It’s about this point in winter, which has months to go yet, that I start yearning for the year’s first Dandelion. I love dandelions, and seeing that bright beauty is always a most welcome and wonderful sight. Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Downy Woodpecker, click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Cabbage. Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Mike Coffman. CREDIT: AP Photo/Jack Dempsey.
The Republican Strategy? In two words: run away.
Congressman Mike Coffman (R-CO) tweeted Friday that he was excited to return home to Colorado this weekend, but things didn’t go very well when he got there.
On Saturday, his open meeting to chat with constituents at the Aurora Central Library was overwhelmed by voters particularly concerned about the fate of their health care if the Affordable Care Act (ACA, also known as Obamacare) is repealed — a plan Coffman supports — without a replacement put in place. Rather than meet with most of them or even address them, he left the event via a back door and escaped in a waiting vehicle.
You can read the whole shameful mess at Think Progress. Well, I certainly find it shameful, but I’ve come to the conclusion that conservatives simply don’t feel shame, much like they have gaping black maws where there should be empathy.
UPRISE / ANGRY WOMEN Exhibit artwork, The Untitled Space Gallery, New York – CARA DEANGELIS- Donald Trump with a Crown of Roadkill.
After angrily spitting out spiteful tweets at John Lewis, a true hero, comes the chickening. Once again, Trump displays a capacity only for pettiness and chickenshit behaviour.
Donald Trump’s transition team said on Sunday that the president-elect has canceled a Martin Luther King Jr. Day visit to the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture which features civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-GA)
According to ABC News, sources on the Trump transition team said that “the visit was removed from his calendar due to scheduling issues and was not fully planned out.”
[…]
The decision to cancel the museum visit comes after Lewis questioned the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency due to Russian interference in the U.S. election. Trump fired back on Twitter, accusing Lewis of not taking enough “action” to help his constituents.
Way to go, Donny Dumbass.
Via Raw Story.
Photo by Benson Kua.
Compromises designed to safeguard both religious freedoms and LGBT rights won’t fly among many of America’s most influential conservative Christians.
Leaders from nearly 90 evangelical seminaries, publications, ministries, and churches—as well as Catholic and Orthodox clergy—signed a statement last month rejecting any legal efforts to protect sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI).
“[We] believe that proposed SOGI laws, including those narrowly crafted, threaten fundamental freedoms,” they wrote as part of the “Preserve Freedom, Reject Coercion” campaign, hosted by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview.
[…]
Heritage Foundation research fellow Ryan T. Anderson and Princeton University professor Robert P. George wrote for Public Discourse about the legal and moral concerns with such laws more broadly:
SOGI policies attempt to impose, by force of law, a system of orthodoxy with respect to human sexuality: the belief that marriage is merely a union of consenting adults, regardless of biology, and that one can be male, female, none, or both, again, regardless of biology. SOGI laws impose this orthodoxy by punishing dissent, and by treating as irrational the beliefs that men and women are biologically rooted and made for each other in marriage.
There are days when it’s hard to believe these asses just don’t drop dead from an overload of cognitive dissonance. And irony poisoning. And heavy hypocrisy poisoning too. No, there’s no attempt, in any way, to legislate a system of sexual orthodoxy. It’s an attempt to include all people in the circle of full human rights. Marriage certainly should be between consenting adults, and what does it matter what their gender or orientation is? If anyone is attempting to legislate a sexual orthodoxy, it’s creepy Christians. This absurd idea that somehow, somewhere, queer marriage will utterly shatter and destroy hetero marriage. Oddly enough, no one has noticed this happening, although Christians still have the highest incidences of adultery and divorce. Perhaps your focus should be there, as clearly, something isn’t working. Perhaps inviting god into your bed every night isn’t such a good idea, after all, it disrupts that whole “one man, one woman” business.
Inclusion laws punish dissent? Huh, news to me. Oh, this about gay wedding cakes and other isht, right? Well, everyone should know the cake is a lie. You should not be able to legislate hate or bigotry. If people open up a shop, there’s an implicit relationship with the public. You’re offering a service, and people agree to pay you money for said service. If you are really that terrified of possibly being tainted by a queer customer, perhaps owning a shop is not a good path for you.
As for “treating as irrational the beliefs that men and women are biologically rooted and made for each other in marriage”, yeah, it is irrational. Part and parcel of the whole irrational god belief nonsense. In case it slipped your notice, you asses are always busy treating anyone you consider other as horrible, sinful, disgusting, and evil. You might want to note, you’re free to do that, and I’m free to fully consider you as irrational, willfully delusional assholes out to harm others. So? It’s hardly our fault you can’t wrap your head around actual science. Anyroad, all over the world, there are hetero people happily coupling, so what’s the problem? I don’t care, and it’s difficult to see why you would. I’m bisexual, and happen to be married to a man because that’s who I fell in love with. If I had fallen in love with a woman, I’d dearly like to think I’d be happily married to her for 38 years. Why on earth that would possibly get your knickers in a knot is unfathomable to me. Love is good. Love should be celebrated. That’s never the focus from the religious asshole sector though. No, everything from there is exclusion and hate. Hate, hate, hate, and never-ending judgmentalism, even though your book of myths says that sort of thing ought to be left to your psychopathic god monster.
You are truly terrible, indecent, immoral people. People who can never manage to get their noses out of other peoples’ crotches. And we’re the ‘indecent’ ones.
Via Christianity Today.
Chris von Keyserling. Photo: / Helen Neafsey.
Christopher von Keyserling, 71, was arrested in Greenwich Town Hall on Wednesday afternoon and charged with fourth-degree sexual assault, police said. He posted $2,500 bond and was released to appear in court on Jan. 25.
The incident began at about noon Dec. 8 when the 57-year-old woman encountered von Keyserling in the hallway of an unnamed town facility, the warrant said.
The two briefly spoke about politics and the woman told him that “it was a new world politically” and he had to educate his fellow politicians, the warrant said. Von Keyserling is a member of Greenwich’s Representative Town Meeting.
He allegedly replied: “I love this new world, I no longer have to be politically correct,” according to the warrant.
She told him that if he was “proud of that I can’t help you,” after which he called her a lazy, bloodsucking union employee, the warrant said.
[…]
As she walked by, he allegedly pinched her in the groin area, according to the warrant. She threatened to punch him if he ever did that again, the warrant said.She said he “looked back with a really evil look in his eyes and said, ‘it would be your word against mine and nobody will believe you,'” according to the warrant.
[…]
Reached by phone, von Keyserling deferred comment to his attorney, Phil Russell. “It’s a sad situation,” von Keyserling said.
Russell said the incident in question, at the Nathaniel Witherell Home, could not be described as sexual or aggressive in nature. He said the charge stemmed from a “jocular” moment with a woman at a gathering at the town-owned senior facility.
“In almost 30 years of practicing law in this town, I would say Mr. von Keyserling is the one person I would never suspect of having any inappropriate sexual predilections,” Russell said, noting his client is in his 70s.
“There was a playful gesture, in front of witnesses. It was too trivial to be considered anything of significance. To call it a sexual assault is not based in reality,” the lawyer said.
And there we are, in a reality where open sexual assault is no more than a “playful gesture”. I have an idea that Mr. von Keyserling might not find people deciding to pinch his penis as jocular play. Since the election of Pussy Grabber-elect, we will no doubt be seeing much more of this; assholes all over using the excuse of “hey I don’t need to be politically correct anymore!” as the rallying cry for indecent behaviour.
Via Daily Voice and Greenwich Time.
And for all of us who never saw a man in the moon, but a hare (or rabbit).
There are eight more wonderful, well worth seeing Indigenous shorts to see here.
In the really bad news department, evangelicals have found themselves in government heaven. Last month, Right Wing Watch reported on the Pendejo-elect’s transition team giving religious right activists, specifically, the members of his evangelical advisory board unprecedented (sb. unpresidented?) input in shaping the new administration. A member of that board, Richard Land, was busy boasting in gleeful surprise about this recently.
Earlier this week, one of the members of that board, Richard Land of the Southern Evangelical Seminary, appeared on the “Point of View” radio program, where he told host Kerby Anderson that he has been shocked by how much influence he and other Religious Right activists have had over the make-up of Trump’s administration.
“Some of my conservative friends and I, we have been pinching ourselves, are we hallucinating or is this actually happening?” Land said. “I know a good number of people on the transition team and I can tell you right now, about half of them, Kerby, think I’m liberal. I mean, these are very conservative people.”
Indeed. Nazis and fascists in general are “ultra-conservative” by typical standards. One could phrase it more precisely as rigidly evil.
Land, a longtime activist and former Southern Baptist Convention official, said that he has “been solicited five times for personnel recommendations” by the Trump administration, which is something that never happened under any previous Republican president. As such, Land said, “this administration is going to have more conservative Christians, Catholic and evangelical, in it than any administration that I’ve been associated with or had contact with, and I’ve been doing this since Reagan.”
For those of us who eschew willful delusions, this is very bad news indeed. “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” I would say they would soon be eyeing suitable candidates for kindling, to set that cross ablaze, but there’s no soon about it. Already happening.
Via Right Wing Watch.
Yeah, yeah, minds out of the gutter! :D From Charly, shots of Parus major. Charly mentions their facility in grabbing sunseeds and whooshing into the trees to crack them open. That’s something I never tire of seeing here, with a relative of the Great Tit, the Black-capped Chickadee. Wonderful shots, click for full size!
© Charly, all rights reserved.
From rq, more of her immortalization of the three lab cats, who continue to look as if their lives are pretty good. I wouldn’t mind playing with lab equipment, either. :D Click for full size!
© rq, all rights reserved.
Dark-eyed Junco, click for full size.
© C. Ford.
CREDIT: sebk/iStock.
There’s an interesting article at Think Progress, demonstrating that the majority of Americans favour pro-choice.
Recent research from the Pew Research Center indicates that 69 percent of Americans — or 7 in 10 — say Roe v. Wade should not be completely overturned. This represents a 6-point increase in the number of individuals who expressed this sentiment just a few years ago.
It’s unfortunate, to say the least, that coinciding with this change is the illegal election which has placed every manner of fanatic into high office.
During the campaign, Trump promised to ban abortion, punish women who got abortions and doctors who perform them, and appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. What’s more, his cabinet picks read like the Who’s Who of anti-abortion zealots.
Our elected officials are now at complete odds with what the American public wants when it comes to abortion.
It’s fairly clear that what the majority of Americans want is not of import; it’s what the minority want which will rule the day. The attempt to de-fund Planned Parenthood is still on, and one of the very first things gutted from ACA was contraceptive coverage, because of course if you want to lessen the amount of terminations, eliminating access to contraception is the way to go. Fucking idiots.
Continuing in this vein, for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been reading about an attempt to pass a federal heartbeat bill. Mostly, this story has been covered by Right Wing Watch. Not anymore! The lunatics are running the asylum, and the federal heartbeat bill is a reality. A vicious one.
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) Thursday introduced a bill that would implement a nationwide abortion ban, modeling it after the “heartbeat bills” already found unconstitutional in federal court.
Under HR 490, an abortion provider who performs an abortion without “determining … whether the fetus has a detectable heartbeat,” “informing the mother of the results of that determination,: or “after determining … that the fetus has a detectable heartbeat,” will face fines and up to five years in federal prison.
In a press release, King called Roe v. Wade “unconstitutional,” arguing, “lives have been ended by the abortion industry, all with a rubber stamp by the federal government.”
“Human life, beginning at the moment of conception, is sacred in all of its forms and today, I introduced a bill that will protect the lives of voiceless innocents,” he said.
“America was founded on the concept that our rights come from God…” the press release continues. “I believe our most important responsibility that God has bestowed upon us is to protect innocent human life, and I will continue to dedicate my life to that responsibility.”
King worked with anti-choice activist Janet Porter on the bill.
This isn’t a war on women. It’s an obliteration. It’s a refusal to accept women as full human beings, who are capable of making their own decisions. Sort of an alternate version of The Handmaid’s Tale. This will, of course, impact just as hard on some transgender men. This is also an insistence on forcing a specific religious belief, which is against the constitution, but these so-called lovers of the constitution don’t give a flying fuck about that, oh no. They are finally in a position to drop the bomb of misogynistic control on our heads, and they can’t wait to do it. Who cares if women end up dead? Small price to pay as far as they are concerned.
“I gave him a packet and he has agreed to introduce a federal Heartbeat Bill, which would protect every baby whose heartbeat can be detected,” Porter told Rewire in an interview. “That will actually end abortion in nearly every case. Ninety to 95 percent of the abortions will be ended with that bill.”
And you don’t give one little shit about all the lives which would be negatively impacted, either. As long as you get to be smug about stomping all over other women.
Via Raw Story.