Hydrophilic beads are fun to play with – they bounce! They also hold and disperse scent nicely.
© C. Ford.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Hydrophilic beads are fun to play with – they bounce! They also hold and disperse scent nicely.
© C. Ford.
Black-capped Chickadee, click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Woman wears Donald Trump mask in racist video (screen grab).
Old Dominion University revealed on Tuesday that it was investigating a hate-filled video that was posted on YouTube.
Throughout the video, which has now been removed due for violating YouTube’s community standards, a woman in a Donald Trump mask can be seen dancing and waving a firearm.
The woman wears a shirt with a picture of Donald Trump and the words, “My President Is White. Again.”
Messages on the screen read, “N****r History Month” and “Kill All N****rs,” while rap music playing in the background promotes lynching, white power and the Ku Klux Klan.
In a statement, Old Dominion University said that an investigation had been launched because the university’s logo could be seen in on a sweatshirt in the video.
You can see the video in the link above, but I recommend a very strong stomach, and an irony meter which won’t explode in your face. I couldn’t make it through the whole thing, but from the start, it’s obvious Ms. White Power is attempting to rap. Yeah. Hate is almost always allied with stupid, and apparently, a serious case of being oblivious to, well, everything. Once again, hate also displays the inherent cowardice of masking up. The university is investigating, and I hope Ms. White Power is kicked out on her lily white ass.
Full story here.
FILE PHOTO – A bathroom sign welcomes both genders at the Cacao Cinnamon coffee shop in Durham, North Carolina, United States on May 3, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake/File Photo.
A group of global investors with $11 trillion in managed assets told Texas on Tuesday not to enact legislation restricting access to bathrooms for transgender people, saying it is discriminatory and bad for business.
The “Texas Privacy Act,” or Senate Bill 6, has been marked as a priority for Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, a Republican and conservative Christian who guides the legislative agenda in the Republican-controlled state Senate. He said the measure protected the privacy and safety of Texans.
The bill on a flashpoint issue in the United States is similar to a law enacted last year in North Carolina that led to economic boycotts and the loss of major sporting events, costing the state an estimated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
“The bathroom bill was bad for North Carolina and it will be very bad for Texas,” New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, a Democrat, told a teleconference, adding it was the first time investors of this size opposed the legislation.
[…]
Springer said institutional investors including BlackRock, Alliance Bernstein, T. Rowe Price and state comptrollers and treasurers from places including New York and California sent a letter on Tuesday to Patrick and other Texas leaders calling on them to drop the legislation.
“As professional investors, we know that discrimination is simply bad for business,” Matthew Patsky, CEO of Trillium Asset Management, which signed the letter, told the teleconference.
The investors did not give specific actions they would take if the legislation were enacted.
Might be nice if they had some specific actions in mind, because I imagine they will be needed. Hateful bigots hold onto their hate like it was their last breath. A warning isn’t much good without an action to carry it through. It’s a nice thought and all, but nice thoughts don’t go all that far.
Patrick has previously said the threats of economic damage to Texas were overblown. A prominent Texas business group estimates the measure could cost the state billions of dollars.
[…]
A National Football League spokesman said this month Texas lawmakers could hurt the football-loving state’s chances to attract a future Super Bowl if they enact such a law.
Ah, hand-egg. Well, that might do the trick.
Full story here.
Trump speaks to supporters at a rally in Melbourne, Florida (screen grab).
A Florida pastor has recounted his experience at the Trump rally in Melbourne, Florida. To say he wasn’t impressed is quite the understatement. His child was traumatized.
Joel Tooley, lead pastor at First Church Of The Nazarene in Melbourne, said that both he and his daughter were traumatized after attending President Donald Trump’s rally in Florida over the weekend.
In a lengthy Facebook post written after Trump’s Saturday rally, Tooley explains that he had not supported the Republican presidential candidate but he felt that attending a presidential speech would be a good civics lesson for his daughter.
[…]
“People were being ushered into a deeply religious experience…and it made me completely uncomfortable,” the pastor recalls. “I felt like people were here to worship an ideology along with the man who was leading it. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the song per se – it was this inexplicable movement that was happening in the room. It was a religious zeal.”
Tooley describes First Lady Melania Trump’s reading of the Lord’s Prayer as “theatrical and manipulative.”
“I can’t explain it, but I felt sick,” he notes. “People across the room were reciting it as if it were a pep squad cheer. At the close of the prayer, the room erupted in cheering. It was so uncomfortable.”
After the president began speaking, Tooley says that Trump fans squared off against protesters in the crowd.
“Two ladies in front of them began seething and screaming in their face while shaking their Trump signs at [the protesters],” he writes. “As they continued chanting, the people around them became violently enraged. One angry man grabbed the lady’s arm – that’s when I went into action. I barged through the crowd and yelled at them to back off.”
“My 11-year-old daughter was clinging to my arm, sobbing in fear,” Tooley reveals. “The two angry, screaming ladies looked at me, both of them raised their middle finger at me in my face and repeatedly yelled, ‘F*#% YOU!’ Repeatedly.”
These are the people who think they comprise American greatness. I imagine they would have pressed assault charges on anyone who dared to to flip the bird at their little darlings.
I raised my voice and calmly said, “These ladies have the right to do what they are doing and they are harming no one; this is America and they a right to express themselves in this way. They are harming no one.” A couple of other people around me stepped in and supported me in protecting them as a barrier, as well.
My daughter was shaking in fear as she clung to me. The one man behind the protesters shoved himself forward, grabbed the lady by the arm and screamed with multiple expletives, “I’m going to take you out! This is my president and nobody has the right to disrespect him and nobody has the right to keep me from hearing him!”
Ah, the amazing reasonableness of the Trump fanatic. Funny how they didn’t notice all the people yelling and making noise were the Trump supporters.
Tooley states that he eventually lost track of what Trump was saying because of the ongoing scuffles.
“My kid was shaken – she had just seen some of the worst of humanity,” the pastor laments in his Facebook post. “But, at the end of the day, what I felt from his leadership in this experience was actually horrifying. There was palpable fear in the room. There was thick anger and vengeance. He was counting on it.”
You can read the whole Facebook post here. So, we don’t just have to be concerned with a maniacal, unstable tyrant, the possibility of nuclear war, and fascism, but there’s a cultish thing going, too. Times continue to be interesting. What I wouldn’t give for uninteresting times.
© DonkeyHotey.
Nearly a dozen Jewish community centers reported phoned-in bomb threats on Monday, following a disturbing uptick in anti-Semitic scares and harassment in recent months. Yet President Trump — known for immediately tweeting his outrage over international Islamic attacks and threats on U.S. soil before all the facts are known— stayed silent until Tuesday morning.
[…]
“Hatred and hate-motivated violence of any kind have no place in a country founded on the promise of individual freedom,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in response to a request by NBC News reporter Peter Alexander on Monday. “The President has made it abundantly clear that these actions are unacceptable.”
But the president had not said such actions “are unacceptable” as of Monday night. In fact, it took until Tuesday morning for the president to respond to the wave of anti-Semitic threats at all. During remarks from the National Museum of African American History, Trump said, “Anti-Semitism is horrible, and it’s going to stop.” Trump also said he would never pass up an opportunity to denounce anti-Semitism.
“Wherever I get a chance, I do it,” Trump said.
That’s just a lie though, isn’t it, Donny? A bigly, yuuuuuuge lie. You couldn’t even be arsed to mention it on Holocaust Remembrance Day. I’d call that a chance, a yuuuuge chance, actually, to address anti-Semitism.
In a memorable exchange with Jewish reporter Jake Turx during a press conference last week, Trump interrupted Turx’s question about the wave of anti-Semitic threats, saying it was “not a fair question” and demanding that the reporter “sit down.” Trump went on to defend himself as “the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life.”
Yes, well, the Tiny Tyrant is always the best, most, or least of something or other. So, as usual, that’s saying nothing at all.
The administration has been largely silent when it comes to attacks on Jews (and Muslims) thus far. On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the White House released a presidential proclamation that omitted the words “Jewish” and “Jews.” Prominent anti-Semites like Richard Spencer and former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke endorsed Trump’s candidacy and presidency, as ThinkProgress previously reported. And his supporters have long harassed and sent death threats to Jewish reporters.
The president and other administration officials have been quick to condemn horrific incidents that do not exist, however. Trump recently suggested that something horrific had taken place in Sweden, allowing him to justify plans to restrict travel to the United States.
On Tuesday, Steve Goldstein, the executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, issued a harsh critique of Trump’s denouncement, saying that the president’s “sudden acknowledgement of Anti-Semitism is a Band-Aid on the cancer of Anti-Semitism that has infected his own Administration.”
“His statement today is a pathetic asterisk of condescension after weeks in which he and his staff have committed grotesque acts and omissions reflecting Anti-Semitism, yet day after day have refused to apologize and correct the record,” Goldstein said. “Make no mistake: The Anti-Semitism coming out of this Administration is the worst we have ever seen from any Administration.
Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, Circa 1500.
The Trump Circus spokespeople have a new, stupid spin on all the money being wasted by the Tiny Tyrant’s need to be hangin’ with his cronies constantly, rather than staying in the white house, like he fucking promised he would, and working. The new excuse? Oh, why being in Florida allows everyday folks, y’know, regular Americans to have access to the prez. Trouble is, that access costs $200,000, taxes, and $14,000 per year in dues. That’s around four times the median income for all those regular Americans. A person could get the feeling that the spokespeople aren’t even phoning it in at this point.
The three consecutive weekends the Tiny Tyrant has already spent in Florida have cost taxpayers about $10 million, which is slightly less than what President Obama spent on travel for a whole year.
The president — whose first budget proposal would eliminate a program that helps provide poor Americans with lawyers, among other cuts — doesn’t seem worried about the burden his unnecessary trips to Mar-a-Lago may place on taxpayers. CNN reports that, with the exception of next weekend, businesses in the Palm Beach area “say they have been told to expect the President every weekend until May.”
Every weekend until May. That’s a lot of picked pockets – Everyday Folks, Regular Americans are going to be picked clean, bone dry, by the Tiny Tyrant’s need to feel validated. None of this seems to bother Trump supporters much, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out why. If it were Clinton doing this, the howls of outrage would be deafening – “how dare she go on vacation every weekend at our expense!?” and so on. Same applies if it had been President Obama doing this – repubs would never shut the fuck up about how awful, evil, and immoral such an action would be, but Tiny Tyrant? “Oh, that’s okay, we don’t mind that he’s stripping us of all our rights and protections, picking our pockets and destroying our future, it’s greeeeaaaaat!” I just don’t grok it. At all.
Along with removing a very important program which helps people with legal problems (linked above ^) they generally have no recourse to deal with, the rethugs have finally gotten an idiot in office who will go along with killing off the NEA (federal arts funding), public broadcasting, AmeriCorps, and educational television for children. None of these programs cost much at all, and cutting them cannot be justified under “budget!”, but the right wing ideologists have hated them for ages.
While Trump spent millions in taxpayer dollars on travel during his first month in office, his team put together a budget proposal that would cut cultural institutions and important services for poor people.
The proposal would eliminate “longstanding conservative targets like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Legal Services Corporation, AmeriCorps and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities,” the New York Times reports. “Most of the programs cost under $500 million annually, a pittance for a government that is projected to spend about $4 trillion this year.”
Important Reading:
Trump’s first month of travel expenses cost taxpayers just less than what Obama spent in a year.
Trump spox says Mar-a-Lago makes him accessible to ‘regular Americans.’ Memberships cost $200,000.
Trump’s first budget would end program to help low-income Americans get lawyers.
Matt Damon as William Garin in The Great Wall. Jason Boland/Universal Pictures.
Chinese director Zhang Yimou, of Hero and House of Flying Daggers fame, made his English-language debut with The Great Wall, which opened Friday. But in a story set in ancient China, Matt Damon’s character sticks out like a sore thumb. The presence of his pale mug in movie posters and trailers drew backlash even before the film’s release. “We have to stop perpetuating the racist myth that only a white man can save the world,” Fresh Off the Boat actress Constance Wu wrote in a Twitter tirade. “We don’t need salvation.” Damon and Yimou both publicly defended the film, with Damon calling it “historical fantasy.”
[…]
The Great Wall exemplifies a related Hollywood trend where white characters play a dominant role in a foreign situation, while nonwhite locals are reduced to sidekicks or people “to be killed or rescued—or to have sex with,” as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen put it recently. Vogue recently added to the outrage over cultural tone-deafness by presenting Karlie Kloss, an American model of German and Danish descent, as a geisha—for the magazine’s diversity issue, no less. Vogue later removed the photographs from its website and Kloss apologized for her participation, but it was yet another episode in America’s long history of whitewashing Asians. We’ll leave you with this brief history of the same. Dig around and you’re sure to find plenty more.
Mother Jones provides a very brief history of Hollywood’s more infamous whitewashing efforts when it comes Asian-based movies, starting with Charlie Chan in 1926, and ending with The Great Wall in 2017. Click over to see them all.
Matt Damon plays a European mercenary who saves China from monsters in The Great Wall. Actress Constance Wu takes issue: “We like our color and our culture and our strengths and our own stories,” she writes. “Hollywood is supposed to be about making great stories. So make them.”
Well, in response to The Great Wall’s upcoming release, people got the #ThankYouMattDamon hashtag trending, and it’s a hilariously sarcastic way for people to “thank” Damon for his all that’s he’s done to help stop people from thinking only white men can save the day. *eye-roll*
Please sign, make your voice known. We must make a stand, we cannot fall in resignation.
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, ’n’ how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ’n’ how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, ’n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ’n’ how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ’n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ’n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
MISSION STATEMENT.
We are a global coalition affirming the radical nature of art. We believe that art can help counter the rising rhetoric of right-wing populism, fascism and the increasingly stark expressions of xenophobia, racism, sexism, homophobia and unapologetic intolerance.We know that freedom is never granted – it is won. Justice is never given – it is exacted. Both must be fought for and protected, yet their promise has seldom been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp, as at this moment.
As artists, it is our job and our duty to reimagine and reinvent social relations threatened by right-wing populist rule. It is our responsibility to stand together in solidarity. We will not go quietly. It is our role and our opportunity, using our own particular forms, private and public spaces, to engage people in thinking together and debating ideas, with clarity, openness and resilience.
OUR PROJECT.
A series of contemporary art exhibitions and actions that confront, head on, the rise of right-wing populism in the US, Europe and elsewhere. Exhibitions featuring critically engaged contemporary artists and taking place in central art institutions as well as alternative spaces, that will bring into public view statements, questions and reflections on the state we are in. To do what art has always endeavored: to help envision and shape the world in which we want to live.Proceeds will go to arts & activist causes and building the coalition.
Beautiful snowdrops from Kengi. Oh, to see flowers this time of year! Click for full size.
© Kengi, all rights reserved.
(AD}
A young squirrel noted the feeding stations being filled, and I noticed young squirrel. Told him no, because dinosaur photo day. I was back inside, where I normally am to shoot birds, with the window open. Young squirrel looks at me, I say no again. Young squirrel opts for the pity position, curling one hand in against the chest, a signifier of just how effing cold it is, have pity! No is reiterated. Young squirrel goes the full court pity position, with both hands curled in, it’s really really really really freezing cold! I remarked to young squirrel that he should not have chosen a day with the sun shining and the temp a very unseasonable 54 F.
© C. Ford.
House Finch, click for full size.
© C. Ford.