From rq, click for full size!
© rq, all rights reserved.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
From rq, click for full size!
© rq, all rights reserved.
Adorable little lizards, from “The”, these were taken in Chile.
© “The”, all rights reserved.
From Kengi, click for full size!
© Kengi, all rights reserved.
A rare capture, a Hairy Woodpecker, who took off after allowing a few shots. Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
In the Tiny Tyrant’s latest interview, he once again went straight back to the past, resurrected old lies, and brought out a couple new ones. Politifact has the fact check, and the truth.
Confronted by his most flagrant falsehoods, President Donald Trump finally faced the question of why he makes so many unsubstantiated claims.
“What have I said that is wrong?” Trump asked.
Trump said his instinct is usually right, and he usually finds evidence supporting his claims that the media and his critics ignore — even as he continued to cite nonexistent evidence.
Here are some of Trump’s most egregious claims from the interview with TIME Washington Bureau Chief Michael Scherer on March 22. Many of the statements are things we’ve debunked again and again.
Fact-checking Trump’s TIME interview on truths and falsehoods.
Yesterday, I had the joy of watching, and capturing a young male Downy Woodpecker, perched in the Lilac, making the portentous decision to invade the finch filled feeder tray. I was lucky enough to get the start of the takeoff, but missed the flight, in spite of continuous shooting. Click for full size!
© C. Ford.
Thousands of people are being evacuated from Balakleya in the Kharkov region of Ukraine, as a massive fire has broken out at a munitions depot, which is said to be the largest in the country. There are reports of explosions and shattered windows.Chaotic scenes with hundreds of vehicles stuck in traffic jams were reported on social media after the Balakleya city administration ordered an emergency evacuation of most of the city.
Videos uploaded by local residents show a huge blaze with what appears to be a missile flying off in a random direction and falling to the ground, as detonations are heard in the background.
Evgeny, who lives near the munitions depot, was one of the first to witness the inferno. He told RT that the incident has been downplayed by the Ukrainian media.
“Ukrainian media report that nothing serious has happened, saying that just one explosion took place and no one was injured. But my friends and I, who saw [the incident] with our own eyes, say that… some people have been injured.”
Explosions are still occurring at the munitions depot, Evgeny said, adding that the entire city of Balakleya has been evacuated.
The civil defense department of the city’s district administration earlier told RIA Novosti that most of the population of Balakleya had been evacuated.
“The first wave of the evacuation has come to an end. Most of the population have been evacuated by buses. Now the buses are returning to evacuate the rest. Specialists are going from house to house checking who remains,” the district administration said.
There have been no immediate reports of any civilian casualty.
RT has multiple videos, as does DelfiTV. Here’s hoping that people stay safe, and that there are no casualties at all, and people will soon be restored to their homes.
Sean Spicer speaks about health care benefits (CNN/screen grab).
See that list in the photo? Those are all things we are about to lose here behind The Gold Curtain. America the Fucked Up. CNN tackled Spicer, who was going with full out bluster, in an attempt to defend this monstrousness. I’m just going to remark on a bit of the stupid, I’m close to overdosing on it already today.
According to Spicer, “older men, older women” who had “gotten passed [sic] maternity age” were being forced to pay for maternity care, driving up the overall cost of insurance.
When, exactly, do men get past maternity age? There are men in their 70s who have very young children, under the age of 5. Also, a lot of women don’t have children until they are in their 40s, so can we at least define this “passed the maternity age” business? Then, if you don’t mind, would you answer as to why you think any of this is your fucking business? Also, y’know, lot of people out there, older ones, who have children who are now having children, and they have a vested interest in them having good healthcare. That sort of thing is called family. You should look it up.
“People who were at the younger end of the age scale were buying end-of-life benefits,” he added.
What, I wonder, do you mean by that one? It’s not in the least uncommon for younger people to make plans for the end of their life, that would be why people make wills, have insurance, and so on, you stupid dipstick of an idiot. What in the fuckety fuck makes you think being younger automatically rules out catastrophic health problems? Accidents? Terminal illness? Not everyone dies at the age of 100something. Most of us won’t make it that far. At your age, Mr. Spicer, I’d think you’d know just how fast it flashes past, and before you know it, you aren’t 25 anymore. Trying to have some safety nets laid out in front of you is one way to prepare, so you can have a good life that isn’t completely wiped out by one unforeseen complication.
The people in charge of the Fuck You Care Plan, now with added Fuck. You.!
Via Raw Story.
ETA: In the comments, I included a link to yet another callous rethuglican, who made a very nasty remark about mammograms. The tweetstream following his notpology is very long, and a good many people brought up a very important point: men also have breasts, and yes, they can get breast cancer too. This is not brought up enough, and men, seriously, if you find you have a lump, get your self to a doctor, immediately! Ignoring such a thing leads to one place: death. Also, manhandle your breasts every month, have a check for anything suspicious. If you have a partner, it can be fun to check each other!
Photo: Tyler Lake.
After a good double face palm, I’m sitting here, staring at a story, shaking my head and sputtering. Oh, I just don’t grok some people. I really don’t. There’s a level of extreme cognitive dissonance that I don’t even understand how people reach in the first place.
The family of a northern Indiana restaurant owner who ICE detained during a routine check-in in February says he’s scheduled for deportation Friday.
Roberto Beristain is the owner of a popular restaurant in Granger called Eddie’s Steak Shed. His family says he came to the United States from Mexico City illegally in 1998. He later obtained documentation to work in the country and checked in with ICE each year.
It was during one of those check ins last month that ICE took Beristain into custody because of an incident in 2000. Roberto and his wife, Helen, were visiting Niagara Falls that year and accidentally crossed into Canada. Officers there detained Roberto when they realized he was in the U.S. illegally. Helen says a lawyer helped get Roberto out on bail, but he was told he had to voluntarily leave the country within a month.
Roberto decided not to self deport because Helen was pregnant at the time. An ICE spokesperson says when Roberto failed to deport himself, his voluntary order revered to a final order of removal, meaning ICE could detain him. They didn’t act on that order for more than a decade.
[…]
During an interview earlier this month, Helen said she voted for President Donald Trump because she supports his immigration policies. She said criminals should be deported, but she didn’t think her husband would face that fate.
“[Trump] did say the good people would not be deported, the good people would be checked,” Helen said.
For Chrissakes, how do you, I uh, okay, I give up. I don’t know how anyone could think this way. It’s a mystery to me. I would have thought that someone who loved a person who was initially an illegal immigrant, then legal, would at least have had more sympathy for other immigrants, if not compassion, but no. I guess all those other ones are bad ones.
Via IPM.
(Photo: Courtesy of Pleasant Run Elementary School).
INDIANAPOLIS — The day should have been one of glory and celebration for five fourth-graders.
The Pleasant Run Elementary students had just won a robotics challenge at Plainfield High School, and the students — new to bot competition this year — were one step closer to the Vex IQ State Championship.
The team is made up of 9- and 10-year-olds. Two are African American and three are Latino.
As the group, called the Pleasant Run PantherBots, and their parents left the challenge last month in Plainfield, Ind., competing students from other Indianapolis-area schools and their parents were waiting for them in the parking lot.
“Go back to Mexico!” two or three kids screamed at their brown-skin peers and their parents, according to some who were there.
This verbal attack had spilled over from the gymnasium. While the children were competing, one or two parents disparaged the Pleasant Run kids with racist comments — and loud enough for the Pleasant Run families to hear.
“They were pointing at us and saying that ‘Oh my God, they are champions of the city all because they are Mexican. They are Mexican, and they are ruining our country,’ ” said Diocelina Herrera, the mother of PantherBot Angel Herrera-Sanchez.
These are minority students from the east side of the city, poor kids from a Title I school.
“For the most part, the robotics world is kind of a white world,” said Lisa Hopper, the team’s coach and a Pleasant Run second-grade teacher. “They’re just not used to seeing a team like our kids.
I have no doubt it’s true that they are not accustomed to seeing a team like the PantherBots, but how is that an excuse, in any way? That is disgusting behaviour, and I have no doubt if slurs were being slung at their milk white children, they would be beyond offended, and threaten to sue. This is the exact sort of shit that the Tiny Tyrant has enabled, and I have no doubt the bigots are all faithful Trumpholes. And I’m supposed to listen to their “side of things”? I don’t think so.
…Three weeks after the incident, the PantherBots won the Create Award — for best robot design and engineering — at the state championships, which qualified them for the Vex IQ World Championship next month in Louisville. They will compete there with students from all over the world.
And they say they’ll walk in with confidence.
“They yelled out rude comments, and I think that they can talk all they want because at the end we’re still going to Worlds,” said team leader Elijah Goodwin, 10. “It’s not going to affect us at all. I’m not surprised because I’m used to this kind of behavior.
The fact that any 10 year old child is accustomed to such vile behaviour should break the heart of any adult, it should certainly affect those who are parents, but this is not the case with Trumpholes, no. A brown child just couldn’t possibly be as smart as a white child. And they wonder why they are called racist and deplorable.
“I was afraid they would let it get in their heads and wig them out,” Hopper said. “We sat down and talked to our kids, and obviously we let them share their feelings.
“They were on top of it already,” she said. “They said: ‘We know they are mean. We know they were jealous. We’re not going to let it bother us.’ One of our guys said ‘to take stuff like that and let it make you stronger.’ ”
Just a few months ago, the PantherBots knew nothing about robotics.
The low-income school was given a grant to develop a robotics program. Fourth-grade teachers were asked to identify 10 students who had potential and exhibited leadership qualities.
And yet, we have Trumpholes in the Regime who think that no poor people should be getting in on that education business, oh no.
A huge shout out to the PantherBots, for a job well done, a great attitude, and best of luck at the Worlds! These are the kids who would grow up to make America great, if they were allowed.
Via USA Today.
Metropolis.
At least this slice of Christian bugnuttery gave me an excuse to use an image from Fritz Lang’s brilliant Metropolis. The rest of this, oh, I barely have words. I did burst out laughing, but that can’t be the only reaction, because like it or not, there are a wealth of people who will believe this absolute shite. “The Robots are coming to get you!” It’s like the death panels of yore being given the Metropolis treatment.
Rabid conspiracy theorist and End Times radio host Rick Wiles dedicated his “TruNews” radio program yesterday to delivering an extended warning that the government will soon dispatch an army of flesh-eating robots to devour uncooperative human beings.
Wiles and Steve Quayle, who is a frequent guest on his program, spent nearly two hours discussing the existence of giants, the prevalence of cannibalism and the looming Tribulation, with Wiles at one point warning that “the hatred of Christians will become so great in the Last Days that people will be encouraged to kill and eat them.”
Oh gack. I have no respect or regard for Christianity, however, you may have all the reassurances in the world I have no interest in killing or eating people, regardless of belief. Where in the fuck do they get ideas like this? Yeah, I know, projection, but still, this is seriously screwed up. You honestly have nothing else to do, except sit around and dream up one insane fantasy after another?
To this end, Wiles cited a 2009 Wired magazine article that reported that a company was working on developing robots that could refuel themselves by ingesting biomass from the environment. Despite the fact that the company itself stated that the robots would rely on plant matter, Wiles remains convinced that they will in fact fuel themselves by feasting on human flesh.
Sigh. So, we’ve all seen those roving bands of supposedly vegetarian robots wandering around, right? No? Well, what about all those corpse eating robots you see on battlefields? No again. Tsk.
“Our military is developing an army of human flesh-eating robots,” Wiles warned. “If you do not conform to the requirements of this new society, they’re going to send a robot to your house to eat you for lunch. That may sound extremely radical, but that’s where they’re taking it. They will reduce the human population. You will conform!”
That sounds like an excellent reason to strip the military budget! Let’s get right on that one, okay? I thought the Religious Reich was in love with the military, and us lefty liberals against it. So, the military is going to turn on rabid neocons? I’d like to see that one. Or are us lefty liberal types going to take over, and send out the ravenous robots? I haven’t received any robots, no agenda, and no instructions.
No, it doesn’t sound extremely radical. It sounds like the plot of a book written by Vox Day. I’m all for a reduced population, but I think you have the flesh eating robots confused with the Borg, and the proper tagline is “resistance is futile.” Get it right, guys. I am reminded of a long ago SNL sketch:
Via RWW.
Oklahoma State Rep. George Faught (Facebook).
Christians. The more you know about them, the more certain you become that this barbaric and disgusting religion has no place at all in any society which deems itself civilised. Not that I’d go so far as to describe America as civilised, it isn’t, especially when you line it up next to actually civilised countries. However, the bloodthirsty, empathy-free hatred practiced by Christians, too many of them infesting the Regime, does not speak well, even in a nation more barbaric than most.
On Tuesday, the Oklahoma House met to discuss engrossment of its controversial House Bill-1549, which would prohibit anyone from seeking an abortion in the case of a genetic abnormality.
Oklahoma State Rep. Cory Williams (D) asked Rep. George Faught — who authored the bill — if rape is the “will of God.”
“Well, you know, if you read the Bible, there’s actually a couple circumstances where that happened,” Faught began. “The Lord uses all circumstances. I mean, you can go down that path, but it’s a reality unfortunately,” he said.
Williams followed up, asking if incest is the “will of God.”
“Same answer. Doesn’t deal with this bill,” Faught said. Williams argued that the questions matter to the legislation, given that Faught was unwilling to make exceptions in the case of rape or incest. “You are proffering a divine intervention as the reason why you won’t do that and so I think it is very important.”
Well, Faught is correct that the bible, an incredibly disgusting pastiche of tales, has rape and incest in it. More than just a couple of circumstances. There’s actually a fucktonne of rape in the bible, quite a lot of it is commanded by that ideal sociopath worshiped by Christians, Jehovah. Jehovah doesn’t have the slightest issue with rape, thinks it’s rather dandy. If you actually read the bible, which most Christians don’t, the sheer amount of rape in the bible is damn near overwhelming. Incest isn’t looked down on much, either. Of course it depends, many of the stories in the bible have more than one version, most of them contradictory. Jehovah didn’t think it was a bad thing to slaughter or sacrifice children, either. I suppose we should all count ourselves lucky none of the Christian sociopaths are trying to find a way to legislate that one.
Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
Numbers 31: 17, 18.
Nice, ennit? That’s said by that wonderful hero Moses, by the way.
“This body wants to know — and myself personally — whether you believe rape and incest are actually the will of God,” Williams questioned.
“It’s a great question to ask,” said Faught. “And, obviously if it happens in someone’s life, it may not be the best thing that ever happened, but — so you’re saying that God is not sovereign with every activity that happens in someone’s life and can’t use anything and everything in someone’s life and I disagree with that.”
If it’s such a great question to ask, why don’t you just come right out with an answer? Easy enough: yes. Because that’s what you mean, but you don’t want to come right out and say it. Even Christians know this shit is disgusting, repugnant, and barbaric, which is why the little dance all around the question. They know they are deliberately backward people, who find any reason to indulge in monstrous behaviour.
And yes, you know, I fully understand just how aghast many Christians would be at the thought of saying rape and incest is okey dokey and “God” approved, but when it comes right down to it, you aren’t aghast enough, because the question involved is a woman’s right to bodily autonomy, and that’s where most all Christians screech to a halt. “Well, I don’t think that rape and incest stuff is right, but abortion, well, that’s wrong, and…” So, in the end, some Christians might find it in themselves to be oh so charitable and provide a rape or incest exception, but still be just fine with grinding women into the dirt when it comes to viewing them as full human beings who have every right to make their own medical decisions.
So many Christians just love to rail against people of other religious beliefs, one in particular these days, and often cite their horrendous treatment of women. Ah, that special blindness. Why in the fuck would a Christian think they treat women any better? A pox on all of you.
Via Raw Story.
