Some juicy gossip about Rep. Paul Ryan and his drinking buddies

Posted: July 10, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Corporate Crime, Economy, Psychopaths in charge, Republican politics, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Paul Ryan hawking his plan to throw grandma from the train

You may have seen this gossipy story about Rep. Paul Ryan at Talking Points Memo on Friday. I’ve been meaning to post something about it but just haven’t found the time. Now TPM has a very interesting update. Here’s the background:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), a leading advocate of shrinking entitlement spending and the architect of the plan to privatize Medicare, spent Wednesday evening sipping $350 wine with two like-minded conservative economists at the swanky Capitol Hill eatery Bistro Bis.

[….]

Susan Feinberg, an associate business professor at Rutgers, was at Bistro Bis celebrating her birthday with her husband that night. When she saw the label on the bottle of Jayer-Gilles 2004 Echezeaux Grand Cru Ryan’s table had ordered, she quickly looked it up on the wine list and saw that it sold for an eye-popping $350, the most expensive wine in the house along with one other with the same pricetag.

Feinberg, an economist by training, was even more appalled when the table ordered a second bottle. She quickly did the math and figured out that the $700 in wine the trio consumed over the course of 90 minutes amounted to more than the entire weekly income of a couple making minimum wage.

Feinberg took some photos with her cell phone, approached the table and asked whether the two men with Ryan were lobbyists. One of the men responded by saying, “F&ck her.” Ryan claimed the two men were economists but refused to provide their names. Ryan then paid for one of the bottles of wine, but when asked about the appropriateness of spending so much when he was going all Dickensian on old people, Ryan avoided answering.

Today, TPM learned the identity of the two men who wined and dined Ryan on Friday night.

TPM has confirmed that the two other men with Ryan were Cliff Asness and John Cochrane. Both men have doctorate degrees in economics and are well-known in the conservative media world as die-hard proponents of the free market’s ability to right itself without government bailouts when the crisis hit in late 2008.

Asness, who ordered the wine and who, according to Feinberg was the one who said “Fuck her,” is better known as a high-profile hedge fund manager. Asness founded and runs AQR Capital, which manages an estimated $26 billion in a variety of traditional products and hedge funds, and his life story has been the subject of numerous books and articles about the rise and fall of Wall Street. He’s also grabbed headlines for being one of the most voluble opponents of President Obama’s economic policies.

[….]

Cochrane, the other, more tempered dinner companion, is the AQR Capital Management Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago, an apparent tip of the hat to the contributions Asness’ AQR Capital Management has made to the Booth School of Business there.

Before launching AQR Capital in 1997, Asness worked for Goldman Sachs, the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, as the director of quantitative research for its Asset Management Division.

Via TPM, in 2009, Asness wrote an open letter to Barack Obama in which he (Asness) complained bitterly about some mildly critical remarks the President had made about hedge fund managers who refused to help out by buying Chrysler bonds. From New York Magazine:

Clifford Asness, the filthy-stinking-rich quant behind AQR Capital Management, [is] publicly engaging with a formidable opponent: The president of the United States. Asness, who supported Obama during the election, was appalled by Obama’s treatment of his colleagues during the Chrysler situation, and although he was not personally involved, he felt he had to make a stand.

Here is a portion of the letter:

Here’s a shock. When hedge funds, pension funds, mutual funds, and individuals, including very sweet grandmothers, lend their money they expect to get it back. However, they know, or should know, they take the risk of not being paid back. But if such a bad event happens it usually does not result in a complete loss. A firm in bankruptcy still has assets. It’s not always a pretty process. Bankruptcy court is about figuring out how to most fairly divvy up the remaining assets based on who is owed what and whose contracts come first. The process already has built-in partial protections for employees and pensions, and can set lenders’ contracts aside in order to help the company survive, all of which are the rules of the game lenders know before they lend. But, without this recovery process nobody would lend to risky borrowers. Essentially, lenders accept less than shareholders (means bonds return less than stocks) in good times only because they get more than shareholders in bad times.

The above is how it works in America, or how it’s supposed to work. The President and his team sought to avoid having Chrysler go through this process, proposing their own plan for re-organizing the company and partially paying off Chrysler’s creditors. Some bond holders thought this plan unfair. Specifically, they thought it unfairly favored the United Auto Workers, and unfairly paid bondholders less than they would get in bankruptcy court. So, they said no to the plan and decided, as is their right, to take their chances in the bankruptcy process. But, as his quotes above show, the President thought they were being unpatriotic or worse.

Well, Duh! But if “filthy, stinking rich” guys like Asness were patriotic, we probably wouldn’t have had a financial meltdown in the first place, now would we?

The other guy with Ryan on Friday, Professor John Cochrane of the University of Chicago, is a freshwater economist and follower of Eugene Fama AKA “the father of modern finance,” and Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance a the University of Chicago. Cochrane is also married to Fama’s daughter Elizabeth.

In early 2009, Cochane and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman engaged in a legendary on-line debate that also involved Brad De Long and Eugene Fama. The whole thing was too wonky for me, but I gather it had something to do with Fama and Cochrane critiquing the use of fiscal stimulus and Krugman saying that the two freshwater economists wanted to return to the “Dark Ages of macroeconomics.” Here’s Krugman’s introductory paragraph:

Brad DeLong is upset about the stuff coming out of Chicago these days — and understandably so. First Eugene Fama, now John Cochrane, have made the claim that debt-financed government spending necessarily crowds out an equal amount of private spending, even if the economy is depressed — and they claim this not as an empirical result, not as the prediction of some model, but as the ineluctable implication of an accounting identity.

Maybe Daknikat can explain what the “cage match” was all about.

I think Paul Ryan is going to need to be a little more careful in the future if he is going to continue promoting the end of Medicare as we know it.

Clinic Owned by Michele and Marcus Bachmann Offers “Ex-Gay” Therapy

Posted: July 10, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, fundamentalist Christians, psychology, religious extremists, Republican presidential politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

For some time, there have been rumors that Bachmann & Associates, a psychological counseling business with two locations in Minnesota offers reparative therapy, often referred to as “ex-gay therapy.” The business is owned owned jointly by GOP presidential candidate Michele and her husband Marcus Bachmann, according to Michele Bachmann’s financial disclosure forms.

The Bachmanns have repeatedly denied that their “clinic” uses this discredited treatment in order to attempt to “cure” clients’ homosexuality. And in fact, the treatment is not listed on the clinic’s website. We now have solid evidence that they are lying.

Two articles were posted on Friday at the Truth Wins Out (TWO) website, one a report of an undercover investigation by John M. Becker and the other by Wayne Besen explaining why the group undertook the investigation and why they have “concluded that That Marcus Bachmann’s Clinic Engages in ‘Ex-Gay’ Therapy.” According to the website, TWO is a “nonprofit organization that fights anti-gay religious extremism.”

Besen writes:

There has been an ongoing discussion as to whether the clinic of Marcus Bachmann, the husband of presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), practices “reparative therapy,” the discredited technique that aims to turn gay people into heterosexuals. When asked, Marcus Bachmann said that his clinic did not take part in such therapy. According to a June 15th article in The Daily Beast:

In November 2005, Marcus Bachmann delivered a presentation called “The Truth About the Homosexual Agenda” at the Minnesota Pastors’ Summit. According to a gay activist who attended and spoke to the City Pages, Bachmann’s presentation ended with testimony from three people who claimed they’d been gay and had been “cured” and become straight. “If someone is interested in talking to us about their homosexuality, we are open to talking about that,” he told the newspaper. “But if someone comes in a homosexual and they want to stay a homosexual, I don’t have a problem with that.”

During a week-long Truth Wins Out undercover investigation inside Bachmann & Associates, Truth Wins Out discovered that the clinic actually does practice textbook “reparative therapy.” With two hidden cameras in tow, TWO’s Director of Communications and Development, John Becker, attended five private sessions with Bachmann & Associates counselor Timothy Wiertzema, MA LMFT.

John M. Becker, the young man who went undercover with hidden cameras to investigate whether Bachmann & Associates is offering reparative therapy despite their denials, reported on his experiences in a second article. He scheduled an appointment with a counselor, explaining that he was “struggling with [his] homosexuality.”

Preparing for my first visit was a surreal experience. I couldn’t pay by check since my checks had my name, my husband’s name, and a Vermont address. This meant I would be paying with cash and opening my wallet before each appointment, so I realized I’d have to go through my wallet and remove or hide anything that would invite suspicion. My Human Rights Campaign credit card had to go, lest anyone recognize that organization’s ubiquitous logo. I left our ACLU membership card behind as well. I also hid my out-of-state debit card and library card, and took the photo of Michael and me out of my wallet along with the copy of our marriage certificate that I always keep close. Despite the hot and humid Minnesota weather, I wore long pants to conceal a tattoo on my ankle of a pink triangle, the badge of gay prisoners in Nazi concentration camps and a symbol of the struggle for LGBT equality. At the last minute, in the parking lot, I remembered that Michael’s picture was set as the background image on my phone, so I hurriedly changed it. Finally, I took a deep breath and slipped off my wedding ring, placing it in a plastic bag inside my satchel, right next to one of the hidden cameras. My identity as a proud, openly gay, happily married LGBT rights activist was totally erased. I was ready

Once inside, Becker explained why he was seeking help.

When asked why I came in for counseling, I said that I had been struggling with homosexuality for a long time and tried a lot of things, up to and including suicide, to make it go away – exactly how my 16-year-old self would have responded. I said that I was upset: this struggle has lasted for so long that I started to wonder if I was doing it right and decided to seek outside help. All of my sexual experiences, from age 14 onward, had been with men. What I wanted, though, was to get rid of my homosexuality and eventually marry a woman.

At the second session Becker asked the counselor if he would

ever be able to be completely rid of homosexuality, or merely learn to cope with and manage it? Wiertzema’s response was that it’s situational. Some people have been able to get rid of it completely over a long time period, others over a shorter time period. Still others are able to get it to “subside,” down to a “manageable” level, but it’s still there in the background. He asked me, “Are you okay with knowing that it might take awhile, and that it might not… maybe not happen at all? …Obviously, it’s not okay, in a way, but…” I said that I wanted to give it a go, that it was better to try than to not try.

In subsequent meetings with the therapist, Becker was told that people can overcome their homosexual urges and no longer be attracted to the same sex and that

“We’re all heterosexuals, but we have different challenges.” Attraction to the same sex “is there, and it’s real, but at the core value, in terms of how God created us, we’re all heterosexual.”

All of this despite the fact that

every professional medical and mental health association rejects “ex-gay” therapy…or that the treatment I was seeking was totally unsupported by research. I was never informed about possible alternative treatment options such as gay-affirmative therapy. Nobody ever told me about the potential for harmful side effects like depression and suicidal thoughts. And although I was asked to sign a treatment plan outlining my problem, desired outcome, and treatment strategy, I was never given nor asked to sign any kind of informed consent document that disclosed the above information about “ex-gay” therapy.

Becker asked about churches that would be supportive of his struggle, and was referred to churches that welcome ex-gays, including the Outpost Ministries, which, according to its website,

exists to help the sexually and relationally broken find healing and restoration through relationship with Jesus Christ….Outpost was formed over 30 years ago to meet the needs of men and women making the decision to break away from gay life. We strive to deal with individuals as whole persons, not merely sexual beings. We offer teaching, encouragement and support to individuals, families and the Church. Outpost emphasizes obedience to God’s Word, which begins the healing process. As we grow in our submission to Jesus Christ, we also grow in friendship with Him. It is in relationship with Jesus that we are healed and transformed.

Another article by Maria Blake at The Nation provides support for Becker’s story and the conclusion that Bachmann & Associates offers reparative or “ex-gay” therapy. Blake relates the story of Andrew Ramirez, who came out to his parents during his senior year in high school.

His mother took the news in stride, but his stepfather, a conservative Christian, was outraged. “He said it was wrong, an abomination, that it was something he would not tolerate in his house,” Ramirez recalls. A few weeks later, his parents marched him into the office of Bachmann & Associates, a Christian counseling center in Lake Elmo, Minnesota, which is owned by Michele Bachmann’s husband, Marcus. From the outset, Ramirez says, his therapist—one of roughly twenty employed at the Lake Elmo clinic—made it clear that renouncing his sexual orientation was the only moral choice. “He basically said being gay was not an acceptable lifestyle in God’s eyes,” Ramirez recalls. According to Ramirez, his therapist then set about trying to “cure” him. Among other things, he urged Ramirez to pray and read the Bible, particularly verses that cast homosexuality as an abomination, and referred him to a local church for people who had given up the “gay lifestyle.” He even offered to set Ramirez up with an ex-lesbian mentor.

So there you have it. Michele and Marcus Bachmann are receiving Federal and state taxpayer funds to offer a discredited and unethical therapy without even informing clients of the dangers or that no major medical or psychological organization approves of this approach.

Boehner rejects Obama’s “Grand Plan” to exchange safety net cuts for cosmetic “revenue increases”

Posted: July 9, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, voodoo economics | Tags: , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Nancy Pelosi meets with right wing Republicans

From Ryan Grim at Huffpo:

WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner is rejecting President Obama’s offer to make historic cuts to the federal government and the social safety net, saying in a statement Saturday evening that he can not agree to the tax increases Democrats insisted on as part of the bargain….

Obama had proposed to Republicans a “grand bargain” that accomplished a host of individual things that are unpopular on their own, but that just might pass as a huge package jammed through Congress with default looming. Obama offered to put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts on the table in exchange for a tax hike of roughly $100 billion per year over 10 years. Meanwhile, government spending would be cut by roughly three times that amount. It’s no small irony that the party’s dogmatic opposition to tax increases is costing the GOP its best opportunity to roll back social programs it has long targeted.

Republicans are now banking on a smaller deficit reduction deal that would still make major cuts, somewhere in the range of $2 trillion.

“Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes,” Boehner said in a statement. “I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt limit increase.”

Politico reports that Boehner will still attend the President’s “summit meeting” at the White House tomorrow.

Is it possible that Boehner decided he didn’t want to risk tampering with Social Security and Medicare? After all, we know the Tea Party crowd doesn’t want to lose their safety net any more than the rest of us. Remember those signs at Tea Party rallies that read “Don’t mess with my Medicare?” One of the big issues for Republicans in 2010 was the claim that Obama’s health reform bill included Medicare cuts.

When looking for cosmetic plastic surgery involves not only a physical change, but a psychological one as well. Visit Galumbeck Plastic Surgery online services at http://www.zwivel.com for more details.

Just a thought. On the other hand, maybe it’s all just a kabuki dance to fool the progs into supporting Obama’s Hooveresque policies.

We’ve not come Far Enough when it comes to asserting Sexual Assault Claims

Posted: July 9, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Violence against women, Women's Rights | Tags: , , | 28 Comments

I first became an advocate for stronger rape laws and prosecution when I was in high school.  It was nothing personal for me. My neighbor was a member of Junior League of Omaha.  The organization had just started one of the country’s first rape victim support lines.  She asked me to volunteer and I went through what passed as training back in the mid 70s to spend an evening a week answering the phone. I was prepared for little more than making referrals to a list of  approved sources but frequently got a little more than I bargained for.  I realized there was a need to change the way we approached sexual assaults.  When I got into university, I helped the University Women’s Action Group by teaching young women–mostly in sororities–on how to be safe on campus as well as how to do limited self defense.  We also worked hard at moving sex crimes out of the property crimes divisions of local police departments, getting more police women to respond to rape reports, and changing the Nebraska Rape laws so that a perpetrator could be charged with the crime without the women having to come up with two to three witnesses.  We also moved to block defense lawyers from putting rape victims on trial by using their personal history against them.  I had one friend that was raped on campus that was afraid to report her assault because she had been smoking pot.  She felt that the police would think she was asking for it by being stoned and alone in the library. When I look back at those times, I realize that our criminal justice system has made some progress.  When I read recent headlines, I realize that we have not yet come far enough.

Three recent high profile sexual assault cases look to end with a very old fashioned problem.  It still seems that being a less than perfect human being means that you ask for it. The first of these cases is that of Jamie Leigh Jones who had accused KBR of perpetuating a climate of sexual abuse of women and some of its employees of rape.  A Houston jury just decided her sexual assault was ‘consensual’ . The verdict appears mostly based on Jones’ credibility due to a history of depression and her past experiences while her accused rapist’s criminal history of violence against women was suppressed.

Now 26, Jones said she was drugged with the date rape drug Rohypnol and brutally raped in 2005, while working at KBR facility Camp Hope in Iraq. She also told jurors that after the incident, she was imprisoned in a shipping container and prevented from calling family for help, and later had to go through reconstructive surgery on her chest and psychiatric counseling for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

But jurors in the case against the Houston, Texas-based company decided in the end that Jones’s sexual encounter was consentual, rendering other charges moot.

…

An attorney for Jones did not comment on a possible appeal, but said that he respected the jury’s decision considering the evidence they were allowed to see.

“We do think it’s a shame that Jamie’s entire personal history was dragged before the jury,” attorney Todd Kelly told the Chronicle, “when her rapist’s criminal history, including violence against women, was suppressed from them.”

Jamie’s case was championed earlier by Minnesota Senator Al Franken ensuring her right to a jury trial when KBR was trying to force her into arbitration. The details of her assault are particularly disturbing as well as the behavior of KBR to avoid the charges. None of this appeared to impact the jury, however.

With the high-profile victim looking on in the Senate chamber in 2009, Franken won passage of a measure in her name ensuring that military contractors couldn’t force victims of sexual assault into arbitration, as opposed to suing.

Jones got her day in court, and on Friday, a federal jury deciding her civil suit in Houston decided she was not raped, vindicating a company that charged she had exaggerated or made up her story, in part for fame, publicity and a book deal.

The jury also rejected Jones’ claims of fraud against KBR, which she said had failed to enforce its policies against sexual harassment or protect her from the alleged attack by the company’s contract workers in Iraq.

Jones’ suit was aimed at KBR, its former parent company Halliburton, and KBR firefighter Charles Bortz, who she claimed led the attack while she worked for KBR in 2005.

Bortz claimed he had consensual sex with Jones. He was not criminally charged and has filed a countersuit against her, according to the Associated Press.

The other high profile case that seems on the ropes due to past history of the accuser–in this case over possibly lying to get asylum in the U.S. and knowing a few criminals–is that of the maid whose charges brought about the resignation of IMF head Dominic Strauss-Kahn and tanked his chances of being nominated as a candidate for the president of France.  Not only is the prosecution’s case said to be falling apart due to her associations and questions about her asylum case, she was held up in a NY Post story as a prostitute with no evidence provided.  She is now suing the paper for slander.  That case probably hinges on her credibility also.

The hotel maid who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of trying to rape her wants her day in court, her lawyer has said.

She still could get it, even if prosecutors decide to drop the criminal case amid what they say are doubts about her trustworthiness.

Regardless of what happens in the criminal case, the woman could pursue her claim in a civil lawsuit, a route taken successfully by some after high-profile criminal cases ended without a conviction. While the housekeeper’s credibility would still be a significant issue, different legal standards for civil and criminal cases could give her claims — which Strauss-Kahn denies — a greater chance of prevailing in civil court.

A civil case can offer the prospect of money and establishing that wrongdoing, if not a crime, was committed. And for some people, bringing their own cases gives them more of a sense of control, instead of putting themselves in prosecutors’ hands.

“The civil suit represents the only avenue for the alleged victim herself to achieve justice,” says L. Lin Wood, an Atlanta-based attorney who represented a woman who accused NBA star Kobe Bryant of raping her in a Colorado hotel room. Bryant said the sex was consensual. The criminal case was dropped after the woman told prosecutors she couldn’t take part in a trial, but she sued Bryant and reached a confidential settlement that bars Wood from talking about the case itself.

What is most interesting in these cases that are considered “he said, she said” is that the women’s personal history is still the overwhelmingly important criteria for witness credibility, while the man’s personal history is not considered as relevant or as important to his credibility as the perpetrator of assault.  Ms Jone’s case was particularly violent. You would think that prior history of the accused would be germane.    Charles David Bortz was arrested in October 2006  for Battery in Okaloosa County Florida.  Dominic Strauss-Kahn is well known as a womanizer and has had at least one woman claim that he sexually assaulted her in the past.  One accuser has refiled charges against him.

Does this mean that we’re now back in the day when you have to be the ‘perfect victim’ in order to get fair treatment in a rape case?

Maybe not much has changed after all, despite 30 years of evolving sex crime laws. Lawyers can no longer badger a woman on the stand with questions about what kind of panties she wore or how many times she’d had sex before — questions that were routine in rape trials I covered years ago.

But the personal life of a rape victim is still considered fair game in too many cases, particularly when the issue is whether the sex act was by consent or involved force or threats of violence.

I understand the reluctance of prosecutors in the Strauss-Kahn case to go forward. Their office was stung in May by the unexpected acquittal in a high-profile case of two New York City cops accused of raping a drunken women after helping her into her apartment.

Jurors told the New York Times they didn’t buy the cops’ story that they had done nothing more than “snuggle” with the inebriated woman. But they didn’t feel they could convict on the word of a woman with no DNA evidence and gaps in her liquor-clouded memories.

Yes, that’s the third high profile case. The oh-so-cuddle worthy officers of New York’s finest.

A jury acquitted two New York police officers on Thursday of charges that they raped a drunken woman after helping her into her apartment while on patrol.

The woman had described snippets of a harrowing night in which the officers, called to help her because she was extremely intoxicated, instead abused her. They insisted no rape occurred, with one allowing only that he snuggled with her while she wore nothing but a bra.

Does this also mean that women should be prepared to use the video camera portion of their phones at all times so they have the perfect out cry witness?   We have three high profile cases where we see nearly three identical outcomes based on the old idea of she asked for it because she …

Just when you think we’ve solved an issue with the way society treats women, we take some giant leaps backwards again.  It’s beyond depressing.  This will have what I believe is an intended result of discouraging rape victims of seeking justice against their attackers. Yup,  we all ask for it.  Beware ladies.

Saturday: Sheros don’t hold their finger to the wind, they ARE the wind

Posted: July 9, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Hillary Clinton, Human Rights, morning reads, Women's Rights | 27 Comments

(Click photo to see slideshow of more) Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez (L) arrives with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a joint news conference at the foreign ministry in Madrid July 2, 2011. REUTERS/Andrea Comas

Morning, news junkies.

This week’s Hillary pic is actually from last Saturday, but it came out after I wrote up my July 2nd post, so enjoy. (Click on the image–or click here–to see a great slideshow of more Hillary and Trini pics at Still4Hill’s place.)

Before I go on, a moment of silence for First Lady Betty Ford who died yesterday at age 93. Carl Anthony has an appropriate tribute to Betty up… The Revolutionary Moment of First Lady Betty Ford : Her October 1975 Speech still Makes History:

In this excerpt of that now largely-forgotten speech, Mrs. Ford delivered her crisp yet eloquent case for equal rights. As an example of the increasingly political and social importance of First Ladies to the nation, it ranks with two other revolutionary speeches – those of Eleanor Roosevelt at the United Nations in outlining the Declaration of Human Rights, a document she helped draft, and of Hillary Clinton in Beijing at the U.N. Conference on Women.

If you click on one link from this post today, make it the following one… Anna Sale/WNYC: Gillibrand’s Bipartisan Partisan Pitch to Women. It’s a very extensive and informative piece, and while there’s a whole bunch I could excerpt and tease, you really ought to just read the entire thing. I do love these Gloria Steinem quotes on Gillibrand from the article though:

Gloria Steinem herself called Gillibrand “our senator and our future” at the May dinner honoring Gillibrand for her defense of abortion rights.

“Like Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisolm, she doesn’t hold her finger to the wind. She is the wind,” Steinem said.

Since NASA launched its last space shuttle mission yesterday, I wanted to link to a few items about the contribution made by women to the shuttle program:

  • about.com’s Linda Lowen: Many Firsts for Women in NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. As always, I recommend clicking over to give the piece a read for yourself, but here’s one part I wanted to draw your attention to in particular (in part because it reminds me of Hillary’s famous line that “if we can blast 50 women into space, we will someday launch a woman into the White House”):

Even women who’d hit the glass ceiling again and again, like astrophysicist and space scientist Candy Torres, kept their eyes on the prize. As one of the first women to work in aerospace, Torres’ story as told to CNN reminds us of the institutionalized sexism that once prvailed and how inroads made Ride and others enabled women to walk an easier path in their pursuit of a career in space science.

In October 2007, Melroy became the second female space shuttle commander, when she led the STS-120 mission of Discovery. On this flight, Melroy and her crew delivered the Harmony node to the fledgling International Space Station.

It also happened that she rendezvoused with another female commander, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who was commanding the International Space Station at the time.

Melroy said this coincidence actually made a deeper impression on her than being the second female shuttle commander.

“I think to me it was actually a bigger thing that Peggy Whitson and I were flying at the same time in space and that no one had planned it that way,” Melroy said.

Next up… leave it to Big Dawg to sum up the state of the 2012 election cycle thusfar… Via The Atlantic… At the Aspen ideas festival, Bill Clinton Handicaps the GOP Presidential Candidates.

A few other 2012-related odds and ends:

Moving along… here’s a rather bizarre link–Clinton-deranged Margaret Carlson of all people saying “You go girl” to Hillary. Meh.

And, another odd one via NY Mag…it’s an “alternate history” on what would have happened if Obama had been adopted, which… I wouldn’t have even linked to were it not for the incredible pic at the link. If you voted for Hillary in 2008, you will want to click on that!!

So we’ve gone from the ridiculous DC parlor game of floating Hillary as a replacement for Biden to the equally ridiculous one of floating Cuomo for the same. Are DC cocktail parties really that boring?

Speaking of which… apparently DC has gone back to the Victorian age? NYT: A New Shirt Closes a Gap in Modesty.

Here’s a fun Hillary moment on youtube, via Team Hillary Clinton. Love Hillary’s quip at the end that if she had the defense department’s budget, this wouldn’t be happening.

Be sure to check out this Dipnote post on Secretary Clinton Honoring “TechWomen,” if you haven’t read about it already. Teaser:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton honored 37 women from the Middle East and North Africa and their American mentors who participated in TechWomen, an initiative that harnesses the power of technology and international exchanges as a means to empower women and girls worldwide, on July 6, 2011.

Secretary Clinton said, “…[B]eing a woman in the field of technology is not always easy. Being a woman in any field is not always easy but there are so many opportunities in technology that we just have to forge ahead, and we’re doing so around the world because we want to make sure that all the tools that technology has made available are just as open to women as they are to men. And I also believe that innovation thrives on good ideas, and women have a lot of good ideas. And we don’t want those ideas to just die. We want them to be shared and to help others and to create businesses and jobs and improve lives. And it has a greater impact when technology has access for everyone.

Reuters: Myanmar envoy seeks asylum, U.S. pressure on rulers. From the link:

(Reuters) – The No. 2 diplomat in Myanmar’s embassy in Washington is seeking asylum in the United States because the reports in which he outlined his government’s failures have put him in danger, he said on Tuesday.

Career diplomat Kyaw Win sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a letter before dawn July 4 spelling out his disillusionment with the lack of reform in the Southeast Asian nation also known as Burma, he told Reuters.

“Sometimes when you report the facts, they don’t like it,” Win said in a telephone interview, describing his efforts to persuade the junta that has ruled Myanmar for five decades that their repression and corruption hurt their country’s image.

“They would write back: ‘why are you doing these kind of things?'” Win said of officials in the capital, Naypyidaw.

And, one more Hillary item, via stacy at SecyClintonBlog–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Next Stop: India and then Indonesia.

I’m going lighter on the Hillary links this weekend (compared to usual, that is!), so I wanted to put a reminder to look out for Luke Fogerson’s Week-in-Review at Dipnote tomorrow. There’s usually one up on Sundays.

Two quick links from Huffpo on women’s issues (both of which mention Hillary’s call to action in Beijing 1995):

And, before ending with today’s historical trivia, I thought I’d just throw this last out there for weekend discussion–it’s an intriguing foreign policy read I happened to catch on Truthdig, by William Pfaff: Democracy Building Is Back in Fashion.

This Day in Women’s History (July 9)

1850: Upon the death of President Zachary Taylor, Abigail Powers Fillmore–wife of Vice President Millard Fillmore–becomes the 16th First Lady of the United States, as her husband assumes the presidency. Here’s a great bio on Abigail:

The Fillmore White House lasted for only two unremarkable years. While her husband is a forgotten president, Abigail can be considered a successful First Lady in that she established the First White House library and encouraged literacy awareness during her short tenure. This legacy would grow years later, when Mary Todd Lincoln added more books to Abigail’s collection. Sadly, Abigail did not live long enough to see her goal fully actualized. She died at age 55 on March 30, 1853, at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. The cause of death was pneumonia brought on by a cold that stemmed from Abigail’s intolerance of Washington’s climate. Had she survived, Abigail would have undoubtedly become an ardent crusader for the cause she cared so passionately about.

Well, that’s it for me. What’s on your blogging list?

[originally posted at Let Them Listen; crossposted at Taylor Marsh and Liberal Rapture]

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