Despite my initial ambivalence about John McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign and come to Washington to help hammer out a bailout deal, I later concluded his “gambit had paid off” when his rival “capitulated and agreed to come to Washington for a summit organized by President Bush.”

Yet, the one thing which troubled me about McCain’s bold move was that he didn’t leave himself any wiggle room to participate in tonight’s debate.  I wish he had said something like this: “Should we make headway toward reaching a bipartisan compromise on a bailout bill, I’ll fly down to Oxford to debate Senator Obama.”

As a result, the MSM has portrayed his move as an “about face” (or so CNN was spinning it when I was doing my cardio about an hour ago.)  The normally even-handed (but left-leaning) Chris Cilliza concluded that McCain blinked.  Even a smart young conservative blogger has questioned McCain’s consistency.  Yet, if he does well tonight, it won’t matter much to those who watch the debate (while it will to the chattering classes).

Had McCain made the caveat I wish he had made, the media would not have been able to level the charge, particularly given the progress he has made in helping air House Republican views.

(more…)

Oftentimes when we who write about politics talk about the debates, we evaluate how well a candidate has done based upon our expectations of his performance.

To that end, campaigns tend to talk down their candidates debating skills while praising their opponent as well-versed in this arena.  This way, after the encounter, they can note how their guy exceeded expectations.

Well, pundits and bloggers may be judging the candidates by how well they meet such “expectations,” but most voters, particularly those still undecided, will evaluate them with their own eyes, what they see tonight.  And not what the pundits or campaigns expect of the candidates.

(I expect to have more to say about the debate, particularly addressing the question of McCain’s “blinking,” later in the day.)

UPDATE:  The Jewish Athena offers an assessment similar to my own:  ”Why is this all silly? No real voters care about this. They watch the debate and decide who did better.”  Read the whole thing.

Well, it seems at least one MSM organ is beginning to tell at least one of the stories other have been ignoring.  Yesterday, I wondered why they weren’t “[p]ointing out that Obama has run more negative ads than has John McCain and has misrepresented (i.e., lied about) John McCain’s record in many of them (as well as in his stump speeches).”

Well, today, the New York Times is running an article (on its front page of all places!), “Dubious Claims in Obama’s Ads Against McCain, Despite Vow of Truth.”  You see, the Democratic nominee promised he would respond to McCain’s allegedly deceptive ads, “with the truth. . . .  I’m not going to start making up lies about John McCain.”

I guess that claim was just another Obama fabrication.  Or maybe he switched positions as he has on so many other issues.

While conservative bloggers, pundits and radio talk show hosts have been taking note of Obama’s deceptions for weeks, today the Times finally reports the story.  Reporters Jim Rutenberg and Julie Bosmand find that, in radio and television ads, the Illinois Democrat has lied about McCain’s position on stem cell research, alternative energy, Social Security reform and immigration:

In all, Mr. Obama has released at least five commercials that have been criticized as misleading or untruthful against Mr. McCain’s positions in the past two weeks. Mr. Obama drew complaints from many of the independent fact-checking groups and editorial writers who just two weeks ago were criticizing Mr. McCain for producing a large share of this year’s untruthful spots (“Pants on Fire,” the fact-checking Web site PolitiFact.com wrote of Mr. Obama’s advertisement invoking Mr. Limbaugh; “False!” FactCheck.org said of his commercial on Social Security.)

Even Democrats are beginning to take notice and think this may hurt his campaign.

Chalk one up for the Old Gray Lady.

Yes folks, it is true what you’ve been hearing the past couple of days.  We here in the Queen City are without gasoline.  Of course it is affecting the normal folks like me who just want to fill up the tank.  But it is also impacting schools (they are closed — buses can’t fill up), and law enforcement (imagine calling 911 and being told “we can’t come — no fuel).

Drivers across the Charlotte region are waiting patiently — and, in some cases, impatiently — for a promised large shipment of gasoline expected to reach the Queen City by afternoon.

But the lines and traffic disruptions that dominated on Thursday continue this morning, with people in some cases having parked at gas stations overnight, waiting near the pumps with their tanks on empty. As was the case yesterday, arguments and scuffles are breaking out as frustrations boil over.

At about 8:30 this morning, a woman in line at a Citgo station in Charlotte’s Plaza Midwood neighborhood told others in line she was saving a place for her father, who was on his way with gas cans. The station, at Parkwood Avenue and The Plaza, was selling only premium gas. The wait was about 45 minutes.

When I flew back into Charlotte-Douglas Airport last night, I went quickly to hunt out three gas stations I know about near the airport.  All pumps were closed and police were guarding the businesses.

PatriotMom reported witnessing yesterday a foreign invader (Florida tags) butt in front of the whole gas line at a station in South Carolina and people getting quite angry.

I had planned to get some photos of gas lines (they are miles long) today.  People are lining up at a station at there mere rumor that a tanker truck is on its way with petrol.

This photo is courtesy of the Charlotte Observer — but I don’t live very far from this gas station in South Charlotte.

However, my own gas tank is so low that I don’t have the luxury yet of going out until I know for sure there is a guarantee I’ll get gas.   I will take my camera with me though in case I have to sit in a long line later this weekend.

Why is all this happening in Charlotte this week, you may ask?

The shortage is caused by the hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast this month, disrupting refinery production. Refineries had enough fuel in reserve to stock southeastern pumps for a week or so, but it ran out before the refineries could get back to full production.

The Charlotte area is served by the Colonial pipeline, which told Carolinas officials yesterday that they were delivering a large shipment of fuel to Spartanburg, S.C., and that an even larger shipment would arrive in Charlotte this afternoon. N.C. Gov. Mike Easley asked several oil companies to release additional supplies from Tennessee and Wilmington.

Remind me again why Democrats are opposed to drilling US oil reserves?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Apparently the presidential candidates’ agreement to swear off earmarks does not apply to the Democratic  vice presidential nominee.  

Delaware Senator Joe Biden still has not released the complete list of his earmarks from all thirty-six of his years in the U.S. Senate.  While we may not be able to track down every ounce of pork he pulled from the federal Treasury in past years, we do know how much he is requesting for the upcoming fiscal year.

According to USA Today:

A $630 billion spending bill nearing final approval in Congress includes $6.6 billion for thousands of lawmakers’ pet projects, including $51.5 million requested by Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden when both presidential candidates have sworn off seeking any money.

At a time when Congress is negotiating a several-hundred billion dollar proposal to bailout Wall Street, shouldn’t our elected officials be trying to remove extraneous spending in order to prevent the country from falling deeper into debt?

It’s unfortunate that individual Republicans, as well as Democrats, are still requesting tens, if not hundreds of millions in personal earmarks. At least our presidential nominee, John McCain, “who doesn’t request earmarks, has said that as president, he would veto any bill containing them.” His Democratic rival who has requested earmarks in the past, but not this year, has only “pledged to reduce them.”

Doesn’t sound like Obama plans on taking firm line against congressional profligacy.

For a news media obsessed about the progeny of the Republican vice presidential nominee, you’d think they’d do some sleuthing around in the affairs of the Democratic presidential nominee.

Yesterday, Powerline’s Scott Johnson linked Tony Blankiey’s excellent article on the media’s “collaboration with Barack Obama:”

The mainstream media ruthlessly and endlessly repeat any McCain gaffes while ignoring Obama gaffes. You have to go to weird little Web sites to see all the stammering and stuttering that Obama needs before getting out a sentence fragment or two. But all you see on the networks is an eventually clear sentence from Obama. You don’t see Obama’s ludicrous gaffe that Iran is a tiny country and no threat to us. Nor his 57 American states gaffe. Nor his forgetting, if he ever knew, that Russia has a veto in the U.N. Nor his whining and puerile “come on” when he is being challenged. This is the kind of editing one would expect from Goebbels’ disciples, not Cronkite’s.

If the MSM were truly interested in reporting the news, we might see the media doing the following:

• Citing efforts by John McCain & other Republicans to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in order to prevent a meltdown like the one taking place now on Wall Street.
• Asking why Democrats led by Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd thwarted those reform efforts.
• Reporting that Obama was one of the top recipient’s of Fannie Mae largesse.
• Pointing out that Obama has run more negative ads than has John McCain and has misrepresented (i.e., lied about) John McCain’s record in many of them (as well as in his stump speeches).
• Probing Barack Obama misrepresentations of his relationship with unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. [UPDATE:  Peter Kirsanow writes that the "attempt to cover-up the extent of Sen. Obama's ties to William Ayers should have journalists salivating. This is a big story that, so far, the press seems determined to avoid."]
• Investigating that relationship.
• Making as much ruckus ties between a PR firm with ties to Democratic Party and anti-Palin “hit” videos as they did about ties between Karl Rove and the Swift Boat Veterans in 2004.
• Covering the ethics problems of Democratic House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel.  (Okay, okay, I realize this isn’t related to Obama, bt it’s a big story which hurts the Democrats and which the MSM is all but ignoring.)

These stories would help Americans get a better picture of the Democratic nominee, so that we might better choose the right man to preside over this nation for the next four years.

Please me know if you think there are other stories which the media should be reporting and, if appropriate, I’ll add them to the list.

UPDATE: Other stories the media should cover about Obama-Biden:

• Requesting that Biden release more than one year of his earmark requests.
• Exploring why Obama hasn’t released “paperwork related to grants to distributed by then-state-legislator Obama (records from 1997 to 2000 aren’t available); his state legislative office records (which he says may have been thrown out); . . .  a specific list of law clients.”  (Jim Geraghty has more questions at that link.)
• Exposing his threats to TV stations which run ads critical of him.
• Asking him how his campaign succeeded in removing all the names from the Democratic primary ballot in his first bid for state Senate.
• Looking into his relationship with the radical group ACORN.
• Pointing out the former Fannie Mae chairman Jim Johnson still plays a “behind-the-scenes role” in the Obama campaign.

UP-UPDATE:

• Asking Obama if he did anything to prevent his campaign’s national finance chair from  allowing religious leaders to fete “world’s leading Islamic terrorist and Jew-hater” in a hotel she owns.

Andrew Sullivan called Obama’s acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention a “transformative event.”  Other Obama acolytes are similar gaga every time the Illinois Senator speaks before a large crowd.

And with good reason, the man is a gifted public speaker.  Yet, does that make him a good public servant?

This man enjoys in public success in large measure not because of things he had accomplished but because of words he has spoken.  His stirring speech four years ago to his party’s quadrennial confab moved millions, yet read that speech yourself and you’ll find an empty address, full of uplifting platitudes, devoid of substance.

In the past week, largely by exercising his rhetorical gifts and playing it cool on the financial crisis, Obama capitalized on John McCain’s campaign errors and reversed his Republican rival’s standing in the polls.  And yet, while the Arizona Senator flailed around a bit before offering a concrete statement of policy proposals, the Illinois Democrat offered no original proposal of his own.

He yielded to congressional Democrats, relying on them to come up with a solution to the mess on Wall Street.

With Obama’s inaction in mind, Carol Platt Liebau takes the Democrat to task for preferring words to action:

It’s shocking that someone who believes himself ready to lead the free world would so brazenly try to dodge any participation in what could be a defining moment in our history.  That’s not leadership — it’s cowardice.  It’s attempting to stay out of the way of any of the tough choices so that one is free to criticize them after others have stepped up.  You can fault John McCain for a lot of things, but lack of leadership and shrinking from the hard choices isn’t one of them.

(Via the Jewish Athena.)

Instead of making hard choices himself, Barack Obama just follows the lead of congressional Democrats. No wonder he has a near-perfect record of party loyalty.

This indicates that should he win this fall, he’ll let congressional Democrats set the agenda. With increased Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress expected , it looks like Nancy Reid and Harry Pelosi will be running the show in an Obama Administration.

Given the mess they’ve made of Congress, the prospect of them in charge is not pretty.

I have had a completely crappy week.  It seems as though the “macro” world and my “micro” world are in complete collapse.  I tend to personalize and worry more than I probably should about the state of the nation and the world around us.  But this week has been a collision of bad news all around it seems.

My first reaction to the news of the bailout last weekend was — “No way should responsible, honest and timely mortgage owners and taxpayers shoulder the burden of those institutions and Americans who bit off more than they could chew.”   Sure, tough love — but $700 BILLION dollars?!?

Over the past week, I have listened to all sides of the issue — and paid special attention to folks like Jack Welch and Larry Kudlow.  And I have to say that I can’t stray away from my initial default decision on this:  “NO WAY.”

I understand the issue, I understand the need to unfreeze the credit markets.  But what I think most pundits are missing is that I do not trust our government and business institutions any more.  Not one bit.  I don’t trust them to do anything anymore.  I certainly don’t trust them to responsibly handle $700 BILLION dollars.

Our national government cannot even control our own border, manage its own spending, and execute a worldwide war on Islamism without major mistakes.   For the most part, our public school systems are turning out politically-correct, self-absorbed kids that don’t know the first thing about our government and why the USA was born 200 years ago.

This is not confined to the Bush Administration.  Simply put, the US Federal Government has demonstrated sheer and continued incompetence from the Oval Office to Capitol Hill to every dumb-ass mediocre bureaucrat throughout every agency of the Federal Government for the past two decades.

I fear our nation and perhaps what we think of “normal” is on the verge of changing radically. 

For now, I am calling my US Senators and Congresswoman and urging them (for now) to VOTE NO on the bailout — without major changes to satisfy We, The People.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Recall how the national media swarmed to Anchorage after John McCain tapped Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.  They were looking into every nook and cranny of the Last Frontier to find anything this good woman had done in her sixteen years on the public stage–and even before.

They’ve made an issue of her lunch receipts and lost their own lunches when they found out that just after her first mayoral election in 1996, she inquired about removing books for the local public library.  Of course, they neglect to point out that she never banned a single book, even after the librarian who responded unfavorably to her inquiry stepped down.

So, why isn’t the national media showing as much interest in Barack Obama’s past?   They’re silent when an Obama fundraiser appears in court on charges of fraud.  And they don’t seem interested in his long-time association with an unrepentant terrorist.

Now, the Illinois attorney general is investigating whether an $100,000 earmark “then-state Sen. Barack Obama awarded in 2001 to a group headed by a onetime campaign voluntteer” was used improperly:

state records obtained by the [Chicago] Sun-Times show $65,000 of the grant money went to the wife of Kenny B. Smith, the Obama 2000 congressional campaign volunteer who heads the Chicago Better Housing Association, which was in charge of the project for the blighted South Side neighborhood.

(Via Instapundit.)

Now, there is no evidence right now that Obama, the politician responsible for the earmark, was responsible for his supporter’s spouse pocketing the money. But, there’s more to this story relevant to what kind of leader Obama is than the story of the Republican vice presidential nominee’s husband’s 22-year-old drunk driving conviction. And the national media took an interest in that.

A google news search of “investigation Obama botanical garden” (without quotation marks) yielded only 3 hits, one to the Chicogo Sun-Times article quoted above, the other to a post on the blog Hot Air and the third to a UPI piece.  (“Todd Palin drunk driving” yields 751.)

No other national media picked up on this. They sure did spill a lot of ink (and waste a lot of pixels) on Sarah Palin’s earmark history. Why not Barack’s?

If you’re in New York this afternoon, try to make it to mid-town Manhattan for a protest across the street from the Grand Hyatt Hotel, East 42nd St between Park and Lexington Avenues at 6 PM today.

There, a group of fifty prominent Jewish and Christian leaders, and public policy groups will protest a dinner meeting between Iranian president Ahmadinejad, anti-American U.N. officials and American religious leaders.

Yeah, you read that right, American religious leaders, including representatives of The American Friends Service Committee, Mennonite Central Committee, Quaker UN Office, Religions for Peace, and the World Council of Churches-UN Liaison Office will be breaking bread with a man who murders his own people.

He executes gay people too. I wonder if national gay organizations will question these groups for dining with the tyrant. I’d bet good money they’d be demanding apologies if these groups honored James Dobson in a similar manner.  I could find nothing on the web-sites of the Human Rights Campaign or the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF).  

Log Cabin Republicans, however, are co-sponsoring this protest.  At least one national gay group is standing up to the most anti-gay regime on the planet.

Not just that U.N. officials will also be there, honoring a man who threatens the destruction of U.N. member state, something which violates the organization’s charter:

Top U.N. officials are scrambling to figure out how to stop the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, from dining with and honoring Mr. Ahmadinejad, who has violated an assembly resolution against denying the Holocaust and broken one of the cardinal rules of the U.N. Charter by calling for the elimination of a member state, Israel.

Why do so many Western élites embrace the most hateful anti-American leaders?  Why do they assume that if we just sit down and talk to our enemies, we’ll make everything better? As if it’s our intransigence that’s the cause of our adversaries’ angry attitudes, brutal policies and despotic acts.

If you think it’s wrong to honor a tyrannical world leader and question the naivete of these religious leaders and are in the New York City area, make sure to join this protest today!

Over at CampaignSpot, Jim Geraghty noticed something that Bruce first drew to my attention two weeks ago: independent voters are breaking for John McCain.

In two successive posts yesterday, Geraghty observed that both the Wall Street Journal poll and the LA Times poll had McCain beating Obama among independents by margins of thirteen points and fifteen points respectively.

Yet, while McCain has slipped in the polls in the past two weeks, the Journal‘s Laura Meckler observes:

The survey finds that Sen. Obama has lost ground with the independent voters who will be crucial to the outcome of the election. They now favor Sen. McCain by 13 percentage points, up from eight points two weeks ago. In early September, just after both parties’ conventions, half of independent voters had a positive image of Sen. Obama; now it’s just 39%. Independents were also less likely to say they could identify with his background and values than they were in early September.

If Obama has lost ground among independents, how has he managed to gain ground among the general electorate? Has there been a stampede of voters away from the GOP and toward the Democrats? Or have the pollsters been oversampling Democrats?

UPDATE:  Just received an e-mail from a politically independent acquaintance who tends to vote Democratic, but leans toward McCain this year.

Yesterday, we had one candidate talk like a president. The other acted like a president.

In the morning, Barack Obama contacted his Republican rival’s campaign and proposed the two candidates issue a “joint statement outlining their shared principles and conditions for the Treasury proposal.”  John McCain responded by saying they should also both suspend their campaigns return to Washington and get something done.

The Democrat offered words.  The Republican proposed action.  Each candidate seems to have the same recurring theme to his career.

In his eloquent initial response to McCain’s proposal, Obama may have offered his best line of the campaign, ““Presidents are going to have to deal with more than one thing at a time,” but like most of his great achievements in life, it was pure rhetoric.  McCain said they would have to deal with this one most pressing issue.  Once again, he tackles a tough issue head-on.

While initially rebuffing McCain’s proposal to return to Washington to hammer out a Wall Street bailout, Obama finally capitulated and agreed to President Bush’s invitation to come to the White House with the Republican nominee and congressional leaders to work out a deal.

What seemed to some a reckless move at first turned out to be one of the boldest moves of the campaign. And it paid off.  Obama may deliver better speeches, but his rival is driving the action now.  

On Wednesday, John McCain looked like a leader.  Only he didn’t appear so at first, like a general who makes what appears to be a foolhardy move, but when the enemy takes the bait, proves to be a brilliant tactic.

Not only was this good politics for John McCain, but it was good politics for the nation.  Getting all major parties together means we should come up with the “least worst” solution to this mess.  No wonder John McCain is looking pretty presidential right now.

THURSDAY MORNING UPDATE:  Below the jump, I reference other bloggers and pundits who have weighed in on this matter: (more…)

When blogger Dirty Harry came over to my place so we could drive together to Simi Valley to see the Gipper’s Hellcats of the Navy on the big screen, I was still ambivalent about McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign.  I shared my post on the topic with him.

In the car, he read me his from the blackberry:  ”This could look like a a serious act of leadership on McCain’s part or the act of a candidate up against the wall hoping to shake things up in his favor.”  I remarked that despite our difference in styles, we reached similar conclusions.  (Read the whole thing; it’s short and to the point.)

As we drove to Simi Valley, we started discussing how independent voters would perceive it.  He read some poll on the internet which suggested it would play well.  We began to feel increasingly despondent. When a Democratic friend called, I told him (via blue tooth of course) I thought the move was “foolhardy” and would likely work to Obama’s advantage.

A few moments later, D.H. started reading Ed Morrissey’s post on how John McCain called Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s bluff by agreeing to come to Washington.  That Democrat had abruptly changed his tune when the Arizona Republican said he would do just that.  (Again, read the whole thing.)

Maybe this move was as shrewd as it had occasionally appeared to me this afternoon.  We became cautiously optimistic (note that accent on the adverb.)

Then, D.H.’s  wife, the Hot Little Number, called him to inform him that Obama had capitulated and agreed to come to Washington for a summit organized by President Bush.

McCain’s gambit had paid off.  That we knew by the Hot Little Number’s description of the talking heads at CNN:  they looked like kids who just had their bicycles taken away.  Even Mark Halperin agreed that only McCain could have pulled off such a thing.

We were exuberant.  From despondency to exuberance in the space of an hour.  How quick the landscape shifts in this election.  

I don’t think this will be the last time in 2008 we experience such campaign whiplash.

Earlier today, I mentioned both thoughts I had for potential posts as well as my mixed feelings of John McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign to focus on the Wall Street bailout.

As I said at the time, I have mixed feelings on McCain’s decision. On the one hand, I do think it shows resolve to confront head-on the most important issue facing the country at the present time. On the other hand, it does look like a political stunt.

Jonah Goldberg thinks politically is a “shrewd even wise” move: “It demonstrates McCain’s willingness to make politics and partisanship a secondary concern.”  Rich Miniter agrees:

It makes McCain look engaged in solving the number one issue on the minds of Americans, right now. It gives him a bigger bully pulpit to fight the Christmas tree of legislation that is winding its way through Congress now (even student and car loans have been added to the bailout).

Read the whole thing.  Rich also see some downsides to the move.

This follows, what I would argue, has been the worst week for the McCain campaign. Instead of responding to the Wall Street mess by pointing to the legislation he had proposed and/or promoted over the years to reform Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (which are at the core of this problem), he lashed out at Obama before finally finding his footing on Friday.

While McCain was the first (of the two candidates) to propose a solution, he allowed Obama to appear more level-headed. Not just that, Obama has no record of reform here, no attempts (like McCain) to work across the aisle to craft legislation to address then-looming crisis. Obama could warn and call for. McCain acted. 

Bill Kristol summed up the situation pretty well:

. . . it was a poor week for the McCain campaign (though the candidate did begin to right the ship with a sensible speech Friday morning in Green Bay). To be fair, the right response to the financial crisis wasn’t so clear, either substantively or politically. Obama played it smart by basically doing and saying nothing–and simply seized on McCain’s mistakes. McCain’s flailing allowed the Obama campaign, which had been off balance for almost a month, to regain its footing.

That said, McCain may well have seized the initiative again with his move, but it’s way too soon to tell.

It is amazing how Obama, by playing it “cool” has surged ahead in most (but not all) polls even by doing nothing. Perhaps, McCain’s suspesnsion will expose the emptiness of his opponent’s rhetoric. Or perhaps people will see this as the political equivalent of a “Hail Mary” pass.

If the media were covering this campaiagn fairly, we would know that John McCain did something to try to prevent this crisis from happening while Obama sat silent in the Senate.  And that the Republican nominee righted himself last Friday with his excellent speech in Green Bay.

Maybe this move was necessary to highlight his record.

Perhaps, I should entitle this, “Life Lesson #567 b-12″ or some such.

Just returned from the gym where I did an intense workout on the Stairmaster and feel much more balanced that I did when I woke up.  I guess the lesson in all this is that when your schedule allows, if you’re feeling off, strenuous physical activity helps.  

It’s amazing how much better I feel.  Amazing.  :-)

UPDATE . . . and the Reagan movie is yet to come.

Not in the greatest mood today and having trouble focusing. Maybe it’s that I’ve been blogging so much that the verbal side of my brain has slowed down. Kind of like how I used to feel after going on a really long run. I had to walk a bit before I could once again find my stride.

And I have a number of topics on my list of “potential blogs” and while there’s lots in the news worthy of conversation, notably McCain’s suspension of his campaign to focus on the bailout (about which I have mixed feelings). 

Maybe I’ll be better able to blog after I do my cardio — or after I see a Reagan movie with friends. The image of the Gipper may well erase the bad movie I saw last night.

As I was fixing dinner, I decided to pop in a DVD I got in some gift bag–Denied a gay movie which, well, seemed to lack a plot. And I just didn’t feel the chemistry between the two male leads.

I probably should have ejected the DVD and put it in my giveaway pile, but I have this habit of watching movies until the end, hoping to find something redeeming in them. Anyway, after watching this flick, I felt kind of empty, almost as if I have internalized the non-communicative relationship between two two ostensible lovers who often find it difficult to communicate verbally. As if that’s how all gay men relate to one another. They have sexual relationships without human connection.  

Even when they try to communicate at the end, they’re little more than actors reading their lines.

But, then as I was writing this post, I got a call from a close friend.  And it reminded me of the human connections in my world.  I immediately began to feel better.

Perhaps, the lesson of this is never watch bad movies alone.

Perhaps a liberal friend of mine is right and there’s nothing much to the story of his candidate’s longtime association with an unrepentant terrorist.  But, I keep asking him if there’s nothing to that story, why does Obama keep misrepresenting his relationship with William Ayers.

First, the Democratic presidential nominee describes him as just a guy in the neighborhood, contending in April he’s “not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.”  Earlier this month, when Bill O’Reilly asked him about his relationship with Ayers and his wife Bernadette Dohrn, Obama dismissed the question, saying that those two terrorists were among the “thousands of” people he knows.

But, did Obama work with “thousands of” people on certain projects over an extended period of time.  The archives on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge at the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago reveal that “Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team:”

The Daley documents show that Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC’s first year. He also served on the board’s governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the Collaborative.

Such a relationship is not one one has with thousands of people. Ayers was more to Obama than just a guy in the neighborhood. Obama launched his first bid for the U.S. Senate in Ayers’s home.

If there’s nothing to this relationship, why does Obama repeatedly misrepresent it?  And why doesn’t the media look into this? If John McCain repeatedly misrepresented his relationship to a controversial figure, don’t you think the media would look into it?

(more…)

When I read Michael Barone’s latest post on the opportunity McCain and Palin have in the Frozen North, that tier of states from Wisconsin to Washington State (and Alaska), one passage (related to another northern state) struck me as it reminded me of one my crazy theories about this election.  First, the passage:

. . .there’s a tantalizing poll in another state that could be called part of the Frozen North: Maine. Scott Rasmussen has Obama up by only 4 percent, compared with 14 percent and 8 percent in his August and July polls there. But Research 2000, polling in September has Obama leading by 14 percent, exactly the same number as the average of seven preconvention polls from April through August.

And now the theory. As you may know, two states, Maine and Nebraska, allocate their electoral votes differently from most states. In these two states, each candidate gets one elector for each congressional district he wins, two for winning the state.

Maine, as Barone writes in his Almanac of American Politics, is “contrary-minded.” It handed Ross Perot his largest percentage of the vote in both 1992 and 1996. In ’92, Perot actually edged out the incumbent president of the United States (who maintained a vacation home in the state) by just over 300 votes.

Perot even won three counties, Piscataquis, Somerset and Waldo. All three counties are in the state’s Second Congressional District. George W. Bush lost the district by fewer than 10,000 votes in 2000 and by about 20,000 four years later.

Given the contrary-nature of the state and the appeal of Sarah Palin to rural voters in the Frozen North, it’s entirely possible the McCain-Palin ticket could carry Maine’s Second District. (And heck, the state seems to like Republican women, electing two of them to the U.S. Senate.)  The Republicans may not win the state, but they will win one electoral vote which could help in a tight race.

It just might be a good idea to dispatch Sarah Palin to Bangor.

Oh, and they do have moose in Maine, with moose-hunting permitted this week and from October 13 through 18.

Please note I had written this piece before John has posted his, but had been holding it.

When I first heard from a gay reader that a gay blogger had posted that a gay radio host had “outing” John McCain’s Senate Chief of Staff, I wondered where the story was.  The blogger went out great lengths to explain to us that McCain is anti-gay because, well, he didn’t support the legislation gay activists want politicians to support to demonstrate their pro-gay bona fides.

So, of course, this man, in the words of the radio host, has to be engaged in “hypocrisy.”  Give me a break.

Hypocrisy?  Huh?  How?  Oh yeah, because Republicans are by definition, anti-gay.

Well, anyway, we already know how John McCain treats friends and colleagues when they come out to him as gay.  It doesn’t matter to him.  He treats them he same as he did the day before he learned about their sexuality.  If he didn’t bother him when he found out Jim Kolbe or Neil Giuliano was gay, it wasn’t going to bother him to learn his Chief of Staff was gay.  And, heck, maybe he already knew.  So what?

Given McCain’s professed tolerance for gay friends and colleague’s, his campaign’s contacts with Log Cabin and gay bloggers, this “outing” in a total non-story.  No wonder the mainstream media hasn’t picked it up.  

And if they did, it would only redound to the benefit of John McCain, providing further evidence of his absence of anti-gay animus.

The Republican presidential nominee treats gay people as individuals.  That’s been a matter of public record at least since 2000.  I don’t know why some activists think it’s some big scoop now to report that he trusts a gay man to run his Senate office.  Maybe it’s their belief that this somehow will matter to Republican voters.  Or maybe their own anti-Republican animus.  Why else would they think people would care?

Mark Buse is assuredly a very competent administrator.   And that’s what matters to John McCain.  

End of story.

Note: Just a reminder that all opinions expressed in posts authored by me at Gay Patriot and my own blog are mine alone. Bruce and Dan are free to give their own comments on the following story as they see fit. Or not.

I usually ignore taunts directed my way by liberals bloggers, especially ones I’ve never even heard of before like NGblog. This particular blogger is practically giddy about the “outing” of Mark Buse, Senate chief of staff to Republican presidential nominee John McCain. However, since I noticed the link and have a little time tonight, why not?

My reaction in a nutshell: meh.

Buse doesn’t seem to me to have been closeted, but as far as I’m aware his sexual orientation was known by family, friends and co-workers. Most importantly, in this specific instance, to his boss: Senator McCain, who appears to not have cared at all. The only ‘story’ here is once again unhinged liberal activists are engaging in gutter politics, a regular practice for them. Did they really think I needed yet another example of why the Democrats and their rabid partisans need to be kept out of the White House? Naaaah. Thanks, but such was completely unnecessary. Oh and the Religious Right folks we both sharply criticize are having a bout of Palinmania at the moment, so sorry guys but I doubt this will even register a blip on their radar. Nice try though.

Contrary to the accusations of NG and other lib bloggers, McCain is hardly “anti-gay” or “homophobic”. He is indeed a man from a different era in terms of gay rights, which readers at both blogs know I have had no problems harshly disagreeing with. John McCain isn’t perfect by any means but something he seems to have, which these folks clearly lack, is personal integrity and character. Mr. Buse’s “ex”, who helped “out” him, would seem to be missing such attributes as well, which is probably why he is his “ex”. If McCain harbored any animus towards homosexuals I seriously doubt Buse would have been employed by him for so long. I also doubt that McCain would have taken such a public stand in support of former Congressman Jim Kolbe or Neil Giuliano, the former mayor of Tempe, Arizona, who currently heads GLAAD.

So my reaction again is simply, meh. These folks are not worth further attention. I regret that Mr. Buse has to endure this nonsense, but he is a big boy and can take care of himself in the political world. Let them have a jolly good time thinking that they’ve ‘exposed’ McCain’s ‘hypocrisy’ while their antics will repulse most voters. This also does nothing to answer our main concern with Obama: his complete lack of experience and inability to effectively act as Commander-in-Chief. So have ‘fun’ for now boys and we’ll see you at the polls in November!

– John (Average Gay Joe)

[UPDATE FROM BRUCE (GayPatriot):  I couldn't agree with John more.  Who cares.  My only additional thought to add is this:  "Why do Liberals hate gays so much that they constantly trash our community?"   Very self-loathing if you ask me.]