links for 2008-10-30

According to legal records on file with the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston, Massachusetts in the case Parker v. Hurley (514 F.3d 87 (1st Cir.2008)), some of the very organizations who are funding and driving the No on 8 campaign have argued vociferously that gay marriage should be taught in the public schools under the guise of “diversity,” and any attempt to prohibit such instruction – or to permit parents to opt their children out of it – must be stopped.

The following are statements filed in amicus curiae briefs in Parker v. Hurley. The statements show how organizations leading the No on 8 campaign are lying to California voters when they say gay marriage will not be taught in California public schools.
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More of the consequences should Propositon 8 fail at the California polls.

Whether disapproving churches could be forced to choose between providing services to gay couples or losing their tax-exempt status is one of the questions swirling around Proposition 8, the Nov. 4 ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriage.
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Flap bets should Proposition 8 fail at the polls this consequence will be REAL in short order.

Tens of thousands of people are expected to gather at Qualcomm Stadium on Saturday to pray for the passage of Proposition 8, the ballot measure that seeks to ban same-sex marriage in California, it was reported Thursday.

Event organizer Lou Engle told The San Diego Union-Tribune that the event scheduled for Saturday, dubbed TheCall, will last from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and will include fasting, in addition to prayer.

Engle said the event is not meant to make a political statement but prayers will go out to God "to influence the outcome of the election," the newspaper reported.
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Note tens of thousands of voters.

John McCain's campaign is looking for a scapegoat. It is looking for someone to blame if McCain loses on Tuesday.

And it has decided on Sarah Palin.

In recent days, a McCain “adviser” told Dana Bash of CNN: “She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone.”

Imagine not taking advice from the geniuses at the McCain campaign. What could Palin be thinking?

Also, a “top McCain adviser” told Mike Allen of Politico that Palin is “a whack job.”

Maybe she is. But who chose to put this “whack job” on the ticket? Wasn’t it John McCain? And wasn’t it his first presidential-level decision?
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John McCain has nobody to blame but himself.He rolled the dice with Sarah Palin and energized his base but squandered her popularity by over-managing her.
Was she experienced? Not so much but McCain could have worked around the issue and by running a good campaign – much like Bush 1 did with Dan Quayle. McCain can pathetically scapegoat Palin if he wants but Schmidt, Davis et al have lost this race.

But 40% of U.S. voters say they are less likely to vote for a candidate on the basis of a Hollywood star’s endorsement, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Only four percent (4%) say a star’s endorsement makes them more likely to vote for a candidate, while 55% say it has no impact on them at all.

One-third of voters (33%) say they have refused to watch a movie because of an actor’s political views, although 62% say that’s not the case for them.
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The backlash from the GOP voters upon Hollywood has not even begun. Flap bets the next election cycle the celebs will take a pass on overt endorsements.

Who are these "wrong advisers" who "captured" Bush? I think it safe to say that Fukuyama means "Advisers Who Are Not Francis Fukuyama." On the other hand, Fukuyama did not hesitate to call for acts of war against Iraq in 1998, when he signed a letter to President Clinton urging him to implement "a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power."

Fukuyama's attack on Sarah Palin is unjust, essentially making Palin the scapegoat of his disillusionment with Bush. But alas, before the "unnecessary war" started — as the result of the ill-informed president being advised by Advisers Who Are Not Francis Fukuyama — Fukuyama was busy scapegoating conservative and libertarian opponents of the war as "unrealitistic" and "isolationist."
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The scapegoating of Sarah Palin continues

From the invasion of Iraq to the selection of Sarah Palin, carelessness has characterized recent episodes of faux conservatism. Tuesday's probable repudiation of the Republican Party will punish characteristics displayed in the campaign's closing days.

Some polls show that Palin has become an even heavier weight in John McCain's saddle than his association with George W. Bush. Did McCain, who seems to think that Palin's never having attended a "Georgetown cocktail party" is sufficient qualification for the vice presidency, lift an eyebrow when she said that vice presidents "are in charge of the United States Senate"?
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George Will bashes McCain and Palin in a last minute plea to renew his conservative elitism and to be invited to the White House for the next 8 years.
For too many years, Will and Noonan have lost their way among conservative grass root politics. They have lived in NY and Washington too long.

A state agency has revealed that its checks of computer systems for potential information on "Joe the Plumber" were more extensive than it first acknowledged.

Helen Jones-Kelley, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, disclosed today that computer inquiries on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher were not restricted to a child-support system.

The agency also checked Wurzelbacher in its computer systems to determine whether he was receiving welfare assistance or owed unemployment compensation taxes, she wrote.

Jones-Kelley made the revelations in a letter to Ohio Senate President Bill M. Harris, R-Ashland, who demanded answers on why state officials checked out Wurzelbacher.

Harris called the multiple records checks "questionable" and said he awaits more answers. "It's kind of like Big Brother is looking in your pocket," he said.
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Big Brother? – just wait until the Obama Administration, brother.

A California couple who hung a controversial effigy of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin from a noose off the side of their house have removed the display under pressure from city officials.
ChadMichael Morrisette, the man who constructed the mannequin as part of a Halloween display, told The Times that he decided to remove the Palin mannequin on Wednesday after meeting with West Hollywood Mayor Jeffrey Prang. Originally he'd vowed to keep the display up until Saturday.

Earlier in the day, about half a dozen of Morrisette's neighbors had protested the display and tried to block it from the view of passing motorists, according to Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
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Did they take it down because of California Proposition 8 and the attention it was bringing to West Hollywood's Gay Carnaval on Friday.
Too late, morons.

Barack Obama has lived one version of the American Dream that has taken him to the steps of the White House. But a few miles from where the Democratic presidential candidate studied at Harvard, his Kenyan aunt and uncle, immigrants living in modest
circumstances in Boston, have a contrasting American story.

Zeituni Onyango, the aunt so affectionately described in Mr Obama’s best-selling memoir Dreams from My Father, lives in a disabled-access flat on a rundown public housing estate in South Boston.
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Nice and a contributor as well.Hey Barry how about sharing the wealth for your own family…

"This associate, Rashid Khalidi, he — in addition being a political ally of Barack Obama — is a former spokesperson for Palestinian Liberation Organization," Palin continued, brushing aside Khalidi's denial that he was ever a PLO spokesman. "The twist here is there's a videotape of a party for this person. A celebration of him. Barack was there. Some very derogatory things were said there of Israel and America's support for that great nation. Among other things, Israel was described there as the perpetrator of terrorism rather than the victim. What we don't know is how Barack Obama responded to these slurs on a country that he professes to support, and the reason we don't know is the newspaper that has this tape, the Los Angeles Times, refuses to release it." Then, the Alaska governor openly mocked the L.A. Times as pandering to Obama (the paper has said it cannot release the tape because it received it from a source on condition that it not be published and intends to honor that com

Saw a clip from the tape. Reason we can't release it is because statements Obama said to rile audience up during toast. He congratulates Khalidi for his work saying "Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine" plus there's been "genocide against the Palestinian people by Israelis."

It would be really controversial if it got out. Tha's why they will not even let a transcript get out.
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Will someone at the LA Times sneek the video out?

It would have been nice to ask that question of Biden himself, but a campaign spokesman told me the Senator was suffering from a cold that made it a strain to give interviews. (I didn't glean evidence of any symptoms during the four speeches that I watched him give over two days.) The spokesman also said Biden would consider it "presumptuous" to talk about how he would perform the job for which he is running. Or maybe it simply wasn't in the script.
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Hiding the GAFFE machine……

The momentum has shifted. National media and politicos are paying attention. Veterans are standing up against the troop-slandering incumbent. The polls are tightening. (A new one posted at GrassrootsPA shows a virtual dead heat: MURTHA 45.5% RUSSELL 43.7%.)

And John Murtha is squealing like the pig he is.

Here he is cursing his head off and attacking Russell as a carpetbagger. House Democrats have pitched in funds to try and bail him out of his self-created mess.
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So goes Murtha may go McCain in Pennsylvania.

Despite a personal plea from the auxiliary bishop of San Diego and a large demonstration by supporters of traditional marriage outside their chambers, the San Diego City Council voted on Monday afternoon to oppose Proposition 8, which would outlaw same-sex marriages in California.
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Shoulkd California Proposition 8 fail, the Homosexual lobby will begin the push for more forced relgious re-education.
Watch Catholic services end adoption services in California.

Patrick Ruffini echoes the theme of this post — that for what's supposed to be a terrible cycle for Republicans, they're poised to knock off some Democratic incumbents, something they couldn't do at all in 2006 — and points to another House races where the GOP is overperforming. In Georgia, Democratic Congressman Bobby Scott is only up by 5 percent, and is way below 50 percent.

A couple readers responded to yesterday's post by pointing to anecdotal evidence that their Democratic congressman is in trouble. In most cases, I'll believe it when I see it, but it's interesting that we're being told that it's a Democratic wave election, but the wave isn't showing up in certain districts — and these are districts in swing states like Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Florida.

Ruffini is right — "If you're a no name challenger who gets 40 to 45 percent next Tuesday, you're in excellent position to come back in 2010."
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Indeed GOP losses have started to bottom out in this cycle.