Charly had the good fortune to spot these visitors and grab his camera. Bramblings, Fringilla montifringilla. Beautiful dinosaurs! Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Charly had the good fortune to spot these visitors and grab his camera. Bramblings, Fringilla montifringilla. Beautiful dinosaurs! Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved.
White-breasted Nuthatch, click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Gov. Paul LePage (YouTube/screen grab).
Supreme asshole bigot LePage is at it again, this time saying that Rep. John Lewis needed to show more gratitude to white people. C’mon, boy, tap those shoes and tip that hat, yeah? All the racist goons are delighting in slamming Rep. Lewis and all people of colour.
The Portland Press Herald reports that LePage slammed Lewis for questioning President-elect Donald Trump’s legitimacy during a regular appearance on a local talk radio show, and he said Lewis needed to show more gratitude to past white presidents who worked to free black people from slavery.
“John Lewis ought to look at history,” the governor told the George Hale and Ric Tyler Show on the Bangor-based radio station WVOM. “It was Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves, it was Rutherford B. Hayes and Ulysses S. Grant who fought against Jim Crow laws. A simple thank you would suffice.”
Christopher Cousins of the Bangor Daily News writes that LePage is simply incorrect when it comes to the history of Jim Crow laws, however, as Hayes agreed to “an informal deal after a contested election that gave him the White House in exchange for promising to pull Northern troops out of the South,” which thus “allowed Jim Crow laws to take root.”
As usual, white bigots who just can’t keep their mouths shut also can’t manage to check a few facts first. How about a “fuck you, go back to school” instead of a thank you? I think that would suffice.
LePage, who this past summer was caught on tape calling a Maine lawmaker a “son of a b*tch socialist c*cksucker,” also criticized the American left for being “so hateful” and “trying to bully us out of believing our constitution.”
:Laughs: Oh, there really isn’t any need for commentary, bigoted cons always manage to swallow both their feet before anyone can get a word in edgewise.
Via Raw Story.
People are a tad upset with republicans, as Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers found out…
I think people should shout a little louder, you could still hear some of the bullshit.
Via Raw Story.
Retired Lt. Gen Michael Flynn, left, his son Michael G. Flynn, second from left, and Boris Epshteyn, a spokesman for President-elect Donald Trump, third from left, board an elevator at Trump Tower in New York on November 17, 2016. CREDIT: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File.
On Monday night, Michael Flynn Jr. — son of and former chief of staff for President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn — tweeted out a story published on Voltaire Network entitled, “General Flynn’s Proposals to Reform Intelligence.”
The story, published last month with a Damascus dateline and authored by Thierry Meyssan — a 9/11 truther who published a book in 2002 entitled, “The Big Lie” — previews how Flynn plans to rollback “the big reforms that took place during the Bush and Obama years.”
Perhaps most significantly, the story says the “radical overhaul” Flynn is planning involves the elimination of the office of the Director of National Intelligence, an office created by President Bush in 2004, with power centralized under Flynn instead.
“The 16 agencies should no longer be accountable to the National Intelligence Director but only to the National Security Adviser,” Meyssan writes. “In other words, they will be accountable to General Flynn personally.”
The story cites anonymous sources, which some informed observers believe include Flynn Jr. himself.
[…]
In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly bashed reputable outlets like CNN as “FAKE NEWS” while linking to content from staunchly pro-Trump sites like One America News and LifeZette. In his most recent post on Gab, a social media platform that caters to white nationalists, Flynn Jr. struck a similarly anti-mainstream media tone, writing, “Im sick of these fake news media a$$holes pulling at strings, trying to pit Trumps cabinet against each other. Piece of advice, good number of his cabinet sat across from (in @GenFlynn case interrogated) members of Al Qaeda so nothing LSM can OR WILL EVER do to shake these TRUE PATRIOTS!!”
The full, depressing story is at Think Progress. We are in so much trouble.
Mark Trahant has an in-depth article about the problems of no healthcare. In related news, Trump’s Health and Human Services pick is busy trying to fan the stench of corruption away from himself, but the stink is speaking loudly:
Washington (CNN)Rep. Tom Price last year purchased shares in a medical device manufacturer days before introducing legislation that would have directly benefited the company, raising new ethics concerns for President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services secretary.
Price bought between $1,001 to $15,000 worth of shares last March in Zimmer Biomet, according to House records reviewed by CNN.Less than a week after the transaction, the Georgia Republican congressman introduced the HIP Act, legislation that would have delayed until 2018 a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regulation that industry analysts warned would significantly hurt Zimmer Biomet financially once fully implemented.
Full story at CNN.
Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs.
If you’re a fan of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, or just an adventurous and generous person, here’s a scent to dissent and help with, Tyrranophobia.
Fear of Tyrants
This has jack all to do with Yule or winter, but it sure does apply to current events. Proceeds from Tyrannophobia benefit the ACLU, thereby helping stem the imminent assault on civil rights. Birch tar, tea leaf, and black raspberry strangled in an iron fist.
Tyrranophobia at BPAL. Yes, I ordered the Tyrranophobia, and the Cryophobia.
The various posters made by Shepard Fairey for this week’s Inauguration in Washington, DC (via Kickstarter).
(graphic by Hrag Vartanian/Hyperallergic).
The #J20 Art Strike is imminent and we’ve compiled a running list of spaces that will be closing for Inauguration Day. The Art Strike is intended as an act of solidarity with the broader slate of #J20 events and, as the movement’s site puts it, as a
tactic among others to combat the normalization of Trumpism — a toxic mix of white supremacy, misogyny, xenophobia, militarism, and oligarchic rule. Like any tactic, it is not an end in itself, but rather an intervention that will ramify into the future. It is not a strike against art, theater, or any other cultural form. It is an invitation to motivate these activities anew, to reimagine these spaces as places where resistant forms of thinking, seeing, feeling, and acting can be produced.
Since there are thousands of spaces across the country, we decided to start local and contact New York-area galleries and art nonprofits to see which would be closing — museums will be listed in a separate post. Below this list is another listing of those spaces organizing special programming for January 20, the day of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Full article at Hyperallergic.
(image courtesy Ana Cecilia Alvarez, Beth Fiedorek, and Alexandra Leon).
In solidarity with the nationwide #J20 movement, students at CalArts in Southern California are organizing a walkout “against the president of Donald J. Trump on inauguration day, January 20,” in their words.
Organized by students Ana Cecilia Alvarez, Beth Fiedorek, and Alexandra Leon, the event is slated to take place at noon local time. The official flyer includes the #J20 Art Strike statement that was released last week. CalArts is considered one of the leading art schools in the country, if not the world.
Hyperallergic reached out to the organizers to understand their motivation for the action. “Organizing around J20 at CalArts was catalyzed by that particular reaction that occurs to political angst when it meets a vacuum,” Fiedorek and Leon told Hyperallergic.
Full article at Hyperallergic.
Bluejay, click for full size.
© C. Ford.
CREDIT: AP Photo/Scott Heppell, File.
Less than a week ago, Trump, via his ‘team’ announced there would be no new foreign deals, in an attempt to quiet critics who keep noting he will not deal with his conflicts of interest. It was also stated that all pending deals would be off the table. Naturally, it didn’t take long for Trump to blithely break his word, which is utterly worthless. As usual, Trump found a way to skate around his statements, and he’s busy sliming over Scotland once again.
A multi-million dollar expansion of President-elect Donald Trump’s golf resort in Scotland is reportedly underway — less than a week after Trump’s attorney told reporters that the president-elect had, in an effort to distance himself from conflicts of interests with regards to his businesses, “ordered that all pending deals be terminated.”
According to the Guardian, which first reported the story on Sunday, the Trump Organization is moving forward with a plan to greatly expand the president-elect’s Trump International Golf Course Scotland, located in Aberdeenshire. The plans include construction of another 18-hole golf course, a new 450-room five-star hotel, a timeshare complex, and a private housing estate. The expansion would greatly increase the value of the property to the Trump Organization, according to the Guardian’s report.
A spokesperson for the Trump Organization told the Guardian that “implementing future phasing of existing properties does not constitute a new transaction” and therefore the Trump Organization plans to proceed with the deal, despite Trump’s assertion that he would no longer pursue foreign investments relating to his company.
I doubt the residents of Balmedie, Scotland are pleased by this move. If you don’t know why Trump is almost universally loathed and reviled by residents of Scotland, have a read. Then you can start wondering which parts of uStates are going to get smothered under the same Trump slime.
Elizabeth Warren speaks to reporters at MLK Breakfast in Boston (Gintautas Dumcius/Twitter).
Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke out on behalf of Rep. John Lewis, and normally I’d be fine with that, but on reading, there was a howling screech of brakes in the brain:
“Donald Trump hasn’t put his life on the line for anyone except Donald Trump,” Warren said. “John Lewis has earned the right to raise questions about [election] legitimacy.
“Earned the right.” No. No, no, no. This is a very bad sign of just how quickly fascist shit was normalised. Since when does anyone have to earn the right to criticize government? If that was the case, all those yapping republicans would have had to shut up over the last eight years. Not only that, but with the electoral college clusterfuck, the casual dismissal of 3 million votes, and all the highly questionable activities in Russia, who the hell wouldn’t be raising questions about the legitimacy of the election? (Not counting Trumpoids, these are not thinking people.) Rep. Lewis is absolutely right in raising questions, someone has to have the courage to do it. That said, as a citizen of this country, he has every right to ask all the questions he likes, this is not something which needs to be earned. Rep. Lewis is far from alone in raising these questions too.
I imagine Sen. Warren was trying to emphasize Rep. Lewis’s integrity and achievements, but this was not done well. We all need to take care of how we express ourselves, and to make sure we are not finding our language tumbling down the slippery slide of fascism.
The Sunday Herald, Scotland.
President Trump: The Inauguration.
4pm, BBC One/ STV.After a long absence, The Twilight Zone returns with one of the most ambitious, expensive, and controversial productions in broadcast history. Sci-fi writers have dabbled often with alternative history stories – among the most common is the “What If The Nazis Had Won The Second World War” setting – but this huge interactive virtual reality project, which will unfold on TV, in the press, and on Twitter over the next four years, sets out to build and ongoing alternative present. The story begins in a nightmarish version of 2017 in which huge sections of the US electorate have somehow been duped into voting to make Donald Trump president. It sounds far-fetched, and it is, but as it goes on it becomes more and more chillingly plausible. Today’s feature-length opener concentrates on the gaudy inauguration of President Trump, and the stirrings of protest and despair surrounding the ceremony, while pundits speculate gravely on what lies ahead. It’s a flawed piece, but a disturbing glimpse of the horrors we could stumble into, if we’re not careful.
A standing ovation to the writers at Scotland’s The Sunday Herald.
Via Raw Story.