100Feed: Going Hungry in America

Dave Krepcho, director of the Second Harvest Food Bank, checks inventory at the food bank warehouse in Orlando, Fla. In the past four years, food distribution to 500 pantries, shelters, and other relief agencies in the six-county area has jumped about 60 percent. In the last year alone, that amounted to 36 million pounds of food. Krepcho estimates about 30 percent of those seeking help are first-timers. They’re blue-collar and white-collar, many middle class, even some upper middle class. They include college-educated couples and professionals. (John Raoux/AP)

By Tim Skillern

Cheryl Preston knows that others are worse off. But she’s still hungry. As grocery prices creep higher and her income sags, rationing her family’s food is a daily task. The 54-year-old mother of three and grandmother of three in Roanoke, Va., says there are days she skips meals so her husband and son can eat. If they notice, she says, she’ll let them think she’s fasting. She waters down the milk and juice to make it last longer. She visits food pantries, but it’s not enough.

“Who would think that in the land of plenty, hard-working families would go hungry? But I am living proof it is true,” Preston writes in a first-person account for 100Feed.

In the last three years, she hasn’t been able to replace a $500 loss in monthly income. Her husband’s job can’t always guarantee 40 hours a week; his second job lasted only through Christmas. So mealtime suffers: Her family eats in one day what they used to eat at one meal. Often, they manage on a nearly barren cupboard for five or six days until the next pay day. They sometimes skip family gatherings at restaurants because they can’t pay the tab.

“It is distressing,” Preston writes.

“When you get a check for $250, and your basic needs require at least $400, you are already defeated. You can only cut back so much and then you have no choice but to do without. I long for the days when I could pay my bills on time, buy more than enough groceries and have money left over.”

She’s not alone. Eighteen percent of Americans say there have been times this year that they couldn’t afford the food they needed, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday. In particularly hard-hit regions of the United States, like the South, at least one in five didn’t have enough money for food. In Preston’s Virginia, 15.2 percent of state residents are affected. (See a full list.)
To put a face on hunger in America, Yahoo! asked readers and contributors to share their personal stories: Are they going hungry? How are they coping with higher food prices? Did they ever think they’d be in this position?

Six years ago, Robert Watkins and his wife earned more than $100,000 combined. Groceries comprised 5 percent of their budget. They kept an emergency fund–good for three months’ expenses–in a money market. Now, Watkins writes, they keep a “rainy day” jar of about $250 in assorted change by the bedside.

“If I had to travel to the market and buy groceries for dinner tonight, would I have the money to do so? The truth is, yes, I would,” Watkins writes. “Yet it’s strange to think that this is life in America today. Like tens of millions of other people in the United States, we look closely at an expenditure that we took for granted just a few years ago–the cost of food.”

Seventeen months ago, Watkins was downsized from his job and while he works contractually and part-time, his income “pales in comparison” to two years ago. Couple their one-income family with inflated food prices, and their grocery budget is almost 10 percent of their net income.

At 46, he says “it’s a humbling exercise.”

To make due, they’ve taken advantage of living in a farming community in Lancaster, Pa. Fruits and veggies are affordable; there’s plenty of corn on the cob, red potatoes, lettuce, and tomatoes. They create their own dressing and get water from a well. And they eat lots of pasta.

“Is it scary sometimes? You bet it is,” Watkins writes. “However, it could always be a whole lot worse.”
In Arizona, Jeremy Shapiro lives on a nutrition assistance program, receiving $50 a week for food. It’s significantly altered his eating habits: less food, less often.

“I have reduced my portion sizes and meal frequency,” he writes. “Creativity and flexibility is key.”
Shaprio, 35, says he has always tried to eat healthy. When he was employed and food prices were more reasonable, it was easy. Now it’s tricky with less money.

“I only shop sales. I hunt for online and paper ads and cut coupons. I also do not stock food unless it’s extremely fiscally prudent,” Shaprio writes.

That means no more fresh fruit; canned and concentrate must suffice. Only frozen chicken, beef and fish are affordable. Brand-name cereals are out. Milk must be on sale, and hormone-free varieties aren’t “financially feasible.” Generics and store brands have replaced Tillamook cheese, Boar’s Head meats and Laura Scudder’s peanut butter.

“One day, I will have gainful employment and afford more and better again,” Shapiro writes. “However for today, I keep my head up and spirits high — and body healthy — as best I can.”

Here’s a taste of Tom Servo’s bare-bones grocery list: A few bags of dried beans. Breakfast cereal of some kind — usually whatever’s on sale. A large canister of dried oats. Lots of bananas — typically a few pounds. A bag of apples. Other miscellaneous fresh fruits and veggies — whatever’s in season and on sale.

The 29-year-old college student in Tampa, Fla., says his grocery list is written for nutrition, not taste. He sticks to bare essentials and buys in bulk. But two weeks of groceries used to cost him $50; now it’s almost $100.

For example: “I used to pay 99 cents for one pound of dried black beans; now they cost $1.49 or more. Two years ago I paid $2.39 for a 16-ounce jar of generic peanut butter; now the same peanut butter costs $3.99.”

“For the first time in my life, I’ve recently had to make a choice between groceries or some other expense,” he writes.

Michelle Zanatta once spoiled her husband with her elaborate Italian meals of fresh vegetables and heaps of garlic bread. They were expensive, too: Her four-cheese lasagna cost $18 to make. The Italian ham and cheese rolls set them back $20.

But after her once-successful business started failing and their home went into foreclosure, she faced the reality of food prices. She and her husband are also dealing with higher food costs in Atlanta after a move from Delaware. (“The cost of a fresh-baked loaf of Italian bread was 98 cents from the local Wal-Mart, while here in Georgia, it’s a $1.49 — plus food tax!”)

“I at no time thought about how much money I spent grocery shopping, until we had to set a very tight budget,” she writes. “I was also never a huge fan of couponing because I thought it was time-consuming; however, at 34, my perspective on coupons has changed greatly.”
Her family visits local food banks and shaves costs off milk, eggs, cereal and cheese through a WIC program.

“Though times seem tough, and my lavish meals have dwindled down to two times a month, my children learned to appreciate those special meals,” Zanatta writes, “and I have learned to use my resources and shop smartly.”

When she worked as a Wal-Mart cashier, Michelle Croy remembers watching seniors decide between buying food and buying medicine.
“Their medicine often ranked first so that meant that Vienna sausages and crackers sufficed for the month for sustenance,” she writes. “I never really entertained the thought that someday that would be me.”

The single mother in Huntington, W.V., says she is shocked she must scramble to pay bills and feed her children. Milk runs upward of $4 a gallon, and a pack of hamburger costs $9. “This is why my family settles with a banana or cereal for breakfast, skips lunches entirely, eats a dinner that is produced almost entirely from our garden, and hardly ever eats out.”

Croy, now a student teacher in Huntington (“where jobs are as scarce as rain in the Sahara”), writes that while groceries trump other needs and wants, they could be in worse shape.

“My case is nowhere near as disheartening as those of the children who go to bed hungry every night, or the families who survive solely on donations from food banks,” she writes, “but it’s indicative of the reality that most of us middle-class Americans face: We are all just one paycheck away from going hungry or living homeless out on the streets.”

100Feed: Who Coined the Phrase, “United States of America”?

By Anderson Cooper

It may seem surprising, but nobody is really sure who came up with the phrase, “United States of America.”

Speculation generally swirls around a familiar cast of characters – the two Toms (Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson), Alexander Hamilton, Ben Franklin, and even a gentleman named Oliver Ellsworth (a delegate from the Constitutional Convention of 1787). But every instance of those gentlemen using the name “United States of America” is predated by a recently discovered example of the phrase in the Revolutionary-era Virginia Gazette.

So who was perhaps the first person ever to write the words “United States of America”? A PLANTER.

That was how the author of an essay in the Gazette signed the anonymous letter. During that time, it was common practice for essays and polemics to be published anonymously in an attempt to avoid future charges of treason – only later has history identified some of these authors.

The discovery adds a new twist – as well as the mystery of the Planter’s identity – to the search for the origin of a national name that has now become iconic.

Several references mistakenly credit Paine with formulating the name in January 1776. Paine’s popular and persuasive book, “Common Sense,” uses “United Colonies,” “American states,” and “FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES OF AMERICA,” but he never uses the final form.

The National Archives, meanwhile, cite the first known use of the “formal term United States of America” as being the Declaration of Independence, which would recognize Jefferson as the originator. Written in June 1776, Jefferson’s “original Rough draught” placed the new name at the head of the business – “A Declaration by the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA in General Congress assembled.”

Jefferson clearly had an idea as to what would sound good by presenting the national moniker in capitalized letters. But in the final edit, the line was changed to read, “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.” The fact that “United States of America” appears in both versions of the Declaration may have been enough evidence to credit Jefferson with coining the phrase, but there is another example published three months earlier.

Beginning in March 1776, a series of anonymously written articles began appearing in The Virginia Gazette – one of three different Virginia Gazettes being published in Williamsburg at that time. Addressed to the “Inhabitants of Virginia,” the essays present an economic set of arguments promoting independence versus reconciliation with Great Britain. The author estimates total Colonial losses at $24 million and laments the possibility of truce without full reparation – and then voices for the first time what would become the name of our nation.

“What a prodigious sum for the united states of America to give up for the sake of a peace, that, very probably, itself would be one of the greatest misfortunes!” – A PLANTER

So who is A PLANTER?

Likely candidates could be well-known Virginians, like Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, or even Jefferson. Some of the essay’s phrasing can be found in the writings of Jefferson. For example, “to bind us by their laws in all cases whatsoever,” appears in both the essay and Jefferson’s autobiography.

A Planter could be the nomme de plume of an intrepid New Englander, like John Adams, attempting to rally support for independence in the South, a similar motive for why he charged Jefferson, a Southerner, to pen the Declaration.
A Planter could be Benjamin Franklin, who was well-known for his hoaxes and journalistic sleight-of-hand. Or maybe, A Planter is exactly whom the letters portray, an industrious, logistics-minded landowner, evangelizing about the promise of increased prosperity should the “united states of America” ever become an independent nation.
There is a possibility the author was aware of the historical significance of introducing the new name for the first time, as he or she observes:

“Many to whom this language is new, may, at first, be startled at the name of an independent Republick, [and think that] the expenses of maintaining a long and important war will exceed the disadvantages of submitting to some partial and mutilated accommodation. But let these persons point out to you any other alternative than independence or submission. For it is impossible for us to make any other concessions without yielding to the whole of their demands.”
So, the mystery continues.

Our anonymous author, A Planter, certainly did plant a few seeds in the spring of 1776. Those seeds came to fruition as the first documentary evidence of the phrase “United States of America” – an experiment in self-government that quickly became one of the most powerful and influential nations in the world.

100Feed: Bennigan’s Way of Honoring America’s Veterans

A naval officer who died while serving in Afghanistan is being remembered for his bravery by those who never met him thanks to a note left at a bar. On March 28, Bennigan’s waitress Hannah Hobbs posted a photograph of a beer with a note that read, “In Memory of Lt. j.g. Francis Toner USN. Killed in action 27 March 2009, Baikh Province, Afghanistan. Non Sibi Sed Patriae. Not forgotten.”

Toner and another soldier were killed when an Afghan soldier opened fire on four officers who were jogging along the perimeter of Camp Shaheen in Mazar-e Sharif. According to reports, the unarmed Toner verbally challenged the shooter and was gunned down. Toner’s act of bravery distracted the shooter, which allowed another officer to seek help for the wounded. He was later posthumously awarded the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest military decoration for valor. He was 26-years-old at the time of his death.

Hobbs said a man had come into the restaurant and asked to leave the beer and note at the bar for the rest of the day. However, Hobbs took the tribute to the fallen soldier to another level by taking a picture of the memorial and posting it to her Facebook account. She wrote, “I’m posting this pic so it can stay forever. So can I get some likes, people?” That is exactly what happened.

By Memorial Day, Hobbs’s photo had received more than 1.2 million “likes” and had been shared more than 117,000 times! The gesture seems to be a growing trend over the past few years, with other bar patrons toasting America’s soldiers in the same fashion.

Hobbs posted on her facebook that, when having to clean up, she almost cried when having to get rid of the note. She then decided to keep the memorial tribute alive by posting the above image to Facebook. Hobbs said, “Several family and friends have served in the military, and I feel we don’t do enough as a country to show our appreciation to those that put their lives on the line to keep us safe.”

In response, Hobbs’s employer started Bennigan’s Wall of Heroes for customers to buy a beer and write a note to any former or current member of the United States military. The company also encourages Facebook posts to honor these heroes.

Through Memorial Day, the restaurant pledged to donate $1 for every photo to Operation Homefront, a nonprofit organization that provides emergency financial and other assistance to the families of U.S. service members.

Bennigan’s is taking the kind gesture toward America’s veterans one step further by offering a $10,000 discount to veterans who want to start their own Bennigan’s franchise.

100Feed: Bill Maher Tells Viewers About Liberty University’s “Fake” College

At the end of “Real Time” Friday night, Bill Maher lambasted Liberty University, the Virginia religious university that has become a mandatory stop for Republican presidential candidates.

“You can’t expect me to believe anything Mitt Romney said last week at Liberty University, because a) he’s a liar and b) Liberty University isn’t really a university,” Maher began. “It’s not like an actual statesman visited a real college. It’s more like the Tupac hologram visited Disneyland and said what he would do as president during the Main Street Electrical Parade.”

Romney delivered Liberty’s commencement speech on May 12.

Maher noted that Liberty teaches “creation science,” and the idea that earth was created 5,000 years ago. “This is a school you flunk out of when you get the answers right,” he joked.

Much as conservatives believe gay marriage cheapens their own vows, “I think a diploma from Liberty cheapens my diploma from a real school,” he continued. “I worked really hard for four years and sold a lot of drugs to get that thing.”

Liberty’s diploma may look real, Maher said, but “when you confuse a church with a school, Maher went on, “it mixes up the things you believe — religion — with the things we know — education. Then you start thinking that creationism is science, and gay aversion is psychology, and praying away hurricanes is meteorology.”

Below is a full transcript of Maher’s rationalization:

And finally, New Rule: You can’t expect me to believe anything Mitt Romney said last week at Liberty University because a) he’s a liar, and b) Liberty University isn’t really a university. It’s not like an actual statesman visited a real college. It’s more like the Tupac hologram visited Disneyland, and said what he would do as President during the Main Street Electrical Parade.
Yes, that’s right. Mitt Romney, from the Church of Jesus Christ, Indian Fighter, spoke on Saturday at a school founded by Jerry Falwell, a preacher who once said AIDS was God’s wrath for fingering the Teletubbies. A guy in magic gym shorts talking to virgin Baptists. Clown, meet college.

But again, not really a college. Because Liberty teaches creation science. In fact, they have an actual Center for Creation Studies, complete with some bones and a guy with a lab coat. Suck on that, Smithsonian Institute.

And they teach that the Earth is 5,000 years old, and dinosaur fossils washed up in Noah’s flood. This is a school you flunk out of when you get the answers right. (audience applause)

Now, I would say we should take away their accreditation, but it’s a private college, and they can teach whatever they want. But at the very least, diplomas from Liberty should come with a huge asterisk next to your name. And at the bottom, it should say, “This institution teaches superstitious nonsense. Hire at your own risk.” (audience applause)

Conservatives often say that gay marriage cheapens their marriage. Well, I think a diploma from Liberty cheapens my degree from a real school. I worked really hard for four years, and sold a lot of drugs to get that thing. So if you want to go to some place that teaches the Bible is literally true, and the Earth was created last Tuesday when God got into gardening, that’s fine, but you can’t call it a university. Target serves pizza; it doesn’t make it a restaurant. (wild audience applause)

It’s just wrong for Liberty to hand out diplomas that look just like real diplomas from actual schools that teach facts. Look, this is the Liberty University diploma, see? There’s no gold stars, or smiley faces, or Care Bears. It looks real.

But here’s the problem with confusing a church with a school. It mixes up the things you believe: religion; with the things we know: education. (audience applause) Then you start thinking that creationism is science, and gay aversion therapy is psychology, and praying away hurricanes is meteorology.

It’d be like teaching American history by saying the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written by God, and even the world’s most ridiculous imbecile wouldn’t say that.

GLENN BECK: It is God’s finger that wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution!

Mitt Romney recently told the crowd, “I happen to believe that the Constitution was not just brilliant, but probably inspired.” And everyone applauded, because they’d all seen this painting:

James McNaughton’s “One Nation Under God”, which reinforces the now-mandatory Republican talking point that the Constitution isn’t the work of brilliant but imperfect statesmen, but a divinely inspired blueprint, conceived by God Himself, and hand-delivered by His only begotten son, Kenny Loggins.

Sorry, but our Constitution wasn’t divinely inspired. It’s just that the guys who wrote it were smart because they went to real colleges! Thomas Jefferson went to William and Mary; Madison went to Princeton; Alexander Hamilton went to Columbia.

And those schools should not be put in the same category as Oral Roberts, or Bob Jones, or the Dueling Banjos College of Prayin’ and Preachin’. Or Liberty, which not only shouldn’t be called a university, it shouldn’t be called Liberty! Since it strictly forbids kissing or drinking. And if you’re in college, and you can’t kiss or drink, good luck f*****g!

100Feed: Romney Defends Marriage and Faith in Liberty University Speech

Mitt Romney stood behind his position against same sex marriage, telling graduates at Liberty University Saturday that marriage between “one man and one woman” is an “enduring institution” that should be defended.

Just days after President Obama endorsed the right of gays and lesbians to marry, the comment earned Romney a standing ovation from the crowd of more than 30,000 people — the largest crowd Romney has ever addressed as a political candidate – but it was his only mention of the hot button social issue.

Instead, the presumptive Republican nominee used his commencement address at that evangelical university to emphasize the importance of faith and family—and take some slight digs at President Obama’s handling of the country, though he didn’t name his 2012 opponent.

“Lately, I’ve found myself thinking about life in four-year stretches. And let’s just say that not everybody has achieved as much in these last four years as you have,” Romney said. ” But that’s a theme for another day.”

Indeed, Romney touched only fleetingly on issues that could be potentially controversial. His visit to Liberty, a Christian university founded by the late televangelist Jerry Falwell, was an overt appeal to social conservatives who have been wary about his White House bid. But his appearance had generated protests by some Liberty students, where the curriculum has described Romney’s Mormon faith as a “cult.”

Romney did not use his Saturday address to specifically defend his Mormon faith. But he did speak at length about the importance of faith in his own life—a riff that was clearly an attempt to discourage suspicion about his personal beliefs. He argued that people, no matter what they believe, could agree on faith and moral service to the country.

“People of different faiths, like yours and mine, sometimes wonder where we can meet in common purpose, when there are so many differences in creed and theology.” Romney said. “Surely the answer is that we can meet in service, in shared moral convictions about our nation stemming from a common worldview.”

He argued that faith and belief in God was more important than “trivial things”—but acknowledged that he, like others, had occasionally lost sight of that. He urged the graduates to always turn back to faith.

“What we have, what we wish we had–ambitions fulfilled, ambitions disappointed; investments won, investments lost; elections won, elections lost–these things may occupy our attention, but they do not define us. And each of them is subject to the vagaries and serendipities of life,” Romney said. “Our relationship with our Maker, however, depends on none of this…The best advice I know is to give those worldly things your best but never your all, reserving the ultimate hope for the only one who can grant it.”

While Romney aides insisted the former governor’s remarks would not be a “policy” speech, he gave a shout out to his former rival Rick Santorum, saying that he agreed that America’s greatness was defined by its “culture” and “values.” And he also argued for the protection of “religious freedom,” saying it’s become a “matter of debate.”

“It strikes me as odd that the free exercise of religious faith is sometimes treated as a problem, something America is stuck with instead of blessed with,” Romney said. “Perhaps religious conscience upsets the designs of those who feel that the highest wisdom and authority comes from government. ”

Romney paid homage to Truett Cathy, the founder of the fast food chain Chick fil-A, who was given an honorary degree just moments before Romney took the podium.

“The Romney campaign comes to a sudden stop when we spot a Chick-fil-A,” the Republican candidate said. “Your chicken sandwiches were our comfort food through the primary season, and there were days that we needed a lot of comforting. “

100Feed: Mitt Romney Bullied Gay Classmates in the 1960’s

Mitt Romney has apologized for incidents described in a Washington Post article about his prep school years in Michigan. Some of the events include forcibly cutting a boy’s bleached-blond hair and harassing a closeted gay student in English class.

“Back in high school, I did some dumb things,” Romney said in an interview on the “Kilmeade and Friends” talk show on Fox News radio Thursday. “And if anybody was hurt by that or offended by that, I apologize.” He added: “There is no question I became a very different person since then.”
Romney emphasized that he had no idea the boy was gay. “I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual,” said Romney in the radio interview. “That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s.”

According to the Washington Post, which conducted interviews with the presidential candidate’s former classmates at the Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Romney forcibly cut the “bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye” of a “soft-spoken” new kid because he felt the boy wasn’t good enough. The story is a profile of Romney’s formative years; the incident occurred in 1965. “He can’t look like that,” an “incensed” Romney told one of his friends upon seeing John Lauber’s hair, according to the friend’s account. “That’s wrong. Just look at him!”
A few days later in a dorm room, several other students pinned down Lauber who was “perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality” while the presumptive Republican nominee “clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.” A terrified Lauber was meanwhile screaming and begging them to stop.

“It was a hack job,” Phillip Maxwell, a student who witnessed the incident, told the Post. “It was vicious.” Lauber died in 2004. Romney also chided another student presumed to be gay, wrote the Post:

“In an English class, Gary Hummel, who was a closeted gay student at the time, recalled that his efforts to speak out in class were punctuated with Romney shouting, “Atta girl!” In the culture of that time and place, that was not entirely out of the norm. Hummel recalled some teachers using similar language.”

According to Romney, he doesn’t recall the incidents. “Anyone who knows Mitt Romney knows that he doesn’t have a mean-spirited bone in his body,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement to the Post. “The stories of fifty years ago seem exaggerated and off base and Governor Romney has no memory of participating in these incidents.” It’s worth noting that the Romney campaign is notorious for its homophobia.

100Feed: Michele Bachmann is Officially a Swiss Citizen

Michele Bachmann is now a Swiss citizen. Bachmann’s office confirmed Tuesday night that the Minnesota congresswoman and former Republican presidential candidate was recently granted dual citizenship.

“Congresswoman Bachmann’s husband is of Swiss descent so she has been eligible for dual-citizenship since they got married in 1978,” spokeswoman Becky Rogness said in a statement. “However, recently some of their children wanted to exercise their eligibility for dual-citizenship so they went through the process as a family.”

According to an interview with Swiss TV, Bachmann, who is currently seeking a fourth term in Congress after her failed bid for the White House, is now also eligible to run for office in the tiny European country.

Asked if she’d be interested in seeking office in Switzerland, Bachmann joked that “there’s a lot of competition … and they’re very good.”

100Feed: President Obama Shows Support for Gay Marriage

President Obama announced today that he now supports same-sex marriage, reversing his longstanding opposition amid growing pressure from the Democratic base and vice president Joe Biden.

In an interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts, the president described his thought process as an evolution that led him to this place, based on conversations with his own staff members, openly gay and lesbian service members, and conversations with his wife and daughters.

“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama told Roberts, in an interview to appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday. Excerpts of the interview will air tonight on ABC’s “World News with Diane Sawyer.”

The president stressed that this is a personal position, and that he still supports the concept of states deciding the issue on their own. He stated that he is confident that more Americans will grow comfortable with gays and lesbians getting married, citing his own daughters’ comfort with the concept.

“It’s interesting, some of this is also generational,” the president continued. “You know when I go to college campuses, sometimes I talk to college Republicans who think that I have terrible policies on the economy, on foreign policy, but are very clear that when it comes to same sex equality or, you know, believe in equality. They are much more comfortable with it. You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table and we’re talking about their friends and their parents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently. It doesn’t make sense to them and frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.”

Roberts asked the president if First Lady Michelle Obama was involved in this decision. Obama said she was, and he talked specifically about his own faith in responding.

“This is something that, you know, we’ve talked about over the years and she, you know, she feels the same way, she feels the same way that I do. And that is that, in the end the values that I care most deeply about and she cares most deeply about is how we treat other people and, you know, I, you know, we are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me as president and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I’ll be as a as a dad and a husband and hopefully the better I’ll be as president.”

Previously, Obama has moved in the direction of supporting same-sex marriage but has consistently stopped short of supporting it. Instead, he’s voiced support for civil unions for gay and lesbian couples that provide the rights and benefits enjoyed by married couples, though not defined as marriage. At the same time, the president has opposed efforts to ban gay marriage at the state level, saying that he did not favor attempts to strip rights away from gay and lesbian couples.

The president’s position became a flashpoint this week, when Vice President Joe Biden pronounced himself absolutely comfortable with allowing same-sex couples to wed.

Obama aides insisted there was no daylight between the positions held by the president and his vice president when it comes to legal rights, but as other prominent Democrats also weighed in in favor of gay marriage, the disconnect became difficult for the White House to explain away.

The announcement completes a turnabout for the president, who has opposed gay marriage throughout his career in national politics. In 1996, as a state Senate candidate, he indicated support for gay marriage in a questionnaire, but Obama aides later disavowed it and said it did not reflect the candidate’s position.

In 2004, as a candidate for the US Senate, he cited his own religion in framing his views: “I’m a Christian. I do believe that tradition and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.”

He maintained that position through his 2008 presidential campaign, and through his term as president, until today.

As president in 2010, Obama told ABC’s Jake Tapper that his feelings about gay marriage were “constantly evolving. I struggle with this.” A year later, the president told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “I’m still working on it.”

“I probably won’t make news right now, George,” Obama said in October 2011. “But I think that there’s no doubt that as I see friends, families, children of gay couples who are thriving, you know, that has an impact on how I think about these issues.”

Obama’s decision has political connotations for the fall.

The issue divides elements of the Democratic base, with liberals and gay-rights groups eager to see the president go farther, but with gay marriage far less popular among African-American voters.

Just yesterday, in North Carolina, voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional ban on gay marriage. President Obama carried North Carolina in 2008, and its status as a 2012 battleground was guaranteed by Democrats’ decision to hold their convention in Charlotte this summer.

Obama’s likely Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, opposes gay marriage, and fought his state’s highest court when Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage in 2004, when Romney was governor. Romney said on the campaign trail Monday that he continues to oppose gay marriage.

“My view is that marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman,” Romney said. “That’s the position I’ve had for some time, and I don’t intend to make any adjustments at this point. … Or ever, by the way.”

100Feed: Highlights of Newt Gingrich’s 2012 Campaign

Student Janitors
Calling America’s child labour laws “truly stupid”, Gingrich uses a November speech at Harvard University to propose a Dickensian alternative. At first glance, this idea sounds ridiculous, but when you stop to think about it – nope, still ridiculous.

Bitten by Penguin
Gingrich loves zoo animals, but they don’t always love him back. Or maybe the penguin bite was done lovingly? We shall never know, but it doesn’t really matter, because this story generated the headline “Newt Gingrich Bitten by a Penguin”, thus making the world a measurably better place.

James Bond Style Plan for Tracking Down Illegal Immigrants
“We send a package to every person who is here illegally. When it’s delivered, we pull it up, we know exactly where they are, it’s on the computer.”

A Moon Colony
“By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon. And it will be American,” Gingrich notoriously explained in a speech in Florida, adding further random thoughts about how big the population of such a colony might have to be before its residents could petition to become a US state. The whole notion of a moon colony by the end of a second Gingrich term was absurd, though, noted a correspondent to the St Louis Times-Dispatch, on the grounds that:

“Newt Gingrich would never have a second term.”

Attacking John King
If there’s one thing truly shocking about Gingrich’s private life, it’s John King having the bravado to ask about it. In any case Gingrich’s non-monogamous approach to marriage simply demonstrates that he has a lot of “leftover love to share with the American people”.

Birthday Cake Theory
As Gingrich helpfully explained in Iowa last year:

“If you went to somebody who was a great cook and you said ‘do you think you can bake a birthday cake’ and they said ‘sure I can bake a birthday cake,’ the odds are pretty high they’ll be able to bake a birthday cake. Now it helps to have a recipe for birthday cakes and it helps to have baked one. President Obama’s biggest challenge is, that he has exactly the wrong ideas. He belongs to an ideology that believes the way you get hard eggs is you freeze them.”

And, like my favorite part of the movie “There Will Be Blood”, “If you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake, and I come over and drink up your milkshake, there is nothing you can do about it.” It looks like Mitt Romney has drank Newt Gingrich’s milkshake.

100Feed Special Report: Jon Huntsman Slams GOP by Samantha R. Selman

Jon Huntsman leveled harsh criticism at his party on Sunday evening, BuzzFeed’s Zeke Miller reported, comparing the Republican Party to communist China and questioning the strength of this year’s presidential field.

During an event at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, Huntsman spoke candidly about his party’s flaws, lamenting the Republican National Committee’s decision to rescind an invitation to a major fundraising event after Huntsman called for a third-party candidate to enter the race.
“This is what they do in China on party matters if you talk off script,” Huntsman said.
Huntsman, a former Utah governor who dropped out of the GOP primary in January, served as U.S. ambassador to China under President Barack Obama.

He also criticized the Republican candidates’ foreign policy stances, particularly in regard to China.
“I don’t know what world these people are living in,” Huntsman said.
Although Huntsman did not mention any specific candidates, he has criticized Mitt Romney in the past for his “wrong-headed” approach. Huntsman, who endorsed Romney after dropping out of the race, said in February that the former Massachusetts governor should take a more opportunity-minded view to relations with China.

Huntsman also spoke on Sunday about his presidential candidacy, revealing that he was less than impressed by his fellow candidates when he attended his first debate in August.
“Is this the best we could do?” Huntsman said he asked himself.
He also joked that his wife forbade him to pander to the party’s far-right contingent ahead of Iowa’s caucuses, which likely hurt him with conservative voters in the Hawkeye State.
“She said if you pandered, if you sign any of those damn pledges, I’ll leave you,”Huntsman said, “So I had to say I believe in science — and people on stage look at you quizzically as though you’re … an oddball.”

Huntsman, however, did not actively campaign in Iowa, telling CBS News in December that “they pick corn,” not presidents, in that early caucus state.

Since dropping out of the race, Huntsman has remained critical of his former opponents and has remained lukewarm in his backing of Romney.
“Gone are the days when the Republican Party used to put forward big, bold, visionary stuff,” Huntsman said during the February interview with MSNBC that got him disinvited from the RNC fundraiser. “I think we’re going to have problems politically until we get some sort of third-party movement or some alternative voice out there that can put forward new ideas.”

And unlike others in his party who have endorsed Romney, Huntsman has refrained from appearing at campaign events on behalf of his party’s likely nominee. According to his daughter, Abby Livingston, he won’t be joining Romney on the trail anytime soon.
“My dad is not a surrogate for Romney and will not be out stumping for him in the general,” she told ABC News earlier this month. “He is enjoying private life.”