I very rarely find myself agreeing with Andrew Sullivan, but on this post of his from yesterday I have little choice (hyperbole excluded):

Here’s the latest ad from the Christianist right opposing Washington state’s domestic partnership law. It’s a useful reminder that it doesn’t matter what equality is called – civil unions, domestic partnerships, civil partnerships, or civil marriage – the GOP believes in no rights for gay couples whatsoever. And in this ad, the argument is explicitly religious and has no secular case to make whatever. It also implies that gays are child-molesters.

He’s still an idiot for the “Christianist” crack and claiming that the whole GOP rejects “civil unions, domestic partnerships, civil partnerships, or civil marriage”. I didn’t get his complaint about this ad supposedly implying gays are child molesters. It had enough to object to without raising this.

Whether Sullivan wishes to acknowledge it or not quite a number of Republicans support civil unions or domestic partnerships, though it is fair to say that a majority do not agree with same-sex marriage. Nevertheless, he is correct about one wing of the GOP. They do not support any of these arrangements. Religion should have no role whatsoever with Washington State’s domestic partnerships.

I can only imagine the loud complaints from this cadre of the self-righteous when other religious groups, like say Muslims, start running ads they disagree with that blatantly appeal for votes because of what is taught in the Qur’an.

– John (Average Gay Joe)

(H/t: Drudge) I don’t know how to imbed video from Politico.com, so I’ll just provide the creepy link here of a dozen gradeschool kids singing an ode to Chairman (and I mean that) Obama. No, it’s not the creepy New Jersey one that made the rounds last week.

This one is much more creepy because it’s being performed not in an obscure gradeschool. This, as James Earl Jones would say, is CNN!

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

UPDATE: Duh. Thanks, to American Elephant (who hopefully didn’t have as mind-numbing of a day as I did). He suggested I just imbed the YouTube video. Here you go:

The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.

Nancy Pelosi, November 7, 2008

Democrats defeat GOP attempt to remove Rangel.

Glenn Reynolds, Today.

RELATED: GALLUP: Approval of Congress Falls to 21%.

A short summary of Mr. Rangel’s personal culture of corruption.  Defending Rangel, Rep Maxine Waters says “Many members” of Congress suffer from the same disclosure issues as Rangel.  Guess that culture is not just personal to Mr. Rangel.

Perhaps the greatest difficulty for conservatives during the better part of the George W. Bush era was that we had a president who was nominally a conservative, but, save for Social Security, he showed little enthusiasm for genuine conservative reforms.  Re-elected in 2004 with increased Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, Bush had a winning hand, but let the Democrats bluff him.  And, well, it seems he didn’t much have the appetite for reform.

As health insurance premiums rose faster than inflation, Republicans were oblivious to popular cries to address health care.  Even the party’s nominee in the 2008 election, while putting together a package embodying sensible conservative ideas for reform, didn’t promote his proposal in his campaign — and let his opponent misrepresent that plan.  To the Democrat’s credit, he recognized reform as a winning issue, so made it a centerpiece of his campaign.  (Of course, he obscured the cost of his proposal and did not stress the details which have now made his current plan so unpopular.)

It is to the great discredit of the GOP that when they had majorities in Congress, they did not move any of the major conservative ideas for health care reform.  Had they done so, it would have shown a commitment both to reform and to free market principles.  While promoting such a proposal may not have kept Congress in Republican hands, it would certainly show that the GOP was not devoid of new ideas.

Now, that we’re out of power, Republicans should redouble our efforts to show that ours is indeed a reform party.

Jennifer Rubin points to a one-page summary that  Jeffrey Anderson has prepared, culling the best of the conservative ideas for health-care reform and putting them on a single page.  It behooves Republican candidates and leaders to familiarize themselves with these proposals and promote them in public fora. (more…)

As I was preparing part of my dinner last night, I switched on FoxNews and heard Sean Hannity interviewing a familiar voice.  Unable immediately to put a face (or name) to that voice, I looked up at the TV and was surprised to see left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore.  What impressed man was the respect the conservative talk show host extended to the socialist propagandist.

I wondered if Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann had ever shown such courtesy to a similarly prominent conservative like Rush Limbaugh,  Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin.

Oh, wait a second, I don’t think those MSNBC hosts ever invited such a guest onto their show, much less treated him in a civil manner.  And some people accuse FoxNews of only offering the conservative point of view!

Oh, and one more thing, despite all the publicity Moore’s latest movie has been getting, it doesn’t seem to be doing very well at the box office.

*But then a teeter totter with Michael Moore on on end and Michelle Malkin on the other is more balanced than MSNBC.

I didn’t paid much heed to Jack Cashill’s post last fall where he finds “evidence” making Bill Ayers “a much more likely candidate than [Barack] Obama to have written the best parts of” the latter’s best-selling memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.  The notion just seemed too far-fetched.

I did read the piece, but thought it far too speculative to rely upon it as proving that Ayers ghostwrote the President’s memoir.  I return to it now, only because information has come forward suggesting that that radical may have helped the President with his book.  Cashill has since, in the word of Ronald Radosh who wrote about this last month, “played literary detective,” uncovering

. . . strange similarities in the metaphors used in both Ayers’ Fugitive Days and in Obama’s Dreams. One of them [Cashill's contributors] found 759 striking similarities. Cashill found one of his contributor’s analysis to be “systematic, comprehensive, and utterly, totally, damning.” You can read his article and judge for yourself.

And now, Cashill picked up the new bestseller about Obama and his wife, Christopher Andersen’s Barack and Michelle:Portrait of an American Marriage. What he found simply threw him for a loop because, I suspect, it was the last thing Cashill expected to find. Andersen writes in his book that after Obama finally got a new contract to write a book, Michelle Obama suggested that her husband get advice “from his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.”

Chancing upon the unrepentant terrorist while passing through Washington, DC’s Reagan National Airport on Monday, blogress Anne Leary heard him confirm that suggestion:

Then, unprompted he said–I wrote Dreams From My Father. I said, oh, so you admit it. He said–Michelle asked me to.

Patterico asks the question that came to my mind when first I read the story:  ”Sarcasm?”   (more…)

According to the Plum Line’s Eric Sargent, the House Speaker has ripped General “McChrystal For Publicly Airing His Views On Afghanistan”

Towards the end of an interview with Charlie Rose that ran late last night, Pelosi took a surprisingly hard shot at General Stanley McChrystal for publicly airing his views on Afghanistan, and called on him to stop.

“Let me say this about about General McChrystal, with all due respect,” Pelosi said, according to a transcript sent my way by a Pelosi aide. “His recommendations to the president should go up the line of command. They shouldn’t be in press conferences.”

McChrystal warned in a speech last week that pursuing a narrower mission in Afghanistan than the one he outlined in a recent assessment envisioning a broad counterinsurgency strategy would be “shortsighted.”

Wonder what Mrs. Pelosi had to say about Gen. Eric K. Shinseki who, back in 2003, faulted the Bush Administration for not sending more troops to Iraq.  His behavior must not have offended the President too much who tapped him as his Secretary Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

RELATED (from Glenn Reynolds): “THE MANTRA USED TO BE ‘LISTEN TO THE GENERALS!‘ Now it’s how dare those generals speak!“