Month: May 2025
Massive drone and missile attack on Ukraine
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/24/europe/russia-ukraine-kyiv-attack-prisoner-swap-intl-hnk?cid=ios_app
Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie
Sunday political cartoons / memes / and news items. Not too long nor too short.
‘Didn’t earn it’ was always a MAGA confession.
Unqualified men get positions they have no experience nor merit in an administration gaslighting about fraud and waste.
The racism and nativism. The jealosy. The envy. The pettiness. The insecurity. The retribution. The white supremacy.
Everything MAGA is less than. Inferior. Unaware. Unserious. The opposite of hard work. Lazy. Shitty and proud.
Attacking prestige. Attacking the number one institution for cancer research. Attacking international inclusion and camaraderie.
Putin is winning. Kristi Noem is helping.
New Montana law limits what flags can be flown at schools and government buildings
The entire article is saying that the public schools should be for everyone … except LGBTQ+ kids and parents of those kids. Yes gay and trans children exist and need / deserve to see themselves represented in the community just as much as straight cis kids do. This is a hate bill, banning a group because the majority in charge doesn’t like them. The flags they say are ok to fly like the Gladstone flag or the thin blue line flag are not neutral and they most definitely represent a political ideology. Again this is about erasing the LGBTQ+ kids / people from society to make the Christian fundamentalist and insecure parents who know they can’t have produced a gay / trans kid feel better about themselves. It is a desire to force the fundamentalist view point on every one regardless if they believe it. It is a desperate attempt to return to the 1950s. Hugs
Posted 2:53 PM, May 21, 2025and last updated 6:48 PM, May 21, 2025A new Montana law limits what flags can be flown on government property or at public schools.
House Bill 819, sponsored by Rep. Braxton Mitchell, R-Columbia Falls, restricts any flags that “represent a political party, race, sexual orientation, gender or political ideology.”
The law effectively bans Pride flags and other LGBTQ flags from being flown at schools or government buildings. In 2019, Gov. Steve Bullock, D-Montana, flew a Pride flag over the state Capitol, which drew criticism from Republicans.
Language in the bill does allow flags like the Gadsden flag and other “official historical flags” to be flown. It also allows flags for law enforcement officers and fallen officers, like the “Thin Blue Line” flag, which Gov. Gianforte, R-Montana, flew above the Montana Capitol on Thursday, May 15, 2025.
When HB 819 was debated on the floor of the Montana House of Representatives, Mitchell said the bill was intended to ensure government entities remain a place of neutrality and was not to impact an individual’s free speech.
“Government buildings, schools and public facilities serve all citizens and should not be used to promote political, ideological or activist messaging,” said Mitchell during the March 6 floor debate.
Critics of HB 819 say the bill targets free speech by allowing provisions for specific flags like the Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag to be flown, while others were prohibited. Rep. Pete Elverum, D-Helena, said under the language, a Confederate flag could be flown.
“What we’re doing here is we’re expressly prescribing what speech is allowed, ‘these flags’, and what speech is not allowed, ‘these other flags’,” said Rep. Pete Elverum, D-Helena, on March 6. “And as for the definition of ‘promoting a certain ideology,’ those [flags] are expressly prohibited, but at the exact same time we’re sitting here with a bill proclaiming to be about free speech, we’re expressly prohibiting some and promoting others.”
Flags of tribal nations, foreign countries, military service branches, the POW/MIA flag and official school or government entities’ flags are also permitted under the law.
HB 819 went into effect immediately after Governor Greg Gianforte signed it.
This year, both Utah and Idaho have passed similar laws restricting or banning Pride flags on government property or at schools.
So is this one allowed, or not?
Open Windows, Clay Jones
Corrupt Bananas by Clay Jones
As Gwen Stefani said, “This shit is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. Read on Substack
If you’re the president of the United States and you want to do a lot of corrupt bullshit, the first thing you do is hire corrupt people who will support your corrupt bullshit.
A sure way to tell someone is corrupt is by offering them a bribe. If they accept the bribe, then they’re good to go because they’re up to no good. Years later, when you need a corrupt Attorney General to vouch that accepting a $400 million plane from Qatar isn’t corrupt, Pam Bondi will tell the public it’s not corrupt, even though it is.
And then, when you need your spokesgoon to say something super ridiculous to defend you over selling access to the Oval Office, you hire Karoline Leavitt. Leavitt said it was OK for Trump to be at his golf club, hosting the top buyers of his crypto because he was off the clock, attending in his “personal time,” as though he’s just a guess. Get the fuck out of here.
The White House claims that Trump’s assets are in a “blind trust” managed by his two idiot kids, Sniffy Jr. and Eric. (snip-MORE, and it’s good!)
Republican bill cuts food aid for elderly, low-income, & disabled Americans by Ann Telnaes
and increased funding for their own version of Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program Read on Substack
John T. Scopes Indicted This Date, + More in Peace & Justice History for 5/25
| May 25, 1774 A group of African slaves in Massachusetts Bay colony petitioned the British royal governor for freedom as their natural right: “. . . we have in common with all other men a natural right to our freedoms without Being depriv’d of them by our fellow men as we are a freeborn Pepel [people] and have never forfeited this Blessing by aney compact or agreement whatever.” |
| May 25, 1925 John T. Scopes was indicted for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. Scopes, a football coach and substitute high school biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, agreed to be arrested and put on trial for teaching evolution. He was challenging the legitimacy of a four-day-old state law barring Darwin’s theory from the public school curriculum.  The Scopes “Monkey Trial” ACLU |
May 25, 1948 Garry Davis, formerly a member of the U.S. military, renounced his American citizenship to become a Citizen of the World. Davis continued to promote “world citizenship” for over 50 years; 400,000 have, at one time or another, joined the movement. watch trailer “THE WORLD IS MY COUNTRY” Read more about Garry Davis NY Times |
| May 25, 1963 Leaders of 32 African nations met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to set up the Organization of African Unity (OAU), giving them a united voice for the first time in the continent’s history. The primary aim of the OAU was to end European colonial control in the countries where it still existed at the time: Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), South Africa, Mozambique and Angola.  OAU flag Read more |
May 25, 1986 An estimated 7 million Americans participated in Hands Across America, forming a line across the country from Los Angeles to New York to raise public awareness of the issues of hunger and homelessness in the U.S. Participants paid ten dollars [almost $20 in 2009] to reserve their place in line; the proceeds were donated to local charities to feed the hungry and help the homeless. |
| May 25, 2003 Four activists, members of the Catholic Worker movement and known as “Riverside Ploughshares,” were arrested for pouring blood and hammering on the USS Philippine Sea’s Tomahawk cruise missile hatches. The ship was visiting New York City for the annual “Fleet Week.” “With hammers we have initiated the process of disarming this battle ship, of transforming this carrier of mass destruction into a vessel for peace…”  pouring blood and hammering.. Details of the Riverside Ploughshares action |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may25
Long-Weekend (US) Reads in LGBTQ+ History
I keep meaning to get them posted, then I don’t get it done. Here they are; readers can pick and choose, or read each one in your own time. Enjoy!
This one has 2: 120, and 120a! -A
Queer History 120: Sappho by Wendy🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🌈
How a woman from ancient Lesbos changed literature and sexuality forever Read on Substack
Queer History 119: Dr Alan Hart, Trans Guy Super Power by Wendy🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🌈
“What does it feel like to save countless lives while being forced to hide who you really are? To revolutionize medicine while living in constant fear of being “discovered”? To fight a deadly disease that ravaged millions while battling a society that treated your very existence as a fucking scandal?”
Read on Substack
Queer History 118: The Tragedy of Carmen Carrasco (1932) by Wendy🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🌈
“In a Spain teetering between progress and persecution, one woman’s death exposed the brutal reality faced by those who dared to love differently.
The day they found Carmen Carrasco’s body, Madrid whispered.” Read on Substack
Queer History 117: The Boys of Boise Scandal by Wendy🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🌈
“In 1955, the sleepy city of Boise, Idaho became ground zero for one of the most fucked-up anti-gay witch hunts in American history. What began as arrests of three men exploded into a moral panic that would rip families apart like wet paper, crush reputations under its boot, and drive some to blow their brains out—all under the bullshit guise of ‘protecting the children.'”
Read on Substack
Queer History 116: Natalie Clifford Barney by Wendy🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🌈
How an American heiress built a lesbian literary empire in the heart of French culture while telling society to go fuck itself Read on Substack
Queer History 115: The Radical Queer Brotherhood in Walt Whitman’s Revolutionary Circle by Wendy🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🌈
How America’s “Good Gray Poet” built a secret society of gay intellectuals that changed literature forever Read on Substack
It’s in the Saturday Evening Post
Mourning Dove, Teller of Native American Stories
The gifted storyteller and tribal advocate published one of the first novels written by a Native American woman.
Mourning Dove, 1916 (L.V. McWhorter Collection, Washington State University Libraries Digital Collections)
“I am most grateful that…I was born long enough ago to have known people who lived in the ancient way before everything started to change.”
–Mourning Dove
Maybe it was because she was born in a canoe on Idaho’s Kootenai River. Or because she was multiracial. Or because she went to a convent school to learn English as a ten-year-old. Whatever the reason, Christine Quintasket, whose Salish language name was Hum-ishu-ma (Mourning Dove in English, which she adopted as her literary name as an adult), wrote stories about the hostility white people had toward Native Americans and the confusion they suffered when educated in white schools.
Born around 1884 to Sinixt/Colville Lucy Stukin of the upper Columbia River and Okanagan/Irish Joseph Quintasket of British Columbia, the future writer grew up speaking the Salishan dialect in her mother’s home near Kettle Falls, Washington, according to her autobiography. Mourning Dove’s grandmother taught her the traditional customs of Columbia Plateau natives. Teequalt, an older woman who lived with the family, introduced her to tribal spirituality, and Jimmy Ryan, an adopted white orphan, taught her to read English through dime novels.
As a young girl, Mourning Dove remembered sitting by a campfire and listening to the animated voice of a tribal storyteller imitating an animal. “We thought of this as all fun and play, barely aware that tale-telling and impersonations were part of our primitive education,” she recalled decades later.
Mourning Dove’s indigenous education ended in 1894 when she went to the Sacred Heart School at the Goodwin Catholic Mission near Kettle Falls. When her mother died in 1902, the writer returned home to care for her younger siblings. After her father remarried in 1904, she moved to Great Falls, Montana to attend the Fort Shaw Industrial Indian School. In 1908 Mourning Dove sorrowfully watched the last roundup of America’s wild bison herd as the Old West faded. “One magnificent fellow fought like a lion as they tried to crowd his wonderful shaggy head into a box car,” she told an interviewer. She later incorporated the roundup in her writing. (snip-MORE, not too long to read, and it’s really interesting!)
Woot! 🌞
Israeli use of human shields in Gaza was systematic, soldiers and former detainees tell the AP
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-army-human-shields-80f358dd2c87a1123f26ffada159701c
Israeli use of human shields in Gaza was systematic, soldiers and former detainees tell the AP
Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie
Scottie's Playtime 