This time I tried to not only use memes and cartoons but also stuff from Bluesky I like. Let me know if that is something you all enjoy. If the Bluesky links to far more important news links is jarring to your viewing, again let me know. Hugs
Did he get a chubby while he was talking about Gitmo?
NEW: HHS launches anti-transgender campaign featuring Riley Gaines. It seeks to ban gender affirming care and require the federal health agencies to eliminate recognition of trans people. womenshealth.gov/protecting-w…
Punchbowl News reporting that Trump and Hegseth plan to start firing top generals, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who was overwhelmingly Senate-approved for a 4-year term back in 2023.No one can say they weren’t warned.
DHS has removed manual guidance barring investigations solely based on sexual orientation and gender identity.This is a prerequisite to targeting the LGBTQ community with criminal investigations solely based on being LGBTQ. news.bgov.com/bloomberg-go…
“We had to erase trans people or we couldn’t get our federal funding”Fuck the federal funding. You fight, you sue, you do not become complicit in our mass erasure.We are all in this together, and we all go down together.I will not allow us to be jettisoned or erased.
Incredible news! More hospitals have returned to offering gender affirming care after Trump's executive order was blocked.Moments after publishing our story on hospitals returning, Childrens National DC announced a return to care.And JUST now, Colorado Children's is back to giving care!AMAZING
People with doctorates are the most liberal and progressive. The entire mission of destroying academia is to eliminate entire voting demographics. They explicitly spell this out.Shutting down PhD programs isn't an accident, it's the goal.
This is a stunning betrayal by Whitman Walker in DC.You CANNOT jettison the trans community to protect yourself.It’s shameful. I got my name changed at WWH. I have promoted their research.Now they are capitulating to save gay people at trans people’s expense by trying to erase us.
A sitting congressman calling Elon Musk a dick is now considered a threat by the DOJ and are now starting a criminal investigation. This is the death of free speech in the United States.
An amendment from Rep. Susan Ruiz, a Shawnee Democrat, to modify the bill’s language so best interests of a child in foster or adoptive care remained the top priority at DCF was rejected by the House. She said the amendment was necessary because the bill was drafted in a way that could force a subsection of children in Kansas to endure more trauma.
“You have to remember why children come into the system in the first place,” Ruiz said. “They come into the system because of abuse and neglect, and it comes in so many forms.”
Ruiz told House colleagues that Kansas youth were physically beaten and emotionally traumatized by parents and church leaders who wanted children to adhere to a certain sexual orientation or gender identity. Some kids were expected to “pray away the gay,” she said.
Others were compelled to undergo so-called conversion therapy, she said. It has little basis in science, but proposes to erase a person’s gender identity or sexuality — usually to conform to ideals of other people.
“This bill opens up the door to one of the most horrible forms of therapy that any human being can be exposed to,” Ruiz said. (Snip-MORE)
The bad news is that the “city-killing” asteroid currently headed our way probably won’t hit us. Even if it does, it won’t be here until 2032 which gives Donald Trump, who probably thinks you destroy an asteroid with Preparation-H, and Elon plenty of time to destroy this world first. It looks like they’re going to reach Fort Knox (because they want to make sure it’s still there) before the asteroid does.
Asteroid Schmasteroid…we have MAGA.
The asteroid, 2024 YR4, is 180 feet wide which is about as close as you can get to Donald Trump before you get a whiff of his diaper. 180 feet is also plenty of room for Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck to land a space shuttle and drill a giant hole into which a nuclear device would be placed. The film Armageddon was based on sound science, right? I refuse to believe Billy Bob Thornton would allow himself to be cast in a junk science movie. Steve Buscemi, maybe, but not Billy Bob. And I’d trust Bad Santa over Bad Batman any day.
George Clooney was the George W. Bush of Batmans. We all hated Clooney but wanted him back after seeing Affleck do it…just like we wanted W back after Trump came along.
And what’s the deal with the name? Why do asteroids get shit like “YRV” and hurricanes get names like Laura (see what I did there?)? Even pets get more respect than asteroids. I knew a cat named Don Cheadle. Since asteroids can destroy our planet, which I’m assuming most of us will hate, let’s name them after actors we hate.
Asteroid Seth Rogan was given 1-32 odds of blasting into us and with the right amount of luck, it’d hit MAGA-Lardo. Then, Seth Rogen’s odds dropped to 1-67. It’s OK to use Seth Rogen here. If he gets lost in space, we’ll be just fine because we still have Jonah Hill who’s basically the same person but with an Oscar. We don’t need two Seth Rogens. Also, Michael Cera and Jesse Eisenberg, same person.
Now, the odds of city-killing Seth Rogen slamming into the planet are 1-360, which are a lot slimmer odds than Seth Rogen’s The Interview destroying the planet because it really pissed off nuke-loving Kim Jong Un. And if there is a city-killing asteroid headed this way, why couldn’t it have arrived before I saw Seth Rogen’s Green Hornet? Oh, the humanity! Say what you will about the Cats! movie but it didn’t nearly destroy the planet.
Asteroid Seth Rogen has a 0.28% chance of destroying us all. The next city-killer headed our way is Asteroid 1950 DA or as I like to call it, Asteroid Kevin Hart (and if you think he’s annoying now, go watch his Peacock talk show), which has a 0.039% chance of impacting Earth in 2880.
These asteroids can’t get here soon enough to wipe out Trump, Musk, Seth Rogen, Kevin Hart, Nickelback, or DJs. You know how DJs put new beats into songs, making them even worse than they started. Last night, a friend dragged me to a bar where a DJ was making a Nickelback song even more torturous, which I didn’t think was possible. I once broke up with a girl because she believed DJs were musicians. DJs are musicians about as much as Gary Varvel is a journalist.
Since these unreliable asteroids aren’t cooperating, it’s up to us to save our nation from MuskTrump.
I bet MAGA-Lardo has a DJ.
Creative note: I was planning to do this cartoon yesterday but decided Kash Patel should come first.
TOPEKA (KSNT) – Kansas’ attorney general and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) have signed a deal to assist federal immigration forces in the Sunflower State.
Danedri Herbert with the Kansas Office of the Attorney General said in a press release on Monday, Feb. 17 that Attorney General Kris Kobach and the KBI have signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This will allow KBI agents to work alongside Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to remove immigrants who are residing in Kansas illegally.
A limited number of KBI agents will receive ICE training that authorizes the agents to arrest immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, serve and execute warrants for some immigration violations and issue immigration detainers, according to the press release. Herbert said a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act authorizes states and political subdivisions of a state to enter into agreements like this. (snip-MORE)
Just a note with the video. I won’t be around much this morning. Neither of us slept much we were both up needing food for crashing blood sugar in early morning hours. I never slept until after three, Ron said he was more towards four. But we got up at 6 am, got coffee, cleaned all the counters, put away the clean dishes Ron washed before he came to bed, and then we washed Odie’s feet from the cat litter he gets packed in them and his butt / belly because he is too lazy to lift himself up when he pees so he ends up laying / walking in the wet pee litter. Then I showered, Ron is showering so we can go shopping today. It is bitter cold, feels like 40 degrees. Great for you northern types, the frozen Arctic for us in southern Florida. Ron and I are both in not so great health and we find it is better if we do the shopping as a team, watching out for each other. See you all after if I can still function. Hugs
In this newly found film from the 1950s we learn how one can determine whether or not they are in a cult. Does any of this sound like you?
What is it with these religious bigots who think their god gives them the right to force everyone to believe / live as they claim to do. They are the first to demand their rights to worship / live as they wish. What gives them the idea the rest of us don’t want the same right. They were the first to attack the Taliban for forcing everyone in the country to worship / live by their version of Islam. Yet now they demand to be the US Christian Taliban. I do not understand their hate. They pick one or a few passages in the OT to clobber others while ignoring all the rest. They don’t stone their rebellious children, they don’t follow the other things in Leviticus and they do not follow anything Jesus said about caring for others. Hate, dominance, and vengeance is all they care about. The Old Testament god gives them that. And pleae notice the bill is titled Increasing Penalties for Child Pornography … it goes against all porn. Just like innocent drag queen story hours were attacked to protect the children from seeing people in costumes reading stories. Hugs
Alongside SB593, Deevers, who is also a pastor at Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Elgin, Oklahoma, introduced legislation to abolish abortion, prohibit drag performances in front of minors, ban divorce on the grounds of incompatibility, and provide tax credits to couples who opt into “covenant marriages” or have multiple children within the bounds of marriage — just to name some highlights.
An Oklahoma state senator has introduced legislation that would ban all pornography, with criminal penalties of up to 10 years in prison for the “production, distribution or possession” of any pornography, according to a press release from the Oklahoma Senate. SB 593, proposed by Senator Dusty Deevers on January 21, is part of a slate of eight bills by the legislator to “restore moral sanity” to the state of Oklahoma.
The bill, entitled “Increasing Penalties for Child Pornography and Prohibiting Pornography in Oklahoma,” goes far beyond the scope suggested in its title. While it does advocate for raising the penalty for the possession, distribution, or production of child pornography from 0-20 years up to 10-30 years, the bill has gone so far as to prohibit pornography entirely.
“Pornography is both degenerate material and a highly addictive drug,” Deevers said in the press release. “It ruins marriages, ruins lives, destroys innocence, warps young people’s perception of the opposite sex, turns women into objects, turns men into objects, degrades human dignity, and corrodes the moral fabric of society. Any decent society will stand against this plague with the full weight of the law.”
Deevers’ description of pornography as a “highly addictive drug” directly echoes the words of the authors of Project 2025,who, in the foreword to the over 900-page blueprint for a very different America, linked pornography to both child abuse and trans identity.
“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare,” the foreword to the document reads. “It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed.”
Alongside SB593, Deevers, who is also a pastor at Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Elgin, Oklahoma, introduced legislation to abolish abortion, prohibit drag performances in front of minors, ban divorce on the grounds of incompatibility, and provide tax credits to couples who opt into “covenant marriages” or have multiple children within the bounds of marriage — just to name some highlights.
Mike Stabile, the director of public policy at the Free Speech Coalition, said the proposed bill was really an attempt to encroach on free speech in a statement to USA Today.
“Porn is the canary in the coal mine of free speech, and the trial balloon used by governments to pass laws that can censor speech more broadly,” he told the outlet. “No matter how people feel about adult content, we should all be concerned about the proposed government crackdown on speech.”
Deevers’ attack on pornography comes less than a month after age verification laws effectively made porn inaccessible in 16 U.S. states, mostly in the regional South.
At the time that many of these bans went into effect, Aylo, the parent company to PornHub, told Mashable that it has “publicly supported age verification of users for years” but that the kind required by these bills is “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous,” as well as a threat to users’ security.
A contributor to Project 2025 was recorded last year stating that age-verification laws are a “back door” to broader porn bans.
Legislators in several states have introduced similarly bizarre bills criminalizing sexual freedom in the short time since Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency for the second time. Last week, Mississippi state senator Bradford Blackmon introduced the “Contraception Begins at Erection Act,” which would make it illegal for a person to “discharge genetic material without the intent to fertilize an embryo.” The bill suggested a fine of $1,000 for a first offense, $5,000 for a second offense, and $10,000 thereafter. In a statement to local affiliate WLBT, Blackmon said the bill was meant to act as a counterpart to contraception and abortion bills.
“All across the country, especially here in Mississippi, the vast majority of bills relating to contraception and/or abortion focus on the woman’s role when men are fifty percent of the equation,” he told WLBT. “This bill highlights that fact and brings the man’s role into the conversation. People can get up in arms and call it absurd but I can’t say that bothers me.”
Mathew Rodriguez is the former senior news editor at Them. In the past, he has been a senior culture editor at The Atlantic, as well as a staff writer at Out Magazine, INTO, and Mic. His writing has been featured in Slate, Teen Vogue, The Village Voice, MEL Magazine, and more. He … Read more
It is nice to know that despite the religious right hate media which includes Fox Entertainment, that people are not buying the current demonization of the LGBTQ+ community. But if we don’t get loud and vocal and our democratic leaders don’t develop a spine and support the LGBTQ+ community our acceptance levels will keep sinking. Hugs
It’s no secret that queer rights are on a backslide in the United States — and American citizens aren’t happy.
In an annual survey by Gallup conducted just before Donald Trump took office, Americans were asked about their satisfaction with various aspects of the country’s culture and politics. That included “the acceptance of gay and lesbian people in the nation,” which only 51% of respondents said they were “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with. That’s the lowest satisfaction rating in that area since 2013, and an 8 percentage point drop from 2017 at the start of Trump’s first term.
Respondents were also asked about their satisfaction with “the acceptance of transgender people in the nation.” To that, only 38% of respondents said they were “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied.”
Notably, the satisfaction varied by political party. Republicans reported that they were largely satisfied with the country’s treatment of gays and lesbians (55%) while Democrats reported dissatisfaction (44%). Both parties expressed dissatisfaction with America’s treatment of transgender people (though potentially for different reasons), with only 42% of Republicans and 31% of Democrats satisfied.
Beyond queer issues, Americans’ overall satisfaction is sitting at 38%, a record low that’s been maintained since 2022.
Scottie's Playtime 