That said, I’m not going to join the chorus opposing same sex marriage. First, I’m against restrictions on adults entering into voluntary contracts. Second, I see no reason why broadening the definition of marriage to same-sex couples devalues or diminishes mine. Finally, there’s the purely utilitarian Gilligan’s Island effect: if Skipper and Professor decide to wed in a tasteful lagoon-side ceremony, I’ve got Ginger and Mary Ann to myself at the wedding luau. And if it’s Mary Ann and Ginger hooking up, well… I’ll be in my bunk.

If there’s anything that gives me pause about SSM, it’s the thuggish tactics of some of its most vocal proponents. It’s hard to take a „human rights activist” seriously while he’s beating someone over the head with a „NOH8” placard for holding the same position Barack Obama held until 5 minutes ago.

So yeah, in a secular society maybe it’s time for opponents to recognize a rational basis for legal SSM. But it’s also time for supporters to recognize they are espousing a position that every society in the first 99.99% of human history would have considered nuts.

The problem, I think, is that marriage uniquely represents a religious sacrament that doubles as an official secular legal status. We don’t have laws, for example, that recognize someone’s baptism or confirmation. Because of that duality of marriage, attempts to expand its definition naturally are seen as an attack on religion, while attempt to restrict its definition are seen as the imposition of religion on society. Everybody gets mad and yells.

The solution Maybe it’s time for government to get out of the whole marriage business altogether. Or at least to treat it as a standard civil contract between adults conferring certain privileges (wills, powers of attorney, co-ownership) and obligations (say hello to alimony and the marriage tax penalty, Bert and Ernie). Don’t want to call it „marriage” Fine, call it a civil union, domestic partnership, blancmange, whatever, leave it open to any pair of consenting adults. Leave the holy sacrament business to churches, and if First Lutheran or Immaculate Conception or Temple Beth-El don’t want to bestow the title of „married” on a same sex couple, that ought to be their own business. You get married at a church, you get blancmanged at the county courthouse.

Maybe then we can get back to talking about our $16 trillion debt.

Gotta go, the wife is yelling.

Vezi sursa articolului aici.

At 11:29 p.m. local time, Hamas tweeted a photograph of a young boy bleeding in his father’s arms, apparently dead. Syrian exile Razzan Saffour, who lives in Britain and sympathizes with the Palestinian cause, responded:

She later tweeted an explanatory note to emphasize that she supports Hamas regardless of the fakery:

Aside from passing off civilian casualties caused by its former Syrian sponsors as Israeli atrocities, Hamas’s @Alqassambrigade account spent the day falsifying its military activities, claiming that Hamas was shelling military targets, when in fact most of the rockets from the Gaza Strip were aimed at Israel’s civilian population.

The IDF distributed–but did not tweet–photographs of civilian casualties in Israel due to Hamas rockets. The photograph at top is one of them.

That is what a real civilian casualty looks like. That is why Israel is at war.

Vezi sursa articolului aici.

The poll found Romney leading Obama 50%-48% among likely voters.

The GOP presidential candidate leads Obama by 21 points (58%-37%) among Virginia’s unaffiliated – or independent – voters and has the support of 90% of the state’s Republicans.

He leads Obama on the economy by six points and on national security and energy policy by two points. Only 19% of voters in Virginia think the economy is „good or excellent,” and 42% describe the economy as poor.

Romney also has a better favorable/unfavorable rating (50/47) than Obama (50/49).

Rasmussen surveyed 750 likely voters in Virginia on November 4, and the poll’s margin of error is +/- four percentage points.

Vezi sursa articolului aici.

Here are Rove’s key points:

1.  Of the 31 national surveys in the last week, Romney leads in 19, Obama in 7, and five show a tie. A key fact is that Obama is not over 50% in any poll, while Romney is over that number in 10 different polls.

2.  The national average for Romney is 48.4%, while Obama trails at 47.2%.  Even with the traditional 1% boost the incumbent always receives on Election Day, that still leaves Obama short.

3.  The Gallup poll that was based on October suggested that the turnout looks as though the Republicans have a 1% lead, 36% to 35%, compared with 39% Democratic and 29% Republican in 2008. If that is true, that’s big trouble for Obama.

4.  Gallup has reported that early voting has broken for Romney, 52% to 46%.

5.  Gallup also found that the 63% who said they planned to vote on Election Day similarly supported Romney, 51% to 45%.

6.  In battleground states, the 2008 edge in early and absentee votes for Obama has eroded.

7.  Getting specific about Ohio, 530,813 Ohio Democrats had voted early or had requested or cast an absentee ballot, which is down 181,275 from 2008. But 448,357 Ohio Republicans had voted early or had requested or cast an absentee ballot, up 75,858 from 2008. That 257,133-vote swing is almost exactly equal to Obama’s 2008 Ohio margin of 262,224. With most observers expecting Republicans to win Election Day turnout, those numbers look good for Romney.

Vezi sursa articolului aici.

Just as Gallup did with their bombshell survey showing that 2012 is looking like a year where Republicans will enjoy a record three-point turnout advantage over Democrats (a ten-point shift from 2008), for whatever reason, they buried the lede with this latest bombshell, as well. When you consider the fact that the CorruptMedia’s been talking for weeks about how Obama’s crushing Romney in early voting, you would think Gallup proving that Narrative a big fat phony lie would be news. Instead, though, they bury this explosive news at the bottom of a piece headlined: „In U.S., 15% of Registered Voters Have Already Cast Ballots„.

Sounds like a nothing story, right?

Except waaaaay at the bottom we learn this:

Thus far, early voters do not seem to be swaying the election toward either candidate.

Romney currently leads Obama 52% to 45% among voters who say they have already cast their ballots. However, that is comparable to Romney’s 51% to 46% lead among all likely voters in Gallup’s Oct. 22-28 tracking polling. At the same time, the race is tied at 49% among those who have not yet voted but still intend to vote early, suggesting these voters could cause the race to tighten. However, Romney leads 51% to 45% among the much larger group of voters who plan to vote on Election Day, Nov. 6.

When Gallup says early voters don’t seem to be swaying the election, presumably what they means is that because Romney is ahead by five points nationally, an early voting advantage of seven-points isn’t going to „sway the election.”

Romney’s early voting lead in Gallup may not jive with the CorruptMedia narrative, but it does with actual early vote totals that have been released and show Romney’s early vote totals either beating Obama in swing states such as Colorado and Florida or chipping away at the President’s advantage in the others. For example, here’s what we know about Ohio’s early voting numbers, thus far:

But here is what we do know: 220,000 fewer Democrats have voted early in Ohio compared with 2008. And 30,000 more Republicans have cast their ballots compared with four years ago. That is a 250,000-vote net increase for a state Obama won by 260,000 votes in 2008.

Something else in this Gallup survey also helps shed some light on what we’re seeing in these sometimes counter-intuitive state polls. As the headline states, Gallup is showing that only 15% of the public has already voted. Moreover, they’ve broken down early voting by region and show that in the Midwest only 13% of voters have already voted. And yet, many polls in places like Ohio show a much higher percentage of early voters, some as high as 30%, which you can bet skews the data. In other words, those polls can’t be correct.

Other than the fact that this is Gallup, another reason to embrace  this poll is due to its very large sample size of 3,312  registered voters.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC

Vezi sursa articolului aici.