Year: 2008

Anti-Gay Activists Outraising Marriage Supporters in California

Jon Ponder

Tyne Daly, Amy Brenneman, Christine Lahti, Sally Kirkland and other stars speak in favor of keeping marriage legal in California

Anti-gay advocates of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative to amend the California Constitution to make marriage illegal for gay men and women, are winning the funding race:

The campaigns for and against Proposition 8 have raised a combined $30 million, with donations given in support of the proposed ban on gay marriage running considerably ahead of those to the opposition.

So far, the main group promoting the Constitutional amendment, which would overturn a recent California Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage, has raised $17.8 million. The main No-on-8 campaign has raised $12.4 million.

While much of the anti-gay funding comes from activists outside the state, a new Field poll shows that opposition to Prop 8 is growing, as support among California residents for keeping marriage legal increases:

Fifty-five percent of voters indicated they would say no to the proposed amendment, which would make same-sex marriage illegal in California. That is up from 51 percent opposing the measure, Proposition 8, in a previous poll conducted in July. In the sampling of more than 800 likely voters, only 38 percent said they would support the ban, down from 42 percent nearly three months ago.

“Initiatives that are trailing, either at the initial measurement or in subsequent measures, rarely pass,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll, also noting that opinions on issues like same-sex marriage tend not to fluctuate dramatically. “History is working against passage.”

Two of the state’s highest profile residents, Brad Pitt and Stephen Speilberg, along with his wife Kate Capshaw, have each donated $100,000 to groups supporting marriage in the past few days. Also, stars of the one-hour drama, “Judging Amy,” which ran from 1999 to 2005, have participated in a web ad (see above) voicing support for marriage rights. “Amy” stars Amy Brenneman, Tyne Daly and openly gay Jillian Armenante and her wife are featured in the ad, along with Christine Lahti, Camryn Manheim, Sally Kirkland and others in speaking out against Prop 8.

A considerable amount of contributions from homophobes has come from Mormons. However, one very high profile ex-LDSer recently donated $1 million to the fight to keep marriage legal:

[…]

Poll: The Early Line — Diageo/Hotline

Buck Banks

This is a new daily poll from Hotline and Diageo that provides a snapshot of the presidential race.

Obama/Biden 47%
McCain/Palin 43%
Undec 9%

– Obama/Biden lead 45-42% among RVs in the battleground states of CO, MI, NH, NM, FL, OH, PA, VA, WI and NV.

– Obama/Biden now lead Inds by just 3%; they led Inds by 10% in yesterday’s release.

– McCain/Palin lead GOPers 88-7%, but trail Dems 86-8%.

– Some new record lows and highs in the tracking poll: just 12% believe the U.S. is headed in the right direction, while 56% say the economy is the top issue facing the nation.

– For the second consecutive day, Obama leads McCain by 1% on the issue of who’d do a better job handling the economy, 43-42%.

Today’s poll, conducted 9/20-22 by FD, surveyed 906 RVs and has a margin of error of +/- 3.3%.

Is It Time to Just Say No to Bailouts?

Trish

Originally, the Treasury-written bailout package was going to include “troubled assets” from the mortgage meltdown, presumably to keep people in their homes. Now they’re tossing in SUVs and credit card debt that people would just as soon not pay too.

I like Chris Dodd but it’s hard to ignore the fact that as chair of the Senate Banking Committee, he received $516,000 this year from the banking industry

That’s right, Republican-Americans and all you other idiots who bought a McMansion with no money down and a five-year balloon, then parked your Lincoln Navigator and Nissan Armada outside while Best Buy delivered the home theater system you charged…you can walk away from all those bad decisions and the idiots who sold you that crap can too. No one’s out anything, unless you count the next few generations of Americans including my 10-year-old niece.

And best of all, we’ll be giving the Treasury, another wing of the executive branch, complete freedom to blow our future wealth with no oversight whatsoever. That will come as a relief to all those CEOs who worried that unlike McCain advisor Carly Fiorina —who was fired from Hewlett-Packard but took her $21 million golden parachute with her anyway — they might actually be held accountable for their poor performance.

Here’s the exact wording of the proposed legislation:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Kind of has the ring of Dick Cheney, doesn’t it?

Treasury Secretary Henry “Hank” Paulson, Senate Banking Committee Chair Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) appeared on ABC’s This Week to tell us that we must act and act now to avert devastation and calamity. The only problem was no one could exactly explain what the impending doom we might avert looks like.

[…]

CNN Poll: Race Could Be a Factor — You Think?

Buck Banks

cnn.jpgFrom the Bleedin’ Obvious File comes this nugget of hard-won truth from CNN: a recent poll “suggests” that race could be a “factor” in the presidential election. Well, duh. It wouldn’t, of course, be a factor if one of the candidates wasn’t BLACK.

Here’s the blather:

A new study that surveyed racial attitudes suggests that racial prejudices could tip the balance in the upcoming presidential election.

If there were no racial prejudice among voters, Sen. Barack Obama would receive about 6 percentage points more support, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll, designed in partnership with Stanford University.

The results suggest that 40 percent of white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, including more than a third of white Democrats and independents. A small percentage of voters — 2.5 percent of those surveyed — said they may turn away from Obama because of his race.

I don’t know what the bright lights at CNN are thinking. Oh, I know, they’re racists! Check out this next bit:

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey also indicates that race could play a big role in November. Asked if race would be a factor in their vote, 37 percent of respondents said yes. But of that group, many are Republicans who are not likely to vote for any Democrat, and some are Democrats who may vote for Obama because of his race.

OK, now the respondents are asked if race “would be a factor” in their vote. But some of the 37 percent — we don’t know how many — who said yes are actually racist Republicans who wouldn’t vote for Obama if he were Alan Keyes, right? And what about the racist Democrats who, CNN suggests, would vote for Obama because he’s black, even if he were a Nazi? Decoding, decoding, decoding ….

Of the 8 percent of Democrats who told CNN they plan to vote for Obama’s GOP rival, Sen. John McCain, half said race was a factor.

I suppose the other 4 percent are Hillaryites who would vote for Obama if he were a black woman. CNN carries on:

Experts point out that it’s hard to quantify racial prejudice because many people who hold prejudices are not going to admit to it.

“The hardest thing in the world for pollsters to poll for, with the exception of sexual behavior, is racial attitudes and how it affects behavior,” said Walter Shapiro, Washington bureau chief for Salon.com. Shapiro said while people might say things differently off the record, racial issues cannot easily be quantified.

Easy: That’s because racists are liars. They know that being a racist is wrong, and they have a deep-rooted shame over their feelings of racial hatred toward blacks, so, in order to protect their reputation, they lie on an anonymous survey to cover up their racism. Makes sense to me.

The pollsters for the AP/Yahoo survey used techniques that they thought would be more likely to lead to honest results — such as conducting the poll online and using subtle methods and formulas to calculate racial attitudes.

I think this is how a subtle question from the survey — formulated to get at those deep-seated racial hatreds — might have read:

I will not vote for Barack Obama for president because:
a) He’s black
b) He’s a Muslim
c) He’s a Democrat
d) He’s a liberal
e) All of the above

If you answered E, it means that “race is a factor.”

That study also suggests that the number of people who may turn away from Obama because of his race could be larger than what the margin of victory was in the 2004 election.

What are we supposed to do with that chestnut? The bigots at CNN just want to sew the seeds of discord, obviously. I mean, they don’t even tell us what that margin of victory was, so it implies that it was HUGE. It was 2.4 percent.

Poll: Bush Approval at 19% – Can We Impeach Him Now?

Jon Ponder

Among other things, this new poll shows that 19 percent of Americans are functionally brain-dead:

A new poll from American Research Group shows that zero percent of Americans believe the economy is improving (h/t Think Progress). The poll also measured President Bush’s approval rating at 19 percent.

Bush’s 11-point drop from the previous poll can be attributed to the recent Wall Street bailouts that have clarified the economic situation for the voters. With Bush’s last major act as President likely to be the negotiation of a massive buyout of which taxpayers will bear the brunt, even Bush’s most ardent supporters have written off the remainder of his presidency.

Early on we were told that Dems in Congress would not impeach Bush over his war lies, CIA agent betrayals, illegal torturing and spying or anything else short of tossing babies into wood chippers in the Rose Garden because it might cause a backlash. Now that he’s at 19 percent, which is statistically zero in our society, there’s little or no chance he could rebound, but, of course, the excuse is, it’s too late.

The Constitution does not require impeachments to be long drawn out affairs, but, at this point, Bush’s lawyers probably could stall the process out until January. Of course, the Constitution also does not specifically say the impeached pol must still be in office.

But this ignores the question of justice and accountability. Growing old in disgrace, as Richard Nixon did, is not punishment enough to stop some future unscrupulous president from taking Bush’s lawlessness even further.

A case could be made that if Nixon had spent a few months in prison in the 1970s, Dick Cheney, George Bush and their crew would not have felt emboldened to shred the Constitution today.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk. The world is growing more complex — and dangerous — with each passing hour, and our position within it growing more precarious. Should she become president, Palin seems capable of enacting policies so detached from the common interests of humanity, and from empirical reality, as to unite the entire world against us. When asked why she is qualified to shoulder more responsibility than any person has held in human history, Palin cites her refusal to hesitate. “You can’t blink,” she told [reporter Charles] Gibson repeatedly, as though this were a primordial truth of wise governance. Let us hope that a President Palin would blink, again and again, while more thoughtful people decide the fate of civilization.

— Sam Harris in Newsweek; read the entire column here

Cars: McCains, 13; Obamas, 1

Trish

Sometimes the differences between political candidates are nuanced. Sometimes they are stark. The number of cars owned by John and Cindy McCain versus the number owned by Barack and Michelle Obama fits the latter category.

Only the Cadillac is registered in the candidate’s name. Cindy McCain’s name is on 11 vehicles

…based on public vehicle-registration records, here’s the score. John and Cindy McCain: 13. Barack and Michelle Obama: one.

One vehicle in the McCain fleet has caused a small flap. United Auto Workers president Ron Gettelfinger, an Obama backer, accused McCain this month of “flip-flopping” on who bought daughter Meghan’s foreign-made Toyota Prius. McCain said last year that he bought it, but then told a Detroit TV station on Sept. 7 that Meghan “bought it, I believe, herself.”

McCain’s personal ride, a 2004 Cadillac CTS, is no gas sipper…

Only the Cadillac is registered in the candidate’s name. Cindy McCain’s name is on 11 vehicles, though not the one she actually drives. That car, a Lexus, is registered to her family’s beer-distributor business and is outfitted with personalized plates that read MS BUD.

Note her tag doesn’t say, “MRS BUD.” Interesting.

So what do Barack and Michelle drive? A 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid. With no vanity plates.