I have to learn to stop getting outraged at media bias.  While doing cardio at the gym today, pretty intensely so I couldn’t follow the close-captioning as closely as I would have liked, I saw a CNN segment on unrepentant terrorist William Ayers whom the “news” network identified as a ’60s radical.  As if most ’60s radicals tried to blow up federal buildings, including the Pentagon and regretted only that they didn’t set off enough bombs.

It wasn’t just that CNN called Ayers a mere radical, it was also that underneath that label, they said Palin tried to tie him to Obama.  As if he were just a guy in the president-elect’s neighborhood and not someone with whom Obama associated on a regular basis in the 1990s and quite possibly until he began service in the United States Senate.

Yes, Sarah Palin did tried to tie Ayers to Obama.  The two men did indeed have an ongoing relationship, a relationship which that very network acknowledged last month.  But, by using the line about the then-GOP vice-presidential nominee’s attempts to raise the issue, CNN made it appear a mere campaign tactic rather than a real relationship.

The more I watch CNN, the more it seems that that network is not trying to cover the president-elect, but instead cover for him.

No record voter turnout, folks.  Move along, nothing to see, no history made here.

Simple explanation:  It was disenchanted Republicans who, by staying home or not voting at the top of the ticket, handed the Presidency to Barack Obama. (h/t – Instapundit)

Turnout in last week’s election increased from four years ago but fell far short of some forecasts largely because many Republican voters either stayed home or left blank the presidential section of their ballots.

In states won by President-elect Barack Obama, turnout was more than five percentage points higher than in states won by Republican John McCain, according to a Globe analysis of data compiled by a pair of researchers who study voting patterns in US elections.

Both Curtis Gans, director of American University’s Center for the Study of the American Electorate, and Michael McDonald, a professor at George Mason University, have conducted state-by-state reviews of unofficial returns, which are still being tabulated in many states. Each had predicted significantly higher turnout than materialized on Election Day.

“I looked at the significant increase in registration and the long lines at the early-voting polling places,” said Gans, who has been studying turnout rates for 36 years. “It turned out the intensity was one-sided; it was on the Democrats’ side.”

Hey, Sarah Palin tried her best to generate Republican excitement — and she did.  But even I had a hard time marking a check next to John McCain on my ballot.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Well, it appears the equivalent is true.  William Ayers has admitted (in a dog-bites-man story) that he is in fact a “family friend” of the Obamas.

Ayers defended his bomb-throwing past and repeated a statement that has infuriated his critics: “I don’t think we did enough.”

The college professor also argued to “Good Morning America’s” Chris Cuomo today that the bombing campaign by the Weather Underground, the group he helped found, was not terrorism.

The Weather Underground bombed the Capitol, the Pentagon and the New York City Police Department in protest of the Vietnam War.

“It’s not terrorism because it doesn’t target people, to kill or injure,” Ayers said.

Uh…. yeah.

Despite Obama’s attempt to portray their relationship as a distant one, Ayers, in a new afterward to his book “Fugitive Days,” describes Obama as a “neighbor and family friend.”

On “GMA,” Ayers again downplayed any close ties to Obama despite the reference to”family friend.”

“I’m talking there about the fact that I became an issue, unwillingly and unwittingly,” he said. “It was a profoundly dishonest narrative. … I’m describing there how the blogosphere characterized the relationship.”

“I would say, really, that we knew each other in a professional way on the same level of, say, thousands of other people,” he said.

He added, echoing a phrase that Obama used to describe Ayers, “I am a guy around the neighborhood.”

Despite admitting they are “family friends”, Ayers has the Obama Campaign’s talking points about their relationship down to a tee.

Unbelieveable.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

While all too many gay activists have busied themselves throwing a temper tantrum expressing their outrage at last week’s California vote in favor of Proposition 8, a few gay writers and leaders have exercised restraint, counseling caution and developing a new strategy to promote state recognition of same-sex marriage.

I believe the broader strategy should be (to do what I have been counseling for as long as I’ve been blogging about gay marriage) to make an affirmative case for extending state recognition of marriage to monogamous same-sex couples.

On the particular issue of the recently (& popularly) amended California constitution, we should not move to explicitly overturn its provision codifying the traditional definition of marriage with one expanding that definition.  Instead, we should give the elected legislature the authority to determine the qualifications for marriage.

I e-mailed my friend Dale Carpenter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, for help with the language.  He cited the language of he Hawai’i marriage amendment passed in 1998: “The legislature shall have the power to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples.”  His preference would be to craft the provision as follows, “The legislature shall have the power to decide whether to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples.”  (Emphasis added to highlight the differences.)

Given how the California legislature has twice voted to recognize same-sex marriage, this would mean that once the provision were enacted, all the legislature would need do would be to vote again on the issue.  This would confer legitimacy on the legislation.  Elected officials, answerable to the citizens, would take responsibility for the new law.

Not just that.  It would easier for many people opposed to the notion of same-sex marriage to vote for a constitutional provision which itself did not explicitly sanction same-sex marriage.

Last night, I attended a forum at UCLA, “Election 2008: A New Administration, the LGBT Vote, & Proposition 8″ sponsored by UCLA’s Williams Institute and the Center for American Progress.  The only thing it accomplished was to provide further insight into the mind of gay left activists.  If I hadn’t run into a couple friends and acquaintances, it would have been a wasted evening.

Yes, one panelist, Hunter College Political Science Professor Kenneth Sherrill, did offer some an interesting breakdown of the electorate in last night’s presidential contest.  And some panelists did offer interesting insights on the incoming Obama Administration.  But, they didn’t really consider why Proposition 8 passed.  Well, they did demonize the “Yes” campaign.  And someone (maybe more than one someone) wondered why all these people currently protesting in the streets hadn’t volunteered for the campaign to defeat the initiative.

Panelists offered much praise for one of their own, Equality California’s Geoff Kors, yet no one thought to question his failed strategy.  Most offensive of all was that it was impossible for those not on the panels to ask tough questions.  We had to write our queries down on cards and pass them up.  The moderator decided which to pose to the panelists.

I sat next to a friend, a practicing psychiatrist, whom I chanced upon at the event.  While his politics are different from mine, he shared my frustration about the discussion.  He wrote out the question he would have asked.  And with his permission, I reprint it:

Where is the soul-searching over our failure?

In medicine, we have a tradition of ruthless examination of how our own practices contributed to treatment failure. Please tell us how you individually and collectively have been ruthless in your examination of our and your own contributions to defeat Prop 8.

No one posed this question or a similar question to Kors, the only panelist who represented the team fighting 8.  So, he didn’t let us know if he or any of his fellows on the “No on 8″ campaign–had even engaged in such an examination to figure out what they had done wrong.

I have a theory on why they failed. I believe they did not show respect for those who supported 8 not out of bigotry but because of their understanding of sexual difference as a defining aspect of marriage. Had they worked on a way to reach people holding such views, they might have seen a different result last Tuesday.

I had drawn up a question (again not posed) based upon that theory:

With a leadership which well represents its left-wing donor base, how do gay groups reach out to social moderates and conservatives whom we most need to move?

In short, the gay groups need to reach out to people who are least like themselves. They need to communicate with people who speak a different (cultural) language than they do.

Alas, that the panelists could not consider these questions, the excellent question of my liberal friend and my own modest contribution. Yet, they are questions gay community “leaders” need address to better understand their recent failures and to better prepare a strategy to reach those people they’ll need to persuade in future campaigns.