I had this thought while watching the Gay Pride parade this past Sunday in West Hollywood and catching sight of the first Obama 2012 sticker:  why were so many of our fellow gays so gung-ho about Obama in 2008, even to the point of regularly deriding Hillary despite his absence then of a record on gay issues.  The Democrat had, in his campaign, shared a platform with an anti-gay singer.  And to my knowledge, hadn’t done much of anything for gay people when in the Illinois — or United States — Senate.

The Illinois legislature didn’t pass a “non-discrimination” law until January 2005, the very month Barack Obama began his service in another legislature.  In his eight years in the Illinois Senate did the Democrat work to advance this legislation, legislation near and dear to the hearts of gay activists?  Did he press his colleagues on same-sex civil unions?

Not just that, as I noted on Tuesday, “Mrs. Clinton participated in gay Pride parades in New York.  Obama never participated in such celebrations in Chicago.”  (Thanks to the folks at Hillbuzz for keeping track of this failure to participate.)

Yeah, I realize this in 2011 and I’m asking a question about 2008, but I’m still wondering why so many gay activists preferred Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton that year when they had little (if any) evidence that he was a champion of their causes.

NB:  Added the parenthetical (some) to the title to make my point clearer.  Thanks, readers, for helping me realize that title leant itself to misinterpretation.

“This president,” Obama strategist David Axelrod told CNN’s John King earlier this week, “was scrutinized, more perhaps than any candidate ever had been.”

Oh yeah, say the editors of the Washington Examiner, commenting on the media frenzy over Obama’s appointments of big donors to key posts Sarah Palin’s e-mails:

too many media outlets that went wild over the Palin emails have not devoted anywhere near as much passion, energy and resources to holding President Obama accountable on the pledge he made on his first day in the Oval Office — that he would run the most transparent administration ever. The list of Obama transparency outrages is a long one, but it has received only sporadic coverage in most precincts of the mainstream media.

Read the whole thing. I’m sure Mr. King will ask Axelrod about this next time he has him on his program.

Via HotAir.com

Representative Anthony D. Weiner has told friends that he plans to resign his seat after coming under growing pressure from his Democratic colleagues to leave the House, said a person told of Mr. Weiner’s plans.

Mr. Weiner, a Democrat, came to the conclusion that he could no longer serve after having long discussions with his wife,  Huma Abedin, when she returned home on Tuesday after traveling abroad with her boss, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Our long national nightmare is over.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Seems that the secret to landing a plum job in the Obama Administration is quite similar to some of the strategies used in the city where the president cut his political teeth.

According to Politico:

More than two years after Obama took office vowing to banish “special interests” from his administration, nearly 200 of his biggest donors have landed plum government jobs and advisory posts, won federal contracts worth millions of dollars for their business interests or attended numerous elite White House meetings and social events, an investigation by iWatch News has found.

To wit:

Overall, 184 of 556, or about one-third of Obama bundlers or their spouses joined the administration in some role. But the percentages are much higher for the big-dollar bundlers. Nearly 80 percent of those who collected more than $500,000 for Obama took “key administration posts,” as defined by the White House. More than half the 24 ambassador nominees who were bundlers raised $500,000.

Via Instapundit.  Do wonder, to borrow an expression from David Axelrod, if this information will be scrutinized as much perhaps as Sarah Palin’s e-mails.

Yesterday, two of my favorite blogger/pundits, Glenn Reynolds and Michael Barone, linked a post where Walter Russell Mead compared the incumbent chief executive not just to the worst president of many of our lifetimes, but also to the man considered by many the worst president of the century just concluded, Herbert Hoover. That big-government Republican . . .

. . . had long been known as a leading progressive, and in the face of the Depression he was ready to countenance a significant expansion of the government’s role. His Reconstruction Finance Corporation would be taken over by FDR; it lent money to distressed companies in an effort to jump start the economy. He proposed the creation of a federal Department of Education; he was willing to countenance significant budget deficits and supported important public works projects (like Boulder Dam) as a way of stimulating employment and rebuilding confidence in the economy. . . .

With great intelligence and serious goodwill, both men set about to address the most important issues facing the country and the world — only to find that their chosen remedies failed one by one. . . . (more…)