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Kathy Hochul wins NY-26 congressional election

Democrat Kathy Hochul has been declared the winner of the special election for the congressional seat in NY-26.

The election seemed to have been flipped on the basis of Hochul’s opposition to changing or “voucher”-izing Medicare.

The rural-suburban district between Buffalo and Rochester is one of the state’s most conservative. But Corwin saw her early lead dissolve after coming out in favor of a Republican budget plan that would cut billions from Medicare, the government health plan for seniors.

With 83 percent of precincts reporting, Hochul had 48 percent of the vote, compared with 42 percent for Corwin.

The seat became vacant in February when Republican Rep. Chris Lee resigned after shirtless photos he sent to a woman surfaced online.

More at HuffingtonPost

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Sarah Palin – New Film to Premiere in June

From RealClearPolitics: Shortly after Republicans swept last November to a historic victory in which Sarah Palin was credited with playing a central role, the former Alaska governor pulled aside her close aide, Rebecca Mansour, to discuss a hush-hush assignment: Reach out to conservative filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon with a request.

Ask him if he would make a series of videos extolling Palin’s governorship and laying to rest lingering questions about her controversial decision to resign from office with a year-and-a-half left in her first term. It was this abdication, Palin knew, that had made her damaged goods in the eyes of some Republicans who once were eager to get behind her potential 2012 presidential campaign.

The response was more positive than Palin could have hoped for. He’d make a feature-length movie, Bannon told Mansour, and he insisted upon taking complete control and financing it himself — to the tune of $1 million.

The fruits of that initial conversation are now complete. The result is a two-hour-long, sweeping epic, a rough cut of which Bannon screened privately for Sarah and Todd Palin last Wednesday in Arizona, where Alaska’s most famous couple has been rumored to have purchased a new home.

When it premieres in Iowa next month, the film is poised to serve as a galvanizing prelude to Palin’s prospective presidential campaign — an unconventional reintroduction to the nation that she and her political team have spent months eagerly anticipating, even as Beltway Republicans have largely concluded that she won’t run.

Read more here.

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NOM denies any of their followers could be biased against LGBT folks

Brian Brown of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage

In an addendum to the post I made about ABC News’ “What Would You Do?” regarding gay parents being insulted at a restaurant in Texas, the National Organization for Marriage is angry at the portrayal that ANYONE would ever be discriminatory towards gays:

Let’s note first of all that the behavior of the “waitress” in this setup up is outrageous. No boss, and no customers would tolerate it. Not even in the “conservative” towns of Texas. Good news for American common sense. The insidious propaganda point from ABC News is the suggestion that millions of good Americans who believe marriage means a man and a woman because children ought to have moms and dads, would or are behaving like this. Shame on ABC.

Ummm… as a gay man at the age of 47, I can tell you that there are folks who discriminate against gays every day – much like the way the waitress was portrayed in the experiment.  To think otherwise means you probably like to pet unicorns and wish on rainbows.

NOM needs to get real. I know they don’t want to admit their own attacks against the LGBT community aren’t “hate” – but if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…

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Soldier writes about serving during the repeal of DADT

TIME Magazine has posted an essay by a gay soldier currently serving in our military.

He wrote about what it’s like to go through training regarding the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

I held my composure as I stood in the back of a small but crowded room with standing room only. The formal briefing was a slightly awkward attempt at a conversation between one of my superior officers and the 40 or so of us squeezed in that room. He was clearly not used to talking about the topic of homosexuality as he seemed uneasy, but his overall message was a good one: “Soon you will be working around openly gay people. This change is akin to the integration of blacks into the military and the key to a successful transition is professionalism and mutual respect.”

As with any other conversation about gays in a setting where I am not “out,” I found myself reverting to old defense mechanisms. I tried to laugh, but not too hard. I listened intently while trying to look as if I was barely paying attention. I looked to see how everyone else was reacting only to mimic their posture, their level of attentiveness, and their own reactions to the conversation.

A good friend of mine, also gay, was standing next to me throughout the briefing. We barely looked at each other the entire time. His posture was much like mine, only he didn’t laugh. He didn’t smile. There was a cold emptiness in him which I had rarely seen before. I guess that was his way of not drawing attention to himself.

For an institution that prides itself on integrity and honesty, it’s a bit tough to read how self-aware some of our soldiers have had to learn to be to hide who they are just so they can serve the country they love.

Read the whole essay at TIME Magazine.