It is an article of faith among the gay left that Republicans hate gay people.  A paucity of evidence notwithstanding act as if animosity toward homosexuals is a defining principle of the GOP.  Yet, an article in the New York Times indicates that some Republicans are actually the driving financial force behind the effort to achieve state recognition of marriage the right way in the Empire State — through the elected legislature:

As gay rights advocates intensify their campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, the bulk of their money is coming from an unexpected source: a group of conservative financiers and wealthy donors to the Republican Party, most of whom are known for bankrolling right-leaning candidates and causes.

heir behind-the-scenes financial support — about $1 million in donations, delivered in recent weeks to a new coalition of gay rights organizations — could alter the political calculus of Albany lawmakers, especially the Republican state senators in whose hands the fate of gay marriage rests.

Seems a lot of my readers have been alerting me to this article, including one who sent me a link to this Stephen H. Miller post on the Times piece.

Do hope this article will cause some on the gay left to reconsider their prejudice.  Yet, for some reason, I don’t think this bit of news will alter some people’s hardened views.

Despite what some on the left says, the question is not, as Newsweek asked in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, why do they hate us, but why do they hate.  Commenting on a massacre in Pakistan, Barry Rubin offers this telling insight:

If the United States had not killed bin Ladin on that particular day, in that place, or in that way, the Charsadda attack would have happened anyway. Thus, terrorists use specific events as excuses to do what they would have done anyway.

Via Instapundit.  Read the whole thing.

SOMEWHAT RELATED:  In the vein of the Newsweek piece linked above, Dennis Prager wonders about a man who uses the occasion of the “killing of his sister’s murderer to badmouth America and hold it ultimately responsible for her death“:

Asking what America did to elicit the hatred of Muslim terrorists is morally equivalent to asking what Jews did to arouse Nazi hatred, what blacks did to cause whites to lynch them, what Ukrainians did to arouse Stalin’s hatred, or what Tibetans did to incite China’s harshly repressive treatment of them.

Earlier this week after President Obama, in his El Paso speech, said that the border fence was “basically complete,” Jim Hoft headlined his post on the matter, “You Lie!”  Now, by the standards the left used to just the in incumbent’s predecessor, the president’s statement about the border fence was clearly dishonest.

The real question is whether or not the president knew at the time he was making the statement that it was false.  In the Bush era, his critics never showed that the Republican was consciously coloring the facts when he spoke about Saddam’s WMDs.  Joe Wilson certainly tried, but it turns out the one-time John Kerry aide was himself playing fast and loose with the facts.

Yet, when a Democrat plays fast and loose with the facts, it doesn’t seem to raise any red flags to the majority of the mainstream media — as it would when it just appears a Republican has done it.  Even the context of the two president’s alleged dishonesty is different.  Bush didn’t make the claims about Saddam’s WMDs to advance his own political fortunes, but to secure the nation against a threat which, as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice noted, appeared more worrisome in the heady months after the attacks of 9/11.

When the incumbent president twists the facts, however, he does so to advance his own political fortunes by discrediting and even demonizing his political adversaries.  As Charles Krauthammer put it:

The El Paso speech is notable not for breaking any new ground on immigration but for perfectly illustrating Obama’s political style: the professorial, almost therapeutic, invitation to civil discourse, wrapped around the basest of rhetorical devices — charges of malice compounded with accusations of bad faith. “They’ll never be satisfied,” said Obama about border control. “And I understand that. That’s politics.”

How understanding. The other side plays “politics,” Obama acts in the public interest. Their eyes are on poll numbers, political power, the next election; Obama’s rest fixedly on the little children. (more…)

Here I am once again in the City by the Bay, a jurisdiction with perhaps the most beautiful coastal setting of any major American metropolis and I do occasional double-takes, wondering if this or that locale looked familiar because I had once been there — or perhaps because I had seen it a movie. It does seem this city serves as the setting for many a film, particularly the darker ones.

So, this got me wondering, what, in your view, is the best film set in San Francisco?

Films which come to mind include The Maltese Falcon, What’s Up, Doc? and Foul Play.  To be sure, the last two hardly count as dark.

The president’s El Paso speech on immigration may have been, as Bryan Preston put it, “a flop,” but that blogger did note the real reason the Democrat traveled to the Lone Star State:  ”He is pushing this issue now purely for politics. He is playing Hispanic voters for suckers while the national economy melts down, the way Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned.”

Obama is making a major push for Latino voters.  They may well be the key to the 2012 election.  He hosted a group of Latino celebrities earlier this month at the White House, trying to shore up his support in a group with whom he has lost the level of enthusiasm he enjoyed in 2008:

Mr. Obama won 67% of Latino voters in 2008, compared with 31% for John McCain. Within the past year, however, Mr. Obama’s approval ratings among Latinos have slumped. In March, 54% of voter-aged Latinos polled said they approved of Mr. Obama’s job performance, down from 59% in February and far below the 82% peak in May 2009, according to a Gallup poll.

That 54% nearly perfectly matches John Kerry’s share (53%) of the Latino vote in 2004.  And given how Obama is slipping among non-Hispanic white voters, he’ll need to do better than that to maintain his majority in 2012.   The president is really in trouble if there is the same gap between his reelect number among Latinos and their approval of his performance as there is between the same numbers among all Americans.

Republicans also need do better among Hispanics as the husband of the woman born as Columba Garnica Gallo observes: (more…)

In a poll “conducted after the death of Osama bin Laden“, Gallup found that

Given a choice between Barack Obama and an unnamed Republican, 43% of registered voters say they are more likely to vote for Obama and 40% are more likely to vote for the Republican. This is essentially unchanged from April and February, when voters’ preferences were evenly split.”

“Imagine,” Jennifer Rubin quips, linking the poll, “if a really exciting Republican decided to run.”

What is interesting is that while only 43% would vote to reelect a man who won the White House with just shy of 53% of the popular vote,

Gallup Daily tracking documented a six-point increase in Obama’s overall job approval rating in three-day rolling averages before and after the May 1 announcement, from 46% to 52%. His approval rating has since stayed above 50%.

So, we see a near 10-point gap between his job approval and his re-elect number.  Perhaps the higher approval reflects Americans expressing their momentary satisfaction with the president’s recent accomplishment.   Or it may well indicate something else that for whatever reason, people wish to tell the pollster they approve of the president, but don’t want to see him reelected.

In commenting on Josh Green’s Atlantic piece on Sarah Palin, Jennifer Rubin takes slight issue with said reporter’s conclusion that the former Alaska governor is a tragic figure and elucidates a pitfall of politics — and of blogging as well:

One can’t but feel that Palin was not only snared in the web of resentment but that it determined a particular course for her post-2008 career. She embarked on a particular path, one incompatible with being a serious force on conservative policy and a credible presidential contender. . . .

But one can’t really call it a “tragedy” as Green does. She’s attained fame and fortune and she has as loyal a following as any popular figure. But she made a choice — to bear grudges, to forgo serious policy study, to reject the advice of all but a handful of advisers. It is a shame for those who saw a star-quality and enviable political talent. But tragedy? No. She simply chose a different path.

“Snared in the web of resentment”:  a good way to describe what sometimes happen to bloggers who end up responding to hate comments where the critic makes little effort to understand our arguments, even less to acknowledge the sincerity of our expression.  But, alas, they’re not interested in our opinions, but see us instead as targets for their own animus.

Just as most Palin critics are little interested in her record.  Josh Green is.  Outlining her successes as governor and asking a question which almost perfectly parallels an exchange I had with a liberal Alaska woman last summer*, he asks:

WHAT HAPPENED TO Sarah Palin? How did someone who so effectively dealt with the two great issues vexing Alaska fall from grace so quickly? Anyone looking back at her record can’t help but wonder: How did a popular, reformist governor beloved by Democrats come to embody right-wing resentment?

I do think he’s a little harsh here, but he is onto something.  Sarah Palin doesn’t so much embody right-wing resentment as she taps into it, but she also exudes conservative enthusiasm.  She can still articulate that vision of the Gipper, painting a picture of that shining city on a hill and expressing the confidence that we can still find our way toward that idyllic place.  But, in promoting that visions, she’s become more of a cheerleader than a policy leader.   (more…)

It often does seem that the president believed that merely by not being George W. Bush and delivering a good speech, he could make the world love America, end war and solve our economic problems all in time so he can get off early and play an extra round of golf.  Michael Ledeen sums up this philosophy:

He believes in his own charisma (“I have a special gift,” he has said), and so he expects all the right people — from his domestic “base” to the media, and to the “progressive intellectuals” throughout the world — to accept whatever he comes to say.

Because it’s all about saying, not doing. Like all legislators, he’s a believer in the magic of words, in the power of public oratory. That’s what they do for a living, after all. They don’t run anything, they don’t make tough decisions, they give speeches. And if a speech turns out to have been wrong, well, they give another speech.

Ledeen wrote that on May 1.  Yesterday, James Taranto informed us that

Having ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, President Obama plans to follow up by . . . giving a speech. All we can say is it’s about time. America waited 9½ years to be rid of bin Laden, and it’s been practically hours since we last heard from the World’s Greatest Orator.

Alas, Taranto informs us that the Democrat doesn’t always follow up on his seminal addresses:

In June 2009 he launched his earlier “outreach” effort with the much-hyped Cairo speech. Just over a week later, Iranians took to the streets to protest a stolen election–and Obama could hardly be troubled to say anything.

If Obama speeches could solve the world’s problems, there would be no more wars, the oceans would have stopped rising, the economy would be humming, a net spending cut would be delivered and the federal budget on its way to perfect balance.

Over at Say Anything, Rob Port posts a telling exchange with New York Senator Chuck Schumer:

He does sound a lot like California Democrats eager to keep our taxes high even as the Golden State hemorrhages jobs.

Port finds this to be an example of the New York Democrat’s hypocrisy:

On Schumer’s own website he touts the “Making Work Pay” tax relief which was part of President Obama’s “stimulus” spending spree. We can argue about whether or not that was actual tax relief or just a one-time check from the government, but the principle remains.

Democrats, when it came to the “Making Work Pay” policy, espoused the idea that temporarily lowering tax burdens would help individuals and businesses. If that’s true, then permanently lowering those tax burdens should be even better, no?

We should also note Schumer’s abundant experience creating jobs; he has spent his entire career in public office.  Elected to the New York Assembly the same year he graduated from Harvard Law School, the career politician has never worked in the private sector.

. . . . it would proof of his stupidity, but since Barack Obama says it, it’s only a human being making an the type of verbal blunder we all make:

Apparently It Wasn’t Over When the Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor
“Internationally, we’ve gone through a Teutonic shift in the Middle East that could have enormous ramifications for years to come.”–President Obama, May 10, quoted by USA Today, which reports the White House says he meant “tectonic.”

With the exception of an AP poll heavily skewed toward the Democrats, few polls have showed the president with a significant bounce for the greatest accomplishment of his term, the dispatch of Osama bin Laden.  While Barbara Walters and Joy Behar may see this operation as heralding Obama’s reelection, most sober-minded pundits understand that his task will not be so easy.

Perhaps, the president would have enjoyed a bigger bounce if the war on terror topped the items on our agenda.  As Ace, in his own inimitable way, puts it:

It’s also a fact of life that terrorism and foreign policy are not tip-top issues for most voters anymore, not like they were from 2001-2005. That’s how Democrats got into office in the first place– by downplaying such issues, and the public agreeing that they should be downplayed. The public isn’t going to suddenly make these issues of 2001-2005 potency just because Captain Bullshit reverses his previous position and now declares we should vote exclusively on terrorism.

“The main event,” Ace adds, “is the economy, and that’s not going to change.”  Read the whole thing.  Looking at the economic numbers, Peter Wehner contends that Obama will be “The Easiest Incumbent to Beat since 1980“:

We are now in the fifth month of Barack Obama’s third year in office. Unemployment is at 9.0 percent. We’re about 7 million jobs short of where things stood when Obama took office. Economic growth in the first quarter was 1.8 percent. Housing prices have fallen for 57 consecutive months. Only one in three Americans approve of the way Obama is handling the economy, the lowest point since he took office, and nearly eight in 10 American are less optimistic about the economy than they were a few months ago.

Indeed, even the most recent NBC/WSJ poll which also skews Democratic shows that “Only 37 percent approve of the president’s handling of the economy, while 58 percent disapprove.“

In an AP poll in which, as Jim Geraghty notes, “46 percent identify as Democrat or leaning Democrat, 29 percent identify as Republican or leaning Republican . . . [,] George W. Bush is at 50 percent approval, 49 percent disapproval“.

Wonder what those numbers would look like if we used Gallup’s recent numbers which show near perfect parity between the parties:

In 2010, 45% of Americans identified as Democrats or said they were independent but leaned toward the Democratic Party, while 44% identified as Republicans or said they were independent but leaned Republican. The 1-point Democratic advantage is the party’s smallest since 2003, when the parties were even, and represents a sharp decline from the record 12-point Democratic advantage in 2008.

So, AP used party ID gap even higher, let me repeat, even higher than Democrats’ record advantage and still found W had 50% approval.

UPDATE:  ”Imagine,” NiceDeb quips, “how Bush would do in a fairly sampled poll.“

We’re just over 18 months away form the 2012 presidential election and yet we have some pundits wringing their hands over Republican dissatisfaction about their current field and others speculating about how the race will play out.  Meanwhile, we keep hearing that the incumbent president whose two greatest domestic achievements have either failed to live up to promise (the “so-called stimulus”) or failed to win favor with the American people (health care overhaul) is practically a shoo-in for reelection despite middling poll numbers (even after the dispatch of Osama bin Laden).

With some pundits hyperventilating about the race as if the political conventions had already taken place and people were focusing on the contest, Michael Barone (once again) offers a dose of common sense:

In two Washington Post articles this morning Mitt Romney is referred to as the front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination. Why? On what basis?

The first article, headlined “Romney has eye on one prize right now: money,” Dan Eggen and T. W. Farnam refer to Romney as “the presumed front-runner.” In a second article on page A4, headlined “Romney to confront his critics in a speech on health care,” Karen Tumulty more cautiously writes that Romney “is seen as a possible front-runner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination?”

Presumed by whom? Seen by whom?

Read the whole thing.  Look, we’re not going to know until October (at the earliest) what the make-up of the GOP field will be.  If the economy doesn’t pick up and the clamor for change increases, some Republicans currently on the sidelines may jump into the game.

It’s way too early to deem any candidate the frontrunner when we don’t even know who all will be his rivals for the Republican nomination.

. . . ever taunt his domestic political adversaries in such mocking terms:

In search of Hispanic votes and a long-shot immigration overhaul, President Barack Obama on Tuesday stood at the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time since winning the White House and declared it more secure than ever. He mocked Republican lawmakers for blocking immigration over border security alone, saying they won’t be happy until they get a moat with alligators along the border.

Emphasis added. He sounds more like a blogger attempting to be witty than a president attempting to lead.

Via Gateway Pundit who has more on the president’s divisive message.

I have come to two broad conclusions about the current and former governor of California.

1. He is incredibly sincere in his efforts to cut state spending and has made a determined effort to root out gratuitous programs, waste and redundancy.
2. He is entirely clueless about how to fix the state’s economic woes.  So determined is he to raise taxes to cover the state’s remaining budget gap, he doesn’t understand that the state’s high tax burden is one of the primary (but not the only) reasons businesses are fleeing the state.

In a good piece on the liberal delusion about the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs), Jennifer Rubin gets at the nub of the issue.

She does so by taking issue with the contention Juan Williams made on FoxNews that we could have gotten the information needed to track down Osama bin Laden “in other ways”:

Williams is simply being untruthful when he says EITs didn’t contribute to bin Laden’s death and that we could have gotten the information by other means. The latter is unknowable (although certainly unlikely), and the former is factually incorrect.

Pretty much sums it up.  Read the whole thing.

Even Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledges the information needed to track down Osama came from ”mosaic of sources.”   A number of the “tiles” used to complete that mosaic came from EITs.  Thus, by using the word, “mosaic,” even the man busy prosecuting those who used EITs on a handful of high-value incarcerated terrorists acknowledges that such techniques helped the CIA track down Osama bin Laden.

Below is a screen capture of an ad I saw on Youtube.

Can anyone remember an incumbent candidate campaigning so aggressively so far ahead of the general election?

Apology for the slow blogging.  A lot on my plate and a lot on my mind.

On Saturday, I asked, “Who Watches CNN?“, observing that I would be as familiar with the network as I am with the golf channel (I don’t play golf) if they didn’t blare it regularly on the TV monitors at my gym. Well, today, I looked up to catch Wolf Blitzer’s “Situation Room” and gained further evidence why, to paraphrase Stacey McCain, If it weren’t for the fact that it plays 24/7 in public places, no one would watch CNN.

Well, they were taking about how getting bin Laden would impact the 2012 presidential race, with the subtext that it would help Obama.  Then, Paul Begala came on and immediately engaged in dishonest (or ill-informed) Bush-bashing, telling us that the immediate past president had basically stopped looking for bin Laden.  (When the transcript comes up, I’ll get his exact expression.)  Had I been on the program with the Democratic partisan, I would have simply asked the former Clinton aide if he had read any of the stories, including those in the New York Times, the Washington Post and on the AP about how they got bin Laden.  Or if he had listened to his former Clinton administration colleague Leon Panetta talk about the operation.

Each of those left-leaning news sources as well as that leading Democrat informed us how key intelligence gathered in the Bush era was to locating the Al-Qaeda leader.

To say that that then-President George W. Bush stopped looking for Osama is at odds not just with the facts, but with what has been reported, even by officials in the incumbent Democratic administration.  Begala was offering a talking point rooted not in the facts, but in his own imagination and in his animus against George W. Bush.

His commentary was so absurd and his animus so evident that my first response was just to laugh, a rich deep laugh.  And I’m sure I was not the only one.

NB:  Fixed a couple of typos as per Throbert’s comment #4 below.  Thanks, Throbert!

UPDATE:  Here are Begala’s remarks as per the CNN transcript:

OK. Now, he [OBAMA] is like — he is a tenured (ph) professor (INAUDIBLE) because he went over there and killed Osama Bin Laden as George W. Bush did not, and he did not continue the Bush policy on this. The Bush policy was to walk away from Bin Laden.

Sorry, Paul, the Bush policy was not to walk away from Bin Laden.  Just because we set out to liberate Iraq doesn’t mean we no longer paid attention to Afghanistan.  As the record clearly shows,  during the time period Begala claims we were walking away from bin Laden, the CIA was busy tracking down leads as to where the then-terror leader might be hiding.

Will be in San Francisco next weekend and will be organizing a breakfast (about 9ish) on Satruday, May 14 for blog readers.  Let me know if you can join us.

(Bumped.)