“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.

Since we are perhaps the leading gay conservative blog, I supposed we’re supposed to chime in on the latest Newsweek cover story, given its gay theme and that is written by a prominent gay ex-conservative (still billed by some as a conservative).

I hate to disappoint our readers.  I have no intention of reading the cover story.  There are only so many hours in the day.  And, well, when it comes to Obama, Andrew Sullivan has become remarkably predictable.

Andrew once offered a fresh and unique insight into gay culture and American politics.  Now he just offers the party line.

Indeed, so goofy is he for Obama that he accords him an honor he once bestowed upon Abraham Lincoln.  In October 2010, he held that Abraham Lincoln was gay. And since Lincoln served roughly a century before Obama was born, that would make Obama the second gay president.

To call Obama a “gay president” is to ignore the first two years of his administration when he dragged his feet on repeal of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT) and neglected to push Congress to act on DOMA repeal or civil union recognition.  A gay president would have made those issues a priority and would not have needed energetic left-of-center bloggers to spur him on.  Eventually, he did do the right thing on DADT — but only after considerable pressure from those bloggers.  He didn’t do much, if anything, to advance federal recognition of same-sex unions.

With that in mind, I have little interest in reading a piece by Andrew on Obama.  He sees the president not as he is, but as he would like the Democrat to be.

And reading Andrew Sullivan today is like returning to a beloved restaurant only to learn that they have taken all your favorite dishes off the menu and replaced them with the fare served at a chain restaurant, say Arby’s.

At Ace of Spades, Maetenloch offers a somewhat snarky spin, contending that “at this point“: (more…)

“In an interview during his Senate race” in 2004, reported Lois Romano of the Washington Post in 2007, “Obama said he admitted using drugs because he thought it was important for ‘young people who are already in circumstances that are far more difficult than mine to know that you can make mistakes and still recover.’”

Now, to be sure, Mitt Romney grew up under far more fortunate circumstances than Mr. Obama, but one wonders that if the legacy media had investigated something troubling in that latter’s past, they would have spun it as the Democrat spun his cocaine use.

Mitt Romney may or may not have given his high school classmate a haircut (in a bullying manner).  He has long since stopped pulling adolescent pranks.  Given his stable marriage and an adulthood filled with abundant acts of kindness for individual in need, Mitt Romney has quite obviously become a better person these past 47 years.  So too has Barack Obama since his high school years.

Had the Washington Post bothered to report Mr. Obama’s adolescent antics, one wonders if they would have covered it as they covered his cocaine use, stressing his ability to recover from mistakes — and casting his process of maturing as an example for young people to follow.

Just shy of a year ago, I posted some pictures I took of empty storefronts on Melrose between Fairfax and La Brea.  Today, I chose just one block, this time west of Fairfax and found on the north side of the street (Melrose) between Edinburgh and Highland exactly as many empty storefronts as occupied ones:

If entrepreneurs weren’t vacating these stores, they could be paying taxes to the state of California, helping reduce it’s deficit while providing jobs for aspiring actors — and other Hollywood wannabes.

The very state policies which cause these enterprises to go belly-up account to a large degree for the state’s slumping revenues.  California has become one of the nation’s least-friendly states for small business.

As Jennifer Rubin puts it:

. . . unless you understand that California has the worst business climate in the country and its revenue projections turned out to be wildly over-optimistic. Reuters explains: “The deeper deficit forecast reflects the state’s uneven economic recovery: tax collections this year have fallen about $4 billion below projections, though many state legislators and economists had warned that the January revenue estimates were far too optimistic.”

And tax collections will continue to fall unless state legislators act to reduce the regulatory burden and adopt a more business-friendly tax structure. That alas does not seem to be on Governor Brown’s agenda.

Oh, and the south side of that block also has its share of vacant storefronts: (more…)

There are two new polls out which suggest that even as voters across the country reject state recognition of same-sex marriages, they are increasingly open to civil unions.  Given the care Gallup takes to survey a representative sample of the American population, we should have every confidence that theirs presents a pretty accurate portrait of American public opinion.

Their latest shows, as per their headline, U.S. Acceptance of Gay/Lesbian Relations Is the New Normal. Indeed.  Take a gander at this chart and look when the shift occurred:

During the Bush years, the 13-point advantage of those finding gay relations morally wrong was erased.

And this belief that gay/lesbian relations are morally acceptable accelerated in recent years. Another chart shows that more Americans find gay/lesbian relationships morally acceptable than believes same-sex marriages should be valid. Guess that means that all opponents of state recognized gay marriages are not haters — as goes the narrative.

By a 2-to-1 margin (63-31), Americans think gay and lesbian relationships between consenting adults should be legal. A CBS survey yields a similar result, showing that “62 percent – close to two thirds – of Americans believe that same-sex unions should be recognized by law.”

With research from NYU political scientist Patrick Egan showing that “the share of voters in pre-election surveys saying that they will vote to ban same-sex marriage is typically seven percentage points lower than the actual vote on election day”, perhaps the better strategy toward improving the lot of gay people in relationships would be, in the present, to push for civil unions.

These numbers show just how greatly things are improving for gay people in America.  Attitudes are shifting.  Not all Americans may want to call our unions marriages, but increasingly, they respect their integrity and moral worth.  A good sign indeed.

As usual you can count on blogress diva Ann Althouse for insightful commentary on events of the day.  And she does so again today with her thoughts on gay marriage and the 2012 election.

She agrees with us that Republicans should resist using the same-sex marriage issue against Obama:

The issues in this election should have to do with economics, foreign policy, and the things that fall squarely within a President’s responsibility. Obama has a record here, and he should have to defend it, not distract us with a “social” issue. His actual political policy on same-sex marriage isn’t even different from Romney’s: Leave it to the states. Leave it to the states is a fine — truly excellent — way to package the issue and set it to the side. I would encourage Republicans to do exactly that . . .

Emphasis added.  Just read the whole thing (via Instapundit).

I quibble slightly with Althouse’s spin, and would replace the word “actual” in the highlighted passage above with “effective.”  Romney does favor a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, thus precluding state recognition of same-sex unions.

The reason, however, I would use the word “effective” is that there is no way such an amendment could muster the necessary two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress in order to be sent to the states for ratification — and you need three-quarters of the states to agree to a constitutional amendment.  Ain’t gonna happen.

The only difference between Obama’s policy on gay marriage and Romney’s is rhetorical.  Just words.

In recent days, the president’s strategy for reelection has become pretty clear; he means to distract voters from the anemic recovery as well as his unpopular health care overall, the nation’s debt and the impending insolvency of entitlements (not to mention his absence of solutions for the last two) by dangling bright shiny articles in front of a compliant media.

“If voters decide the 2012 election based on Obama’s economic record,” observes the editors of the Washington Examiner, “he will lose.  And so the liberal media, as in love with him as ever, is helping him parade shiny objects to distract voters from that record.”

They want to make Mitt Romney appear so weird and out-of-touch that come November, voters will pinch their nose and vote for Obama only to spare us four years of Romney.  And so far, thanks in large part to a legacy media remarkably incurious about the failure of the Democratic Senate to vote on a budget for over three years or the Treasury Secretary’s acknowledgement that the administration has no plan to address the nation’s debt crisis, the Obama distraction strategy appears to be working.

This has led New York Times columnist Ross Douthat to ask “what this successful maneuvering is actually gaining the White House“:

The weaknesses it’s trying to exploit are real enough: the country is moving leftward on many social issues, and Romney’s mix of squareness and weirdness — the moneyed background, the Mormonism, the 1950s persona — makes it relatively easy to portray him as culturally out of touch.

But this would be a bigger problem for Republicans if the 2012 campaign were taking place amid prosperity and plenty.

In the end, people will likely look to their pocketbooks and realize how their purchasing power has declined over the past four years.  And they might just start getting tired of the endless distractions coming from our supposedly even-handed media that they may just tune them out.

Before our friends in the legacy media run after the next bright shiny object, they may want to talk to that boy who cried, “Wolf,” one too many times.

Please note that I include this post in random thoughts because I am not entirely sure how answer to the question I pose in the title.  Until last night, I thought that Obama’s recent shift on gay marriage wouldn’t make any difference in the fall, save to increase his fundraising. Then, I got a link to this video last night in my e-mail, watched it and wondered:

Victor Davis Hanson’s read on the president’s supposed shift also caused me to question my initial interpretation:

The flip-flop on gay marriage, of course, did not win Obama a single vote, just plenty of one-percenters’ money. More injurious to his cause was his idiotic refrain about his “evolving” views. No one believed that yarn: fifteen years ago he was for gay marriage when it was smart politically for him to be so, and then he revolved to “no” when it was not. All that happened this week was that clueless Joe Biden jumped the gun. Obama with a wink and nod had privately assured rich gays, as he had Putin, that after his reelection he would give them what was wanted, but could not quite yet, given his need to hoodwink the clingers to get reelected. I think most voters understood that con as emblematic of this presidency.

Via Instapundit.  Where it hurts the most is not the merits of the issue, but that people will see the re-positioning as patently political.  Not just that, he looks out of touch, having announced his shift the day after North Carolina voters overwhelmingly rejected state recognition of same-sex marriage.  It’s almost as if he were thumbing his nose at the citizens in a state that he won in 2008–and is trying to hold again this year.

Now, I wish that gay marriage were not, to borrow Mitt Romney’s expression, “a hot political issue dividing our nation.”  And wish support of state recognition of same-sex unions would not hurt a candidate at the polls.  And maybe, under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t. (more…)

I decided to take today off from blogging, have one piece upcoming on the political implications of Obama’s shift on gay marriage, but after that may not post again until tomorrow afternoon.  But, don’t be disappointed, even if my blogging is slow, there’s lots of good stuff from the Watcher of Weasels.

I thought a good number of the submissions last time with particularly strong, so encourage you to peruse this list and follow the links if you’re looking for some good blog reading.  It’s not to say I share the perspectives presented in each of the posts, but that I found many to be thought-provoking and otherwise insightful, so enjoy!

And bear in mind–just because they didn’t win doesn’t mean they’re very good.  :-)

Council Winners

• *First place with 5 votes! Joshuapundit – Inside Vladimir Putin (more…)

“Boys,” Anne Moir and David Jessel in Brain Sex: The Real Difference Between Men and Women, “tend to seek out dares or challenges to flex their adolescent muscles in obedience to the dictates of their adolescent hormones.”  They seem particularly unruly in all male environments without the tempering influence of girls.

So Mitt Romney’s adolescent antics seem par for the course.  He was, after all, a student at an all boys school.  Whether or not it is true that he bullied a classmate, cruelly cutting his hair, he doesn’t seem to have kept up with his antics in the past 47 years, particularly in the past 43, that is, since March 21, 1969, a few days after celebrating his 22nd birthday, when he married his high school sweetheart, Ann Lois Davies.

Maybe it was dating her in 1965 that caused him to clean up his act.  Women do have that effect on men.

The prankster Mitt knew he needed to become a better person in order to merit the fetching Miss Davies.  And given that Ann had broken up with Mitt after they had “informally agreed to marriage after his senior prom in June 1965“, he knew he’d have to be on his best behavior to win her back.

Mitt very much seems devoted to Ann.  Just watch him when they’re on stage together and she’s introducing him; he’s got this goofy affectionate look, as if he can’t believe this woman would, of all the men in the world, choose him — and stick with him for more than four decades:

So perhaps Romney bullied a classmate.  The story, if true, paints a picture of a callous, insensitive young man.  But, things have changed for that young man in the intervening forty-odd years.  The adolescent Mitt Romney, however, is not running for president.  The former Ann Davies’s husband is.

What Log Cabin Executive Director R. Clarke Cooper giveth in one release on Thursday, with his strong statement on Obama’s fundraising pitch to the gay community, he taketh (partially) away in another that very day with a threatening language  directed against his own party’s presidential nominee:

Marriage equality has captured the nation’s attention, and the response to President Obama’s announcement is evidence of the tide turning in favor of equality for all. . . .

Governor Mitt Romney’s statement in opposition to not just marriage but civil unions jeopardizes his ability to win moderates, women and younger voters, especially as a large majority of Americans favor some form of relationship recognition for their LGBT friends and neighbors.

Equality for all?  What’s that mean?  It’s certainly not a conservative slogan, but one more familiar to a Mr. W. Smith.

Clarke is right to criticize Romney for his “opposition to not just marriage but civil unions”, but his tone is counterproductive.  Moderates, women and younger voters won’t vote against him because of his stand on gay marriage.  They will, however, vote against him if he makes that stand central to his campaign.  They’re not going to decide their vote exclusively on gay marriage.  He would have served himself (and the cause of his organization) better had he merely expressed disappointment with Romney’s position.

Clarke is not the only non-left gay leader to offer intemperate remarks about Romney this week.  Our pal JimmyLaSalvia, Executive Director and Co-Founder of GOProud, “With his speech at Falwell’s Liberty University, it is clear that Governor Romney’s message to Goldwater conservatives is: drop dead.”  Earlier today, Governor Romney delivered the commencement address there.

While we would rather the Republican nominee not have to make a courtesy call at Jerry Falwell U (as have all Republican candidates “in recent years“), Romney’s speech hardly amounted to a repudiation of Goldwater’s small government ideals.  Indeed, his talk barely touched upon government’s role in society, save to remind the graduating students that “Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution“. He focused instead on the importance of family and faith.

And he did say, what we already know him to believe, “Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman.” He offered nothing new on social issues — and didn’t attack gay people or advocate policies anathema to libertarians. (more…)

California deficit has soared to $16 billion, Gov. Jerry Brown says:

Gov. Jerry Brown announced on Saturday that the state’s deficit has ballooned to $16 billion, a huge increase over his $9.2-billion estimate in January.

The bigger deficit is a significant setback for California, which has struggled to turn the page on a devastating budget crisis. Brown, who announced the deficit on YouTube, is expected to outline his full budget proposal on Monday in Sacramento.

“This means we will have to go much further, and make cuts far greater, than I asked for at the beginning of the year,” Brown said in the video.

Good.  Jerry, you also might want to consider repealing the Dills Act. That could go a long way to cutting the costs of state government.

Gay marriage will not decide the 2012 election unless either major party candidate makes it the focus of his campaign. The one that does that will indeed decide the election — for his opponent.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, for the record supports gay marriage; the presumptive Republican opposes it.

Ed Morrissey contends that the manner in which the Democratic candidate came out for gay marriage could hurt him:

When a President goes out of his way to support a position that state after state opposes — same-sex marriage — it’s not going to have a positive result on polling.  It helps even less when (a) no one really believed Obama’s stated former position, and (b) the President has to get pushed into telling the truth, by his own admission, by a Vice President stumbling his way off the reservation.  No matter what the White House wants to claim as courage in this decision, it hardly looks like leadership.

It goes to Obama’s approach to the issue.  People do see it as a pandering political move.  This may excite a lot of left-of-center, but most were already favorably disposed to the Democrat anyway.  This decision will, to be sure, help in Obama’s fundraising — the likely reason for the sudden shift.

The bottom line is that, cultural issues in general (including gay marriage) “rank low”, as Morrissey reports, on voters’ lists of priorities.  If either candidate dwells on the issue, voters may wonder about his commitment to address the nation’s more pressing problems.

On Facebook, a college classmate living in Virginia offered this beautiful commentary on the results earlier this week in North Carolina and I reprint it with his permission:

Regarding North Carolina, my second thought is… I have been with Eric for nearly seventeen years. Whatever we have we got from ourselves, our families, and our friends. Whatever we still need we will get from those same sources. At this point, I honestly cannot imagine feeling any more married than I already feel. There is nothing in the current heterosexual reality that I feel inspired any longer to pursue.

What the hell am I talking about?  Well, you have to read my piece now up at The Daily Caller to find out.

Here’s a taste:

They [the gay leftists] will send money and vote for Obama in the same way they still fawn over Bill Clinton, who stabbed gays in the back during his time in office. The most important thing for gay ideologues in America is not earning the respect of their fellow Americans. It is being patted on the head and told they are loved by their Democratic president.

And I am called self-loathing?

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/11/barack-buchanan-and-the-gay-left/#ixzz1uakplzgs

Enjoy!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)