Nine years ago DaimlerBenz bought Chrysler for $37 billion. Today they sold the bulk of the company to a private equity firm for the bargain basement price of $7.4 billion. Ouch! Lee Iaccoca, who famously engineered a government bailout of Chrysler in 1979, is “broken hearted.” The new owners of Chrysler are faced with billions of dollars in employee costs …

Overheard: “Hi, mom! Happy Mother’s Day! I tried to call you this morning. What? No, I’m in the city. At a bar. A bar. The Eagle. You wouldn’t like it.” Traversing our usual haunts yesterday, we observed that teh gays must be good sons, because Mother’s Day really wiped out attendance at the bars. Good boys.

Several hundred thousand Italians protested proposed gay rights laws in Rome on Saturday, in a giant rally called “Family Day.” The rally was organized by a consortium of Catholic groups and was attended by many nuns and priests. The new law would give expanded rights to gay and unmarried couples in matters like welfare and inheritance rights, but does not …

Central Park and northward, from the Top Of The Rock yesterday, courtesy of Dr. Jeff. If you embiggen, you can make out the George Washington Bridge. The white square below the big lake is the Metropolitan Musueum, I live somewhat to the right of there.

For always and forever, you will be my Saturday love. Ah, that’s better. Another lazy Saturday afternoon in the park with my boys, attended by George, Aaron, the Farmboyz, Little Tom, Little David, Foxy, Rod, Mike, Chris C., Dr. Jeff, DC guys Todd and Joe, several friends of friends and a trio of doggies. The park is fantastically lush already, …

Did you hear the one about the dead sperm donor being forced to pay child support? In 1999 and 2000 a Pennsylvania lesbian couple created two turkey baster babies using sperm donated by the then-living father, a friend. The couple civil-unioned in Vermont in 2002, but broke up in 2006, with one of the women winning monthly child support payments …

As the leading Republican candidates continue to trip over themselves in a fight to the bottom, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg has quietly relaunched the site he used in his last two mayoral campaigns. Term limits means that Bloomberg cannot be NYC mayor again. When asked if he plans on running for president, he usually waffles between “no” and “not likely”. …

From LOGO’s Big Gay Sketch Show:

He Who Shall Not Be Named is back up to his old tricks. Literally..

My mother just emailed me to say that Orlando police have already caught the guy that raped her neighbor. He is the son of another woman on her street. My mom, being the person that she is, is now very upset for the mother of the rapist. I, however, am feeling less worried. Go OPD!

Yahoo is closing its online auction site, in a move seen as indicative of the seeming futility of competing with the “Wal-Marts” of the web. The net, once seen as a place where an upstart company could quickly compete, is now dominated by a handful of behemoths who completely dominate their “big box” categories: eBay, Google, Netflix, Amazon, MySpace, iTunes, …

RELATED: CBS News has fired retired Army General John Batiste for filming this ad: (Via – Meanwhile.)

New Order has broken up. And if you don’t get the headline, you were born after 1986.

My neighbor and buddy Dr. Jeff sent me this shot he took during a meeting at 7 World Trade yesterday. Do embiggen.

From New Scientist: “People who have had more than five oral-sex partners in their lifetime are 250% more likely to have throat cancer than those who do not have oral sex, a new study suggests. The researchers believe this is because oral sex may transmit human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus implicated in the majority of cervical cancers. The new findings …

Built by Hungarian-born Emory Roth, who gave Manhattan dozens of landmarks (the Beresford, the Eldorado, the St. Moritz, and about half of downtown and midtown), the San Remo apartment building went up in 1932. Originally each unit contained an average of eight rooms and 3000 sq. feet but the units were later subdivided. The apartments sell for an average of …

My mother’s neighbor was raped yesterday. In a nice little subdivision in a busy neighborhood in relatively idyllic Orlando, the woman was sleeping in her locked home when a man smashed a window and attacked her. My mother, naturally, is completely freaked out. Mom, who is retired and lives alone, is an ardent member of Neighborhood Watch and writes the …

A decade after taking over as British Prime Minister, Tony Blair steps down on June 27th. Widely credited for helping move Britain away from socialism towards a vibrant, pro-market economy, Blair instituted welfare reforms, tripled the funding for the national health service, and brokered a truce with the IRA. Today Britain has the world’s 5th largest economy and the pound …

Yesterday the California Assembly passed a bill making it easier for same-sex partners to take the surname of their partners or to create a new surname entirely. The bill must pass the state Senate and by signed by Schwarzenegger to become law. Currently only seven states (including New York) allow a man to take the last name of his wife …

The woes never stop for Steven Green, the 42-year old gay mega millionaire New Yorker who was once named as one of the city’s ten worst landlords. First, he gets sent to jail for failing to provide tenants with heat and water. In January, Green again made headlines when he lost a high-profile gay divorce case against the man he …