Category: News / Information

In Regard To GoComics

I think others here read on GoComics, so likely are aware that they did some work on their site. I’m an almost-daily reader there, but I have no account; I just go there and read the ones I want to read.

One of those is “Fur Babies.” Nancy Beiman has not only created a genius little toon about a girl and pets, she’s also mentioned other ‘toonists and their work, and I read those now, most of the time, as well.

Since I don’t have an account, I’m not aware of the issues Ms. Beiman mentions here in her substack. I do see, in comments when I bother reading those, that people have trouble getting in, getting around, and seeing what they go to GoComics to see. So, all of that is the background for this, from Nancy Beiman. Maybe none of you read her comic, and don’t mind what she or any other artist does. But, maybe some of you do, so please read this and give her your thoughts, all right? You’ll need to click through to Substack to do so. And thanks!

A Question and a Poll by Nancy Beiman

Two year anniversary…then what? Read on Substack

FurBabies will have its second GoComics publication anniversary on June 5, 2025.

I was told that I should allow two years for the strip to get off the runway. The time is nearly up, it’s still on the runway, and I need to know if the flight should be cancelled.

Drawing a daily strip is a lot of work for very little reward, and I’m not talking about money. I got rewarded well at first. A core group of readers posted daily on the GoComics page. They enjoyed the strip, there were very few trolls, and the number of followers was going steadily up. Then they changed the site and everything changed for FurBabies.

The strip now gets 50% of the likes and comments that it formerly received. I have no way of seeing if the followers are increasing or decreasing. Some commenters have disappeared (most were able to return, although not without difficulty) No one can see the number of followers change any more. The system now only changes when 100 people add or leave the page. This is of little consequence to strips with thousands of followers, but it is devastating to ones with fewer than two thousand (I am not the only one in this predicament). If the smaller strips aren’t publicized, they never will become better known. I’ve done everything I could to get the word out, but am completely discouraged by the recent developments.

I’m running a poll here and on Instagram: Should I keep drawing the FurBabies?

They were intended to bring a little fun and innocent humor into the comics. The zeitgeist tends toward ‘dark’, snarky, or autobiographical strips lacking in humor. I’m out of touch and I know it. Frankly I don’t want to be ‘in touch’ with these times.

If I do continue FurBabies, I will most likely go to alternate days and drop daily updates.

Thank you for reading this and I look forward to hearing from you.

Nancy

(snip-go answer the poll-it’s a simple couple of clicks. I don’t mind how you vote, but she’d appreciate the information.)

Janet Brings Us Digby

Are We Safe? The Implications of ICE’s Power

Continuing Education

Hello All; I thought that since the drumpf and the republicans want to defund public education and national educational standards, we could use this time to learn some new words. Please feel free to add these to your vocabulary as I believe these will be especially useful for describing current politics.

Some Harvard News from God (just read it!) 😉

Trump Humiliates Himself at West Point Graduation by God

Just in time for Memorial Day. Read on Substack

Snippet:

3. God’s Final Word

Dictator Donald wants everyone afraid and confused at all times. Verily, God says fuck that.

There is a better story I want to share.

Harvard just announced free online courses for every US citizen. Topics include basic government, the Constitution, and how to recognize a dictatorship.

Now that is how you defeat tyranny. Not with fear, or panic, but with knowledge. With clarity. With truth. And with stories of hope.

The fight is far from over. But we are not alone.

We will not go quietly.
We will not forget.
We will fight like hell. And we will win.

(snip)

Is It A Good Day To Post About Drag in The US Army?

Everyday’s a good day to do that! Jeff Tiedrich included this in his substack today about the President’s grad speech at West Point. I also linked that below this snippet, if anyone’s interested in that. It’s TMI for me today, but very good; I read his most days. Meanwhile, back to the Army news: -A

Drag in the military: How drag queens helped U.S. soldiers win World War II

Ronald Reagan was even involved in this largely-forgotten tradition.

By Dan Tracer Friday, June 21, 2024 · Updated on June 22, 2024

Long before RuPaul’s Drag Race, Drag Queen Story Hour, or any one of the countless drag shows gracing the stages of LGBTQ+ bars around the world, there was another popular spot for performative gender-bending: U.S. military bases in the 1940s.

During World War II, the military embraced drag shows as a unique form of entertainment and a morale-boosting activity. These officially sanctioned events featured all-male performances with soldiers often dressing in women’s attire. According to author Allan Bérubé, GIs staged these shows everywhere from makeshift platforms to grand theater stages, incorporating popular female impersonation routines of the day.

Due to the official segregation of the armed forces, service-member theater productions had no option but to cast men in female roles.

One of the most iconic productions of the era, “This is the Army,” was initially a Broadway musical designed to raise funds for troops. It later became a sensation as a 1943 film starring Ronald Reagan, 37 years before he was elected President of the United States. These shows not only provided soldiers with much-needed diversion during the stresses of conflict but also served as a safe haven for gay service members, as explained by Joe E. Jeffreys, a drag historian and professor at New York University’s New School. (snip; a little MORE with video)

==========================

elderly golfer’s brain goes fuckity-bye in batshit West Point speech by Jeff Tiedrich

Donny can’t be bothered to act like a human being Read on Substack

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

https://www.ktvh.com/news/new-montana-law-limits-what-flags-can-be-flown-at-schools-and-government-buildings

By: John Riley
Posted 2:53 PM, May 21, 2025 
and last updated 6:48 PM, May 21, 2025

A 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.

New Montana law decides which flags fly in public schools.

— The Pulp (@thepulp.org) 2025-05-23T21:15:13.391Z

So is this one allowed, or not?

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.

Nancy Rubin Stuart

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!)

Trump Administration Must Republish Harvard Doctors’ Studies (1)

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/trump-administration-must-republish-harvard-doctors-studies

May 23, 2025, 3:13 PM EDT; Updated: May 23, 2025, 3:35 PM EDT
Allie Reed

Allie Reed
Correspondent

A large transgender flag with signatures and messages during a protest.
Photographer: Manaure Quintero/Bloomberg

The Trump administration must republish two Harvard Medical School professors’ papers it censored because they contained words related to gender ideology, a federal judge ruled Friday.

“The plaintiffs are likely to succeed in proving that the removal of their articles was a textbook example of viewpoint discrimination by the defendants in violation of the First Amendment,” Judge Leo Sorokin wrote for the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

The US Department of Health and Human Services took down peer-reviewed articles by doctors Gordon Schiff and Celeste Royce from the now-inactive Patient Safety Network website, run by the HHS’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

PSNet said the articles were taken down in accordance with President Donald Trump’s executive order directing agencies to remove content that promotes “gender ideology.” Schiff’s article, on suicide risk assessment, and Royce’s, on endometriosis, both referenced transgender people.

“This is a flagrant violation of the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights as private speakers on a limited public forum,” Sorokin wrote.

The government can only restrict speech on a limited public forum like PSNet in a way that is reasonable and viewpoint neutral, the order said, and the administration’s restrictions were not.

Sorokin said it is not within his discretion “to evaluate the wisdom of restricting access to peer-reviewed scientific information that enhances patient safety by fostering more informed and timely diagnostic care—or of eliminating entirely a free, online repository of patient-safety resources accessed each year by thousands of medical professionals seeking to provide better, safer care to their patients in the United States. Those are matters for the political branches of government to decide.”

The preliminary injunction applies to Schiff and Royce’s articles, as well as other content removed from PSNet in a similar manner.

The case is Schiff v. U.S. Office of Personnel Mgmt., D. Mass., No. 1:25-cv-10595, preliminary injunction order 5/23/25.

(Updates throughout.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Allie Reed in Boston at areed@bloombergindustry.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alex Clearfield at aclearfield@bloombergindustry.com

U.S. citizen with REAL ID handcuffed and held in immigration raid before being released

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/us-citizen-immigration-raid-real-id-handcuffed-alabama-rcna208794

The man told Noticias Telemundo that authorities took his ID from his wallet and told him it was fake before handcuffing him.

By Suzanne Gamboa

A U.S.-born citizen who was wrestled into the dirt, handcuffed and detained in a vehicle as part of an immigration raid had a REAL ID on him that was dismissed as fake, the man’s cousin said Friday.

Video of the arrest, aired by Noticias Telemundo, showed authorities grabbing Leonardo Garcia Venegas, 25, while at a job site in Foley, Alabama, on Wednesday and bending his arms behind him. Someone off-camera can be heard yelling, “He’s a citizen.”

Garcia told Noticias Telemundo that authorities took his ID from his wallet and told him it was fake before handcuffing him. REAL ID is the identification U.S. citizens are required by law to have in order to travel through airports and enter federal buildings. It is considered a higher security form of identification.

“Apparently a REAL ID is not valid anymore. He has a REAL ID,” his cousin Shelah Venegas said. “We all made sure we have the REAL ID and went through the protocols the administration is asking for. … He has his REAL ID and then they see him and I guess because his English isn’t fluent and/or because he’s brown it’s fake, it’s not real.”

Garcia had told Noticias Telemundo that “they grabbed me real bad” and the handcuffs were placed “very hard” on him.

Garcia said he was released from the vehicle where he was held after he gave the arresting officials his Social Security number, which showed he is a U.S. citizen.

The arrest has left Garcia, who was born in Florida, shaken, particularly because the officers also arrested and detained his brother, who is not in the country legally, Venegas said. She added that Garcia lived with his brother. Their parents are from Mexico.

Leonardo Garcia Venegas.
Leonardo Garcia Venegas.Telemundo

“He was actually pretty sore when he got back,” Venegas said of Garcia. “He said his arms were hurting and his hands. His wrists, you could see where he had all the marks from the handcuffs. … The way they put him on the ground, his knees also were hurting.”

She said they have been trying to find a lawyer but local ones have told them that it is nearly impossible to sue a federal agent. It is not clear from the video whether the authorities were federal immigration agents or local law enforcement carrying out enforcement duties.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement to NBC News that Garcia interfered with an arrest during a targeted worksite operation.

“He physically got in between agents and the subject they were attempting to arrest and refused to comply with numerous verbal commands,” said Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary. “Anyone who actively obstructs law enforcement in the performance of their sworn duties, including U.S. citizens, will of course face consequences which include arrest.”

The response did not address the dismissal of Garcia’s identification.

Garcia denied that he interrupted an arrest. He told NBC News that he was trying to take out his phone when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent took it and threw it to the ground and then an agent began grabbing him.

Venegas said Garcia’s brother has signed deportation papers because the family didn’t want him detained “forever” as they’ve seen happen to another family member, who was held for months in a Louisiana detention center.

“It’s inhumane, what they are doing to our people. They are treating them as if they were murderers,” she said.

Venegas said the immigration arrests are creating repercussions among Hispanics, even among U.S. citizens.

“It’s about race now. It’s not about whether you are here legally or not,” she said.

Her family owns a fairly large contracting company, she said, “and a lot of the people that work with us are not working. … They are refusing to go to work. They said they are not going to go until this stuff calms down.”

Venegas added that the majority of her family is self-employed and “we do the same thing every other citizen does.”

“It’s just insane we can’t be different, the color that we are. We contribute to this country the same way every other citizen does with their taxes,” she said. “But we have to be the ones that every time we go to work, we are going to be scared that we’re going to get discriminated.”

“I think about my family,” she said. “Even though a lot of them are citizens, I think about how we all work in the same area in construction and they can’t sit out there because they could literally get harassed or attacked the way my cousin did.”