links for 2008-11-21

There's been a lot of outrage from the No on Proposition 8 camp since California voters approved a ban on gay marriage. But until now, there has been less soul searching about what went wrong. But Terry Leftgoff, founder of the Gay and Lesbian Business Assn. of Santa Barbara, has a thoughtful piece on WeHo News looking at how the opposition to Proposition 8 fell short. It did, he says, on several levels: A mixed message, failing to respond to attacks from Yes on 8 forces, little black and Latino outreach.
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Duh
The Yes on 8 campaign had one of the best campaigns Flap has ever seen.

Antiwar groups and other liberal activists are increasingly concerned at signs that Barack Obama's national security team will be dominated by appointees who favored the Iraq invasion and hold hawkish views on other important foreign policy issues.

The activists are uneasy not only about signs that both Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates could be in the Obama Cabinet, but at reports suggesting that several other short-list candidates for top security posts backed the decision to go to war.
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Obama moved to the center to win the election against McCain and if he wants to win re-election he will have to continue in that direction. Obama is no fool.

The Associated Press plans to cut up to 10 percent of its workforce in 2009, according to sources at the news service, as it copes with tough financial times and ailing member newspapers.

The AP has one of the world's largest news-gathering teams, employing about 3,000 journalists, and a total of about 4,100 people worldwide. The cuts could amount to about 400 employees.

AP Chief Executive Tom Curley delivered the news as part of a "town hall" meeting with employees.

"All areas and ways of doing business are being reviewed," said an AP statement provided to Reuters. "The AP, which recently instituted a strategic hiring freeze, may need to reduce staff over the next year. If so, it hopes to achieve much of the reduction through attrition."

The job cuts come as the AP restructures its operations in the United States in a bid to provide what it said would be deeper, more relevant coverage for its member newspapers.
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AP with citizen journalism is becoming less of a source

Even as President-elect Barack Obama continues to rapidly fill out his White House staff and Cabinet picks, the buzz around whether he will spend some of his prized political capital on behalf of former state Rep. Jim Martin (D) in Georgia continues to grow.

Martin is taking on Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) in a Dec. 2 runoff occasioned by the fact that the GOP incumbent was unable to win 50 plus one percent of the vote on Nov. 4.

Martin clearly benefited from Obama's presence at the top of the ticket — particularly in the black community — and Democrats eyeing a 60-seat filibuster proof majority believe an Obama appearance may be the only way Martin can come close to re-creating the sort of base turnout he needs to beat Chambliss next month.
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It may be a risk of political capital that Obama does not wish to make.

The Democrats have lost their best candidate in Arizona. Napolitano was a canny politician who knew how to outflank the GOP. I think going to Washington and taking up Homeland security will not be a boon to her future political career. Several Republicans were lining up to run for governor in 2010. With Jan Brewer as an incumbent, they may modify their plans.

The top of the Arizona GOP ticket in 2010 (Brewer and McCain) should help down ticket.

In the meantime, I just glad we are getting her out of the state. Who said that the Obama Presidency would be all bad?
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Anything that helps the GOP at this point.

How NOT to win hearts and minds about gay marriage

The interesting political question is why she'd take this job. She's been considering running for McCain's seat in 2010 or Kyl's in 2012 — I can't see how she could go to Washington and start running for Senate in less than two years, so maybe she has 2012 in mind instead. But even so, as DHS secretary, she is now going to be answerable for every illegal alien crossing the border and every snafu at ICE or USCIS — like the revelations from Houston that immigration authorities allowed back into the community violent criminals who admitted they were illegal aliens.
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I thinks she viewed her prospects better in the Obama Administration rather than Arizona agaisnt entrenched GOP Senators – plain and simple.

So, this is “progress?” eHarmony, a Christian-targeted dating website, gets sued by a gay man demanding that the business match him up with a same-sex partner. The New Jersey Attorney General intervenes on behalf of the gay plaintiff and forces eHarmony to change its entire business model. To be clear: The company never refused to do business with anyone. Their great “sin” was not providing a specialized service that litigious gay people demanded they provide. This case is akin to a meat-eater suing a vegetarian restaurant for not offering him a ribeye or a female patient suing a vasectomy doctor for not providing her hysterectomy services. Sadly, eHarmony has settled . I wish they hadn’t, but I understand the decision given the chilling antics of the anti-Prop. 8 mob. The company agreed not only to offer same-sex dating services on a new site, but also to offer six-month subscriptions for free to 10,000 gay users.
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Alot of whining going on in the homosexual community.

As Dan reported a few days ago, Log Cabin Republican President Patrick Sammon has announced he is leaving his post at the national gay Republican organization after two years.

It seems there is more going on behind the scenes as well. One of my very reliable LCR Board insiders tells me a shocking fact: “Log Cabin is over $150,000 in debt.”

And nearly the only source of income to Log Cabin lately is from none other than the Gay Left’s version of George Soros: the infamous Tim Gill. We have tracked Gill’s ties to Soros and Log Cabin extensively over the years here at GayPatriot.

The Legislative Analyst's Office will release a new report today analyzing the woeful state of California's finances. It will flesh out last week's estimate that the state faces a $27.8 billion deficit over the next 19 months.

But a new report from Beacon Economics predicts things will look even glummer in the future:

* Labor markets are showing increased signs of stress.
* There is little sign of a recovery in housing, and foreclosure rates are growing worse by the day.
* Consumer markets have fallen off a cliff.
* Corporate profits are taking a serious beating.

The report commissioned by California Forward, the nonpartisan government reform group, describes itself as "decidedly more pessimistic" than the LAO or Schwarzenegger administration projections, largely due to lower projections for corporate taxes.

The report also predicts the first year-over-year decline in statewide property taxes "since the Great Depression," according to Fred Silva
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Calif meltdown