Bobservations

This week, as I was finishing up work with one of our clients, Peter, who owns the bakery in town, Carlos came in; he’d been doing an interpretation at a lawyer’s office and came into my job so we could ride home together.

Carlos and Peter began chatting and then Peter’s wife, Fran, came in and they all were talking baking and pies and such. I finished up my work and as Carlos and I were leaving, we said goodbye to Peter and Fran. Peter called out:

“Keep an eye on him, Carlos.”

Peter knows of my reputation for being a bit of a troublemaker; Carlos called back:

“With my good eye!”

And he laughed about that all night long, because that’s how he handles this eyesight issue. But the next day Peter was back in and told me to apologize to Carlos because he didn’t mean what he said, and that it was rude. I told him Carlos found it high-larious and there was no apology necessary because Carlos was still laughing about it today.

That’s Carlos; always looking at the bright, and funny, side.

Margie Reckard was one of the victims of domestic white terrorism in El Paso earlier this month and when it came time to plan her memorial, her husband, Antonio Basco, thought no one would show up for the  service as the couple had no relatives in the area. Basco put out the word that anyone was welcome … and nearly a thousand people showed up at the La Paz Faith Memorial and Spiritual Center to say goodbye to Margie. The center was filled with over 400 mourners, while another 700 waited  outside in nearly 100-degree heat to pay respects to a woman they didn’t even know.

Strangers from as far away as Japan and New Zealand sent so many flowers that Salvador Perches, owner of Perches Funeral Home, had 22 hearses, one for each victim, filled with the overflow flowers and then sent them to the memorial site in El Paso.

This story both warms and breaks my heart; it makes me happy because of the compassion of strangers from around the world; it makes me sad because I know this story will happen again.

And Again.

So, will this one … in Wynne, Arkansas, four young black teenagers were going door-to-door selling discount cards for their annual high school football team fundraiser. At one home, a black dog chased the boys into the back of a truck until the dog’s owner came out to assure them the dog was friendly; the boys then spent several playing with the dog.

Then they met Jerri Kelly; and her gun. Kelly had seen the boy’s in the neighborhood and had already called the police about the “suspicious persons” who were “yelling and screaming” in the driveway of her neighbor’s house.

“All males were African American, and I know this residence to [be] white.” Kelly told police. She reported the boys “horseplaying” in the driveway, “aggravating the dog that lived there” and when they turned toward her house, Kelly said she feared for her safety, and grabbed her gun.

By the time officers arrived eight minutes later, Kelly was holding the teens, on the ground, at gunpoint, demanding to see their IDs. Luckily, one of the responding officers recognized the teens as students from Wynne High School, where he is the resource officer. He told them they to go wait by the patrol car, but when they began to walk away, Kelly began lecturing them, saying her actions weren’t racially motivated; she said the boys were acting “suspicious” and did not look like salesmen.

You know, because they were black kids knocking at the door of a white house.

Jerri Kelly was charged with four counts each of aggravated assault and false imprisonment, both felonies, and four counts of endangering the welfare of a minor, which is a misdemeanor. Kelly’s husband is the Cross County Jail administrator; after her arrest, and there she was booked and bonded out without ever getting her mug shot taken, which has drawn criticism from locals that she received preferential treatment.

You don’t say …

If you didn’t see this coming, you had your eyes closed.

_____ is against the stronger background checks that he was for just last week in the wake of the shootings in El Paso and Dayton because he says the United States already has “very strong background checks” for gun purchasers.

I guess that check from the NRA to his reelection campaign cleared and he used it to wipe the blood off his hands.

Speaking of racists, like ____, in November 2018 members of the Pacifica High School water polo team gave a Nazi salute and sang a Nazi march song at an awards ceremony, according to media reports.

A video of these morons recently surfaced, but nothing ever happened to those students; no censure by the school, no suspensions, nothing.

The administration simply looked the other way, until now. The Garden Grove Unified School District released a statement:

“Garden Grove Unified School District and Pacifica High School strongly condemn a video recorded last year of some students who engaged in offensive Nazi-related gestures. The video was filmed in November 2018 prior to the start of an after school hours, off-campus student athletics banquet in an empty and unsupervised room at the facility. The video was shared within a small group of students on SnapChat. It was not brought to the attention of the administration of Pacifica High School until March of 2019, four months following the banquet, at which time school administrators took immediate action and addressed the situation with all students and families involved. Federal law (Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act) prohibits the district from disclosing details of student discipline.”

Uh huh. Right.

After trying to buy Greenland from Denmark last week—no, seriously, he tried to buy a country—_____ has postponed a planned trip to Denmark claiming it was because Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said that “Greenland is not for sale.”

The cancellation was a rare snub of Denmark’s head of state, Queen Margrethe II, who had extended the invitation to _____ and would have hosted him and the first lady but is that true or could it be something else, like, oh, I dunno …

The fact that Barack Obama is also set to visit Denmark next month and _____ is afraid he’ll look bad in comparison.

Yeah, that’s it.

Oops, another one bites the dust. Conservative GOP Christian Tennessee state 

Representative Bill Sanderson resigned last week citing a son-in-law in poor health and the demands of his business, but is that really what happened, or …. Is it because of the Grindr messages and nude photos uncovered by journalists that have exposed Sanderson as yet another Republican closeted gay male hypocrite has voted against every LGBTQ issue that has come before him.

Bye Felicia.

Men’s underwear company Tommy John has issued a new report has been released that shows nearly half of all Americans don’t change their drawers every day.

Half of you are running around in day old underwear!

Some 1,000 people took the poll, with 45% saying they had worn the same pair of underwear for two or more days, while another 13% admitted to wearing the same pair for a week or more! In big surprise news, Tommy John found that men were 2.5 times as likely as women to wear crusty drawers for a week or more.

No word on those of us who go commando a lot.

Finally! Five years after Eric Garner’s dying plea that “I can’t breathe” became the rallying cry against police brutality across the nation, Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer who murdered him has been fired.

If you remember Garner was busted for selling single “loose” cigarettes on the streets of New York, and Pantaleo used a banned chokehold to bring Garner to the ground while he was gasping that he couldn’t breathe eleven times.

In 2014 a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo for the killing of Eric Garner.

This, however small, is at least some form of justice.

I love bald men …but beefy bald men in little bikinis drive me insane, and so here we have one Webster Charlotten, male model, and Hot Man of the Week.

See what I mean?

Enjoy.

Another One: Brandon Elizares

Down in El Paso, Texas, Brandon Elizares, a sixteen-year-old Andres High School student killed himself last Saturday after being bullied for over two years.

He was openly gay.

"He got bullied simply for being gay," his mother, Zachalyn Elizares said. "He's been threatened to be stabbed. He's been threatened to be set on fire."

For being gay.

But, what makes this story different, is that  Zachalyn  Elizares reported the bullying to the school district, and she says they did all they could to stop it.

"They've reprimanded several kids and they did everything that they could," Elizares said.

But, Brandon friends say that last Friday, after more episodes of bullying, someone insulted her son and planned to fight him the next week.

On Saturday, after running errands,  Zachalyn Elizares came home to find her son's body: "My son had every right to live his life the way that he wanted to, without having to fear that people would call him names or threaten to beat him up," she said.

And he did, as do all LGBTQ youth. But how can they, when we live in a world that sees politicians consistently tell them they have no value, that they have no rights that they are less then.

How can any young LGBT person feel safe in this country when you have pastors and preachers and so-called men of god saying we need to be locked up, or that the government needs to kill us?

How can we expect children to treat LGBTQ youth with compassion and tolerance and acceptance when they are being taught every day by religious leaders and political leaders to do otherwise?

source

A Patriot Where Most Of Us Might Least Expect It

How many times do you see a homeless person and think the worst? Some drug addict or drunk asleep in a doorway? Some lazy dirty person who won't find work but has the nerve to ask you for change? A crazy old lady who is warned to stay away from you? Well, one of those homeless people, a man living on the streets of El Paso, Texas, is garnering praise this week after rescuing Old Glory. Gustus Bozarth was trying to stay dry during a rain storm this past week, but then something caught his eye and made him leave the so-called "comfort" of his homemade shelter, and his two cats, to head into the storm.

He saw an American flag that had been knocked over by the storm and, after carefully folding it military style, he tucked it under the windshield wiper of a nearby vehicle and then moved the flagpole to the front of the building.

The next morning, employees at Management & Engineering Technologies International [METI]were mystified to find the neatly folded flag on one of their trucks; they suspected vandalism, but a stretch of surveillance tape revealed Bozarth and his act of patriotic chivalry.

"When we saw that it was a good Samaritan, we were shocked--and even more shocked to see that it was a homeless man who had been around the area for quite a while," Rebecca Orozco, METI spokeswoman told local media. And, recognizing Bozarth as the homeless man, whose shelter is in the back of warehouse not far from METI, she add, "So, we were able to locate him and thank him for the good deed that he did and for helping our flag to be saved."

How many of us, with jobs and homes, would go out in a rainstorm to rescue an American flag, fold it properly, and place in somewhere safe?

After so many of us have turned our backs on him, or looked the other way, thought him to be crazy, lazy or drunk, this man didn't turn his back on the country, and the flag that represents it.

How many of us would do the same?

I Love Lisa Turner

In El Paso the City Council decided to offer domestic partner benefits to gay and heterosexual unmarried couples. Lisa Turner went to a city council meeting to discuss the budget, but when people began to criticize to council over the domestic partnership decision, Lisa began saying something else entirely.

This is what Lisa Turner said:

I'm not going to sit here and be attacked. You've got all these preachers who came up here and talked. These are the people who are teaching hate (sound of laugh). In the house of God you're teaching hate. Their parishioners, these are the people who teach their kids, and teach ... (pauses) I'm sorry, I'm getting emotional.

These are the people in their church who say it's wrong and they teach this ... this is why an 11-year-old goes and hangs himself, because the children of these ministers and people who go to the church have berated this child, because he's perceived to be different, he's perceived to be gay, and there's so much pressure the child hangs himself. And he's 11-years old. 

You tell me where in your Bible that's OK. It's not. You speak about your Bible. Well, the Bible says if you work on the Sabbath, you're to be stoned in public. I don't see a public stoning place. We don't stone anybody in public. 

It says you're allowed to have slaves as long as they're not of our nation. We don't do that any more. We are a country where all men are created equal. Not according to somebody's Bible, somebody else's religious text. I don't care if it's the Torah, the Koran, the Bible; teachings from Buddha, Hindu, Native American, I don't care, we're all equal, we're to be treated the same and a lot of what you heard today, if you turn the clock back 40 years, it's what they were saying about people who were black. The same thing. 

Don't say no. I grew up in there. I heard it all. I lived in the south. I heard this stuff. This is a civil rights issue. I will not stand silent while people preach hate and I've had to suffer the violence of such hate. These are the very people who make me carry a weapon with me at all times. I have to protect myself from the violence that these people instigate. (laughter)

You think it's funny? (voice, "Yeah it is.") What do you think the family of Matthew Shepard thought when their son was assaulted, tortured and staked on a fence. Yeah, that's the Bible. Then we can go back to the inquisition and the burning of women in this country because they were witches. You know what? You all using the Bible for your justification has done more harm to mankind then it does to help. And when it comes to marriage it's not the gays and lesbians and transgendered people who are at fault for your failure to stay faithful to your partner. It's your fault. 

Go look in the mirror; over 50 percent of heterosexual marriages end in divorce. You have men running around impregnating teenage girls and they walk away from it. It's called responsibility. I believe that's somewhere in the Bible too. 

In the Bible, God is about love. It's not about hate. But this Satan patrol in here is preaching one thing and that's hate. They have to have somebody to look down on. And if they don't have somebody to look down on they feel inferior. They blame gays for the failure of their heterosexual marriage and it's not. It's their failure. It's the failure of the church to make sure that people who are getting married understand what they're getting into and are there for them when they're having problems and they're not and now we have to pick up the crumbs where they have failed, and it's not my responsibility to pay taxes for your rugrats who go to school who don't bother to study who don't work hard better themselves in school and learn what they're supposed to learn I shouldn't have to pay that bill that's your responsibility you brought them into this world you pay for it.

(City clerk: Ms. Turner, your time is up)

No Lisa, your time is far from over. The time is just beginning.

El Paso Can Kiss My Grits

Guards [Really? Taco stand guards?] at a Chico's Tacos on the East Side of El Paso ejected a group of gay men from the restaurant because two of the men were kissing.
"It was a simple kiss on the lips," said Carlos Diaz de Leon, who called the police when he feared he and his group were targets of discrimination after two of his male friends kissed in public.

It seems that the two Rent-a-Cops hired by Chico's Tacos were so offended at the sight of the man-on-man liplock that they approached the men and said "they didn't allow that faggot stuff to go on there."

The minimum wage terrorists then made the men leave the restaurant.

When a real police officer arrived at the scene about an hour later [apparently fresh donuts were available en route and that held them up] de Leon tried to tell the officers what happened. The police officers wanted to hear the Rent-a-Cop story first.

Then the real officer informed the group it was illegal for two men or two women to kiss in public, de Leon said. The five were told they could be cited for homosexual conduct--a charge the US Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas. And, way back in 2003, the city of El Paso passed an ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation by employees of the city and by businesses open to the public.

Still, El Paso Police Detective Carlos Carrillo said a more appropriate charge would probably be criminal trespass; for buying a taco and kissing.

Seriously.