It’s been nearly eleven months since Dan Savage slurred certain gay people (with whom he disagreed on matters political) as “faggots,” an epithet whose use by one teenage girl caused the Human Rights Campaign to demand an apology from that girl’s Republican mother.  Well now Mr. Savage has wished illness upon that charismatic Republican woman.

And yet I could find nothing on HRC’s web-site related to the slur.* (HRC has still refused to call on Mr. Savage to apologize for using a hateful word to describe his fellow gays.)

Mr. Savage wished cancer on Sarah Palin.  I guess it’s okay to wish death on those horrible, no good very bad Republicans.  Don’t expect any gay group to ask that gay leftist — or any gay activist — to speak in more civil terms.

* (more…)

When I wrote my first post on liberalism as more of a social phenomenon than an intellectual one, I imagined a series of posts dealing with many different implications of that idea.  So far I’ve written three other posts in the series on topics ranging from slogans to leftist intolerance and political changers to the so-called “wealth gap.”

One big topic that I haven’t explored yet–even though I’ve meant to do so since the start of the series–is the way in which liberal ideas are perpetuated on social media and elsewhere through the use of simple-minded memes.  As I considered the idea of social liberalism, one point which came to mind is that so many liberal memes might seem catchy at first glance,  but they are either responses to outlandish straw men, or they make no sense whatsoever when subjected to even the slightest bit of scrutiny.

At Legal Insurrection, Professor Jacobson has written a few posts about the role of the leftist site Upworthy in promulgating memes of both sorts, including a post this past Tuesday on the high cost of low-information voters.  And he’s not the only one to recognize the importance of simple-minded memes for the left.  For example, this post at Breitbart.com takes the idea one step further to reflect on the significance of LOLcats in politics.

What interests me at the moment, though, is that there is a whole class of liberal memes which go beyond the simple-minded to the downright pernicious: they promulgate leftist thinking in a way that seems ironic or clever or humorous, even as they blatantly acknowledge the darker goals of leftist ideology.   I stumbled across a prime example of one such meme on Facebook about two months ago when an acquaintance “shared” a meme which had been promoted by the Facebook group “Being Liberal” back in December 2011.  I’ve pasted the image below.

We’re all familiar with the common liberal tropes about “beating swords into plowshares” and the frequent lament heard on the left that “if we spent on education or social programs what we spent on the military” somehow all of society’s ills would disappear.   This meme takes that same tack, but uses “irony” to take it one step further by suggesting that the government can use the military to “win the hearts and minds of the population” and put the “locals to work” working on infrastructure politics.

By supposedly employing “irony” to make its point, therefore, it moves from the simple-minded lament about spending more on education and social programs into the territory of the pernicious by endorsing the use of the military as a means of social control.  The person who posts or re-posts the idea can feign ignorance of the pernicious implications by saying that the meme isn’t “serious” or that it is “just making a point through irony,” but it’s a point which betrays the left’s ignorance of the way free people and free markets operate.  The point of the meme is unmistakable:  all good comes through government, and we ought to use the force of government to establish a planned economy.

The Facebook page for “Being Liberal” attributes this meme to one of its readers named Terry Sebolt who wrote in and said (with the disingenuousness common on the left): “”Those were my words, but not my pic. Feel free to put it anywhere you want. I meant every word of it, and hope people enjoy the irony, regardless of credit. It was a throw away line…”

The claim may be spurious, though, as I did some internet searching and the earliest example I could find for the meme online was this appearance on Twitter from August 9, 2011.  I’ve posted a screenshot of the image below.

Regardless of the authorship, though, the claim is intended to make a point by shocking, even though those who quote the statement will try to distance themselves from its actual implications.  Those implications, though, tell us a great amount about the worldview of the left.

What’s even more amazing in the case of the person I know who re-posted this meme is that she is an immigrant from eastern Europe with a PhD in a scientific field from an American university.   She often refers to the bad days growing up in her country under a brutal dictator when everyone was suffering.  And so she moves to the U.S. and spends time in universities and decides that she’s a “liberal” and approvingly re-posts that “ironic” image.  If that’s not an example of a socially-promulgated disorder, then I’m not sure what would be.

Does the left-wing Facebook group which posted this picture realize how accurately it depicts the juvenile attitude the incumbent President of the United States has adopted to his predecessor:

And how the depiction does their man no credit.  They may find this funny, but the action they depict reflects poorly on their man in Washington as Jennifer Rubin explains:

There is irony overload in President Obama describing President George W. Bush as “gracious” and “patriotic.” Obama has been among the most ungracious of successors, rising to power by vilifying Bush 43 and blaming four years of economic failure on his predecessor. He has assiduously refused to acknowledge Bush’s accomplishments (e.g. the troop surge). Dubbing his predecessor as “patriotic” is only a compliment in a political universe in which “Bush lied, people died” is taken as gospel. (Does he imagine there is some doubt as to Bush’s patriotism that requires Obama’s stamp of approval?)

(Read the whole thing.)  How many other presidents whined about the problems they “inherited” from their predecessor?

No, Mr. Obama never performed the juvenile stunt depicted in this photoshop.  But it does say a lot about liberals who think it funny.

Remember three years ago when the unhappy Barney Frank, then a Member of Congress said “his GOP colleagues need[ed] to do more to ‘differentiate themselves’ from the hateful speech spewed in the healthcare debate’s final hours.”

Looks like Barney needs now to differentiate himself from himself.  And, by his own standards, House Democrats should be doing the same.  The mean-spirited Massachusetts Democrat is now comparing Al-Qaeda to the Tea Party:

Former Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., responding to al-Qaeda’s criticism of his sexual orientation in the latest issue of their magazine, compared the terrorist organization to the Tea Party and cracked that the two groups are “aligned” with each other against gay marriage.

“I wonder how the right wing in America feels about being aligned with al-Qaeda?” Frank said to Buzzfeed, adding that “there is an irony that the most active anti-gay [groups] are al-Qaeda and the American right-wing.”

The Democrat contended that Al Qaeda “sounded like what the Tea party said when I got married”.  Do wonder if Mr. Frank can source his slur — and if the Democrat is aware that the Tea Party as a whole is uninterested in gay marriage.

But, when slurring the Tea Party, Democrats don’t really see the need to check their facts.

Don’t be expecting Mr. Frank to apologize or even to acknowledge his error.

Don’t worry, I’m probably not going to make these headline summaries a regular feature. Other bloggers do it better.

Still, I must again express my amazement at how, on any given day, a quick scan of the headlines reveals a world gone awry. Just from Ace and HotAir today:

• The IRS may be spying on your Facebook page and Twitter stream, for God-knows-what reason.
• Hundreds of leftists celebrate Thatcher’s death by partying and/or rioting. Meanwhile, an MSNBC host claims that she embodied greed. So much for human freedom, I guess.
• In Massachusetts, people are no longer allowed to defend themselves from wild animals.
• When are women *not* entitled to control the product of their bodies? When a creepy, duck-speaking lefty feels the need to take control of their kids.
• On the Aurora shooter, a tragedy of errors.
• It comes out that police were warned about him, a month before. That kinda works against the narrative in favor of gun control, so now…
• The Fox reporter who brought it out may go to jail. And…
• The rest of the media doesn’t care. A contrast to the Plame case which, remember, was much ado about nothing (except that it played against a GOP President).
• Meanwhile, North Korea threatens to launch nuclear missiles… and Obama still wants to cut missile defense spending.
• And lefty GWU students can’t get over the fact that a Catholic priest would teach Catholic teachings.

I need to start looking for things that are going right. Of course Obamacare, which kills both jobs and worker benefits, isn’t one of them.

But maybe the fight for gun rights is. Like seeing Mark Matteoli (of Sandy Hook) or Manuel Martinez (formerly of Communist Cuba): two men who understand freedom, and speak out in its favor.

When I put up my first post on social liberalism several weeks ago, I envisioned a series of posts that would discuss many of the implications of the fact that modern liberalism is more a social phenomenon than an intellectual one.  I’ve done that in part, but have until now neglected to mention one of the largest implications of all, namely that most modern liberals make easy targets for propagandists of all stripes because their political identity is driven more by their feelings than by the facts, and so they rarely exert critical judgement over the memes and narratives of the moment.

Quite to the contrary:  to exert critical judgement is automatically to invite suspicion, because it means asking difficult questions, seeking facts, pointing out fallacies, noting inconsistencies, all of which make modern liberals profoundly uncomfortable because those sorts of activities advertise the questioner’s willingness to dissent from the orthodoxy.

Neo-Neocon wrote a great post many years ago where she quoted Milan Kundera’s Book of Laughter and Forgetting on the power of “Circle Dancing”:

Circle dancing is magic. It speaks to us through the millennia from the depths of human memory. Madame Raphael had cut the picture out of the magazine and would stare at it and dream. She too longed to dance in a ring. All her life she had looked for a group of people she could hold hands with and dance with in a ring. First she looked for them in the Methodist Church (her father was a religious fanatic), then in the Communist Party, then among the Trotskyites, then in the anti-abortion movement (A child has a right to life!), then in the pro-abortion movement (A woman has a right to her body!); she looked for them among the Marxists, the psychoanalysts, and the structuralists; she looked for them in Lenin, Zen Buddhism, Mao Tse-tung, yogis, the nouveau roman, Brechtian theater, the theater of panic; and finally she hoped she could at least become one with her students, which meant she always forced them to think and say exactly what she thought and said, and together they formed a single body and a single soul, a single ring and a single dance.

To question is to step outside the  circle, to resist the lure of the dance.  And so the memes and narratives proliferate, pushed on by those who “feel moved” by them and are too afraid to question them.

Among the many liberals I know, this week’s meme is a viral video about “the wealth gap.”  I first noticed a college acquaintance (and an enthusiastic Elizabeth Warren supporter) mention it on Facebook on Sunday, and have noticed at least three other references to it by others since then.  The video is only 6 minutes and 24 seconds long, but if you’re like me, after about three minutes, it will seem like it is going on forever.

I’ve recorded some of my thoughts below the fold.

(more…)

A few weeks ago, a reader at Instapundit found an interesting passage in the archives which Glenn Reynolds had first quoted in February 2002.  I made note of the passage because it seemed to fit so well with both the social liberalism theme and also with the distinction (increasingly hard to recognize in the age of Obama, I admit) between liberals and leftists to which I made reference in my last post.

The passage is from an article by Judith Lewis entitled “Why I’m Not a Protestor” that appeared in the LA Weekly on Jan. 30, 2002:

And whatever these perfect strangers from Kentucky stood for, however distant they were from the causes of global minimum wage, clean energy and sustainable peace, they were still able to treat people who shared almost none of their values without contempt. We were able to do the same, and to us, that was a hugely political act.

But it is the kind of political act for which the current crop of activist groups — from the Voters Rights March to Ramsey Clark’s International Action Center — have increasingly little patience. Faced with dissenting views or even devil’s advocacy from newspaper reporters, they grow hostile and deny access. When I’ve collaborated with activists on the left, as I did recently on a Web site, I’ve found them willing to censor discussions or use ridicule when certain words make them uncomfortable. When I’ve written about them, they’ve been unhappy that I’ve focused on their personal struggles and not exclusively on the issues, and as a member of the media, I’ve endured their suspicion and scorn. Were these people ever to actually run the country, I complained loudly in the summer of 2000, while I was up in Malibu covering the Ruckus Society’s direct-action training camp, it would be a bona fide fascist dictatorship.

Although the LA Weekly article ends by reiterating the writer’s allegiance to leftist goals and ideals, she intends it as a warning to her fellow liberals and leftists that they need to learn to work and play well with others.  Despite her moment of clarity, she is unable to recognize that the leftist activist class is extreme and intolerant because leftist philosophies inevitably end up there.

The passage came to mind again when I saw this recent interview with Juan Williams at the Daily Caller.  In the interview, Williams talks about what he learned from his firing by NPR:  the liberal media will “shut you down, stab you, kill you, fire you” if you disagree, he tells Ginni Thomas.

Both examples remind me of the many political change stories that Neoneocon has collected and written about over the years.  Although neither Judith Lewis (in the LA Weekly article) nor Juan Williams have abandoned their belief in leftist ideas, both have experienced a key element of leftism that has inspired many others to look more closely at conservative ideas and conservative thinkers.

In other words, the ingrained tendency of the left to go too far often unsettles the willingness of individuals to continue to believe in the narrative of a beneficent and well-intentioned politics–a belief which, however unfounded, is one of the hallmarks of social liberalism.   At least that has been my experience.

What have our readers observed?  Were any of you political changers?  Was there something about the anger, intolerance, and extremism of the leftist activist class that inspired you to question your views or, alternately, that made you more resolute in your conservative beliefs?

The first post in my ongoing, periodical series about “social liberalism” generated a lively discussion (which was still continuing last time I checked).  I had originally planned a second post about the implications of the socially-perpetuated nature of liberalism on both the arguments (or lack thereof) and pundits that seem to dominate on the left side of the political spectrum.  I still think that’s a fascinating topic, and I plan to write more about that in the future.

For the time being, though, I’d rather call attention to this noteworthy post by Bookworm which I learned of as a result of this post by Neo-neocon.  Bookworm’s post is about the need for conservatives to focus largely on messaging which captures something that Malcolm Gladwell refers to as “the stickiness factor.”  Bookworm explains:

The Stickiness Factor?  That’s what it sounds like:  it’s a message that doesn’t just amuse or intrigue people for a mere minute.  Instead, it sticks with them and, even more importantly, makes them act.  During the Bush years, the Dems came up with a great one:  No War for Oil.  The fact that this slogan had little relationship to the facts, or that a ginormous number of people stuck it on the back of their gas-guzzling SUVs was irrelevant.  Those four words convinced too many Americans that the Republicans were fighting wars on behalf of Standard Oil.

She goes on to reflect on examples similar to the kinds of things I was reflecting on as I imagined some of my future posts on the socially-coercive power of contemporary liberalism:

The Progressive penchant for ignoring facts undoubtedly makes it easier for them to come up with the pithy slogans and posters that sweep through Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and email chains before ending up on tens of thousands of bumper stickers that subliminally drill into every driver’s head. People could laugh when reading “Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot,” never mind that George Bush was a highly educated, accomplished man with an academic record better than or equal to his opponents’.

Conservatives used to have pithy sayings (“Live free or die,” “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country,” “That government is best that governs least”), but we don’t seem to have come up with any clever ones lately.  As you may recall, during John McCain’s failed candidacy, his slogan — “Country First” — managed to leave supporters cold, while allowing opponents to mumble about racism.  I doubt that we’ll ever get another “I like Ike,” but we can certainly do better than Romney’s “Believe in America,” which sounds more like the beginning of a fairy tale than it does a rousing call to the ballot box.

And finally, there’s the Power of Context, which at its simplest level means that a message has to capture the zeitgeist.  People have to be primed and ready to receive the message.  In 2012, Americans, fed on decades of anti-capitalist education and entertainment, were more than ready to believe that Romney was a dog-abusing, woman-hating, religious nut who wanted to enslave poor people and blacks.  Thirty years ago, people would have laughed at this message.  Last year, there were too many people who thought it made a good deal of sense.

(Read the whole thing.)

Conservative thinkers may have some level of disdain for the demagogic nature of most political slogans, but one can’t deny their force or their effectiveness.   People on the left, for instance, love to make assertions about “social justice,” “sustainability,” and lately “gun violence” which rarely stand up to close scrutiny, but the mere application and repetition of the terms is usually enough to persuade a certain sector of the population that these must be serious ideas deserving of merit.

Bookworm argues that conservatives need to focus more on generating catchy and timely messages  and that doing so will help advance our ideas more effectively.  I think it’s a great point.  Conservatives are certainly capable of it:  the early Tea Party rallies were filled with all kinds of clever signs and slogans, but the creative force of that movement seems to have dispersed lately.   How can we reignite it?

I work in a very liberal environment, and over the past few years, I have come to wonder at the fact that the vast majority of the folks I have kept in touch with from high school, college, and graduate school are overwhelming left-leaning.  Until recently, I even found logging on to Facebook depressing, simply because the vast majority of my Facebook “friends” are Obama voters.

Although I can understand how and why I ended up with such a large collection of liberal friends, acquaintances and colleagues–from about the age of 16 through my late twenties I fancied myself a “moderate,” and I have spent most of  my adult life in or on the margins of the academic world–I can’t help but feel dismayed that so many of the folks I know have clung to the leftism of their youth with the zeal of the true believer.

Blogger Assistant Village Idiot has written many excellent posts over the years on the nature of what he considers “tribal” thinking when it comes to political, social and cultural identity.  He wrote a great one two weeks ago where he reflected on the nature of contemporary liberalism as primarily a social phenomenon:

I have declared many times that liberalism is more of a social than an intellectual set of beliefs.  Certainly, liberalism is enforced socially rather than intellectually (though the claim of intellectual superiority remains, and is in fact part of the pressure).

He goes on to cite examples from the current TV show Portlandia which illustrate the techniques of liberal social “enforcement” at work through the application of “self-righteousness,” the use of “public shaming,” and the threat of being “cut off from the group.”   Read the whole thing, and be sure to watch some of the clips, too, if you’re not familiar with the show already.

Most readers of GayPatriot are more than familiar with the shock, disbelief and horror (along with much more mean-spirited and vitriolic reactions) voiced by “liberals” when we express conservative views or even when we question standard liberal talking points and “conventional wisdom.”   Likewise, I’m sure most of us have had the experience of referring the seemingly more open-minded among them to an article, website, book or movie which they never even look into.  One reason for their reactions is that, because of the social conditioning perpetuated by aggressive liberals and the propagandizing of the educational establishment, most contemporary liberals aren’t prepared to engage intellectually with ideas outside of a narrow range of approved opinions, and so they quickly turn to insults, name-calling, ad hominem attacks, and other forms of invective. (more…)

Two events in the past few days have gotten me thinking, again, about the arguments for gay marriage.  On the one hand, there was the statement by GOProud on its support of gay marriage as an issue nationwide. And on the other, there was a recent article in The Atlantic on “The High Price of Being Single in America.”  The Atlantic article intrigues me because, in my reading of the article, it indirectly undermines some arguments for gay marriage by making the case that, for single people, at least, policy makers and other institutions haven’t necessarily been “fair” in granting special status to heterosexual marriage.  The “marriage isn’t fair to singles” argument, however, if fully unleashed, could have the potential to derail the case for gay marriage: after all, there are more singles (both straight and gay) than there are gays and lesbians in committed partnerships.

The Atlantic article is seriously flawed in both its methodology and its conclusions, but that is not why it interests me.  It interests me because, by making the “marriage isn’t fair to singles” argument, it unintentionally illustrates how far the “mainstream” case for gay marriage has deviated in recent years from the more thoughtful and high-minded case that was made for the issue at the time the first serious arguments for gay marriage began to appear widely in the popular press.  And the evolution (though perhaps devolution is the more apt term) of the argument in this way is completely apparent from the way in which those on the gay left greeted the GOProud announcement.

I believe that the push for gay marriage comes partly from two different places philosophically: one is the desire by gay couples to have the same sorts of legal and financial privileges as straight, married couples, which is a consequence of having written laws and policies designed to provide special status to married couples; but the second place it comes from is what has been called “the politics of recognition,” i.e., the desire of gay people to have their worth recognized or validated in some sense  through public policy. The second push comes more from a psychological need which might be emotionally appealing, but which doesn’t  necessarily qualify it as good policy. The first comes from a more legitimate grievance against a government with an interest in deciding which sorts of relationships are “more equal than others.” (The first motive–and kind of argument–is also, incidentally, key to winning over more  conservative and libertarian kinds of voters.)  The two different strands of the argument can exist together in a kind of symbiosis, but separated, they are potentially at odds with each other.

(more…)

Given the “economic headwinds the president faced,” Jay Cost writes today in the Weekly Standard, his campaign team . . .

. . .played to its base with a level of intensity rarely seen in the modern era. “The war on women” was a prime case in point. The idea was to maximize turnout for the president’s core groups by focusing on identity politics, encouraging them to come out and vote against a fictitious GOP bogeyman who would suppress their rights to vote, deport their friends and neighbors, deny them Medicare, ship their jobs overseas, raid their pensions, and eliminate their access to contraception. And it worked.

Emphasis added.  Indeed, as Guy Benson put it, Mitt Romney

. . . was defeated by a small, petty, and overwhelmingly negative opponent whose turnout machine swamped all else.  The unserious and unseemly drumbeat of birth control, Big Bird, binders, and Blame Bush worked.  The “Kill Romney” strategy laid the groundwork for this successful approach.  The president offered no meaningful or sweeping vision for a second term, but it didn’t matter.  What an awful precedent.

And the end of the campaign, when Mitt Romney seemed so confident and Obama so angry, I myself became increasingly confident that he would win.  He just looked like a winner.  I had thought Obama’s nastiness would backfire.  People don’t want a president who engages in such kind of petty attacks.

It looks like I was wrong.

That’s one of the things which makes our defeat this week so troubling. The challenger had the more upbeat message and lost.  The incumbent instead misrepresented his opponent’s record and attacked his background.

He won by demonizing.  And that is just not a pleasant thought.

Conservative friend on Facebook said she heard a lot of radio ads tying the GOP to Todd Akin’s crazy comments on rape. Even though Akin apologized, that seemed to resonate. It created an image of a party indifferent to rape. That was just part of the Democrats’ effort to make the GOP an unacceptable alternative.

Perhaps, that caused voters disenchanted with Obama to stay home yesterday.

And this reminds us yet again that the Democrats won, not so much by selling their ideas, but by demonizing our party.

We need do a better job of defense. And pick candidates more ready to fight back against their smears.

Having voted for George W. Bush in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008, Ann Althouse often serves as a kind of a barometer of the well-educated, high information swing voters are leaning.  Yesterday, she blogged that she had come for Mitt Romney.

This morning, she weighed in on the contrast between Barack Obama asking us to vote for “revenge” and Mitt Romney asking us to vote for love of country, saying it

neatly embodies a reason why I believe Romney will win. He feels like optimism, and Obama — who once owned the word “hope” — seems petulant, divisive, and ungrateful.

Read the whole thing.  (It’s short.)

UPDATE:  Observing Romney’s rally in West Chester, Ohio, Byron York concludes that the Republican “sounds like a winner.“

I agree with Jim Geraghty who doesn’t “know how those few remaining undecided voters will react to this ad… but it strikes me as just the right tone, and contrast, to end this campaign.”

A number of right-of-center bloggers have linked/embedded this, but I hat tip Jim on this one as I first saw it on his Campaign Spot.

Our reader Tim in MT shared this video with us that he had made after catching Michelangelo Signorile on SiriusXM radio yesterday.

The left-wing radio talker, twice in the segment (at about 2:15 & 3:45) advises his gay Romney-supporting caller to drink arsenic or other poison so he can commit suicide. At 2:57, he tells the young man that he should not be allowed to vote.

Such tolerance.

FROM THE COMMENTS: Just Me asks, “Any guesses what the outrage would be if this was Rush telling a gay liberal that he should commit suicide or be prohibited from voting?”

AND ANOTHER:   Leah quips, “You vote for people who give you things? Yes that explains the selfish left.”

AND ANOTHER:  V the K reminds us that

We are always lectured at by activists that gay teen suicide is the most horrible social problem in the world and that gay teenagers are so delicate that the slightest hint of disapproval from a conservative will lead to thousands of them spontaneously offing themselves. (more…)

As you recall, two days after Sarah Palin’s daughter used the epithet, “faggot” on Facebook, the Human Rights Campaign called on that teen’s mother to speak up.  ”As a mother,” said HRC Vice President of Communications Fred Sainz, Mrs. Palin

should know to speak up when a child makes hateful remarks, particularly in this cyber age. Anti-LGBT bullying needs to stop and Sarah Palin should be a part of making that happen.

Four days ago, at a fundraiser in Sunday night fundraiser in Hollywood for former Democratic Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, a woman far older than Sarah Palin’s daughter made similarly, by HRC’s standards, “hateful remarks”.  “Comedienne” Sarah Silverman

. . . told the crowd of just under 100 that they must remember that both conservatives and liberals want the best for the country, even if liberals are more “open-minded” and conservatives are “less open-minded” and ” a little more “faggot-ish.”

(H/t:  Reader TGC.)   I searched HRC’s site; they have yet to call on the left-wing comedienne to  ”speak up.”  Wonder why that is. (more…)

Vandal Keys ‘Obama’ Into 2 Cars In Alta Loma:

Someone keyed the word “Obama” into two cars and slashed seats in another outside a residence that had Mitt Romney campaign signs.

CBS2 and KCAL9 reporter Rob Schmitt spoke to Ken Slown, owner of one of the keyed vehicles.

Slown actually supports President Obama!

He explained to Schmitt that he and his wife — both currently unemployed — are staying with her parents and it’s her parents who support Romney.

it would be worse in West Hollywood.  Wonder how many more Romney-Ryan signs we’d be seeing in “blue” enclaves if Republicans didn’t fear the wrath of the forces of tolerance.  (Alta Loma in San Bernardino County is far less Democratic than the area where I live.)

Kudos to the local media for doing what their national counterparts fail to do–cover the news.

Editor’s Note:  He’s unemployed and he still supports Obama?!?!?

*and other “blue” enclaves.

Kyle Wood, reports Dustin Siggins at the Daily Caller

a full-time volunteer working for GOP House candidate Chad Lee, was hospitalized for injuries suffered during what he said was an assault at his home.

Wood told The Daily Caller that vandalism preceding the assault, along with his attacker’s statements during the incident, suggested his sexual orientation and his politics each played a role.

Before the assault, Wood had experienced the same type of insults many gay Republicans hear on a regular basis:

Wood said his attacker’s reference to a warning likely pointed to graffiti he found painted on his car last week. The vandalism included the phrases “house trained republican faggot,” “traitor,” and “ur like a jew 4 hitler.”

. . . .

Lee and Pocan are squaring off to replace Rep. Tammy Baldwin, an openly gay Democrat who left the House of Representatives to run for retiring Democrat Herb Kohl’s U.S. Senate seat. . . .

Both the Pocan and Baldwin campaigns failed to respond to repeated requests for comment. The Human Rights Campaign, a leading liberal gay rights organization, also did not respond to TheDC’s request.

Conservative blogosphere has been abuzz today about reports that Obama supporter Gloria Allred has an “October surprise” prepared for Mitt as per this report:

Famed civil rights attorney Gloria Allredwill be in a Boston area courtroom Wednesday in an attempt to unseal the sworn testimony given by Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, in a prior court case, RadarOnline.com is exclusively reporting.

Civil rights attorney?  That’s how they bill Miss Allred?  A reader thinks he knows what this is all about, and directs me to this TMZ post.  Allred wants to unseal the records of “Staples co-founder Tom Stemberg and his first wife Maureen”.

This is scraping the bottom of the barrel.  Mr. Romney just testified at the trial.  The case wasn’t even about him.

Ace is already on this.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Ryan questions my conclusion:  ”Scrapping the bottom of the barrel? More like ten feet UNDER the barrel!”

UP-UPDATE:  Sorry, Gloria, there appears to be no there there.  Romney’s lawyer is okay with testimony being made public:

Robert Jones, an attorney at the Boston law firm of Ropes & Gray, who is representing Romney in this matter told TIME in a statement, “This is a decades-old divorce case in which Mitt Romney provided testimony as to the value of a company. He has no objection to letting the public see that testimony.”

Via HotAir headlines.