From Kengi, so sweet. Click for full size.
© Kengi, all rights reserved.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
From Kengi, so sweet. Click for full size.
© Kengi, all rights reserved.
Beautiful, serene scenes from Giliell. I love these so much. Click for full size.
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Gorgeous photos of European Blue Tits, from Charly. Click for full size!
© Charly, all rights reserved.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Current Hours: 1,042. Skeins Used: 150.
Today, the skies are achingly clear, and the sun is strong and bright, it beckons one outside. Unfortunately, the message of sky, sun! is a treacherous one. -18 F today; there are frostbite warnings if you stay outside for over 10 minutes, and you can see every breath you take. Photos taken from the safety of my studio.
© C. Ford.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
It’s way past time to get back to work on the Tree Quilt. It’s been so long, I don’t even remember what I had planned to do with the bit all the way to the right, where I last left off. Oh well.
Oh, is it possible for us atheists to be more evil? According to some, yes. The luridly purple (and highly inaccurate) prose of Christian fanatics know no bounds, and now includes the utter horror of atheists attempting to abort a birthed baby from thousands of years ago. Right, that just makes all kinds of sense! The actual problem? Oh, the usual – evil atheists and satanists are allowed to put up their own seasonal displays, messages, and billboards, quelle horreur!
The haters of all-things-Christmas, some of whom claim to be “freedom” lovers, are busy again this December trying to legally abort the baby in the manger.
If they could pull this off, it would be the ultimate late-term abortion, since that baby was born 2,000 years ago and lives eternally as the King of Kings.
Oh FFS. The idiocy is simply too much to bear.
The atheist-Satan alliance is becoming more visible than ever. Bill Donohue of the Catholic League noted in a recent press release that atheists and Satanists have the same goals: they hate Christianity.
Most satanists are atheists, who happily use satanism to smack fanatical Christians by means of using their own twisted logic. As for actual Satanists? They’re Christians too, and should be embraced by Christians, after all, you wouldn’t have a religion at all without your scapegoat, would you? It’s rather silly, the bad rap Lucifer gets, given that almost all of the vicious, bloodthirsty killing in the bible is the direct action of Yahweh. (If you haven’t read Drunk With Blood: God’s Killings in the Bible, by Steve Wells, I highly recommend it.)
So, if you’re actually going to believe all that silly shit, looks like Christians are on the wrong side. Nothing new there. I just can’t continue quoting the idiotic column, but it is a goldmine of paranoid idiocy, so if you’re in the mood, here it is.
This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. Some of you, perhaps, have already heard what it contains but I would just like to read it to you: ‘ … We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.
British PM Neville Chamberlain, 1938
Make no mistake: Donald Trump’s Administration is coming for Indian Country—we’re suddenly big targets on his radar. We haven’t had quite this big of a place on the national and international stage in a long time. It makes sense—Native communities have about 25% of the nation’s on-shore oil and gas reserves and developable resources and this upcoming administration is oil-thirsty.
And they’re coming for what Tribes have; Dakota Access was the warm-up. Trump’s line-up of cabinet nominees tells us that his Administration is coming squarely for Native land and Native natural resources. Rick Perry, who sits on the Board of Directors for the Energy Transfer Partners (the company that owns the Dakota Access Pipeline), was nominated as the Energy Secretary. Trump also nominated Scott Pruitt to be the new head of the EPA; Pruitt said that “hydraulic fracking, a technological innovation that has done more to reduce carbon emissions in this country than any other technological advancement of our time.” No really—that’s what he said. He also wrote a letter to Obama In 2012, Pruitt and Republican Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal wrote a letter to President Obama asking to eliminate a Bureau of Land Management proposal that requires oil companies to disclose the chemicals used in fracking operations on Native American land.
These cats want to separate Native people from our lands and mineral resources. It’s westward expansion, manifest destiny!
Again.
Gyasi Ross has an outstanding article up at ICTMN about the current political mess, and what it’s going to mean to Indian Country:
The Thing About Skins: Make no mistake, Donald Trump’s Administration is coming for Indian Country.
In an earlier edition, Marty Two Bulls made his feelings about certain Indians active in the current mess quite clear:
© Marty Two Bulls.
(Reuters/Lucas Jackson).
Since the election of Donald Trump, the walls of New York City’s 14th Street Union Square subway station have become a release valve for grief-stricken New Yorkers, who, outside of Staten Island, overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton. Created by artist Matthew “Levee” Chavez, “Subway Therapy” invites anyone to write down their fears, hate and hopes on a Post-It note and tack it on the station’s tile walls.
Thousands of Post-Its have formed a thick and colorful wallpaper over the course of six weeks, with many passengers stopping to read notes or take a quick photograph of the growing collage. Chavez estimates about 2,000 new postings are added daily.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced plans to archive a large portion of the collection as a historical record. “Today, we preserve a powerful symbol that shows how New Yorkers of all ages, races and religions came together to say we are one family, one community and we will not be torn apart,” said Cuomo in a press statement Dec. 16. Cuomo himself posted a message of unity for New Yorkers during a Nov. 14 visit, scribbling down a line of poetry from the base of the Statue of Liberty.
The New York Historical Society will work with the NY Metropolitan Transit Authority to gather and preserve the sticky notes as part of its History Responds program. “We are ever-mindful of preserving the memory of today’s events for future generations. Ephemeral items in particular, created with spontaneity and emotion, can become vivid historical documents,” said the society’s president Dr. Louise Mirrer.
Other articles have noted that:
The New-York Historical Society will also let New Yorkers place notes on its glass walls starting Tuesday, Dec. 20 through Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.
I think everyplace should have Subway Therapy, whether there’s a subway or not. I could use one here in nDakota, not that I think it would be allowed to stand for 10 seconds.
Via Quartz.
The Religious Reich have a Xmas wish list, one they fully expect Santa Trump to fulfill. Just the wish list here, click over to Right Wing Watch for the grisly details.
After jettisoning all of their rhetoric about public morality and personal character in order to help Donald Trump get elected, Religious Right activists are now hoping the president-elect fulfills the promises he made to the social conservative movement during his campaign.
Trump, who received the support of around eight in ten white evangelical voters, spent months boasting that he is a “great Christian” who will restore the long-lost holiday of Christmas and create “the strongest Christian lobby.”
[…]
“Like President-elect Trump, we have much to celebrate this Christmas season,” the National Right to Life Committee declared in its December newsletter, rejoicing in Trump’s anti-choice policies and Cabinet picks.
As Christmas approaches, Religious Right activists are reminding Trump of the good deeds they did to help elect him and demanding that he, in turn, deliver on his promises. Here are just 12 of the gifts the Religious Right is expecting from Trump in the new year:
- Nominate conservatives to the Supreme Court.
- Repeal the Affordable Care Act.
- Sign the First Amendment Defense Act.
- Rescind Nondiscrimination Protections.
- Defund and Investigate Planned Parenthood.
- Reinstate the Mexico City Policy.
- Codify The Hyde Amendment.
- Sign a 20-week Abortion Ban.
- Sign The Conscience Protection Act.
- Repeal The Johnson Amendment.
- Federal Voucher Funding.
- Curb Immigration, Ban Muslims and Stop Refugee Resettlement.
The details aren’t pretty. If all this is managed, we’ll be well past the welcome to fascism stage. Via Right Wing Watch.
If you missed out on The Gay Agenda Kickstarter (the agendas are almost ready to mail out! excitement!), don’t despair. You’ll be able to order one at The Gay Agenda.
A Hairy Woodpecker pretends he isn’t at all interested in all that seed and suet on the deck, nope. Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Rep. Garland Pierce (D-Scotland) addresses protestors during a special session at the North Carolina Legislature. CREDIT: AP Photo/Gerry Broome.
The Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature is not happy that voters last month chose a Democratic governor and a liberal majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court. And today, they could take advantage of an “emergency” legislative session to pass a series of bills that would minimize the impact of the voters’ choices by limiting the power of the other two branches of government.
This is from an earlier article on Think Progress, about the panicked coup attempt by NC repubs, who aren’t at all happy that Cooper won the election. In doing so, they have pulled out the dirty tricks playbook:
The Republican leaders of the North Carolina legislature called an emergency special session this week ostensibly to send funding to parts of the state devastated by Hurricane Matthew. Yet they used the opportunity to rush through a series of bills designed to limit the power of incoming Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who unseated Republican Pat McCrory by a narrow margin in November.
“It now seems to me the hurricane session was just a ruse to get us here,” Sen. Jane Smith (D-Columbus) complained.
Rev. Dr. William Barber, the president of the North Carolina NAACP, agreed, and called the move “an insult to the democratic values held by all people of goodwill in this state.”
“It is immoral, it is unconstitutional, and this illegal session is a direct attack on the people of North Carolina,” he said. “To convene in Raleigh under the pretext of a special session called by the Governor to provide relief to those affected by the hurricane and wildfires continues the worst of this extremist legislature’s legacy: making unjust laws to give more power to themselves, on the backs of those most vulnerable.”
There are now active protests taking place once again in North Carolina, where it just wasn’t enough for the voters to speak their mind and oust McCrory.
Via Think Progress.