These Things

Looped
Obama doesn't have the power to make same-sex marriage legal. But by taking a stand, he closed the loop with gay-rights activists who are important financiers and supporters of his re-election campaign while putting himself on a potentially perilous path with voters in states such as North Carolina. (Burlington Free Press, 5/10/2012)


As is now becoming increasingly obvious, Obama's gay big money supporters essentially forced his hand. (Or is it "big money gay supporters?" Or "big gay money supporters?" Oh, never mind.)


Clear Day
It's never quite clear whether a politician's high school years are fair game for political attacks. (Huffington Post, 5/10/2012)


Actually, it is entirely clear that a politician's high school years are fair game for political attacks...if that politician is a Republican.


So - in the interest of fairness, RedStateVT excerpts the following:


Obama, by all accounts, was a habitual drug user in high school. He tried cocaine, he admits in Dreams From My Father; he “tried drugs enthusiastically.” The Chicago Tribune reported back in 2007 that Obama thanked the “Choom Gang” in his high school yearbook; “chooming” was Hawaiian slang for smoking pot. The Honolulu Advertiser reported that Obama’s senior portrait “prominently displayed … A package of ‘Zig-Zag’ rolling papers and a matchbook.” One of Obama’s close friends was arrested for drug possession during high school. (Breitbart.com, 5/10/2012)


We cannot talk about Obama's drug past enough; not because it matters, but because - like so much of the Obama biography - it is ignored by the media. 


Landslide Bring It Down
If the election were held today, Mitt Romney would win by a landslide...(Published polls) poll only registered voters, not likely voters. Rasmussen is the only pollster who tests likely voters, and his latest tracking poll has Romney ahead by 48-43. (DickMorris.com, 5/9/2012)


RedStateVT Cheney Award winner Morris is doing his usual great work getting inside the details of the various presidential polls. 


High Times
We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change. (James Hansen, NYT, 5/9/2012)


Gore, McKibben and Hansen have all stepped up the climate change rhetoric, quite obviously because they are losing the public on the issue. Meanwhile, ClimateDepot.com presents instantaneous rebuttals including the one below:


Hansen tells us that global warming will cause a semi-permanent drought in the west and in Texas. He also tells us that global warming may cause a semi-permanent El Nino.

One minor problem – El Nino normally causes unusually wet conditions in the west and in Texas.

He appears to have mutually exclusive apocalyptic visions running around inside his head. This is normally called paranoid schizophrenia.

If the Pacific is cold, the west is dry. If the Pacific is warm, the west is wet. Both at the same time isn’t an option. (stevegoddard.wordpress.com)