A lovely Rock Pigeon from David. I love all the colours and patterns you see with them, beautiful dinosaurs.
© David, all rights reserved.
Affinity
Emphasis on the Social
A lovely Rock Pigeon from David. I love all the colours and patterns you see with them, beautiful dinosaurs.
© David, all rights reserved.
Image from the scene where an off-duty officer was shot by a fellow cop in St. Louis (image via Twitter).
Y’know, if this doesn’t drive home the endemic bigotry in this fuckin’ country, and the problem of bigoted cops shooting and murdering people on the basis of skin, I just don’t know what will drive it home. All I have here is sputter and head shaking. This truly should be unbelievable, because something like this should never, ever happen.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and local news outlet Fox2Now, a white St. Louis police officer shot a black off-duty officer from his own force after a car chase ended in a crash outside the off-duty officer’s home.
The African American officer, who has not yet been identified, came outside of his home while off-duty after hearing the commotion from a car chase that ended nearby. Despite identifying himself as a cop, the man was ordered to the ground by two officers. He complied, and soon after, they recognized him and told him to get up.
That was when a third officer entered the scene, and because he did not recognize the black off-duty cop and claimed to “fear for his safety,” shot the off-duty cop in the arm.
The Post-Dispatch reported that police are calling the incident an example of “friendly fire” due to the suspects from the car chase firing at police. The paper also reported that police initially claimed that the 38-year-old African American officer, who has been on the force for 11 years, was “caught in the crossfire.”
Obviously, this ‘incident’ is going to come with many different stories, as cops try to spin it this way and that, in an attempt to make it look like anything except what it is. When in the fuckety fuck are people going to wake the fuck up, and stop accepting this bullshit? Cops are out of control, and free to run around murdering people at will, as long as the victims have the right skin colour, then they were just askin’ for killin’, you betcha. Fucking disgusting, and even more disgusting are all the people on juries, freeing murderers. That has to stop.
This is a real problem,” Rufus J. Tate Jr., the attorney for the injured off-duty officer, told the local Fox affiliate.
“In the police report, you have so far, there is no description of threat he received. So we have a real problem with that. But this has been a national discussion for the past two years. There is this perception that a black man is automatically feared,” the attorney concluded.
I do believe that belongs in the understatement of the century category.
Via Raw Story.
Been having very high levels of pain lately, which also seeps out all over my attitude. Having to get up early to blog every day doesn’t help, because I’m a nocturnal sort. I don’t function well in the morning, and no matter how much sleep I get, it never feels enough because morning. So, outside of a couple scheduled things, Affinity will be slow starting Friday. All the regular stuff will show up, just later than normal, I’m giving my alarm clocks a day off.
The Obscene Kiss, an illustration of witches kissing the Devil’s anus from Francesco Maria Guazzo’s Compendium Maleficarum (1608).
Satanists! Who else? Rick Wiles is on a tear over it all:
“I believe the deep state, at it’s core, is satanic,” Wiles said. “It is Luciferian. They, that synagogue of Satan dark state, in 1917, overthrew the Russian government … The Russian people were trapped in communism, atheistic God-hating communism for 70 plus years; the Russians finally cast it off and came out from under this communist oppression. I believe the deep state is furious with them that they dared to overthrow their God-hating atheism, their Satanism.”
Sigh. I get very tired of repeating this, but atheism and satanism, not the same thing. Atheists don’t believe in any gods. Satanists are Christians as far as their mythology goes, Lucifer/Satan/Devil/Whatever is part and parcel of the christian mythos. Jehovah and Jesus and the rest of the cast don’t matter much without the foil of Lucifer. As for the deep state stuff, some evidence please.
“The people in control of America today are Satanists,” he continued. “What do they defend? Baby killing. Selling baby parts. Homosexuality. Pedophilia. They celebrate it.”
An embryo is not a baby. No one is selling baby parts. Or adult parts. Nothing at all wrong with homosexuality. And then, the big ol’ chestnut of christian fanatics – pedophilia! I’d like to know why, as much as they love to bring it up, they never address the mass amounts of rape and sexual assault committed against children by christians. Work on that one, Mr. Wiles.
Wiles went on to praise and defend Russia’s strict anti-LGBTQ laws, declaring that “as a Christian, I stand with the Russian people in their defense of morality and I condemn the dark state that is in control of the United States and Europe and Canada and Australia and New Zealand; it is a Luciferian, demonic Satanic empire that is against God, hates God.”
As it would seem the Luciferian Demonic Satanic Empire is firmly on the social justice side, it doesn’t appear to be terribly powerful, looking at what’s happening in the world at the current time. Interesting how Wiles carefully picks out all those places dominated by white people as being under attack, which is not at all subtle in its appeal to bigotry.
After asserting that he feels “more threatened and afraid of the CIA” than of the Russians, Wiles again insisted that “Luciferian, devil worshiping” forces within the “deep state” are working to foment a war in order to punish Russia “for breaking free of that communist tyranny that that satanic group had put on Russia.”
Some days, I just can’t get over how very much some things have changed. I can’t imagine anyone having the spine to say this sort of thing in the 1960s or 1970s.
Wiles was also outraged that some Christians are “condemning Russia for being an anti-Christian nation that persecuted Christians” simply because it had banned the Jehovah’s Witnesses and seized the group’s churches.
“You know what the Russians did?” Wiles asked. “They banned the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Kicked them out of the country. Well, congratulations! I’m glad you did it. I wish we could do it. I wish we could get rid of all the cults in this country. We’d be better off for it.”
Yes, I have no doubt many christians would just love that sort of power, and it would be damned scary if they had it, to say the least. They are working towards that, and Trump is working at giving them what they want. As for cults, it would be really nice to stick a muzzle on christianity.
On the other side of the aisle, Sam Rohrer is all about the antichrist:
“Lawlessness is what the devil, Satan, is attempting to create,” Rohrer said, explaining that the “enemies of Christ”—by which he meant globalists, Islam, and the cultural “establishment”—are “all working together” because “they hate God, they hate the Constitution, they despise Jesus Christ, they want to destroy Israel and the United States and they are using chaos and division as their way of creating the circumstances … out of which will come the Antichrist.”
“These things that we’re seeing are preparatory for the emerging of the Antichrist,” he said. “We have to understand that what we are seeing has been foretold, it is exactly what the Bible is talking about will happen, is happening and we need to, as God’s people, be taking advantage of this time and pointing people to Jesus Christ, understanding the Battle of the Ages is unfolding before our very eyes.”
Hate crimes have spiked under Trump, and they keep escalating. Crimes committed by people who describe themselves as god lovin’, constitution lovin’, Jesus lovin’ christian patriots. I think Rohrer and company have this whole antichrist thing backwards, to say the least.
Via RWW.
Until now, I’ve avoided unpicking on the tree quilt, which has been so very nice. In my early haste to start the foliage, however, I fucked up. I hadn’t picked up the flow yet, and now that I have it, that first section jars, badly. I’ve left it be, telling myself to give it a chance. It keeps drawing my eye, and leaving a bad taste in the brain, so it must go. Every needlesmith on the planet knows the feelings when you meet up with the unavoidable unpickening. Unpicking knots is not as bad as unpicking, say, a raised satin stitch, but it’s not fun, either. Eh, that wasn’t so bad. At least I didn’t rip the fabric!
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
I want to keep the foliage work on the tree quilt level, so I shifted right, which, as I’m working upside down, is going left. :D Now I have this urge to watch a certain movie.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Motorcyclist arrested at Trumpcare protest (Facebook).
A member of the “White Privilege Club” social media group was arrested for attempting to run over Trumpcare protesters in San Francisco with his motorcycle.
The motorcyclist drove at high speed directly at a group of demonstrators staging a “die-in” Wednesday afternoon to protest the Republican health care reform bill, reported the San Francisco Chronicle.
Some of the protesters were lying down, blocking Seventh Street near Mission Street for about seven minutes, when the man turned the wrong direction down a one-way street and drove directly toward them.
“He was revving and revving, he was gunning it, aiming at people who were laying down,” said witness Tracey Brieger, of Emeryville.
Demonstrators rolled out of the way, and the motorcyclist turned around and drove back toward them from the opposite direction.
“If you want to go to the hospital, here you go,” he yelled, according to witnesses. “You will have health care if you people stop protesting.”
The motorcyclist was quickly surrounded by police, who pointed weapons at him and ordered him off the motorcycle.
“You guys were blocking the intersection and now you’re not — see how that works?” the man said after he was detained, according to witnesses.
No fucking comment.
Screen capture.
Politics tends to be a game for the wealthy, although every now and then, someone without significant monies gets in. A short while ago, the Tiny Tyrant, looking at crushing disapproval and clouds of scandals coming home to roost, decided to get back on the ol’ campaign rally trail, because by gosh, some people just love him. I’m getting the distinct feeling this “strategy” isn’t going to work out all that great for Donny. He seems to forget that he’s not a candidate now, so just saying whatever pops into that pea brain of his isn’t the brightest of plans. In Iowa, he explained how poor people just weren’t wanted, and how they are just, um, icky.
Donald Trump on Wednesday defended his decision to appoint cabinet members with significant personal wealth, arguing he doesn’t “want a poor person” in charge of the economy.
Trump was speaking about Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs banker the president appointed as his chief economic advisor—despite promising to “drain the swamp” during his presidency.
“I love all people,” Trump said during a campaign-style rally in Cedar Rapids, IA. “Rich or poor. But in those particular positions I just don’t want a poor person. Does that make sense?”
No, it doesn’t make sense. Not one little fuckin’ bit, Donny. I’d like to know how Donny defines poor. What constitutes a poor person in TrumpWorld? I imagine a two income household that manages to scrape past the $100,000 mark each year would be considered pitifully poor to those on billionaire’s row. As for all of us well below that mark? I’m not altogether sure we’re even visible.
Trump has received significant criticism for his appointment of Cohn, as well as Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. Although he ran on a populist platform, Trump’s cabinet has a combined net worth of $6 billion.
Six billion. There’s a figure which is little more than a nebulous abstract to this person. How does anyone in the rarefied, atrophic atmosphere of billions and billions define poor? And how does that definition relate, in any way, to those of us on planet earth?
Via Raw Story, where there’s video. Turns out, this post is hand and glove with one of Marcus’s, on Propaganda.
From rq: shortest night of the year – from here on in, the nights only get darker. Our days have gotten long, but still not much sun, mostly cloudy. Click for full size!
© rq, all rights reserved.
