The Golf Course Ratings War.

A U.S. carrier group, including the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, shown here, departed Singapore on Saturday, April 8, towards the Korean Peninsula, according to a Navy news release. CREDIT: AP Photo/Bullit Marquez.

The Tiny Tyrant is, once again, where else? On a fucking golf course in Florida. For all the mouthing off this idiot did about President Obama golfing, this massive asshole seems to be unable to stay off of one for a whole three days. Poor Little Tyrant, his pointless bluster in the form of an airstrike didn’t work on his ratings. They stay at the bottom of the barrel. What’s a tyrant to do? Oh, well, let’s take a shot at provoking a nuclear war, that should work! FFS, is there no one who will tell this sociopathic idiot that most people, including Americans, really don’t fucking want a nuclear war, because most of us don’t want to fucking die just yet?

We now have two idiotic, sociopathic tyrants facing off in their “my dick is bigger!” contest, Kim Jong-Un and Little Donnie. Yeah, I’m gonna go paint while I can.

Think Progress has the full story.

Oh, there’s also this:

“Xinhua, the state news agency, on Saturday called the strike the act of a weakened politician who needed to flex his muscles,” The New York Times reported. “In an analysis, Xinhua also said Mr. Trump had ordered the strike to distance himself from Syria’s backers in Moscow, to overcome accusations that he was ‘pro-Russia.’”

Not “pro-Russia”. Right. How in the fuckety fuck does that work when he had his little chat with them, warning them about the strike? FFS, no one can take this idiot seriously, which only ups the possibility he will use nukes. Christ.

Via Raw Story.

The Wall Hits A Wall.

Getty Images.

All I have here is: it’s about godsdamn time people came to their senses. Took long enough.

“It’s anywhere between $26 billion and $40 billion to build it, you can’t drive on it, you can’t use it for anything, it doesn’t do anything to drive economic growth and jobs in America beyond the building of a wall itself, and it probably wouldn’t be built using union jobs to begin with,” said Rep. Joseph Crowley (N.Y.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

Yep. By golly, they even managed to notice that Mexicans aren’t exactly enamored of Americans anymore, and we’re talking repubs here. So, let’s hope this is one idiotic idea that’s down the drain.

The Hill has the full story.

Back.

After a start, and behaving boringly well for eight days, I can’t stand it anymore. Back to painting, damn the pain. If I have to stay all quiet for 4.5 more weeks, I’ll go full court bugshit. Working on the Tree Quilt is out, because there’s just too much twisting in the intercostal area, and that I really can’t do.

Acrylic and ball point pen on gesso board, untitled. © C. Ford.

Sunday Facepalm: The Problem with Syrian Kids.

When I posted about the illegal strike on Syria, I made a strong point about the Tiny Tyrant’s hypocrisy in claiming to care about Syrian children. He did not, and does not care about those children in the least. While campaigning, he compared Syrian people to venomous snakes, and Syrian people are high on his ban list. Nikki Haley has now come out and stated the real problem with those “beautiful babies” who happen to by Syrian – they come with parents. Oh my!

Following President Donald Trump’s military attack on Syria for the use of chemical weapons, CNN host Jake Tapper asked Haley why the administration was opposed to taking in refugees when “beautiful babies” were being “slaughtered.”

“Why not allow Syrian refugees who are children and maybe their mothers to come in after they’ve been vetted,” Tapper wondered.

Haley argued that President Trump “very much believes in the responsibility of keeping Americans safe.”

[…]

Tapper pressed: “But certainly you don’t think Syrian children pose a risk to the American people.”

“Well, Syrian children have to come with Syrian adults,” Haley replied. “And you don’t know, it’s hard to know based on the vetting process. And that’s unfortunate that we can’t find that out.”

[…]

“At the end of the day we need to remember that Syrians don’t want to live somewhere else. They want to be home. They want to be with their family. They want to be with their loved ones. And that’s the focus of why the airstrike happened this week.”

Right. An airstrike which did not do one fucking thing, outside of being a cynical ploy to shore up abysmal ratings, the only thing the Tiny Tyrant cares about. He certainly does not care about anyone’s children, outside of his own. I do imagine most people would prefer to stay in the land of their birth, however, war and climate change are making that impossible for way too many people. Since Little Donnie doesn’t want to actually help any of those brown babies with adults attached, perhaps he could go big picture, and focus on making a difference regarding climate. Oh, wait. Yes, he’s already done that one, hasn’t he? Rolled us right back by about 45, 50 years, hellbent on accelerating the nauseous mess uStates is about to become. Got it.

Via Raw Story.

Gothic Boxwood Miniatures.

Pure amazement and awe here. If you have the chance to take this in, take it!

Gothic Boxwood Miniatures.

Gothic Boxwood Miniatures.

In the video, Pete Dandridge, conservator and administrator in the Department of Objects Conservation, reveals the wizardry behind the creation of a miniature boxwood prayer bead. Through his collaboration with Lisa Ellis—conservator of sculpture and decorative arts at the Art Gallery of Ontario—the techniques of the 16th-century carvers are fully understood for the first time.

Produced in conjunction with the exhibition Small Wonders: Gothic Boxwood Miniatures, on view at The Met Cloisters from February 22 through May 21, 2017.

Featured Object:
Prayer bead with the Adoration of the Magi and the Crucifixion, early 16th century. Netherlandish. Boxwood, Open: 4 1/2 x 3 1/4 x 1 1/8 in. (11.2 × 8.1 × 2.7 cm); Closed: 2 3/8 x 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 in. (5.8 x 5.5 x 5.6 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917 (17.190.475)

 

That’s not all! There’s a virtual reality tour of these tiny wonders, too.

In Small Wonders: The VR Experience, now at Met Cloisters in New York City, visitors are presented with one of these boxwood carvings—created some 500 years ago by an unknown artist—that is blown up to a much larger proportion. It can be exploded and collapsed, and participants are free to walk in and around it. The incredibly small details are now large enough that viewers can see just how this artwork, which depicts Heaven and Hell, was carved and assembled into a sphere that opens like a locket.

http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2017/small-wonders * Small Wonders: The VR experience.

Black Stork.

Foto: Dabasdati.lv

Foto: Dabasdati.lv

rq explains: The first black stork has returned to his nest! A rarity here and in the world, their nesting area is closely monitored and deforestation efforts are co-ordinated with ornithologists every year.
He’s not tagged, but experienced observers say it’s the same guy from previous years; his mate hasn’t returned yet. Of the three ‘šeit’ links at the end, the first is a live camera view of the black stork nest, while the third has five different live camera links to bird nests: white-tailed eagle, black stork, chickenhawk, Eurasian eagle-owl (whose Latin name Bubo bubo I adore) and osprey. According to the third text, the chickenhawks and the eagle-owls are already incubating eggs.

Via DelfiTV.

Straight from the Golf Course, It’s Mr. Tweet!

The reason you don’t generally hit runways is that they are easy and inexpensive to quickly fix (fill in and top)!

That’s the Fucking Idiot’s amazing military logik! Well, he would know the dirty and cheap way to do something. I’m afraid the Tiny Tyrant isn’t doing so well anymore, the tweet stream is cynical, funny, and outraged. Lots of people tired to death of this moron. Not a whole lot of Trumpholes coming to the defense, either.

This also came up more than once in the tweet stream:

Pro-Trump super PAC @GreatAmericaPAC fundraising off missile strikes in Syria.

This Fucking Idiot is busy trying to funnel money into a 2020 campaign, while demonstrating that he can’t even manage to stay in the white house for one fucking weekend, let alone actually work.

Naturally, our ever Fawlty Dictator is busy sucking up all the taxpayer money while he plays at his private club, and is, once again, golfing.

Source: WaPo.

Think Progress has a lovely breakdown of just how much money the Fawlty Dictator has stolen to date, in order to spend every possible moment out of the white house, faffing about in Florida, busy sucking all those poor people dry, and golfing. Amazing he found a moment to tweet at all, ennit?