FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog

In a statement issued after the election, leaders of the No on Proposition 8 campaign urged its coalition to take the long view. "We achieve nothing if we isolate the people who did not stand with us in this fight," the statement said.

Unfortunately, a lone statement on a Web site is not adequate. That message needs to be spread widely and loudly by all leaders in the gay and lesbian community, and all opponents of Proposition 8. It's part of the task of building enough support to ensure that Californians support equal rights for same-sex couples the next time the question is on the ballot.
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Didn't Flap tell you there would be a backlash against the gay marriage proponents for haraassing churches and donors.

Biegun is hardly the only Bushie to be tapped for Palin duty.
Matt Scully, a former Bush White House speechwriter who helped draft some of the major foreign-policy addresses during the president’s first term, is working on Palin’s acceptance speech to the convention Wednesday night.

Mark Wallace, a former lawyer for the Bush 2000 campaign who served in a variety of administration jobs including chief counsel at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and deputy ambassador to the United Nations, has been put in charge of “prep” for the debate against Biden.

Wallace’s wife, Nicolle Wallace, the former White House communications director, has taken over the same job for Palin.

Tucker Eskew, another senior Bush White House communications aide, is serving as senior counselor to Palin’s operation.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former chief economist at the Council of Economic Advisers who has been serving as top economics guru for the McCain campaign, has moved over to serve as Palin’s

I wrote a piece for the new issue on the McCain campaign, focusing especially on the endgame and the fight over Palin. I know a lot of people are already sick of this stuff, but I wanted to talk to people in the campaign to satisfy my curiosity as much as anything else.

The split over Palin, of course, poisoned everything at the end. One of the dividing lines was between her communications team and the policy advisers. The communications team seemed to consider her a dolt, while the policy people—like Steve Biegun and Randy Scheunemann—were impressed with her and her potential. As one McCain aide told me, "It's the difference between considering her someone who lacks knowledge and someone who is incompetent, and they [the communications aides] treated her as the latter."
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Lowry shows himself to be the Mitt Romney shill that he is. WFB must be rolling over in his grave.

For supporters of same-sex marriage, the Election Day loss in California seems to be energizing their campaign rather than ending it.

Demonstrations against Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage, have been growing, CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports.

Now the anger is moving to the Internet, where supporters of same-sex marriage are posting blacklists - the names and businesses of those who gave money to help Proposition 8 pass.

Chris Lee, an engineer who is an immigrant from China, was shocked to see his name on the Web site AntiGayBlacklist.com after he gave $1,000 to the campaign to end same-sex marriage.

"I was completely disgusted," Li said. "This sort of blacklist should only appear in communist countries, should not be found in the United States."
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Not a way to win hearts and minds to support gay marriage

So far, however, Prop. 8 opponents haven't gone out of their way to make nice with the winning side and start the education work needed to convince them that support for same-sex marriage won't end civilization as they know it.

Instead, many of the post-election comments and demonstrations by Prop. 8 opponents have characterized the 52 percent of California voters who supported the gay marriage ban as little more than ignorant bigots, haters and homophobes. They have called for boycotts of Prop. 8 supporters. They also have argued that the Mormon church and other religious groups that backed the ban had no right to get involved in politics and should be stripped of their tax-free status by the IRS.
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Another key mistake by gay rights activists - go after the churches. Even Elton John is disgusted with the No on 8 folks.

Gingrich said that the best thing the Republican Party could do right now is stop worrying about the Republican Party. “We need to worry about the nation,” Gingrich said. “Wal-Mart doesn’t get ahead by attacking Sears but by offering better value.”

It wasn’t all that long ago that the Democratic Party was going through the same kind of agonizing re-appraisals, bemoaning the fact that it couldn’t raise as much money as Republicans, build as impressive a ground operation or field as compelling candidates.

County election officials inched closer to the finish line on Wednesday, adding 14,394 ballots to the results from last week's election but leaving a handful of races still too close to call.

Ventura County has now counted 294,736 ballots, or about 88 percent of those cast. The remaining 41,000 or so are absentee ballots handed in at the last minute, or provisional ballots, cast by voters whose registration status couldn't be clearly determined on Election Day.

Because election officials don't know where the uncounted ballots were cast, it's impossible to know just how many votes are left in each race.

The county plans to release more results Friday, but the final tally won't be known until next week at the earliest.

Bolstered by another good showing in late ballots counted in Ventura County, Republican Tony Strickland widened his lead Wednesday to 1,560 votes over Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson in the 19th Senate District.

The margin is by far the largest held by either candidate, as the lead has ping-ponged back and forth since election night. Strickland is likely to build a still larger lead later in the week after more late mail-in ballots from Ventura and Los Angeles counties are tabulated.
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Flap worries about transporting ballots for a manual recount. Who is the brain donor here?

As the media keeps gushing on about how America has finally adopted tolerance as the great virtue, and that we're all united now, let's consider the Brave Catherine Vogt Experiment.

Catherine Vogt, 14, is an Illinois 8th grader, the daughter of a liberal mom and a conservative dad. She wanted to conduct an experiment in political tolerance and diversity of opinion at her school in the liberal suburb of Oak Park.
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Not a shock to Flap

A week after California voters approved Proposition 8 and decreed they wanted to end same-sex marriage in the state, details are emerging of an opposition campaign that was in disarray.

Key staff members – including the campaign manager – were replaced in the final weeks as polls turned dramatically against the No side. Their replacements say they found an effort that was too timid, slow to react, without a radio campaign or a strategy to reach out to African Americans, a group that ultimately supported the measure by more than 2 to 1.
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The No Campaign was attempting to hide the ball and not put homosexuals in the tv ads. Proposition 8 would have lost no matter their turmoil. The Yes campaign had a superior message and financing.

"The recent vote on Proposition 8 and the reaction by some of those who opposed it make it very clear that there is a fundamental difference in the understanding of marriage between those who voted ‘yes’ and those who voted ‘no.’

“We believe that marriage, which predates both Church and government, is an institution that arose from the reality that the union of a man and a woman is necessary for the continuation of the human race. Those opposed to Proposition 8 believe marriage to be a ‘civil right’ analogous to the right to vote.

“As we said in our original statement of support for Proposition 8, same-sex unions are not the same as opposite-sex unions. The radical change in the definition of marriage to include same-sex partners discounts both history and biology and ignores how deeply marriage—as the union of a man and a woman—is embedded in our culture, language, and laws and how foundational it is for the well-being of children and the flourishing of society..
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Indeed….

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.
Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt…
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Shocking….NOT.

Another part of the lengthy postmortem on the McCain-Palin campaign contends Sarah Palin refused to go on stage with Sen. John Sununu and former Rep. Jeb Bradley when she was in New Hampshire on Oct. 15.
Duprey said he "saw no evidence" of that, despite being with Palin the entire day. A spokesman for Sununu had no comment and Bradley could not be reached.
The Newsweek piece is among the many post-election stories about disarray in the McCain-Palin campaign.
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You mean the MSM is wrong about Sarah Palin and the rumors swirling around her?
What a surprise?
NOT……

Gay rights groups in California plan to ask voters to overturn the ban on same-sex marriage they approved last week if legal challenges to Proposition 8 are unsuccessful.
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Gay marriage proponents have lost every election where the question has been on the ballot.
In an e-mail to supporters, Equality California executive director Geoffrey Kors said Wednesday that he and other gay marriage advocates are aiming for a ballot initiative to reverse the ban in two years.

Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that overruled the California Supreme Court that legalized same-sex marriage, passed 52 percent to 48 percent.

Updated vote totals in Ventura County on Wednesday expanded Republican Tony Strickland's lead to 1,560 votes over Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson in a cliffhanger race for the 19th District state Senate seat.
Election officials said they may be busy for weeks more counting remaining ballots and then doing a “manual tally” to ensure the accuracy of the results. Because the race is so close, the state probably will require that all 19th District ballots be manually recounted to ensure the accuracy of the results, an election official said Wednesday.
The only votes still uncounted in Santa Barbara County, election officials said, were about 6,000 provisional ballots and 1,100 “emergency ballots” issued during the final week to voters who couldn't make it to the polls but hadn't signed up as absentee voters.
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If it is true that there are so few Santa Barbara County votes yet to be counted, Tony Strickland is looking good to win this seat.

The good news for supporters of marriage equity is that — and there's no polite way to put this — the older voters aren't going to be around for all that much longer, and they'll gradually be cycled out and replaced by younger voters who grew up in a more tolerant era. Everyone knew going in that Prop 8 was going to be a photo finish — California might be just progressive enough and 2008 might be just soon enough for the voters to affirm marriage equity. Or, it might fall just short, which is what happened. But two or four or six or eight years from now, it will get across the finish line.
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Don't count on passage anytime soon, Nate.

With Employers

He was an early supporter of John McCain and won some initial veep buzz before falling off the radar to run his own breeze of a re-election campaign.

But to chat with him here at the RGA and then see him address a room full of reporters, it seems that Utah Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr may very well be in the presidential mix in 2012.

Huntsman, 48, cuts an impressive figure and has a fascinating personal and political story to tell, including the sort of foreign policy background most governors lack. The scion of a prominent Mormon family, he served as U.S. Ambassador to Singapore for Bush 41 when he was in his early 30s, did trade stints in the Commerce Department and was a Deputy U.S. Trade Representative under the current Bush, overseeing trade with Africa and Asia.

Fluent in Mandarin Chinese — a few words of which he put on display to an unexpectant press corps — Huntsman is the father of seven, including two adopted girls from China and India.

– Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on Wednesday said she would consider serving in the Senate if God gave her the opportunity and Alaskans wanted her to take the job. Republican Sen. Ted Stevens holds a narrow lead in a race for his seat that is still undecided. About 90,000 votes were outstanding and a little more than half are being counted Wednesday, according to election officials.

Even if he is re-elected, Stevens could be ousted by the Senate for his conviction on seven felony counts of failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts, mostly renovations on his home. If Stevens loses his seat, Palin could run for it in a special election.
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Coulda shoulda Woulda for the 'Cuda. Stevens is now trailing by 3 votes in the Alaska Senate race. We will know more next week.

Have a look at the largest donors who support gay marriage in California. Should traditional marriage supporters boycott them?

A listing of donors of Yes on Propositon

Scott Eckern, the Sacramento theater director whose political donation in support of California's Prop. 8 ban on same-sex marriage has become a lightning rod in the debate over gay rights, resigned today. He said he wanted to protect the California Musical Theatre, his artistic home since 1984, from further controversy.

Word of Eckern's $1,000 donation — publicly reported under state elections law — spread rapidly on the Internet late last week, and Eckern drew criticism from some prominent stage artists, including Tony Award-winning composer Marc Shaiman ("Hairspray") and Jeff Whitty, the "Avenue Q" librettist, who wrote on his whitless.com website about his thoughts on how to deal with the fact that "Avenue Q" would be opening at California Musical Theatre in March.
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When will there be a backlash against the homosexual community? It is coming, mark Flap's word.

As of Tuesday 11/11/2008 at 4:49 PM
TS: 15,356
HBJ: 11,322

As of today at 1:46 PM
TS: 115,753
HBJ: 104,920

As of 4:32 PM today:
HBJ: 69,829
TS: 56,522

While they are behind by more than 3,000 votes, Democrats remain (cautiously) optimistic due to the large number of votes still uncounted and Begich's strength among those early votes that have been tabulated. (The incomparable Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com breaks down the numbers behind this argument.)

We should know by late today — or maybe tomorrow morning — whether that optimism is well founded or not. If Begich can't get ahead by the end of counting today, he's not likely to pull off the come-from-behind victory some Democrats see for him.
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Flap bets on Stevens…..

A federal appeals court has upheld bribery charges against U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, clearing the way for a trial.

The Louisiana Democrat sought to dismiss the indictment, claiming that his constitutional rights were violated when the grand jury received evidence that violated legislative immunity.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday rejected Jefferson's claims, ruling that prosecutors can pursue the case without making reference to constitutionally protected material.

A lower court judge previously refused to dismiss the indictment, saying Jefferson was trying to apply immunity so broadly that it would make it virtually impossible to ever charge a congressman with a crime.
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Damn finally!

As of late afternoon there have been no changes in the reported count – we are still ahead by 1,092 votes, or 0.34 percent out of 313,384 votes counted.

We expect the bulk of Nevada County’s votes to be reported tomorrow, where we could lose as many as 1,500 votes. Nevertheless, we are seeing better performance with the late absentees than we saw on election night in every county – including Nevada – and if that keeps up, our numbers should bounce back fairly rapidly. Based on the precincts yet to be counted, chances are very good that our lead should start widening from our low point when Nevada comes in. If we stay out of negative territory with that vote, victory should be within sight.
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Stay tuned for an update this afternoon

FOOT IN MOUTH — Politico exclusive, thanks to a tip from one of the Playbook Playahs: A roomful of academics erupted in angry boos yesterday after political analyst Michael Barone said "the liberal media" trashed Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republicans' vice presidential nominee, because "she did not abort her Down syndrome baby." Barone said in an e-mail that he "was attempting to be humorous and … went over the line." Barone was speaking in Chicago to the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges. "The liberal media attacked Sarah Palin because she did not abort her Down syndrome baby," Barone said. "They wanted her to kill that child. … I'm talking about my media colleagues with whom I've worked for 35 years.”
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What do you expect from a group of academics where the LEFT is the incubator. Still, Barone should have been more tempered in his comments.

ncumbent Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) retains a narrow lead over Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich (D) as Stevens tries to retain his seat in the wake of a felon conviction. But what would happen should his lead hold?

Time to put to bed the rumors of Gov. Sarah Palin appointing herself to should Stevens win and then resign, news stories to the contrary.

Citizen reaction to former Governor Murkowski appointing his daughter, Lisa, to a vacant Senate seat in 2002 was a 2004 ballot initiative stripping the Governor of this power (56% to 44%). According to the Alaska Elections website (pdf), the 2002 initiative "repeal[s] state law by which theGovernor makes a temporary appointment of a person tofill a U.S. Senate vacancy until a special or regularelection can be held."
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But, Palin would have a free ride to run for the Senate seat and she should.

Even today, two years after Mark Foley's very public fall from grace, the former congressman can't explain why he sent lurid, sexually explicit computer messages to male teens who had worked as Capitol Hill pages.

Sitting in his room at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York this week, the Florida Republican, wearing a yellow tie with blue elephants, finally broke his silence.

"I'm trying to find my way back," Foley said in an interview with The Associated Press, his first public comments on the scandal since resigning from Congress on Sept. 29, 2006.

Foley insists he did nothing illegal and never had sexual contact with teens, just inappropriate Internet conversations. Investigations by the FBI and Florida authorities ended without criminal charges.
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Sorry but Mark Foley is a homosexual prevert. Show him the door and he should be thankful he was not prosecuted for sex crimes.

Barely a week after Barack Obama's decisive victory, Republican governors across the country gather in Miami today for two days of exploring how to find their way out of the wilderness.
The host of the Republican Governors' Association event is Florida's Charlie Crist, a big believer in the "big tent" theory who calls his way of governing "a model for the country."

But Crist will have to share the stage with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who was wildly popular with the conservative base of the GOP that remains a little wary of Crist.
Crist is one of several Republican governors who will address the convention. Others include Rick Perry of Texas, Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota.

But it is likely to be Palin who eclipses them all. Since last week's election defeat, the former vice presidential nominee has kept a very high profile with interviews and appearances in which she has said she'll "plow through that door" of a presidential run if it's God's will….

Said McCain last night on Leno: "I really believe that Sarah Palin is amongst some, like Tim Pawlenty and Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, there's a group of young Republican governors and — mainly governors, but also some in the Senate — that I think are the next generation of leadership of our party."
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Palin,Jindal and Pawlenty in this order.

Reagan worked his magic with tax cuts. Obama is trying to do the same with government spending. But stimulus packages are only supposed to keep the recession from getting worse or morphing into a mini-depression. I don't think anyone expects that $500 billion in hot money to return America to prosperity. Only time (and the private sector) can do that, especially with a downturn caused by a credit crisisa and deflating asset bubble. And four years may not be enough time for the Obama presidency to traverse that long road or complete that steep climb.
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Agreed. Symbolism over substance

The California Supreme Court's surprising announcement that it will quickly review the legality of Proposition 8, banning gay marriage, has prompted growing speculation that the four judges who found a right to gay marriage in the state Constitution in a May ruling will quickly throw Prop. 8 out. If that happens, watch out for a "barn-burner of an election — the biggest thing this state has ever seen," says recall election guru Ted Costa.

Costa says he's already been contacted by some of the folks who would seek to recall Ronald George, Joyce Kennard, Kathryn Werdegar and Carlos Moreno if Prop. 8 is scrapped. He thinks it's premature and risky because talk of a recall "would just (bleep) off the judges."
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It will be NO problem gathering the signatures recalling the 4 Justices of the California Supreme Court that would vote to invalidate the will of the people.

The California Supreme Court could rule as early as this week on a lawsuit that seeks to invalidate Proposition 8, court spokeswoman Lynn Holton said today.
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If the California Supremes invalidate Proposition 8 all hell will break loose in California politics.

Meanwhile, more than 40 Democratic state legislators filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of opponents of the gay marriage ban approved last week by California voters.

In a teleconference last week among more than 100 gay legal scholars and others who support gay marriage, the mood was dour. "This has cast a pall" over what had otherwise been a historic election on Nov. 4, said D'Arcy Kemnitz, executive director of the National Lesbian Gay Law Association. Longtime gay rights advocate Dean Trantalis of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and others on the conference call expressed concern that the gay rights movement had become too focused on marriage, and is now paying the price in other more critical areas. "Marriage was never our issue," Trantalis said. "It was thrust upon us by the other side, and they've done a very good job of beating us up over it."
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Gay activists should also rethink their attacks on churches and people of fatih. They are nt winning heats and minds to their cause.

Sarah Palin, who started her post-campaign bid for rehabilitation with a series of high profile interviews this week, emerged from the 2008 election in an even more politically damaged condition than previously understood, new data show.

In the national Election Day exit poll, fully 60% of voters said they did not consider her qualified to serve as president if necessary, while only 38% thought she would be ready to step in. Those figures were daunting enough, but new calculations from the exit poll provided by the NBC News political unit show that outside of the Republican base skepticism about Palin’s credentials reached even more imposing heights. While 74% of Republicans thought Palin was qualified, just 35% of independents and 9% of Democrats agreed, the figures (first aired on David Gregory’s 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Monday night) showed.
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Sarah Palin has plenty of time to mature as a politicla figure. Look for her to do GOP fundraising well into 2010 and do some travel.

Nearly a week after the election, the campaigns for Democrat Charlie Brown and Republican Tom McClintock are both waiting to see how thousands of provisional and vote-by-mail ballots turn out in the 4th Congressional District race.

The most recent results as of Monday afternoon show McClintock, a state senator from Southern California, leading Brown of Roseville by 970 votes, out of more than 313,000 cast.

Tony Strickland stole a narrow lead back from Hannah-Beth Jackson in the race for the 19th District state Senate seat this afternoon when Ventura County elections officials posted the latest tally of thousands of absentee votes.
When election offices closed their doors for the weekend on Friday, the latest totals for the district as a whole showed Jackson ahead by 255 votes, but as of Monday Strickland was ahead by 540 votes.
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Strickland picked up + 795 in Ventura County today. There are many more votes in Ventura county to be counted. If the trend continues in Strickland's home county - well, you do the math.

Strickland now has 50.1 percent and Strickland garnered 49.9 percent of approximately 360,000 votes across three counties.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sunday expressed hope that the California Supreme Court would overturn Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that outlawed same-sex marriage. He also predicted that the 18,000 gay and lesbian couples who have already wed would not see their marriages nullified by the initiative.

"It's unfortunate, obviously, but it's not the end," Schwarzenegger said in an interview Sunday on CNN. "I think that we will again maybe undo that, if the court is willing to do that, and then move forward from there and again lead in that area."
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Yet, Arnold did no television commercials for Prop 8. No campaign mail either.

Opponents contend that a ban on gay marriage can only be done by a revision of the state Constitution involving the Legislature. The Prop. 8 campaign leader calls the effort 'a Hail Mary.'
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Flap doubts the Supreme Court will review the case. If it does, then it will be for show.
If the court overturns the will of the people they will be recalled.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Monday he proposed eliminating two state holidays and requiring state workers to take a monthly unpaid day of leave "under the auspices of everyone gets a little haircut."

The Republican governor wants lawmakers to agree to require about 200,000 civil service employees to accept furloughs and lose state holidays.

"I mean, you've got to go and look at the whole inventory of different things that are available, and I thought by closing some of those holidays and by having some of those people take off one day a month, I think it could save the state some money," he said in an interview with The Bee's editorial board. He said state tax collectors would be exempt.

If enacted before Dec. 1, the overall furlough plan would save the state $714 million through June 2010, while the holiday elimination would save $114 million.
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Arnold won't get this by the California state employee unions who own the Democrats

Flap does not believe the lead was more than 255 over the weekend. Plus, these figures were announced before Ventura County updated their figures at 3 PM. There continue to remain many Ventura County ballots to be counted.
The math favors Strickland.

Tony Strickland picks up another 795 votes in Ventura County with more votes to be counted over the next couple of days.

Over the weekend President-elect Barack Obama scrubbed Change.gov, his transition Web site, deleting most of what had been a massive agenda copied directly from his campaign Web site.
Gone are the promises on how an Obama administration would handle 25 different agenda items - everything from Iraq and immigration to taxes and urban policy - all items laid out on his campaign Web site, www.BarackObama.com.
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What do you expect from Obama?

Facing pressure from vendors and consumers who aren't spending, Circuit City Stores Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection Monday as it heads into the busy holiday season with hopes that the move will help it survive.
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Signs of the recession times. A shame…..

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun attacked President-elect Barack Obama's agenda as "Marxist" and derided some fellow Republicans for abandoning conservative principles during a speech in Augusta on Friday, his first since being re-elected in Georgia's 10th District.
Mr. Broun also criticized Mr. McCain.

"I'm very disappointed with the McCain campaign," he said. "In my opinion, it was inept."

He said he believes Mr. McCain failed to adequately differentiate himself from President Bush and embrace conservative values.

He referred to Mr. McCain as a "milquetoast" Republican.
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Broun has a point. But, Obama will enjoy a honeymoon but watch the left ideology flow.

The Romney people did it?
Sen. McCain did not allow a nanosecond to go buy without issuing a sanctimonius, full-throated condemnation of any Republican who dared use Sen. Obama's middle name, mention Jeremiah Wright, or otherwise trash The One.

So where is the vigorous defense of his running-mate?

I'm sorry Obama won, but I'm not weeping that we won't have these fabulously honorable guys running the place — and running down their own — for the next four years.
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McCain needs to set the record straight…..

I talked to Steve Biegun, the former Bush NSC aid who briefed Sarah Palin on foreign policy, and he considers the leaks against her on the international stuff "absurd."

He says there's no way she didn't know Africa was a continent, and whoever is saying she didn't must be distorting "a fumble of words." He talked to her about all manner of issues relating to Africa, from failed states to the Sudan. She was aware from the beginning of the conflict in Darfur, which is followed closely in evangelical churches, and was aware of Clinton's AIDS initiative. That basically makes it impossible that she thought all of Africa was a country.
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Of course it waS. All of the Palin crapola is.

the scoreboard in popular referenda on such amendments is now Marriage 30, Same Sex Marriage 0. It was the fact that in the most socially liberal state in the country, whites had voted (narrowly) against the amendment, Hispanics narrowly for, and black voters overwhelmingly for the traditional definition of marriage. Amazingly, Los Angeles County, which chose Obama over McCain 69 percent to 29 percent, supported Proposition 8, with black voters in crime-ridden South Los Angeles neighborhoods like Compton voting strongly in favor, while Beverly Hills, Westwood, and Pacific Palisades were tolerantly and disdainfully against.
So elite opinion makers had to say something about these black voters. The accounts I saw said two things: Many blacks are bigoted against gays, and the pro-Proposition 8 forces got to California's black pastors. In other words, the anti-same-sex-marriage black voters are bigoted, they are sheep, or most likely some combination of the two. No other analysis offered

Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, warned president-elect Barack Obama that he would filibuster U.S. Supreme Court appointments if those nominees were too liberal.

Kyl, Arizona's junior senator, expects Obama to appoint judges in the mold of U.S Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Those justices take a liberal view on cases related to social, law and order and business issues, Kyl said.

"He believes in justices that have empathy," said Kyl, speaking at a Federalist Society meeting in Phoenix. The attorneys group promotes conservative legal principles.

Kyl said if Obama goes with empathetic judges who do not base their decisions on the rule of law and legal precedents but instead the factors in each case, he would try to block those picks via filibuster.
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The remaining GOP Senators really need to grow a pair and fight for the party

For Trebor Healey, a 46-year-old gay man from Glendora, Tuesday's election was bittersweet.

He was thrilled that the nation elected its first African American president. But he was disappointed that black voters, traditionally among the most reliably liberal in the state, voted overwhelmingly to ban same-sex marriage.
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Obama helped Proposition 8 pass. Go figure…..

The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.
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You think?

Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson leap-frogged back in front of Republican Tony Strickland on Friday in their nip-and-tuck battle to represent Ventura County's 19th Senate District.

Based on additional mail-in ballot results reported by Santa Barbara and Los Angeles County elections officials, Jackson took a 255-vote lead. With 339,259 votes counted, Jackson now leads by 0.075 percent.

The lead could swing back to Strickland on Monday as Ventura County — which he carried in Election Day balloting — releases its next update on the 63,065 mail-in ballots that have yet to be counted. Ventura County released no additional results Friday.

Strickland is also likely to benefit after an unknown number of late ballots are counted in the small Los Angeles County section of the district.

Among votes already counted, Strickland leads in Los Angeles County by 14.5 percentage points.
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Flap would rther be Strickland than Jackson at this point. Almost all of Santa Barbara County has been counted

Daniel Ginnes carried a banner declaring: "No More Mr Nice Gay." Brian Lindsey held up a sign billing Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, as a "prophet, polygamist, paedophile." Hundreds of others simply chanted: "Mormon scum."

More than 2,000 gay rights protesters marched on a Mormon temple in Los Angeles on Thursday, throwing the church and its followers on to the front line of the battle over California's decision to ban same-sex marriage.

Earlier this week, 52.5 per cent of voters in the supposedly liberal state decided to back Proposition 8, a ballot measure that adds 15 words to the constitution, saying that: "Only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognised in California."
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What about the Catholics, Muslims and Jews who supported Proposition 8 that restored the traditional definition of marriage?

Utah's growing tourism industry and the star-studded Sundance Film Festival are being targeted for a boycott by bloggers, gay rights activists and others seeking to punish the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for its aggressive promotion of California's ban on gay marriage.

It could be a heavy price to pay. Tourism brings in $6 billion a year to Utah, with world-class skiing, spectacular red-rock country and the film festival founded by Robert Redford among popular tourist draws.

Gay rights activist John Aravosis, whose well-trafficked AmericaBlog.com is urging the boycott, is unapologetic about targeting Utah rather than California, where voters defined marriage in the state Constitution as a heterosexual act.
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Utah will survive and there will be counter-boycots against companies like Apple Computer who support gay marriage

After enduring three days of brutal postmortem attacks, Sarah Palin and a group of Republicans who worked with her during the presidential race are pushing back hard against claims that she was a “diva” who helped tank John McCain’s campaign.

"I never asked for anything more than a Diet Dr Pepper once in a while," Palin told reporters as she returned to the governor’s office Friday.

She said she “never forced anybody to buy anything for her” — a reference to the $150,000 in clothes and makeup the RNC purchased.

And, as the Associated Press reports, she lashed out at unidentified GOP sources who told Fox News that she didn’t know that Africa was a continent and couldn’t name the parties to NAFTA.

Palin said it was “cowardly” for people to make those charges anonymously.
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McCain needs to make a statement……still

Las Vegas As she dealt one losing hand after another at Mandalay Bay's $10 blackjack tables early Wednesday evening, Trisha, a chatty dealer from Bloomington, Minnesota, changed the subject from cards to Barack Obama.

"Ohhhh ya," she said in a sing-songy northern plains accent, "me and my girlfriend are going to go to the Inauguration. It's so exciting. Did you watch that speech? Oh my God! Do you think he just made that all up as he went along? Oh my God! He's amazing!"

A businessman from Nashville, in town for a convention, rolled his eyes. "That's how Obama won," he whispered. The dealer did not hear him.

"It's just so exciting," she said, preparing to go on.

"Let's not talk about it," said Michael Goldfarb, taking a long sip from his Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks.
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Post-McCain campaign in Las Vegas. Did Goldfarb not know it was a crap shoot anyway?

In serious conversations among Republicans since their election debacle Tuesday, what name is mentioned most often as the Moses, or Reagan, who could lead them out of the wilderness before 40 years?

To the consternation of many Republicans, it is none other than Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House.

Gingrich is far from a unanimous or even a consensus choice to run for president in 2012, but there is a strong feeling in Republican ranks that he is the only leader of their party who has shown the skill and energy to attempt a comeback quickly.

Even one of his strongest supporters for president in 2012 admits it is a "very risky choice." But Republicans are in a desperate mood after the fiasco of John McCain's seemingly safe candidacy.

Republicans seem chastened by the failure of seeking moderate, independent and even Democratic votes. They are ready to try going back to the "old-time religion."
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If Obama has a good first year it won't be Newt

While the wording is simple, the situation has quickly become complicated. One question: What happens to those same-sex couples who married prior to the ruling? Legal challenges filed on Wednesday raised other questions: Was the referendum process itself lawful? Does the new language conflict with other parts of the state constitution? Separately, should Prop. 8 opponents have filed challenges saying the proposition violated the U.S. Constitution?

Too many conservatives think we've seen all this before — in 1964 and 1974 and 1992 — and that we know how to handle it. Fly, meet ointment: We're not dealing with the same sorts of opponents. These New Alinskyites who are taking over the White House, combined with the most leftist congressional leadership in memory, will not let us play by the same rules under which conservatives recovered from those earlier debacles. They will try to drastically tilt the playing field, seed our side of the field with land mines and, in short, rig the process to make it next to impossible for the political right, or Republicans, to recover. And they are likely to succeed in at least some of these designs.

Saul Alinsky’s radicalism was expressed in his 1971 book, “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals.” In that book, Alinsky said, “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.” Alinsky never saw himself as the devil, but as some radical angel who could bedevil “the Establishment” and force it to change to assuage pressures from community organizations.
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The model for present day gay marriage protests

Reporting from Phoenix — Sarah Palin left the national stage Wednesday, but the controversy over her role on the ticket flared as aides to John McCain disclosed new details about her expensive wardrobe purchases and revealed that a Republican Party lawyer would be dispatched to Alaska to inventory and retrieve the clothes still in her possession.
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John McCain must take the initiative and defend Sarah Palin.Schmidt, Davis and Wallace will NEVER work again for a national GOP campaign. This is for sure.

Would these differences potentially impact a conversion statute? They might, though any impact would be minimal.

For instance, consider a hypothetical couple who married during the interim period, with one of the two being 16 or 17 years old and marrying with parent or guardian permission. That couple could legally marry, but they would not be eligible for a registered domestic partnership under the statute as now written. The same would apply to a couple who has never cohabited.

However, any conversion statute of the kind that Eugene suggests could simply provide an exception for any such cases. So these differences, while real, would likely have only minimal impact on any statutory conversion plan of the sort that Eugene has suggested.
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Very slight difference beetween domestic partnership and traditional marriage.

What Will Happen to California Same-Sex Marriages?
California voters seem to have enacted Prop. 8, a constitutional amendment that states, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." What happens to all the same-sex marriages that have already taken place? (Let's assume for now that the amendment is upheld as constitutional, at least as to future marriages — something that I think is quite likely.)
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Difficult to predict the California supreme Court but Professor Volokh lists the options