Erick Erickson's Blog, page 48

The Moral President #EERS

It’s that time again. We’re going to focus on the moral President and more.

You can listen live tonight on the WSB live stream and call in at 1-800-WSB-TALK.

Consider this an open thread.

On Fairness & Moral Cases

Another day, another socialist takes to the New York Times to denounce capitalism. With his criticism — he is a professional critic, which is a job no socialist society would really see value in except as an agenda of propaganda, but he thrives in the capitalist society he condemns — he premises it on some sort of morality. He mocks Christians for embracing capitalism with no understanding of Christianity or even a real understanding of capitalism.

But his critique is filled with the usual, and totally unoriginal leftist pablum about the evils of profit motive, etc. while ignoring arms length transactions, how the free market, unlike any other economic system, has elevated so many out of poverty, etc.

Along the way, we keep hearing something from these leftists, whether it be Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi, or the Hollywood crowd is that the rich need to “give back” and “pay their fair share.”

They’re just as happy to quote a secular philosopher as they are the Bible. Elizabeth Warren famously said that the factory owner wants us to ignore the people who built the roads or ran the phone lines, etc. She, however, wants to ignore the factory owner’s idea, success, and hiring record — providing jobs to people to build his product.

But all of that misses the larger point.

Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi, etc. have turned the federal tax code into a moral code and designated themselves the agents of moral fairness. They will be the arbiters of what is and is not fair. The free market will not. The collective will of the American people, exercising choice in a free market, will not. They will.

They will quote the Bible as justification for gay rights, higher taxes, government assistance to the poor, but they won’t actually follow the Bible. That moral code only has the Creator, his Son, Moses, Elijah, and many others willing to die for their beliefs.

Instead, Barack Obama would have us reject that moral code — while quoting from it to justify his actions — and instead hand us over to the tax code as a moral code. It’s agents? The President and Congress.

That’s right friends, Barack Obama has decided that he, a former coke head who once supported infanticide and got his political start in the home of a domestic terrorist, should be the arbiter of morality. But he is not stopping there. He wants Congress to be the agent of morality in writing the tax code.

So instead of God and the Son of God, our new agents of morality will be a group of present or former drunks, adulterers, tax cheats, pedophiles, extortionists, liars, and the like. They will decide what is and is not fair. And if you don’t like it, you must be a sinner in need of punishment by the Archangel IRS.

The tax code should not be about either political party’s morality. It should be about funding the federal government. But if the left wants to make it about morality, they should have a rational answer for why we allow Congress to be the agent of morality in the tax code? Because Congress is democratically elected? Well then I guess they are perfectly fine with 32 states banning gay marriage. After all, Democracy!

It truly says something about the hubris of Barack Obama that he could tell us we are our brother’s keeper when his brother lives in a shack in Africa. Practice what you preach, Barry O!.

Morning Briefing for May 14, 2012

RedState Morning Briefing

May 14, 2012

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. What the Mainstream Media Isn’t Reporting About Solyndra

2. Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and its Shameless Cover-Up

3. The Most Ludicrous Graph of the Month

4. Q&A with with Steve Scalise on Retransmission Consent; Snyder backs Marketplace Fairness Act; Lieberman-Collins gets opposition

5. Florida investigation reveals 180,000 non-citizens may be registered to vote

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1. What the Mainstream Media Isn’t Reporting About Solyndra

There are a number of facts surrounding the Solyndra story that don’t seem to be getting any attention. A significant part of the public outrage regarding the bankrupt company isn’t centered on their failed business model or external factors; it’s the millions of taxpayer dollars that the Obama Administration lost on Solyndra after the business was doomed.

After Solyndra defaulted and they knew Solyndra was in real financial trouble, Secretary Steven Chu’s Department of Energy (DOE) staff made a decision by December 10, 2010, to subordinate $75 million of taxpayer money so more private capital could be injected into Solyndra. Subordination means that outside private investors are given superiority over taxpayers in the event of bankruptcy. At that point, $440 million of the $535 million loan guarantee already had been pumped into the company.

By law Secretary Chu wasn’t allowed to subordinate the taxpayers’ money. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 specifically states that the loan guarantee “shall be subject to the condition that the obligation is not subordinate to other financing.” It was the clear intention of Congress that taxpayers should be reimbursed first.

For a company that had already been declared in default and had a collapsed business model because the Chinese were selling their solar panels for less, one might question the sanity of private investors who gambled on Solyndra in December of 2010. Were they after Solyndra’s intellectual property (IP) rights? As a private investor and the dominant financier, could Argonaut’s support of President Obama have helped them secure Solyndra’s IP assets?

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and its Shameless Cover-Up

IMAGINE A GOVERNMENT agency designed for the specific purpose of investigating and preventing the unlawful use, manufacture, and possession of firearms. Now imagine this agency engaging in an operation that not only goes against that purpose, but actually seeks to accomplish the opposite, by actively encouraging the sale of firearms to people whose ties to organized crime and gun violence are well known– and that this operation involves sending firearms across an international border into a country that this agency, and the government of which it is a part, purposely failed to warn, inform, or request permission from.

That, in a nutshell, is the Obama administration’s “Fast and Furious” program, whose development, bloody results, and ongoing cover–up are comprehensively documented and presented by investigative journalist Katie Pavlich in her new book, Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and its Shameless Cover–Up (Regnery, 2012). In the book’s ten chapters and 222 pages (of which nearly sixty are appendices and meticulously cited endnotes), Pavlich makes the case that the Obama administration’s “gunwalking” operation “wasn’t a ‘botched’ program, [but] a calculated and lethal decision” by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, with the full knowledge and assent of the Departments of Justice and of Homeland Security, “to purposely place thousands of guns into the hands of ruthless criminals” (p. 162).

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. The Most Ludicrous Graph of the Month

Obama’s energy policies are a key vulnerability in the November elections, which has his staff scrambling to make it look like he’s actually done something to support domestic energy production. Since neither he nor anyone in his Administration knows the first thing about oil and gas, that can lead to some pretty ridiculous claims.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. Q&A with with Steve Scalise on Retransmission Consent; Snyder backs Marketplace Fairness Act; Lieberman-Collins gets opposition

I know many RedState readers are big fans of Jim DeMint, so in my coverage of the Retransmission Consent debate, I’ve focused on him. However he’s not the whole story. This Congress, due to the TEA party-driven Republican majority, it’s been the House where our major regulatory reform successes have happened. And it’s Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana and Bobby Jindal’s successor in the House, who is the champion of the Next Generation TV Marketplace Act there.

However I know that there have been skeptics on this reform, so I was fortunately able to snag some of the Congressman’s time, and ask him a few questions about the proposed reforms.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. Florida investigation reveals 180,000 non-citizens may be registered to vote

Florida officials have discovered that 180,000 registered voters may be non-citizens.

A CBS4/Miami Herald analysis of information supplied by Miami-Dade shows a large number of the potential non-citizens voters cast ballots in the past — including the 2000 election, when the presidency was decided by just over 500 votes.

According to Deputy Supervisor of Elections Christina White, there are a “lot of non-citizens on our registration rolls.”

Florida’s Division of Elections is checking the citizenship of voters by comparing drivers license records, which show whether a licensed driver is also a U.S. citizen.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

When you’re done with the briefing, don’t forget to check out Caleb’s daily links from around the web.

Where Is The Balance?

In the past week, I’ve been called a bigot, a hater, had people wish I died, and had people wish Christians had died, been rounded up and killed, or experienced their own personal holocaust.

All this came from proponents of gay marriage. The media won’t cover most of this. The media sees most stories as victims versus victimizers and those who support gay marriage are the victims. They get the positive media coverage.

In reality, though, throughout this week I’ve seen a number of Christians engaged in as much hate filled rhetoric as gay marriage proponents, including the pastor in North Carolina who encouraged parents to beat up their gay acting sons.

As a Christian, I cannot support gay marriage, nor can I accept practicing homosexuality as anything but a sin. At the same time, there are a lot of Christians out there who seem convinced they aren’t sinners. In fact, we are all sinners and as I have matured in my faith, I have a harder and harder time understanding how so many Christians can be so tolerant of so much sin, but treat homosexuality as some sin set apart from all other sins making it a worse sin than, for example, adultery.

This is a political blog and I try to leave my theological ramblings for special occasions, but I think this needs to be said.Christianity is a religion premised on God’s love. We are to hate sin, but we are to love sinners. For non-Christians, that may make them rage about Christian hypocrisy, but it should not. I have gay friends. They all know where I stand on this issue. But they also know that I know that I too am a sinner. For me to love myself and hate them would just be sin on top of sin. We all, like sheep, have gone astray and I am no better than they are nor they better than me.

Hearing a pastor encourage parents to commit violence on their sons because they may be gay is offensive to me. Hearing Christians refer to gays with slurs is offensive. At the same time, hearing gay rights proponents wish Christians would die is equally offensive. Hearing gay rights proponents derisively call a Christian a bigot for standing on principle is offensive.

What many people tend to forget is that Christianity is not a religion premised on some of us getting to heaven and others not. Christianity is actually a religion premised on not one single person getting to Heaven. All of us are on the express train to hell. All of us.

I no more belong in Heaven than the Pope or Billy Graham and they no more belong in Heaven than me. None of us belong there.

We get there by God’s own grace given through our saving faith in Christ. Believing in Christ gets us a “get out of jail free” card, but that card does not mean we don’t belong in jail.

Those of us who are going to Heaven view ourselves as passing through this place. But we have an obligation to fight for what we believe in and to stand up for our values. We know not just that society, over several thousand years, worked out that marriage between a man and woman is the best organization for society and we should not change that just because some people think it would make them happy or be fair.

We also, as Christians, know that marriage is an institution set up by God where man and woman become one being designed to glorify God. That’s why we can’t support changing marriage’s definition.

But as I defend marriage as it exists, and recognize that many opponents on this issue will see anything Christians say and do as examples of bigotry and hate, we Christians should reflect our values with love of our fellow sinners, not condoning violence.

Liberals view the Golden Rule as they do the Commerce Clause — a theological blank slip to justify any action they want as the commerce clause is a constitutional blank slip to do whatever they want legally.

Evangelical Christians should remember the Golden Rule and treat others with the love and respect we wish to be shown. But we should also know the limits of application for the Golden Rule and remember that sometimes loving others means saying no.

The balance in an increasingly secular world is difficult for Christians to maintain. As the world comes down on our values, it is easy to react back with hostility. But as I noted on twitter the other day, for all the people calling me a bigot and saying I am out of step with the advance of history, my response is that I am not concerned about being on the right side of history. I am concerned about whose side I am on, on the last day of history.

There will be a last day. And though I may lose in this lifetime, on the last day Christ wins and I through him.

There are real rights and real wrongs and we should not be so eager to accommodate this world as to be silent on right and wrong. But we should not be so eager to show our separation from this world by pouring out contempt for others who, like ourselves, have fallen short of the glory of God.

The balance is not easy, but let’s try not to go wobbly.

Morning Briefing for May 11, 2012

RedState Morning Briefing

May 11, 2012

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. Washington Post Story On Romney Begins To Unravel

2. At Emory University, Darwin’s Bullies Smear Commencement Speaker, Dr. Ben Carson of Johns Hopkins

3. Obama’s new Ohio ad: just making stuff up at this point.

4. State Spending Not The Path to Growth

5. Where Is The Balance?

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1. Washington Post Story On Romney Begins To Unravel

So yesterday morning the Washington Post runs a story detailing what kind of a jerk Mitt Romney was in high school. This is a surprise, right? A high school kid being a jerk. This has never ever happened before. Why, you might well ask, would the Washington Post devote valuable time and space to writing about this event? And why, you might well follow up, is this worth posting about when everyone should be talking about the environment?

The answer is easy. It builds a meme and it translates Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage from a liability into a perceived strength.

[Editorial Note: The Washington Post, overnight, changed the story without noting any changes to the story]

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. At Emory University, Darwin’s Bullies Smear Commencement Speaker, Dr. Ben Carson of Johns Hopkins

The serious problem of bullying in junior high and high school has received some overdue attention lately. Lee Hirsch’s documentary Bully is in theaters and highly recommended.

But don’t think that bullying in academic settings is exclusively a phenomenon of adolescence. Adults also bully adults. That’s what is happening now at Emory University in Atlanta.

You can be a brilliant, innovative pediatric neurosurgeon at a sky-scraping top medical school, in addition to being a generous philanthropist with an inspirational up-from-dire-poverty personal story, plus a Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, and a best-selling writer whose memoir was turned into a TV movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr.

But in the hands of academic bullies, if you once shared your critical thoughts on evolutionary science and its moral implications — well, everything else about you suddenly dwindles to very little.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. Obama’s new Ohio ad: just making stuff up at this point.

Let me present to you the amazing amount of scrutiny that apparently needs to go into a Barack Obama campaign ad, just to understand what it actually means.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. State Spending Not The Path to Growth

I wanted to bring to your attention a short report released by The Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions (full disclosure: I am the president) focused on state spending burdens and their connection, or lack thereof, to economic growth.

Adam Schwiebert, The Diehl Family Fellow at the Buckeye Institute, put together a short policy brief that uses a measurement know as “state spending burden” – comparing combined state and local government spending as a percentage of private sector Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – to look at the connection between spending and growth. The resulting chart, shown below, highlights that Ohio has a higher level of spending than growth states like Texas, South Dakota and Colorado.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. Where Is The Balance?

In the past week, I’ve been called a bigot, a hater, had people wish I died, and had people wish Christians had died, been rounded up and killed, or experienced their own personal holocaust.

All this came from proponents of gay marriage. The media won’t cover most of this. The media sees most stories as victims versus victimizers and those who support gay marriage are the victims. They get the positive media coverage.

In reality, though, throughout this week I’ve seen a number of Christians engaged in as much hate filled rhetoric as gay marriage proponents, including the pastor in North Carolina who encouraged parents to beat up their gay acting sons.

As a Christian, I cannot support gay marriage, nor can I accept practicing homosexuality as anything but a sin. At the same time, there are a lot of Christians out there who seem convinced they aren’t sinners. In fact, we are all sinners and as I have matured in my faith, I have a harder and harder time understanding how so many Christians can be so tolerant of so much sin, but treat homosexuality as some sin set apart from all other sins making it a worse sin than, for example, adultery.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

Communists, Cop-Killers, and Cocaine: Why the Washington Post Focuses on Romney Instead

Now this is just silly. The Washington Post can’t be bothered to worry about Barack Obama’s college years, college transcripts, communist friends, cocaine use, or cop-killing plotters in whose living room he first launched his major political career, but they can get in the really way back machine to 1965 and Mitt Romney’s high school years.

Mitt Romney cut a hippy’s hair at his preparatory high school. A day after Barack Obama caved on gay marriage, the Washington Post “coincidentally” says Mitt Romney cut the hair of a boy who “was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality.”

Let’s leave out the fact that the kid who got his haircut was subsequently thrown out of school for smoking one cigarette, but we’re to believe that the assailants of his hair, witnessed by many, were ignored. Oh, and the guy who got is hair cut never, ever, ever mentioned it, including to family, and died in 2004 so it can’t be verified. But a handful of students who now probably support Barack Obama have a crystal clear memory of events from 50 years ago. The people who were adults at the time of the incident and still alive have no memory of it, but remember Romney and said he was never a disciplinary problem.

After four years of ignoring Barack Obama’s bullying of religious groups and others from inside the White House, it’s fair game to go after Mitt Romney as a supposed high school bully.

I guess we won’t hear the left whining any more when we mention Barack Obama eating a dog since, as they are quick to point out, he was a kid when it happened.

We have now had more in depth examination of Mitt Romney by the Gang of 500 than of Barack Obama.

We do not really know much about Barack Obama’s constituent record in the Illinois Legislature.

We still don’t know his college transcripts.

We still don’t know what exactly he did for ACORN in his community organizing time.

We still don’t know all the details about the depth of the cocaine use Barack Obama admitted to in his book. Likewise, we know very little about his drug use in high school beyond just a few lines of reporting from 2007.

We know very little, outside of his own autobiographical spin, about how he overcame his rage at white people — something he wrote about, but again, as a politician in an autobiography.

We still don’t know about just how many communists Barack Obama chose to surround himself with.

We still know very little about Barack Obama’s ties to Bill Ayers and the media sure hates to talk about Barack Obama getting his major political start in Bill Ayers’ living room.

But the press is perfectly happy to go back several decades to tell us every salacious detail about Mitt Romney the teenager.

This reminds me of 1992 all over again. The George H. W. Bush team wanted to go focus on Bill Clinton the draft dodger from Vietnam because they couldn’t fight on the economy. Unlike 1992, Barack Obama has the media doing it for him.

The Media and Barack Obama’s Pauline Kael Moment on Gay Marriage

If you listen to Barack Obama’s statement to ABC News yesterday you’ll hear something not reflected in all the transcripts that went out yesterday. He said his administration gave up the legal fight to defend the Defense Against Marriage Act. It’s actually the Defense Of Marriage Act.

Obama claimed DOMA made marriage a federal issue and it should be a state issue. That’s a gross mischaracterization of DOMA, but for now that’s besides the point. Two days after major gay donors said they’d withhold funding from his campaign and one day before his swank $40,000.00 a person fundraiser with George Clooney, Barack Obama publicly reversed course on gay marriage. The Washington Free Beacon’s headline says it all: Gay For Pay.

Obama looks weak and under duress. He looks weak because he would not come out before the North Carolina vote and under duress because he only did so now as his donors held his campaign hostage. Now President Obama might as well be called President Dick Cheney. In addition to GTMO still in use and warrantless wiretaps still being deployed, Obama comes out in favor of the states’ individually deciding the issue while supporting it himself. It’s the gay marriage equivalent of being personally pro-life, but supporting a person’s right to choose. It is also, like GTMO and warrentless wiretaps, Dick Cheney’s position — a position the much maligned former Vice President held even after Obama went from being for gay marriage, to against gay marriage, to evolving on gay marriage.

But there is another angle to this as well.

Barack Obama and the Washington Press Corps, aligned perfectly on this issue, are oblivious to one overwhelming data point.

Consider National Journal’s Hotline from the other day:

Pro-marriage activists have considerable leverage at the moment: About 1 in 6 Obama donors are gay, according to a Washington Post estimate. We’ve said it before: Obama will be the last Dem nominee to be publicly against same-sex marriage. No future candidate will be able to afford to oppose it.

I had to read that a couple of times to understand that pro-marriage means pro-gay marriage. I consider myself pro-marriage, which is why I don’t want its several thousand year old definition changed to accommodate people who do not qualify for it.

But beyond that, it is telling that National Journal would characterize one side as “pro-marriage” and it happens to be the side wanting to change marriage as we know it.

The media fundamentally is ignoring what is staring them in the face as are the Democrats.

What’s staring them in the face? Well, consider the always excellent Ron Brownstein in National Journal:

In the Pew survey, half of college-educated white men, a resounding 65 percent of college-educated white women and 68 percent of whites under 30 backed the idea. (In 2001, just 52 percent of younger whites backed gay marriage.) African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities are much more closely divided on gay marriage, with the Pew survey finding just 40 percent of non-white men backing the idea. But it attracts support from 54 percent of minority women and retains plurality support among minorities overall.(That itself represents a major increase from as recently as 2007 when only about one-third of minorities backed gay marriage in Pew polling.)

According to pretty much every poll, everybody supports gay marriage. Nobody wants to be labeled a bigot. But while liberals keep referring to history on the move and the ever growing consensus for gay marriage, they ignore that 32 states have put gay marriage to a vote and it has failed all 32 times.

It is one thing for voters to tell pollsters they support gay marriage. It is quite another thing to actually get it passed at the real polls. Perhaps pollsters should stop asking people if they support gay marriage and instead ask people if they think their neighbors would support gay marriage.

For all the data that political scientists, Democratic strategist, and even a growing number of Republican strategists look at, the data they miss is that gay marriage does not actually win when put to the voters.

The media chooses to ignore this because, like Pauline Kael being shocked by Nixon’s re-election, they know no one who opposes gay marriage. In fact, the Gang of 500, mostly creatures of the Northeast, live in the only area of the country to embrace gay marriage. The Northeast, on cultural issues, is increasingly detached from the rest of the country — even California.

Just last month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Obamacare case. Conservatives have, for three years, insisted Obamacare is unconstitutional. When Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke skeptically about the constitutionality of Obamacare, it was like a nuclear bomb had gone off in the legal pundit community the press relies on. Not one of them had, for even a minute, thought the concerns about Obamacare’s constitutionality were valid.

And yet . . .

The media really needs to get out of the DC/NYC Corridor more often.

Morning Briefing for May 10, 2012

RedState Morning Briefing

May 10, 2012

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. The Media and Barack Obama’s Pauline Kael Moment on Gay Marriage

2. Infographic: The Obama Economy

3. Obama: Troops Are Fighting On My Behalf

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1. The Media and Barack Obama’s Pauline Kael Moment on Gay Marriage

If you listen to Barack Obama’s statement to ABC News yesterday you’ll hear something not reflected in all the transcripts that went out yesterday. He said his administration gave up the legal fight to defend the Defense Against Marriage Act. It’s actually the Defense Of Marriage Act.

Obama claimed DOMA made marriage a federal issue and it should be a state issue. That’s a gross mischaracterization of DOMA, but for now that’s besides the point. Two days after major gay donors said they’d withhold funding from his campaign and one day before his swank $40,000.00 a person fundraiser with George Clooney, Barack Obama publicly reversed course on gay marriage. The Washington Free Beacon’s headline says it all: Gay For Pay.

Obama looks weak and under duress. He looks weak because he would not come out before the North Carolina vote and under duress because he only did so now as his donors held his campaign hostage. Now President Obama might as well be called President Dick Cheney. In addition to GTMO still in use and warrantless wiretaps still being deployed, Obama comes out in favor of the states’ individually deciding the issue while supporting it himself. It’s the gay marriage equivalent of being personally pro-life, but supporting a person’s right to choose. It is also, like GTMO and warrentless wiretaps, Dick Cheney’s position — a position the much maligned former Vice President held even after Obama went from being for gay marriage, to against gay marriage, to evolving on gay marriage.

But there is another angle to this as well.

Barack Obama and the Washington Press Corps, aligned perfectly on this issue, are oblivious to one overwhelming data point.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Infographic: The Obama Economy

The Romney campaign has released a good new infographic detailing the truth about Obama’s promised “green economy” job gains. (Click on the graphic to view full size.)

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. Obama: Troops Are Fighting On My Behalf

When Barack Obama made his unsurprising announcement that he has finally evolved far enough to endorse homosexual marriage, ironically an evolutionary dead end, he made two other interesting statements.

First, he attributes his evolution to his Christian faith. This is sort of odd, speaking as a Trinitarian Christian, because it puts Christ in the position of disavowing himself. This is not surprising. Anyone who learned Christian theology from Jeremiah Wright is bound to have imbibed a substantial number of heresies.

The most surprising statement was this:

[W]hen I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf…

Please click here for the rest of the post.

A Terrible, No Good, Awful Night for Barack Obama

One initial point to ponder: if the No-H8 campaign tries to fire up in North Carolina as the No-A1 campaign, people will wonder why they are campaigning against steak sauce. Probably won’t happen. North Carolina did not pass a ban on gay marriage as the media reports. Rather they refused to allow their definition of marriage to be changed. The marriage definition was put into law years ago, but with an onslaught of judicial activists, the voters in North Carolina decided to shut down any further consideration of the issue.

The most fascinating bit of it all is that time and time again gay marriage polls quite well in the United States. Time and time again, gay marriage proponents go down to defeat at the actual polls. Said one gay marriage proponent on Twitter last night to me, “It will be a happy day when all hate filled Xians are dead.” Xians is “Christians” in Twitter speak. At first I thought it was a Xenu or Thetans reference.

This was a bad night for Barack Obama. Whoever decided to put the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina should be given a lollipop by the GOP for the intense level of comedic schadenfreude we can all now watch. The Democrats will convene in a proudly right to work state whose state Democratic Party is imploding due to a gay sexual harassment scandal, the state itself just voted for marriage by a margin few statewide candidates in North Carolina get, and twenty percent of Democrats voted against Barack Obama in the North Carolina Democratic Primary.

On the bright side, North Carolina is not West Virginia where a felon in federal prison in Texas locked up 40% of the vote in the Democratic Primary against Barack Obama. The Chain Gang looks to be as popular as the Change Gang.

In Indiana, Rickard Mourdock beat Richard Lugar. Lugar is Barack Obama’s favorite Republican Senator. The Washington, DC Gang of 500 — the political reporters who set the tone for political coverage in America — are still crying in their beer as the sun rises that Indiana’s statewide elected Treasurer beat a Republican incumbent who has never been a threat to the liberal agenda the Gang of 500 agrees with.

The truth is that as much as tea party energy gave Richard Mourdock a surge and a platform, two-thirds of Indiana’s county Republican chairmen and a majority of the Indiana GOP State Committee encouraged Mourdock to run. Lugar did not lose for defying the tea party. He lost because he lost touch with Indiana.

In West Virginia, a felon in a federal prison in Texas gave Barack Obama a run for his money in the Democratic Primary for President. Seriously! The felon got about 40% of the vote. Joe Manchin, West Virginia’s Democratic Senator would not even tell reporters who he voted for in the primary.

Then there’s Wisconsin.

In Wisconsin, more Republicans turned out than Democrats for the Democrats’ contested primary. The Democrat who won the right to challenge Scott Walker in the recall was, only a month ago, savaged by the unions and has already spoken up in favor of tax increases.

But if that’s not enough, then there’s Europe. Yes folks, Europe.

The Greeks have handed 37 year old Alexi Tsipras the right to form a government. He is a radical leftist who wants to abandon the Greek bailout, nationalize the banks, restore all salaries and pensions, and restore collective bargaining.

In France, Hollande the socialist won. He wants to renegotiate the austerity measures Europe has never really even implemented.

All this means European economic turmoil could be about to rear its ugly head, also plunging the United States further into the economic morass. That will only hurt Barack Obama.

Friends, put bluntly, there is a lot of hype and posturing out there in the media on Barack Obama’s behalf. The Gang of 500 is friendly toward him. There are better relations there than with Team Romney. They are more likely to buy into the Obama spin. But spin it is. The reality is the nation, heck even a lot of Democrats, are rejecting Barack Obama.

Morning Briefing for May 9, 2012

RedState Morning Briefing

May 9, 2012

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. A Terrible, No Good, Awful Night for Barack Obama

2. Elizabeth Warren’s ancestor traced back to Trail of Tears! …On the side holding the guns.

3. Victory in NC and IN, But There’s More to Do

4. Chilean Study Proves that Outlawing Abortion Does Not Lead to “Coat-hanger Deaths”

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1. A Terrible, No Good, Awful Night for Barack Obama

One initial point to ponder: if the No-H8 campaign tries to fire up in North Carolina as the No-A1 campaign, people will wonder why they are campaigning against steak sauce. Probably won’t happen. North Carolina did not pass a ban on gay marriage as the media reports. Rather they refused to allow their definition of marriage to be changed. The marriage definition was put into law years ago, but with an onslaught of judicial activists, the voters in North Carolina decided to shut down any further consideration of the issue.

The most fascinating bit of it all is that time and time again gay marriage polls quite well in the United States. Time and time again, gay marriage proponents go down to defeat at the actual polls. Said one gay marriage proponent on Twitter last night to me, “It will be a happy day when all hate filled Xians are dead.” Xians is “Christians” in Twitter speak. At first I thought it was a Xenu or Thetans reference.

This was a bad night for Barack Obama. Whoever decided to put the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina should be given a lollipop by the GOP for the intense level of comedic schadenfreude we can all now watch. The Democrats will convene in a proudly right to work state whose state Democratic Party is imploding due to a gay sexual harassment scandal, the state itself just voted for marriage by a margin few statewide candidates in North Carolina get, and twenty percent of Democrats voted against Barack Obama in the North Carolina Democratic Primary.

On the bright side, North Carolina is not West Virginia where a felon in federal prison in Texas locked up 40% of the vote in the Democratic Primary against Barack Obama. The Chain Gang looks to be as popular as the Change Gang.

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2. Elizabeth Warren’s ancestor traced back to Trail of Tears! …On the side holding the guns.

Yeah, when’s that primary in Massachusetts, again? Because the general election is going to be a trip.

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3. Victory in NC and IN, But There’s More to Do

In North Carolina CD-8, the Cantor/establishment candidate, Richard Hudson, only won 32% against Scott Keadle’s 22%. There will be a runoff. Keep in mind that the other lesser candidates in the race, who garnered 45% of the vote in total, enjoyed a lot of Tea Party support. Many of their supporters should go to Keadle. However, he needs our help. Keadle will stand with the most conservative members of Congress and lead a coalition to challenge leadership when necessary. This is a guy who is worth as much support as a Senate candidate.

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4. Chilean Study Proves that Outlawing Abortion Does Not Lead to “Coat-hanger Deaths”

For decades, supporters of abortion on demand have insisted on two completely unproven assertions concerning what would happen if abortion were made generally illegal in this country. First, they have asserted, somewhat counter-intuitively and again without any proof, that such a law would not work, and women would continue to get abortions. Second, based on the first unfounded assertion, they insist that therefore women would be forced into “back alley abortions” which would presumably always be performed with a dirty coat-hanger, thus leading to massive maternal mortality. These two pronouncements have been peddled uncritically with all the fervor (and factual backing) of a particularly obnoxious street corner preacher wearing a “THE END IS NEAR” sandwich sign by virtually everyone who supports abortion on demand. Now, for the first time, a scientific study published in a peer-review journal has scientifically disproven both assertions.

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