oooOOOoo Shadow Government ooOOOooo.

The Shadow as depicted on the cover of the July 15, 1939, issue of The Shadow Magazine.

Rick Wiles has gone more than a bit tinfoil hat, positing a whole shadow government which is doing nefarious things in an attempt to, uh, do something.

“I am going to stand by my claim that America has death squads,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s the U.S. government, I’m saying there is a government beyond a level that any of us know about. There is a top secret shadow government that very few people know exist.”

It’s always something few people know about, and of course, it’s those few, brave conspiracy concocters who are the heroes proclaiming the truth. One thing about the conspiracy mongers – they obey all the tried and true tropes.

“Henry Kissinger is the secretary of state of the New World Order,” Wiles added. “There is a secret shadow government, it has its own infrastructure, its own courts, its own laws, its own structures, its own prisons. They sit and they laugh at the American people believing that these people in Washington and Congress and the White House and the Supreme Court are actually the government. They’re not the government, they’re puppets.”

That doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. This would mean, basically, that there were two uStates. Is one on top? Are they parallel? C’mon, the plot needs details, man! And who cares about the secretary of state in Shadowmerica? Who is the president? Oooh, bet it’s Hilary Clinton. How does one become a citizen of Shadowmerica? I’d like to take a tour.

“If they ever act like they’re the real government, the death squads will show up,” he continued. “Ask Judge Scalia what happens. You’ll have a pillow case put over your face and they’ll carry your body away and U.S. marshals won’t even get your body, somebody else will take your body, they’ll never call the police. A Supreme Court justice dead with a pillow case over his face and the police weren’t called. Who can do that kind of stuff, Doc? A shadow government. Who can kill 50-some people at Mandalay and get away with it? A shadow government, it’s a death squad that is operating in this country.”

Sigh. Christian zealots do love them some death squads, they just can’t give the idea up. I seem to recall that Scalia’s corpse was widely known about, to say the least. Police aren’t generally called when a 79 year old shuffles off the mortal coil. If this was Shadowmerica operating, well, they’re quite incompetent, aren’t they? Just like Regularmerica. As to who can kill 50-some people at a concert, yet another white male who can’t work up the nerve to commit suicide without making the consequences of staying alive too dire to bear. Anyone in Regularmerica can get their hands on all manner of weapons, and decide that random people are going to have the worst day of their lives. You don’t need Shadowmerica for that one at all.

I would think that if Shadowmerica was going to employ death squads, they would have some sort of purpose; an aim. Why bother with a country music concert?

RWW has the story and soundcloud.

Still at the egg market…

and having fun. :D I’ve gotten so accustomed to doing gum arabic watercolours, I don’t know that I can ever go back to plain.

Meeting at the Egg Market © C. Ford, all rights reserved.

ETA: I was still undecided on the body colour for the being on the left; I decided to go with Charly’s characterisation of pony, so dappled gray.

© C. Ford, all rights reserved.

Alexander Graham Bell’s Kites.

Tetrahedral Kites!

Although best known for developing the practical telephone — for which he became the first, in 1876, to secure a US patent — the Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell is also noted for his work in aerodynamics, a rather more photogenic endeavour perhaps, as evidenced by the wonderful imagery documenting his experiments with tetrahedral kites. The series of photographs depict Bell and his colleagues demonstrating and testing out a number of different kite designs, all based upon the tetrahedral structure, to whose pyramid-shaped cells Bell was drawn as they could share joints and spars and so crucially lessen the weight-to-surface area ratio.

[…]

Bell began his experiments with tetrahedral box kites in 1898, eventually developing elaborate structures comprised of multiple compound tetrahedral kites covered in maroon silk, constructed with the aim of being to carry a human through the air. Named Cygnet I, II, and III (for they took off from water) these enormous tetrahedral beings were flown both unmanned and manned during a five year period from 1907 until 1912.

The delightful images below have mainly been sourced from three places: Bell’s own private journals, which meticulously log his progress not only with text but also with numerous photographs pasted into the pages (from 1903–104); a couple of articles (from 1903 and 1907) in the National Geographic Magazine; and the Bulletin of his Aerial Experiment Association, which he led from its beginning in 1907 until it disbanded in 1909.

There are so many photos, I just grabbed one at random, The Public Domain has oodles of photos, and links to all the sources!

Word Wednesday.

Subvert

Transitive verb.

1: to overturn or overthrow from the foundation: Ruin.

2: to pervert or corrupt by an undermining of morals, allegiance, or faith.

– subverter, noun.

[Origin: Middle English, from Anglo-French subvertir, from Latin subvertere, literally, to turn from beneath, from sub– + vertere to turn.]

(14th Century)

It was “an evil of such magnitude as to threaten the moral, social and national life of our country,” the handiwork of publishers with “diabolical intent” to “weaken morality and thereby destroy religion and subvert the social order.” – The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, David Hadju.

Word Salad Wisdom.

Bill Day.

James Robison is one of the Tiny Tyrant’s “key spiritual advisors”.  While shilling his new book all about Jehovah and Trump, he gushed all over the place about the amazing wisdom of the Tiny Tyrant, which showed through…Twitter.

Robison revealed that he had urged Trump not to try to speak in religious terms but to simply let his “personal growth” reveal to the world the way in which his faith in Christ has changed his heart, insisting that the nation is witnessing this spiritual growth in the increase maturity of Trump’s tweets and his treatment of women.

Increased maturity? Let’s keep in mind that the man is in his 70s, might be a tad on the late side for blooming. Let’s look at some of that astonishing maturity:

“With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!”

Mmmm. I’m reminded of Phil Hartman’s Frankenstein sketches.

“I have been with him in so many settings,” Robison said, “with so many different people, including on the plane and in the car, watching how he treats everybody. It is absolutely one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. He is so respectful and then he’ll get up and be like [Muhammad] Ali, punching everybody out, knocking them out and they’ll think, well, he doesn’t have love. Well, did you ever think maybe love knocks out the enemy that is hurting all the people that need that love? So that’s what he is doing, so yes, what he is accomplishing and what must be accomplished is an answer to people’s prayers.”

Uh, so now it’s Trump who is answering prayers? What did he do, knock ‘god’ off his perch? Generally speaking, people who get punched, in any sense of the word, aren’t feeling loved.

“He just needs to keep doing what he is doing,” Robison continued. “He is just getting wiser every day, his tweets are getting wiser. And by the way, doing those tweets, he is doing the thing that every leader is going to have to do—you have got to communicate directly with the people you love, directly with the American people and you have got to be able to do it around a biased, totally anti-God, anti-Christian-biblical-worldview media. You have to talk continually to the American people and, God bless him, he’s doing it and I think that his tweets will become wiser and wiser … As he walks out the power of scripture and the truth that wisdom offers and the incredible wisdom that makes possible unbelievable correction and restoration, if he’ll just keep doing that and then just share his heart, more and more you are going to see continuous wisdom. I watch it every day.”

Uh huh. Let’s have another gander:

“…We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!”

Would it be possible for that ‘god’ of yours to teach Donny the rules of capitalization?

“…approvals of The Keystone XL & Dakota Access pipelines. Also, look at the recent EPA cancelations & our great new Supreme Court Justice!”

That’s not coming across as love, wisdom, or any other good thing to me. Just the overwhelming damage done by a fucking idiot.

Robison claimed that he has sown a deep seed of faith in Trump and “he’s very, very responsive. The ways he respects [Rex] Tillerson, [James] Mattis, the ones around him, [Mike] Pompeo, Ben Carson, the people he’s put there. I’ve watched him honor his assistants that have been with him 15 or 20 years and talk about him maybe not respecting women, I’ve never seen a man treat women behind the scenes any more respectfully that I’ve watched him treat them when I’m around him. And he’s not doing it for show.”

That’s interesting. It’s in news stories all over the place, about the Tiny Tyrant mocking Pence and his beliefs; and I’d guess you aren’t listening to women who have had the distinct displeasure of dealing with Trump over the decades.

RWW has the story.