The Texas comptroller said the state has opened an investigation into a Dallas bar that held a drag show for children earlier this summer.
In a statement released Friday, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar identified himself as one of many Texas parents who found themselves “disturbed by the recent images showing children participating in a drag show in the Dallas area, including one of a child placing money in a performer’s undergarment.”
Hegar’s announcement came one day after Republican state Rep. Bryan Slaton [photo] called on Hegar to treat Mr. Misster as a “sexually-oriented business.” As Slaton explained, “Sexually-oriented businesses are required to pay $5 per attendee present and they must also prevent children and sex offenders from attending or participating.”
Slaton, who is fond of making public appearances carrying an assault weapon and wearing a belt of ammunition, first appeared on JMG in March 2021 when he introduced a bill making abortion a death penalty crime for doctors and even women who undergo the procedure.
Earlier this year he introduced a bill requiring genital exams for trans athletes in public schools.
As I reported in June, extremists mobbed and attempted to enter Mr. Misster during the show, hurling abuse at children and parents.
The State of Texas is evaluating the tax status of a Dallas bar that hosted a “Drag the Kids to Pride” event in June. If determined to be a “sexually oriented business” after hosting the event, the bar would owe $5 per entrant under state law. https://t.co/08Qf19n0Hk
As usual the backward asses wants to make something funny as something stupid. And there are people out there who has no idea of the entertainment that Drag shows give. Just another way for the right wing assholes to turn communities against us.
They use that falsehood to Ban Books and teaching TRUTH inSCHOOLS. So, if a parent wants to take their kids to a Drag Show, do they NOT HAVE THE RIGHT to DO SO???
Right. First they get drag queen story time canceled, then all drag shows, then they’ll work on getting all gay bars closed (a child might walk past one!) and all LGBTQ content expunged from TV, movies, and the Internet. Think of the chilllldrennnnnn!
There is no appeasing them. Their concerns are disingenuous, and if they are allowed to shift the Overton Window, they’ll just keep pushing until they are allowed to criminalize and/or kill us again.
If we really want to appease them, we all need to stop existing ASAP. Because our existence is what triggers those delicate snowflakes’ feeeeeelings more than anything.
Just hours after a list began circulating among right-wing media of FBI agents who signed off on the search warrant for Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, a former Trump aide tried to sic MAGA fans on the family members of the purported agents.
Garrett Ziegler, who recently went on a sexist tear against former White House colleagues, took to Telegram to post the personal information of men he identified as agents.
The former Trump administration staffer further listed out the FBI agents’ date of birth, work emails and linked to alleged family members’ social media accounts. “We have to have faces,” he said. “There are people ruining America, and they have names, and emails, and addresses.”
Far right, Christian White Nationalist, Garrett Ziegler, complains about his post being taken down from Truth Social after he doxxes @FBI agents (including family details) that purportedly executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago.
Commentators soon took to Twitter to accuse Breitbart, an outlet previously managed by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, of doxxing—the practice of identifying a person or releasing personal information about them, often with the aim of enabling targeted harassment. Some also accused Trump of leaking the warrant to Breitbart in hopes of targeting the agents.
Some folks are going to learn the hard way the perils of declaring war on the FBI. When they act like thugs and declare war on FBI families, it’s not going to having the intimidating effect these MAGA Brownshirts are counting on.
“I’m sure he’s loaded to the hilt. Do you know who his wife is? Lauren Boebert. She’s loaded. They all have guns,” one neighbor told 911 dispatchers.
In this Sept. 16, 2021, file photo U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colorado, right, speaks during a Second Amendment Rally at a gun store in Midland, Texas. Colorado state Sen. Kerry Donovan, a leading Democratic challenger to Boebert in next year’s election, has suspended fundraising for her campaign after the state’s independent congressional redistricting commission approved a map that places Donovan’s residence in another district. (Eli Hartman/Odessa American via AP, File)
Garfield County Sheriff’s deputies decided to let neighbors of U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert settle a dispute between themselves and the congresswoman’s husband after he reportedly threatened them and destroyed their mailbox.
But 911 calls from the incident, obtained by The Denver Post, show just how upset and nervous the neighbors were over their run-in with Boebert’s husband, Jayson Boebert.
The calls also provide additional context into what the neighbors, in Silt, said amounted to excessive speeding, property damage, possible drunken driving and threats made from a man whose family openly and regularly carries their firearms.
“I’m sure he’s loaded to the hilt. Do you know who his wife is? Lauren Boebert. She’s loaded. They all have guns,” one neighbor told a 911 dispatcher. “He just got chest to chest, face to face, looking to fight.”
That additional context from the calls appears to match the limited information available in reports from Garfield County deputies. But still, Sheriff’s Office spokesman Walter Stowe refused to say why deputies didn’t investigate further and would not provide any additional information.
WARNING: This audio contains graphic language and has been edited to remove identifiable information of the callers such as names and addresses.
The apparent inaction drove the head of American Muckrakers — a political group looking to oust Boebert — to ask Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, the local district attorney and the Colorado Bureau of Investigations to investigate the relationship between the congresswoman’s family and the Sheriff’s Office.
“This was clearly a serious situation as there were two 911 calls, five deputies and at least four families involved,” David Wheeler, head of American Muckrakers, wrote in an email asking for the investigation.
The incident began in the evening hours of Aug. 4, after a neighbor flagged down one of Boebert’s sons asking him to stop speeding up and down their street in a dune buggy, according to the calls and a short incident report filed by deputies.
“He’s going like 50 miles an hour and this is a residential lane, there’s kids,” one neighbor, told 911 dispatchers, according to the audio. “We tried to stop him and he’d just freakin’ cuss at us and just left.”
That neighbor could not immediately be reached for comment, but she was so flustered that she had a difficult time recalling her own phone number when asked by the dispatcher.
“It’s the Boeberts, if you know who the Boeberts are,” she said. “I need the sheriff out here.”
“Our wonderful congresswoman,” someone else said in the background.
By the time the second neighbor called 911, deputies hadn’t yet arrived. During that call, Jayson Boebert reportedly began to run the second neighbor’s mailbox over in a truck.
“There’s about to be some s— going down here,” the second neighbor told dispatchers. “It’s Lauren Boebert’s jackass husband, Jayson Boebert.”
During the call the second neighbor can be heard yelling at Jayson Boebert.
“Stop, you jackass! Get the f— out of here,” he yelled. “Come on, man. What are you doing? What did we do wrong?”
Jayson Boebert did not respond to a message seeking comment, nor did the second neighbor. However, over the phone, the second neighbor told the 911 dispatcher that Jayson Boebert had driven to their house with his son “trying to claim that someone took a swing at his kid and nobody did.”
He calls Jayson Boebert “dumb as a post” and “irrational,” then expresses concern about the being threatened and more.
“Jayson’s probably drunk. You could probably get him for a DUI, he just drove down here,” he said.
Eventually deputies arrived and Sheriff Lou Vallario previously told The Post that everybody had “agreed to work it out as neighbors. No charges. No further action.”
Confronted about the additional context provided by the 911 calls, Stowe on Friday would not, however, say whether deputies declined to investigate further.
Lawrence Pacheco, a spokesman for Attorney General Phil Weiser, confirmed the office had received Wheeler’s request to investigate Wheeler’s message. Representatives from the Colorado Bureau of Investigations and 9th Judicial District Attorney Jefferson Cheney’s office did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
This riding dirt bikes, etc. thru neighborhoods, violating noise, speed, and licensing laws has become the antigovernment thing to do for a certain type.
They move into an area for safety from the other and become the nightmare they think they left behind.
Talk about nightmare neighbors. If the neighbor wanted to move, they’d probably have trouble selling their home because who would want to live next to this entitled white trash.
It is an entirely different Reality. We receive a message on line from a neighbor who clearly despises us and she doesn’t even know us. The Pecking order that many live by was established decades earlier when they all roamed the Halls of the local High School. Ground Hog Day on a loop.
Yes. I think that there’s a kind of establishment fatigue, too. Given how badly our schools have declined, the idea of what the electorate finds “relatable” has gotten really low.
When we as a culture keep pressing the snooze button each time we get a wake up call, this is where we are. When you have millions willfully resisting a vax to protect the collective, your answer is in that mess. Just make sure all your recording devices are fully charged when you leave your home.
Drunkenly gets into a fight over destroying a mailbox.. while packing heat.. why yes, I’m sure that’s exactly what the Founding Fathers intended when they wrote the 2nd Amendment, with no care to things like “well regulated” or anything silly like that.
The world continues to change. Even the gaming universe which a decade ago or more was rocked by a huge anti female scandal has long ago accepted being gay and lesbian. Those character settings and modifications are available in all mainstream big name games. But trans characters were haphazardly applied, hard to set or understand. Even though it was common for a trans person to choose a different gender character the game play was still cis gender. That is changing. Now before there are the grooming complaints and such, understand the buyers and users of the games drive big video game characters. So once there was a large drive by users that there be gay characters for them to play as gay characters were able to be chosen, that is now happening for characters to be trans. This is the world of the future, the world of acceptance. Hugs
Guilty Gear Strive has finally done right by one of its best characters.
Gaming still has a lot of baggage when it comes to femininity. The medium that largely focused on an audience of straight white men for its early decades has become one of the most diverse forms of media in the world. Such progress has different ethnicities, sexualities, and genders welcomed into the fold as the toxic echo chamber becomes more tolerable.
Things are changing, and we’re forced to confront long-standing issues before we can justify moving forward. Rampant sexualisation, thinly-veiled racism, and fear that supporting more inclusive audiences will see games reduced to political objects are all things we’re still grappling with. Progress is being made, but slowly, and not without forces holding us back. I don’t think this will change, at least not for a long time, but the steps being taken by games like Guilty Gear Strive give me hope for the future. More specifically, characters like Bridget.
Guilty Gear Strive confirmed earlier this week that series veteran Bridget is transgender. This had been part of a complex headcanon for years, but the continued use of masculine pronouns and the narrative’s unwillingness to explore this aspect of her character meant nothing was ever satisfactorily confirmed in the canon. Raised in an English village, Bridget was brought up as a girl due to a local superstition that twins born of the same gender were bad luck, but has remained in ‘girl mode’ well into adulthood.
Her parents believed this superstition, so she came to wear feminine clothes, use she/her pronouns, and presented herself as a cis women. However, the audience (and several other characters) knew she was born male, and she was referred to by he/him or other masculine titles on occasion too. Back in the day she wasn’t viewed from a strictly queer perspective, but was seen as a ladyboy hiding a penis under her clothes that male gamers could make fun of one another for finding attractive because dicks are scary apparently. It leaned into a ‘trap’ stereotype that claims trans people are merely trying to fool people into finding them attractive before their genitals expose the real truth. Like we’re a sick circus attraction instead of actual human beings.
This is a situation that in the real world has gotten trans people killed (and cis people have gotten away with it, under the Trans Panic defence), but given how juvenile and heteronormative games tend to be, burdening Bridget with this stereotype happened quickly and remained an inside joke amongst series’ fans for decades. As a closeted teenager I admired characters like Bridget because they were male beneath it all, yet exhibited all the signatures of an attractive, passing woman.
She was someone I wanted to be, so to see the character labelled as transgender with such explicit declaration feels like queer fans are reclaiming something that was once held over them as a twisted joke. Women have to look and behave in a certain way, or they risk being seen as a societal oddity or unworthy of attention. Bridget fell into this nebulous middle ground.
Her transgender identity is immediately embraced by the wider cast of Guilty Gear Strive, which only furthers how positive this reveal has been. One scene in the arcade mode has Bridget talking with Goldlewis Dickinson and Ky Kiske about a journey of self discovery that is far from easy, but she knows the final destination will be more than worthwhile. The two characters sit alongside her, nodding in agreement while providing the advice that every trans person needs to hear – leaving behind the fear of prejudice and failure to become the individual you want to be is worth the inevitable heartache.
Dickinson is unsure of what to call Bridget, given the complex layers of her gender identity, calling her “cowgirl” before falsely correcting himself to “cowboy”. She responds: “Cowgirl is fine. Because… I’m a girl!” So many games would be scared to define something so clearly, largely so the typical minority of vocal chuds can deny any semblance of queer representation in fear it will ruin the entire game for them. Guilty Gear Strive couldn’t care less, and the conviction it expresses in Bridget’s character and how unapologetic she is in being a trans girl is so damn liberating.
Players have already unearthed further instances of dialogue that only serve to reinforce Bridget’s transgender character arc in the game, making it clear that Arc System Works are fully on board with this new interpretation. It’s been a long time coming, and feels like fitting retribution for a character that for years has been the victim of transphobic punchlines.
While the games themselves might have never leaned into the idea of Bridget being a trap designed to fool eagle-eyed male players, the community embraced that idea and made it the most iconic aspect of her character. It sucked, and I wish I knew better as a teenager instead of leaning into such needless jokes. My internal fascination would eventually lead to me making strides with my own queer identity, but Bridget has always deserved better, and to see her receive that respect in Strive means so much.
its official!
bridget is transgender!
you cannot comprehend how hard i screamed its not intentionally vague its loud and clear and of all people to show her that its GOLDLEWIS pic.twitter.com/7kIAOArToH
She joins Testament, a character who was revealed to be non-binary earlier this year and has also been taken in by fans as a welcome example of queer representation. Fighting games aren’t always heavy on narrative, often leaving us to fill in the blanks or providing lore dumps outside the core gameplay for audiences to obsess over. That is also true for Guilty Gear, but it makes characters like Bridget and Testament so much easier to fall in love with.
Their queerness is deliberate and seldom up for debate, with small nuggets of dialogue between encounters and nestled between modes providing just enough context for us to rejoice over. Bridget is a cute, confident, and empowering trans character who for decades has been working towards this eventual destiny, and to see it capitalised upon while simultaneously subverting a culture of ingrained transphobia is a perfect storm of brilliance.
We need more younger democratic candidates willing to take the fight to the opposition and fight back hard. This was a group of Abbott supporters there to heckle and mock O’Rourke. He did not tolerate them and forcefully put them in their place. Hugs
The Democratic candidate for governor had a scathing response to a heckler.
Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for governor in Texas, didn’t hold back when a heckler laughed as he described the gun used to murder 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde earlier this year.
“It may be funny to you, motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me, OK?” O’Rourke fired back at the laugher, who was standing among a small group of supporters of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.
See the full exchange from Wednesday evening in Mineral Wells, about 50 miles west of Fort Worth:
Tonight, in Mineral Wells, Texas
When a @GregAbbott_TX supporter laughs, yes, laughs out loud so everyone could hear, while Beto described the massacre of 19 children and 2 teachers in Uvalde, Beto quite appropriately lets loose with a MF. Yep. It was a pretty good one too. pic.twitter.com/t5LLMIPXeP
“You’re doing nothing. You’re all doing nothing,” O’Rourke told Abbott and other officials gathered on a stage for the event.
O’Rourke was escorted out.
“This is on you,” he said before leaving. “Until you choose to do something different, this will continue to happen. Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state or they will continue to be killed just like they were killed in Uvalde yesterday.”
After Wednesday’s event, O’Rourke tweeted:
The parents in Uvalde are demanding action to address gun violence so no more families have to go through what they are experiencing.
Say what you will about Beto, but there isn't a politician in the state that can get grandmas to applaud "motherfucker." Highly effective crowd work. https://t.co/jY38mAmNkV
Do we need anymore proof of the complete racist white privilege Florida maga sponsored by DeathSantis is pushing. Read to the end to see the attitude of the white woman who told him that Former President Obama was not age appropriate to be posted on a bulletin board in a majority black school. These people don’t even feel the need to hide it anymore. We have to stop this spread, remember DeathSantis is the favorite for the republicans in 2024. Hugs
An Escambia County public school teacher resigned this week over what he characterized as racist behavior by a school district employee.
The teacher, Michael James, emailed a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis and Escambia County Superintendent Tim Smith in which he wrote that a district employee removed pictures of historic Black American heroes from his classroom walls, citing the images as being “age inappropriate.”
Images that were removed from the bulletin board at O.J. Semmes Elementary School included depictions of Martin Luther King Jr., Harriett Tubman, Colin Powell and George Washington Carver, James said.
“It really floored me,” James told the News Journal. “I’ve been teaching special education for 15 years, and it just really floored me when she did that.”
James chose the board’s theme because the majority of the students and the residents in the neighborhoods that surround O.J. Semmes are Black, and he wanted to motivate his students with inspirational leaders they could easily look up to and see themselves.
James, 61, of Daphne, Alabama, sent his letter to the governor Monday night. He officially resigned from his position as an exceptional student education teacher at O.J. Semmes Elementary School on Tuesday morning.
Superintendent Smith said teachers are permitted to decorate their classrooms with educational materials and he was unaware of any policies that would prohibit a teacher from displaying pictures of inspirational American heroes on their walls.
Smith said a full investigation of the incident, which he called an “anomaly,” has been launched.
Charlie Crist, who is running for the Democratic nomination for governor to challenge DeSantis in November, blamed the governor’s “culture wars” for politicizing Florida’s public schools.
“This is the sad reality of Ron DeSantis’s Florida — a teacher, in a predominantly Black community, comes into their classroom to see posters of historically Black American heroes, including President Obama, taken down for being ‘inappropriate’,” said Crist in a statement by his campaign.
“DeSantis’s culture wars are infiltrating every corner of our state, and it’s Florida’s students who are paying the price.”
Crist, currently a U.S. congressman from St. Petersburg, is running against Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fired for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.
Escambia County Public Schools spokesperson Cody Strother provided the News Journal with an official statement on behalf of the school district.
“Our office was made aware of this employee’s resignation and his stated reasons for resigning very early this morning, Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022,” the statement read. “Around the same time, we were copied on an email written by this individual and released to the Governor’s Office and various media outlets before we had any opportunity to investigate. We are now in the process of conducting a full investigation. If these allegations are deemed factual, we will certainly take corrective action, as it is our aim that all of our teachers feel valued and supported.”
The district has yet to confirm the identity of the district employee who James alleged removed the pictures from his classroom walls, but in his letter James stated the employee worked as a board certified behavior analyst for the school district.
Above the pictures of the Black leaders, a copy of the Pledge of Allegiance was pasted in the bulletin board’s upper right hand corner, James said.
“Am I to believe Escambia County Schools employs those that dislike African Americans and are against swearing allegiance to these United States of America? Is there a dislike in anything that states ‘One Nation Under God’ in it?” James wrote, in his letter to the governor and superintendent.
James said he could not work for a school, or under the umbrella of a school district, that would hire people who would condone such behavior.
“I hate to say this about everybody in the staff or the leadership there, but something is not right,” he said. “Something needs to be changed or fixed.”
James previously taught at schools in Hawaii, Georgia and Alabama. It was going to be his first year teaching in Florida.
In his letter, he explained he recently purchased approximately $58 of school supplies with his own money at the Teacher Store in Pensacola.
“With these school supplies purchased, I spent several hours making a classroom bulletin board located behind my desk,” he wrote.
On Monday, the behavior analyst and another behavior coach entered his classroom to help him set up the room.
“That is kind of unusual, but that’s OK,” James recalled thinking. “They came in, and we started moving tables around and swapping some out, and I had made the bulletin board a couple of days earlier.”
As an ESE teacher, James was employed to teach students ranging in age from kindergarteners to fifth-graders. The bulletin board was on the wall directly behind his desk at the front of the class.
It contained about five to seven images of Black historical figures, as well as the Pledge of Allegiance. The individual pictures were about the size of a piece of paper, with short written passages on them explaining the achievements of each person.
“I was sitting down in one of the children’s chairs cutting something out, and I turned around and saw her start taking something off the bulletin board,” James recalled.
When he questioned what the behavioral analyst was doing, “She said something along the lines of it wasn’t age appropriate. Something like that,” James said.
James does not remember the woman mentioning race while taking down the photos. But he did note that she had also seized a picture of former President Barack Obama that he had placed near his desk because there wasn’t room on the bulletin board.
“She picked it up and said, ‘You don’t need to put this up either,'” James recalled. “She said — I can’t remember exactly what she said — but she said, ‘the kid are too young‘ or something like that. It floored me. I thought, ‘This is the first Black president.'”
The behavioral analyst’s general demeanor and attitude made James feel like she had authority at the school, he said.
“I don’t know who guided her or why she took that on her own. I’ve never seen that in 15 years — just completely take down my board — without asking or anything,” he said.
In his brand new work environment, James didn’t know what to say or who to go to in the moment.
“I didn’t say anything else. I honestly let it go, but got to thinking about it and got pretty upset,” he said. “I could have just sent it the principal. But things need to get done. A lot of times people can just sweep things under the rug.”
His lack of institutional knowledge at his new job and what he characterized as the “rundown” state of the O. J. Semmes Elementary School building compelled James to go straight to the top with his complaints.
James said the school is in poor shape and he believes that it is treated as a lower priority because many of the students are Black children from low-income families.
“I feel like sometimes they are taken advantage of and no one is speaking for them, and that school — there is no way with the Florida lottery — that it should look like that. I’m wondering what kind of equitable division of money is being done for that school compared to other schools in other wealthier areas of Pensacola or Escambia County,” he said.
Currently, teachers are in demand everywhere, and James is not too worried about finding a new job.
“I’ll be teaching somewhere in a month,” he said. “I have excellent credentials.”
The teacher was told to remove images of notable Black American leaders, like former President Obama, from his classroom because they were deemed "age-inappropriate".
Making it more difficult for smart and committed teachers to do their job well is a tactic, as poorly educated, misinformed people are easier to control with bullshithttps://t.co/J65e4d9ujb
We had a Roundtable with teachers who recently left the classroom. ALL of them expressed that their #1 reason for leaving the classroom is because of the fear/stress of this attempted “new normal” for teachers & education in Florida.
I’m at a loss to understand the mental gymnastics the mind has to go through to think that black American history is age inappropriate, other than it comes from the mind of a racist.
You answered your own question. Start with a conclusion, then walk backwards
10). White people are perfect 9). And the black people thanked god whites people were there to rule over them . . . 1). Blacks are lesser humans at best.
Jesus fucking christ, they are on an absolute RAMPAGE to rewrite history and write black folks right out of it. Fucking Orwell’s spinning corpse should be connected to a turbine to solve global energy shortages.
Keep in mind, if the governor of Florida and his fellow Republicans across the country hadn’t demonized education and black experience to the point where many have criminalized the concept of Critical Race Theory, the racists wouldn’t feel empowered to cancel race in the classroom.
Absolutely no doubt about DeathSantis attacking education in Florida. The bastard took State Education funds to pay for “private” schools. The KKKrist-O-Fascist population jumped at the opportunity for indoctrination, grooming and kiddie diddling Priests.
This is a national disgrace! This country is said to be the wealthiest on earth. We have billionaires and millionaires, and because of unrestrained capitalism the wealth gap gets wider every day. Rents too high for people to have a place to live, medications to expensive for people to get the life saving drugs they need, but no question at all for more money for the wealthy defense industry. Every year there is more money shoved into the defense / military budgets than asked for because most of that money goes to the wealthy executives and their shareholders. This must stop. We are creating a country of impoverished beggars and super wealthy. As one person said, it is a crime to be poor. Hugs
Officials in Tennessee passed a new bill making it a felony to make a campsite on public land, affecting people experiencing homelessness. CNN’s Nick Watt reports.
Indiana State Rep John L Bartlett proposed a bill that would ban erectile dysfunction pills. His reasoning? If unwanted pregnancies are gods will so is impotency. Comedian Ben Gleib breaks it down on Rebel HQ.
Scottie's Playtime 