I first begin to feel disappointment with President Bush in the spring of 2003 when my friend David Boaz of the Cato Institute alerted me to an Op-ed he had written detailing the Republican’s spendthrift ways.  Instead of containing the size of the federal government as our party had long committed to do, Bush had expanded it — and not just for national security.

I had initially hoped that with Republicans in control of the executive and legislative branches of government for the first time in two generations, we could finally start cutting a federal government which had grown so rapidly during decades of Democratic legislative dominance.

And now with Democrats returning to power, controlling the executive as well as the legislative branches, it seems they’ll continue to push the growth that my party failed to contain.  Even after the GOP’s brief sojourn in power, they didn’t succeed in eliminating any significant federal programs.  Instead of Democratic policies restoring some kind of status quo ante, they’ll just build upon the growth long since in place.  Our government will be bigger than ever before.

So, herewith the great irony of the 2008 elections.  We’re about to have the most left-wing government in recent history, elected to replace one perceived as conservative but which was, in practice, particularly on domestic issues, anything but.

The problem is that while Democrats (and sometimes even Republicans) succeed in expanding the size and scope of the federal government, Republicans (when they are at their best) succeed only in containing its growth, not reducing its size.

With the media on the side of the Democrats and bigger government, it seems we’ll never succeed in returning to the Jeffersonian ideal of limited government.  Alas for our economy, for our nation, our freedom.

If you had told me at the beginning of this year that as the year drew to a close, I would be warming to the idea of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, I would have laughed in your face.  But, now that President-elect Barack Obama has been floating the idea, well, I kind of like it.

It’s not that I think she’ll be a diplomat of the caliber of the greatest and most successful Secretary of State in the past quarter-century, George P. Schultz.  But, she would certainly be a better choice than most of the mediocrities and incompetents who followed the man who helped the Gipper win the Cold War.

HIllary has a keener intellect and shown more flexibility in thought than her husband’s two choices for that position (the incompetents identified above).  During the Democratic primaries, she demonstrated an understanding of the threats facing our nation.  She may well be the best we could get from her rival for her party’s nomination.

To be sure, I would prefer John Bolton as our nation’s chief diplomat.  But, there’s no chance the president-elect would appoint that good man.  And Hillary would be a much better choice than the Democrat campaigning the most aggressively for the post.

This is some great advice from the conservative political soothsayer known to everyone only as “Obi-Wan.”  (Everyone but Jim Geraghty, that is).

So the problem with the blunt instrument  is the unintended consequences.  The 1964 results meant the social tragedy, especially for the poor, of the Great Society programs.  The 1974 Democratic Congressional blowout cost 13 million South Vietnamese their freedom.  The 1976 defeat meant Carter era malaise at home and one of the most perilous periods for U.S, national security.

The liberals in Congress will soon push to discourage entrepreneurship and economic growth, nationalize the medical system, weaken the military, use state power to coerce Americans into removing mentions of God from the public square, accepting abortion on demand and the altering  the definition of marriage. And an early test for President Obama will be his reaction to pressure in two areas from his own party that may brand his administration early as decidedly leftist. He will be pushed to take various measures to stifle dissent through enacting the Fairness Doctrine and ending the secret ballot in union elections. And he will be pushed to make a decision that cost the newly elected President Clinton his honeymoon period — changing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy about gays in the military. On all of this, the congressional liberals and their media allies will be unrelenting. And yet all this represents opportunity for the GOP.  The last Congress was the most unpopular in history because of its radical liberalism. Yet the GOP failed entirely to enumerate for voters that Congress’s transgressions. That opportunity is coming again.

Also, the liberals know that neither in 2006 nor 2008 did the American people vote for the left-wing agenda. They are hoping conservatives will again go along after some polite demurrals.  So, if loud and noisy but enlightened opposition is offered at every turn, much of the collateral damage can be avoided. And the American people will see the real agenda of the liberal elites.

Seems like our own Jedi, GayPatriotWest, was channeling Obi-Wan earlier today….

And American conservatives can also share in this note from Obi-Wan, too:

REJOICE — Electing an African American president closes a painful but proud chapter in American history.  What a country.

American Conservatives still cry at our National Anthem, pray for our soldiers and send them gifts, put our hands over our hearts when the flag unfurls, and contribute more to charities than any other group in the entire world.  So, of course, we would rejoice in Obama’s historic election and celebrate the final closing of a chapter in American history wrought with pain and injustice for many.

After all, need I remind anyone the price Abraham Lincoln (R-IL) paid to begin the writing of that chapter of the American Experience?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Via Drudge: WTAE-TV 4, PITTSBURGH.

A 20-year-old woman who was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield was also maimed by her attacker, police said.

Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard tells Channel 4 Action News that the victim was robbed at knifepoint on Wednesday night outside of a Citizens Bank near Liberty Avenue and Pearl Street just before 9 p.m.

Richard said the robber took $60 from the woman, then became angry when he saw a McCain bumper sticker on the victim’s car. The attacker then punched and kicked the victim, before using the knife to scratch the letter “B” into her face, Richard said.

Richard said the woman refused medical treatment after the assault, which happened outside the view of the bank’s surveillance cameras.

The robber is described as a dark-skinned black man, 6 feet 4 inches tall, 200 pounds with a medium build, short black hair and brown eyes. The man was wearing dark colored jeans, a black undershirt and black shoes.

So it begins.  I’m shocked that the mere stating of facts in this news report isn’t being branded as “racist”.

First they came for the campaign volunteers, then the opposition party members, then the media, then …

UPDATE: The 20-year old victim (via Gateway Pundit)

[RELATED:  The Coming Liberal Thugocracy - Michael Barone]

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

UP-UPDATE (from Dan): Because some readers have raised doubts about the story, I’m busy googling and checking the blogs to try and see if we can confirm this (or contradict it as the case may be).

UP-UP-UPDATE (from Dan): Michelle Malkin is skeptical. Phyllis Chesler is not. Me, well, let me just say, it doesn’t smell right that she refused medical attention.

UP-UP-UP-UPDATE (from Dan): She’s changed her story.  Hmm. . . Something doesn’t smell right.

Or stick it on your car for the next two weeks!

BUY IT NOW!  TELL YOUR FRIENDS!

[RELATED:  Secret Service visits anti-Obama voter over "threat" (h/t - GP Reader Mark M)]

[RELATED:  The coming liberal thugocracy - Michael Barone]

Other Obama supporters have threatened critics with criminal prosecution. In September, St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce warned citizens that they would bring criminal libel prosecutions against anyone who made statements against Mr. Obama that were “false.” I had been under the impression that the Alien and Sedition Acts had gone out of existence in 1801-’02. Not so, apparently, in metropolitan St. Louis. Similarly, the Obama campaign called for a criminal investigation of the American Issues Project when it ran ads highlighting Mr. Obama’s ties to Mr. Ayers.

These attempts to shut down political speech have become routine for liberals. Congressional Democrats sought to reimpose the “fairness doctrine” on broadcasters, which until it was repealed in the 1980s required equal time for different points of view. The motive was plain: to shut down the one conservative-leaning communications medium, talk radio. Liberal talk-show hosts have mostly failed to draw audiences, and many liberals can’t abide having citizens hear contrary views.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

UPDATE: Foley responds on Drudge…

FOLEY: ‘An online article posted today on Variety’s website innaccurately reported that I was supporting Barack Obama. The story on Variety’s website, based on a second or third-hand account of my private conversation, is incorrect. I have already voted by absentee ballot in Florida. Although I didn’t vote for Senator Obama, I intend to keep my choice private.’

I know there is a joke in here somewhere.   I’m just too busy to think of it.   But our traffic usually spikes when there is a Mark Foley Update, so here goes…. (h/t - Drudge)

I got an excited phone call yesterday from two friends, TV producer Richard Ayoub and talent manager Dolores Cantu, who were having lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Sitting the next table over was Foley, who resigned just before the midterms after the revelation that he sent inappropriate e-mail messages to a congressional page.

Ayounb and Cantu didn’t know immediately recognize him until he told them he had once been in Congress. The jist of the conversation then went like this, according to both:

Cantu: “You didn’t have an affair, did you?”

Foley: “Well, I was…”

Realizing who was in their midst, Ayoub, who has a penchant for devilish humor, offered a deadpanned admonishment, “You should not flirt with congressional pages.” Foley went on to say that nothing happened, he didn’t realize that the page was only 18, and that he perhaps was a bit tipsy when he sent the e-mails.

What they both said was how great Foley looked, and he was particularly excited about Colin Powell’s endorsement that morning of Obama. Foley said he also favors Obama.

And Foley also expressed some pleasure in watching the latest developments from his old Florida district: His successor, Democrat Tim Mahoney, is now in trouble for a series of extramarital affairs.

Foley seems to be the latest sufferer of the “Post-Conservative Gay Liberal Conversion Syndrome” (see: David Catania, Patrick Guerriero, Neil Guiliano, Andrew Sullivan)   That’s the best I could do to coin a new disease name; sorry for its lameness.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

As background for this post, here is a passage from Senator Obama’s biography on the official Obama-Biden website.

He went on to earn his law degree from Harvard in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law. Finally, his advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate, where he served for eight years. In 2004, he became the third African American since Reconstruction to be elected to the U.S. Senate.

Many Obama supporters have, ad nauseum, labeled the Senator a “Constitutional scholar.”   Obama himself repeatedly puffs out his chest with this part of his resume.

Well, something has been bothering me about the first Obama-McCain debate.  That is Obama’s complete lack of understanding about the Consitution when it comes to the budget-making process.   Here is the transcript of the debate that I’m referring to:

But let’s go back to the original point. John, nobody is denying that $18 billion is important. And, absolutely, we need earmark reform.   And when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.

But the fact is that eliminating earmarks alone is not a recipe for how we’re going to get the middle class back on track.

As Seth and Amy would say on “Weekend Update”… REALLY?   Really, Senator Obama?  You’d go line-by-line in the US budget?  How is that possible, Senator, when the President does NOT HAVE A LINE-ITEM VETO? 

Not that Republicans haven’t tried.  Reagan wanted a line-item veto.   So did Newt Gingrich’s Congress.   Bill Clinton had it, for a time.

But Obama, The Constitutional Scholar, thinks the US President HAS that power now.  I’m completely dumbfounded by Obama’s ignorance given this is supposed to be his specific area of knowledge.  It is outrageous that his understanding of the Constitution is not being explored by the media, since HE and his supporters bring it up all the time as one of his main qualifications to be President.

And it wasn’t just a slip of the tongue on debate night.  Obama has repeatedly said he would use the line-item veto.  Here, and here, and here.

“I’m not a Democrat that believes we should befriend every government program just because it’s there,” Obama said, pledging to go through the federal budget line by line as president to eliminate programs that do not work.

If he doesn’t know the facts of one of the most talked about Republican-Democrat policy disputes over the past 25 years (passage of a line-item veto), what else is he ignorant about while he campaigns to “uphold and protect” the Constitution?

I wonder… maybe Obama learned Rev. Wright’s version of the US Constitution?  You know, the one that highlights slavery, white domination, Marxism and spreading the AIDS virus from government labs.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

No, “WE” didn’t cause this Wall Street mess - Richard Miniter - PajamasMedia
(and yes, this is the whole column printed below)

You must be as tired of hearing it as I am.  Somehow, we are all at fault for Wall Street’s meltdown.  We demanded cheap loans for houses we couldn’t afford and voted in corrupt dolts, who took from Fannie Mae and told us what we wanted to hear.  Now, we are getting what we deserve.

Take Rod Dreher’s otherwise excellent column in the Dallas Morning News:

After all, these scoundrels did not elect themselves, nor was there an outcry heard in the land against Wall Street rapacity and recklessness when our 401(k)s were rising, and all but the lowliest plebeian was moving into his very own McMansion.

Along those lines, there’s one proverb that we will all become painfully acquainted with in the years to come: You reap what you sow.

There are two essential problems with this analysis: it is factually false and morally unwise.

Rep. Barney Frank was elected by a majority of the people of his district in Massachusetts. Senator Chris Dodd is brought to us by many but not all of the voters of Connecticut. And so on. Most of us never had the chance to vote for or against these solons. So why should we be blamed?

The regulatory changes that led us to this point were the work of lobbyists, bureaucrats and lawmakers including Dodd and Frank and corrupt executives, like Raines and Johnson. We know or can know their names.

The idea of blaming “all of us” is a way to avoid blaming those who did the deeds and reaped their ill-gotten gains.

What about cheap mortgages?   Sure, some of us took them when they were offered.   But who offered them and why?   Yes, it is the Clinton-era changes to the Community Reinvestment Act that forced banks to lend more for “affordable housing.” Law firms, including ones connected to Obama, sued banks that failed to meet their low-income quotas for mortgages. Bankers were not driven by greed, as everyone says, but by fear.  Fear of the baying hounds of regulators and lawyers would call them racist and ruin their careers.  But who unleashed the hounds on the bankers?

Particular policies and people made this mess. The public’s only role will be to pay the tab, a cruel addition that will equal more than $2,500 per person.  Can’t the talking class at least have the decency to stop blaming the one group generous enough to pay for the party they didn’t attend?

Amen, brother.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Spend just 10 minutes and learn a lot about why we are facing a $700 BILLION financial crisis.

Spend 10 minutes and learn how the same Democrats in Congress who caused this mess, also got massive campaign contributions from the greedy investment houses and lenders.

Spend 10 minutes and learn that these same Democrats are still kowtowing to their Wall Street donors and left-wing groups during this financial crisis.  We expect the people who caused this mess to FIX IT??

Ask yourselves why Chris Dodd & Barney Frank are SO EAGER to pass the Paulson package so we can “move on” to other subjects.   Don’t look behind the curtain, says Barney, just do what I say.

Ask yourselves which political party, over the past 10 days, has stood up for Main Street and which one has had to stand up for Wall Street due to the political support they rely on.

Spend 10 minutes watching this before you decide who to vote for this November. (h/t - Ace of Spades)

[RELATED STORY: Bailout Mess: And You Wonder Why I'm Not A Democrat? - Kevin at Citizen Crain]

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

UPDATE (from Dan);  As that video above no longer works, please check this one out:

If this doesn’t turn the stomach of every voter in America that hasn’t yet been brainwashed by The One or intimidated by the Obama Goons, nothing will.

Soldier’s Family Told Obama Not to Wear Son’s Bracelet - Gateway Pundit

Barack Obama played the “me too” game during the Friday debates on September 26 after Senator John McCain mentioned that he was wearing a bracelet with the name of Cpl. Matthew Stanley, a resident of New Hampshire and a soldier that lost his life in Iraq in 2006. Obama said that he too had a bracelet. After fumbling and straining to remember the name, he revealed that his had the name of Sergeant Ryan David Jopek of Merrill, Wisconsin.

Shockingly, however, Madison resident Brian Jopek, the father of Ryan Jopek, the young soldier who tragically lost his life to a roadside bomb in 2006, recently said on a Wisconsin Public Radio show that his family had asked Barack Obama to stop wearing the bracelet with his son’s name on it. Yet Obama continues to do so despite the wishes of the family.

How dare Senator Obama use the name of a dead Army soldier, whose name he can’t remember, as a sheer political stunt.  And against the wishes of Sgt. Jopek’s family, nonetheless.  

Senator McCain wears his bracelet in kinship and shared sacrifice with the family of Cpl. Matthew Stanley.

Senator Obama wears his bracelet in an arrogant defiance of what America stands for.  To Obama, the bracelet is yet another prop for his campaign, like the American flag he once did not wear on his lapel.

He makes me sick.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

“The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.” - Nancy Pelosi, 11/8/06

“The American people - many Republican and independent voters among them - entrusted Democrats with their hopes and aspirations for themselves, their families, and their future. We are prepared to lead and ready to govern. We will honor that trust, and we will not disappoint.” - Nancy Pelosi, 11/14/06

(Not My) Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) may wish to remind Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) about these empty promises.

Reid Keeps The Swamp Brimming - DC Examiner (h/t - Instapundit)

As the stock market plunged nearly 1,000 points in two days this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada was preoccupied with protecting billions of dollars worth of earmarks contained in a separate, unpublished committee report that got a one-sentence reference in a giant $612 billion defense bill. Reid engineered the 61-to-32 vote to limit debate on the bill, thus barring consideration of an amendment offered by Sen. Jim DeMint. The South Carolina Republican’s amendment would have deleted the reference to the committee report so that it would have to be considered separately. By leaving the language in the bill, the lawmakers were able to carry out one of their favorite maneuvers: Incorporating committee reports into omnibus bills so they can give billions of tax dollars to their cronies without recorded votes on specific spending measures. This is the same Harry Reid who with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to “drain the swamp” of Republican corruption if voters would return the Democrats to the majority.

Maybe Sen. Reid could consult with Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) on ethics and good government?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Yesterday I noticed that a post by Dan about Sarah Palin had been visited by what appears to be an “astroturfer”. For those who do not know what “astroturfing” is, Ace of Spades posted about this curious ‘phenomenon’ which has recently been found on conservative blogs and elsewhere on the Net:

Astroturfing is the dishonest PR technique of inserting PR messages straight from the PR shop out into the public, but in the guise of “concerns” of “real citizens” who are “independent” and have “no relationship” whatsoever to the PR campaign. It tries to disguise itself as a “grassroots” phenomenon — but it’s artificial and inorganic. Hence, “Astroturf.”

The particular “astroturfer” who commented on Dan’s post calls themself “Rebecca Burt” and claims to be someone who “was not completely decided on my vote until I really started to look into what [Palin] has done and what she stands for”. For an a self-proclaimed “Christian and pastor’s wife” I must say that “Burt” is certainly lacking in the fundamental virtue of charity, something Vince P also noticed. What did “Burt” use as the basis for her objections to Palin? Why, every scurrilous lie and rumor floated about by Obama supporters since John McCain announced his Veep pick a couple of weeks ago. I took the time yesterday to rebut most of the inane charges “Burt” raised to slander Palin, but alas thus far ’she’ has chosen to remain silent in response. Perhaps this post will elicit further comment from this troll visitor. Somehow I doubt it though, given that she apparently doesn’t stray far from the exact same script of talking points, as can be seen on quite a number of blogs.

I would like to make one more point to “Burt” and other astroturfers: we welcome an open and honest debate at Gay Patriot so there is no need to lie about who you are and why you oppose McCain-Palin or the GOP in general. True “concerned conservative Christians&