ENDORSEMENTS, LA TIMES, OBAMA

I know I can write; I know how to give a speech but do I ever wish I could have written this. So take a few minutes and read the Los Angeles Times' endorsement for Senator Obama ... it matches Mr. Obama in elegance while not avoiding the "Palin choice" or the challenges that a "President" Obama must face.

It is just a wonderful thing to read, in and of itself ... it ends by saying: We may one day look back on this presidential campaign in wonder. We may marvel that Obama's critics called him an elitist, as if an Ivy League education were a source of embarrassment, and belittled his eloquence, as if a gift with words were suddenly a defect. In fact, Obama is educated and eloquent, sober and exciting, steady and mature. He represents the nation as it is, and as it aspires to be.

Or you can follow the endorsements here on Editor and Publisher which reported today: BARACK OBAMA,
64 newspapers total, well over 8 million circulation (we are still counting); JOHN McCAIN, 18 newspapers total, about 1.7 million daily circulation.

GOLDBERG, REPUBLICAN BASE AND AMERICA?

Jonah Goldberg wrote a column for the LA Times; this was my response to him.

Yes, go ahead and "hit" Mr. Goldberg; you are a perfect creation of our times! History however captures how Rockefeller was treated at the '64 Rep convention -- how he was ridiculed; how Nixon used out right lies in his first race for congress against Douglas and breed generations of political operatives who scream "win at any cost" ... right on down to "Swift Boats" and Ayres. Republican don't win on ideas; they win by fabricating "character defaults."

Take a look at the Republican base. Who are they ... homophobic, xenophobic, racists and religious zealots ... people whose political lives are based on their own "rightness" and a fear of anyone different from them. They have scraped together the rank parts of our nature around a political party ... three generations of Republican leaders have preached, "at any cost" to the point that the prospect of a Democrat winning causes the reactions we see at Republican rallies -- "hang him" they shout, in reference to Mr. Obama.

The ultimate example is Karl Rove, who developed and implemented a successful political strategy based on inflaming the political base through wedge issues like gay marriage while his gay father lay dying in Palm Springs ... yes, win at any cost! You, and they, have sown these awful seeds; now all of us must live with the whirlwind.

LA TIMES THIS MORNING.

Under the title: Gay? Who cares? the following op/ed piece by Gregory Rodriguez appeared in this Morning's Los Angeles Times.

Last Tuesday, the New York Times ran a front-page story on the diminishing allure of gay enclaves in the United States. The next day, the San Francisco Chronicle published a Page 1 story explaining how same-sex couples in California are a lot more socioeconomically and ethnically diverse -- read: less white and less wealthy -- than you might believe. The Williams Institute at UCLA Law School will release a report today by demographer Gary Gates that all but poses the question: Is gay the new straight?


READ MORE HERE, it is excellent.