Not Enough Facepalm, No.

The Tiny Tyrant was speaking to women. Yeah, you already know this is going to be bad, don’t you? I’m just going to relay the idiot’s words, it’s late in the day and my tank of caustic is low:

“My cabinet is full of really incredible women leaders,” Trump told the room. It’s unclear what he meant by the word “full,” however. In fact, Trump’s cabinet is more white and more male than any cabinet since Ronald Reagan.

Full of women? Since when? Having Kellyanne hanging around does not equate to “full of really incredible women leaders”. Or else y’know, all those photos of white men are doing a great job of blocking them out of view. Oh, and your daughter doesn’t count.

“Since the very beginning, women have driven, and I mean, each generation of Americans, towards a more free and more prosperous future,” Trump said. “These patriots are women like the legendary Abigail Adams, right? Who, during the founding, urged her husband to remember the rights of women. She was very much a pioneer in that way. We’ve been blessed with courageous heroes like Harriet Tubman who escaped slavery. And went on to deliver hundreds of others to freedom, first in the underground railroad and then as a spy for the union army. She was very, very courageous, believe me. Around we’ve had leaders like Susan B. Anthony. Have you heard of Susan B. Anthony? I’m shocked that you’ve heard of her — who dreamed of a much more fair and equal future and an America where women themselves as she said helped to make laws and elect the lawmakers, and that’s what’s happening more and more.”

He is shocked that women have heard of Susan B. Anthony. I rather imagine that’s the result of him not knowing a damn thing about Ms. Anthony until right before his “talk”. Someone should really tell the fucking idiot that it’s much better for fucking idiots to stay quiet, rather than open their mouths to constantly prove just how much of a fucking idiot they happen to be. Please, just shut the fuck up already.

Via Raw Story.

Play Break.

Playing with hydrophilic beads again, thanks to Marcus, who is responsible for a great deal of displacement activity on my part. That’s actually good for me, so I’m thankful. :D

Russia Investigation: Let the Tantrums Begin!

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Nunes arrives for a weekly meeting of the Republican Conference with House Speaker Paul Ryan and the GOP leadership on Wednesday. CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.

On Tuesday, House Intelligence Committee chair and former Trump transition team official Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) made the extraordinary claim that Democrats are actually the ones obstructing his committee’s investigation into connections between President Trump and Russian officials.

Nunes — who abruptly cancelled all scheduled committee hearings last week, including one that was to feature testimony from Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general who alerted the White House to Michael Flynn’s deceptions about his communications with Russian officials and was fired for refusing to enforce President Trump’s Muslim ban — told NBC News that “it appears the Democrats aren’t really serious about this investigation.”

“They need to give us their witness list because we have no idea who they even want to interview,” Nunes said. “So, at the end of the day here we’re going to get to the truth, we’re going to find out who’s actually doing a real investigation… we’re going to do an investigation with or without them, and if they want to participate that’s fine, but the facts of the matter are pretty clear.”

But a source with knowledge of the situation tells ThinkProgress that Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee actually submitted a tentative witness list to Republicans on Tuesday and haven’t yet heard back. That information was corroborated by Business Insider’s Natasha Bertrand, who reported that a “[c]ommittee aide tells me Dems provided witness list to Nunes yesterday and offered to schedule hearings next week, have not heard back.”

[…]

Nunes might say “the facts of the matter are pretty clear,” but they’re not. Here’s what we do know. Last Wednesday, Nunes held a press conference where he appeared to clumsily validate Trump’s claim that Obama wiretapped his Trump Tower phones by saying he has “recently confirmed that on numerous occasions the intelligence community incidentally collected information about US citizens involved in the Trump transition.”

Instead of sharing that information with the intelligence community or his committee members, Nunes raced to the White House to brief Trump, whose campaign is under investigation for possible collusion with foreign agents. In the week since, Nunes has steadfastly refused to share what he claims to know about legal incidental collection at Trump Tower with his House Intelligence Committee colleagues.

The list of willful obstruction on the part of Nunes and Gowdy continues over at Think Progress, and it’s quite the long recount of obstruction. It would be downright laughable, the weak attempt to place blame on democrats, except for the fact that this is extremely serious. If this was anyone else, everyone would be going apeshit, screaming for impeachment and imprisonment. The silence of those on the right is more than telling, it’s an indictment all its own, of just how much they truly don’t care about such treasonous actions, as long as the crimes are being committed by someone on their side of the fence.

Think Progress has the full story.

Let’s [Not] Talk Gibberish.

Seeing as it’s Word Wednesday here at Affinity, what better day to review the atrocious mangling of language Trump indulges in? Todd Gitlin has an excellent article and review up of the Tiny Tyrant’s Art of the Non Sequitur, along with his working vocabulary, which is more suited to a toddler.

Once upon a time, there were presidents for whom English seemed their native language. Barack Obama most recently. He deliberated. At a press conference or in an interview — just about whenever he wasn’t speaking from a text — his pauses were as common as other people’s “uh’s.” He was not pausing because his vocabulary was impoverished. He was pausing to put words into sequence. He was putting phrases together with care, word by word, trying out words before uttering them, checking to feel out what they would sound like once uttered. It was important to him because he did not want to be misunderstood. President Obama valued precision, in no small part because he knew he lived in a world where every last presidential word was a speech act, a declaration with consequence, so that the very statement that the sky was blue, say, would be scoured for evidence that the president was declaring a policy on the nature of nature.

That was then. Now we have a president who, when he speaks, spatters the air with unfinished chunks, many of which do not qualify as sentences, and which do not follow from previous chunks. He does not release words into a stream of consciousness but into a heap. He heaps words on top of words, to overwhelm meaning with vague gestures. He does not think, he lurches.

Here are some examples from TIME’s transcript of their cover story made out of their phone interview with the president of the United States. I have italicized the non sequiturs, incomplete propositions, indefinite pronouns and other obscurities that amount to verbal mud.

I used to have sequential eyerolls over Bush Jr’s mangling of language: uninalienable, subliminabable, resignates, disregardered, impedent, misunderestimated, and so forth. Well, at least Bush tried for the big words. That’s better than a basic vocabulary of “bad, sad, bigly!”

Click on over for the full gibberish analysis!

And here’s a fine example of the Gibberish Takeover:

“I think the president is very well steeped in world affairs, especially Europe, NATO, all of the issues,” Spicer declared. “He was a leader in the effort to call Brexit, as you know.”

Spicer, however, did not explain how Trump led the “effort to call Brexit.”

“So, I think both on the EU and that, that’s that,” Spicer concluded.

How, exactly, does any of that answer the charge that the Tiny Tyrant is ignorant when it comes to world affairs? We are talking about the fucking idiot who presented Ms. Merkel with a bill, for fuck’s sake. He also didn’t have the slightest idea of what NATO is, or how it works. He was not a leader in the effort to call Brexit, although he did plenty of cheerleading for it. And what we get is: “So, I think both on the EU and that, that’s that.” WHAT IN THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN? Is everyone getting so damn stupid that such shite gets a pass, or worse, knowing nods?

Tin Cap Time.

The Heartland Institute recently had their “Fuck the Planet!” conference, attended by the Mercers, and all those others who have some sort of vested interest in killing off everyone and everything. I guess they’ll bug out to Mars with Musk when life becomes unsustainable.

The atmosphere was buoyant at a conference held by the conservative Heartland Institute last week at a downtown Washington hotel, where speakers denounced climate science as rigged and jubilantly touted deep cuts President Trump is seeking to make to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Front and center during the two-day gathering were New York hedge fund executive Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer, Republican mega-donors who with their former political adviser Stephen K. Bannon helped finance an alternative media ecosystem that amplified Trump’s populist themes during last year’s campaign.

The Mercers’ attendance at the two-day Heartland conference offered a telling sign of the low-profile family’s priorities: With Trump in office, the influential financiers appear intent on putting muscle behind the fight to roll back environmental regulations, a central focus of the new administration.

The Washington Post has a full run down on the conference.

I’ll just focus here on the batshit element of such conferences, this time, embodied by ever loony Lord Christopher Monckton:

Raw Story has a rundown of his 5 main points, so click on over if you prefer to read.

The Farce That Is “The Wall”.

Ryan Zinke (Twitter).

Just when you think rethuglicans really could not possibly go lower or more regressive, *bam*. Ryan the fink Zinke has a problem with the stupid wall – placing it on U.S. land would cede the Rio Grande, oh no wtfbbq!!!11!1 The solution? Doesn’t seem to be one right now, outside of making sure endangered animals are endangered right into extinction. It seems the only way to keep the Rio Grande would be to either steal land from Mexico, or build it on Mexico’s land and claim it for uStates. Or something. Jesus Fuck. There’s that Colonial mindset at work.

E&E News reports that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke talked about the logistics of building a border wall while speaking at an event held by the Public Lands Council this week, and he said the Trump administration didn’t want to build the wall on American soil because it would mean ceding the entire Rio Grande river to Mexico.

“The border is complicated, as far as building a physical wall,” Zinke said. “The Rio Grande, what side of the river are you going to put the wall? We’re not going to put it on our side and cede the river to Mexico. And we’re probably not going to put it in the middle of the river.”

Zinke didn’t elaborate on how the wall would get built if it wasn’t located on America’s side of the Rio Grande or in the middle of the river, which implies that it would be built on the Mexican side of the border.

Elsewhere in his talk, E&E News reports Zinke said the Trump administration will seek a waiver to the Endangered Species Act so it can build the wall in jaguar habitats that are for now protected from “destruction or adverse modification.”

Via Raw Story. And, Ryan fucking idiot Zinke has now said there’s no such thing as clean energy. Nope.

Nemo’s Megalodon! And Giant Squid! And Cycloptopus! And…

Oh, the work of Nemo Gould is so many things. Wonderful. Awesome. Imaginative. Out of the Box. Fun. Every good thing. His outlook relates very much to mine, and I love that, but it’s hard to see how anyone wouldn’t take joy in his work. Also, he has a thing for tentacled beings, what’s not to love? He even did work for the Monterey Aquarium!

Nemo Gould.

The Megalodon is Gould’s latest work, a 16-foot-long salvaged fuel tank from an F-94 bomber plane’s wing. The shark has working propellors for fins, and a tail that glides back and forth ominously. A cutaway on the side reveals various boiler and control rooms, each with their own delicately installed moving parts. It’s packed full of tiny human figures and whimsical creatures alike, all in mid-task as they operate their predatory underwater vessel.

The project took Gould a little over two years to finish. “I’d wanted to make a cutaway vessel for years, and had been putting objects aside for that purpose,” he explains. “I know it sounds backwards, but the tank was the last missing piece.” He found it at an aircraft salvage business, and from there he was able to assemble the final sculpture.

Gould says his process is a lot like solving a puzzle. “I maintain an extensive collection of things that I feel strongly about one way or another,” he says. “The challenge is to find which of the million potential relationships between these things could lead to the best art.” More so than his skills as an artist, machinist, fabricator, woodworker, et al., Gould says that “maintaining a vast, organized library of seemingly random objects is the real trick.”

Megalodon 2016 (extended) from Nemo Gould on Vimeo.

Just two more, and it’s killing me to not post all of them, and there are so many, so you’ll have to go visit!

Nemo Gould.

Cycloptopus is a fearsome hybrid of two of my favorite monsters, one real, one mythical. This creature is particularly dangerous because of its irritability. You’d be irritable too if you were powered by an open flame and your body was made of wood.

Materials:

Radio cabinets, rocking chairs, fake fireplace, decorative clock elements, cabinet knobs, wall paper, chair parts, lamp parts, wheel hub, motors, LEDs.

Nemo Gould.

I have been fascinated by the Giant Squid for quite some time. A real life, terrifying mystery of the deep.

I have posted a step-by-step essay of this piece with lots of process photos over at Instructables.com

Materials:

Street light covers, belt wheels, railing sections, brass fireplace hardware, candle sticks, drawer pulls, chandelier parts, wood planks, vanity mirror frame, timing motor, gear motor, LEDs, lawn sprinkler, pop rivets.

There are videos for most all the wondrous creations, showing them in their full glory and movement! Fair warning, you’ll be lost in Nemo’s world for a long time, but that is in no way a bad thing!

Oh, and don’t miss Octovarius! * Nemo Gould, Kinetic Sculpture from Found Materials. Go visit!

Via Make.

Word Wednesday.

Atrocious

Adjective.

1 : extremely wicked, brutal, or cruel: Barbaric.

2: Appalling, horrifying.

3a: utterly revolting: abominable. b: of very poor quality.

– atrociously, adverb.

– atrociousness, noun.

[Origin: Latin atroc-, atrox gloomy, atrocious, from atr-, ater black + –oc, –ox.]

(1658)

“Robespierre had paused briefly to finger his jabot.

‘I tell you that anyone who is trembling at this moment is guilty. Because innocence never fears the public gaze.‘

‘That’s atrocious,’ Adamsberg whispered back. ‘The most terrible of all, in my view.'” – A Climate of Fear, Fred Vargas.

As our quote finds us in the time of Robespierre, a bonus phrase: Sneeze into the sack:

“‘Hébert was famous for writing “fuck this” and “fuck that”, ever two lines in the paper, and Gonzalez liked imitating him, they were stirring sessions. “Let those toads in the Plain go and sneeze into the sack,” he would say. Robespierre was very shocked by Hébert’s vulgar language.’

‘Sneeze into the sack?’ asked Adamsberg.

‘A contemporary expression for being sent to the guillotine.'”

Force of Nature 4.

Flowers! From Giliell, click for full size.

Laika Come Home.

From rq, who says: A piece of large format art I ran across on the way to visit a friend. The name (from the back of the piece) seems to be “Laika Come Home”, which is also the title of a Gorillaz remix album by Spacemonkeyz – artist unknown. At first I thought its gaze might be significant, but the Russian embassy is too far out the right of the frame, where I tried to capture that. So who knows, probably just a tribute to the album. :) Still, a surprise!

Click for full size!