 bombs in bags and possibly baby strollers, U.S. forces in Iraq arrested two suspected plotters who had been under close surveillance until Thursday morning, officials said. The third escaped until his arrest Friday.

Meantime, in Washington DC today, the Rayburn House office building was evacuated due to a suspected bomb threat, and the Washington Monument and streets around it were cleared due to a possible threat. Luckily nothing happened at either place.
UPDATE TWO:Omar at IraqTheModel reports that Zarqawi is defying the instruction in the letter from al-Zawahiri and will continue to target Iraqi civilians who work toward democracy.

Zarqawi said that Islam doesn’t distinguish between people on the basis of civilian vs. military but on the basis of Muslim vs. kaffir (infidel) and that “an infidel’s blood should be spilled regardless of his occupation or position unless he had a treaty or a promise of peace”.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

What Does A “Living” Constitution Really Mean?

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I hate to get all “scholarly” on a miserable rainy Friday. But there was a very interesting discussion a couple days ago on Sean Hannity’s radio program. A caller said that in his mind a good test for Harriet Miers, or any SCOTUS nominee, would be to ask them if they believed the Constitution is a “living document.”
My initial thought was, well of course it is! That is what I was taught throughout my public school education. The Constitution has a mechanism to be amended if enough Americans were moved to do so. In fact, we even have the capability to convene a Constitutional Convention to make changes. So I believe that it is in fact a “living document.” But this caller had another, very interesting interpretation.
He said that in his mind the phrase “living document” meant that judges could intepret the Constitution any way they want. That the words in it don’t mean anything except through the filtered eyes of lifetime-sitting judges. That thought had never struck me before. And it is most disturbing because many if not most of our Federal judges are elite academic types with their heads buried in case law and whose allegiances are with the American Bar, ACLU, and other liberal causes. There is a clear disconnect between the judicial branch and the people. So this caller is right, the Constitution has become a “living document” for the Federal judges, but no longer for “We, the People.”
And then he made a more important point in my mind. The Constitution is a “contract” between our Founding Fathers and “We, the People.” If you had a guy building your home based on a contract you both signed, would you want him to interpret the contract with his own “intent” halfway through construction of your house? Of course not. So why are we allowing our sacred Constitution to be altered based on the will of liberal special interests with undue influence on the Federal judiciary?
Our Federal judges are in “breach of contract” with the American people.
Our President’s duty to us is to reclaim this contract and appoint Federal judges and Supreme Court nominees who believe that as well.
I will be very interested to hear how Ms. Miers answers the question….. “Is the Constitution a ‘living document’?”
-Bruce (GayPatriot)

How American Gay Elitists Are Failing Iranian Gays

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(Hat tip: Instapundit)
Rob Anderson at The New Republic has a must-read column on the hypocrisy and silence of the American gay “establishment.” Many of these points have been echoed at this site ad nauseum.
How America’s Gay Rights Establishment Is Failing Gay Iranians: The Quiet Americans – The New Republic Online

When it comes to the oppression of gays and lesbians in Muslim countries, gay activism hasn’t died; it never really existed. Gay activists have used two types of excuses to justify their failure to aggressively mobilize for the rights of gay Muslims–moral and strategic. The moral argument is that Americans are in no position to criticize Iranians on human rights–that it would be wrong to campaign too loudly against Iranian abuses when the United States has so many problems of its own. Then, there are two strategic rationales: that it is better to work behind the scenes to bring about change in Iran; and that gay rights groups should conserve their resources for domestic battles.
The strategic rationales are not especially compelling, but it is the moral argument that is particularly troubling, because it suggests that some gay and lesbian leaders feel more allegiance to the relativism of the contemporary left than they do to the universality of their own cause. Activists are more than willing to condemn the homophobic leaders of the Christian right for campaigning against gay marriage; but they are weary of condemning Islamist regimes that execute citizens for being gay. Something has gone terribly awry.
But gay activists need to come to a consensus sooner rather than later because, while they argue, Iranian lives are on the line. For now, mainstream gay organizations have made clear where they stand. As President Ahmadinejad, a man who is partially responsible for these brutalities, passed through New York last month, gay activists failed to confront him. Now he has returned to Iran, where those who are proven to be gay are thrown in jail, tortured, and executed on trumped-up charges. When it comes to the Muslim world, gay and lesbian leaders are evidently uncomfortable talking in moral absolutes. But if this is not absolute evil, then what is?

The problem for the American gay community is that our “establishment” no longer recognizes right from wrong. Only Red from Blue. And we know where their allegiance, money and time goes. It is not on behalf of moral absolutism, but political hackery.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
UPDATE (from GPW): Now in his new perch at Malcontent, my buddy Robbie looks into this matter. Noting how Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Program at the Human Rights Watch, excused Muslims for gay bashing in Holland, he wonders:

If a gay couple had been assaulted by poor, Christian evangelicals in Alabama, I highly, highly suspect Mr. Long would not be waxing sympathetic about the effects of poverty or single motherhood. I am reasonably certain his condemnation would have been swift and furious, and rightfully so. Instead we are treated to an apologia, brazen excuses, and a reluctance to condemn the Religion of Peace.

Now, that I’ve whet your appetite, read the whole thing!

AP Story/AOL Poll on “Outing” of Public Figures

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(Hat tip: The Malcontent)
David Crary of the Associated Press has done a story about the “outing” of public figures.

NEW YORK (Oct. 4) – Though decried by many gay-rights leaders, “outing” – the practice of exposing secretly gay public figures – is expanding into new terrain as Internet bloggers target congressional staffers, political strategists, even black clergy whose sermons and speeches contain anti-gay rhetoric.
Few issues are as divisive within the gay community. Numerous gay organizations, such as the Human Rights Campaign and the Log Cabin Republicans, staunchly oppose outing, yet many other activists support it when the targets are public figures – or their aides – who work against gay rights or condemn homosexuality.

Malcontent points out there is a survey associated with this story where you can make your opinion known on the subject.
Full Article and Vote Here!
-Bruce (GayPatriot)

President Bush’s Speech on War On Terror

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(Hat tip: The Political Teen)
Just a reminder that we are indeed in a world war against a political movement that declared war on America many years ago. And what is at stake. Some of us have forgotten. The terrorist political movement has not.

The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. We must recognize Iraq as the central front in our War on Terror.
Some have also argued that extremism has been strengthened by the actions of our coalition in Iraq, claiming that our presence in that country has somehow caused or triggered the rage of radicals. I would remind them that we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001 — and al Qaeda attacked us anyway. The hatred of the radicals existed before Iraq was an issue, and it will exist after Iraq is no longer an excuse. The government of Russia did not support Operation Iraqi Freedom, and yet the militants killed more than 180 Russian schoolchildren in Beslan.
The influence of Islamic radicalism is also magnified by helpers and enablers. They have been sheltered by authoritarian regimes, allies of convenience like Syria and Iran, that share the goal of hurting America and moderate Muslim governments, and use terrorist propaganda to blame their own failures on the West and America, and on the Jews. These radicals depend on front operations, such as corrupted charities, which direct money to terrorist activity.

I would ask you to consider if the American news media and elements of the Democratic Party are part of the “helpers and enablers.”

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy is dismissive of free peoples, claiming that men and women who live in liberty are weak and decadent. Zarqawi has said that Americans are, quote, “the most cowardly of God’s creatures.” But let’s be clear: It is cowardice that seeks to kill children and the elderly with car bombs, and cuts the throat of a bound captive, and targets worshipers leaving a mosque. It is courage that liberated more than 50 million people. It is courage that keeps an untiring vigil against the enemies of a rising democracy. And it is courage in the cause of freedom that once again will destroy the enemies of freedom.
The terrorists are as brutal an enemy as we’ve ever faced. They’re unconstrained by any notion of our common humanity, or by the rules of warfare. No one should underestimate the difficulties ahead, nor should they overlook the advantages we bring to this fight.
Some observers look at the job ahead and adopt a self- defeating pessimism. It is not justified. With every random bombing and with every funeral of a child, it becomes more clear that the extremists are not patriots, or resistance fighters — they are murderers at war with the Iraqi people, themselves.

Full video here.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
To read the full text of the President’s speech…. click here… [Read more…]

GPW’s first blogiversary

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While the blog celebrated its first blogiversary over a month ago, today marks my blogiversary. Shortly after I e-mailed Bruce (whom I then only knew as “GayPatriot) to praise him for telling Log Cabin to stick it (for withholding its endorsement of the president in last fall’s campaign), we exchanged e-mails and soon he invited me on board.
Bruce, I am grateful for the opportunity you gave me to share my thoughts with your audience, pretty substantial even back then for a blog so young.
Since then, we have gotten to know each other and frequently found it uncanny how similar our thoughts are on certain issues. And I met Bruce and his Partner John last fall when they were in LA. We made a pilgrimage to one of the most sacred spots in Southern California–the Reagan Library.
I am also grateful to those of you who read us regularly and those who comment, particularly those who take the time to express their disagreement in a civil manner. While I know (and regret) that some critics misrepresent our ideas and call us (and our supporters names), I appreciate those like Patrick who help further the kind of debate, I believe, a blog should promote.
As I am busy writing two papers and engaging in introspection appropriate to the Days of Awe, I will not be able to post much in the next few days. I’ll try to dash off a thought or two. So, as I did when I celebrated my six-month blogiversary, I reference my “virgin post” and quote again the words of the great Albert Camus with which I entered the blogosphere:

Something in us has been destroyed by the spectacle of the years just past. And this something is the eternal confidence of man, which has always made him believe that one could draw human reactions from another man by speaking to him in the language of humanity. We have seen lying, debasing, killing, deportations, torture, and each time it was not possible to persuade those who were doing it not to do it, because they were so sure of themselves and because one cannot persuade an abstraction, that is to say, the representative of an ideology.
The long conversation of mankind has just ended. And, of course, a man whom one cannot persuade is a man who frightens us….
We live in terror because persuasion is no longer possible, because man has been delivered entirely to history and because he can no longer turn to that part of himself, as true as the historical part, which he discovers in front of the beauty of the world and of human faces…

“The Century of Fear” from Combat, November 1946 (my translation). If I have a personal motto as a blogger, it is those words.
I seek always to remain open to persuasion and to keep open as well that long conversation which too many, on both sides of the political aisle, would rather keep closed.
-Dan (AKA GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com

Open Thread Wednesday

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I’m swamped with work today…. and Dan is celebrating the New Year. So I will, with great trust, turn over the day to all of you!
-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Protest Outside Iranian Embassy In London Over Gay Torture

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**WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTO IN POSTING**
My comrades against terror in the United Kingdom held a rally outside the Iranian Embassy in London a few hours ago. I have some of the first photos of the demonstration and will post them in a few minutes.
Here is the press release from OutRage!

Celebs join protest against Iran executions and torture
Scott Capurro, Jeremy Sheffield, Q Boy and Josh Rafter picket Iranian
Embassy
Boy George, Matt Lucas, Simon Callow condemn Iranian murderers
Petition rejected by Iran Embassy – Now to be delivered to Foreign
Secretary
London – 4 October 2005
TV soap and film actor Jeremy Sheffield, gay rap star Q Boy, comedian Scott Cappurro, Big Brother contestant Josh Rafter, out gay Labour MP Chris Bryant and human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell today joined a 50-strong protest outside the Iranian Embassy in London.
The protest was also backed by Little Britain TV star Matt Lucas, Hollywood actor Simon Callow and pop singer and DJ Boy George.
The protest was part of an on-going series of global demonstrations against the Iranian government’s arrest, imprisonment, whipping and execution of gay men.
It was organised by the gay magazine Axm, and by the queer rights group OutRage!.
OutRage! expresses its appreciation to Axm for its splendid work in making this protest possible.
“We are here to condemn Iran’s execution and torture of gay men, and to demand international action against the tyrannical Iranian regime” said protest co-organiser Peter Tatchell of the LGBT human rights group OutRage!.
“The international community should issue an ultimatum to Iran: either respect human rights, or face economic sanctions. There can be no normal relations with an abnormal regime that executes gay people,
unchaste women, Muslims who renounce their faith, and political, religious and ethnic minorities.”

Ahhh, if only American gay “rights” organizations made similar, strong and consistent statements about the War on Terror….

New photo of the executed Iranian teenagers:

(Welcome to readers from The Daily Dish and Roger L. Simon!)
Photos of today’s demonstration…. click here…. [Read more…]

TIME: Miers Backed ‘Full Civil Rights’ For Gays

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Hat Tip: Hotline On Call
From TIME.com – A Sampling of the Writings of Harriet Miers

An indication of her stance on gay rights comes from this questionaire from the Lesbian/Gay Political Coalition of Dallas Miers filled out while running for the Dallas City Council in 1989. In it, she supported full civil rights for gays and lesbians and backed AIDS education programs for the city of Dallas. (Source: Quorumreport.com)

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Was There A Terrorist Attack At Univ. of Okla.?

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It appears the mainstream media has ignored a potentially important story that took place this weekend.
A suicide bomber on the campus of the University of Oklahoma.

The FBI is continuing its investigation of the death of OU mechanical engineering junior Joel Henry Hinrichs III, who died in an explosion about 100 yards away from a packed Oklahoma Memorial Stadium Saturday night.

NewsBusters says we aren’t getting the full story from former Democrat Senator, now OU Prez David Boren.

University of Oklahoma President David Boren seems determined to have everybody believe Joel Henry Hinrichs III was merely a disturbed young man who decided to commit suicide by blowing himself up within 100 yards of a stadium containing 84,000 screaming fans of Sooner football.
Sorry, I don’t buy it, at least not yet. Here’s why: First, The Daily Oklahoman is reporting authorities found a large cache of bomb-making materials in Hinrichs’ apartment. The cache is so big that the Oklahoman quoted one of the officials on the scene as estimating a full 24 hours would be required to cart away all of the material.
Suicide victims don’t normally accumulate a large amount of bomb-making material in their homes. People intent on blowing up other people do.

How soon we forget that the Al-Qaeda handbook instructs followers to hit such “soft targets” in their War Against America like shopping malls and sports stadiums. (Read here and here.)
Even if there is no terror-related reason for this incident, why is our “mainstream” media ignoring this event in the context of our War on Terror?
-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Gay Spies Among Us

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I have to let you all in on a secret. I have become pretty sure that PatriotPartner and I have unwittingly played a practical joke on our entire neighborhood. We have both decided that our neighbors think we are gay spies.
You see, we have private sector jobs that keep us away from home a lot. And since we have only lived in our community (think Wisteria Lane) less than a year, we just haven’t had time to socialize a lot with the more traditional families who are our neighbors. ‘MarineDaddy’ and his family are a few doors away, BlockCaptain Lady also is not that far down the street, and CommunityLeader BoardMember is just around the corner. We live in a very active, family-oriented community. But we are never home. (Sidenote… our conservative neighbors in the reddest of Red Counties in Northern Virginia accept us as a gay couple and could care less. Shocker, eh?)
When we are home, usually it is one or the other of us… rarely both at a time. And the only time we emerge from our house is to walk the dog (the remaining PatriotPooch). Otherwise, when I’m home I’m in the basement doing my real job, and Partner is at his office. But, again, most of the time one or both of us are flying to parts of the USA for our jobs.
So after just 10 months living here, a ‘For Sale’ sign pops up and our neighbors suddenly want to know…. “Why are you moving” from this great neighborhood. Our answer is usually the traffic (see posting below) and a change of pace from the DC area. But in conversations lately, I found myself giving this other twist to the answer.
“Well, you know since my job and John’s job don’t require living any certain place, as long as we are close to an airport….”
Uh oh. One of the neighbors does know that John’s job involves military-related contract work. So the other night Partner and I looked at each other and started laughing…. “Do you think the neighbors might think we are spies?”
Gay Spies, nonetheless!
Actually, what a perfect cover don’t you think?
-Patriot….. Gay Patriot

Just My Luck…..

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Hey, PatriotPartner….. why the hell are we moving to Charlotte again?

Lucky Us: We’re Among Tops in US for Gas Prices – Charlotte Observer
Oh, now I remember…. because I live 30 miles west of Washington, DC, and our roads look like this all the time except between midnight and perhaps 5:00AM.

I’ll pay for higher gas in the Queen City.
Now would someone please buy my friggin house in Virginia???!!!! The traffic isn’t thaaaaat bad……
-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Capsized Tour Boat Didn’t Have Enough Crew

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Boat Did Not Have Enough Crew – CBS News
Let me guess.. the crew that should have been there is stationed in Iraq?
No, wait…. FEMA should have known the boat was going to capsize so they should have had a team in place.
No, that’s not it. The tax breaks for the rich people in Lake George, NY went into fixing up their own homes overlooking the lake and didn’t help the local economy at all so the Bush tax cuts meant the tour company couldn’t hire more staff.
Darn… still not right. I’ve got it! Bush and Cheney didn’t serve in the military so people who could have been hired by the private boat company were so distraught with their un-American administration in Washington that they left the area and moved to Canada.
Oh screw it, it was Bush’s fault anyway.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)

10,000 versus 964

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Remember Mayor Nagin’s hyperbolic statements that the MSM ate up in the first hours of his Katrina-induced coma?

PAULA ZAHN, CNN: We are just now starting to get a clear picture of the massive disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina. But even as we speak a much grimmer task is also underway: Recovering bodies of the victims. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin now says as many as 10,000 people may have died in that storm or its aftermath.

But reality bites Nagin’s apocolyptic tantrum….. La. Search for Katrina Dead Ends at 964

FEMA did nearly 23,000 secondary searches in New Orleans with about a dozen teams.
As of Monday, the Katrina death toll in Louisiana stood at 964.

Maybe he meant that there were 10,000 city buses dead in the water?
-Bruce (GayPatriot)