The Dooryard

Barack Obama's lecture on creating small businesses misses the true purpose of tax hikes

When I hear Barack Obama say that business owners didn't build their businesses, I instantly think of my father. He is a plumber, used to be on Cape Cod and is now in Maine. I remember as a kid watching him work 10 hours a day, five-and-a-half days a week. And this wasn't sitting at a desk in an air conditioned office. This was manual labor, lifting pipes and risking severe cuts and burns, in the freezing cold, hot humidity, wet rain, scorching sun...every weather condition imagineable. He did it so he could feed his family.

He also paid taxes. Those taxes, to the town, state and Federal governments, helped build roads and bridges. They helped educate his children. They helped educate him. 

Neither my father nor anyone else I know has any problem with paying taxes to do those things. That is the essential function of government. Creating roads, educating children...Despite knowing some very conservative people, I have never heard any of them say taxes should be abolished, or that the government should not have these rolls.

The problem is that the government goes beyond these rolls, and Obama's government goes way behind them. Taxes go to frivolous government research. They turn into government subsidies for the friends of the President and other elected officials. 

When Obama lectures us about the government, not people, building businesses, his underlying message is that businesses and successful people should pay higher taxes because without that government, they wouldn't have a business at all. Business can flourish just fine with limited government; It is the government that cannot grow with limited business. Ask the Russians and Cubans; They have tried.

The deeper problem with his mismanaged statement is the lie about where increased tax dollars go. Obama does not want higher taxes to build more bridges and roads, or increase the ability of small corporations to conduct business. He wants the increased money to hand over to people in entitlement programs. That's the "fair" thing to do, he says. Yet these entitlement programs have never built a single business or created a single job except to manage the government programs themselves. He has no interest in building roads; He has every interest in handing out checks.

It's shameful to see the President try to buy votes with government handouts, all on the backs of my father, my partner and myself.

Distracting voters with Mitt Romney's teenage 'bullying,' Barack Obama assaulting a girl and eating a dog

PHOTO: This photo of Romney was posted at the Web site, "Shut the Fuck Up, Conservatives" - lovely, right? That helps the national dialogue.

The Washington Post and others have set out to distract the electorate once again, posting an 11-page story about Mitt Romney allegedly bullying a man who years later came out as gay. The alleged incident happened...in 1965. That's right, when my mother was 10. I wouldn't be born for another eight years. Romney was a teenager. Yet the Washington Post wants to turn this into an election issue. In. Sane.

When the alleged incident took place, Romney was 18. I remember when I was 18. I was a Far-Right religious conservative. I didn't know what pad thai was. I had been outside of New England once in my life. Yet somehow the Washington Post and Democrats want us to brand Romney a bully because of what he did at the same age I was pumping out peanut buster parfaits at a Dairy Queen. 

Barack Obama supports gay marriage. Log Cabin Republicans release sad attack.

I've been thinking about diving back into my blogging for a couple months now. With today's announcement from President Obama of his support for my marriage, I figured it's the right time.

My lack of fondness for the President is no secret. I feel like he's been the Campaigner in Chief for most of his presidency. And I feel many of the promises he made in 2008 have been thrown out the window for new campaign promises this year. On key policy initiatives -- the Keyston pipeline, Obamacare -- I disagree with him. This isn't to say I'm a Romney fan; We'll simply get to him in another post. 

But today I'm proud of the president. He didn't have to vocalize his support for gay marriage, but he did. It made me very, very happy and somehow more fulfilled. 

Now everyone's shouting

Don't count me among those who think the ruckus reception that many lawmakers have gotten at their "healthcare town meetings" is fake or orchestrated. There is a lot of anger out there directed at the Federal government and the ballooning deficit, and this power grab over healthcare is the epitome of that to a lot of people. Still, there have been many (mostly Obama supporters) who have attacked these angry people, calling them (among many other things) unAmerican.

So when I saw that Sen. John McCain was met by a verbal assault from the Left this week, it did feel phony to me. After weeks of the Left attacking people for their loud retaliation against Senators and Congressmen who support Obamacare, they've decided, "Well fine then, we'll just do the same thing." I know there is equally passionate support for some of the general ideas that Obama supports (can't really call it a 'bill' since Obama hasn't even considered putting his stamp of approval on any one bill), but the tactic of shouting at rallies, after weeks of attacking the opposition for the same thing, feels like they're just trying to keep up with the Joneses.

Boies' great arguments for gay marriage

Attorney David Boies penned a fantastic piece in today's Wall Street Journal outlining why he and Ted Olson are taking the gay-marriage fight to the Supreme Court. It's one of the most compelling, well-written pieces on the subject I've seen from anyone!

For the liberal "conspiracy theorists" claiming that Olson is only on board to try to derail gay marriage, the piece certainly contradicts that as Boies embraces Olson (besides, Boies is no idiot who can be duped into taking a bad case to the Supreme court). Boies talks directly about why he and Olson, two old rivals, teamed up for this one:

We acted together because of our mutual commitment to the importance of this cause, and to emphasize that this is not a Republican or Democratic issue, not a liberal or conservative issue, but an issue of enforcing our Constitution's guarantee of equal protection and due process to all citizens.

Brilliant.

It's pretty sad how some gay rights groups are attacking them and then trying to intercede in the case. They realize that they have been sitting on the sidelines, trying to simply shepherd gay marriage with little result...and that this case has the potential to make them sideshows and show just how irrelevant many of them have become.

I hope Boies and Olson are completely successful. To have two men from opposing views come to the same legal conclusion about the importance of my rights would be probably the most breathtaking moment in gay-rights history.

Obama is treasonous regarding DADT

This past Monday, Barack Obama held a reception at the White House for "leaders" in the gay community. In actuality, it was a cocktail party he had with a couple hundred devoted gay followers to make it look like he was doing something for gay people. Many involved with the reception turned around and wrote items and spoke to the press saying how much in love they are with Obama because of the things he said at the event. Mind you, he didn't DO anything. He didn't even PROMISE anything. He just told the people there that they were welcome to be in the White House and that they would be happy with his Administration at the end of it. Can you get anymore vague?

One area where he wasn't vague was national security. About the policy of discharging openly gay people from the military, Obama said this:

And finally, I want to say a word about "don't ask, don't tell."  As I said before -- I'll say it again -- I believe "don't ask, don't tell" doesn't contribute to our national security.  (Applause.)  In fact, I believe preventing patriotic Americans from serving their country weakens our national security.

Let's be clear about this. Obama said he believes that discharging gay people from the military is undermining national security: Yet, he continues to follow that policy! He could stop the discharges TODAY with an executive order preventing the execution of DADT, but he doesn't. When the President of the United States acts against national security, he is failing to uphold his most important job and is acting in a treasonous way AGAINST national security! How this man sleeps at night, believing he is putting his own personal political future ahead of national security, is hard to understand.

While people want the equal rights he promised, Obama just keeps campaigning

I have long been critical of gay "leaders" for cozying up to the Democrats at the expense of furthering gay rights. We've seen it over and over, as HRC and others are willing to sit on the sidelines and wait while the campaign for Democrats who do nothing to further our rights. So I've been excited to see the clear shift in the last few weeks as gay "leaders" begin to hold Barack Obama and other Democrat leaders accountable for their promises to gay people.

After wooing gay dollars and votes with promises to advance eight gay rights, Obama quickly abandoned all of them once in office. He went from opposing the Defense of Marriage Act to supporting it. He went from saying he'd end Don't Ask Don't Tell as soon as he got into office to saying it won't happen for at least two years and failing to stop the discharges (something he could do with a stroke of the pen). To see devout gay Democrats like David Mixner and Corey Johnson and Andy Towle boycotting the DNC gay fundraiser this week is outstanding and shows TRUE leadership on their part!

Meanwhile, Obama thinks he's still on the campaign trail. He thinks that if you just keep talking and promising, all will be well. In the last week, he has tried to throw gay people little bones to make up for it. He granted some Federal workers some health care benefits for their partners. And now comes word that he's throwing an exclusive party for important (read: rich donors) gay people next Monday. This is all, of course, an attempt to continue his campaigning without actually governing and DOING something about his promises. I pray no gay people fall for it, and I'm encouraged to hear others say the same.

TEA Parties inspire my parents

Yesterday there were reportedly hundreds of TEA Parties across the country to protest the wasteful collection and spending of the money of hardworking Americans. It was very sad to hear network after network try to characterize the people there as crazy and stupid, and paint the whole series of events as sour grapes. This is one that I actually think Fox News got dead on: This was the beginning of something big.

My father, at the age of 58, and my mother, age 54, attended the TEA Party in Augusta, Maine. It was the first political rally of their lives. My Dad reiterated what so many at these parties were talking about, and what Fox News, again, got right: It's not about Democrats or Republicans, they are all corrupt and are destroying this country together.

In the middle of a recession, we have a government tripling the deficit in one year and a President calling for hundreds of billions of dollars for a high-speed train system, despite the fact that the one high-speed train system in the Northeast isn't particularly popular.
I don't have a problem with paying taxes when I know it's being collected fairly and it is being used efficiently and for good purposes. It's that second part that has gotten woefully lost by our government: I don't feel a penny of my tax dollars are being efficiently spent, and I feel like only half is getting spent for good purposes. While the White House, Congressional leaders and many in the mainstream media want to paint these TEA Parties as a bunch of unpatriotic fools, I just have the feeling that it'll be anyone who ignores these angry Americans who are the fools.

Example of veiled bias in the media

This is an example of why I believe there is a bias in the media that favors Democrats over Republicans. I have watched for years how the party affiliation of politicians involved in "positive" stories and "negative" stories is identified. I've long noticed a trend: That the party affiliation of Democrats in negative stories is buried, while the party affiliation of Republicans in negative stories is generally in the first reference to the person.

The latest story is one of a New York state senator who has been indicted on assault charges. A journalist is supposed to mention the politician's party affiliation (you often see it as D-NY or something like that) early on. Instead, this reporter waited until the last paragraph in the whole article, and even then referenced his "fellow Democrats."

I don't have quantitative evidence of this, but over the years I've noticed this trend over and over.

Another bad pro-gay-marriage commercial

After Prop 8 passed in California, there was an outpouring of thought about what to do next. The terrible TV commercials that the pro-gay-rights side aired were targeted and the people who led to their creation were blamed. There were marches, letters, conferences, symposiums, meetings, phone calls. After taking all of that in, Equality California has come out with another TV ad - and it's as though they weren't listening.

Actually, listening to the wrong people. There was a chorus after the election saying the mistake was not putting more gay people in the ads: Harvey Milk would have put gay people in the ads, so that was the mistake that was made. So what does EqCa do? They put Harvey Milk and gay people in the commercial. That's not enough; They need to change their message!

But the commercial misses the mark completely because it harps on the same old tired theme of "we're right and you're wrong." Telling people they have to give you something is no way to get them to give it to you; In fact, it often makes them want to keep it from you that much more. This commercial says "we deserve this" and "you can't keep us from it anymore." It mentions Jerry Falwell by name and identifies him as an enemy; Why would you want to alienate his friends and allies? How is that changing people's hearts and minds? It's more stomping feet and throwing a tantrum. That this is what they came up with after four months of listening is very, very sad.