From HuffPo:

Based on a CDC data study with 1.3 million people, two researchers have compiled a happiness index ranking residents of the fifty states from happiest to least so.

Ranking No. 1 in happiness was Louisiana, home of Dixieland music and Cajun/Creole cooking.

snip.

Rounding out the happy five were Hawaii, Florida, Tennessee and Arizona.

At the other end of the scale, last in happiness – is New York state.

As if to illustrate the problem, residents attending a meeting Wednesday in rural Queensbury unleashed their anger and cynicism at a state government they described as corrupt, self-dealing and too quick to increase taxes. It was a tirade that had one lifelong resident saying he was ready to flee "this stinkin' state."

I don't think it's a coincidence that New York also comes in dead last among the fifty as the state afflicted with the most dysfunctional government. Or that an entire swath of the state, pretty much everything north of the City, is bleeding population year over year. Unhappy people, robbed of futures for themselves and their families, really can't be blamed for pulling up the stakes and pitching their tents elsewhere, can they?

In especially as the corrupt Albany system may change frontmen occasionally, but remains essentially unchanged and impervious to change. Unless, that is, the people make it change, and turn their anger to where it belongs: Albany's bi-partisan incumbent duopoly.

Do something: join us at ReBootNY.org.

From a press release forwarded by Facebook's Defeat New York State Senator Carl Kruger in 2010.

“Throughout my fifteen years in the Senate I have supported and advocated passionately for legislation that furthers the cause of human rights and fairness for all.

[Blah Blah Blah].

“Our American government was crafted to function as a representative government. Fifteen years ago, when I voted in support of the death penalty, I was mindful of this fact. We are elected to serve the voters -- those who entrusted us with the mission of advocating for their best interests. It is my belief that the overriding sentiment of the district must merit my utmost attention and respect.

“Therefore, I voted no to the same-sex marriage bill.”

We don't elect leaders to rubber-stamp whatever prejudices we happen to hold at a given moment in history. We elect them to lead.

Well, perhaps not verbatim, but per Liz, Joe Bruno's favorite Democrat didn't manage to slink away quickly enough to escape teh gays.

After voting "no" on the gay marriage bill yesterday, Sen. Carl Kruger exited the Senate chamber and walked straight into the buzzsaw that was Allen Roskoff and Corey Johnson.

The two outspoken gay advocates stunned onlookers by heckling the Brooklyn Democrat, publicly calling his sexuality into question and threatening to support a primary candidate against him in 2010.

You know, this fills me with compassion. Not because of any fondness for Kruger, but because coming out can be tough. God alone knows how long it took me, not to mention all the self-loathing, misery and loneliness that go with the territory before your own screaming sorrow over your wasted life pushes you out that door and into the first leather bar you can find. So I propose a trial by fire: The Eagle.

You're welcome.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.

There is dismay tonight in the Empire State. The resounding defeat of a bill in the Senate to grant - what a curious term, grant - the simple right to get married, to finally be equal in the eyes of the law, to gay and lesbian New Yorkers is yet another setback for the only group of Americans that can still be openly discriminated against. And no, I don't give a flying fuck what you think your god says is right or wrong, Senator Diaz, you cretinous hypocrite. Go officiate at Hiram Monserrate's wedding, buddy.

We as gays and lesbians are used to this. It was ever thus. We are easy to hate, and not because there is anything in us that makes hatred intrinsically possible, but because of bigotry borne in silence. We have always hidden in the shadows.

No longer. We have a long way to walk yet, but know this: history will yet spit on the grave of Ruben Diaz's bigotry. The day will dawn.  read more »

...to get marriage equality, asks the Village Voice.

If you answered "Ruben Diaz", you'd be half right, but the Pentecostral zealot is only part of a larger problem that the Voice sums up simply as chickenshit Democrats.

Last week, Governor Paterson called lawmakers to a special session to deal with the state's hemorrhaging budget, but also to vote on gay marriage. Democratic senators punted.

"I'm still stinging from the disrespect we received," says Cathy Marino-Thomas, president of Marriage Equality New York. She had spent all of last Tuesday in the Senate Gallery and outside Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson's office, only to be ignored: "Our folks were out there all day, pouring their hearts out, begging for a vote, pleading for a vote—or, at least, an answer on whether or not there was even going to be a vote, and no one even addressed them!"

New York's Democrats take quite a bit for granted when it comes to who will support them and why. They won their slender majority in the Senate in 2008 despite the massive outflow of resources into the coffers and walklists of the Obama campaign. Then they pissed that majority away in a coup that originated in their own caucus and made the state a national punchline. And now, we're on the verge of what could be a bitter fight for the gubernatorial nomination in 2010. None of that bodes well for anyone trying to expand that Democratic majority in the Senate, certainly not for the foundation of any such effort, raising money. "Please, give, we promise we won't fuck it up this time around". Good luck with that, especially when it comes to getting all those dollars from LGBT donors. One of the more difficult political tasks is to be put to shame by the New York State Assembly, but the Senate has managed just that, trailing behind the Assembly 0-2 on marriage equality.

New York Democrats - and by that I don't mean most of the incumbents serving, if that's even the right term, in the legislature, but the party activists, grassroots leaders, volunteers - have to realize that the national netroots motto, More and Better Democrats, applies in spades to our state. What we do with that realization, time will tell, but I'd suggest time is running out for those who think business as usual will run on forever like Niagara Falls.  read more »