The Funny Papers

Bill Bramhall, Matt Wuerker, Randy Bish, Pedro X Molina, Michael de Adder, Marc Murphy, RJ Matson, Nick Anderson, Walt Handelsman, Gary Huck

An Open Letter to the GOP by Bruce Lindner

Dear Republicans;

We get it. You all saw what he did to Liz Cheney, and you don’t want that to happen to you. Short of outright political banishment, if you displease him in the slightest, he might even mean-tweet you from his golf cart in Florida. You all tremble at the mere thought of that.

And he knows it, which is why he does it; to control you. To get you to confirm the most unqualified Cabinet secretaries in American history. If the gravity of that situation wasn’t so solemn, it would be comical.

But what’s done is done. You didn’t want to suffer the indignity of being mean-tweeted, so you seated a drunk who paid a woman $50,000 to buy her silence to become America’s Secretary of Defense, an anti-science conspiracy theorist for Health and Human Services and a man who openly hates the FBI to run it.

You’ve watched in silence as his hatchet man—or should I say his chainsaw man—has wiped out the careers of untold thousands of Americans, the cascading effects of which will no doubt threaten the very existence of poverty-stricken communities who rely on America’s bounty and generosity.

You fidgeted in your seats a bit when he shook his fist at Mexico, Canada, Panama and Denmark. But no outright condemnation from any of you, because again, you can’t: the spirit of Liz Cheney might haunt you.

You’re in a unique position. Hard as it is to believe, you’re the gatekeepers. Once upon a time, in a magical epoch known as pre-Trump, Congress was a coequal branch of government. That means YOU had it within your power to keep lawlessness and tyranny in check.

But that was then and this is now. You’ve ceded your authority because; say it with me: Liz Cheney.

In the hierarchy of things that matter to you, in order from most to least, are:

• Me

• My personal safety

• Not getting mean-tweeted

• Getting re-elected

• People who won’t vote for me

• People in shithole countries

• The nation

At the far end of the courage spectrum from you and at the far side of the planet, there’s a guy named Volodimr Zelenskyy. He must look like an alien species to you, because his priorities are diametrically opposed to yours. When offered a chance to be airlifted out of his embattled nation, he turned it down and confronted the threat pouring over his nation’s borders. He then addressed his people from a darkened corner somewhere in Kyiv, reassuring them that he and his government will stand and fight on their behalf.

But now he and his 38 million fellow Ukrainians face a new threat: Blatant betrayal by the President of the United States. If Trump follows through with it, Zelenskyy himself, perhaps the most iconic example of raw courage in the world today, will be hunted. And if captured, meted out Navalny justice.

But that can only happen if you let it.

Yes, I know, you murmur amongst yourselves over martinis how you had to swallow hard to vote for Tulsi Gabbard, or to stay silent when he gutted the USAID and the national parks. But unless you take a hard stand, and say HELL NO, I’m drawing the line right HERE… you’re as complicit as he is.

This quote has never been more relevant: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing.” ~ Edmund Burke

This is your moment. History will document your names right alongside his. I’m looking at you, Lindsey the Lionhearted. Ted the Turd. Joni, Queen of Castraters. Rise up. Fear not the mean-tweet.

Liz Cheney knowingly sacrificed her career, as did Adam Kinzinger, because they made the calculus: Who am I and what are my core values? And they deduced that there are bigger things in this world than themselves.

Thus far, not a single Republican in this picture has come to a similar conclusion.

Cowards, all. And if you allow Ukraine to fall by your inaction, you’ll be accomplices in mass murder, as well as the beginning of the end for NATO.

Written by Bruce Lindner and found on Facebook

Take Three Minutes and Listen ... Memes Will Be Up Later

Bobservations

Carlos is sick. I think it’s the Moron-a-virus. I kid; or do I?

See, when Carlos gets sick, no one has ever been as sick, and he hopes and hopes and prays that I “don’t get this because it’s really bad.” And then, if I do get it, and I complain about it, he says, “It’s not that bad.”

I will give him credit because he’s moved to the guest room while he’s hacking and sniffling and sneezing—so I don’t “get it”—and I’m enjoying the luxury of king-sized sleeping. But then he’s also upset because none of the cats sleep with him. Um, they want the king-sized luxury, too, you know.

This morning, as he moaned in that scratchy deep voice that would be so sexy if it weren’t for the phlegm and the coughing fits, I told him he should pray that he gets well quickly, and he said:

“God can suck my dick.”

Someone won’t be getting better any time soon, I think.

After leaders of the Nevada Culinary Workers Union alleged online bullying by Bernie Sander’s  supporters over the union’s disagreement with his health care plan, Bernie said this:

“Harassment of all forms is unacceptable to me, and we urge supporters of all campaigns not to engage in bullying or ugly personal attacks. Our campaign is building a multi-generational, multi-racial movement of love, compassion, and justice. We can certainly disagree on issues, but we must do it in a respectful manner.”

See what he does there? He accepts zero responsibility for his rabid supporters.

Hey Bernie? Tell’ em to knock it the fuck off because otherwise, you look like you condone it. And you don’t, do you?

Brad Parscale, _____’s campaign manager, Tweeted, and then deleted, a photo of Air Force One at the Daytona 500 with the caption:

“@realDonaldTrump won the #Daytona500 before the race even started.”

Twitterers took about a nanosecond to point out that the photo was from President George W. Bush’s visit to the NASCAR race in 2004.

Here’s the deal—and one or both of these things could be true—wither the _____ campaign is run by a gaggle of lying stupid asshats, or the _____campaign thinks its supporters are stupid enough to believe whatever they say.

Cardinal Valasio De Paolis—the Vatican official appointed by the pope to lead the Legion of Christ, a disgraced religious order and to clean up its history of child rape—has been called out Yolanda Martínez, whose son had been asexually assaulted by a Legion of Christ priest to report the settlement offer the church came up with to compensate her son for his rape.

Cardinal De Paolis had offered the Martínez’ family about $16,000, but only if her son would recant his testimony that the priest had repeatedly raped him when he was a 12-year-old student at the order’s youth seminary.

He gets the money for being raped if he says he lied about being raped.

The Catholic Church.

In great LGBTQ+ ally news, two of my favorite actors, Ruth Wilson and Matt 'My Husband In My head' Bomer, are set to star in the film The Book of Ruth, based on the life of Ruth Coker Burks—center—the self-described “straight church lady” who provided end-of-life care, and oftentimes funerals, to nearly 1,000 gay men with AIDS whose families had abandoned them.

You can read her story HERE

Several #GOPCoward lawmakers expressed concern over _____’s comments on the sentencing of longtime ally Roger Stone.

Really? What they say to their Glorious Leader?

Miss Lindsey: “I don’t think he should be commenting on cases in the system. I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

Susan Collins: “The president should not have gotten involved.”

My favorite is Senator Lisa Murkowski, the #GOPCoward from Alaska who was asked if she believed _____ learned any lessons from his impeachment: “Well, there haven’t been very strong indicators this week that he has.”

And yet they still kiss his ring, though in the case of Miss Lindsey, it’s the ass he’s kissing.

These three #GOPCowards are exactly why this party needs to go. They say he does bad things; they say he doesn’t do the right things; they say he’s wrong, but when it’s time to stand against him, suddenly they lose their voices.

Vote.Them.All.Out.

The other night, bored, I began flipping through channels, not really paying attention. But then … Irish accent; man, I’m a sucker for an accent. And so, I stopped, and discovered Eoin—pronounced Owen—Macken, on s showed called Stumptown.

He’s an actor, director, author and model, and has an honors degree in Psychology; smart, sexy, scraggly bed hair, soulful eyes, dimples and an accent.

Sign.Me.Up.

Bobservations

One last Consuelo story … for now.

Once we got the little bitch our darling girl into the house, and into the guest room, and I was trying to get her out of the cage, Carlos said:

“Wait. Are we sure that’s her?”

Seriously. And if she ever gets out again, I now know I’ll just have to throw a dish towel on the floor by her food dish and he’ll think she’s still in the house.

Here’s a story I’d never heard …

Shortly after Rosa Parks defied segregation laws and sparked the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, she left the South for Detroit. In 1994 Rosa Parks was robbed and assaulted in her home at the age of 81. Damon Keith, a Detroit native and civil rights activist, helped Rosa Parks find a new, safer apartment in the city, and that’s when the amazingly sweet happened.

Mike Ilitch, the Little Caesars founder and Detroit Tigers owner who died last week, read the story in the newspaper and called Damon Keith and made an offer: he would pay for Rosa Parks' housing indefinitely, which he did from 1994 until the icon passed in 2005.

RIP Mr. Ilitch and say Hello to Rosa.

The nativity scene at Claremont United Methodist Church depicts Jesus, Mary and Joseph as refugees held in separate cages topped with barbed wire. The baby Jesus is wrapped in a silver foil blanket. Lead Pastor Karen Clark Ristine:

"We thought about the most famous refugee family in the world, the family of Jesus.  In the Claremont United Methodist Church nativity scene this Christmas, the Holy Family takes the place of the thousands of nameless families separated at our borders. Imagine Joseph and Mary separated at the border and Jesus no older than two taken from his mother and placed behind the fences of a Border Patrol detention center as more than 5,500 children have been the past three years."

Imagine that Deplorables? If Jesus, Mary and Joseph came to our borders today, you’d cheer as they were separated and jailed.

This weekend is the Kennedy Center Honors, honoring Earth, Wind & Fire, Sally Field, Linda Ronstadt, Sesame Street, and Michael Tilson Thomas. But before the show, the State Dept. held a  dinner for the honorees and Mike Pompeo, introducing Linda Ronstadt, paraphrased one of her biggest hits and asked when he would be “loved”.

When Linda Ronstadt got up to receive her award, she looked Pompeo dead in the eyes and said:

“Maybe when you stop enabling Donald _____”.

Icon. Hero. Deserves very honor.

Matt Gay, kicker for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has been bullied his whole life because of his last name.

Now his nieces and nephews suffer the same, because … 2019 and people are still asshats. So, Matt has taken up the cause of anti-bullying and will wear special cleats to Sunday’s game against the Indianapolis Colts:

“It’s so easy to hide behind a phone and say whatever you want. … I think it’s pure coward-ism for those who do it and there’s no place for it in this world. I got bullied and teased all the time for my last name and things like that. Luckily, I was stronger willed than they were and overcome it. There’s a lot of kids that get bullied in this world and have no way to stand up for themselves. Some of the messages I receive, it’s almost like people forget you’re an actual human being.”

Good on Matt because not only is the bullying ridiculous and must stop, the idea that calling someone gay is an insult has also got to go.

A new holiday ad for the H&M clothing chain features gay and lesbian love alongside straight couples in an ad entitled “Moments in Between”—that is the moments during the holiday season that come between the big events like Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

Set to Judy Garland’s performance of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” many of the scenes shown aren’t romantic, and most aren’t LGBTQ. But there are two queer moments where two women are kissing under the mistletoe, and two young men kiss on a stairway.

Cute, right? Well, H&M is being forced to delete hateful comments about LGBTQ people under the post:

“We have a strong belief in love being for all and would like everyone to keep a friendly tone. Therefore comments that are extremely hurtful and not in line with our well-rooted values about equality have been removed.”

The comments are removed, but not the scenes of two same-sex couples sharing a kiss.

Take that!

Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, has been selected as TIME’s 2019 ‘Person of the Year’, making her the youngest person ever bestowed with their honor.

Before 2019, the previous individual to hold the record for youngest Person of the Year was the first Person of the Year in TIME’s history: 25-year-old Charles Lindbergh, back in 1927.

Congratulations to a most deserving honoree.

Adrien France.

Yes; he’s French; I’m dreaming of that accent now. And then there’s that whole loves-to-model-in-his-underwear thing. He works the curly hair, works the sleek hair, works the 70s porn star look.

Just sayin’.

Mother Confronts Her Son's Bullies, and She's Arrested

Hell hath no fury like a Mama protecting her young son.

When Jamie Rathburn found out that kids at Greenbrier Elementary School were calling her third-grade son “gay” and “stupid,” she was upset, but when he came home with bruises and scratches, she was done.

She emailed the school, and then met with school faculty and administrators, who apparently told her “boys will be boys” … who bully and beat up other boys, I’m guessing. The school passed on doing anything, but then Rathburn learned that one of the teachers had to follow her son around the schoolyard, and so she took matters into her own hands.

She entered the school without permission from the front office and confronted a group of her son’s third-grade classmates and their teacher, and recorded a video on her phone:

“I walked right in that school [and] told those children that bullying wasn’t okay. If they wanted to continue, then I needed to talk to their mommas because the school wasn’t doing anything.”

She then cussed out her son’s teacher and the principal, who had done nothing to stop the bullying. After posting the video on Facebook, Jamie Rathburn was arrested and booked into Greenville County jail on a charge of non-student interfering, disrupting or disturbing schools. The district later issued a no trespass order for preventing her from for all Greenville County schools for her illegal entry. If found guilty for the misdemeanor charges carry, she could face a $2,000 fine and up to a year in jail.

All because she wanted to protect her son from bullies at a school that acted like it was no big deal.

Rathburn’s family started a GoFundMe campaign to pay her legal bills, and it has raised $4500 of its $8000 goal.

Beth Brotherton, director of communications for the Greenville school district, said:

“Maybe in her mind she was going there to confront a bully or a couple of children, but in not knowing who those were and choosing to yell at dozens of innocent kids, there is nothing appropriate about yelling at other people’s children’s in a school setting after you’ve snuck in illegally.”

Hey Beth, you ignorant tool, lemme ask you a question. Since we hear all the time about bullied kids committing suicide, and since the school seemed to have a “so what” attitude, and did nothing to stop the bulling, and the physical assault, what exactly did you expect Jamie Rathburn to do?

What would you do if it was your child? Sit back until you come home one day and find your child hanging from a belt in the closet? Sit back until you get a call at work that your bullied son took a gun to school and killed a classmate?

Rathburn does not regret standing up for her child, or the way she did it, and maybe, just maybe, she saved his life.

But hey, it’s not your child … this time.

LGBTQ Nation

Tuesday Thought #4

The Funny Papers

Steve Breen, Mike Smith, Clay Bennett, Jack Ohman, Steve Sack, Ed Hall, Jim Morin, RJ Matson, David Horsey

The Funny Papers

Jack Ohman, John Cole, Mike Smith, Mike Luckovich, Steve Sack, Drew Sheneman, Nate Beeler, Clay Bennett, Nick Anderson