The Funny Papers

The Peace Art Collective, Dennis Goris, Clay Bennett, JD Crowe, Pedro X Molina, Michael de Adder, Nick Anderson, Benjamin Slyngstad, Gary Huck, Jon Ostrove, Lalo Alcaraz

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.

Tuesday Thought #3

When The President [for now] Says They're 'Fine People' This Is What Happens

Over there to Tennessee a House committee declined … declined … to pass a resolution that stated Tennessee denounces white nationalism and neo-Nazism.

The sponsor of the bill, Rep. John Ray Clemmons, right, a Democrat, because of course, didn’t even receive a second motion to proceed with discussing the resolution in the House State Government Subcommittee:

"I'm in utter disbelief at what just happened. I didn't think there was anything controversial about this resolution."

The subcommittee's sole Democrat, Rep. Darren Jernigan, made the first motion, but it was met with silence, and no action whatsoever, from the subcommittee's Republican members, Reps. Bill Sanderson, Bud Hulsey and Bob Ramsey.

And when Clemmons started to discuss the resolution, you know, talk about it, Bill Sanderson, left, cut him off; Clemmons was only allowed to speak again if he spoke about an unrelated bill on studying state government contracts.

House Republican Caucus Chairman Ryan Williams said the inaction by the committee on the resolution was the result of Clemmons not lining up enough votes to take up the bill before the panel convened.

So, he couldn’t line up enough votes to denounce white s supremacy and neo-Nazism?

Oh yeah … Tennessee. And Republicans. And a president who says Nazis and white supremacists are good people.

The Tennessean