We’re Eating From the Wrong Side of the Mushroom (AKA: Stop Blowing Things Out of Proportion)

I don’t usually play the “gay” card when it comes to my politics, mostly because it’s just not important.

Sure, I play it when I want to make a liberals head explode from having to deal with a Republican who isn’t a “straight, white male” but that’s pretty much it.

I have little to no use for minority or collective politics, that’s why I’m a conservative. I have absolute no need for advocacy groups for my sexuality or gender.

That’s not to say that I don’t like GOProud to a certain extent or that I’m not a member. I do credit them (though more because of Breitbart’s initial involvement with them, than the group itself) with helping me come out of my conservative closet, and I like Jimmy and Chris quite well. I don’t want people getting the idea that I dislike GOProud or what they do…I just don’t always think they are right all the time, just by virtue of being run by gay people. That would be a disservice to them and to my own conservative beliefs.

Bring Out Yer Dead! Or At Least 55% of Their Wealth.

Well it’s 2013. We survived a lot this past year. The Mayan’s really poor sense of humor, our President and Secretary of State blaming a youtube video for the death of 4 Americans, Hamas attacking Israel and nearly starting an all out war, the “ceasefire” between Palestine and Israel, Hurricanes, the election season, election night (I nearly didn’t survive that and several bottles of alcohol were murdered, but we made it), and I managed to not punch anyone in the face this year.

That was a close one to be honest and if I had physical access to some of the liberals on tumblr, that might not have happened.

However big things are happening this year and we need to discuss them. The obvious issue would be the fiscal cliff, but that’s a horse that’s been well and truly beat to death by better people than me and I’d like to avoid it.

Something that people have not been talking about as much is the fact that estate taxes (commonly referred to as “Death taxes”) are going up to 55% this year and $1 million is now the threshold. This would be a really bad year to die and leave an inheritance to your kids.

Two decades ago, Kester paid the IRS $2 million when he inherited a 22,000-acre cattle ranch from his grandfather. Come January, the tax burden on his children will be more than $13 million.

For supporters of a high estate tax, which is imposed on somebody’s estate after death, Kester is the kind of person they rarely mention. He doesn’t own a mansion. He’s not the CEO of a multi-national. But because of his line of work, he owns a lot of property that would be subject to a lot of tax.

“We’re not millionaires in the terms of making a million dollars a year,” said Kester who lives in a modest home and whose family — not outsiders or a corporation — runs his ranch. “I have a half-a-million dollars in soil.”

Kester can’t spend it, without selling land. But by selling the land, each year the ranch would become less viable.

- Fox News

In fact this will effect over half a million family farms in the United States.

See, an estate tax does not tax income or liquid assets. It taxes your assets and your estate. “A tax levied on the net value of the estate of a deceased person before distribution to the heirs.” And the estate and assets of a farm or ranch, while not liquid in many cases, add up to being worth a pretty penny very quickly. Land is not cheap and neither is the farming equipment or cattle or other livestock that one would find on a farm or ranch.

In 1997, a study looked at 22 herds of cows that averaged 99 heads of cattle and with the cost of cows being extremely high ($900 a head or more) the asset of a heard of cows could be worth over $100,000.

Then the land could be worth several million on its own.

Crops grown on a farm could be considered an asset and wheat, corn, and other crops are worth a lot!

Farm equipment is another expensive asset.

Family farms and family cattle ranches, which may not have much in the way of liquid assets (many do not) are quite often worth more than the million dollar asset limit asset limit.

So what happens when the person who owns one of this asset rich family farm or ranch dies and passes on the property to their children?

Well in the case of the Kester family, his children will have to pay a ‘death tax’ of $13 million dollars on his estate. The ranch does not have that sort of liquid worth, so the children will have to sell off part of their father’s land, their birthright,  to pay the IRS.

Pay them for what exactly?

For the fact that their father died?

The land has neither gained nor lost value with the death of the father. The land is probably not even leaving the family line, no one is making a profit from the transfer of the land from the father to child.

But the IRS, like vultures picking the flesh off the dead, want their piece of the pie.

The estate tax is a relic that not even Russia or China still employ. Are we really so greedy and grasping that we use the death of someone as a reason to snatch as much of his or her property and assets as we can?

I guess the answer to that is yes, but it shouldn’t be.

Estate taxes are an unethical money grab by the government and they need to go. Even if the limit was moved up to protect family farms and ranches, the estate tax would still need to go. It’s a sign of greed and grasping at anything that someone else has earned.

I want to pass on my wealth to my children. That’s why I work so hard to better myself, not just to give them a better life while I’m with them, but to leave them something when I pass on. I don’t do it to give the government 55% of it when I die.

My first political book is officially in the works.

As readers of my blog, you all need to help keep me accountable and working hard on this book.

Obviously I won’t be ‘live blogging’ the writing of a book, since that would defeat the purpose of writing a book, but you can follow me on twitter and watch for the occasionally frustrated, rending of clothing and tearing of hair, tweets about my progress…among other things.

How do you keep me accountable?

Well if you are interested in the book, send me a tweet or leave me a comment on the blog to nag me about when I will finish the book.

Of course when it’s done I’ll have to find an agent and a publishing company, so if you have any advice on that, feel free to include that along with the nagging.

What’s the book about, you ask?

What do you think? It’s a  non-fiction political book which, among other things, tells a bit of my own personal story of transition from liberalism to conservatism, a discussion of what being a gay conservative means (mostly a lot of being insulted by gay liberals), clearing up some misconceptions about what it means to be conservative, and quite a large section devoted to motivating young conservatives (gay and straight) and encouraging them to get their views out there and argue their beliefs.*

Also there is will be some vague threatening posturing towards a few conservative pundits, who have their own shows *cough*GregGutfeld*cough* about what will happen if they don’t invite me to come on their show.

 

 

*any and all parts of this description could change. In fact, the whole book could become an argument about why koalas are superior house guards than dogs.  I make no promises.

Follow up to my post about Kyle Wood.

Okay, so now the police say Wood has ‘recanted’. I still think there is more to the story, but my point still stands. The original post was about the lack of reporting, not the incident itself.

The Advocate and other gay news organizations have jumped on dozens of ‘hate crimes’ against gays (the non-conservative ones) that later were proved to be false. Not only was their reporting on it after the falsehood was discovered very low key…to the point of almost not existing, but when you read the comments on the posts, the gay ‘community’ rallies around these liars and either says the cops are homophobic bigots who are lying about the situation or, if they do admit it was fake, they stand by them and say that ‘well this PARTICULAR case may not have been true, but this stuff happens all the time and they are just trying to get hate crimes noticed so people will do something to stop them’. (No joke, that’s almost word for word some of the comments I’ve seen on stories about gay people faking hate crimes.)

The biggest issue here is not that someone lied (still want to know what happened, it was clear he was beaten and it was not a beating he could have administered himself, something happened here and someone is responsible for his assault) but that many of the ‘leading’ gay news organizations did not bother to report on it until after it came out that it was recanted and then they made a HUGE deal out of it…unlike similar stories of gay liberals faking hate crimes.

Then of course there is the absolutely CHARMING commentary on the story about the situation. Gay liberals using every slur in the book, ones that they would normally call a person ‘bigoted’ and ‘homophobic’ for using, but when they do it to a gay person it’s apparently okay.

My point stands. This was not reported quickly for political reasons in the first place, because it did not fit the narrative that these websites want to promote.

It had nothing to do with the ‘lack of evidence’ to support it, no matter how much liberals would want you to believe it.

Why do I say that? Because if this SAME situation had happened to a gay liberal, Dan Savage would have been reporting on it in a heartbeat, not sitting around telling people that it didn’t pass the ‘smell test’.

How exactly does this promote ‘equality’? A question for gay liberals and The Advocate.

Would you like to know which news story is conspicuously absent from The Advocate today?

No, it’s not the latest hatchet job attempt to make Romney into a vicious homophobe. They have a new article doing that every other day.

It’s not an outraged article about how offensive the Timberlake/Biel wedding video was to Transsexuals. That’s on the top of the main page.

And it’s certainly not an article about the ’25 gayest Halloween movies’.

No, the story that is 100% absent from a website that claims to be “The World’s Leading LGBT News Source” is a story of an assault on a gay man in Wisconsin, which has been reported on by the Daily Caller and The Examiner.

Why is this story not being reported on by The Advocate? I certainly can’t claim to know their reasoning, but I feel like it probably has to do with the fact that Kyle Wood, who is currently in the hospital following the assault in his own home yesterday morning, is a Republican who is a full-time volunteer for Chad Lee’s Republican campaign for the House.*

Wood told The Daily Caller that vandalism preceding the assault, along with his attacker’s statements during the incident, suggested his sexual orientation and his politics each played a role.

“I was getting ready for work and there was a knock at the door,” Wood emailed The Daily Caller late Wednesday. “I opened it, and a guy wrapped a ligature around my neck, slammed my head into the doorway, and smashed my face into a mirror, telling me ‘You should have kept your [f*******] mouth shut.’”

“He then kidney-punched me, while at the same time saying I was ‘warned,’ and continued to beat me,” he added.

Wood said his attacker’s reference to a warning likely pointed to graffiti he found painted on his car last week. The vandalism included the phrases “house trained republican faggot,” “traitor,” and “ur like a jew 4 hitler.”

Those slurs, he explained, were references to him being a gay Republican working to help Lee, a straight GOP candidate, defeat the openly gay Democrat Mark Pocan.

- The Daily Caller

I hate the term ‘hate crime’, but there is literally no other way to describe this vicious, malicious, hateful assault, which occurred for only one reason, Wood had the audacity to be gay and openly conservative. Which The Advocate, given their silence on the issue  despite their usual vocal quality when it comes to hate crimes against the LGBT community, seems to almost approve of.

Wood was unable to move the right side of his body immediately following Wednesday morning’s assault. He was transported by ambulance to Meriter Hospital in Madison. His eyes were swollen shut by the beating, and he suffered a concussion along with neck and head lacerations.

Wood told The Daily Caller, yesterday, “I will not be bullied, intimidated or threatened into abandoning my moral values.”

Anyone who knows me well, or reads this blog, knows that I am of the same mind  as Wood, but this entire story (and the gay communities silence on the issue) disgusts and terrifies me as a moral person and a gay conservative myself.

Where is this ‘equality’ that the liberal LGBT community keeps preaching?

The truth is, they don’t think we deserve it, so why should they bring attention to a story about a gay conservative who has been brutalized.

They think we deserve to be assaulted and put in our place.

Much the same way that liberal ‘feminists’ have a habit of ignoring (or joining in on) hateful, vile, and cruel words and actions against conservative women.

Hey Advocate, get off your ass and denounce the unknown attacker who performed this hate crime. Tell your reader’s this is unacceptable behavior. Tell them that no one, no matter what their political views, deserves to be treated this way.

If you don’t, the only thing that gay conservatives can take away is that you tacitly approve of our assault.

Ah well, I’m not holding out any hope that you will.

“It Gets Better” my ass.

 

 

Additionally, the former holder of the seat that Lee is running for (Tammy Baldwin, gay Democrat) and the challenger to Lee (Pocan, gay Democrat) have said not one word about the attack.

Wood said he is offended by the silence from the two usually vocal gay icons in the 2nd Congressional District. Pocan and Baldwin, he said, have historically sprung to the defense of victims of violence in the gay community.

“I find their lack of response maybe not unexpected but lacking decorum,” he said.  “I don’t look for a response from either of them, but from a political standpoint that’s what this race will come down to: do you want to elect someone who is going represent the entire 2nd District or do you want to elect someone who will pick and choose who they want to represent?  That’s what their lack of a statement is telling me, that I’m no longer a person to be represented.”

- WatchDog.org

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*This is only days after the son of  Senator Neal Kedzie (also Wisconsin, what the hell is wrong with liberals in that state?) was hospitalized after a beating that occurred when he tried to stop a man from stealing his Romney yard sign.

It’s a nice sentiment and I believe it. So why do liberals want my sexual orientation to determine my politics?

Or my friends,
my politics,
my religion,
etc.

I’ve seen this picture numerous times, or ones similar to it.

Usually posted by people or organizations that I’ve had intense disagreements with over the fact that they seem to believe that I can’t be a conservative if I’m gay…or that I can’t be gay if I’m a conservative. I’ve heard it both ways.

I’ve even, recently, dealt with someone who told me outright that being gay was a political position and that I crazy if I thought that being gay only dealt with your sexuality. (This was a liberal who said this, I haven’t had this reaction from any of the conservatives I’ve talked too. Including the ones I met at Right Online this year).

So please, explain to me how my sexual orientation doesn’t choose all of the things mentioned in that drawing…but it does choose my politics, because I’m failing to see how these things are different.

Democrats now have gay marriage on their platform

*packs bags to switch political camps*

Or not.

Because I’m not a moron.*

First of all, you are a gay person and think this means that the Democratic party cares about you one iota, you are naive…and a moron.

Just the same way you are a moron if you think that Obama’s jury-rigged, executive order dream act (which not even top officials at ICE agree with) means they care about illegal immigrants.

As Mark Steyn, over at National Review, put it: You are the Democrats house pets. You are convenient now, but the moment you aren’t good for their cause they will cut off all the favors and nice words.

As an exercise in sheer political muscle, it’s impressive. But, if you’re a feminist or a gay or any of the other house pets in the Democrat menagerie, you might want to look at Rahm Emanuel’s pirouette, and Menino’s coziness with Islamic homophobia. These guys are about power, and right now your cause happens to coincide with their political advantage. But political winds shift. Once upon a time, Massachusetts burned witches. Now it grills chicken-sandwich homophobes. One day it’ll be something else. Already in Europe, in previously gay-friendly cities like Amsterdam, demographically surging Muslim populations have muted leftie politicians’ commitment to gay rights, feminism, and much else. It’s easy to cheer on the thugs when they’re thuggish in your name. What happens when Emanuel’s political needs change?

- Mark Steyn, National Review

Liberal politicians regularly cozy up to Islam, a religion which, the the countries where it runs the show, encourages institutionalized hatred of women and homosexuals. Want to talk about American culture ‘blaming rape victims’? Let’s talk about women being whipped for being raped in Muslim cultures under Sharia law, the law of Islam.

In Muslim countries, homosexuality is still a punishable offense with either prison or death being the punishments in most cases. In Iran, only months ago, 4 gay men were hanged for being homosexuals.

But liberals have an uncomfortable habit of viewing Islam as “an unfairly maligned religion of peace” as Sam Harris pointed out earlier this year.

But hey, no need to worry about that, because liberals will let us get married! Don’t worry about the fact that the groups which they considered allies (The Muslim Brotherhood), support (Hamas), and protect (Iran), are all in a hurry to kill or imprison all of us.

No need to make a stir over the fact that the same Boston mayor (Tom Menino) who said “There is no place for discrimination on Boston’s Freedom Trail” in reference to the owner of Chick-fil-A saying he supports traditional marriage, also have given $1.8 million of municipal land to the new mosque of the Islamic Society of Boston. Who lists Yusuf-al-Qaradawi as a trustee.

In case you don’t know who that is, he’s a man whose tolerant view of homosexuality led him to say “Some say we should throw [homosexuals] from a high place, [s]ome say we should burn them, and so on. There is disagreement. . . . The important thing is to treat this act as a crime.”

Yeah, no cause to worry about what liberals REALLY think about gay people.

No reason to think they only want to support us for as long as we are useful.

Because, hey, they say they are going to put gay marriage on their platform.

______________________________________________________________

*Also, it would helps because I don’t support gay marriage, but if you read my blog you already know that…I hope.

My Right Online Experience.

After a  lot of difficulty and maneuvering I got a ticket for the full event at Right Online, which was sold out this year.

So Friday morning, my family* packed up and headed to Las Vegas.

The conference was held at The Venetian, which is apparently the only non-union business on the La Vegas Strip. Which made it ideal for a meeting of conservatives.

Anyway, I got to the Venetian in time to get registered and get my copy of Culture of Corruption signed by Michelle Malkin.

The Andrew Breitbart Tribute Reception was extremely moving with dozens of stories about Breitbart’s life and how he had affected the lives of those he worked with over the years. In fact, stories about Breitbart were brought up in almost every speech.

It made me incredibly sad to see how many people he had affected in his 43 short years and the fact that I never had to chance to meet him.

I can’t even begin to describe the awesomeness of the speeches at this event or how much they affected me. So I’ll simply include the videos and encourage you to listen to them.

I hope to also implement some of the ideas I got in the breakout sessions, where I heard a lot about making a blog successful and building an audience. Including the possibility of doing a roundtable podcast with other conservative voices and covering more of my city and state local politics.

To the speeches.

Andrew Marcus, Breitbart Tribute

Former Governor Sarah Palin

Michelle Malkin on June 15th

Michelle Malkin on June 16th

Roger Hedgecock

Hugh Hewitt

Congressman Joe Heck

S.E. Cupp

Lars Larson

Jonah Goldberg

Rusty Humphries

Dana Loesch

Who I got to take a photo with.

Ann McElhinney

 

*They wanted to go on vacation and Las Vegas seemed like a good choice.

Did Obama or Loki say that? (Via The Conservative New Ager)

So I went to a midnight showing of The Avengers last night (I will get a glowing review out, but I need to see it at least once more before I do so).   Great movie!  Witty, fun, moving…Joss Whedon at his best.  Not that this stopped the snobs at the New York Times from not too subtely suggesting that Loki’s evil is preposterous and ridiculous overblown character (despite the very valid comparison Whedon makes between Loki and every tyranny in history.  “There are always men like you.” Although even I will admit it’s hard nailing down Whedon’s politics from his shows–you have the liberal conception of the evil corporation in Angel and Dollhouse but a hyper libertarianism in Firefly with that individualism only slightly toned down in Buffy) and that the only real sheeple out there are the people who could enjoy a movie like The Avengers (I’m sure it’s the not to thin layer of patriotism throughout the movie that most offened the hacks over at the Times). But I realized that the New York Times movie review find this character overblown…because to admit that such rhetoric was the rhetoric of tyrants and petty dictators throughout history would mean that they might have to actually look to see if any modern politicians who might be saying similar things. Loki says he comes to free people from that burdonsom chore of freedom, which sadly there are people who would actually applaud that being forced on society.

So, to show you that Loki’s quotes aren’t that overblown (although much better written as Whedon was behind them) let’s compare Loki to a modern day politician…oh, let’s say…Obama.

Did Obama or Loki say that?.

 

My thoughts, on all of Loki’s speeches, exactly.

Dan Savage’s hypocrisy

(This is the first,  in what may be 2 or 3 posts on this issue. This is a general response, next I will respond to the rest of his speech, and perhaps another post to deal with some of the responses that liberals have had to the completely justified outrage that conservatives are feeling about this.)

I spent most of the day, yesterday, trying to figure out how to start this post.

I’m usually quite witty (if I do say so myself), but I’m honestly just very angry about this. Wit has deserted me in favor of mental equivalent of “HULK SMASH!”

Now let me preface this with something that I don’t talk about often.

I am not a Christian. Let’s get that out of the way so that I won’t be categorized as a “religious bigot”, “butthurt Christian”, “conservative fundie”, or any of the other terribly tolerant language that the liberal blogs have been categorizing anyone who takes issue with Savage’s language as.

Yes, that’s right, I’m personally pro-life and extremely conservative in most other ways…but I don’t believe that Jesus Christ rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, ate the last supper with the 12 apostles, or died on a cross and rose again 3 days later.

I do believe that the Bible has some good stories and some good lessons to teach, just as I believe about many religions. I believe that it shows a unique look at a society (or a religious history, for the Jewish people, if you are looking at the Old Testament) and it must be read in the context of its time, as a form of history. (Something even my mother who, unlike my father, can be a bit of a Biblical literalist, freely admitted in a conversation with me last night).

The Bible, similar to most other philosophies and religions, has some bad parts as well. The large portion of the Old Testament is history and some truly awful shit has gone down in every society/religion at some point.

Now, having said that.

What Dan Savage said in his rant (yes, that’s what I categorize it as. Lot’s of anger, no real substance) just made him a bully and destroyed his credibility as a promoter of “anti-bullying” views.

Yes, calling a holy book, or part of it’s contents, “bullshit” is sometimes accurate (I often say similar words about things that about the Q’ran) however, saying the things he said in a pre-planned speech, to a group of high school students, was bullying. This wasn’t said in the heat of the moment, when he was angry at someone coming after him personally, this was pre-meditated and there is no way he did not know that many students and teachers in that crowd would be Christians. That would be a statistical improbability.

Then, of course, he took it a step further and called those who did the mature and walked out (rather than I would have done, even as a non-Christian, which would have been stand up and take him to task…or possibly pop him in the mouth…depending on my mood) “pansy assed”. Which, unless I’m wrong, is a pejorative used to refer to effeminate gay men.

Oh the irony inherent in a man who hates the bullying of gay people, using a gay slur to insult others.

Maybe he should have just called them faggots and gotten it over with.

I have an intense problem with hypocrisy. It is the one thing that will automatically make me lose all respect for you.

I may not like the views of certain groups (PETA, liberals in general, the Taliban, etc) but if you can remain consistent in your views and actions, I can at least respect that you know your own mind…even if I can’t stand the way your mind works.

It is the hypocrisy of Dan Savage’s views that kills me.

You cannot truly know yourself or your beliefs if you believe that bullying of one group is wrong, but bullying of some other group is fine…because you don’t like them.

You can’t be believed or respected if you say “It Gets Better” from one side of your mouth, while the other side says that you wish an entire political group was “just fucking dead”.*

You can’t demand respect for gay people, while using gay slurs to categorize those that you don”t like.

You can’t demand change and respect from people, when your actions against those who disagree with you is to make up vile uses for their name.

Not only has he shown his hypocrisy, but Savage has once again shown his sheer lack of intelligence (Yes, I think you are unintelligent if you can’t hold consistent beliefs, it isn’t hard to do) and his immaturity.

Is this really the person the gay community wants to represent the great future that is in store for young GLBT people?

How can life “get better” if the role model for a better life is so filled with anger, so bitter and hurtful to others?

You can’t fight fire with fire Mr. Savage. Perhaps it was your intent to live up to your name, but you are doing a great disservice to those you claim to be trying to help.

As Perez Hilton said** “Can’t we just be good and kind to each other? Isn’t faith in love and honesty and kindness all any of us really need?”

That is what will get our world where it needs to be, not divisive language and anger towards anyone who doesn’t fall in line with your ideal.

 

*As a gay conservative/Republican I would like to know what that means for me. Should I just die to make Savage happy? Or does life get better for me too, since I’m gay?

**Yes, I was shocked that he was one of the people to speak out about this.