The Funny Papers

Clay Bennett, David Horsey, Darrin Bell, John Buss, Lalo Alcaraz, Christopher Weyant, Adam Zyglis, Deb Milbrath, Drew Sheneman, Wes Rowell, Mike Luckovich,

Why Is It ...

… that when someone asks me if I’m ‘okay,’ I say, ‘Absolutely not, but I’m funny.’

… that I hate getting mad? Is it because it takes me two-and-a-half-years to calm down?

… that no one understands I am only social on Facebook; do not come bothering me in real life.

… that I want to live my life to the fullest, but I also want to be in bed by 9?

… that I understand being a responsible adult, but every day … every … single … day … seems a little excessive.

… that no one realizes that I am that age where I won’t make eye contact with someone because they look like a talker?

… that even though my work week finishes up by Friday, in reality I’ve emotionally given up by Wednesday?

… that if you want to make a moron’s head explode, all you have to do is ask them to spell ‘there.’ And when they ask you to use it in a sentence, say, ‘Their car is parked over there and they’re late.’

I Didn't Say It ...

President Biden, issuing pardons to LGBTQ+ service members previously discharged for their sexual orientation or gender identity under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell:

“Today, I am righting a historic wrong by using my clemency authority to pardon many former service members who were convicted simply for being themselves. Our nation’s service members stand on the frontlines of freedom and risk their lives in order to defend our country. Despite their courage and great sacrifice, thousands of LGBTQI+ service members were forced out of the military because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Some of these patriotic Americans were subject to court-martial and have carried the burden of this great injustice for decades.”

Biden’s clemency for LGBTQ+ veterans corrects a dark time when the military prosecuted individuals under Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which prohibited gay sex and was in place from 1951 until 2013.

Estimates are that approximately 100,000 service members have been expelled from the military because of their sexual orientation since World War II, including more than 13,000 under DADT between 1994 and 2011. The practical impact for those convicted under such discriminatory policies will allow veterans to access benefits they have long been denied.

That’s my president, doing what’s right and fair and just.

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Kevin Roberts, president of Hate Group the Heritage Foundation, having a spat with MSNBC’s Symone Sanders:

“Abortion’s not healthcare. I find it really interesting, if not worse, that you wouldn’t support the change of the [Health and Human Services] department’s name to the Department of Life. I thought we were all in support of life. Why aren’t we talking about the people who are supporting legislation that abortion can happen until three days after the person’s born? Abortion is not healthcare. Abortion is the murder of a human being.”

Yes, he suggests Democrats would be fine with abortion after birth and doesn’t see the ignorance of his claim. But then he says he cares about life but children slaughtered by madmen with guns in schools doesn’t bother him at ll.

Ass.Hat.

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Kurt Vonnegut, American author, on faux-Christians:

“For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. ‘Blessed are the merciful’ in a courtroom? ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon? Give me a break.”

Typical Christians picking and choosing the parts of the Bible that fit their hate of ‘others.’

God is watching and She is not happy.

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Charlie Kirk, showing his special brand of illiterate crazy on his wee podcast, talking about Democrats:

“They’ve never loved this country. They have bitterness for it. And they see [Hair Furor] as a true threat because he is a threat. He is an existential threat to their regime. He brings you, the American people, into the fight. Yes, it is a tipping point. Yesterday is a day like any other. It will go down in the memory of the nation like the JFK assassination, like 9/11. It’ll go down like the 2008 financial crisis, it’ll go down like COVID, it’ll go down like the 2016 election. You will remember where you were on May 30. Relief Factor. 100% drug-free relief. So check it out—knee pain, back pain, joint pain. Check it out right now.”

Seriously, he thinks anyone will remember where they were when Hair Furor was found guilty of  … something? Which time???

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat Representative, on this election, women’s rights, and SCOTUS:

“It’s been two years since six conservative justices toppled Roe v. Wade and our freedom over our bodies was seized by the most corrupt president in US history … Now women have less rights today, in 2024, than our parents and grandparents did. And if he wins in November you better believe [The Felon] and a Republican Congress will pass a national abortion ban. That alone is enormous reason why we must reelect Joe Biden.”

This isn’t fear, this is fact. The GOP, led by The Felon, will strip more health care rights away from women, and take Social Security away from every American, while rewarding the 1% with tax breaks.

Ain’t that America.

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Thom Tillis, North Carolina Republican, on whether presidents should have absolute immunity:

“I don’t believe anybody deserves absolute immunity. You know, the fact of the matter is that’s the last thing I’d want to do. That sounds a whole lot like the position we got rid of when we fought the Revolutionary War. Kings have absolute immunity. I don’t believe presidents should.”

Be careful, sir, Hair Furor may come after you.

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Larry Hogan, former Maryland Governor, and current GOP Maryland Senate candidate, saying he would vote to codify Roe v. Wade, “so every woman can make her own choice”:

“As governor, I promised to uphold Maryland law on abortion, while providing over-the-counter birth control covered by insurance and I kept my word. Today, with Roe overturned, many have asked what I’ll do in the United States Senate. I’ll support legislation that makes Roe the law of the land, in every state, so every woman can make her own choice … because no one should come between a woman and her doctor.”

I hope he’s being honest and not just pandering for votes …

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Bobservations: Fifty-Five Years Ago Today

Originally posted June 27, 2009

It was fifty-five years ago, a lifetime to some of us, a minute to others, but it marked a turning point for what would become the LGBTQ+ community. It wasn’t the first time our community fought back—there was the Cooper Do-nuts Riot in 1959,  the Dewey's Restaurant protest in 1965,  the Compton's Cafeteria riot in 1966, the Black Cat Tavern and New Faces, The Patch in 1968, among other—but Stonewall marked one of the loudest times that gay men and trans women stood up en masse and said, ‘No. We will not be treated like this any longer!’

The weekend of June 27-29,1969 began what is the modern-day gay movement. To be sure, there were gay and lesbian activists before that weekend, but the confrontation between police and demonstrators at the Stonewall Inn in New York City lit a fire in the hearts of the LGBT community like it had never been done before.

And like any good story, there is controversy surrounding the Stonewall Riots; there are arguments and differences over what happened, how it started and how it ended. But the fact that we all need to remember is that it did happen, and it should continue to be a rallying cry for the LGBTQ+ community today, as we continue the march toward equality in the eyes of the law, and in the eyes of America.

Friday, June 27, 1969: the world was mourning the death of Judy Garland. Could it be that the death of one of the most famous gay icons was what sparked the fire of the modern-day Gay Rights Movement? Many people have speculated that Garland's death did indeed push the gay community into the streets of New York that night, but it was also hot in New York that night, and some say it was the heat that fueled the crowd into action, into reaction. I think maybe it was both, Garland's death and the hot summer night; or maybe it was just that the gay community had finally had enough of being told what to do, what not to do, and how we should live our lives. Whatever the reason, it was enough. Finally, enough.

In the early morning hours of June 28, police officers raided the Stonewall Inn, a small bar located on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, as they had done on other occasions. Although mafia-run, the Stonewall, like other predominantly gay bars in the city, got raided by the police periodically.

Typically, the more "deviant" patrons—the queens and butch lesbians, especially if they were black—were arrested and taken away, while white, male customers looked on or quietly disappeared. The bar owners would be levied an insubstantial fine—a sign of police corruption and collusion between bar owners and police—allowing them to reopen for business the following day.

On this night, the charge at the Stonewall was the illegal sale of alcohol. The raid began as they always did: plainclothes and uniformed police officers entered the bar, arrested the employees, and began ejecting the customers one by one onto the street. For some reason, however, the crowd that had gathered outside Stonewall, a somewhat campy and festive crowd, began to cheer as the patrons were pushed out of the bar. But soon the mood changed; it was Judy Garland's death, or the summer heat, or the fact that the summer of 1969 was a particularly busy one for police raids on gay bars. Or maybe it was watching drag queens and lesbians being pushed and shoved and kicked into paddy wagons. Whatever it was, the on-lookers lost their patience. No one really knows who threw the first punch; some say it was a drag queen, some say it was a rather butch-looking lesbian. But someone defied the police that night; someone had finally had enough.

The crowd, now numbering several hundred, exploded. People began hurling coins at police officers, then they moved on to rocks and bottles, whatever they could grab. The police, at first stunned that the normally docile and shamed homosexuals would react in such a fashion, soon began beating the crowds with nightsticks. This group, however, was too angry, and was not going to be pushed around, or down, any longer; the police officers were forced to take refuge inside the Stonewall.

As news spread throughout Greenwich Village the crowd grew ever larger; many residents, some gay, some not, ran down to the Stonewall Inn to join the fight. Lighter fluid was squirted inside the bar and someone tried to light it; others grabbed a downed parking meter and used it as a battering ram against the front of the Stonewall. Someone began chanting "Gay Power!"

The riot-control police unit arrived to rescue the trapped officers and break up the demonstration, though it took over an hour before the crowd dispersed. To taunt their attackers a group of drag queens began to sing at the top of their lungs:

We are the Stonewall girls
We wear our hair in curls
We wear no underwear
We show our pubic hair
We wear our dungarees
Above our nelly knees!

That first Stonewall Riot ended the morning of Saturday, June 28, but the fight was far from over. That night a second riot broke out and the crowd now numbered in the thousands, filling the streets in the name of Gay Pride. They marched to the Stonewall Inn and waited for the police to arrive; and they did, in the early morning of Sunday, June 29.

For over a week, though in smaller numbers, protests and demonstrations continued in Greenwich Village. There was finally a sense of what could be accomplished by banding together, by being out, by being seen, by being heard. By being angry. It was a new day.

A month after the riots, the Gay Liberation Front [GLF] was formed. Radical and leftist, the GLF was one of many politically focused lesbian and gay organizations formed in the days following the riots. The number of lesbian and gay publications skyrocketed as well, which led to an even greater sense of community. The LGBT community was no longer strictly marginalized in United States society. Now, out and proud lesbians and gay men were developing their own communities in cities across the country.

Since 1970, marches have taken place in New York City—and all over the world—every year on the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. In June 1994, hundreds of thousands of people converged on New York to celebrate Stonewall's 25th anniversary. In 1999 the United States government proclaimed the Stonewall Inn a national historic site. The following year, the status of the Stonewall was improved to "historic landmark," a designation held by only a small percentage of historical sites.

Stonewall, while not the first protest, is our Plymouth Rock. It's where the gay community landed and came together and began the march toward equality. Stonewall was our first glimpse of a new world where we weren't alone, we weren't all that different, where we belonged.

It makes no difference how it started. The death of an icon; the summer heat; a sense of frustration. It makes no difference who started it; drag queens or lesbians; coin tossers or rock throwers. The difference is that it happened.

As I said, no one really knows who started the riot, or how it all started, but we do know that a great deal of the credit goes to Marsha P. Johnson, a drag queen who frequented the Stonewall Inn, and fought back and fought for our community before some of us were even born.

Fifty-five years ago today.

As we have seen this past year, in states around the nation, and in the Supreme Court, no rights, no laws, are safe with this radical rightwing GOP. And while the Supreme Court justices say they won’t come for LGBTQ+ rights, or marriage equality, we know them to be deceitful. What we once thought was settled law could be lost to us unless we stand up, speak up, shout out, show up and CAST A GODDAMNED VOTE.

The march goes on …

Architecture Wednesday: Coachella Pueblo-Revival Horse Property

If you like to feel like you’re on vacation every day have I got a house for you …

This private resort-like compound, spread out over two and one-half lush green acres features five structures designed in modern Pueblo Revival-style and yet it contains resonances of its past; the property was initially built as an equestrian ranch by one of the preeminent developers of the Coachella Valley for his wife.

A gated drive lined with old growth carob trees brings you to the spacious main house, two guest houses, an ancillary building, and a three-car garage as well as a long list of well-appointed amenities—an 80 foot pool, spa, tennis court, party pavilion, firepit, putting green, bocce ball court, horseshoes, hammock and basketball area. There is also a fruit orchard with guava, lemon, pear, pomelo, avocado, fig, and mango trees.

The vast main house is accessed through a dramatic colonnade up from the pool and the social spaces include a living room, den, media room, wet bar, dining area and kitchen all flowing into each other and outside onto shaded courtyards with decades-old cactuses; one such courtyard includes an outdoor dining room with a fireplace and barbeque.

The home's interiors include aspects of Pueblo Revival-style such as thick adobe-style walls and viga—roughhewn beams—and latilla ceilings. Warm flagstone floors flow throughout the interior and exterior spaces, adding another natural texture to the home's thoughtful warm simplicity.

The main home features two bedrooms, the primary with a kiva fireplace and spa-like bathroom with a walled cactus garden, custom stained glass in the shower room and large tub for soaking.

The horse stables have since been transformed into a gym, office and guest house and yet retain their rustic equestrian atmosphere with vestiges including the sliding stable doors of the horse stalls; in fact, one stable, the tack room, and the polo field pasture remain for horse lovers.

The home's meandering plan and network of covered outdoor spaces offer numerous paths to explore this enchanting property with its other structures, pool, tennis court, and multiple surprises.

Sold furnished so you can start your life-long holiday now.

As always, click to emBIGGERate ...

Dwell