Image: Wikipedia
I receive a daily email about historical tidbits, and today's concerned the Roman Emperor Nero. In the year 67 CE, Nero participated in the Olympic Games, and was declared the winner of every event he entered, both athletic and artistic.
On this Presidents Day, does he remind you of anyone?
Image: Gay City News
It was Gay City News that alerted the world a few days ago that the Trump administration had removed the large Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument.
Now GCN is reporting the flag has returned—thanks to a healthy dose of Stonewall-like defiance.
The removal of the rainbow flag, which had been installed during the Biden administration, provoked angry responses from lots of New York politicians. Some of them pledged to re-raise a flag yesterday afternoon.
They brought a Pride flag on a thin plastic flagpole and placed it next to the flagpole where the original flag had flown. The elected officials "walked away, leaving the audience groaning in disappointment."
Then several activists took it upon themselves to install a rainbow flag on the actual flagpole. It even landed a few inches above the American flag.
So, what happens now? Will these activists who channeled the spirit of Stonewall be arrested?
Will Trump use this as an excuse to invade New York City? Bulldoze Greenwich Village, call it New Greenland, and install Barron as potentate?
If Trump and his minions do choose to escalate the situation, I foresee not just another round of Stonewall Riots, but potentially another 1776. The fight against authoritarianism has to start somewhere, and wouldn't it just make sense in 2026 that queer people would lead?
After all, we've only recently been freed. Returning to the closet has all the appeal of being forced to watch "Melania."
Image: Facebook
First of all I'd like to say I'm proud to be here to represent Team USA and to represent our country. But we'd be remiss if we didn't at least mention what's going on in Minnesota, and what a tough time it's been for everybody. This stuff is happening right, right around where we live, and what's happening in Minnesota is wrong. There's no shades of gray. It's clear.
Rich Ruohonen, Olympic curler, lawyer, and at 54 the oldest athlete ever to represent the U.S. at a Winter Games
Source: YouTube
Image: Wikipedia
President Obama designated the Stonewall National Monument in 2016, the first national monument dedicated to LGBTQ history. In the decade since, Pride flags have always flown at the famed Greenwich Village site.
Until yesterday.
The National Park Service took down the rainbow flag, and said today that it's only following recently issued Interior Department rules that reduce the flags that can be flown.
The park that celebrates the origin of Pride is forbidden from flying the Pride flag.
Beam me up, Scotty. I'd rather risk my molecules getting stuck in an eternal transporter malfunction than spend another minute in Donald Trump's United States of Cruelty.
This is just the administration's latest attack on the monument. A year ago, as part of the efforts to erase transgender people from federal websites, all references to trans and queer people on the monument's webpage disappeared.
The webpage memorializing the spot where trans women and drag queens fought back against police now refers only to "LGB" people. I was incensed then that the other initials were amputated, and the administration's latest move has made me even incensed-ier.
I'm even making up words.
If this pattern of rewriting history and contradicting reality continues, the "LGB" might well disappear. Stonewall will be turned on its head and become a monument to the need to let police terrorize any group the majority fears.
And they should wear masks while doing it, since police look so darn fetching in them.
Image: Facebook
I grew up in New England, and I live in Seattle. But I'm not torn about who I want to win today's Super Bowl: Bad Bunny.
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| Image by kalhh from Pixabay |
Last night Donald Trump posted a video promoting conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. The end of the video depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.
When asked why Trump felt the need to share this video, his mouthpiece Karoline Leavitt wrote, "Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public." Hours later the video was deleted.
In the midst of Black History Month, the American president decided to share a glaringly racist trope with his over 11 million online followers.
I hope this was a sign of desperation. That as his poll numbers decline and the midterms loom, Trump aimed to inspire his base with a gift of overt racism.
Next he'll be offering up a night with Melania in the Lincoln Bedroom.
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As a fan of old cartoons, I often find myself watching the cable channels that revolve around nostalgia. That's how I caught an ad the other day that shocked me like I was Daffy Duck grabbing a power line.
It was an ad for CarShield, a company that provides "vehicle protection plans," and whose spokesperson is usually rapper and actor Ice-T. But this time the hawker was Michele Bachmann.
Yes, that Michele Bachmann, the conservative Christian politician from Minnesota who many of us remember as a well-coiffed thorn in queer sides. She claimed nutty things, like gay people wanted to abolish age of consent laws so adults could "prey on little children sexually."
All the while she was married to a man who struck many of us as being gayer than a night on Fire Island.
Bachmann, a Tea Partier, took her anti-queer, anti-abortion act national when she mounted a short-lived run for the 2012 presidency. She retired from Congress a few years later, and I don't recall hearing a thing about, or from, her since.
Then she shows up in 2026 shilling on TV for CarShield, a company that has been in deep trouble for deceptive advertising. Considering Bachmann and her husband ran a Christian counseling center that practiced conversion therapy despite their denials, I'd say she's perfectly suited to her new gig.
Hey, it's not everyone who can lie with a beatific smile and get paid for it. Thank God.
Image: Facebook
In response to the ICE atrocities in Minneapolis, it's "National Shutdown" day. Activists want us to ditch school and work and not spend money on Jan. 30.
The citizens of Minneapolis pulled that off beautifully a week ago, but I fear there hasn't been enough time to mount a paralyzing nationwide strike.
Still, I'm in. I was supposed to do a happy hour with a couple of friends at one of Seattle's waterside restaurants today, but I let them know why I can't, in good conscience, be there. To acknowledge those killed in Minneapolis (and Chicago and Los Angeles), I can certainly forego shellfish and wine.
Not a sacrifice of heroic proportions. Giving up the chance to gossip, though, that was a little harder.
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Donald Trump is holding a televised cabinet meeting today.
You know what that means: More fawning than a deer birthing season.
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Image: Facebook
The president of the United States, hot to acquire Greenland, actually sent this text to the prime minister of Norway over the weekend.
"Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America."
Petulant? It's crystal clear we're being led by Veruca Salt.
Image: Facebook
The entire planet knows that Donald Trump lusts after the Nobel Peace Prize. This week he got it—sort of.
The 2025 winner, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, presented Trump her golden medal in a golden frame at the golden White House as a "personal symbol of gratitude on behalf of the Venezuelan people."
I assume Trump's booby prize, the hastily created peace prize FIFA awarded him last month, will now be moved to a West Wing bathroom.
The Nobel Prize committee said that Machado's decision to fork over the medal doesn't change who won. The prize can't be "revoked, shared, or transferred to others."
But Trump's grin on receiving the bribe—I mean gift—showed how happy he was to be the new owner of a lightly used, second-hand medal.
Machado didn't leave the White House empty-handed. She carried away a red gift bag bearing Trump's signature in gold on the outside. As to what, if anything, was inside the swag bag, my bet is a Steven Miller Pez dispenser.
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Pedophile protector!
Ford plant worker TJ Sabula to Donald Trump, who twice mouthed an expletive and flipped him off in return
Source: The Washington Post
A friend in Vermont sent me this photo taken at an anti-ICE protest in Brattleboro this past weekend. I needed the levity.
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| Image by TASFIQ UR RAHMAN NABIL from Pixabay |
American forces invade Venezuela to capture its president? An ICE agent fatally shoots a woman in Minneapolis?
That's what the Trump administration brought us in just the first week of 2026.
I want to turn this year in already, but I can't find the receipt.
Image: Free-Images
You got to win the midterms because if we don't win the midterms, it's just going to be -- I mean, they'll find a reason to impeach me. I'll get impeached.
Donald Trump to Republican lawmakers—and threatening the rest of us with a good time
Source: ABC News
Image: Facebook
The White House today rolled out a new website for the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 riots.
CNN reports the new site claims the violence "was instigated by law enforcement and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It recasts the rioters as the victims that day, and depicts President Donald Trump as a hero for granting sweeping pardons for the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the deadly attack."
Sure. And George Washington grew up on the planet Venus, and currently works as a chiropractor in Poughkeepsie.
Image: Facebook
It's hard to know where to start with Donald Trump's having dispatched American forces to capture the Venezuelan head of state and his wife.
So I'll start with this: Both Trump and Nicolás Maduro carry the title of president, but both are dictators. And both are as crooked as Steve Buscemi's grin.
When I heard the news of the capture this morning, I immediately wondered what Trump's base would make of this. They voted him in, we're told, largely to bring down prices. MAGA is allergic to foreign affairs, yet lately that's what Trump has been fixated on, while dismissing concerns about the cost of living as a Democratic hoax.
Will MAGA forgive him for blowing them off so he and his ego can earn a place in history? Heaven knows they've forgiven him for everything else, from sexual assault to Constitution assault, so the chances are decent, alas.
I also wondered, of course, why Trump took such an aggressive step. One answer is oil. Also, a friend reminded me that Trump sees the world as divided into his portion, Xi Jinping's portion, and Vladimir Putin's portion. Trump needs to shore up his piece of the pie. Which means the polar bears of Greenland better start worrying.
While thinking about what I'd write, I decided I needed to come up with new names for Venezuela, since Trump's narcissism has recently had him naming things after himself. "Trumpela?" "Donvenez?" "The Republic of The Donald?"
Then I found out the man-child beat me to it. In his press conference hours after Maduro was snatched, Trump invoked the Monroe Doctrine, but he called it the "Don-roe Doctrine."
Someone please explain to me how a man with an ego that size doesn't simply explode?
