Obama Takes First Direct Shot At Palin

Huffington Post: Barack Obama made his first direct criticism of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin on Saturday, saying she pretends to oppose spending earmarks when she actually has embraced them.

Speaking to 800 people at the Wabash Valley Fairgrounds in Terre Haute, Ind., the Democratic presidential nominee ridiculed John McCain and his running mate, the Alaska governor, for describing themselves as agents of change at this week’s GOP convention.

“Don’t be fooled,” Obama told the crowd surrounding him in a large barn. “John McCain’s party, with the help of John McCain, has been in charge” for nearly eight years.

“I know the governor of Alaska has been saying she’s change, and that’s great,” Obama said. “She’s a skillful politician. But, you know, when you’ve been taking all these earmarks when it’s convenient, and then suddenly you’re the champion anti-earmark person, that’s not change. Come on! I mean, words mean something, you can’t just make stuff up.” (continue reading)

Sarah Palin’s Alleged ‘Partner’ Orders Divorce Records Sealed

247Gay: On the heels of their outing John Edwards’ affair, the National Enquirer is sticking by claims that Republican vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin cheated on her husband Todd with his former business partner.Now, Andrew Sullivan over at The Atlantic is claiming the rumored beau’s legal team has filed an emergency order to have his divorce records sealed.

The rumored affair was part of a more intensive cover story which claimed, among other things, that Palin initially tried to cover up daughter Bristol’s pregnancy. Palin announced two days after accepting the nomination to run alongside John McCain that her 17-year-old daughter is five months pregnant.

Palin’s name was tossed into the race just a week ago, and almost immediately the rumors began to fly. The McCain camp immediately called on a cease and desist of the media digging into her past.

But the one topic of discussion the media wont seem to let go is whether or not she improperly ordered a state trooper to be dismissed from his post. Palin is currently being investigated for ordering the firing of Alaska trooper Mike Wooten, who used to be married to Palin’s sister.

According to the Boston Herald, this week, the Alaska trooper’s union filed an ethics suit against Palin.

Women’s soccer league to expand to Philly

But you’re gonna have to wait until 2010…

PGN: As fans across the country rally behind the U.S. women’s soccer team as they battle for gold in Beijing, local soccer fans have cause to celebrate a lot closer to home.

Women’s Professional Soccer will expand its league to the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection by 2010, bringing the league’s total number of teams to eight.

WPS started play last year in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New Jersey/New York, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.

“Since signing on the dotted line with our initial seven investor groups, we’ve had our sights set on adding an eighth team to the league,” said WPS commissioner Tonya Antonucci. “In Philadelphia, we have the perfect foundation for success.”

Major League Soccer also recently solidified plans for a professional men’s team in the area, which will also begin play in 2010.

The men’s team will play in a new 20,000-seat stadium in Chester, which Matt Driver, managing partner of the Philadelphia WPS team, said the women’s team will likely share.

Philadelphia currently plays host to the Liberty, a Women’s Premier Soccer League amateur team based out of West Chester University. Driver owns the Liberty, as well as the A.C. Diablos in South Jersey and the C.D.S.A. Future in Delaware, and operates the Youth Premier Soccer League, which serves aspiring soccer players from across the Delaware Valley.

Driver said the local area already has a flourishing soccer community and that he was looking for a professional franchise to offer further opportunities for local athletes and fans.

“We wanted to see if any groups were interested in starting a women’s pro outfit in Philadelphia because we saw what kind of synergy we could have. There could be a 4-year-old kid connected to the youth program who plays all the way up to college and beyond and then could possibly have the ability to play for the national league,” Driver said. “So I suggested, why don’t we go out and try to bring investors into the city? The infrastructure we already had was something that was not easily replicable.”

Although the team already has several committed investors, Driver noted that it is still looking for interested backers from Philadelphia.

“We have investors from Delaware and from South Jersey, but we don’t have any investors in Philadelphia yet,” Driver said. “We feel that to be a true Philadelphia team and a Delaware Valley team, we need to have interested partners from all three of these areas.”

Driver noted the Philadelphia women’s soccer franchise is unique in that the new professional team already has a strong foundation.

“We’re building our franchise from the bottom up; in most cases, you build from the top down,” he said. “Normally when you buy a team, you have a concept and it takes you two to four years to implement the structure, and then those two to four years are the typical time when you find out whether a team survives or not. We feel we already have access to a lot of things that other new teams don’t: We have camps, we have training programs and people know who we are. The hardest part is done.”

Driver said the team will have a pool of accomplished athletes from the Liberty and other local teams from which to recruit players. While Driver said that women of different sexual orientations are welcomed into the league, he prefers to focus on his players’ abilities rather than their personal lives.

“I’m very aware that there are players who are of different sexual orientations, but what they do in their private lives is in their private lives. I coach soccer players. Women don’t want to be treated like women, they want to be treated like serious professional athletes, and that’s how I treat them. I don’t get into what they do in their private lives besides if they’re drinking or doing drugs or something that could have a negative impact on them. I don’t have a problem with someone of a different sexual preference as long as she’s on time and can put the ball in back of the net or keep it out of the goal, end of story.“

For more information on the WPS league, visit www.womensprosoccer.com.

Red Duchess a rebel to the last as she snubs family and leaves all to wife

The Independent UK: She was the 21st Duchess of Medina Sidonia, Spain’s most ancient dukedom whose origins go back to 1297. She was a princess, a marquess and a three-fold Spanish grandee. But from childhood, Luisa Isabel Alvarez de Toledo y Maura kicked against the conventions of her lineage.

The dictator Francisco Franco jailed her for championing workers, who nicknamed her the “Red Duchess”. She challenged Spain’s official history, arguing that Columbus didn’t discover America. She was an atheist, a republican and reckoned her 13th-century ancestor Guzman el Bueno, ennobled for fighting the Moors, was a north African whose grandmother was black.

But the Red Duchess – a “title” she never accepted – threw down her most defiant challenge in her final hours. As she lay dying in her palace in Sanlucar de Barrameda, aged 71, Luisa Isabel married in articulo mortis her secretary and companion, Liliana Maria Dahlmann, and left her everything. Her discreet sexual preferences were known to her family, but the secret lesbian marriage has shaken Spain’s proud and ancient aristocracy and is likely to unleash a legal battle over a sumptuous inheritance.

The duchess’s German-born widow, 52, inherits a patrimony accumulated over seven centuries, a collection of six million letters and documents said to comprise Europe’s biggest private archive, an undisclosed quantity of art and property, and the marital home, the 16th-century ducal palace. (continue reading)

Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey sign up for gay roles

PinkNews: A new Hollywood movie, already dubbed Brokeback Prison, will see comedian Jim Carrey play a married prisoner who falls in love with another inmate, played British actor Ewan McGregor

I Love You Phillip Morris is salted for 2009 and is based on the true story of Steve Russell, a convicted conman, who fell for his cellmate, the Morris of the film’s title.

When Morris was released, Russell broke out of jail four times to try to be reunited with him, leading him to be locked up for a 144-year sentence.

On one occasion, he faked his own death to escape and on another occasion coloured his entire uniform green to make them look like surgery scrubs.

“It’s an unusual love story,” McGregor told The Star.

“The fact that Jim Carrey was already involved attracted me. The two non-violent offenders hit it off immediately.”

McGregor recently played gay in the 2006 British film Scenes of a Sexual Nature.