Messiahs

Leftys remember:  All messiahs, other than the one whose birth we will soon be celebrating, disappoint.

 

Ah, the tolerant left

Last Friday night my Friend and I went to TPAC to see Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles.  Since I’m vastly older than he is, I had a bit more of a connection to the music.  We had a great time hanging out.  Afterwards, we stopped by Tribe for a drink, then went next door to Play to see what was going on.  A mutual friend, “T”, joined us.  After a bit of mingling and the requisite collection of a drink from the bar, we headed to the smoking porch out back.  The three of us were chatting when a guy in a red waffle henley and a ball cap came up and started talking to my Friend.  T and I took to our own conversation.  Red shirt was standing just off my right shoulder.   At some point in talking with T, I mentioned Proposition 8.  Immediately, red shirt turned and started talking to me.  I quickly learned that he had moved to Tennessee from California just four months ago.  Since he was still registered in L.A., he went back there to vote against Prop 8.  I mentioned to him the protests scheduled across the country for the next day and the one set to be held in Nashville at the courthouse.  At that point, and without prompting, he said, “I am a Stonewall Democrat.”  I smiled and said, “I am a Log Cabin Republican.”  His response?  “I don’t talk to Republicans.”  Then he turned away.

Wow.

I’m pretty out as a conservative.  I used to write a column  titled “Conservative Tendencies” for the now-defunct Church Street Freedom Press, a local gay paper.  It’s pretty common for people to engage me in political discussions when I’m out, whether at the bar or an event.  Rather than avoiding me because of my views, the more common reaction is to engage me.  That, I can respect.  Simply refusing to hear or acknowledge other viewpoints is pretty mindless.  I had heard, through GayPatriotWest, of this sort of reaction out on the coast.  This guy is going to need to grow up if he wants to live here.

 

I thought the Democrats were better on gay issues!!

Rea Carey, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund, sent out an email on the day after the Obama victory that started with these words:

Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States… but marriage bans have passed in Arizona and Florida, an adoption ban has passed in Arkansas, and the outcome of Proposition 8 in remains uncertain.

Needless to say, this is a bittersweet day for our community.

Er, no.  First, 27% of “our community” voted for McCain.  Second, Obama opposes same sex marriage on religious grounds.  (Sound familar?)  While so far he has said he does not support a constitutional ban on same sex marriage, he did nothing to defeat Proposition 8 in California, or other anti-gay measures in Arizona, Arkansas or Florida.  He will do nothing to make sure that our relationships are given equal protection under the law.

Why didn’t he come out against those anti-gay issues?  Because Democrats in those states are just as “anti-gay” as Republicans.  He wouldn’t risk offending his base to stand up for us.  He knew that the people who would vote for him, would vote against us.  He wouldn’t stand up for us in the election and he won’t stand up for us in office.  He still has to run again and the base simply won’t move enough on those issues to make it safe for him to help us.  Gays and lesbians should quit pinning their hopes on winning national elections and focus on making our case directly in our neighborhoods and our local communities.

At least we can’t say we were thrown under the bus.  We never had a seat on the bus, in the front or the back.

 

Congratulations Mr. Obama . . .

you are the next President of the United States.  Don’t fuck it up.

 

A call to the White House

“Hello? Obama Headquaters for Hope and Change.  How may I spread your wealth?”

 

The next four years

This morning we awaken to an election day all but certain to end in victory for Barack Obama.  Two years ago, the certainty for today was that Hillary Clinton would be receiving the congratulatory call at the end of the evening from the vanquished Republican.  Sen. Obama had entered the race most likely to build upon the name recognition that he had achieved from his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, with his eye set upon a future campaign and a future victory.  A combination of factors, including a superior campaign organization,  a well timed but vacuous promise of Hope and Change, a national press so eager to defeat a Republican that they would utterly fail to discharge their duty to fairly and evenly find and report the news, a Republican candidate who refused to point the finger of blame for the economic disaster we are enduring at the Democrats responsible and who further refused to discuss the effect of sitting for 20 years under the hate-America-first preaching of the Black Liberation Theologist Rev. Wright and who refused to  discuss Sen. Obama’s antipathy for Second Amendment rights have, among other things, brought us to this point.

Somehow, the United States of America, the nation which became the greatest on earth based on principles of personal, economic and political freedoms is turning to a man who believes that all of those should be curtailed and limited because freedom produces inequality.  He ignores the benefits of inequality – the incentive to self-improve and the trickle down of economic improvement.  Freedom and prosperity are partners.  One cannot advance too far beyond the other.

But, we cannot change the inevitable.  Today, I will be at my local polling place at 8:00 a.m. to cast my vote.  I hope that it and all legally cast votes are counted fairly.  They won’t be.  Voter fraud and election machine errors will mar this election, creating a clinghold for those who will spend years shouting that their candidate was unfairly deprived of the office he deserved.  Unfortunately, some of those wll be right.  Having a black man, or more accurately a half black man, in the White House will fire up the hate groups.  As much as i oppose his policies and decry his vision of America, I fervently hope he remains safe and healthy throughout his tenure.  America does not need tragedy and the race war that his assassination would bring.  And while I would wish my political opponents from the stage, I do not wish them dead.

The economy will improve, but it will take a year or two.  The military will be weakened.  Our ability and desire to bring freedom to millions around the world will wane.  Government will expand.  Health care will become more and more a government function leading to a decrease in quality and to unnecessary rationing.  Taxes and regulation will strangle businesses and stymy economic progress in ways reminiscent of overburdened European economies, economies now trying to throw off those limitations and grow free again.  The nation will not get the needed energy plan that exploits currently available resources while pursuing new forms and sources of energy.  Instead, we will leave oil in the ground and refuse to build new nuclear energy plants in hopes that some as yet unknown fuel will power our future.

Gay rights will continue their halting steps forward, not because of support from the administration but because attitudes change.  As gay people become more visible in daily life, we become less of a threat and more accepted.  Straights will reaize that we are more like them than they previously thought and we will change from an oddity to neighbors and co-workers and friends.

I wish I could be more optimistic.  I wish I could believe that freedom and prosperity will flourish and democracy and capitalism will spread.  Even more so, I wish that Barack Obama wanted those things.  He doesn’t.

 

The best response

I’ve actually heard people say that they are going to vote for Obama simply because “we need a change.”  Jeez.

h/t www.tennesseefree.com

 

Halloween fright

Even though I really don’t do costumes, I’ll probably attend a costume party being thrown tonight over in east Nashville by some friends of mine.  I might swing by the Obama/Biden headquaters right by my house and pick up a campaign button.  That way I can go as the scariest thing I know of – a Democrat.  The only downside is the increased likelihood of having to talk politics all night.  But, since I’m pretty well known as the out-spoken gay conservative/libertarian type, that’s fairly likely any way.  I couldn’t even avoid it the other night when I went to see Avenue Q at TPAC, which was pretty good but not great.

UPDATE:  I bought the button.  $5 to the Obama campaign.  For the next 4 years you can cuss my name, since his ascendency to the throne will be my fault.

 

Are liberals really this vile?

Barack Obama accidentally exposes that he is a socialist.  Liberal reaction?  Attack the man who asked the question that Sen. Government was responding to.  I don’t care if Joe the Plumber rapes dead cats while shooting pure heroin into his viens during a seance on the chuch steps.  Joe, himself, isn’t the issue.  The issue is Sen. Obama’s desire to “spread the wealth” by using the power of big government to take from the successful to give to those he considers deserving.

When a liberal uses the word “fairness,” he means bringing everyone, except himself and his cronies, equally under the oppressive fist of government.

 

Like Bush, only worse

As I’ve said before, Sen. Obama, the man who had said he wasn’t ready to be president, will be the next president of the United States.  That’s depressing.  It’s depressing because the next four years will be a repeat of what was wrong with the last 8 years, times a hundred.  Everything George Bush did wrong domestically, e.g. No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, domestic survellence excesses, steel tariffs,  are the antithesis of small government conservatism.  Barack Obama makes no pretense of prefering small government.  Government coercion, regulation, control and big spending are his view of a better America.  Couple that with his long, close association with Americans who hate America and his need to please the rest of the world instead of placing the interests of the United States first and we are faced with a dismal, depressing future.