As I was reviewing the transcript of President Obama’s interview with ABC News’s Robin Roberts, I caught this aspect of the Democrat’s attempt to justify his switch on state recognition of same-sex marriage:

Part of the reason that I thought it was important– to speak to this issue was the fact that– you know, I’ve got an opponent on– on the other side in the upcoming presidential election, who wants to– re-federalize the issue and– institute a constitutional amendment– that would prohibit gay marriage. And, you know, I think it is a mistake to– try to make what has traditionally been a state issue into a national issue.

Interesting how this supposedly post-partisan politician felt it incumbent upon himself to further politicize the issue.  He would have served himself — and the cause of gay marriage — better had he just limited his remarks to the merits of the expanded definition of this ancient institution.

It’s not just gay marriage.  The Democrat is trying to politicize American history:

The Heritage Foundation’s Rory Cooper tweeted that Obama had casually dropped his own name into Ronald Reagan’s official biography onwww.whitehouse.gov, claiming credit for taking up the mantle of Reagan’s tax reform advocacy with his “Buffett Rule” gimmick . . . .  Obama has added bullet points bragging about his own accomplishments to the biographical sketches of every single U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge (except, for some reason, Gerald Ford).

Ed Morrissey provides “a comprehensive collection of the ‘Did you know?’ sections added to boost Obama, with links to the specific pages attached to the names of the former Presidents“.

You’d think that the incumbent President of the United States would let the biographies of his predecessors speak for themselves, but this incumbent (or his staffers) felt it incumbent upon himself (or themselves) to insert his name intp their life stories, using their record to promote himself.

Council Winners

• *First place with 3 1/3 votes! The Noisy Room– The Fascist Boogie Fever
• Second place *t* with 2 1/3 votes – Joshuapundit The New Egypt’s Politics: Who Can Demonize Jews And Israel The Most?? (more…)

“Notwithstanding a comically fawning press” writes Charles Krauthammer this morning about the president’s sudden switch on gay marriage, “Obama knows he has boxed himself in.”

In his op-ed, the sage pundit talks about two arguments for gay marriage, Argument A, empathy, and Argument B, rights, and the president’s muddled position as he tries to straddle the two, first the former when he first announced his new position, then “five days later” moving on  ”to adopt Argument B, calling gay marriage a great example of  ’expand[ing] rights‘ and today’s successor to civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights and workers’ rights”:

Problem is: It’s a howling contradiction to leave up to the states an issue Obama now says is a right. And beyond being intellectually untenable, Obama’s embrace of the more hard-line “rights” argument compels him logically to see believers in traditional marriage as purveyors of bigotry. Not a good place for a president to be in an evenly divided national debate that requires both sides to offer each other a modicum of respect.

It’s Krauthammer.  Read the whole thing.

NB:  Am working on a post to address the argument that even if Obama is not sincere about his switch on gay marriage, it’s good to have the president speak out on the topic.  In this post, I will note the several arguments, gay marriage advocates make for expanding the definition of this ancient institution and address why Obama’s approach is so unsatisfying.

Although I often agree with Krauthammer and share his views about Obama trying to straddle the issue here, I believe there are more than just two types of arguments for gay marriage.

They’ll tolerate you as long as you don’t deviate from their orthodoxy.

–James Taranto, Best of the Web, May 17, 2012

On Facebook, a number of my conservative friends have expressed disappointment that Mitt Romney has repudiated the idea of campaigning on “Barack Obama’s 20-year association with Jeremiah Wright“.

I think the presumptive Republican nominee is right on this one; Ed Morrissey explains:

The best argument against Obama will be Obama’s record, and every moment spent by the Romney campaign or major outside PACs talking about anything other than the core issues of the 2012 campaign — jobs, economy, deficits, debt, and Iran — play into the distraction strategy that Team Obama is desperate to use.

Read the whole thing.  Morrissey also reports how the super-PAC that had considered running ads about that relationship dropped the idea.

In this video, Charles Krauthammer offers a similar view, but still managed, as reports Noah Glyn who embedded it on National Review’s The Corner, to eviscerate “President Obama, Jeremiah Wright, and the media“:

This is not to say that Romney shouldn’t attack Obama, but should focus his attacks on the Democrat’s record in office, particularly his failure to keep his promises about lower deficits and a booming economy.

Lately, I’ve been wondering if friends on Obama/DNC mailing lists receive regular missives, telling them what a horrible, no good and very bad man this Mitt Romney is.  An acquaintance was incredulous that an intelligent gay man could indicate a willingness to vote for the presumptive Republican nominee.  He was convinced the former Bay State governor lacked any redeemable qualities. (Neo-Neocon offers some reflections on such incredulity.)

At the same time, a friend reports that his in-laws hold a similarly low opinion of Obama’s opponent, hating “Romney because he beat up gay person when 18.”

It seems, however, that public opinion is swinging away from those with doubts about the Republican.  Citing a poll showing a jump in the likely GOP standard bearer’s favorables since Romney locked up the nomination, John Hinderaker believes that

. . . there are still a lot of independents who have seen little of him. Many of them won’t really tune in until the fall. When they do form an impression of Romney, I think it is highly likely to be positive, as Romney comes across as reasonable, competent and likable. So I will be surprised if this comparison does not continue trending in his favor from now until the election.

I agree.  Most people don’t follow politics as closely as do those of us who blog about it — and those who read our posts.  Their impressions likely won’t be shaped until this fall.  The way he comes across on the campaign trail, particularly in contrast to the incumbent, will have a greater impact on voters than the media foraging into his adolescence, the Obama attack ads — and Democratic e-mails.

RELATED:  Michael Barone, Romney closing the likeability gap

UPDATE: Writing on the determination of some lefties to define Mr. Romney as crazy, James Taranto quips, “The reflexive labeling of one’s partisan opposition as ‘crazy’ and ‘lying’ does not seem to us a sign of strength.“

After summarizing a nearly forty-year-old Life magazine account of Israel “on the occasion of its 25th birthday in May 1973″, Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, asked Monday in the Wall Street Journal, “Would a mainstream magazine depict the Jewish state like this today, during the week of its 64th birthday?”

Unlikely. Rather, readers would learn about Israel’s overwhelming military might, brutal conduct in warfare and eroding democratic values—plus the Palestinians’ plight and Israeli intransigence. The photographs would show not cool students and cutting-edge artists but soldiers at checkpoints and religious radicals.

Why has Israel’s image deteriorated? After all, Israel today is more democratic and—despite all the threats it faces—even more committed to peace.

The media’s darker portrayals of Israel notwithstanding, the American public continue to hold the Jewish State in high regard, with a March Gallup poll finding that the “large majority of Americans continue to view Israel favorably, while far fewer say they view the Palestinian Authority or Iran very or mostly favorably“:

In addition, more than 60% of Americans “say their sympathies are more with the Israelis than with the Palestinians”, with 19% saying their sympathies are with the Palestinians and the same percentage with both sides or neither.

Considering the media bias against Israel, these numbers are particularly impressive. It is instructive to note that even as Republicans only manage to capture about one-fourth to one-third of the Jewish vote, 78% sympathize more with the Jewish State than with the Palestinian Arbs. Barely half (53%) of Democrats hold similar sympathies. (more…)

If you had to cast someone today to play the role James Stewart defined in Harvey (on stage as well as screen), it would be the fetching Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory‘s Sheldon. He’s set to do that this summer on Broadway.

From this interview, it’s clear he understands the part. And did I hear him say Carol Kane was in the cast? If so, kudos to the person who cast this play. She would be ideal as Veta Louise Simmons, the role which earned Josephine Hull her (much-deserved) Oscar.   [Alas, Kane will not be playing Veta Louise; in this production, that role went to Jessica Hecht.]

[chose to remove video which can be found here as the autoplay was annoying some of our readers.]

More often than not, casting is as important as story-telling in theater and film (some would argue it’s more important). And with the good script, assuming they remain faithful to Mary Chase‘s stage- and screenplay, those who make it to New York this summer will be in for quite a treat.

. . . since nobody seems to be watching.

CNN Hits Lowest Primetime Demo Rating at 9 PM In 15 Years:

Last night was a typical, boring Tuesday, with little earth-shattering news to drive TV viewers to cable news. It was also May sweeps, with the season finale of “NCIS: LA,” “America’s Got Talent” on NBC and “Dancing With the Stars” on ABC drawing an astonishing 39 million viewers between them at 9 PM.

Unfortunately for CNN, “Piers Morgan Tonight” was the apparent victim of the busy night, drawing only 39,000 viewers 25-54 at 9 PM. To say those ratings are anomalous would be something of an understatement. That is the lowest 9 PM weekday demo rating for CNN since at least 1997. While the ratings were an outlier, it was a fairly normal edition of “PMT,” with Morgan hosting. Guests included Jane Lynch and “The man with the golden voice” Ted Williams.

“Like General Motors during the late 1970s,” observes Ed Driscoll, commenting on the “news” netwwork’s lousy numbers,

CNN is attempting to sell an obsolete paradigm to an American public that knows better — (more…)

As Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker faces a recall election in just shy of three weeks, he hovers at around 50 in the polls — and this despite strong attacks from the left.  As President Obama faces reelection, he hovers at around 46 percent in the polls, a bill lower if you factor out the surveys that oversample Democrats.

Now, he still leads Mitt Romney when you average the polls, but only two show him near 50% — and of those used a sample more Democratic than the turnout in 2008, a banner Democratic year.

After three years in office and a largely favorable press, fewer than half of the American people want to reelect Barack Obama.  No wonder he’s deployed the “kitchen sink” strategy to go after Romney.  To win reelection, he needs to count on winning over half the undecided voters.  And he can best prevent them from supporting Mr. Romney by making the presumptive nominee out to be a horrible, no good and very bad man — and a bully to boot.

Bear in mind that undecided voters tend to break for the challenger (though in some years, e.g., 1948 and 1976, they broke for the incumbent).  Recent polls in Michigan, Oregon and Wisconsin showing the incumbent at 45.1, 47 and 46 respectively, states he carried (again respectively) with 57.33, 56.75 and 56.22 percent of the vote —  only one of which has gone Republican since the Reagan landslide of 1984 (Michigan for George H.W. Bush in 1988).  It now seems increasingly likely that Romney could win all the states George W. Bush won in 2000 and 2004 and add a few from the Gore and Kerry tally to his own take.

No wonder the Obama team seems worried, very worried.

On two successive days last week, I posted about wanting to blog at a slower pace and focus on other things.  I have not yet had time to find that focus.

As per the second post, however, I really did the wrong week for slow blogging.  Since heading up to the Bay Area at the end of last month and determining to focus on other things, it has very much been the gay fortnight, first with a man (unfortunately) highly regarded in the gay community delivering a mean-spirited diatribe against Christians.  This was not that man’s first foray into nasty rhetoric — or juvenile antics (and he’s no longer in secondary school).

Then came the Grenell matter where the Romney campaign awkwardly handled a situation which appeared to have become delicate.  I will have a bit more to say on this, hopefully later this afternoon, but that post (on the awkward way the Romney campaign handled the matter) got delayed by the president’s (successful) ploy to raise campaign cash from the gay community.

If the president’s shift on gay marriage were sincere, wouldn’t he have made a stronger case for expanding the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples, telling his fellow citizens why he believes this expansion to be a good thing for the individual couples — and for society at large?

Will try to keep up a steady blogging pace, but do hope you understand if I slow it down a bit for a few days.

“You might think”, reports Oliver Knox  on Yahoo! News

. . .  that Barack Obama’s crazy presidential schedule makes it difficult for him to stay on top of popular culture. You’d be half-right. Quizzed on ABC’s “The View” on Monday, Obama slam-dunked a question about Kim Kardashian . . . .

“Which Kardashian was married for only 72 days?” co-host Joy Behar asked the president.

“That would be Kim,” Obama replied.

Via Jim Geraghty.  Meanwhile, at PJMedia, Tom Blumer reports:

An indicator of just how seriously the federal government’s financial situation has deteriorated (combined of course with the establishment press’s clear desire to emphasize “news” which might assist Dear Leader’s reelection effort) is that the dismal 2012 report released by the Social Security system’s trustees on April 23 received little attention. Viewed through that perverse prism, cash deficits which “will average about $66 billion between 2012 and 2018 before rising steeply,” even before considering the $110 billion or so taken from “general (non-existent) revenues” during 2011 and 2012 to make up for the payroll tax cut, pale in comparison to the importance of higher priorities — like working up a 5,400-word report riddled with errors and distortions on what Mitt Romney was doing when he was a teenager.

The sad, under-reported truth is that three years into an alleged “recovery,” the long-term outlook for Social Security continues to crumble at an accelerating rate.

Via Glenn Reynolds.  Could find online any reports about the president’s plan to fix Social Security.  Or address the coming insolvency of Medicare.  Or a plan to put a dent in the national debt.

Hugh Hewitt’s observation this morning about possible “trouble in Obamaville” provides another data point suggesting otherwise.  ”The president’s cash haul in April”, he observes “was down from that in March, and The Hill’s report has this note of anxiety within it:”

The Obama campaign is making a concerted effort to boost the number of small donations, as its affiliated super-PACs have not been able to compete with the big donations from wealthy individuals contributing to super-PAC’s affiliated with presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney.

As I wrote last June, “Face it, gay Democrats, he’s just after you for your money“

Council Submissions

• The Colossus of Rhodey – “Distress”
• The Noisy Room – The Fascist Boogie Fever
• Simply Jews – Fahd al Quso’s demise, blame the previous manager, Obama’s campaign claims, etc
• Joshuapundit-The New Egypt’s Politics: Who Can Demonize Jews And Israel The Most??
• The Razor – The Myth of an Unbiased Media
• New Zeal – Communists in Congress? (1) Hansen Clarke (D) Michigan
• The Political Commentator – Syosset, New York: Political smear campaign or just a big old coincidence?
• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Syrian Unsafe Zone
• Rhymes With Right – Shocking — Mitt Romney And Barack Obama BOTH Were Bullies In School
• Bookworm Room – Presidential Election 2012: Eddie Haskell versus Ward Cleaver
• VA Right! - A Million Souls Up In Heaven
• The Right Planet – Syria
• The Glittering Eye -It’s a Floor Wax and a Dessert Topping
• The Mellow Jihadi – Breastfeeding, By Any Weans Necessary
• Gay Patriot – Marriage to Ann seems to have ended Mitt’s adolescent unruliness
• The Independent Sentinel – Obama’s Bad “Investments” Keep Piling On the Taxpayers – the Auto Bailout Boondoggle

Honorable Mentions (more…)

“It’s not the first time“, writes James Taranto today in his Best of the Web column, “the New York Times has been accused of bias, but it may be the funniest”:

Charlie Spiering of the Washington Examiner reports that the charge was leveled this morning by the Obama campaign. MSNBC host Chuck Todd asked deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter to comment on the latest Times/CBS News poll, and she said: “The methodology was significantly biased.” She then “said that she didn’t want to bore the viewers with talk of methodology, but repeated that she believed the poll was flawed.” Pressed by Todd, she said: “It’s a biased sample, so they re-biased the same sample.” Glad she cleared that up.

Yeah, I caught the Spiering piece too and Ms. Cutter’s reaction struck me as odd and counterproductive.  It reinforces the image that the Obama campaign is in panic mode — and reminds me of the time the McCain campaign in ’08 organized a bloggers’ conference call to comment a ABC/Washington Post poll showing their guy in trouble.

Instead of trying to attack one survey, Ms. Cutter would have served herself — and her boss’s campaign better — had she said, that this is just one survey and reminded her interlocutor of another data point favoring Mr. Obama  – without whining about that one poll, save to call it an outlier.

UPDATE: Commenting on Ms. Cutter’s complaints, Allahpundit offers:

Note to Team O: If you don’t like the fact that people perceive O’s gay-marriage “evolution” as opportunistic, why not try to find the silver lining in that result instead of whining about it?Debbie Wasserman-Schultz did!

When I first came out, I read and enjoyed Edmund White’s early fiction Nocturnes for the King of Naples and Forgetting Elena.  His later work become increasingly sloppy and solipsistic; sometime in the 1990s, I stopped reading his stuff.  Of the gay writers writing today, White is perhaps the most gifted stylist — or at least was in his early work.

Last night, however, when Walter Olson linked an essay White had written, reflecting on his years at Cranbrook, the “boys’ prep school outside Detroit” that both he and Mitt Romney attended, though at different times, I discovered the writer I had once enjoyed. He reflected on his own years at the school, then considering the nature of the place and the background of the studies, turned his thoughts to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and considered the recent allegations of the candidate’s adolescent antics:

On the one hand he had an embarrassingly famous father, the governor of Michigan, whom he idolized as the youngest child. On the other he was the sole Mormon, a member of what was definitely seen as a creepy, stigmatized cult in that world of bland Episcopalian Wasps (we had Episcopalian services at chapel three mornings a week). When his father was president of American Motors, he lived at home and was a day student, an envied status. When his father was elected governor and moved to the state capital of Lansing, he became a boarder. Suddenly he was surrounded by other Cranbrook students and the strict “masters,” 24/7. He no longer had the constant support of his tight-knit family. Now he had to win approval from the other boys.

No wonder he became a daring and even violent prankster. He who worried about his own marginal status couldn’t bear the presence of an unapologetic sissy like Lauber, with his long bleached hair (the Mormons, then as now, have insisted on a neat, traditional, conservative appearance, especially in their young missionary men whom they send out all over the world). In scorning and shearing a sissy student and leading a gang of five other boys in this “prank,” Romney may have felt popular and in the right for the first time.

Emphasis added.   (more…)

It’s not just an on-line poll on Yahoo! A New York Times survey finds that Obama’s Switch on Same-Sex Marriage Stirs Skepticism:

Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed by The New York Times and CBS News since the announcement said they thought that Mr. Obama had made it “mostly for political reasons,” while 24 percent said it was “mostly because he thinks it is right.” Independents were more likely to attribute it to politics, with nearly half of Democrats agreeing.

This may help the president with his fund-raising, but don’t think it will convince wavering independents that the president is a decisive leader.  ”Turns out,” Hugh Hewitt quips, “voters have mistaken ‘evolution’ for transparent ‘manipulation.’”

Law professor William A. Jacobson sees “the makings of a major political disaster not because people disagree with Obama’s position on gay marriage (although many do), but because it revealed once again the cynical money-hungry permanent campaigner and self-absorved politician he is.”  Indeed.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  TnnsNE1 is “tired of being a political football. Let’s please concentrate on things that really matter to most Americans.”  Yes, let’s.

In the forty-seven years since Mitt Romney pulled his last high school prank, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has grown up quite a bit, donating a large portion of his income to charity and performing myriad acts of kindness, helping neighbors, looking out for people in need.

You would think that a journal supposedly interested in gleaning information about a candidate’s adolescent behavior might also want to investigate his actions as an adult.  In his piece on tales of Romney’s youth, Mark Hemingway notes that one “of the major sources for the Post’s Romney scoop is a former Obama campaign volunteer“.  Why not turn to journalists from the Boston Globe?

In their biography of Romney, Globe correspondents Scott Hellman and Michael Kranish report how Romney and his family pitched “in to help in ways big and small. They took chicken and asparagus soup to sick parishioners. They invited unsettled Mormon transplants in their home for lasagna.”

In The Daily, we learn more about Mitt Romney’s good deeds:

One cold December day in the early 1980s, Mitt Romney loaded up his Gran Torino with firewood and brought it to the home of a single mother whose heat had been shut off just days before Christmas.

Years after a business partner died unexpectedly, Romney helped the man’s surviving daughter go to medical school with loans for tuition — loans he forgave when she graduated.

And in 1997, when a fellow church member’s teenage son fell seriously ill, Romney sprinted to the hospital in the dead of night, where he kept vigil with his terrified parents.

Stories like these — tales of long hours spent with grieving families, financial assistance to those in need and timely help given to strangers whether asked for or not — abound in the adult life of the Republican presidential candidate.

(Via HotAir headlines.)  Wonder why the Washington Post was more interested in tales of Mitt Romney’s adolescent antics than the “timely help” he provided to strangers in more recent years.  One would think the stories of what a man makes of himself as an adult help better to define his character than the pranks he pulled as a teen.

Reader MV passed along this story of how non-discrimination laws might prevent an employer from choosing to hire only gay people:

A gay man in Manhattan contends he was fired because he objected to his boss’s biased hiring: The boss, he alleges, had a bias against hiring straight people.

Jamie Ardigo, 32, of Hoboken, is suing investor and entrepreneur J. Christopher Burch of New York for sex-discrimination and wrongful termination. Ardigo, who had been hired as HR director for J. Christopher Capital, Burch’s company, contends he was fired when he sought to change what he claims was Burch’s and the company’s discriminatory practices.

. . . .

[Fewer than four weeks after Ardgo "went to work for the company in early November 2011"] he says, he was seated in a meeting where Burch announced the fact that he hired only gay men because they were productive, and because he trusted them. Burch said the same thing, Ardigo asserts, on other occasions: “I witnessed it in meetings with the executive management team, where he’d blatantly state the fact that he only likes to hire gay men and beautiful women.”

And the problem is?

It is Mr. Burch’s company; he should be free to determines which individuals make the most productive and trustworthy employees.  And if he believes gay men to be more productive (and given some gay men I know it the field of finance, I have seen some grounds for that belief), the he should be free to hire them.

If he, however, chooses to hire only gay people, he gives his competitors an advantage — as they will be selecting from a much wider pool of potential employees.   That’s said, it’s his money he’s risking (not the government’s).

Now, Burch’s lawyer denies the allegations; this issue may never come before a judge.  That said, were Mr. Burch to prefer gay men in his office, well, bully for him.  The state should not be in the business of deciding how an entrepreneur selects his workforce.