People Will Die, What’s New?

A man delivers heating oil to a house in Maine in 2015. CREDIT: AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty.

A man delivers heating oil to a house in Maine in 2015. CREDIT: AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty.

That’s a familiar scene. Living rural, I’m on propane for heating and cooking. Propane is expensive, very expensive. Most people who live rural have large tanks, which when full, might be able to see them through a winter. Depending on how harsh the winter might be, sometimes a tank will last, sometimes it won’t. We have two tanks, totally 1,500 gallons. We rarely have the full amount. Naturally, it’s cheaper to fill your tanks in the dead of Summer, but that won’t keep you all the way through to winter, especially in places like Maine, or nDakota. We’re still in Winter here. There have been times when there’s been no power; there have been times when there’s been a heating failure, and it’s not easy to cope when you don’t have heat. When you don’t have heat, you’re prone to doing unsafe things, like opening the oven, and cranking it up, stringing electric heaters everywhere, lighting candles, firing up kerosene heaters and so on. And in such cases, people often die. People also die of hypothermia, because yes, it gets that damn cold. Out here in rural land, USA, we’re a tad short on mansions. Houses tend to be old, and not terribly energy efficient, and subject to drafts. A lot of older people simply close off most of their house and live in one or two rooms come winter, as do a lot of people without a ton of money. Most of us rural types don’t have handy get aways in Florida, either.

The Tiny Tyrant is so unhinged from reality, it never crosses that atrophied pea brain of his that most people in this country are not wealthy, they don’t have mansions, they don’t have the wherewithal to con people in order to stuff their pockets, and get very concerned when faced with the choice of either starving to death or freezing to death. The same people who, while faced with such dire choices, are having their pockets picked clean by the fucking Tiny Tyrant, so he can hide out in his Florida Fucking Mansion near to every weekend. Over $3 Million every effing trip. This weekend marks the 5th weekend, and the 7th weekend spent flaking off to huge sums of money. The Monstrous Narcissist Evil which is Trump is happily planning to kill off the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which uses very little money in comparsion to say, the military budget, but is crucial in keeping people alive in not only brutal winters, but brutal summers as well. As Global Warming gets worse, also hastened by the The Monstrous Narcissist Evil Trump, both of these extremes will worsen, and without aid, even more people will die. Not that the thought of people dying ruffles Trump’s tiny, smooth brain.

“You’ve got a population that’s got very little money, not able to work because of their age or their health, and this is the way we keep them in their apartments and keep them safe,” said Wolfe.

“If you withdraw that, some of them will die. But that doesn’t seem too important to them at the moment,” he said.

“He doesn’t know anybody like that. They don’t belong to Trump’s club.”

And that last line sums it up. In the Tiny Tyrant’s world, people without money aren’t even on the radar. As far as Trump is concerned, they barely exist, and they certainly don’t matter. Not that it would make much difference if he was more aware, it still wouldn’t register. There isn’t any empathy in The Monstrous Narcissist Evil which is Trump. There is plenty of hypocrisy, though! There’s a mine full of it. If only hypocrisy were food, then everyone would have enough. The Tiny Tyrant is intent on killing off any and all programs which so much as hint of helping people, and won’t shut up about “slashing” the budget (while massively increasing the military money), while the money being spent out of taxpapyer’s pockets by the fucking evil asshole is overwhelming:

President Trump doesn’t want to spend federal dollars on after-school programs, meals for poor people, or heating assistance that helps keep folks alive.

But he has no problem wasting more than $3 million a pop to spend weekends at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Trump has already made four trips there since becoming president on January 20, and on Friday he confirmed he’s headed there this weekend for the fifth time.

[…]

Despite vowing during his campaign that he “would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done” and “would not be a president who took vacations” because “you don’t have time to take time off,” Trump has visited Trump-branded properties each of the past six weekends. That streak will hit seven when Trump lands at Mar-a-Lago later Friday.

In fact, Trump has spent time at Trump-branded property every weekend of his presidency other than the very first, when he created chaos throughout the country by signing a Muslim ban executive order that was later stayed by a federal court.

[…]

As Quartz reported on Friday, after this weekend, Trump will have already spent about $16.5 million on trips to Mar-a-Lago. For that amount, Meals on Wheels could feed 5,967 seniors for a year and after school programs could feed 114,583 children for a year.

Remember though, that starving seniors and children don’t matter! Nope.

On Thursday, Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney defended the draconian cuts included in the Trump administration’s proposed budget by arguing that the federal government can’t ask “a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for” programs like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But one wonders whether those struggling Americans would rather have public radio or dole out their share of the $3.3 million a self-proclaimed billionaire is spending each weekend to mingle with his ludicrously wealthy club members down in Florida.

Oh yes, of course, why a coal miner or a single mom are just your general dumbfucks who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in quality educational TV, or good quality radio broadcasts, oh no. Why, they are just stupid peons, they don’t think, or feel, or care about anything at all, no. Certainly, they’d have no interest in their children having access to good education and information, no sir. They are, however, supremely happy to have the food taken out of their mouths in order to support the Tiny Tyrant when he wanders off to play golf and collect those $200,000 dues from his “friends” at the club.

Via Think Progress: Ending home heating subsidies is a choice to let people die. Trump to spend 7th consecutive weekend at Trump-branded property, at enormous cost to taxpayers.

Mr. Tweet, Coward at Large.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks on as President Donald Trump accuses a German reporter of engaging in 'fake news.' (Screen cap).

German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks on as President Donald Trump accuses a German reporter of engaging in ‘fake news.’ (Screen cap).

Take a moment, and look at that screen cap, again. Most people have seen it, the look of “unfuckingbelievable” on Ms. Merkel’s face when Trump pulls his fake news clown act on a German reporter. I cherish that expression, because it’s a clear divider between adult / child. Unfortunately for us in uStates, we’re stuck with the terrible infant.

Naturally, having to limit his childish outbursts during the press conference, as soon as possible, unpresident Jekyll found a dark corner, and let the craven Mr. Tweet loose, to spew forth all the shit he knows he can’t get away with saying in person. He’s doing all this, by the way, from his hidey mansion in Florida, y’know, the place he swore up and down he wasn’t going to go. This makes his 5th weekend there, at a cost of over $3 million a trip, so all us taxpayers are on the hook for more than 16.5 million dollars for Jekyll & Tweet to play, all while his sputtering temper adds more instability to the world.

As is his custom on Saturday mornings when he is vacationing at his Mar-a-Lago resort, President Donald Trump jumped on Twitter to complain about something — this time taking shots at both the media and Germany.

Following a meeting and press conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel — where Trump refused to shake hands with the German leader and she gave him a dismissive glance when he brought up surveillance of both of them — Trump felt the need to set the record straight in typical Trump fashion on Twitter.

“Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel,” Trump began in his first tweet before getting to his latest complaint.

“Nevertheless, Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!” he continued.

Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Nevertheless, Germany owes…

…vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!

:Drops head gently onto desk: No. Just No. It’s the weekend, I slept in, and I was feeling kind of good, and then … No. I’ll content myself with a “Hey, Donnie! Go Fuck Yourself!”

Via Raw Story.

Nimuno Loops!

nimuno-loop-lego-tape-design-products-toys-children_dezeen_2364_col_9

Lego fans can now build outwards from walls, chair legs, household objects or the backs of other toys using a new studded tape.

The Nimuno Loops tape is the creation of Cape Town-based designers Anine Kirsten and Max Basler. They launched the product on crowdfunding site Indiegogo three days ago, and have already amassed 12,107 per cent of their $8,000 (£6,470) target.

This looks like so much fun! You can see and read much more at Dezeen.

The Shaolin Flying Monks Theatre.

Photography is by Ansis Starks.

Photography is by Ansis Starks.

This is one of those things you really wish you could see in person!

Monks perform levitation over a huge wind tunnel at this amphitheatre, which was designed by Latvian studio Mailītis Architects for a mountain range in central China. The Shaolin Flying Monks Theatre stands on a slope covered in cypress trees on Songshan Mountain – a mountain range in Henan Province.

The mountains are home to the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Shaolin Monastery, which is also considered to be the birthplace of Zen Buddhism and Kung-Fu martial arts.

Tasked with creating an amphitheatre to host weekly shows where local monks as well as the general public can try flying, Riga-based Mailītis Architects wanted to create a building that respects its natural surroundings.

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monks2

Click all the images for full size! There’s much more at Dezeen.

Mesmerizing?

This well-known photograph was taken (extremely) shortly after the detonation of a nuclear device during Operation Tumbler-Snapper.

This well-known photograph was taken (extremely) shortly after the detonation of a nuclear device during Operation Tumbler-Snapper.

Ars Technica has an article up about recently declassified nuclear tests, which are now being plastered on youtube. I watched two of the videos, and realized I was physically pulled back, half turned away, in cringe mode. Yes, I can see where someone could find these mesmerizing, but I don’t, I just find them terrifying. I find every single thing about it terrifying – that we ever reached this point at all is a terror.

From 1945 until the practice was ended in 1963 with the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the US conducted 210 above-ground nuclear weapons tests. The majority of those took place at the Nevada National Security Site, then on remote Pacific atolls. Obviously, since the purpose of the tests was to understand this powerful new class of weapon, all of the tests were captured with multiple high-speed cameras (running at roughly 2,400 frames per second). And until now, many of those films have languished in classified vaults. But Greg Spriggs and his colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL) are rescuing and declassifying many of them, posting them on YouTube in the process.

The first 64 declassified films were uploaded this week, with footage from Operations Upshot-Knothole, Castle, Teapot, Plumbbob, Hardtack I, Hardtack II, and Dominic. And they’re utterly mesmerizing. In fact, they’re truly awesome, in the literal sense of the word.

No, I don’t find them awesome, either. They don’t fill me with awe, they fill me with dread. I find them disgraceful, discouraging, darkly dystopian, and we are now tottering on the edge of actual deployments, not tests. What I find even more dismal is that there will be too many people who will shout “oh cool, look at that, destroyed!” or some such, like cheering on destruction in a video game, rather than enough people who will take these for the warning they should be. And yes, I know there is a fascination to watching shock waves intersect and all, but these make me want to hide in a cave. Not that it would help.

Via Ars Technica.

Friday Rat.

This is Rune (roo neh), my sweetest little boy. He’s not so little anymore, but always sweet. He’s recently been accepted into the Hades & Hellquin club, and it’s not easy to get accepted by those two elders. I have four boys who are an odd mix of Rex and Hairless. Rune has been getting more hair as he ages, but he still doesn’t have full coverage. The others are Ingo, Inigo, and Balthasar. I got photos of Ingo and Inigo, but Balthasar is not a social guy, and he’s bloody huge and very fast, so no photos of him. Rune likes traveling on the top of my head.

FR1

FR2

FR3

FR4

© C. Ford.

Paul Ryan’s Fantasy Life.

CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.

CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.

Unfortunately, this is not as amusing as the rest of today’s posts. It’s not amusing at all. There’s no more hedging or obfuscation over The Fuck You Plan, Trump has been interviewed, and admitted it will aid rich people and fuck over the poor (and everyone else), and now Ryan is blathering away about just how long he has yearned to rip healthcare away from people. From where I sit, this isn’t fantasy, it’s an obsession, an evil one.

…And, if you were House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), it was a time to dream about how, someday, you would take health care away from millions of poor people.

In a conversation with the National Review’s Rich Lowry on Friday, Ryan bragged about how conservatives now have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to take health coverage away from the most vulnerable Americans.

“So Medicaid,” Ryan told Lowry, “sending it back to the states, capping its growth rate. We’ve been dreaming of this since I’ve been around — since you and I were drinking at a keg. . . . I’ve been thinking about this stuff for a long time. We’re on the cusp of doing something we’ve long believed in.”

Ryan is 47 years old, which means that, if he started “drinking at a keg” early in his college career, he’s fantasized about all the poor people who could be stripped of health care for nearly three decades.

And he’s downright gleeful about finally being able to culminate his long standing obsession. Why? Why are these people voted in to government in the first place? I do not want to belong to a country in which its so-called leaders have long standing fantasies about fucking people over in the worst possible way, and spend their whole lives in pursuit of that fantasy. People like Ryan should be ashamed, and wondering just what in the fuck is wrong with them, but that never seems to happen.

Full story at Think Progress.