Elizabeth Taylor, good-bye and God bless you

Elizabeth Taylor died of congestive heart failure today at the age of 79. Being a movie star made her famous but I believe that her movies will endure on the strength of her character, her resilience, her courage and her loyalty more than any other reason that makes an actress famous or a movie a classic. No other movie star even comes close.

Almost single-handedly, Elizabeth Taylor stopped the hatemongers who whipped up hysteria about AIDS in service of their own greed and lust for power. Then she set about raising money for AIDS research. Starting in the 1950’s when her loyalty could have jeopardized her career, she stood by her gay friends, which is a big deal beyond the ability of most straight people to imagine, because so many of us can’t get our own families to let us come home, let alone stand by us, vote for our equality or march in our parades.

The lasting effect of Elizabeth Taylor’s resilience in adversity is represented for me in the episode of “Sex in the City” entitled “One,” where Charlotte miscarries just before the first birthday party for Brady, the unplanned child of her friend, Miranda, who never wanted to be a mother. Miserable, unkempt and depressed, Charlotte stays home from the party and while she is watching TV, she happens on a biography of Elizabeth Taylor. A couple of scenes later, Charlotte has showered, put on make-up and is wearing a dress that is glamorous yet appropriate. She still looks sad and serious, but her chin is up and she looks determined and filled with purpose. At the party, Charlotte explains that watching Elizabeth Taylor overcome so many obstacles without self-pity made her determined to do the same.

Dear Dave Burge, aka Iowahawk, notes on Facebook:

Some amazing betcha-didn’t-know facts about Liz Taylor: she was a 1959 convert to Judaism, and was banned by Egypt during the filming of Cleopatra for donating to Israeli causes. She also supported Soviet Jewry during the Cold War, and in 1977 offered herself as a hostage during the Entebbe hijacking. RIP to a staunch friend of Israel.

I can’t help adding, as a public service announcement, that Ms. Taylor’s obesity and congestive heart failure both are characteristic of untreated obstructive sleep apnea, which was not discovered until the mid-1970’s when she was in her mid-40’s. A treatment was not invented until the 1980’s. OSA was discovered to be the cause of idiopathic congestive heart failure in 1996, but cardiologists still largely ignore the research on sleep medicine showing that obstructive sleep apnea causes idiopathic congestive heart failure (which stops being idiopathic once the cause is determined), intractable high blood pressure and atrial fibrillation.

Why Palin should run for president

Sarah Palin should run for president and be the Republican nominee — Sarah Palin should BE president — because she knows more about energy policy and what it will take to secure energy independence for the U.S. than any other nominee, as her recent speech in India shows. Energy independence will drive down the cost of living and make our economy more secure from the whims and malice of the oil-producing nations that hate America. Obama pledged in 2008 to make the cost of energy skyrocket — and he is making use of the oil spill in the Gulf last summer, the tsunami’s destruction of nuclear reactors in Japan on March 11 and civil war in Libya to realize that goal. The rationale is that when conventional energy sources are expensive, then green energy can compete.

However, for people to want to trade cheap, conventional energy for green energy, then green energy has to be able to deliver reliably and at a reasonable price — neither of which it can do. People who don’t want to be making a choice between food and gas for their cars are likely to see the virtues of the candidate who can deliver on a pledge to make the U.S. energy independent and bring down energy prices. And that candidate is Sarah Palin.

A letter from Sendai, Japan

My spiritual community is the Transcendental Meditation organization — relax, seriously, it’s not a religion, it’s a mental technique that gradually generates and establishes the experience of enlightenment. Through my network of TM friends, I just received a letter from a friend of a friend who is living in Sendai, Japan, and survived the tsunami on Friday, March 11, and earthquakes. There’s an amazing tone of positivity and bliss in the letter that I think I should explain. The positivity comes from an awareness that what you put your attention on grows stronger. As a consequence, people who really grasp this principle seldom complain, whine or denounce. As for the bliss, I assure you it is a real result of practicing the TM technique. You would be amazed at the amount of adversity those two things can get you through:

A letter from Sendai

3/14/2011

Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend’s home. We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful.

During the day we help each other clean up the mess in our homes. People sit in their cars, looking at news on their navigation screens, or line up to get drinking water when a source is open. If someone has water running in their home, they put out a sign so people can come to fill up their jugs and buckets.

It’s utterly amazingly that where I am there has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open, as it is safer when an earthquake strikes. People keep saying, “Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another.”

Quakes keep coming. Last night they struck about every 15 minutes. Sirens are constant and helicopters pass overhead often.

We got water for a few hours in our homes last night, and now it is for half a day. Electricity came on this afternoon. Gas has not yet come on. But all of this is by area. Some people have these things, others do not. No one has washed for several days. We feel grubby, but there are so much more important concerns than that for us now. I love this peeling away of non-essentials. Living fully on the level of instinct, of intuition, of caring, of what is needed for survival, not just of me, but of the entire group.

There are strange parallel universes happening. Houses a mess in some places, yet then a house with futons or laundry out drying in the sun. People lining up for water and food, and yet a few people out walking their dogs. All happening at the same time.

Other unexpected touches of beauty are first, the silence at night. No cars. No one out on the streets. And the heavens at night are scattered with stars. I usually can see about two, but now the whole sky is filled. The mountains around Sendai are solid and with the crisp air we can see them silhouetted against the sky magnificently.

And the Japanese themselves are so wonderful. I come back to my shack to check on it each day, now to send this e-mail since the electricity is on, and I find food and water left in my entranceway. I have no idea from whom, but it is there. Old men in green hats go from door to door checking to see if everyone is OK. People talk to complete strangers asking if they need help. I see no signs of fear. Resignation, yes, but fear or panic, no.

They tell us we can expect aftershocks, and even other major quakes, for another month or more. And we are getting constant tremors, rolls, shaking, rumbling. I am blessed in that I live in a part of Sendai that is a bit elevated, a bit more solid than other parts. So, so far this area is better off than others. Last night my friend’s husband came in from the country, bringing food and water. Blessed again.

Somehow at this time I realize from direct experience that there is indeed an enormous Cosmic evolutionary step that is occurring all over the world right at this moment. And somehow as I experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening very wide. My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don’t. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that much larger than myself. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard, and yet magnificent.

Thank you again for your care and Love of me.

The air in Sendai now is more than “crisp” — it is freezing at night and they have had snow. Their lives are in danger. The easiest and most reliable way to help them is through the American Red Cross. To donate $10, just text “REDCROSS” (without the quotes) to 90999 and that amount will be added to your phone bill. Japan and the Japanese people are friends to America and Americans, and the sooner we help them get back on their feet, the better it will be for the people of both countries.

UPDATE, 3/19/11, Sat.: Via Instapundit, “There’s no food, tell people there is no food.“

Help Michelle Malkin find her cousin, Marizela Perez, missing in Seattle

Tammy Bruce interviews Michelle Malkin, whose cousin, Marizela Perez, disappeared in Seattle, Washington, on Saturday, March 5. The family needs to spread the word to find anyone who might have seen Marizela. They also need financial donations to help them cover the costs of looking for her. Prayers also are welcome to surround Marizela with divine protection, to fill her heart with divine love and to uplift her family. There’s more information on how to donate, along with videos and photos of Marizela, at MichelleMalkin.com and FindMarizela.com (click on the buttons at the top of the page to donate, for updates, and additional information).

‘People are dead because of Mike Huckabee’

Amen to Richard McEnroe at Three Beers Later, who was set off by Huckabee’s attack on Natalie Portman for her prior-to-wedlock pregnancy and his swipe at Bristol Palin as a means of exalting himself for his own piety:

If he runs he will be bathed in the blood of four dead policemen, if not by his rivals in the GOP primaries then by the Democrats in the general election.

Yes, yes, he will. Please read the whole thing — it is on point, and delicious.

Attacking unwed mothers should be a more obvious no-win position for Huckabee not only for the reasons that Richard points out for conservatives and independents, but also because Democrats will rain down hellfire upon him since Obama was conceived out-of-wedlock and his father had a wife when he married Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham.

Mary Matalin and Ken Mehlman speaking at GOProud’s fundraiser

My favorite points from Republican strategist Ken Mehlman, who recently came out as gay:

  1. Mary Matalin has made conservativism cool again.
  2. Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan restored the Republican party to being a party of ideas, rather than something you were born as.

There’s a short glimpse of me at the beginning of the video because a few minutes earlier I’d gone up to Mary to tell her how much I admired her commentary in July 2009 that Gov. Palin was a genius for resigning because she stopped being a sitting duck for specious ethics complaints and freed herself up to tell her story herself and travel. Just before the moment that GOProud founders Christopher Barron and Jimmy LaSalvia gathered everyone together to hear GOProud’s goals for 2011, I was telling Mary that the moment Gov. Palin earned my respect and loyalty was when she thanked Geraldine Ferraro and describing the expression on Ms. Ferraro’s face of gratitude warring with exasperation when she said in a TV news interview that that was the FIRST time anyone had ever thanked her as a trailblazer because dagnabbit, how can you credibly go on to demonize an opponent with such conspicuous majesty of soul?

Click here to read GOProud’s goals for conservative federal legislation.

Sassy Gay Friend rescues Cleta Mitchell

Did I forget to finish the Cleta Mitchell story I started after dear Christopher Barron characterized her in an unflattering way in the interview he and Jimmy LaSalvia gave to Metro Weekly that was published on Feb. 9 during CPAC? For some reason, several months of being on the receiving end of Ms. Mitchell’s scorched earth character assassination campaign over whether GOProud would be allowed to be a participating group in CPAC 2011 exhausted Chris’s patience and he used a Leftist expression to a Leftist reporter. I am the only conservative blogger who asked for Chris’s side of the story, which was only covered online by Leftist blogger, Pam Spalding. Short version: Ms. Mitchell’s first husband ended their nine-year marriage in the 1980’s and came out as a proud gay man. He died of AIDS in 1991. So Miss Haversham of Charles Dickens’ novel Great Expectations is an apt comparison. And that is why Ms. Mitchell’s vendetta against gays in general and gay conservatives in particular does not appear to be motivated by principle at all, but rather by wounded narcissism and a determination to wreak revenge.

What if James Carville isn’t distorting what conservatives believe as a rhetorical trick, but …

… because he actually believes that’s what we believe?

Last night I had the pure joy and honor to meet Mary Matalin and chat with her at the fundraiser she held in her home for GOProud. Whenever I’ve seen her on television she’s always been under enemy fire, so while I knew about her brilliance, I didn’t know she has warmth, wisdom and humor in the high terrawatts until, oh, some three or four nanoseconds after meeting her in person.

At the fundraiser we talked as a group for a bit on how to win hearts and minds to conservative principles and candidates and what gays can do for conservativism. That’s right — we were asking not what conservativism can do for us, but what we can do for conservativism. And Mary pointed out that we have to figure out how to defeat a rhetorical tactic of which her husband, James Carville, is reigning master and world champeen: presenting your opponent’s case in ways that are so false and wrong that you get them to run out the clock correcting all your misrepresentations so they never get a chance to make their real case.

I looked through Mr. Carville’s books on Amazon before writing this post and I gather he explains this tactic as framing the debate in his book, Buck Up, Suck Up.

I admit, when Mary brought this up and was trying to give it a name, I jumped in and called it, “rhetorical cheating.”

But something extremely rare and wonderful about the Matalin/Carville home made me reconsider that characterization this morning and give Mr. Carville more credit for integrity: their art collection of paintings, statues, ceramics and glass. I’m not just an art lover, I’m the widow of a genius artist who taught me a thing or two. So here’s the thing about the Matalin/Carville art: from big names to less well-known artists, all of it was real art and it was all chosen with real love. And here’s what is extremely rare: the unifying traits all the pieces share are joy, silence, playfulness and a transcendent spirituality.

So it struck me that the reason James Carville distorts conservative positions to frame them as demonic is NOT just to win arguments and campaigns but because that’s what he really thinks we believe. His liberal brain translates what conservatives believe into those demonic images.

What this means is that when we frame our arguments, we have to take Liberal Brain Syndrome into account. That means the place we have to start in presenting the conservative case is to frame the most fundamental difference between conservativism and liberalism. To wit, conservatives believe wealth is born of an individual’s ideas and grows in a system that respects liberty and lets individuals keep the lion’s share of the fruits of their labors. In contrast, liberals have no idea how wealth is created — money comes from rich people, who got it unfairly, and it must be taken from them by force and re-distributed by all-wise politicians and bureaucrats. So we have to incorporate into our message that money comes from ideas and the little guy with an idea can prosper, just as relentlessly as liberals chant that money comes from rich people and the little guy has no hope.

This is a more compelling message than the traditional conservative one of drastic cuts and shared sacrifice on the part of people who were so wantonly imprudent that they squandered their money instead of becoming independently wealthy before losing the ability to work by becoming elderly, disabled, or both.

Every liberal principle is based on the axiom that the origin of wealth is unknowable. This is a message of hopelessness and stagnation.

Every conservative principle is based on the axiom that the origin of wealth is within each individual in their capacity for creativity. This is a message that enlivens creativity and ambition.

Because of Liberal Brain Syndrome, liberals can’t imagine how wealth is created by individuals with ideas, free markets, less regulation, lower taxes, more incentives to create, energy independence, secure borders and a strong defense. To frame the debate so they can understand what we are saying, we have to tell them how, and paint them the picture, every time.