Why do I follow NY politics? Well, NYC is my favorite place on the planet. I love New Yorkers, I love Jews, & I love a guy that tells it like it is, with a great big pinch of piping hot devastating, dead on humor.
Brooklyn born, Anthony Weiner has been the the US Representative for Southern Brooklyn & a big swatch of Queens, since 1998. He has won every election since that time, never receiving less than 59% of the vote. Weiner graduated from SUNY-Plattsburg, where his roommate was Jon Stewart. At 27 years old, he was the youngest person elected to the NYC Council. His marriage to Huma M. Abedin, an aide to Hillary Clinton, was officiated by Bill Clinton. He is buddies with Ben Affleck. Can he really be any cooler? Mayor of NYC... please! POTUS in 2016? Did I mention that I love him?
With The Bride Of Weiner
"Nancy Pelosi was my House Leader & we worked well together. We agree on most issues... we both believe in Mandatory Gay Marriage."
"I'm gay, I'm left-handed, I'm Jewish. There's a lot of things that I'm supposed to do that I don't do."
I love him for his ire & for his wit. I think he is a true American Hero. For the 1st time in 40+ years, Barney Frank yields real power now & he is wielding it in a characteristically idiosyncratic manner. He remains a national symbol of outré sexuality as well as a rare wit in humor lacking in politics in DC.
Barney Frank on being harassed by Tea Party members: ''More than one. My partner, Jim, & I were walking from… it was a nice day! We walked from one House office building to another. There was a great deal of shouting, you know, waving of fists & signs, & sort of people getting very close & yelling. & a number of the comments were homophobic... really, sadness. As Jim said, we're adults… I haven't really got a lot of respect for these people, to be honest. So, who cares what they say to me? But you do have to think about it. I'm serious about this, this bullying in junior & high school. It's a big problem. What occurs to me is, there are kids all over the country watching this, not as a game but as real life. Watching so-called respectable politicians cheering them on, & that was just discouraging, that at this point in our history, we couldn't have a rational debate with these kind of thug tactics that werebeing used.''
On coming out to himself, Frank says he realized he was gay when he was 13 years old: "I was aware when I was 11 and 12 that my sexual feelings were different than the other guys'. But I thought I was just a little slow to get those feelings. & then it just hit me like a thunderbolt one day. It was terrifying & emotionally very devastating."
Frank attended Harvard, & graduated in 1962. He taught undergraduates while pursuing a Ph.D. He left in 1968 before completing the degree in order to work as Boston Mayor Kevin White's chief assistant. In 1972, Frank won a seat in the State Legislature. The following year, he introduced the state's first 2 gay rights bills.
In 1980, Pope John Paul II ordered all Roman Catholic priests to withdraw from electoral politics. Father Robert Drinan, who represented the Fourth Congressional District in Massachusetts, complied. More than a dozen local politicians vied for the seat. Frank narrowly won the election. His slogan was "Neatness Isn't Everything," a reference to his rumpled wardrobe.
In 1987, Frank became the first congressman to voluntarily announce his homosexuality publicly.
In 1989, Frank found himself in a major scandal. 4 years earlier, Frank had engaged the services of a male escort named Stephen Gobie. Frank later hired Gobie as a driver despite knowing that he was on probation. Frank also used his House privileges to waive Gobie's parking tickets. When Frank discovered that Gobie was running a prostitution service out of his Capitol Hill apartment, he fired him. Gobie responded by telling his story to the news media. Attempts to expel or censure Frank, led by members of the House Ethics Committee who included the charming Representative Larry Craig, failed. Frank initially decided not to seek reelection in 1990; however, he changed his mind & would win with 66 % of the vote. He won reelection in 2008 with 70% of the vote.
Frank resides in a studio apartment in Newton, Massachusetts & small apartment in DC. His boyfriend, Jim Ready, is a pot smoking surfer who lives in Maine. Last year, Ready nearly got Frank, in a bit of trouble when he got arrested for growing marijuana while Frank was in the house with him. He told off to a couple of Right Wing Christian ladies who were heckling Frank on a plane flight. My kind of boyfriend.
Barney Frank celebrates his 71st birthday today. Happy Birthday & thanks for fighting the good fight.
Tammy Baldwin: "Focus on jobs, not restricting women's rights!"
The Republicans are playing a dangerous game with the American people. Despite all their talk about jobs & deficit spending, they’re pushing for extreme new laws that would give government & insurance companies power over our most personal life decisions & health care decisions.
House Republicans have decided that their biggest priority this week is to pass legislation that would cut off millions of women from the private health care they have today & limit the ability of a woman to get the care she need, even if the result could be a serious permanent health condition or could shorten her life.
These bills, H.R. 3, the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” & H.R. 358, the “Protect Life Act” would allow public hospitals to refuse to take the steps necessary to save a woman’s life & allow states to deny Medicaid coverage for care to prevent life-long disabilities. This intrusive legislation would also allow public hospitals to refuse to take the steps necessary to save a woman's life & allow states to deny Medicaid coverage to prevent life long disabilities. It would give insurance companies more power over what women can & cannot do with their own health care dollars.
But, Representative Tammy Baldwin is calling the Republicans out. Baldwin: "Despite promises from the new majority that this Congress would focus on creating jobs & bolstering the economy, this bill that we are considering today fails to deliver this promise. In fact, this bill could further exacerbate the problem by causing millions of vulnerable Americans & small businesses to face a tax increases. If there's one message I've heard loud & clear from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, it's that tax hikes result in jobs lost."
Don’t messy with this Baldwin. She was just 9 years old when her mother married a black man in 1971. Baldwin was forced to face the injustice of suspicious white adults stopping her stepfather to ask what he was doing with a blond, blue-eyed little girl. She was the first openly gay non-incumbent elected to Congress, & the first woman elected to Congress from Wisconsin. Despite anti-gay smear campaigns by her Republican opponents, she has won her last 4 elections by 2-to-1 margins. Baldwin voted against the Iraq invasion in 2003, & she co-sponsored a resolution to impeach Cheney & Gonzales.
Today is Tammy Suzanne Green Baldwin's 49th Birthday. You Go, Girl!
I will always remember who I thought to be one of only intelligent female characters on early TV viewing. She was a character from one my earliest favorite TV series from the late 1950s. This show was The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis, & what a cast: Dwayne Hickman, Tuesday Weld, Frank Faylen, Florida Friebus, Bob Denver (who I worked with in the early 1970s, in a little thing called The Star Spangled Girl), Warren Beatty & Shelia James Kuehl as Zelda Gilroy.
Kuehl was slated for her own spinoff, Zelda, & episodes were filmed, but the project was dropped when rumors began to circulate that she was a lesbian. When she was passed over for a promotion in favor of a man with less experience she began to see major obstacles for women in the job market. She went back to school, received a law degree from the Harvard Law School & became an advocate for equal rights as an attorney specializing in Feminist causes before being elected to the California State Assembly in 1994. Kuehl was the first woman in California history to be named Speaker pro Tempore of the Assembly. She is also the first openly gay person to be elected to the California Legislature.
Kuehl's story could only happen in Hollywood. She was from a working class family & was only a teenager when she broke TV with her big break with the role of Zelda Gilroy in that widely popular series about American teenagers.
Along with Miss Jane Hathaway from The Beverly Hillbillies, Zelda was a favorite of mine when I was an 8 year old viewer, because even then, I liked my girls to be more like boys. I am proud to know that Kuehl would become better known for her legislation that protects students from anti-gay harassment and discrimination in California's schools.
