Affinity

Art, Fun, & Nonsense.

Practicing Unprotected Politics.

Goodness me, one of the Tiny Tyrant’s spawn had a thoughtless spill of arrogance, and a bit of truth tumbled out. Ooops. I’m sure there are some Trumpholes out there who believe that Donnie has “separated” himself from his business, but believing that requires quite a conscious effort of reality distancing. I expect most of them don’t care, and don’t see anything wrong the Tiny Tyrant treating the government like another overblown hotel or golf course.

…Because Trump hasn’t divested from his businesses, his separation from the vast conflicts of interest they pose is already shaky — and any separation at all rests wholly on his promise not to talk to his sons about them. None of the parties involved have provided any way to verify that this promise has been kept — and now, reports keep leaking out from Trump Jr. and Eric Trump themselves that President Trump is much more informed on his businesses than he alleges.

It’s just one more piece of evidence that Trump’s separation from his businesses is no more than a corporate shell game, and that there is little to stop him from making decisions as president that enrich him personally.

“He is breaking down one of the few barriers he claimed to be establishing between him and his businesses, and those barriers themselves were weak to begin with. But if he is now going to get reports from his son about the businesses, then he really isn’t separate in any real way,” Larry Noble, general counsel of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center and a former chief ethics officer at the Federal Election Commission, told Forbes.

Think Progress has the full story.

Acts of Defiance.

Image: Charlotte Cooper, CC-BY.

Maryland is leading an action which is poised to be picked up by lawmakers across the country. The federal de-funding of Planned Parenthood clinics is not sitting well with constituents far and wide, and they are making their voices known.

Every dollar that the Trump administration takes away from Planned Parenthood in Maryland will be replaced by state funds (about $2.7M), which will save about $6 for every dollar it puts in, because when women are in charge of their own fertility, they don’t end up raising kids they can’t afford.

State lawmakers across the USA are planning to follow suit. Maryland’s Republican state governor Larry Hogan didn’t even try to veto the bill, having seen what happened when federal Republicans tried to take away health care — and women are disproportionately willing to rise up to fight for their rights.

Boing Boing has the story.

Handsome Devils.

Pictured is a handmade puppet, Bastet. Exquisite work by Han, and there’s much more to see at Handsome Devil Puppets.

Puppets are infinite. If you know love, they do. If you know sadness, they do. If you breathe, they do. You give them steps and they make them strange. They are sometimes silly, sometimes serious, always honest little vessels. I started making puppets when I felt I didn’t have a voice. I sculpted powerful, magical women to dance and sing and cry and give me that voice. When I feared death, they showed me it could be beautiful. When I feared life, they showed me it could be weird and wonderful. The Handsome Devils are each hand-sculpted, piece by piece, and decorated in everything from remnants from the bottom of granny’s jewelry box to bones from a field in my hometown.
“The terrors of living, the joys and the revel, alive in your misfit, misguided young devil”

Han is also featured at The Creators Project, but go have a wander over at Handsome Devil Puppets, there’s much to see!

The Edinburgh Remakery.

Here’s a grand undertaking, and one desperately needed all over the place. We have become so accustomed to living in a consumer driven throwaway manner, and even when people want to be thrifty, or would prefer to fix something, there’s often no option to do so.

The Edinburgh Remakery is a social enterprise that teaches repair. The shop sells refurbished computers and furniture, and hosts workshops where people can come along and learn how to repair their own things. There’s a big vision behind it: “we want to generate a repair revolution. This means changing the way people use and dispose of resources, encouraging manufacturers to build things to last and to be fixable, and making sure the facilities are in place to allow people to repair and reuse.”

Films for Action has the full story.

“ I feel it’s important to have hydrocarbons equally represented.”

CREDIT: Independence Institute.

I, uh, uh, oh gods, there’s so much wrong here, that it … oh, wrong, wrong, wrong. Along with the wrong, the co-opting of phrases expressing specific concepts has been turned into a rotten, fermenting word salad crawling with maggots. I, oh. I sincerely hope that no artists participate in this travesty.

One thing Earth Day celebrations have been lacking is a recognition of fossil fuels — at least according to the Independence Institute, a self-described “action tank” based in Colorado that receives funding from a litany of prominent conservative dark money groups.

“Enviros celebrate by planting trees but they never celebrate the trucks that deliver the trees, or the gas that powers that truck, or the plastic handles of the shovels they use,” an email from the organization reads. “Shouldn’t Mother Earth be thanked for making Earth Day events possible?”

Budding artists are encouraged to send their original works in by April 21 with the main requirement that it “should showcase the awesomeness of fossil fuels.”

I can’t even. Just can’t. Think Progress has a full breakdown on the monies backing this monstrous reality denial.

Amy Cooke, executive vice president and director of the Energy Policy Center at the Independence Institute, has been critical of Colorado’s renewable energy standard, arguing that clean energy sources should be expanded to include clean coal, natural gas, hydroelectric power, and nuclear. Late last year, Cooke was named to the Trump administration’s EPA “landing team,” and wrote of her excitement for the future of the EPA under Trump and Administrator Scott Pruitt (both have been clear about their intent to cripple the agency, slashing its budget and immediately gutting policies to fight climate change).

Cooke told ThinkProgress that the organization’s fossil fuels art contest is rooted in inclusivity. “Fossil fuels seem to get left out of the Earth Day celebration,” she said via email. “As an energy feminist — pro-choice in energy sources — I feel it’s important to have hydrocarbons equally represented.”

Fossil fuels get left out of Earth Day celebrations because they have a lot to do with destroying the earth, habitats, species, poisoning water and so forth, you godsawful excuse for a person. “Energy feminist.” “Pro-choice in energy sources.” Okay, I have to get past my overwhelming desire to smack her.

In regard to Independence Institute’s donors — and their history of working against climate action — Cooke avoided specifics. “In general, people and organizations support us because of the work we do including being energy agnostic,” she said. “We encourage innovation instead of over regulation. It’s actually kind of liberating because we aren’t boxed in by an either-or cynical choice paradigm.”

“Energy agnostic”. Uh huh. Oh you’re boxed in, alright – all you want is destruction. Jesus Fuck.

Full story at Think Progress.

Troll in the Dungeon, Er, Crossdressers in the Building!

Karen Kipgen, Page Program Supervisor for the Oklahoma House of Representatives, sent out a Capitol-wide email warning members and their staff of “crossdressers in the building.”

The Page Program is for high school sophomores, juniors and seniors seeking to serve in the House to help elected officials.

Several sources sent Raw Story photos of the email of Kipgen’s warning.

“As per the Speaker’s office, Pages are being allowed access to the ladies restroom across from 401, for today. Again, there are cross-dressers in the building.”

[…]

The state’s LGBT organization Oklahomans for Equality, as well as Planned Parenthood and other HIV/AIDS advocacy groups, were visiting the Capitol as part of an education advocacy day.

[…]

“I’m with about 70 traumatized students right now,” Toby Jenkins, Oklahoman’s for Equality executive director, told Raw Story over the phone. He explained that they went to the House Speaker Charles McCall’s office with questions about the email but that the Speaker refused to meet with them. He did tell them that the email did not come from the Speaker’s office and that they’re investigating whose office sent the email.

Way to be a nasty asshole, Oklahoma. (#NotAllOklahomans, I know. You need to hold these willfully ignorant assholes to the fire.) Via Raw Story.

A Shambolic Adhocracy.

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast.

Rick Wilson has an incisive and wonderfully caustic take on the current state of … affairs. Just a bit here, the whole column is highly recommended reading.

Trump is faced with terrible options when it comes to rearranging the deck chairs on the SS White House, and those of us who warned you this was inevitable are ordering popcorn. The cancer in the presidency isn’t his staff—though they reflect his shoddy intellect, his shallow impulsiveness, his loose grasp of reality, and Chinese-menu ideology. The problem is Trump himself, and nothing and no one can change that.

[…]

What about some of the other ideas in play? Might a D.C. Wise Man/Usual Suspect of the old school right this ship? This too is a path where Trump can’t win.

First, it’s an instant way to alienate his base of fervent “burn down da gubbmint and let Trump be King” morons. A swamp veteran is going to smooth down the edges, take away Trump’s tweeting phone, cut deals with Congress, and fire the embarrassing mouth-breathers like Scavino, Gorka, and their like. He’ll work deals, manage expectations, and close the Oval Office to the random calls and visits that send President ADHD’s agenda bouncing wildly as an ideological Pachinko machine.

Some of the people mentioned are smart, competent folks with decades of experience in the folkways and traditions of D.C. Some know how to manage large, complex operations. Here’s the problem; no White House chief of staff can change Trump’s essential character. No White House chief of staff can set up a chain of reporting and accountability for a man who is driven almost entirely by the need to draw every particle of praise and adoration into the event horizon of the black hole of his boundless, hungry ego.

A strong, effective chief of staff would be of enormous benefit to this president, but so would avoiding Kentucky Fried Chicken, early morning tweet frenzies, and 20 hours of Fox News every day.

[…]

The shambolic adhocracy of his White House is a perfect reflection of Trump’s own chaotic, disordered thought process and lack of mental discipline, and that’s not changing any time soon.

Full column here, highly recommended.

New York: Tuition Free 4 Year College!

Gov. Andrew Cuomo says in New York we have rejected the politics of division.

New York will be the first state in the country to cover four-year college tuition for residents after the program was included in the budget package approved Sunday night.

The state’s Excelsior Scholarship program will be rolled out in tiers over the next three years, starting with full coverage of four-year college tuition this fall for students whose families make less than $100,000.

The income cap will increase to $110,000 in 2018 and $125,000 in 2019.

“With this budget, New York has the nation’s first accessible college program. It’s a different model,” said Governor Andrew Cuomo Saturday in a statement. “Today, college is what high school was—it should always be an option even if you can’t afford it.”

This is amazing and wonderful news. NYS has become a great model in these dark times, and it would be fantastic to see other states pick up this model as well, as our current regime would never do anything so positive and *gasp* socialist.

Via NBC and NY Daily News.

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