[snip] With his position still undeclared, Senator Mark J. Grisanti, a Republican from Buffalo who had sought office promising to oppose same-sex marriage, told his colleagues he had agonized for months before concluding he had been wrong.

“I apologize for those who feel offended,” Mr. Grisanti said, adding, “I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is the same rights that I have with my wife.” [snip]

What a powerful comment, and I am glad he was able to come to that position.

But now there are starting to be some consequences in those states that sanction same-sex marriage. The New York Times reported that several major companies are now asserting that those who currently have domestic partner benefits need to get married in order to keep those benefits:

[snip] Corning, I.B.M. and Raytheon all provide domestic partner benefits to employees with same-sex partners in states where they cannot marry. But now that they can legally wed in New York, five other states and the District of Columbia, they will be required to do so if they want their partner to be covered for a routine checkup or a root canal.

On the surface, this appears to put the couples on an even footing with heterosexual married couples. After all, this is precisely what they have been fighting for: being treated as a spouse. But some gay and lesbian advocates are arguing that the change may have come too soon: some couples may face complications, since their unions are not recognized by the federal government.

“Even with the complications, many people will want to get married for the reasons people want to get married,” said Ross D. Levi, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda. “But from our perspective, to hinge something as important as insurance for your family to what is still a complicated legal matter for same-sex couples doesn’t seem to be a fair thing to do.” [snip]

The issue with same sex marriage and the federal government is that those of us who have domestic partner benefits are taxed on them as income, as opposed to heterosexual couples, who are not. That is the difference to which Mr. Levi is referring.

I may be missing something, and feel free to tell me if I am, but I am not sure why he is characterizing the push by these companies for people to get married in states where they live work in order to secure these benefits is unfair. Or maybe I just don’t accept his argument.

Like the following argument for how this change could affect adoption:

[snip] When it comes to adopting a child, couples may run into trouble if they are trying to adopt from a place that restricts same-sex married couples from adopting. Having one parent adopt while still single may be easier. “If you want to be able to answer honestly in paperwork, multiple interviews and background checks, then you won’t want to get married,” Ms. Taylor said, adding that many foreign countries ban adoptions to same-sex couples. [snip]

Wait – this seems like a red herring to me. If someone is single when they are adopting – as in, not in a relationship – what difference would it make if they found someone after the fact? I think what she is saying, though, is that the person can CLAIM to be single if they aren’t legally married, so they can adopt. But that is not being honest anyway, so I am not sure why this changes things.

And then there is the immigration issue:

[snip] He said that there were a variety of reasons — legal, financial and personal — that companies should keep the domestic partnership option at least until gay marriage was recognized at the federal level. Legally speaking, getting married could create immigration issues or it could potentially muddy the process of adopting a child. In some instances, he added, an employee may work in a gay marriage state but live in a neighboring state that does not recognize the marriage. The couple may want to wait to marry until they can be legally wed in their home state.

“There are certainly reasons why a couple may not wish to marry,” added Camilla Taylor, marriage project director at Lambda Legal. “People with certain immigration statuses might want to think very carefully before getting married. There are some types of visas that are meant to be temporary, and if you get married to someone who is a citizen, it could flag your renewal application and reflect your more permanent decision to stay.” [snip]

But doesn’t that apply to ANYONE? If someone is here on a temporary visa, finds an American with whom they fall in love, won’t the outcome be similar?

Here’s the thing – my partner and I had hoops through which we had to jump in order for me to be on her insurance. We have to pay more in taxes as a result. And there are some changes that occurred when she changed companies in our insurance, like that the only way I could have dental insurance was if I saw a dentist in California where her company is based. It is unfortunate for obvious reasons, and obviously heterosexual couples don’t have that issue, but there you are. Still, even though it was not legal, we did have a commitment ceremony 14 years ago, and would gladly go to a Justice of the Peace to get legally hitched if we had the opportunity (which is likely to be some time for SC).

All of that is to say, I cannot shake the feeling that some of these folks want their cake and to be able to eat it, too. They pushed for this in these states, they got it, and now when some major companies are saying they have to play by the same rules, they are balking. It isn’t like the companies aren’t giving them time, or making concessions for issues like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” but still, there are concerns:

[snip] At least for now, these companies seem to be in the minority, though it is unclear whether more employers will follow their lead. Eastman Kodak, based in Rochester, said it would continue to offer domestic partner coverage to both same-sex and opposite-sex partners.

“My impression is that there has been lots of discussion about dropping domestic partner coverage when marriage is first opened up to same-sex couples, but very few employers actually end up taking this step,” said Jennifer C. Pizer, legal director at the Williams Institute, which studies sexual orientation law and policy issues. “Some employers initially believe that it is fairer of them to impose the same marriage requirements on all employees, regardless of sexual orientation. But then employees and others explain that employees with a same-sex life partner remain in difficult circumstances due to the continuing federal discrimination.”

Whether same-sex couples marry, they will still be responsible for paying federal income taxes on the value of their partner or spouse’s benefits since they are not recognized by the federal government as an economic unit, unless the person covered is considered a dependent. Couples will not owe those taxes at the state level in places like New York that recognize gay marriage. [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

And that is a difference – if the companies offer partner benefits regardless of sexual orientation, then sure, keep it that way. But if the benefits are offered because same sex people were unable to get married at that time, but can now, it only seems fair.

And along these lines of same sex marriage, my sister sent me the following video yesterday. I thought there were some pretty good signs. Cracked me up. I hope you find the humor in them, too:

I may be too black/white about this, but if companies are already progressive enough to offer these benefits out of a sense of fairness, are giving people a year to get married, I am not sure what the difference is. But that’s just me.

What do you think? Should the companies that already provide partner benefits for their same sex employees require that they get married if they are able to be eligible for these benefits if that is the requirement for their heterosexual employees? What about the immigration and adoption issues? I’d love to hear what you think.

Good grief.

Yes, that is the problem – that Weiner’s “privacy” has been violated, not that he has disgraced his office, his wife, and himself, with very little contrition for what he actually DID. No, his tears were over being CAUGHT, not that he is a freakin’ pervert, engaging in sexting with women around the country, and apparently, made phone calls to some of these women from his House office. There is no doubt that not only did he act unprofessionally, but unethically, compounded by his vast number of lies upon lies.

But as Jennifer Rubin pointed out in her Washington Post piece, “Anthony Weiner, Wronged Man? Not Quite,” some are taking the Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz approach, claiming this is a “private matter.” They are wrong. Rubin specifically mentions Ezra Klein and Richard Cohen:

I’ve been a bit amazed at the post-bizzaro press conference insistence by some on the left that Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) is a wronged man. Ezra Klein via Twitter professes to be puzzled how this can be a big deal. Richard Cohen writes:

We are doing a terrible thing here — we hypocrites of the press, especially of the blogosphere. Every man lives a bit in a fantasy world, maybe women, too, but I know nothing of them. Every man is a boy, either in mind or in deed. Much of this is harmless. There are no bodies. There is no crime. This is the case with Weiner. No damsel was in distress, and no one was rescued.

This is the place for me to condemn Weiner. Consider it done. He’s a liar and a creep, although how one can be the latter without being the former is beyond me. (Still, lying is impermissible.) But I would also like to condemn those who made it their business to destroy him, who deputized themselves to invade someone’s private life, his fantasy life, and hold him up to ridicule.

Let me point out that Weiner went beyond fantasy. Or have we forgotten that these are real women with whom he was communicating? Women who, gosh, he thinks, are not underage. Women who he supposed would not blackmail him. Women whom he apparently told his wife about before their marriage but could not bring himself to give up. The press isn’t invading his mind or his bedroom; it’s looking at his Tweets and talking to the women on whose Timeline he was willing to risk his marriage, his career and his self-respect. [snip]

So let me make sure I understand Mr. Cohen’s point – he thinks the press is doing the wrong thing by REPORTING THE NEWS??? I am just shaking my head in disbelief at these men. Oh, no, check that – I am shaking my head in DISGUST at these men, and their willingness to use their professions as “journalists” to try and protect this pervert.

Jennifer Rubin’s response was very good, I thought:

[snip] Let me point out that Weiner went beyond fantasy. Or have we forgotten that these are real women with whom he was communicating? Women who, gosh, he thinks, are not underage. Women who he supposed would not blackmail him. Women whom he apparently told his wife about before their marriage but could not bring himself to give up. The press isn’t invading his mind or his bedroom; it’s looking at his Tweets and talking to the women on whose Timeline he was willing to risk his marriage, his career and his self-respect. (As for the comment, “Another Christian has been thrown to the lions. The ‘Christian in this case is a Jew,” I am dumbfounded and dismayed that Weiner’s religion should enter into the discussion.)

As for the “I just don’t get it” response of some young liberal men out there, I can only imagine that ideology so dominates their lives that they fail to see the harm in a public figure’s not-at-all-private conduct. Or perhaps they too see the Tweets as a harmless pastime. Maybe, for all the “sexual harassment” training we’ve gotten, we’ve forgotten some essential training in ethics. [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

I don’t get it, either, Ms. Rubin, except to say that this mindset is incredibly disturbing. (Ms. Rubin goes on to note that the Wall Street Journal has a very good editorial on Rep. Weiner’s behavior and judgment, and I encourage you to either finish reading her piece, or read the WSJ piece here.)

The next piece of news also deals with a Democratic Representative, Earl Blumenauer. Seems Rep. Blumenauer is upset at the effort put forth by the Parks Department for doing anything that might amount to educating Gov. Palin about American history. Yes, he is upset that money is being spent to give the governor an education at our historic sites and monuments, presumably because it is making her smarter than many in the press (I refer you to the ridiculous recent brouhaha over Paul Revere) in which journalists by and large failed to factcheck before jumping on their condescending “gotcha” bandwagon).

Yes, this representative, Earl Blumenenaur, has some “serious concerns” over the money spent thus far on Palin and her bus tour:

[snip] “Many of the press accounts of stops included in this tour, which provided personal and political benefits to former Gov. Palin, suggest that National Park Service resources were made available to an extent beyond that which an average American family would receive,” Blumenauer wrote.

He cited media reports of Palin and her family receiving a private guided tour of Mount Vernon, early admission to the National Archives and a 10-person escort involving park rangers and New York City police officers at the Statue of Liberty.

“For cases in which the Park Service did not have additional personnel on duty as a result of the tour, was manpower diverted from regularly-scheduled services to accommodate the Palin family’s visits and is this a routine practice for visiting celebrities?” Blumenauer added.

National Park Service spokesman Jeffrey Olson said his understanding is that Palin received customary treatment for a visiting celebrity and that the costs of her visits were nominal at best.

“We see celebrities on a regular basis, it’s something that we’re used to,” Olson said. “We give them a tour but we also try to not make it a bug hoo-ha for all the other visitors. So it’s kind of standard fare if there’s a celebrity or two that show up we do a special program for them.”

That usually involves rangers and interpreters that are on the job regardless. “That’s why it’s not an extra cost for us,” Olson said. “We just try to make sure everybody has a good experience at a national park.” [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Maybe that’s what is getting Rep. Blumenaur’s goat – that Palin is seen as, and treated like, a celebrity. Oh, but the best part? Palin was not the one who requested the Park Police provide an escort while she was at the Statue of Liberty. Rather, it was one of the officers in charge who did that. Oops – so much for this little “gotcha” attempt by Rep. Blumenaur.

One of the commenters at this Politico.com article was kind enough to post a video of another “celebrity” getting a private tour at the Statue of Liberty. I wonder if Rep. Blumenaur was so quick to investigate the money spent on THIS tour:

I am going to guess, no, Rep. Blumenaur did NOT demand an accounting from the Parks Service for Rep. Weiner being able to go where people had not been able to go since 9/11. But, hey – that’s different, right? Yeah, sure, right.

And in an incredible twist of irony, Rep. Weiner called President Clinton to apologize to him for this whole sexting scandal. President Clinton officiated at Weiner and Huma Abedin’s wedding.

Gee, I wonder what the conversations are like between Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin?

Blech. This whole thing is making me ill – support for this immoral, unethical piece of work (Weiner), and attempts to take down someone as a result of PDS. The hypocrisy is staggering, and I am just sick of it.

How about you? Feel free to talk about the issues above, or anything else on your mind today.

To celebrate Women in Sports, especially with the Women’s World Cup (soccer) coming up this summer, Secretary Clinton delivered the following remarks:

Now you know, I am a HUGE soccer fan. And I was able to attend the semifinals in DC of the World Cup of which Sec. Clinton spoke. In fact, President Clinton was at the stadium at the same time I was, watching the match. There was even a flyover with fighter jets – cool! Oh, and the US obviously won, since they went on to win the World Cup in the dramatic fashion Sec. Clinton mentioned.

This is a great time, this celebration. But wow, do we still have a long way to go.

While Secretary Clinton is reflecting on Women and Sports, a “Gay Girl in Damascus” was allegedly kidnapped in Syria. In Egypt, another woman journalist was almost killed in Tahrir Square last week, saved by a police officer, who was then beaten himself for rescuing her.

A Libyan student in Australia received only THREE YEARS in jail for sexually assaulting four women, and two girls, one of whom was only 13. Why? Well, you know, it is a whole cultural thing. The way these women dress, oh, my, it just upset him SO much, and made him excited, all at the same time. So he did what any man would do – he attacked them. Oh, wait – most men do NOT do that:

Libyan Almahde Ahmad Atagore, 28, was sentenced to three years behind bars yesterday for sexual assaulting a number of young women in Melbourne in August and September last year, the Herald Sun reports.

Atagore was shocked by the cultural differences and felt isolated and depressed, particularly as he did not have a mosque nearby, said County Court Judge Margaret Rizkalla.

He told a psychiatrist he did not like how Australian women dressed, leaving him angry but also aroused. [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Women, and girls, participating in sports is important, there is no doubt about it. And it is very cool that the US does sports exchanges with other countries. The benefits to girls and women who participate in sports are numerous, with higher self esteem and better overall health at the fore.

But it is not enough when men still think they can overpower women, see women purely as sexual objects, or violate them in a sexual manner as a show of power (though it really highlights the man’s weakness, IMHO). It is not enough when they are seeing a very different message coming from the media, and from our political parties. When the Democratic elite are still supporting a complete sleazebag like Anthony Weiner, what kind of message does THAT send to our young women and girls? When judges in countries like Australia grant a short amount of jail time for a man who assaulted several women, and two girls, as a nod to his neanderthalic view of women based on his religion, how do the girls and women in Australia feel? What is the message being sent to them?

I am glad we still have Title IX in this country, and am happy to celebrate its 40th anniversary. Our girls and women deserve it. But all girls and women, here and around the world, deserve to be treated better than we are. We deserve to not have some slimeball US Representative texting a college woman with a photo of his private parts. We deserve for men to serve the time for the crimes committed against us, not some slap on the wrist. We deserve to be able to do our jobs without threat of DEATH because gangs of men descend upon us.

We deserve better. We deserve better from men, we deserve better from the women who support these sleazeballs, we deserve better from our elected officials.

To follow up on Sec. Clinton’s suggestion, and while I can still post videos from YouTube (our illustrious US Senators are threatening to make it a felony to embed videos), I want to honor the US Women’s Soccer Team. Below is look back at the ’99 World Cup win, and the iconic moment of Brandi Chastain scoring the winning goal for the US Women over China for the Gold:

May the US Women play hard, play clean, have no injuries, and bring back the Gold from Germany.

Debbie Wasserman Scultz, that is. Her twisting, looping, convoluted machinations to deflect for Re. Anthony Weiner should easily merit her the second spot with Obama on the ticket. I mean, really, someone who can stay the talking point repeatedly no matter how idiotic it sounds with a straight face surely does deserve a higher spot than just DNC Chair.

Don’t take my word for it. Watch her respond to Wolf Blitzer’s questions regarding Rep. Weiner (H/t to Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion):

Okay, we get it. You think it is a “personal matter” for a US Representative to be tweeting out photos of his, um, oh, hell – you know – to young women? Really? Well, at least you are consistent when it comes to matters of US Representatives engaging in some hinky behavior.

Oh, wait – no you’re not, as Michael Alan of Le-gal-In-sur-rec-tion highlights in this piece:

[snip]Well, that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz should really get acquainted with this Debbie Wasserman-Schultz:

This goes beyond Rep. Foley, it goes to the values of the Congressional leadership. These are not family values, these are not American values.

What was Wasserman-Schultz referring to in that 2006 quote? The behavior of Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL . . . are you watching those party labels?), who made advances towards 18 and 21 year old young men.

In fact, she went as far as to demand the resignation of then Speaker Denny Hastert for not addressing the Foley matter quickly enough:

[snip] What I’ve called for is an investigation to be completed within 10 days. And quite honestly, yes, I do think that Denny Hastert should resign . . . I‘d like to see the Republican caucus call upon their leadership, Speaker Hastert, Majority Leader Boehner, to get this resolved quickly. Do it before the election. And I haven‘t heard them say that. They‘re saying have the FBI investigate, have the House Ethics Committee investigate. They need to push their leadership to get this resolved so that they can move on, and we can make sure that we can restore the trust that they have shaken the public in Congress.

Now there are obviously some major differences between the two cases, but a big part of Wasserman-Schultz’s complaint in 2006 was that Foley had not been previously sanctioned, despite evidence of a proclivity for hitting on much younger men.

But TNR’s Jonathan Chait, who is one of the few lefty bloggers honestly covering this story, points out a Vanity Fair piece that suggests similar evidence of Weiner’s issues as far back as 2001. [snip] (Click here to read the rest, and that goes for TNR piece, “Anthony Weiner’s Skeeziness,” too.)

Just to be clear, then, when a Republican Representative was caught engaging in less than seemly behavior, Wasserman-Schultz wanted the TOP Republican to resign as a result. But with Democrat Anthony Weiner, it is simply a “personal matter,” and everyone should just leave him alone.

Is it just me, or is Wasserman Schultz digging a deeper and deeper hole since Obama wanted her to be the DNC Chair?

And WHAT is with these women defending men like this? Wasserman Schultz could not have deflected more to protect Weiner, and essentially declared this a hands-off matter. The National Enquirer has reported that Maria Shriver knew about Arnold’s love child back in 2006, but Uncle Teddy wanted her to keep quiet lest it affect the family. (I know, I know, about the National Enquirer, but after they broke the John Edwards story, one has to give them props for getting it right sometimes.) And the list goes on.

Meanwhile, some of the Democratic BigWigs are all upset that Re. Weiner didn’t show up for the Israel Day Parade in New York this past weekend. I am not kidding. These are some heavy hitters:

[snip] “I’d like to see him here,” Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said at the parade, the New York CBS affiliate reported. “He cares about Israel, [is] very active in the Jewish community, and he ought to be here.”

Former New York City comptroller Bill Thompson, who’s seen as one of Weiner’s top potential rivals in the 2013 mayor’s race, said that the situation surrounding Weiner is “becoming a huge circus” and “it’s unfortunate that the congressman didn’t deal with this quickly.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y), also at the parade, noted Weiner’s absence but avoided criticism. “It’s going to be up to the congressman how he handles this and people will have their opinion when they actually have the facts,” he told the New York Post.

A handful of Weiner’s colleagues who represent New York City in the House refused to comment at the parade.

“I’m not here to pass judgment,” Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) told CBS. “I’m not trained in that area.”

“I know what you want to ask me, and I don’t want to answer,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney said. [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Please tell me again how the DNC is the party for women? The one that stands up for women? Because I am not seeing it. When you have major Democrats like those mentioned above lamenting that Weiner isn’t in attendance at an event afte rall of this information is coming out about him, well, that is telling indeed. Heck, even as I type, more and more is coming out about Anthony Weiner and his Tweets to women – I’m sorry, I meant to say, INAPPROPRIATE tweets to women.

But Rep. Wasserman Schultz will keep trying her, “nothing to see here, move along, move along, this is a private matter,” and her colleagues will, apparently, act like his behavior is no big deal, so he should show up anyway, and on, and on, and on…

Yep – I think the DNC Chair is destined for bigger things the way she stands by her (Democratic) man when he treats women like crap. Don’t you?

UPDATE: I know this will come as a shock to you, but Rep. Weiner has FINALLY admitted that he has been sending these kinds of tweets before, and AFTER, he got married. AND, he admitted the underwear photo was indeed of him, and he indeed did send it to some young co-ed. What a charmer.

But you know he is not resigning over this.

There is so much more to the crapola he said, and you can read it all HERE.

Oh, my – that is freaking HILARIOUS! Here is part of the article:

The cyber-warfare operation was launched by MI6 and GCHQ in an attempt to disrupt efforts by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular to recruit “lone-wolf” terrorists with a new English-language magazine, the Daily Telegraph understands.

When followers tried to download the 67-page colour magazine, instead of instructions about how to “Make a bomb in the Kitchen of your Mom” by “The AQ Chef” they were greeted with garbled computer code.

The code, which had been inserted into the original magazine by the British intelligence hackers, was actually a web page of recipes for “The Best Cupcakes in America” published by the Ellen DeGeneres chat show.

Written by Dulcy Israel and produced by Main Street Cupcakes in Hudson, Ohio, it said “the little cupcake is big again” adding: “Self-contained and satisfying, it summons memories of childhood even as it’s updated for today’s sweet-toothed hipsters.” [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Isn’t that, um, rich, that they used a recipe from the Ellen Degeneres Chat show? C’mon, that is FUNNY! Use a recipe in a magazine for Al Qaeda Would-Be Terrorists from an out-lesbian’s show? That is fabulous! You know that had to make their little terrorist heads explode. Gotta love MI6! Well done!

Speaking of Al Qaeda, here’s an interesting little tidbit that slipped by. Guess who invited the Libyan “rebels” new National Transitional Council to open an office in Washington, D.C.? Did you guess Obama? Well, then, you would be right. Yes, these are the same people whose connections are still unclear, though they CLAIM none of the people on the council have ties to Al Qaeda…Uh huh. Oh, and this is the same group that demanded Qatar return a rape victim, Eman al-Obeidy, to them, which Qatar did:

[snip] She said that, besides beating her and forcing her onto the plane, the Qataris had taken everything from her and her parents, including cell phones, her laptop, and money.[snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Oh, yes – I can see why President Obama would offer to allow the NTC to open an office in DC. Oh, wait, no I can’t. It is ludicrous. It is obscene.

Speaking of obscene, now it is time for a PSA from Monica Hesse of the Washington Post: Listen up, fellas: Naked man-parts? Not so sexy. Ms. Hesse is referring, of course, to the alleged tweet from Rep. Weiner (oh, wow) a leading Democrat from NY of a, well, um, how shall I say this – weiner. Weiner, of course, denies any such allegation, though – and this is just one of those, WTH kind of moments – he cannot say with certainty that the photo is NOT him.

Whaaaa? I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell would know if somehow there was a photo traveling around of my private parts. How in the hell cannot he NOT KNOW FOR SURE??? I think that says a lot, and what it says is: EWWWWWWWWWWWW.

Back to Hesse’s article. She has some suggestions from women in America about what they WOULD like to see:

[snip] “I would like a photo of a made bed,” says Kathryn Roberts, who works at a law firm in Washington. “I would take rose petals, but I want them on top of a made bed.” And not that fake kind of made, either, where the comforter is smooth but the sheets are a jumbled mess.

“Or laundry,” adds her friend Andrea Neurohr.

“Folded laundry,” elaborates Roberts. “Maybe in a wicker basket.”

Over the years, a handful of famous men — and a boatload full of unfamous, Craigslisty men — have landed in the news for sending women photos of their artfully framed packages. Brett Favre allegedly had a special delivery for Jenn Sterger, a sideline reporter for the New York Jets. Kanye West allegedly provided some of his female MySpace friends with some extra-friendly pictures. There are entire Web sites, aimed at men, teaching them the etiquette for public displays of private parts.

Men! Broaden your seduction techniques!

How about you move away from the below-the-waist close-up? How about you try going naked from the waist up? How about a picture of you, sweaty, cleaning out the storm drain? How about a photograph of you gently caressing the yogurt, as you rotate the soon-to-expire food to the front of the refrigerator? So sexy!

“The refrigerator,” says Gretchen LeMaistre. “That’s a big scenario.” LeMaistre is a San Francisco-based photographer who has worked on the “Porn for Women” series, tongue-in-cheek books purporting to tap into women’s most intimate pleasure zones. In the yet-unpublished “Porn for Working Women,” an attractive man cleans out the office fridge and asks, “Am I the only one who cares if we have a clean breakroom?” [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Uh, yeah. I am guessing that would work.

I suppose at some point we will get to the, uh, bottom of all of this, though so far, for my money, Weiner seems a bit creative in his deflections. I’m thinking he did SOMETHING he shouldn’t have. Oopsy daisy.

Speaking of someone who did something he shouldn’t have, it looks like former NC Senator, VP candidate, and presidential candidate, John Edwards can anticipate criminal charges being filed against him. Again, oopsy daisy. I reckon that’s what happens when you funnel campaign cash to your mistress and your love child. Seems that’s against the law. You’d think an attorney would know that. Apparently not:

[snip] Edwards, a trial lawyer who represented North Carolina in the Senate before his 2004 and 2008 runs for the White House, met last week with benefactor Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, the donor believed to have funded Edwards’s attempt to cover up his affair and child with Rielle Hunter, ABC News reported. Mellon is said to have given Edwards $700,000 for the purpose. [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

Holy moley, that’s a lot of green. I guess Ms. Hunter likes the finer things in life, huh?

I doubt that will be the color of the jumpsuit Edwards will be wearing if convicted. Ahem. I’m thinking orange. Sure hope it was worth it…

Oh, ick. I feel the need for a metaphorical shower, don’t you? Hey, it is Friday, after all. Here is something just for fun. I hope it brings a smile to your face:

Thank Goodness It’s Friday…

And why is Obama seeking “REGIME CHANGE” with our closest ally in the Middle East, and peacekeeper with Israel? Where is the hue and cry from the Left on this? Oh, wait – since it is Obama, it is fine and dandy. Right…

Indeed, the more answers I get about this organization, the more questions I have. For instance, why did Obama invite the PM of the Muslim Brotherhood to his speech in Cairo on June, 9, 2009? Especially considering the contentious relationship between the Brotherhood, and Egypt’s president? Is there any way a comparable scenario would be allowed to play out in the United States? That the nemesis of the president would be invited to attend the speech of a visiting dignitary? I think not.

Yet, that is exactly what Obama did:

[snip] The Muslim Brotherhood has been a thorn in President Mubarak’s side for many decades. Many of its members, at one time or another have been jailed. However, the group has 86 members in the Egyptian parliament, and the head of the Parliamentarian bloc of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammad Al Katatini, stated on Tuesday that he had received a private invitation from the American President to come to Al-Azhar University, where Obama will deliver his speech. This is an audacious move on the part of Obama, which managed to irritate the Egyptian leadership who say that the Brotherhood is ‘illegal’. Apparently, Americans officials in Cairo met with Al Katatini according to a report from Al Jazeera. [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

And then there was that secret meeting between former Ambassador to Egypt, Frank Weisner, and a senior leader in the Muslim Brotherhood, Issam El-Erian, on January 31, 2011, in Cairo.

What the hell is going on here?

In all honesty, I am not really surprised by these actions of Obama or his Administration. Though I was surprised to learn that Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota went on a trip to Mecca sponsored by a group, MAS (Muslim American Society), with these ties to the Muslim Brotherhood:

[snip] The MAS was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an international Islamist movement created in Egypt in 1928. Radical members of the Brotherhood founded the terror group Hamas and were among the first members of Al Qaeda.

The Muslim American Society’s former secretary general has acknowledged that the group was founded by the Brotherhood, and in 2004 he estimated that about half of MAS members were in the Muslim Brotherhood. [snip]

[snip] “It is the de facto arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S.,” said Steven Emerson, director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. “The agenda of the MAS is to … impose Islamic law in the U.S., to undermine U.S. counterterrorism policy.”
[snip](Click here to read the rest.)

Wow. Now THAT is disturbing. Yet we are often bludgeoned into silence int his country should we dare raise any questions about these kinds of Muslim organizations. It seems we should have been asking a lot more questions,of Obama, and his associates, especially if you look at the choices Obama has made with some of his appointments. As it turns out, a number of them, including one of the people he chose to participate in his inauguration ceremonies:

[snip] Obama’s first attempt at outreach to Muslims came when he chose the head of a Muslim Brotherhood-linked group that had been named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case to give a prayer during his inauguration ceremonies. Ingrid Mattson, who was then president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), offered this prayer at the National Cathedral on Obama’s Inauguration Day – despite the fact that the previous summer, federal prosecutors rejected a request from ISNA to remove its unindicted co-conspirator status.

There is no record of Obama ever asking Mattson to explain ISNA’s links to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. On the contrary: he sent his Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett to be the keynote speaker at ISNA’s national convention in 2009.

But wait – there’s more:

Even worse, in April 2009, Obama appointed Arif Alikhan, the deputy mayor of Los Angeles, as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development at the Department of Homeland Security. Just two weeks before he received this appointment, Alikhan (who once called the jihad terror group Hizballah a “liberation movement”) participated in a fundraiser for the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Like ISNA, MPAC has links to the Muslim Brotherhood. In a book entitled In Fraternity: A Message to Muslims in America, coauthor Hassan Hathout, a former MPAC president, is identified as “a close disciple of the late Hassan al-Banna of Egypt.” The MPAC-linked magazine The Minaret spoke of Hassan Hathout’s closeness to al-Banna in a 1997 article: “My father would tell me that Hassan Hathout was a companion of Hassan al-Banna….Hassan Hathout would speak of al-Banna with such love and adoration; he would speak of a relationship not guided by politics or law but by a basic sense of human decency.”

Al-Banna, of course, was the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.[snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

So, yes, that Obama invited the PM to his speech in Cairo, and had the former Ambassador meet with the Brotherhood in private really should not be a surprise. Evidently, Obama’s connections with the Brotherhood are not new.

And this news raises this important question for me: how, and why,is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton able to justify this support for the Muslim Brotherhood to have a role in Egypt’s government given her lifelong work and dedication to women and children? I do not understand it.

Anyone who has read me regularly knows that my support for Hillary Clinton was complete and unwavering. I had never felt so strongly about a presidential candidate in my life as I did about her run for president. And not just because she was a woman, but because she was one of the most qualified, experienced, intelligent people with a real grasp of what is going on in the lives of regular Americans as any candidate I have ever seen. Her ability to hold so many different concepts at once, able to see down the road how implementation of policies would be most effective, and she was able to communicate her knowledge with compassion, wisdom, and humor. In short, she was the complete package.

Clinton’s work on behalf of women and children began after law school when she went to work for the Children’s Defense Fund in 1970, and her commitment only grew after that. Her work as First Lady of Arkansas, First Lady of the United States, US Senator from New York, and now Secretary of State, have all included her commitment to women and children. She routinely speaks out about the positive effect on a country when its women and children are educated, and has an office dedicated to Women’s Issuesin the State Department.

Curiously, there is also an office for outreach to Muslim Communities, initiated in 2009. This special representative, Farah, Pandith, reports directly to the Secretary. Interesting, that. Why is our State Department reaching out to a particular religious group, I have to ask? Again, it should not be a surprise that this office came into being with Obama’s presidency.

All of the above leads me back to this: how can Secretary Clinton continue to support President Obama in his push for the Muslim Brotherhood to be involved in governing Egypt? The Muslim Brotherhood wants to implement Sharia Law, for heaven’s sake. How in the world can Secretary Clinton stand by this? How can she possibly condone the impact this will have on women in Egypt given her lifelong work for women to have full human rights? How? I simply do not understand this. It seems to fly in the face of everything for which she has stood, and about which she spoke, in this groundbreaking speech back in 1995:

If Sharia Law is implemented in Egypt, as it surely will be if the Muslim Brotherhood is involved, it will set back women’s progress there decades. How Secretary Clinton can remain silent on this is beyond me. There is still time, though, and I hope she will come out and say the right thing, or give up her office rather than be complacent in Obama’s push for the Brotherhood’s involvement there. I hope she will truly stand on the side of women, and not this president who clearly does not have women’s best interests at heart (which I have been saying from the get-go. Do you think “Ms. Magazine” and N.O.W. have gotten it, um, now?).

Will Secretary Clinton stand with women around the world, or will she stand with Obama? One can only hope she will choose the former. The latter would just be unthinkable…

Well, one of the alleged Republican women depicted in the video, supermodel, CEO, and chief designer, Kathy Ireland, took exception to the depiction of women in this video in a BIG way. In this AOL News opinion piece, Ireland spoke out:

There are so many warning signs that negativity is devouring honest political discourse in our country, and one of these recently made me a very unwilling part of it. When misogyny becomes part of victory at any price, our democracy is embarrassed and endangered.

Here’s what happened, and here’s why I’m angry and why I feel any American of whatever party or gender should be furious too.

Suddenly it was widely reported on the Internet that a GOP political blog in Minnesota had posted a disgusting video that proclaimed Republican women — candidates and supporters — are attractive and that their Democratic counterparts are, in the most disturbing and distorted photo presentations in their video, just the opposite. This vulgarity and flat-out misrepresentation of all women identified as Democrats was to the accompaniment of the rock song “Who Let the Dogs Out?” That shows the level of maturity.

The more appropriate question is, “Who in the Minnesota Republican campaign let these people near a computer?” Everything about this sordid business was vile. But the most awful fact is that it is absolutely representative of the tastelessness and negativity that is now the American political landscape.

I had become personally involved in this low point of political conniving because these bloggers identified me by name and photo (in swimwear, of course) as one of the “Republican babes” about whom they were boasting. My assumption is that my open position on the life issue has caused the video makers to place me in a Republican box. I’m too odd-shaped to fit into any neat little box. I vote for integrity, character, leadership and policy, regardless of party label. [snip] (Click HERE to read the rest.)

Dang – you go, Ms. Ireland! You tell ‘em! And did she ever as she continued:

But my fury derives from the way these “leaders,” and a bipartisan collection of other political negativists on both sides of the aisle, are debasing our democracy and the essential exercise of our privilege to vote our leaders in or out. Political candidates of every stripe are responsible for holding their supporters and campaign teams to their own ethical standards, or else we have to assume that these excesses (whether their prejudices are misogyny or any other form of ignorance) represent what the candidates stand for. [snip]

Snap!!! You said it (and click here to read the rest). You betcha – this kind of thing is indicative of how a candidate, a politician, sees women. Like when Obama’s Chief Speechwriter, Jon Favreau, now his White House Chief speechwriter, had a photo taken of him groping the breast of a Hillary Clinton life-size cutout, which he put on his Facebook page, and was still able to keep his job, it told us EXACTLY what we needed to know about Obama. Not only did he keep someone who clearly had a disrespect for women, but disrespected his future Secretary of State, that said it all. Not that those of us paying attention needed any more proof. We had seen plenty enough misogyny spewed Clinton’s way from Obama, his team, and the DNC long before this disturbing incident.

Good for Kathy Ireland for calling this what it is – misogyny. I appreciate her speaking out in no uncertain terms about what this looked like, and felt like, to her. She really nailed it on the head, and was absolutely right to call people to account for this kind of video.

I should add, the Minnesota GOP was none too pleased with this video, as this Atlantic article acknowledges, “Minnesota GOP Not Pleased With Sexist Video”:

[snip]The video was released by a Republican Party unit, akin to a county committee, in Senate District 56, and the Minnesota Republican Party is quick to point out that this is NOT their doing. They are, in fact, none too pleased with it.

“It was down before we even knew it was up, and obviously it’s wrong and obviously it’s inappropriate,” Minnesota GOP spokesman Mark Drake said.

“I think some people from the party have been in touch with them,” Drake said when asked if the state party has called the Senate District 56 Republicans to scold them about the web ad. “I don’t think anyone’s pleased that it was up.” [snip] (Click HERE to read the rest.)

Good for them for making that clear. So did some of the Republican women candidates.

And how about the guy who made the video, Randy Brown? What does he have to say about it? I bet you know what’s coming. It was just humor, people.

Um, no. It wasn’t humor, and it wasn’t funny. Kathy Ireland said it all: it was sexist and misogynistic. Maybe Brown thinks that’s funny. I sure as hell do not.

One last note, and this is to John McEnroe, who felt compelled to demonstrate his sexism once again in this NY Post article, “Tennis Loudmouth John McEnroe Says Women Players More Fragile Than Men,” please stop talking now. Yes, he said it:

Tantrum-prone tennis bad boy John McEnroe hit a smash shot at the ladies Friday, saying women players aren’t tough enough to compete in as many tournaments as men.

“They should be required to be in less events. There should be less events for the women,” McEnroe said on a CBS Sports conference call about its coverage of the U.S. Open, which starts Monday in Flushing Meadows.

[snip]

“You shouldn’t push them to play more than they’re capable of,” McEnroe said of the female players.

“It seems it takes an actual meltdown on the court or women quitting the game altogether before they realize there’s a need to change the schedule.” [snip] (click here to read more.)

Do I even have to mention that former pro player, Mary Carillo, and current tennis announcer with McEnroe, was not amused? Especially since she won the 1977 French Open mixed doubles championship with him. I am sure, beside Carillo, most of the pro women weren’t either. I’d love to see him say that to Serena Williams face, wouldn’t you?

John, here’s a little tip for you – put a tennis ball in it, you sexist pig. Oh, and you have a call – it’s from Kathy Ireland.

George W. Bush. No, really – I’m serious. They want George W. Bush to weigh in on the building of this particular mosque near Ground Zero. Would I lie to you? No. And wait until you see who a couple of the writers are requesting Bush’s input in this Byron York article in the Washington Examiner, “Mosque supporters beg George W. Bush to come to Obama’s rescue“:

It’s time for W. to weigh in,” writes the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd. Bush, Dowd explains, understands that “you can’t have an effective war against the terrorists if it is a war on Islam.” Dowd finds it “odd” that Obama seems less sure on that matter. But to set things back on the right course, she says, “W. needs to get his bullhorn back out” — a reference to Bush’s famous “the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!” speech at Ground Zero on September 14, 2001.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson is also looking for an assist from Bush. “I…would love to hear from former President Bush on this issue,” Robinson wrote Tuesday in a Post chat session. “He held Ramadan iftar dinners in the White House as part of a much broader effort to show that our fight against the al-Qaeda murderers who attacked us on 9/11 was not a crusade against Islam. He was absolutely right on this point, and it would be helpful to hear his views.”

And Peter Beinart, a former editor of the New Republic, is also feeling some nostalgia for the former president. “Words I never thought I’d write: I pine for George W. Bush,” Beinart wrote Tuesday in The Daily Beast. “Whatever his flaws, the man respected religion, all religion.” Beinart longs for the days when Bush “used to say that the ‘war on terror’ was a struggle on behalf of Muslims, decent folks who wanted nothing more than to live free like you and me…”

Come on, isn’t that hilarious? These are the same people who vilified Bush routinely, routinely!!! And now, now that the man they supported after consuming massive amounts of Kool Aide, and smoking tons of Hopium, and shoved down our throats, refusing to do any vetting whatsoever, has made such a mess of this issue, they want BUSH to weigh in? This is one of the funniest things I have heard in a while. Maureen Dowd?? Eugene ROBINSON?? Oh, wow.

Well, someone else who has weighed in is Debra Burlingame, from the 9/11 Families. Did she ever have something to say, especially about Madam Speaker Pelosi’s remarks about funding:

Well, Ms. Burlingame certainly didn’t mince words. Agree with her or not, there is no misunderstanding from where she is coming on this issue.

There is one group from whom we have not heard on this whole mosque business. And that would be moderate Muslims. What is their take on Imam Rauf’s building the mosque near Ground Zero? They, too, are quite clear: don’t build it. That is the upshot of this Daily Caller article by Caroline May, “Moderate Muslims Oppose Location of Cordoba Mosque – On Religious Grounds.” This article is well worth the read, but a few salient quotes:

[snip] Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, told TheDC that moderate Muslims have been silent on the matter, despite possible disagreements, due to religious concerns. According to Fatah, however, the need to avoid causing another person pain should trump such conflicts.

“There is a widespread belief among Muslim teaching that anyone who opposes the construction of a mosque, which is the house of God, is committing a sin,” he said. “So a lot of people who want to voice their opinion do not want to become a part of the controversy. But especially during the month of Ramadan it is important that our actions not cause pain to anyone. Any action by a Muslim that causes any pain to anyone else should be halted!” [snip]

That explains a lot – the widespread belief, that is. It helps to know why moderate Muslims have been quiet throughout this discussion. There is more:

Fatah believes the mosque plans are moving forward because they have the support of the American government. “I think they have an official green light either from the State Department or the White House telling them to, ‘Go ahead, you have our full backing,’ and they want to use this Islamic center as a place for diplomacy to the Middle East to demonstrate that the United States is a place where Muslims thrive. But that has backfired because this could have been done in many other ways.”

Jasser said that the building of this mosque is ‘fitna,’ a religious term meaning mischief-making, which is severely frowned upon in Islam. “‘Fitna’ is anything that causes chaos in society,” he said. “This mosque is causing chaos, it is causing ‘fitna’ and that is not the Islamic thing to do … This is ‘fitna’ and ‘fitna’ is wrong.”

Fatah agreed saying that ‘fitna’ is an ethical and moral issue that ought not be taken lightly. “If a step taken by an individual causes disharmony then it is ‘fitna.’ [The mosque] has caused so much pain. There are many mosques already in New York, nobody has ever opposed a mosque, if there is opposition to a mosque on grounds of hatred I would be the first to confront it. But over here it is a matter of sensitivity and there is no residential community even near the community center.” [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)

“Mischief-making.” Yes, that seems to be a good term for what Imam Rauk is doing, along with Obama, I might add. And yes, the State Department sending Imam Rauf on a tour of the Middle East on our dime, at a cost of $16,000, certainly appears to condone the building the mosque by essentially endorsing Rauf.

But Fatah said it all. This is not about hatred. It is about sensitivity (about which I wrote recently, too). This decision is causing pain, to a number of people. Two thirds of New Yorkers oppose building the mosque there. Two thirds of Americans oppose building the mosque within two blocks of Ground Zero. Not because they/we/I oppose building mosques in general, but because we oppose it being built THERE, overlooking where Ground Zero stands, a hallowed ground to New Yorkers, to our nation.

George W. Bush can say something or not, doesn’t really matter to me. As far as I am concerned, the opposition is about sensitivity to those who lost loved ones, and to a nation that suffered a devastating attack there. It is not a matter of “freedom of religion,” or “freedom to practice religion.” It is about ceasing the mischief making, an “ethical and moral issue” of some weight.

I think that pretty much says it all, don’t you?

But I am not writing about any of those issues today, except to say my heart goes out to those in the Gulf States, as well as Tennessee and Kentucky. I might add, kudos to those in New York for their quick action.

Rather, I want to mention a recent report that is a good news/bad news report that came out in April. The report, taken from Census results, claims that women are now on a par with men in advanced degrees. Wow – that is quite a step! That’s the good news. Ready for the bad news? I am sure you can guess: we still don’t get paid the same. Nope, different day, same result:

Women are now just as likely as men to have completed college and to hold an advanced degree, part of an accelerating trend of educational gains that have shielded women from recent job losses. Yet they continue to lag behind men in pay.

Among adults 25 and older, 29 percent of women in the U.S. have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 30 percent of men, according to 2009 census figures released Tuesday. Measured by raw numbers, women already surpass men in undergraduate degrees by roughly 1.2 million.

Women also have drawn even with men in holding advanced degrees. Women represented roughly half of those in the U.S. with a master’s degree or higher, due largely to years of steady increases in women opting to pursue a medical or law degree.

At current rates, women could pass men in total advanced degrees this year, even though they still trail significantly in several categories such as business, science and engineering.

“It won’t be long before women dominate higher education and every degree level up to Ph.D.,” said Mark Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan-Flint who is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank. “They are getting the skills that will protect them from future downturns.”

While young women have been exceeding men in college enrollment since the early 1980s, the educational gains have now progressively spread upward to older age groups. That could have wide ramifications in the workplace: more working mothers, increased child-care needs and a greater focus on pay disparities among them.

Women with full-time jobs now have weekly earnings equal to 80.2 percent of what men earn, up slightly from 2008 but lower than a high of 81 percent in 2005.

So, why the continued disparity in pay, then? If we are on a par with men in terms of education, why are we not getting paid the same as they are? And if women are going to overtake men, will pay go up for women, or will it just come down for men? I guess we’ll see, but it is infuriating that this disparity continues after all these years. When will the time come that women will be treated as truly equal??

And that brings me to this story. Now, you know I am a huge baseball fan, so when I saw this headline, it caught my eye,
Joe Niekro’s Knuckler Lives Through Arm of 12-Year-Old Girl. Say whaaa? How can that be? This is how:

As an organ donor, pitching great Joe Niekro left his eyes behind so another man could see. He left his liver, kidneys and heart so three others could live today.

He left a unique and special gift — his famed knuckleball — to a precocious little girl who could be on the verge of inspiring a whole new generation of baseball players.

Chelsea Baker, only 12, has learned to make that pitch dance, to magically make it move like a butterfly on its way to home plate, baffling and befuddling young hitters. Like Joe taught her, shortly before his death in 2006 (the two are seen in the photo above, courtesy of Rod Mason).

“Joe would be so proud, so really proud,” said Debbie Niekro, Joe’s widow who has watched Chelsea pitch several times. “He really liked Chelsea. He loved the way she listened, and learned at that age. He knew she was going to be something special.”

Niekro was 61 when he died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. At the time, he was helping coach a Little League team on which Chelsea and his own son played in his adopted hometown of Plant City.

Wow, what gifts Niekro left behind, from being an organ donor, an issue near and dear to my heart (my mom received a liver transplant almost 25 years ago, which allowed us to have her for all those years before her death in January), to coaching Little Leaguers, to treating this little girl like she was just as worthy as any of those boys on the field. That is no small thing. Nor was the way in which he inspired this little girl:

Chelsea was 8 when he died, too young to quite understand how final death would be, but old enough to understand the gift that Niekro had left her. It gave her a passion for the game, and specifically for the pitch.

“I bugged him to teach me because I never could hit that knuckleball when he would throw it to me in batting practice. He always said it was a secret, but he finally taught me, and we worked on it a lot,” Chelsea told FanHouse last week after a game. “I love throwing it. My catcher says it’s so nasty.”

And the batters can’t touch it. Although there are many young girls peppered across America now playing Little League Baseball with the boys, there are only a few who can dominate as Chelsea does.

She has thrown two perfect games within the past year, including one in an All-Star Game. She is unbeaten this season in nine starts, throwing 54 innings and striking out 103 batters while allowing only four runs. She also is hitting .569, playing third base when she doesn’t pitch.

“When she first came to me for instruction, I was thinking ‘OK, here is a girl I can help,” said Keith Maxwell, a hitting instructor who played 12 years of professional baseball, including five with the Pittsburgh Pirates organization. “But after two weeks with her, I was like ‘wow.’ She has an incredible pop in her bat. She isn’t just a pitcher. I thought, ‘This is probably going to be the first girl to play Major League Baseball.’ And I don’t say that lightly.”

Holy cow, wouldn’t that be SOMETHING? I would sure love to live to see that day, a woman playing in the Big Leagues. Just think about this: baseball players, football players, and basketball players make MILLIONS of dollars a year – if they are men. Women do not have access to those kinds of salaries as professional athletes with the exceptions of tennis and golf. Professional women soccer and basketball players are not signing multi-million dollar contracts right out of college, that’s for sure. The disparity is glaring and extreme. For women to finally have access to those kinds of salaries would be a big deal indeed.

Back to Chelsea:

She already is being recruited to play for the Sparks, a girls baseball team based in the Northeast that tours nationally playing against the best boys teams in the country.

Chelsea, average size for a 12-year-old girl, is unusually athletic with a powerful arm and a fastball that comes close to 70 mph. Yet it’s Niekro’s knuckleball, and the passion he sparked, that makes her so special.

It’s why in the fall, when her sixth-grade history assignment was to do a project on “Someone Who Changed The World,” she selected Joe Niekro as her topic. She already had all his old baseball cards. She had several pictures of her and him on the baseball field together.

“I got an A on the project. The teacher told us it had to be about someone you felt strongly about,” she said. “And I knew how famous Coach Joe was. I miss him. I remember before every game I pitched, I had to give him a kiss on the cheek before he’d give me the ball.”

Niekro pitched 22 seasons in the major leagues for seven different teams. He won 221 games. He and his brother Phil Niekro combined for 539 wins, the most of any brother tandem in history. Chelsea knows all those numbers now.

Some of his time in the Bigs was spent in Atlanta, my favorite NL team, with his brother, Phil. He and Phil were also in the Pinstripes of the New York Yankees while I was living in New York. What a career. Chelsea could tell you all about it:

She is the one who wrote the moving passage that was used as part of Niekro’s obituary tribute. It brought friends and family members to tears.

“Coach Joe taught me so much in the few short years I new (sic) him. He taught me how to have pride in myself, and to be humble. Most of all, he taught me to throw his famous knuckle ball. . . . . I miss seeing him . . . . . . and his happy face at the ballpark. I will always remember and love you. – CHELSEA BAKER.”

It was also Chelsea who came to the funeral viewing services and left a baseball in Niekro’s open casket. And it wasn’t just any baseball, either. It was a scuffed baseball, with four tiny and barely visible fingernail marks along the seams, exactly where he taught her to grip it.

“He taught me how to hold it like this,” she demonstrated last week. “I usually wait until I have two strikes. They can’t hit it. He told me that’s how it would be.”

She is merely a seventh-grader, but watching her pitch or watching her play, or hearing her speak about Niekro, she seems much older. For all her accomplishments — she will make her sixth consecutive All-Star team in Plant City — she is surprisingly humble.

Now THAT is something to celebrate. An accomplished athlete who makes good grades AND is humble. Wow. This pretty much says it all:

Some of her teachers at Turkey Creek Middle School don’t even know she plays baseball. Most of the boys do, because they’ve been playing against her for several years, accepting her as one of the best. It’s when she travels, as the only girl in her league, that occasionally she hears remarks about her being a girl. Mostly it’s from the grandstands, from other parents.

“I still hear parents from other teams say, ‘When is she going to start playing softball?’ ” said stepfather Rod Mason, who helps coach her team now. “And it kind of ticks me off. So I usually just say, ‘When she stops striking out your little Johnny.’ ”

Well said, Mr. Mason. Well said, indeed. How fortunate Chelsea is to have such supportive people in her life:

Mason and wife Missy have followed Chelsea’s baseball from the start. She started with baseball because that’s what Mason’s sons played. And she just happened to be so good at it.

“I’ve had other parents tell me now that they couldn’t get their girls to practice until they saw Chelsea play,” Mason said. “I think her success will help other girls. She’s just so unbelievably focused. I never ask her to practice. But she always comes to me.”

Home-plate umpires often come to Steve Gude, manager of her team now, and apologize for missing calls when Chelsea pitches. Her knuckleball often darts out and back into the strike zone when she keeps it low — like Coach Joe taught her.

Joe never taught her this trick, but it’s one she can do if you ask. She can stand out in center field — and her arm is so strong — she can throw a knuckleball all the way to home plate, giggling as it flutters through the air.

“Joe was really good to her,” Mason said. “He went out of his way to help her. He was such a giving guy with all the kids, always willing to help. But I think he knew Chelsea was kind of special.”

Women are graduating with advanced degrees in equal numbers with men. Our pay still lags behind the men. Good news, bad news. And the bad news is simply unacceptable in this day and age. Women must get the same pay as their male colleagues. Women must learn to stand together and demand the same salary as the guys with whom they are graduating. It is not going to be something handed down from on high. This battle has been dragging on far too long.

But then there is Chelsea Baker, a knuckleballer who throws as hard as Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield, who can also hit, and may well be the first woman to go up to the Big Show. Oh, who is also a good student and humble to boot. Here’s hoping she is one of many to shatter that glass ceiling. How ironic would that be – to have a woman in the Big Leagues before we have a woman president? Looking like that might be possible. It’s a start, though, a glimmer of hope. I’ll take it.

Now, it seems, not only is the White House threatening Democrats who didn’t toe the Party Line, but a number of unions, including SEIU, are threatening, too:

Senior White House and organized labor officials are warning the handful of House Democrats who supported health care legislation last year only to oppose the final measure on Sunday that they shouldn’t expect assistance for their reelection campaigns this fall.

The five who switched from yes to no — Reps. Michael Arcuri of New York, Marion Berry of Arkansas, Daniel Lipinski of Illinois, Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts and Zack Space of Ohio — have so annoyed top Democrats that there is also open talk of finding opponents to ensure they pay a steep political price for changing their vote.

“We’re looking at candidates we can trust to run against them, either through a primary or in the general election,” said Service Employees International Union Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger, noting that recruitment conversations were already under way.

Of the five who switched, Burger said flatly, “They should not expect help from us.”

Karen Ackerman, political director of the AFL-CIO, said local union members were deeply disappointed in the vote-switchers — and that the locals will determine whether to endorse the incumbents.

“There are no guarantees, and they have a lot of work to do to attempt to repair that relationship. It may be repaired or it may not be repaired,” Ackerman said.

Top aides to President Barack Obama also made clear that they’ll prioritize their political time and resources this year with an eye on those who did or did not stand with them on the toughest vote of the election cycle.

“There is not a whole lot of Barack Obama and Joe Biden to spare on a good day,” said one senior White House official. “We’re going to have to focus on our friends.”

Another top Obama aide, asked about the group of five, responded simply: “We appreciate the people who hung with us.”

Yikes. Yep, those sound like threats to me. And that’s not all:

In the West Wing, where aides spent hours pleading with the members to stick to their original votes, there is a feeling that the group unnecessarily imperiled passage of the bill for reasons that defy political logic.

White House officials and other party leaders say that, having already supported health care once, the members will still be attacked by Republicans for the original vote and will now face additional anger from their own political base for opposing the final version of the historic bill that is now law.

“They have the vote, but now they lack the accomplishment,” said a senior Obama aide, adding that the group’s members have endangered their own prospects at the polls because the so-called “surge voters” who came out to back the president in 2008 will be tougher to motivate.

“The prescription for winning tough races is to generate turnout from many of the folks that came out in 2008,” the aide said. “I would think this would make it harder to do that.”

Another White House official made the case that “the public is not going to make the distinction [between the two votes], and they’re going to get hammered.”

On Capitol Hill, there is a sense of puzzlement mixed with frustration among colleagues of the five.

One senior Democratic House member was withering: “They were without backbone.”

I’m sorry, WHO was “without backbone”?? The people who were bought by the White House? The ones who bucked the will of their constituents? Or the ones who did as their constituents wanted? Perhaps this is the problem with many in DC – they do not understand basic English. Maybe they just don’t know what the term means. That might explain it. There’s more:

And, this member said, the group made an already difficult election cycle for House Democrats that much more difficult.

“That group that said ‘yes’ and then ‘no’ are the most challenging members now for us [to defend in November],” the member said.

Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, didn’t defend the political calculus of those in the group but said that his focus was solely on keeping the seats in Democratic hands and that he’d stand by the incumbents.

“We will help all our guys,” said Van Hollen. “If others want to pick and choose, that’s up to them. Our job is to make sure that we remain in the majority.”

Of the five, Berry, who is retiring after this term, is the only one who will definitely not be on the ballot in November — and seemingly the one with the least to lose by staying in the “yea” column.

But the strong suspicion among top Democrats is that Berry switched his vote as a favor to his chief of staff, Chad Causey, who is running to succeed him and has indicated that he would have opposed the legislation.

Yeah, okay, that makes sense – not.

Now the unions start weighing in:

Alan Hughes, president of the Arkansas AFL-CIO, said his organization was “highly disappointed in [Berry’s] vote” and noted that Causey and the other Democrats running for the seat Berry is vacating would be sitting for interviews at the state federation’s convention this weekend in Hot Springs.

“We’re going to drill the hell out of them,” Hughes said, alluding to their positions on health care and other issues important to labor.

Arcuri and Space, both second-term members from districts previously held by Republicans, are widely viewed as having switched for the most purely political reasons.

“Fear in politics is a very powerful thing, and these guys were just fearful of losing their seats,” a top White House aide said.

In New York, liberals have already begun wooing one of Arcuri’s former primary opponents to run against him.

Les Roberts, a Columbia University professor, has said that he’s considering running in the Democratic primary as well as on the Working Families Party ballot line.

In the run-up to the vote, Arcuri said he was unhappy that Medicare was still not allowed to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry and had worries that taxes on medical devices may have an adverse impact on his district.

Well, those sound like good reasons to me. Taxes ARE going to go up, as are insurance premiums, and drug prices. All thanks to Obama pandering to Big Pharma. But hey – why let some facts interfere with threats, right? Right:

In Ohio, local chapters of SEIU and UFCW announced Monday that they would no longer support Space, who already faced a difficult reelection in his rural eastern-Ohio-based district after he supported the energy bill last year.

Space indicated he was concerned that the final version of the bill might tax the health care benefits of his middle-class constituents.

Lipinski and Lynch are the most puzzling switchers in the group — both hail from heavily Democratic, big-city districts.

Lipinski cited concerns about abortion, but his position was undercut when Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and other anti-abortion Democrats still voted for final passage of the bill after Obama issued an executive order reiterating the ban on federal money being used on the procedure.

What angers Democrats about Lipinski is that he suffers from diabetes, and it has long been thought in Chicago political circles that he is in Congress in part to have access to a gold-plated congressional health care plan.

The view among party officials is that Lipinski’s father, a conservative-leaning Democrat who previously held his son’s seat and engineered the succession, thought it would be good politics to oppose the bill.

“He could not articulate to us why he was doing this,” a senior White House official said of Lipinski.

While the Illinois primary has already taken place, an independent could still file to run against Lipinski this fall.

As for Lynch, Democrats believe he’s still bitter over the lack of support he received when he considered running in the special Senate race for the seat of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and thought that, by changing his vote, he could separate himself from other 2012 primary hopefuls vying for the seat now held by GOP Sen. Scott Brown.

But it’s difficult to see how such a position could be advantageous in a Democratic primary in a state such as Massachusetts.

“John Kerry tried to disabuse him of that notion but could not,” said a senior White House official, referring to the Bay State’s senior senator.

“Everyone I talk to is baffled by Lynch’s votes,” said the AFL-CIO’s Ackerman, noting that the congressman, a former ironworker, comes out of the labor movement.

Lynch, for his part, said he opposed the bill because it didn’t do enough to crack down on insurance companies.

But progressives in Massachusetts are already courting a potential primary opponent, Harmony Wu, to run against Lynch.

Well, considering by some estimations premiums are going to go UP $2,100 not DOWN $2,500, as Obama claimed they would, I can see why these representatives are concerned. Heck, taxes ARE going to go UP to, exposing another Obama lie. There is GREAT concern about the cost of this bill for New York City, for example. Why? Because NYC will have to pay $6.5 BILLION a year to DC in taxes as a result of this bill:

That figure is JUST for the city, not including the rest of the state. Holy moley. That’s a big chunk of change. $200,000, as Megyn Kelly pointed out, is NOT a lot in the city. No kidding. Oh, what a great bill this is.

So, yes, these folks are indeed being threatened. By their own party members, I might add. Just more of the Obama Hope-y, Change-y Unicorn Rainbow – Chicago style. I can’t wait to see what’s next…

Much has transpired in the intervening year. I would like to thank No Quarter regular reader, Boonies, for sending me this update,
Aasiya Zubair Hassan’s Tortured, Manipulated Life: Beheaded woman left statement detailing years of torment, tragedy.

I should warn you that, as the headline would indicate, this is a difficult story. It is about as far from a “feel good” story as one can get. It is painful, it is grotesque, and it is infuriating. Just so you know.

And now, to her story:

When Aasiya Zubair Hassan was finally ready to leave her husband, she prepared herself. She gathered copies of her police reports, photos of her beaten face, images of her ransacked house, scripts her husband made her memorize.

Then she painstakingly chronicled her years of torment in a 21-page court statement that painted her husband as not just a batterer, but a cruel, manipulative monster.

She detailed how he deprived her of sleep to “improve her personality,” made her sign memos authorizing him to punish her if she talked with the police and Child Protective Services, and threatened her with the loss of her children whenever she tried to break free.

Toward the end of her statement appealing for divorce in February 2009, she reflected on how furious her husband would be when he saw the document: “I am afraid of what he might do.”

One week later, she was dead. Her husband, Muzzammil “Mo” Hassan, led police to her stabbed and decapitated body in the Bridges TV studio they founded in Orchard Park.

Anyone who has done any work in the field of domestic violence, as I have, knows that this is when a woman is most at risk – when she is planning her escape. Unfortunately, this case does nothing to change that statistic:

None of this has apparently stopped Hassan from continuing — in letters to reporters and in his defense in court — to try to paint himself as the victim and his wife as the abuser.

“He was the abuser. He was the perpetrator. Now, he’s the manipulator,” said Afshan Qureshi, an advocate of domestic violence victims who knew both Aasiya Zubair Hassan, Hassan’s third wife, and Sadia Hassan, his second wife. “Those who are good at emotional abuse are good manipulators.”

From the Erie County jail, Hassan has sent handwritten letters to The Buffalo News and others portraying himself as an abused and battered spouse. In each case, he signed his mother’s name to the documents.

“If you are a mother like me, would you like to see your son being abused and cannot even turn to the system for help?” stated one letter.

It is clear that he wrote the letters, not his mother. Hassan, 45, has neat and distinctive penmanship. The News found the handwriting in all these letters match that of other documents signed under his own name. The postmarks are from Buffalo; his mother lives in Texas.

If you have any desire to read any of the letters this man has forged, click HERE, and you can get to them through links in the article.

I am not surprised by his actions. Rather, they seem to be pretty typical for someone like him:

Hassan seems to have no reservations about manipulating people by assuming other identities. In numerous cases, he appeared to have secretly authored documents that re-created reality and/or portrayed his wife as a dominating, mentally unstable woman.

Among the examples:

• Zubair Hassan stated that her husband forced her to give him the password to her e-mail account and subsequently logged into her account and sent e-mails to his attorney and his court-appointed psychologist pretending to be her.

One e-mail sent to psychologist Kenneth Condrell opens by stating, “I have been reading the Dale Carnegie book on “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” There is a chapter about admitting mistakes quickly and apologizing profusely and repeatedly. It struck me as a thuderbolt [sic] that I had difficulty admitting a mistake to Mo and struggled to apologize.”

It goes on to state, “I honestly do not believe he belongs in the Domestic Violence class. He has so much insights [sic] into human behavior and self-awareness.”

• While preparing to defend himself in a child neglect case, Hassan scripted the responses he wanted his wife to give when his defense lawyer questioned her in court. He made her stay home for two days to memorize her answers, she said.

In response to a question by defense lawyer David Siegel, “Do you think you are a battered woman?” Zubair Hassan was to respond as stated in the script: “What nonsense. Complete hogwash. I have always been a strong woman and a high achiever and no one violates my boundaries … My husband cannot tell me what I can and cannot do. I am my own person.”

• Hassan apparently drafted a letter for psychologist Condrell to sign describing his wife as a dominating and aggressive woman and further stating that “this personality profile test further indicates that Mrs. Hassan does not have the personality of a typical abused wife.”

The draft letter goes on to state “that there is no safety need that requires keeping Mr. and Mrs. Hassan apart over the next 6 months.”

A copy of the actual letter signed by Condrell and obtained by The News is much shorter. In it, Condrell states the personality test taken by Zubair Hassan as part of her master’s program in business “shows her to be a dominant, strong willed, aggressive woman.”

But he does not suggest that she wasn’t abused and does not state that her husband posed no safety threat. Further, it omits all references from the draft letter describing the husband as being “a persuasive, poised, influential, convincing, demonstrative and trusting person.”

Wow. Again, I wish I could say this was unusual. I cannot tell you the lengths to which some abusers have gone to play the victim, or to try and manipulate others involved in the situation to deny what the abuser has been doing, often for a number of years (and it usually starts out slowly, little by little, chipping away at the person’s self esteem, belittling them, then isolating them, cutting them off from finances, and on it goes):

In Hassan’s handwritten letter to The News, he states that Condrell testified in court that “Aasiya was aggressive, controlling and arrogant, while Mo was humble, kind and polite.”

Condrell declined to comment on the matter, citing his professional ethics, but Hassan’s statements are not supported by Condrell’s letter to the court.

• Hassan wrote two letters to The News under his mother’s name. The second letter included annotated copies of e-mails purportedly between Hassan and his wife.

“Inaccurate image’

The letters describe Hassan as part of an “epidemic” of battered men and cite authors and experts who have addressed the issue. They also describe his wife as an abuser who “needed proper medical help.”

“Many news stories have presented an inaccurate image of my son … The main reason for his difficulties is that he is too much of a people pleaser who avoids conflict. For years he kept appeasing a demanding wife. The more he appeased her, the more demanding she became,” one letter stated.

These actions are attributed to a man described as “manipulative” and “sick” by those who knew him and/or Zubair Hassan.

“She’s gone, and now the only thing he can destroy is her reputation,” said Faizan Haq, who once worked with both husband and wife. “He has nothing else in his control except her name. In a way, he’s still abusing her. He hasn’t stopped.”

In January, defense lawyer Frank M. Bogulski stated in court that Hassan was a “battered spouse” and promised “a revolutionary defense” that would get Hassan acquitted, using both psychiatric elements and legal justification.

Both defense lawyers, Bogulski and Julie Atti Rogers, state they are not committed to a specific defense and have not seen the divorce affidavit by Zubair Hassan.

“An affidavit is only one person’s side,” Bogulski cautioned. “Just because it was put in an affidavit doesn’t mean it was true.”

That’s exactly what I mean. The batterer often presents him(her)self as the batteree (if you will), often knowing the correct language to use to try and make that case, the right buttons to push. I cannot tell you how many times the batterer will get a restraining order against the person whom they are battering. It is far more common than one might think. at least in this case, the DA seemed to have a clue:

District Attorney Frank Sedita laughed when he heard of Hassan’s self-portrayal as a victim last week.

“What do any of these claims have to do with the issue that is before the court and the issue that will be before the jury?” he said. “Is there sufficient evidence to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant murdered his wife? That is the only issue to this point.”

In Zubair Hassan’s divorce appeal to the court, she attached 16 exhibits attesting to her husband’s abusive and controlling nature.

One exhibit, dated March 7, 2008, is a formally written, “confidential” memorandum of understanding that Hassan made his wife sign.

In it, both spouses “agree” that under threat of punishment, Zubair Hassan will not call, cooperate with, or threaten to call law enforcement. She also “agrees” not to threaten to leave him.

Physical abuse

The sworn statement signed by Zubair Hassan a week before she died brings to light many other details of a terrifying reality.

Contrary to Hassan’s assertions to The News that he never used his physical size to overpower his wife, Zubair Hassan’s sworn statement is full of instances where she claims he used his size and strength to imprison or physically hurt her.

Most of those claims are supported by police reports, photographs and witnesses. Among the worst incidents described by Zubair Hassan that were previously unknown to The News:

• When Zubair Hassan unexpectedly became pregnant in early summer of 2006, her husband, who is a stocky 6-foot-2, imprisoned her in the bedroom and sat on her until she admitted she needed psychiatric help.

In two separate incidents later that month, he punched her in the face, and dragged her down the driveway and sat on her after trying to convince her to have an abortion. She subsequently miscarried.

• The family’s four children — two older ones from a previous marriage, and two very young children born to Zubair Hassan — were also victims.

Child Protective Services investigated several complaints lodged by school personnel against Hassan for physical abuse of the children and his wife, ransacking the house and otherwise posing a threat to their safety.

Jennifer Greer, who baby-sat for the Hassan children from 2002 to 2008, said the young daughter would talk about hearing thunder on nights when there was no storm, and the young son spent much of his life living in an imaginary world where everyone was a superhero and they all cared for each other.

“It was heartbreaking to watch him go through that,” she said.

As we know, children also pay a price when there is domestic violence in the home. Sadly, this story is no exception:

• In October 2007, Zubair Hassan tried to fly to New York for a few days, but while Greer was driving her to the airport along Route 219 with the two young children in the back seat, Hassan ran their car off the road.

Greer cried as she recalled the terrified children in the car.

“Raising them, they were like my own kids,” she said. “All of us could have died on that day.”

• Hassan repeatedly punched his wife in the face until blood was pouring out her nose in April 2008. His wife recalled the oldest daughter screaming to her father, “I’m taking her to the hospital. I don’t care what you say. I’m not going to let her die here.”

Hassan did not let her seek medical treatment and refused to let her leave the house for a week because of her bruises, Zubair Hassan stated.

Two previous wives

Zubair Hassan was not the only woman who charged Hassan with abuse. So did his two previous wives.

Qureshi, president of Saathi of Rochester, a domestic violence program for South Asian women, said Hassan once pushed his second wife, Sadia, out of a moving car.

After the Muslim community intervened on her behalf, he told her she could have a divorce and get her green card only if she let him claim he was the abused victim.

“She was very scared,” Qureshi said. “She didn’t know what to do, where to go.”

Zubair Hassan asked for an order of protection as part of her divorce appeal, allowing her husband to be near her only at the Bridges TV studio, where she was later found dead.

“I am fearful for my children’s safety as well as my own,” she stated.

Hassan’s lawyers said their client shouldn’t be convicted by the media before his murder trial begins in September.

“We don’t in any way want to disparage Aasiya or her memory,” Bogulski said. “This is a horrible tragedy. But at the same time, we have to keep in mind that there is a presumption of innocence in regard to my client, and we ask the public to keep an open mind.”How Dostan@buffnews.com

Oh, yes. That is important – presumed innocence and not trying cases in the media. Though Hassan DID tell police his wife was dead, and her body was found at his business. But still, right?

I have written a fair amount about Women’s History this month, and as much as it pains me to say, this is a part of our history, too. Not even so much our history as it is the present for far too many of us (95% of battered persons are women). Chances are good that right now, right this very second, a woman is being battered. Almost half (42%) of women who are murdered are killed by people with whom they are intimate. That is an issue of monumental proportion, if you ask me. I am glad that Secretary Clinton acknowledged in her recent speech to the UN that we have a ways to go for women’s equality here at home, but wow – do we ever.

But whatever we do to address this critical issue, it will be too late for Aasiya Zubair Hassan, and a number of other women in this country. That is just heartbreaking. But we must push on, we must put a stop to violence against women once and for all. And we must do it NOW!

I admit, this one really shocked me, even more than Maine. What else surprised me was that it wasn’t even that close a vote:

The State Senate defeated a bill on Wednesday that would legalize same-sex marriage, after an emotional debate that touched on civil rights, family and history. The vote means that the bill, pushed by Gov. David A. Paterson, is effectively dead for the year and dashes the optimism of gay rights advocates, who have had setbacks recently in several key states.

The bill was defeated by a decisive margin of 38 to 24. The Democrats, who have a bare, one-seat majority, did not have enough votes to pass the bill without some Republican support, but not a single Republican senator voted for the measure. Still, several key Democrats who were considered swing votes also opposed the bill.

Mr. Paterson made an unusual trip to the Senate floor minutes after the last vote was cast, saying, “These victories come and so do the losses, but you keep on trying.”

True, there are wins and losses, and yes, we just have to keep on trying. But there are some agencies against which we are fighting that will be difficult to overcome:

The state’s Roman Catholic bishops, who had actively lobbied against the bill, said they were pleased by the vote.

“While the Catholic Church rejects unjust discrimination against homosexual men and women, there is no question that marriage by its nature is the union of one man and one woman,” Richard E. Barnes, the executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference, said in a statement. “Advocates for same-sex marriage have attempted to portray their cause as inevitable. However, it has become clear that Americans continue to understand marriage the way it has always been understood, and New York is not different in that regard. This is a victory for the basic building block of our society.”

Not quite sure how I can read that as anything other than being unjust, but that’s just me Still, this was not the overriding factor:

In the end, it was not an issue that broke down along racial lines, or even religious and agnostic divisions. In fact, nine of the Senate’s 11 black members voted in support of same-sex marriage.

“When I walk through these doors, my Bible stays out,” said Senator Eric Adams, a Brooklyn Democrat who compared the law preventing same-sex marriage with laws that kept blacks and whites from marrying. “I believe there are certain moments here where we can benchmark our lives by the votes we took.”

The debate was as personal as any to take place in the Senate chamber in years. Senators spoke of their experiences as Jews and Baptists, as blacks and women. They spoke of spending long nights contemplating their votes and the deceased gay friends and relatives who inspired their decision.

Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson, a Democrat who represents parts of the Bronx and Westchester County, spoke publicly for the first time about her gay brother, who was shunned by her family and moved to France.

“He had disappeared from our lives. And my father worried, but he could not ask him to come home,” she said, fighting back tears. Ms. Hassell-Thompson said she searched for her brother and eventually found him and asked him to come home. But he told her he was hesitant because he felt his family did not want to see him. “I said, ‘But your sister does.’ ”

Hold on, I need a moment…

Okay. Unfortunately, not everyone felt similarly:

State Senator Rubén Díaz Sr. of the Bronx made an impassioned argument against same-sex marriage, describing his continued opposition as reflecting the broad consensus that marriage should be limited to a union between a man and woman. “Not only the evangelicals, not only the Jews, not only the Muslims, not only the Catholics, but also the people oppose it,” he said.

Senate Republicans had said before the vote that they believed their members could provide a few votes for the bill.

“There may be a few, that’s very possible,” said Senator Thomas W. Libous of Binghamton, the deputy Republican leader. “Everybody’s feeling is get it on the floor and let’s vote it up or down. It’s been talked about enough. Let’s get it done. I think it’s going to be very close.”

Ms. Krueger said before the debate began that she was optimistic the bill would pass, but added, “It depends on whether Republican votes are delivered.”

But, as it turned out, not close at all.

New York has now joined a growing club:

Had the legislation passed, New York would have become the sixth state where marriage between same-sex couples is legal or will soon be permitted. But now that it has failed, New York becomes the latest state where gay rights advocates have made considerable progress only to see their hopes dashed.

Last month Maine became the 31st state to block same-sex marriage through a referendum. The Maine State Legislature had voted to legalize same-sex unions earlier this year, but opponents of gay rights gathered enough signatures to put the measure on the ballot.

Last year, California voters repealed same-sex marriage after the State Supreme Court said that gay couples had the right to marry.

Unlike in Maine, however, New York does not have a referendum process that allows voters to overturn an act of the Legislature.

The State Assembly had already approved the legislation, and Gov. David A. Paterson had said he would immediately sign the bill if it made it to his desk.

Shortly after midnight on Wednesday, the Assembly voted 88 to 51 to allow same-sex marriage. Though the Assembly has already passed the bill twice, a quirk in New York’s legislative code required the Assembly to pass the bill again before the governor can sign it.

As the vote approached advocates on both sides of the debate were pushing ahead with a last-minute effort to shore up support.

“We’re working it as hard as we can,” said Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, a Democrat who represents the Upper West Side and who supports same-sex marriage. “It feels very good right now. It feels like its going to happen. But this is an issue where some people don’t want to declare themselves until the last minute. And I think, believe it or not, I think there are one or two people who are really still torn.”

Demonstrators on both sides of the issue were relatively scarce in the Capitol on Wednesday. A small group of Orthodox Jews gathered outside the Senate chamber, one of them holding a sign that read “Gay Union/A Rebellion Against the Almighty.”

Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of Monsey, N.Y., said he traveled to Albany to remind the Senate “that the world belongs to the Almighty, and they have to reckon with his rules and his law.”

As John L. Sampson, the Senate Democratic leader, walked into his office on Wednesday morning, he flashed a thumbs-up to same-sex marriage supporters standing a few feet from the protesters. But Mr. Sampson acknowledged he did not know how the vote would turn out.

“I’ve got my work cut out for me,” he said.

So do a lot of us, apparently.

And it doesn’t stop there: A Surprisingly Dark Day For Gay Rights In New Jersey. Just next door to New York, the LGB community is engaged in a battle that they may not have expected:

Support for gay marriage in Trenton is draining away like water from a tub as nervous legislators scurry towards safer political ground.

“I can’t say I’m confident now,” says Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen), a lead sponsor. “I think we still have a pretty good chance. But people are getting nervous and weak-kneed.”

Bad as that sounds, know that Weinberg is spinning this as best she can. Several other senators, supporters and opponents, say the movement is all but dead.

“They’ve lost the momentum,” says Sen. Kip Bateman, a Somerset Republican who considered supporting the measure until last week. “I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

So mark this as a black day for the cause of gay rights in New Jersey. Marriage equality was supposed to be the big prize, the final measure of respect, a sign that gay families were indeed equal under the law.

Instead, gay couples and their children are getting another ugly reminder that their families are regarded as second-class, as something less than the families next door.

Gay activists are bitter about what they see as betrayal. Democrats, especially Gov. Jon Corzine, told them over and over to wait for this moment.

And now they are getting tepid support, or none at all.

“Many of us in the progressive movement just want to throw up,” says Steve Goldstein of Garden State Equality, the state’s leading gay rights group. “Democrats put out one hand out to ask for money, and with the other they stab you in the back.” (Emphasis mine.)

This is a refrain that is becoming more and more common from the LBG community. Many within the community are waking up to the realization, one shared by many women, that the DNC could care less about them, simply paying lip service and nothing more. Obama picking a homophobic, anti-choice chair for the DNC pretty much says it all.

Back to Trenton:

So what changed in the last month? Why did supporters get so nervous?

For one, Corzine’s big loss has Democrats rattled. Republican Chris Christie united his party, and did well in Democratic strongholds like Middlesex County. He didn’t emphasize the gay marriage issue, but when asked, he promised a veto.

Democrats were rattled again when voters in Maine rejected gay marriage in a referendum, the 31st state to do so.

Perhaps most important, the Roman Catholic Church in New Jersey threw its muscle into the fight. Bishops and priests spoke against it from the pulpit, and more than 150,000 parishioners signed petitions in opposition.

Several legislators said they were impressed by that show of strength, given that Catholics make up more than 40 percent of the state’s population.

“Any time you see that kind of passion, you have to pay attention,” said Sen. Jennifer Beck, a Republican from Monmouth County. “You’re elected to be the voice of the people who voted for you.”

Finally, there were discouraging noises from Sen. Steve Sweeney, a South Jersey Democrat who will take over as Senate president in January, replacing Sen. Richard Codey (D-Essex).

Sweeney suggested that the legislature should leave this issue aside for now, and focus instead on the economic crisis. It was pure political nonsense, because the legislature is not even considering major economic bills.

But the signal was sent.

Indeed, and it is one that seems to be appearing all too often these days. And the result is all too predictable:

So the senators began to peel off. Codey found himself counting heads to reach 21, the magic number to win passage. He couldn’t get it from Democrats, so he reached out to Republicans.

“Codey called me,” Bateman says. “I’m told they (Democrats) have 14 or 15 votes on this. I told him they have one or two (Republicans) at most.”

At tense moments like this, most politicians behave like herd animals. They are careful not to stray far from the pack. And if one of them gets rattled, everyone runs.

What we have on our hands today in Trenton is a bunch of scared herd animals. And it’s not a pretty thing to watch.

Only 2 percent of voters said this is the most important issue to them. And these skittish Democrats are almost all in gerrymandered districts that were drawn to ensure they win by large margins.

Ask senators privately what would happen if they all voted their consciences, and you get the same answer over and over: It would pass with votes to spare.

But our leaders, these puny men and women, are too scared to stand up and be counted.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could drum up a voter backlash against that?

Oh, I think a backlash is coming on a bigger scale, but for now, the message is all too clear: Members of the LGB community are not equal.

And then there is someone who SHOULD have said no, and that would be noted Homophobe, Pastor Rick Warren, he of Obama’s Inauguration fame. Pastor Warren is getting notice for what he would NOT do:

Rick Warren Refuses To Condemn Proposed Ugandan Law Executing Gay People

That would be President Obama’s friend Rick Warren. Rick Warren who says he even ate dinner with a gay couple once. Rick Warren who says he doesn’t hate gay people. Funny, then, that Rick Warren refused to condemn Uganda’s proposed legislation to executive people for being gay and HIV positive. From Newsweek via Box Turtle:

But Warren won’t go so far as to condemn the legislation itself. A request for a broader reaction to the proposed Ugandan anti-homosexual laws generated this response: “The fundamental dignity of every person, our right to be free, and the freedom to make moral choices are gifts endowed by God, our creator. However, it is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations.” On Meet the Press this morning, he reiterated this neutral stance in a different context: “As a pastor, my job is to encourage, to support. I never take sides.” Warren did say he believed that abortion was “a holocaust.” He knows as well as anyone that in a case of great wrong, taking sides is an important thing to do.

Oh, I’d go one further. Rick Warren has taken sides before. He did it with Prop 8. On the side of the haters. But now he won’t do it when they’re talking about executing gay people? Why, because it’s a foreign country and Rick doesn’t get involved in foreign politics, only our own? Yes, I remember well when Jesus told us all to be good Christians only in our own backyard.

I don’t remember that passage and I have read the Christian Scriptures a number of times. Oh, wait – that’s because it isn’t in there. And, I don’t remember Obama speaking out about that practice, either. Birds of a feather he and Warren.

It’s hard to even know what to say at this point. It really is. It is just hard to live in a country in which so many people are willing to discriminate against you. I totally understand why the brother of the NY State senator moved to France. I, too, hope to end up living somewhere in which people see me as fully human, and where my almost 14 yr relationship is deemed as worthy under the law as other of my fellow citizens. A place in which I am not just treated as equal, but seen as equal. Heaven knows, that would be some change I could believe in…

The current issue of Time Magazine has Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the cover, and an article by Joe Klein entitled, “The State of Hillary: A Mixed Record On The Job.” On Joe Scarborough the other morning, they discussed this article (major H/T to Bronwyn’s Harbor for the video):

How cute is Joe Scarborough calling Secretary Clinton his “girlfriend”?? Repeatedly? Evidently, he has NO idea how much competition he has, does he?

And Scarborough makes a great argument about Hillary Clinton “not going rogue.” Of course she is taking the tack Obama has directed her to take. It is not a surprise that Obama would want her to do the HARD work while he “flying at 40,000 ft”.

Just to be clear on Pakistan, the White House does back Secretary Clinton on what she said there. While it may not be the language Mika wants her to use (and honestly, could Hillary Clinton say anything of which Mika approved? Just asking, in a snarky kind of way.)

Don’t even get me started on the whole election thing, though. Don’t even get me started. Good for JOE for pointing out – AGAIN – that the media played a huge role in how she was treated, as we all know already.

The remarks by General Petraeus were telling, telling indeed. That, along with the relationship she has developed with our military personnel is exactly why I contend she would have gotten to Fort Hood tout suite after the tragedy there. Because she truly cares about those serving in uniform. She, unlike our President, has made that support crystal clear.

Okay. About this “unnamed White House source” crapola. I am referring to the “Unnamed White House sources” who claimed Secretary Clinton had made big mistakes in foreign policy since becoming Secretary of State reminded me of the “Unnamed McCain aides” who made the most outrageous, and false, allegations about Gov. Sarah Palin, including that “she didn’t know Africa was a continent.” That is to say, I just cannot take their claims seriously. Especially when one of those high up in the Obama Administration, Jon Favreau, has demonstrated just how much he respected Hillary Clinton when he posted a photo of himself groping a life-size Hillary Clinton cutout on Facebook. Yeah, right. I’m not buying what they’re selling. I’ve seen plenty from those folks already, and have been singularly unimpressed. Whatever.

Anyway, it was an interesting discussion about Secretary Clinton, the work she is doing, and Joe’s undying love for her. All I can say about that is, join the club, Joe, join the club.

Speaking of Secretary Clinton, Saturday is when she commissions the assault ship, USS New York. There will be video available later, which I will then put up. For more on the USS New York, its 7.5 tons of steel from the World Trade Towers, and the emotions it elicits, please watch the video below:

Very moving, and powerful. Great thanks to those who serve aboard this state of the art vessel, and who sought to serve aboard this ship. The motto of the ship is apt: Strength Forged Through Sacrifice. Never Forget.

They won’t forget, and neither will we.

May this ship and its crew have smooth sailing for years to come.

(Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images North America)

UPDATE: Here is the link to NavyTV’s video of the Commission of the USS New York.

Due to the tragic events at Fort Hood yesterday, this post was delayed out of respect for those who were lost and wounded. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families, friends, and all those serving at Fort Hood.

Bleary eyed, but sated with my celebratory Belgian pecan waffles, turkey link sausages, numerous cappuccinos, and with a goofy grin plastered on my face, I am happy to report that the New York Yankees have won their 27th World Series Championship. Woohoo!!

The Yankees have christened their new stadium with their 27th World Series Championship in 40 tries. They won the Series 4 – 2 over a gutsy, exceptional Philadelphia Phillies team with a strong 5 2/3 showing by Andy Pettitte. Pettitte gave up 3 runs, but battled hard for outs and got the ones that counted even though he only had 3 days rest. Pedro Martinez was operating on regular rest, but that didn’t keep the Yankees from driving him out of the game early. Joba Chamberlain and Demaso Marte held down the fort until the Yankees could bring in the greatest reliever of all time, Mariano Rivera. Rivera got the last 5 outs of the game, capping a phenomenal year, and post-season, with a final score of 7 – 3. Derek Jeter recorded his 175th hit in his post season appearances, and had a hit in all but one game in the entire Post Season. Alex Rodriguez was hit by pitches three times, as was Mark Teixiera, but A-Rod also provided a tremendous spark to the offense, casting of the demons of post seasons past.

The Yankees manager, Joe Girardi, won 3 World Series rings as a Yankees player (catcher), and has now won 1 as a manager in only his second year at the helm. That is quite a feat. And quite a feat to have done both for the same team. Not only is he a great manager, and a great player in his day, but a great humanitarian, too. On his way home from the stadium last night, after their big win, he stopped and helped a woman who had crashed her car into a wall. Not only did he check on her and make sure she was okay, but he flagged down a police car for her. Oh, and he had to run across a highway on which people routinely go 80 mph, according to the article link above. He didn’t tell the woman who he was, either. She found that out after the fact. That’s one helluva guy.

The Yankees, with the best record in baseball (103 wins in the Regular Season), played like the best team in baseball, and earned this 27th World Series Championship.

(Gallery of Photos, NJ.com)

Hideki Matsui earned the World Series MVP on the strength of his bat, driving in 6 runs Weds. night, tying a 49 year old record held by Bobby Richardson, also a Yankee. Matsui’s contribution to the team throughout the postseason was simply outstanding.

(Eric Gay/AP)

This team started out slowly at the beginning of the season, losing their ace, Chien Ming Wang, early in the season. Alex Rodriguez was out for almost a month following hip surgery, with more surgery to follow in the off season. Mark Teixeira was also off to a very slow start with his bat, but not his defense. Yankee fans were dismayed, to say the least, when the Yankees were swept by the Red Sox – TWICE – early on.

But then something happened – A-Rod came back, Tex’s bat began to match his defensive prowess, the pitchers started locating their pitchers, and the team became a team. People often complain about how much money the Yankees spend on their players, but all the money in the world doesn’t buy you a Championship – it has to be won. This team, this 2009 club, is just that – a TEAM. They enjoy each other, have fun with each other, and they are passionate about playing the game. We usually hear about the highly paid players, like A-Rod, or Tex, or CC Sabathia. But there are plenty of players on that team who contributed who do not rake in the big bucks. The point is something happened this year. Despite their slow start, despite losing some crucial players, this team jelled as a team. They backed each other up, they worked for every win, and as a result, they are now the new World Series Champions.

Oh, and for all of the Yankee haters, here is a little piece of trivia for you – when the Yankees win the World Series, historically stocks go up, especially when they do it in 6 games! So, even if you hate them, there is a total bonus to them winning!

Here is Hal Stein Steinbrenner, son of The Boss, George Steinbrenner, talking about this team, and this win:

This win came exactly 9 years after the Yankees lost the World Series in Game 7 back in 2001. That was an emotional year for the Yankees, for the entire country, coming as it did on the heels of the attacks on the World Trade Towers. It is fitting that this week, the week the Yankees claim their Championship, in New York City Harbor is the USS New York awaiting its commission. This new ship is partially made with 7.5 tons of reclaimed steel from the rubble of the World Trade Towers. While traditionally* only submarines are named for states, former NY State Governor Pataki lobbied to have this state of the art ship named for New York as both a memorial and a monument to those who were lost, and for those who will take the fight to our attackers. The ship’s motto: Never Forget. Here it is sailing into New York City Harbor this week:

(AP Photo, Newsday.com)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will commission this assault ship on Saturday. Secretary Clinton will represent the Administration, but as a NY State senator at the time of the attacks, and one who worked diligently for the First Responders in New York City, it is most fitting that she has this honor.

It is a big week for New York City, for the Yankees as they clinch their 27th Championship, and as this great monument to those who were lost at 9/11 is commissioned into active duty.

Go, Yankees! Only four and a half more months until Spring Training starts!

* Please see comment below on naming of ships/submarines – while accurate that a certain class of submarines receive the names of states, that appears to be a fairly recent event.

If this isn’t indoctrination, I don’t know what is:

Here are the words, in case you can’t understand them:

Barack Hussein Obama
He said that all must lend a hand [?]
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said we must be clear today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said that we must take a stand
To make sure everyone gets a chance
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said Red, Yellow, Black or White
All are equal in his sight
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
Yes
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama

Second Song:

Hello, Mr. President we honor you today!
For all your great accomplishments, we all [do? doth??] say “hooray!”
Hooray Mr. President! You’re number one!
The first Black American to lead this great na-TION!
Hooray, Mr. President something-something-some
A-something-something-something-some economy is number one again!
Hooray Mr. President, we’re really proud of you!
And the same for all Americans [in?] the great Red White and Blue!
So something Mr. President we all just something-some,
So here’s a hearty hip-hooray a-something-something-some!
Hip, hip hooray! (3x)

HOLY SHIT. Can you believe this? Just insert “George Walker Bush” in there instead of “Barack Hussein Obama” to get a full sense of how disturbing this is. Hell, insert any president’s name, it doesn’t matter. I imagine most parents would object to their children, their SMALL children especially, being taught to sing the praises of “Dear Leader” – WOW. That’s not how Americans roll.

Or wasn’t, until now.

Someone NOT singing the praises of Barack Hussein Obama is Michelle Paterson, wife of embattled New York Governor, David Paterson. She is mighty upset that Obama wants to push out the first African American governor in NY. So is her husband:

Paterson added, “I never heard of a president asking a governor not to run … so I thought it was very unusual that this would be asked of David and I don’t think it’s right.”

Obama aides have asked the embattled Democratic governor, who has done poorly in recent polls, not to run for governor in 2010.

Paterson said her husband was shocked at the request.

“I think he was stunned. Like I said this is very unusual,” she said.

And Ms. Paterson revealed what Obama whispered into Gov. Paterson’s ear when they met the other day. Are you ready? According to First Lady:

Ms. Paterson also said that Obama told the governor during a trip to upstate New York on Monday that he was “a little chagrined about how the White House handled the message.”

He was not chagrined at the MESSAGE to the governor, mind you, not at the backstabbing of Gov. Paterson, but the way it was HANDLED. Oh, I am sure The One made it ALL better with that admission.

I wonder if THAT is going to make it into the elementary school song of praise to Obama? I’m guessing not…