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Update: Little Miss Attila has the story on an example from San Francisco. Moe Lane has the update.

moar funny pictures

I find listening to Obama’s speeches excruciating because the disconnect between what he says and what he does annoys me. During the election, I also found fault with my liberal friends’ method of researching his qualifications for the presidency — or any full-time job — which was to listen to Obama talk and believe every word he said.

I also am flabbergasted that more people don’t see through one of Obama’s principle techniques for bullying people when they are upset with his contradictions and broken promises and outright callous disregard for everyone except himself. He uses his frowny face and most superior manner and scornful voice — all of which reliably cow self-doubting idealists — then he firmly states short, declarative sentences that are true and relevant to the general topic, but which avoid the actual problem altogether. However, because he is so forceful in declaring his evasion to be THE answer — which it never is — too many people think, “Wow! That must have been the answer.” When it was not.

I rejoice, therefore, that Benjamin Sarlin, a liberal blogger at a liberal blog has spotted a different, but related, pattern in Obama’s speeches. I hope this is a harbinger that liberals finally are starting to see the disconnect between everything Obama says and everything Obama does: first he says what he thinks people who oppose his real plans want to hear, then as soon as they have relaxed and stopped paying attention, he does whatever he wants, which is usually the opposite of what he said he’d do.

Anyway, here it is, your own DIY Obama Speech Toolkit, so now YOU, too, can write Obama’s speeches in the comfort of your own home!

(Teleprompter sold separately, batteries not included.)

Update: Prof. William A. Jacobson of Legal Insurrection also de-constructed Obama’s rhetorical flim-flammery today:

Obama loves strawman arguments. His favorite form of argument is to set up false choices, and false equivalencies to make his point. Frequently, Obama uses the device of what “some say” or similar words to accomplish his phony set-up.

Washington at Valley Forge, painting by Edward P. Moran, Library of Congress.

Baron von Steuben training the troops of Gen. George Washington at Valley Forge, 1777. Painting by Augustus G. Heaton, U.S. Archives, 111-SC-83897.

It is Memorial Day and I do wish to honor all the members of our armed services, living and dead. But I am going to have to start insisting on having me all of that equality they talked about today that every other citizen has, and, frankly, practically every illegal alien, too.

I attend Memorial Day services because I play bassoon in the Bel Air Community Band, one of the largest and best community bands in the U.S. We play for the Memorial Day services held in Bel Air, Maryland, because we are patriotic. Many of our members have served in the armed forces, including our conductor, Scott Sharnetzka. Some are currently serving — Aberdeen Proving Ground is nearby.

In the past four years or so since I’ve played with the band on Memorial Day, the talks have been very moving — including a Marine sergeant who lost an arm and both legs in Viet Nam, and last year a father reading a letter from a fallen son. The Air Force National Guard general who spoke this year will be leaving for Afghanistan in a couple of months.

But thanks to Carrie Prejean touting as one of her credentials for speaking against marriage equality for lesbians and gays the fact — I assume she’s telling the truth — that one of her grandfathers fought in World War II in the Battle of the Bulge, I found myself listening to the speeches today about liberty and American values and getting angry. One of my ancestors — an I-don’t-know-how-many-greats-grandfather — spent the winter in the Revolutionary Army under Gen. George Washington at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania. (There was no battle with the British at Valley Forge, but it was a turning point of the Revolutionary War simply because enough of an army stayed with Washington to keep the war for independence going.) Grandma said he was so hungry that when he caught a frog and it got away before he could cook it, he cried. Why does the service of MY ancestor not count? Where is MY equality? Why is it legal to deny me marriage equality, a job, a home or the right to enjoy a public accommodation, such as a restaurant or store, for the BEING crime of being homosexual? Why does MY equality vary from state to state, even county to county or city to city?

One of the answers is that our military’s policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” goes a LONG way toward perpetuating inequality for lesbians and gays. It gives our inequality a rationale — we do not have equality because we haven’t paid for it with our service. Never mind that foreigners are allowed to serve in our military as THEIR path to FULL citizenship.

I don’t know my family’s military service history between the Revolutionary War and World War II. During World War II, I think both my mother’s brothers who were old enough were in the Army. I know Uncle Herbert was — I have photos of him in uniform. Both of my father’s brothers were in the military in World War II — his brother Donald was a Flying Tiger in China. (Yes, the same Flying Tigers as the John Wayne film.) His brother Paul was in the Army — oh, and I think Uncle Paul was gay. My parents met in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, separating uranium for the Manhattan Project. (My father is nuclear physicist Hubert P. Yockey.) My mother’s father and one of her sisters worked there, too.

So — why doesn’t MY family’s service count toward MY equality as a homosexual?

And — since we have a far-left Democrat in the White House who promised to end “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” AND Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate, NOW really seems like the time for the legislation to remove this policy of inequality. It’s time for liberal gays and lesbians to give Obama a deadline for repealing “Don’t ask, don’t tell” because enough lesbian and gay pioneers like me have settled in Fiscal Conservative Land that they really do have a place to go now when Democrats don’t keep their promises.

Memorial Day seems like the right time to remember that fighting for equality is a virtue and that fighting for the right to serve in your nation’s military is patriotic and shows the willingness to pay the price of equality in full measure. It is time to repeal “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” It is time for homosexuals to have equality.

Update, 5/27: Becky, the lesbian libertarian at Just a Girl in Short Shorts Talking About Whatever, also has some worthwhile observations about “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and a pertinent video — plus, she has hot illustrations, while the closest I have ever come to heat here is a nude Bea Arthur portrait staid enough to be handing in the Tate Gallery.

see more pwn and owned pictures

Charles Winecoff at Big Hollywood has lots of thoughts on the lesbian and gay community and gay marriage tonight. He asks, “When did the gay community get so mean?”

Charles, I came out in 1972 and I have a question for you: “When was the gay and lesbian community EVER nice?” Because I can’t think of a time.

The point Winecoff eventually arrives at has to do with gay marriage vs. civil unions.

On that, something Winecoff wrote needs clarification. He quotes another blogger as saying that civil unions in France, which are available to both straights and gays, provide the same rights to lesbians and gays as marriage. This is not correct. The Washington Post had a Valentine’s Day story on French civil unions, known by their acronym “PACS,” which stated:

… PACS unions are also seen as more appealing than marriage because they can be dissolved without costly divorce procedures. If one or both of the partners declares in writing to the court that he or she wants out, the PACS is ended, with neither partner having claim to the other’s property or to alimony.

… government statistics show, one-sixth of PACSed couples that end their unions do so because they want to get married.

Separate. Not equal.

Winecoff also points out that the global jihad hates gays and lesbians as much as it hates Jews and that our community is oblivious to this threat. On this point, I agree.

Anyway, he says we need allies come the jihad, so we should be nice now and drop our demands:

Instead of stirring up resentment trying to snatch a piece of a stale pie we don’t really need — and setting back our cause in the process — we need to keep moving forward, not “separate but equal,” but different and equal.

It’s time to reprioritize, show some gratitude for how far we’ve come, and try some magnanimity for a change. Let the so-called “bigots” keep their rituals. We have our own way of doing things.

Charles, Charles, Charles. Where do I start? Here: have you ever had a love of your life and stayed committed to one another for 10 years or more? I have — over 20 years, in fact. Have you had to fight for your life partner’s life? I have. Arrange for your life partner’s funeral? I have. We need the rights to do those things. A lesbian attorney wrote my life partner’s will but was unaware that a will is not the instrument that gives a surviving life partner the right to make funeral arrangements. I’m a planner, so we found out in time — but just barely.

Winecoff’s essay does not mention any profound loves or longterm relationships. That is why it sounds to me like Winecoff doesn’t know what marriage is, at all. So his assertion, “Let the so-called ‘bigots’ keep their rituals,” isn’t principle, it’s sour grapes.

On the issue of gay marriage, if you really have no idea what the spiritual, emotional and life content of a marriage are like, work on that first, because that is what is informing the efforts of those of us who do want full marriage rights for lesbians and gays.

Moving along, dear GayPatriotWest, aka Daniel Blatt, picked up on Winecoff’s post here. We have exchanged some pleasant e-mails and it pains me to disagree with him, but disagree I must. He writes:

I do know some gay people who do want marriage, but it seems the most vocal advocates see gay marriage more as, to quote my friend Dale Carpenter, a “trophy in the cultural wars” than anything else.

No, no, no, no, NO!

We need fully equal marriage for the following reasons:

1. Marriage is about enlightenment and God consciousness. I will explain that in another post on enlightenment and higher states of consciousness. To deny lesbians and gays the right to marriages that are fully equal to straight ones cuts us off from God. How is that not evil?
2. Marriage creates a structure for uniting two lives into a couple and provides the foundation for building one life together. Civil unions degrade that reality by defining marriage as a collection of legal rights and duties. Therefore, to create a second class marriage with civil unions will inevitably degrade the concept of marriage, even though marriage is the “more equal” option.
3. Marriage gives you rights to do things for one another from managing your affairs together, to managing your spouse’s healthcare when he or she is no longer able to make decisions, to control of your spouse’s remains and funeral arrangements after death, to inheritance rights. It is not plausible that civil unions ever would be able to keep up if every equal right has to pass a legislature and be signed by a governor or president, or that they would be recognized in every other country, as legal marriages are.

I just don’t get the feeling from Winecoff and Dan that they ever have been in a longterm committed relationship with someone that was/is the love of their lives. If they haven’t — and I don’t know — that is why they are able to be so reasonable, so negotiable,  so “peace in our time.” If they have not had the emotional and spiritual bond with another person that underlies true marriages, whether or not they are legal, then it’s impossible for them to understand the passion and urgency of those of us who have.

People who are ambivalent about marriage, whether straight or gay — will never, ever expend the effort and political capital to make gay marriage legal. I do not believe the Democrats will ever deliver on gay marriage for their lesbian and gay worker bees/cash cows — they’ll string us along forever.

But religious people/conservatives who love and understand marriage are EXACTLY the people who will ultimately be our best allies in legalizing gay marriage — because they understand the passion to be married and build a life together.

For new readers:

The brief story of my own marriage with my late life partner of over 20 years is here.

And my observation that we’ll never get liberals to support gay marriage because they aren’t all that solid about straight marriage so they can’t understand why we want it is here.

For my foreign readers:

There’s an old joke in the U.S. about an Italian immigrant woman who was being lectured by her priest on the subject of birth control. She replied to him, “You no playa da game, you no maka da rules.”

Update: I e-mailed Dan about this post to give him a heads-up that I linked him and that we disagree. I could not do the same for Winecoff because I could not find his e-mail address at Big Hollywood. I have an e-mail from Dan this morning saying that he is not in a committed relationship, but Winecoff is. Dan says that he does understand the passion and urgency for marriage to be legalized for lesbians and gays. I hope he will comment and explain in his own words. Winecoff also is welcome to comment here.

Correction: I should have consulted a reference before using the “peace in our time” quote. Wikipedia says that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s actual words were “peace for our time” when he announced on September 30, 1938, that he had sold out Czechoslovakia — “a far away country of which we know little,” as my father quotes him, from being alive at the time — to Hitler’s demand for “living space” for Germany in the Munich Agreement. Chamberlain had ceded to Hitler territory over which he had no legal control, Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, which Hitler invaded the very next day. Chamberlain’s appeasement policy, however, did not secure peace for very long and World War II began a year later when Hitler invaded Poland.

Since I am obviously giving Dan and Winecoff a dig about appeasement, I should say that the way we will obtain our right to marry is to be out in every aspect of our lives while being the best people we know how to be and making the best marriages — I feel it’s degrading to use the more correct term of “committed relationships” because it does not capture the dimensions of spirituality and devotion — we can now. I will explain in more detail in future posts. We are a quite a large minority when  our families and friends and colleagues know we are lesbian or gay and give us their support. The love and respect we earn among people who know we are gay or lesbian is what will soften the hearts of those now opposed to gay marriage and will let them feel comfortable about admitting us to full membership in the club. Anyway, love, respect and openness is how I’m going about it.

Update: Protein Wisdom also has a post about Winecoff’s column.

… and I’ve suffered losses not only in the hundreds of thousands of dollars but also almost my life due to liberal/libertarian opposition to development of any kind. But that’s a story for another day. Right now, Stephen Gordon has asked for help in spreading the word about another side of the story down Alabama way and I am willing to oblige by linking here.

I’m big that way.

However, does it strike anyone else as ironic that liberals pose as the great changers of the world, but they are the biggest enemies of change when it comes to development that will make a community thrive?

Totalitarian liberalism is on the march in Canada to silence Kathy Shaidle here:

In Ms. Shaidle’s case, she became a target because of her outspoken support of Israel and her criticism of the Canadian government’s use of “human rights” to stifle free speech.

and here.

Since Kathy Shaidle posted my threat last night to change my tagline from, “A Newly Conservative Lesbian, ” to “A Newly Conservative Lesbian with Really Big Breasts,” — I’ll explain soon, I promise — I couldn’t resist teasing you with the headline.

My “Beau” is my darling Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside, III, who is named after the Southern beau, Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside, Jr., from the movie Auntie Mame, who rescues Mame and marries her after she has lost all her money in the Obama stock market crash. No, wait, the stock market crash of 1929, the one that was broadcast to Joe Biden’s television.

I rescued Beauregard and his two brothers and sister around Thanksgiving 1996 as feral kittens (and got their mother spayed). The 1958 film version of Auntie Mame with Rosalyn Russell was being played a lot that December and Margaret and I must have watched it every time. When Beau, played by Forrest Tucker, finally finds Mame on Christmas Eve after becoming charmed by her when she sold him skates for children in an orphanage, he said, “Why, it’s a miracle. It’s a good old-fashioned Christmas miracle, that’s what it is!”

So when MY dear Beau gave his first sign of crossing the line from feral to tame, which was exploding into a purr as I stroked his ear, I said, “Why, it’s a miracle! It’s a good old-fashioned Christmas miracle, that’s what it is!” And then I realized that he was dressed in Confederate gray and so incredibly handsome that the only logical name for his was “Beauregard.”

And last night, he wanted to sleep with me. So, that is how I slept with my Beau last night.

Beauregard

Beau played an important role in my starting this blog. I got a cancerous tumor removed from his left cheek last August — note to animal lovers, a bald spot on your cat’s cheek is a bad sign — and found another bare spot at near the old spot on his lip in December. I started this blog in the wild hope that I could make money with it promptly and pay for his surgery. Stop laughing! So far, no money, although I’m working on changing that, and I borrowed the money for Beau’s surgery. Good news! This lump was benign and his good looks are pretty much intact now that he’s healed up.

“Mr. Applewhite, what are you doing in that hole with Mr. Gutterman? … Mr. Whitterman, there’s no such place as San Francisco!”

(Give credit where credit is due: while Mame was a social liberal, she was fiscally conservative enough to get a job as soon as she’d lost her fortune.)

Son of a bitch, another celebrity I have to give up as a liberal fool! During the 2008 election campaign it was like a stampede of celebrities to the brink of our last nerve and beyond as Cuban Diva BFF and I commiserated by phone over our losses.

So, today I’ve had it with Roseanne Barr, but before I say good-bye, I have to tell you her best line EVER:

“They say that lesbians hate men. How can that be? They don’t have to fuck them.”

Update: Welcome, gentle readers from The Other McCain!

Little Miss Attila kindly asked me what I thought of this post at her blog, and here is my answer:

My concern with Steele’s put-down of Limbaugh is that it makes me question his personality, his judgment and his qualifications for the job of chairman of the Republican National Committee, which Rush correctly pointed out is not the same as being the leader of the Republican Party and is definitely not the same as being the leader of the conservative movement.

To the extent that a leader articulates principles and inspires people to adopt and advance them, then Rush Limbaugh is indeed the leader of conservatism right now and he proved it with his CPAC speech, which I heard in its entirety in one of the overflow rooms thanks to having the sense to stay put in my chair after the Conservatism 2.0 session ended.

As a brand new conservative who has only ever heard snippets of Limbaugh from the MSM, along with its demonization of him, I was absolutely flabbergasted at how warm, compassionate, inclusive, courageous and insightful his speech was. I’m glad my remarks from the first session of Conservatism 2.0 are on PJTV video so I can prove this isn’t a “me too” statement regarding Rush’s comments about conservatism and the individual: what I said there is that the essence of conservatism is about creating the conditions for individuals to succeed AND the reason that conservatism isn’t selling as well now as it used to is that the victim entitlement demagogues, especially lesbians — my people — and African-Americans (Wright, Sharpton, Jackson, ACORN leaders et al.), have successfully stolen the dreams and ambitions of their constituents by persuading them that they have no power as individuals to succeed due to various all-powerful demons (who are usually white, not that there’s anything racist about that).

Obama personifies this pernicious, soul-killing ideology, and the reason people were open to him as a savior, and to the idea that big government is their salvation, is this loss of belief in themselves, their inability to imagine that they could succeed as individuals instead of giving up their individuality to become true believers in a conformist and totalitarian mass movement dependent on a big government nanny state to take care of them.

In his CPAC speech on Saturday (2/28), Rush pointed out how conservatism loves individuals and wants everyone to succeed. But the reason I jumped out of my chair on Thursday at Conservatism 2.0, and that I am going to keep banging this drum, is that longterm fiscal conservatives — I know I’m repeating myself — are acting like there’s something wrong with their ideas and that modifying them will be the key to current and future success.

NO! NO! NO! NO! A THOUSAND TIMES, NO!

The necessary condition for condition for fiscal conservatism to succeed is that the majority of the population MUST believe they can succeed as individuals in realizing their goals. START THERE, conservatives, and victory is in your grasp.

Remember, the number of people that conservatives need to reach with this message is not overwhelming.

In the 2008 election, 58,343,671 people — 46 percent of votes cast — believed in themselves as individuals, rejected Obama’s flim-flammery and voted for McCain/Palin; 66,882,230 people — 53 percent of votes cast — voted for Obama, some as true believers who wanted a savior; and some as idealists-cum-suckers-who-will-spend-the-rest-of-their-lives-with-trust-issues-when-they-wake-up, who believed in his magical powers to make mutually exclusive things exist simultaneously in the same space.

A seven percent margin of victory, when it is comprised centrists who did not pay attention to the candidates until the last two weeks before Election Day (if ever), of the hopeless, the suckers/idealists — and, it has to be said, the ACORN coalition of the existentially-challenged, serial voters who cast ballots in multiple states, and illegal aliens eager to support an “open borders” candidate — is not an overwhelming number of people to reach in order to turn the tide.

We can do this, people!

During CPAC I felt a special calling to reach and free my people — the lesbians who have been rendered helpless and hopeless by women who have exploited and deluded them. Surely this has to compare with birds returning to Noah during the flood with branches in their beaks — a harbinger that the time adrift will soon be over. If CPAC did this for me, I think it was a success.

Now, to return to the doubts Steele’s remarks about Rush inspired in me.

First, Steele’s response to Hughley, who was a thoughtful interlocutor, to me sprang from a wounded ego. If so, that’s a personality problem that suggests he does not belong in the job of RNC chairman. If he is so easily shamed and can be gotten to respond so inappropriately so easily, he is now the bitch of Obama, who is the master of manipulation.

Second, when you’re down, you don’t get up by forming a circular firing squad, especially when your judgment is so poor that you take a shot at your movement’s most popular talk show host immediately after he has inspired and energized your base.

Third, making rookie mistakes like this after serving in elective office, non-entity that he was as Maryland’s lieutenant governor, suggests Steele does not have the qualifications to be a successful chairman of the Republican National Committee.

I have to admit, my own lukewarm support of Steele went cold at CPAC when an AOL reporter, who interviewed me, asked for my reaction to Steele’s statements about gay marriage on the Mike Gallagher show — it was the first I’d heard about them:

GALLAGHER: Is this a time when Republicans ought to consider some sort of alternative to redefining marriage and maybe in the road, down the road to civil unions. Do you favor civil unions?

STEELE: No, no no. What would we do that for? What are you, crazy? No. Why would we backslide on a core, founding value of this country? I mean this isn’t something that you just kind of like, “Oh well, today I feel, you know, loosey-goosey on marriage.” […]

GALLAGHER: So no room even for a conversation about civil unions in your mind?

STEELE: What’s the difference?

(Quoted at thinkprogress.org.)

My reply to the AOL reporter was that Steele may be more committed to Black Liberation Theology than anyone realizes. This thought occurred to me because black ministers in Maryland are very active in opposing equal rights and marriage for gays. I wonder how much influence they have had on Steele, and how much he is beholden to them? I am thankful that former Gov. Parris Glendening got a state-wide civil rights law protecting the rights of homosexuals to jobs and housing passed, in memory of his gay brother who died of AIDS.

It is this toxic betrayal of the “rainbow coalition” promise by black ministers that was the second thing to turn me against Obama during the primaries. (The first was his support of open borders. I lived for many years in a community overwhelmed by illegal aliens and while they are divided by an almost infinite number of hatreds, the two things they agree on is that women are property and gays should be killed. So I do not feel the least hateful about insisting our borders should be secure and illegal aliens returned to their homelands forthwith. To say nothing of the fact that tolerating breaking our laws by anyone makes a sap out of everyone who plays by the rules — nothing is more corrupting to the social contract.)

Conservatives can come to blows on many hot-button issues — gay marriage; don’t ask, don’t tell; illegal immigration; and abortion — but what won my heart at CPAC was the willingness of the speakers and everyone I met to emphasize our common ground that conservatism is about creating the conditions for individuals to succeed. Now we have to be the ones that inspire people to believe in themselves again. We took it for granted they still do, but a critical number had lost faith in themselves without our realizing it and the victim identity predators got them.

Our message is the one that will free them and show them the way to fulfill their full potential. To get them to believe in themselves again so they can connect with what conservatism has to offer, how about adapting this message from Napoleon Hill (author of “Think and Grow Rich”)?: What you can conceive, and believe, you can achieve. If that phrase seems corny to you, get over it. Do that because it will turn the tide for conservatism with a speed that will confound and astonish Obama and his fellow purveyors of confusion, helplessness, hopelessness and doom. That is because it has magic and power in it, because it connects with everyone’s deepest longing and unleashes their power, and because the best way to fight darkness is to turn on the light.

P.S.

Since we lesbians and gays do not have a national civil rights law to protect our rights to jobs and housing, quite a lot of us have to be entrepreneurs and make our own jobs. Conservatives, do you know what that means? It means that lesbians and gays are YOUR natural constituency, not liberalism’s. Think about that and let it sink in. Gays and lesbians ALONE would have swung the election to McCain/Palin. Plus, we’re fighting to be allowed to marry and to serve our country. Seriously, if THAT’S what we’re fighting for, how evil can we be?

P.P.S.

Cuban Diva BFF loves talk radio and just sent me an e-mail with a screenshot from Rush’s Web site home page from 3/2/09 with this pertinent quote from Rush:

Mr. Steele, if it is your position as the chairman of the Republican National Committee that you want a left-wing Democrat president and a left-wing Democrat Congress to succeed in advancing their agenda — if it’s your position that you want President Obama and Speaker Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid to succeed with their massive spending and taxing and nationalization plans — I think you have some explaining to do.  Why are you running the GOP?

Rush provides the full transcript here and it turns out he’s gone to bat for Steele more than once and really put himself on the line on Steele’s behalf. Now I think Steele should step down immediately, if Republicans want to win in 2010. He is too inept and disloyal for the job.