Fun! :D Oh, that white space you encounter? Be patient. From Bill Wurtz. Bill’s website.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Fun! :D Oh, that white space you encounter? Be patient. From Bill Wurtz. Bill’s website.
The Infinite Now from Armand Dijcks on Vimeo.
Over the past months I’ve been working with Australian photographer Ray Collins to bring his amazing oceanscapes to life in the form of cinemagraphs, a blend between photography and video. Each cinemagraph is created from one of Ray’s stills, and sets it in infinite motion, making a unique moment in time last forever.
These cinemagraphs inspired André Heuvelman from the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra to get together with pianist Jeroen van Vliet to record a very moving custom soundtrack, which I combined with a selection of the cinemagraphs.
You can see the original cinemagraphs at armanddijcks.com/cinemagraphs-waves
Ray’s images can be found at raycollinsphoto.com
André Heuvelman’s music: andreheuvelman.com
Stunning and mesmerizing work by all!
The Canadian Museum of History has unveiled a unique new exhibit that brings the faces of a 4,000-year-old Indigenous family back to life.
The museum revealed the three-dimensional forensic reconstruction of a shíshálh family whose remains were found in an ancient burial site near what is now Sechelt, B.C. The digital images move and blink in the incredibly life-like display.
“To look back on some of our people that existed within our territory 4,000 years ago, and to be in close proximity of their images — it’s a humbling experience,” Chief Warren Paull of the shíshálh Nation told CBC News.
“I see cousins. I see family.”
You can read more about this here. Amazing work.
SHE INSPIRES installation view.
Women’s history has long been marginalized in mainstream education, relegated to its own niche of study and overlooked in favor of male-dominated historical narratives. SHE INSPIRES, a group exhibition at The Untitled Space, highlights these lesser told histories through the work of over 60 contemporary artists. Each piece in the show is an homage to an important woman. Curator, Indira Cesarine, tells Creators, “SHE INSPIRES aims to honor and celebrate women who have impacted our culture and tell their stories which should be rightfully included not just as ‘women’s history,’ but everyone’s history.”
[…]
SHE INSPIRES is on display at The Untitled Space in Soho through May 20th. Click here for accompanying events and more information.
You can read and see more at The Creators Project.
The Slow Mo Guys take on mousetraps on a trampoline.
Zuul crurivastator, a newly discovered species of armoured dinosaur named after a creature from Ghostbusters, is shown at the Royal Ontario Museum. (Andrew Francis Wallace).
“It has this very short, broad snout, and then it has these two sets of horns that project backwards from the eye; one above the eye and one a little bit further down. And that’s exactly what we see in the skull of this dinosaur.”
Research on the new species, led by Arbour, was published in the May issue of the Royal Society OpenScience journal.
Zuul, the dinosaur, is about 75 million years old. Its body was found in a river deposit in Montana’s Judith River Formation and spanned about six metres long.
The dinosaur’s skeleton was found almost entirely intact, according to Evans, noting it was “remarkably preserved” under 10 metres of rock.
“This is a dinosaur that would not have been exposed for paleontologists to find for probably hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years,” he said. “The fossil was never exposed to modern erosion or plant roots . . . so that means we have a level of preservation that is jaw-dropping.”
The skeleton had to be broken up into several pieces in order to be removed. Zuul likely weighed about 5,500 pounds, equivalent to the size of a white rhinoceros.
“This is very rare, to find a complete articulated skeleton, especially for this group of dinosaurs,” Arbour said. “They’re just not as common.”
Its species name, crurivastator, means “destroyer of shins,” a reference to a large knob of bone at the tip of its tail, which may have been used to strike the legs of predatory dinosaurs in defence, or for battle during contests for mates.
Researchers have preserved the large, sharp bony spikes that formed in Zuul’s skin over its tail and likely the entirety of its body, forming its armour. They also managed to maintain very rare keratin sheaths — the same material which forms finger nails, bird beaks and the top of turtle shells — and soft tissues such as its scales.
While the dinosaur’s colour is unknown, Evans said they believe it may have been brightly coloured due to its outer keratin layer.
Obama Legacy; Bears Ears National Monument.
The Fight for Bears Ears has been going on for a very long time; people have been happy with Pres. Obama’s protective national monument status. Now the GOP is arguing that us dumb Indians, gosh, we just don’t understand. If places are declared national monuments, it will seriously impact our primitive lives, and we wouldn’t be able to do native stuff, like gather firewood, so um, just give us the land, and everything will be great! There really isn’t deep enough mockery for these arrogant colonialists.
Speaking alongside Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke about the Trump administration’s order to review — and potentially shrink or eliminate — nearly 30 national monuments, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said Native Americans were “manipulated” into their support for the 1.35 million acre Bears Ears National Monument southeastern Utah.
“The Indians, they don’t fully understand that a lot of the things that they currently take for granted on those lands, they won’t be able to do if it’s made clearly into a monument or a wilderness,” Hatch said on Sunday. “Once you put a monument there, you do restrict a lot of things that could be done, and that includes use of the land… Just take my word for it.”
Oh, right. We should just take the word of a white man. Gosh, that’s worked so well in the past.
Hatch’s dismissal of native voices is not only condescending, it is incredibly inaccurate in the case of Bears Ears. Protections for Bears Ears were nearly 80 years in the making. Most recently, the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition, which brought together five tribal nations, pushed for the protection of the Bears Ears region. After the group received no substantial response from the Utah Congressional delegation about protecting the area, the group opted to propose that President Barack Obama should create a national monument, which he did in December 2016.
[…]
But variations of Hatch’s argument have been routinely made by critics of the national monuments — namely, Republican politicians in Utah. Gov. Gary Herbert (R) has long purported that a national monument would get rid of critical tribal activities, such as firewood gathering. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) similarly stoked fears that the federal government would seize native American land for the monument. Utah state legislator Mike Noel (R), who is looking to join the Trump administration, launched an investigation into the tribal support of a Bears Ears National Monument, calling it a “charade.”
These accusations are part of a continued misinformation campaign targeting tribal members that started during the lead-up to the monument designation. In the summer of 2016, flyers meant to antagonize local Navajo were found posted around towns adjacent to the now national monument. One of the flyers impersonated an Interior Department press release that claimed the government would be taking over four million acres of Navajo reservation land. Others suggested the national monument would ban firewood gathering and Native American access.
The Washington Post reports on the Republican infatuation with Russia, and it looks like there’s a blossoming of true love happening there. Conservatives are looking at Russia, and Putin, and seeing their dream of America. It’s one hell of a 180 from when I was growing up in the 1960s, when being like Russia was the American Nightmare™. Given the new love affair, it’s hard to see that the so-called investigation into the many tentacles of collusion is going to go anywhere.
Growing up in the 1980s, Brian Brown was taught to think of the communist Soviet Union as a dark and evil place.
But Brown, a leading opponent of same-sex marriage, said that in the past few years he has started meeting Russians at conferences on family issues and finding many kindred spirits.
Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, has visited Moscow four times in four years, including a 2013 trip during which he testified before the Duma as Russia adopted a series of anti-gay laws.
“What I realized was that there was a great change happening in the former Soviet Union,” he said. “There was a real push to re-instill Christian values in the public square.”
A significant shift has been underway in recent years across the Republican right.
On issues including gun rights, terrorism and same-sex marriage, many leading advocates on the right who grew frustrated with their country’s leftward tilt under President Barack Obama have forged ties with well-connected Russians and come to see that country’s authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin, as a potential ally.
The attitude adjustment among many conservative activists helps explain one of the most curious aspects of the 2016 presidential race: a softening among many conservatives of their historically hard-line views of Russia. To the alarm of some in the GOP’s national security establishment, support in the party base for then-candidate Donald Trump did not wane even after he rejected the tough tone of 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, who called Russia America’s No. 1 foe, and repeatedly praised Putin.
[…]
“Is it possible that these are just well-meaning people who are reaching out to Americans with shared interests? It is possible,” said Steven L. Hall, who retired from the CIA in 2015 after managing Russia operations for 30 years. “Is it likely? I don’t think it’s likely at all. . . . My assessment is that it’s definitely part of something bigger.”
Interactions between Russians and American conservatives appeared to gain momentum as Obama prepared to run for a second term.
At the time, many in the GOP warned that Obama had failed to counter the national security threat posted by Putin’s aggression.
But, deep in the party base, change was brewing.
[…]
“There has been a change in the views of hard-core conservatives toward Russia,” a participant, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), said in an interview. “Conservative Republicans like myself hated communism during the Cold War. But Russia is no longer the Soviet Union.”
And there’s are bottom line: conservative assholes of all stripes can tell themselves that the love affair with Russia is dandy and okay because no longer the Soviet Union. Everything is great now, and Putin is a wonderful tyrant, we need one of those too! The Tiny Tyrant is not in Putin’s league, to be sure, but it’s clear enough that he wants to be. Trump has long demonstrated a taste for authoritarian despots, and that brings us around to the troubling business of Trump and Duterte. The Tiny Tyrant thinks Duterte is great, and really admires his mass slaughter parading under the ‘war on drugs’ banner.
Duterte is an evil person, the very definition of amoral, but the Tiny Tyrant wants to be best buddies with him because North Korea. There’s been no noise out of the white house condemning the mass amount of violations, but Priebus did have this to say:
“If we don’t have all of our folks together — whether they’re good folks, bad folks, people we wish would do better in their country, doesn’t matter, we’ve got to be on the same page” on North Korea, Priebus said.
Ah. So now the bad guys are okay. Right. I’m sure all manner of Filipino people will be fine with that one, because gosh, two maniacs getting together to gang up on a third one, well, nothing bad can happen there, right?
How the Republican right found allies in Russia.
White House defends Trump invitation to Duterte despite human rights violations.
Oh, and there’s right interesting information here: Why did Trump invite a murderous autocrat to the White House? Follow the money. A towering conflict of interest.
Karl Blossfeldt, Cucurbita sp., pumpkin, tendrils (courtesy D.A.P.).
Karl Blossfeldt, Polystichum munitum, western swordfern, young furled frond (courtesy D.A.P.).
As someone who gets obsessive about shooting plants, all the various bits, and finds them endlessly fascinating, Karl Blossfeldt has long been a revered icon. There’s a new book of his photos out, and they remain some of the most beautiful botanical photos ever taken. That beauty is magnified by the fact that Blossfeldt was using a homemade camera.
Karl Blossfeldt originally made detailed photographs of plant specimens as teaching tools for his applied art students, building his own camera to magnify the sculptural qualities of seedpods, pumpkin tendrils, and horsetail shoots at up to 45 times their size. The 1928 publication of his book Urformen der Kunst (Art Forms in Nature) suddenly brought the Berlin professor widespread artistic acclaim, with critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin describing the “astonishing plant photographs” as revealing “the forms of ancient columns in horse willow, a bishop’s crosier in the ostrich fern, totem poles in tenfold enlargements of chestnut and maple shoots, and gothic tracery in the fuller’s thistle.”
[…]
We’re so familiar with macrophotography today that it may be hard to return to the early-20th-century context and imagine how these images would have startled viewers with their revelations of intricate beauty in even the smallest bud of a violet. Yet they remain compelling examples of looking closely at the world around us.
I love macro photography, and indulge in it often enough, but for me, none of it takes away from Blossfeldt’s work. There’s a joy and purity to his photos which are simply unparalleled.
Time for a Pants On Fire Reality Check! The white house has released “President Trump’s 100 Days of Historic Accomplishments.” Historic. Right. I suppose “President Trump’s 100 Days of Abysmal Failure” didn’t go over well. As usual, the press release is “alternative fact” based, and has little to do with reality in any way, shape or form.
The release sorts Trump’s accomplishments into three categories. Front and center is a section entitled “TAKING EXECUTIVE ACTION” that touts the 30 executive orders Trump has signed in hist first 100 days — a total the White House says is higher “than any other President since Franklin Roosevelt.”
There are two big problems with that claim, however.
First, it’s false. As historian Peter A. Shulman explained, the White House is overlooking executive orders not included in the American Presidency Project, the non-comprehensive source the Trump administration appears to have used to tally the number of executive orders signed by previous presidents.
When executive orders not included in the American Presidency Project are included, FDR’s total actually dwarfs Trump.
FDR signed 99 of them. That’s considerably more than 30, but this isn’t a bloody contest, in spite of the Tiny Tyrant’s trying to make this all about ratings too. Fucking idiot.
…Besides those inaccuracies, it’s odd that Trump would tout EOs as an accomplishment, since he repeatedly criticized President Obama for signing them. In December 2015, candidate Trump blasted Obama’s EOs and characterized them as the last resort of presidents who can’t work with Congress.
“I don’t think he even tries anymore. I think he just signs executive actions,” Trump said of Obama. “That’s the way the system is supposed to work. And then all of a sudden, I hear he tried, he can’t do it, and then, boom, and then another one, boom.”
Trump also blasted Obama’s executive orders in 2012, tweeting that they represent “major power grabs of authority.”
[…]
There’s also the question of how much credit Trump should take for signing executive orders that in some cases he seems to be barely familiar with. For instance, during a signing ceremony for an executive order on agriculture on Tuesday, Trump, reading off a sheet of paper, said, “So this is promoting agriculture and rural prosperity in America. And now there’s a lot of words, I won’t bother reading everything, but agriculture and rural prosperity in America — that’s what we want.”
And that alone rather neatly sums up the Idiot Unpresident. “I don’t have the slightest idea of what I’m doing, and I’m not going to *gasp* read, but it must be good, because I’m going to sign it, and someone said…”
Oh gods. Just not enough facepalm in the universe. Not enough. Think Progress has the full reality check.
Oh my. A post at The Creators Project brought all kinds of memories flooding back, especially in regard to KRLA. I remember The Freep fondly.
Psychedelic Center Ltd. Design by Jerry Kay; Sterling Steam Calliope Manufacturing Co., 1967.
Michael Ian Black and Marc Rosenthal, A Child’s First Book of Trump.
Unfortunately, when it comes to history, there’s a long, ugly history in the U.S. of lying to children. Books are filled with euphemisms and omissions, desperate to find any way to praise past politicians and their acts. This is quite the problem with presidential bios, going all the way back. People were considered courageous to mention that the oh so holy Saint Jefferson was a slaveholder. They omitted the rapes, subsequent pregnancies, and those inconvenient little slaves Jefferson fathered. You don’t find sections or books on just how genocidal presidents were when it came to Indians, or how they spent time and money on being devious bastards, making promises they fully intended to break. Nothing about the rapes, murders, and stealing of children, no. There’s very little action across uStates to undo all the whitewash. That much has not changed, but even in an industry well practiced in the art of whitewash, Trump is presenting special problems.
…Rosman catches the Scholastic folks red-handed as they rewrite history to try to prettify Trump for their audience. In a prepublication draft of the book, under the heading “Troubling Statements,” its authors initially explained: “Some of Trump’s biggest supporters were white nationalists. Their comments and actions during and after the campaign were racist and often dangerous. Trump did little to speak against them.” But in the final version, we get, instead, a page called “Campaign Statements,” which explains that, “Some of Trump’s critics felt he did not speak out against prejudicial people and groups strongly enough.”
[…]
The problem with Trump is not that he did not denounce the racism, much less the fact that some people might have felt this way. It’s that he actively encouraged not merely racism but a particularly violent strain of it; one that helped create an atmosphere of menace toward almost all people of color among his most virulent supporters. What’s more, this racism, according to the best data we can find, was central to his appeal both in the Republican primaries and in the general election. The fact that he is now president of the United States presents an additional ideological problem for children’s book publishers. Not only must they find a way around the fact that their subject is a racist, sexist, ethnocentric, McCarthyite, lying con man, but also that nearly half the country’s voters knew all this and picked him anyway.
To be honest about Trump is to be honest about America, and right now, that is just not the kind of thing children’s publishers are set up to do. It’s not even the kind of thing The New York Times or The Washington Post is set up to do — at least not without blaming “both sides” for whatever crime against democracy, decency or common sense Trump has most recently committed. Joana Costa Knufinke, group editor for nonfiction books in Scholastic’s library publishing division, uses this time-honored excuse when she explains to Rosman, “We make an effort to show both points of view.”
[…]
The challenge regarding Trump, however, is not that he has flaws, as men and all presidents do. The problem is that he is all flaws and that it was these flaws that got him elected president. Without those flaws — the racism, sexism, jingoism, dishonesty, incompetence, ignorance and belligerence — there is nothing left to say about Trump… except perhaps to make fun of his hair. This puts the nice people in the children’s book business in the uncomfortable position of either ignoring the new president or running interference of his destructive qualities and teaching our children to, at best, ignore them, or at worst, emulate them.
An incisive look at how the children’s publishing industry is going to be very busy orange-washing and filtering all information about the current unpresident of uStates. Highly recommended reading.
Full article here.
Tucker Viemeister.
“Someone as despicable as Hitler didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,”
So said one Sean Spicer. To date, the stupidity has already been excruciatingly difficult to bear, but this? Really? When asked for clarification, Spicer stated that Hitler never used gas on his own citizens, so y’know, all those German Jews? Guess they weren’t German. Or citizens. Jesus Fuck. The internet at large is already busy tearing Spicer apart.
George Bush, “Sergeant Leslie Zimmerman U.S. Army, 2001-2004” (undated), oil on stretched canvas, 20 x 24 in.
It’s no secret how much I loathe the pretentiousness of the art world. It’s not easy to find equal levels of pompous puffery, arrogance, and pretentious fawning that infest the art world. The latest person being painted over with fawning pretension is George W. Bush. Seph Rodney at Hyperallergic takes on the fawning of the New York Times.
Take the recent New York Times piece, “‘W.’ and the Art of Redemption” by Mimi Swartz, about the portrait-painting practice of former President George W. Bush. The piece, among other things, reports the landing of the book of his paintings, Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors, on the New York Times best seller list. It’s part reputation rehab, part art review, part commendation, and part audition for the job of Bush’s headstone writer. We might one day see, etched in marble, something like: “Here lays the former president who found his true calling only after serving the highest office in the land.” And verily there will be tears.
[…]
The piece veers upward from there, lifted by the imprimatur of key art critics Jerry Saltz and Peter Schjeldahl, who use terms like “innocent,” “sincere,” “earnest,” and “honestly observed” to describe Bush’s portraits.
I don’t think Bush’s paintings are awful, they aren’t. I don’t think they are terribly good, either. They’re okay. If you inhabit the art world, or have wandered into it on occasion, you’ll find that “innocent”, “sincere”, and “earnest” are code words for primitive and childish, not worth anything as art, but hey, former president! I haven’t been in the art world for a while, so I’m not sure about “honestly observed”, but I’d wager a guess that it means something along the lines of “he’s doing his best.”
Swartz continues her transformation of the feckless leader into a sensitive and empathetic artist by tracing his tutelage under several art teachers: Gail Norfleet, Roger Winter, Jim Woodson, and Sedrick Huckaby. She makes Bush out to be a student, willingly learning from others, instead of the leader and “decider” he once touted himself to be. We are led to believe that all of this learning, nurturing, and patient working in obscurity, outside of the “swamp” that is Washington, DC, have now turned him a perceptive human being. Swartz tells us that “the proceeds from sales [of the book] will go to a nonprofit organization that helps veterans and their families recover,” and the George W. Bush Presidential Center website confirms this. (The hardcover edition costs $35, while the deluxe, signed and personalized edition costs $350.) But Swartz doesn’t ever acknowledge that it was Bush and his employees who started the Iraq war and put these very same people in harm’s way in the first place.
This is also a fine example of the dishonesty which comes into play when those in the art world decide to play at pointless flattery.
To be clear, this is the same man who, as president, pursued a war that was illegal and declared that coalition partners were “either with us or against us in the fight against terror” — terror only as he and his administration defined it. Even his press secretary, Scott McClellan, later admitted that a sophisticated propaganda campaign sold the war to the public. Bush manipulated and strong-armed the media into supporting his reprehensible war, and this is what we lost in it: 134,000 Iraqi civilians, though Reuters notes that the conflict “may have contributed to the deaths of as many as four times that number”; “$1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans,” according to Reuters, referencing the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies; and $33 billion in “U.S. medical and disability claims for veterans after a decade of war,” according to the initial Costs of War report in 2011, with that number rising to $134.7 billion just two years later.
The idea that people should forget such an enormous cost because Bush now paints portraits of military personnel is a pernicious one, at best.
What’s insidious about the Times piece is that it puts readers in the position of feeling the need to forgive Bush and recognize his current artistic work as somehow redemptive; otherwise we seem mean-spirited or, perhaps worse, unfairly unable to evaluate another person beyond stereotype. Swartz writes: “Mr. Bush discovered what many who paint discover: that as he worked on their portraits, he came to understand his sitters, and their pain, as well as their love for one another.” But art of this nature is not redemptive — it never is unless you shut your eyes, put your fingers in your ears, and yell nonsense. Art does not restore a soldier’s arms or eyesight, or provide them with physical therapy in order to learn to walk on prostheses. It does not heal their PTSD or bring back innocent Iraqi civilians from the dead.
I don’t believe Bush came to understand those he painted; I certainly don’t think he has the slightest idea of their pain, trauma, or bonds. I’m sure he’s selling that idea, and it’s a pity some people are licking the kool-aid off the floor. To even come close to a deep understanding of your subject, well, more is required than just painting. Going by the portraits at Hyperallergic, Bush didn’t even come to a shallow enough understanding for it to be reflected in the paintings. When an artist has an access of empathy while working, that tends to get into the work, in a visible way.
But we need to expand our imaginative faculties to viewing people in terms other than the ecclesiastical story of fall and redemption. Sometimes when you lose, you truly lose. And we lost that war, lost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars and a dwindling supply of international credibility and respect. George W. Bush may be a good painter and a caring friend to soldiers, but he’s also the man who callously put those soldiers in harmful situations, and has now reduced them to characters within a feel-good narrative that he can tell to friends, family, and the rest of the world.
I agree with that, absolutely. I can, and do, see Bush’s work as a way for him to feel better about himself, and in the end, it all comes back to putting focus on Bush. It’s yet another way of using people, the same people he used before. Well, at least the ones who survived.
The full article is at Hyperallergic.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Nunes arrives for a weekly meeting of the Republican Conference with House Speaker Paul Ryan and the GOP leadership on Wednesday. CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.
On Tuesday, House Intelligence Committee chair and former Trump transition team official Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) made the extraordinary claim that Democrats are actually the ones obstructing his committee’s investigation into connections between President Trump and Russian officials.
Nunes — who abruptly cancelled all scheduled committee hearings last week, including one that was to feature testimony from Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general who alerted the White House to Michael Flynn’s deceptions about his communications with Russian officials and was fired for refusing to enforce President Trump’s Muslim ban — told NBC News that “it appears the Democrats aren’t really serious about this investigation.”
“They need to give us their witness list because we have no idea who they even want to interview,” Nunes said. “So, at the end of the day here we’re going to get to the truth, we’re going to find out who’s actually doing a real investigation… we’re going to do an investigation with or without them, and if they want to participate that’s fine, but the facts of the matter are pretty clear.”
But a source with knowledge of the situation tells ThinkProgress that Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee actually submitted a tentative witness list to Republicans on Tuesday and haven’t yet heard back. That information was corroborated by Business Insider’s Natasha Bertrand, who reported that a “[c]ommittee aide tells me Dems provided witness list to Nunes yesterday and offered to schedule hearings next week, have not heard back.”
[…]
Nunes might say “the facts of the matter are pretty clear,” but they’re not. Here’s what we do know. Last Wednesday, Nunes held a press conference where he appeared to clumsily validate Trump’s claim that Obama wiretapped his Trump Tower phones by saying he has “recently confirmed that on numerous occasions the intelligence community incidentally collected information about US citizens involved in the Trump transition.”
Instead of sharing that information with the intelligence community or his committee members, Nunes raced to the White House to brief Trump, whose campaign is under investigation for possible collusion with foreign agents. In the week since, Nunes has steadfastly refused to share what he claims to know about legal incidental collection at Trump Tower with his House Intelligence Committee colleagues.
The list of willful obstruction on the part of Nunes and Gowdy continues over at Think Progress, and it’s quite the long recount of obstruction. It would be downright laughable, the weak attempt to place blame on democrats, except for the fact that this is extremely serious. If this was anyone else, everyone would be going apeshit, screaming for impeachment and imprisonment. The silence of those on the right is more than telling, it’s an indictment all its own, of just how much they truly don’t care about such treasonous actions, as long as the crimes are being committed by someone on their side of the fence.
Think Progress has the full story.
The Heartland Institute recently had their “Fuck the Planet!” conference, attended by the Mercers, and all those others who have some sort of vested interest in killing off everyone and everything. I guess they’ll bug out to Mars with Musk when life becomes unsustainable.
The atmosphere was buoyant at a conference held by the conservative Heartland Institute last week at a downtown Washington hotel, where speakers denounced climate science as rigged and jubilantly touted deep cuts President Trump is seeking to make to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Front and center during the two-day gathering were New York hedge fund executive Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer, Republican mega-donors who with their former political adviser Stephen K. Bannon helped finance an alternative media ecosystem that amplified Trump’s populist themes during last year’s campaign.
The Mercers’ attendance at the two-day Heartland conference offered a telling sign of the low-profile family’s priorities: With Trump in office, the influential financiers appear intent on putting muscle behind the fight to roll back environmental regulations, a central focus of the new administration.
The Washington Post has a full run down on the conference.
I’ll just focus here on the batshit element of such conferences, this time, embodied by ever loony Lord Christopher Monckton:
Raw Story has a rundown of his 5 main points, so click on over if you prefer to read.