President Obama’s same-sex marriage endorsement makes a full quarter of Florida voters less likely to cast their ballots for him, according to a poll released Monday.

Quinnipac’s latest poll of the Sunshine State finds that 25 percent of voters say Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage makes them less likely to vote for him. On the other hand, 11 percent say that it makes them more likely to vote for him.

(ALSO ON POLITICO: ‘Pro-choice’ voters at lowest level ever, poll shows)

Among independents, 23 percent say that they’re less likely to vote for Obama over same sex marriage. Older voters (55 and older), born-again evangelical Christians, lower income voters and military veterans are all more likely than other demographic groups to say that Obama’s backing of same-sex marriage will sway them towards Romney.

On the whole, Romney beats President Obama by six points in Florida, leading 47 to 41 percent over the incumbent president.

On the gay marriage issue, national polls have largely showed the issue to be a wash for the president, with roughly equal numbers of voter saying it made them more or less likely to support Obama. That’s in line with national polls that show majority support for gay marriage — but state by state polling that shows high levels of resistance in several key battlegrounds.

Source: Politico.

How Egyptians are trying to divide power between the country’s problematic players.

There is no predestination in human affairs, so it is impossible to predict what a post-Arab Spring Egypt will ultimately look like. It might well degenerate into a totalitarian theocracy more odious than the secular autocracy that the Egyptian people overthrew, as some neoconservative worrywarts warn. But the run-up to the presidential elections this week suggests that Egyptians are desperately looking for a system of checks and balances to keep authoritarians of every stripe at bay.

This itself is reason to be cautiously optimistic about Egypt’s future.

Commentators like Samuel Tadros of the neoconservative Hudson Institute have been saying “I told you so” ever since the Muslim Brotherhood and its more extreme Islamist Salafi cousins together won 65 percent of the seats in parliament last December. Egyptian liberals, who had actually led the rebellion against the Mubarak dictatorship, by contrast won only 15 percent.

As far as Tadros and his ideological bedfellows are concerned, this offers proof positive that elections and democracy won’t lead to an enlightened liberalism that protects the rights of women and minorities (after all, 80 percent of Egyptians allegedly support capital punishment for apostasy). Rather, they’ll simply legitimize a reactionary and retrograde form of sharia-based government that is hostile to Western values.

CONTINUED at Reason. Written by Shikha Dalmia.

The small but vocal New Black Panther Party is woefully disappointed in President Barack Obama, and is openly implying that the best way to reach its goals is no longer through “the ballot” but through “the bullet.”

In the Spring edition of the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) newspaper — cover reading “The Ballot or The Bullet: which way for black people?” — NBPP Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz breaks down the presidential election, concluding the Democratic Party is the “institutional pimp of Black peoples and the Black Nation” and that Obama has “been a real disappointment.”

“Black peoples are the whores and prostitutes of the Democratic Party, and mistreated mistress that is courted in the late of night, but left hanging when it is time for real change in the light of the post election day,” Shabazz wrote, following a dissertation on the need to “Vote for Revolution.”

Shabazz detailed his past hopes for Obama as the first African-American president, noting that Obama has not lived up to them — specifically by continuing the policies of the Bush administration in the so-called war on terror and ignoring the economic plight of black Americans.

“The black community is at large no better off that (sic) before he was in office. We are curious as to what his agenda is for Black people in America and if he even has one,” Shabazz added.

The lead editorial in the 36-page publication is written by the paper’s editor, Chawn Kweli, entitled “4 years and a Bucket of Hope: The Change That Never Came,” which describes the group’s excitement, and subsequent disappointment, after Obama was elected.

“Mr. Obama’s policies have not corrected the economic troubles of America, they have gotten worse,” Kweli wrote. “The debt continues to expand [into the trillions], and the administration’s handling of international relations has hardened dialogue with foreign nations. Mr. Obama’s policies have been especially harsh to us the Black community. He [Obama] bailed out Wall Street and the auto makers but kept us at the top of the unemployment ladder.”

CONTINUED at The Daily Caller.

A preliminary count of votes for Egyptians living abroad has put Islamist candidate Abdul-Moneim Aboul-Fotouh in the lead, followed by left-leaning Hamdeen Sabahi . The online statement by the State Information Service (SIS) on Saturday added that the figures “confirmed a sharp competition” for third between Amr Moussa and Mohamed Mursi.

The note did not elaborate on the precise breakdown of votes, or how many had been counted so far. A total of 587,000 Egyptians abroad registered to participate, according to the Supreme Presidential Elections Commission (SPEC). The figure represents just 1.13 percent of citizens eligible to take part, but nonetheless gives valuable clues about the current strength of the 13 candidates running for the top job. Almost 45 percent of Egyptian voters overseas reside in Saudi Arabia, and some 119,000 in Kuwait.

Numbers have gradually been trickling in from individual consulates and embassies around the world. In a press conference on Saturday, Egypt’s ambassador to Kuwait said that Mursi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), had garnered the most votes in what appeared to be a closely-fought race. Out of a total of 55,288, Mursi secured 17,139 votes. Aboul-Fotouh came in second with 14,109, followed by Sabahi.

CONTINUED at CNBC.

Mitt Romney has won the Indiana, North Carolina and West Virginia presidential primaries.

The trio is certain to push Romney closer to the 1,144 delegates he needs to clinch the GOP nomination, handing him 100 or so delegates of the 288 he still needs.

None of the outcomes is a surprise. Romney faces no serious challenge to the Republican nomination.

Even the candidate himself is essentially ignoring Tuesday’s primaries. Romney has been spending the day campaigning in Michigan, where he castigated President Barack Obama as an “old-school liberal” whose policies would take the country backward.

Source: The Toledo Blade.

An Exclusive interview, Alex Jones speaks with Sen. Rand Paul on NDAA, TSA undercover on Houston busses, Obama’s overall neglect of the Constitution, his possible impeachment and much more. This is a must see video.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

I haven’t written as much as I’d like to in the last month. My real job has been insane and sucking out a lot of my creative energy the last several weeks. On top of that, I find it hard to stay motivated as the 2012 primaries draw to a close and my guy is in last place out of the four remaining candidates. I guess all this heathen can do is act religious and pray for a brokered convention and then a miracle. Fat chance, I know but there really isn’t much else I can do to bring Ron Paul to the big dance. I guess Plan B a.k.a. Gary Johnson is the next card to play but realistically, as I’ve stated before, this is such a long shot that I have to pretty much accept the fact that Johnson won’t even get invited to the debates and Romney will win the GOP nomination and most likely go on to lose to Barack Obama who will stop at nothing to rape the Constitution harder than he did before he had to worry about re-election.

Romney has racked up victories in Puerto Rico and Illinois as well as Guam and the Virgin Islands. Keep in mind however that Ron Paul really won the Virgin Islands yet the Republican establishment changed the rules so that Romney magically walked away with the most delegates. Not bad for a guy who didn’t finish first as the guy who did only got one delegate.. yes, one! Paul also potentially won Maine but the votes from several counties weren’t counted and Romney was awarded that state with only a few hundred votes separating him and Paul. Missouri has also been a haven for Paul supporters the last few weeks as he is taking over that state, yet the media ignores it, the establishment and police have been caught on multiple occasions manipulating the caucuses and they are still only talking about Santorum’s beauty pageant win a month ago where no delegates were handed out. The true caucuses that actually award delegates in Missouri haven’t handed out their delegates yet. The fact is, the media ignores the fraud and foul play even though it is practically wide out in the open. This is a disgusting and careless travesty that is all a part of a bigger plan. That plan is control – control by a giant duopoly two-party system that will do absolutely anything it can to hold on to it’s power: that same power that controls and manipulates the mainstream corporate media as well.

So as I sit at my dinner table, which has been converted to my writing desk, chewing on some terrible lo mein and sipping on a bottle of Hibiki 12-Year-Old Japanese whisky, I find it absolutely perplexing that after all the rhetoric, the hatred, the money spent and the time wasted – this country is only going to continue down a very dark path. It really doesn’t matter who wins between Obama or Romney and hell, Rick Santorum would probably be the worst president ever. What matters is the fact that America has failed once again and I am just sick of it: disgusted really.

With the mainstream media showing blatant bias and blatant irresponsibility in reporting accurately, there is nowhere for true Americans to turn to for fact-based reporting other than the Internet, which they are trying effortlessly to censor and control, mind you. With the Republican establishment on the national and many local levels playing dirty pool, it only proves to me that not only is the political system broken beyond any sort of reasonable repair, it is also just a predetermined game being played out by unknown decision makers who are shaping the world regardless of how any of us feel about it. When our angry voices fall on deaf ears and we are seemingly powerless to change anything within a perpetually tyrannical system, it may be time to break down that system and start over. At this point, this country may just need to completely fail and fall in shambles. Maybe it is true when that old adage states, “Things have to get worse before they can get better.” Maybe this is all beyond saving and America does have to crash and burn. I’m not opposed to that idea and truthfully, it probably needs to happen and is going to happen regardless of what any of us try to do about it.

Our greatest president Thomas Jefferson once said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Maybe this is what’s happening. It’s been over 200 years since those words were expressed and that’s a long time for the tyrants to get their claws into liberty’s flesh and tear it to shreds. Figuratively speaking, the tyrants drew first blood yet we, as the patriots, continue to take their abuse while kidding ourselves that our vote will change something. Sure, we’re all pissed and we all talk a big game about what we are going to do but so far, big picture-wise, we haven’t done anything to truly upset the establishment and regain order. How can we when the establishment fully controls the order and our votes and voices are often times casted aside through blatant voter fraud, establishment hijinks and a pen that has been held in several hands that were quick to sign off on executive orders?

The answer, in it’s simplest form, is that we must remain positive and vigilant. We must question everything our leaders tell us and hold them accountable. Even if our votes don’t matter, the people will always outnumber their masters and throughout history, it has been the downtrodden, sick-of-it-all masses that have torn down the castles and palaces of tyrants and taken their freedom back. I don’t think that the revolution needs to be a violent one, we’re beyond that unless of course the tyrants fully turn on us, which isn’t far-fetched thanks to the PATRIOT Act and the NDAA. However, we need not stoop to that level unless it comes to defending our lives, our families and our property. What I’m saying here is that the fight must go on, the message must continue to exist and grow and when there is an opening, and there will be – there always is, we must act. It’s the people who shape the world, not the few tyrannical schemers sitting fat atop the tree of liberty pruning its branches.

Establishment GOP leaders in St. Charles County, Missouri, shut down a caucus and had Ron Paul supporters arrested in order to avoid enthusiastic Ron Paul supporters from taking over the caucus March 17.

Last night on Politico’s live-stream election show, Politico editor-in-chief John Harris highlighted a provocative Politico story about “stupid voters.”

The Politico article by reporter Alexander Burns examines poll numbers from voters who still think Obama might be a Muslim, believe that the president can change gas prices, and appear to have conflicting opinions about the war in Afghanistan.

The article quotes Tom Jensen of the Democratic polling firm Public Policy Polling who admits, “The first lesson you learn as a pollster is that people are stupid. . . I tell a client trying to make sense of numbers on a poll that are inherently contradictory that at least once a week.”

Harris said the story grew out of one of his “personal rants” sparking debate in the newsroom with the editors over the headline, which Harris said he wanted to be “provocative.”

“They didn’t want the sharpest headline — ‘Are voters stupid?’ or switch to the order of the verb ‘Voters are stupid., Harris said, “I think we want something a little more neutral. . .the debate was whether to go with the sharpest possible headline or a more muted one.”

Harris added that voters were “expressing their opinions in a context of ignorance” which means that pollsters get   results that “seem stupid even have the voters themselves actually aren’t stupid.”

The headline for the piece ended up being, “How much do voters know?” and featured a picture of Forrest Gump.

“I felt I won this debate in part because we did get a picture of Forrest Gump to accompany the story,” Harris said. “Forrest Gump in this case representing the sort of ignorant voters who are saying these wacky things in polls.”

Harris was clear enjoying his onscreen rant, and afterwards read his email address (jharris@politico.com) on the air so that people could respond.

Source: The Washington Examiner.