Sunday Facepalm.

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Oh, how the mighty hath fallen. Going by the old testament, or the apocrypha, which was cut in the final edit, Jehovah was very much what one could call an interventionist god, even if that isn’t terribly accurate. Jehovah got bored a lot, and had many temper tantrums or warped whims, so any situation it bothered to intervene in was one it had caused in the first place. According to Todd Starnes, Jehovah has once again been busy with intervention:

“I would not discount the power of what Franklin Graham did,” Starnes said. “He did not endorse, but what he did do in 2016 was stage massive prayer gatherings at every single state capital in the country. And I believe that we experienced divine intervention last November and I believe that God was giving us a second chance. So we’ve been given a second chance and Christians, we’ve got to stand up and we’ve got to get it right.”

Huh. That’s not much in the godly intervention stakes, is it? Especially when the reality of the whole sorry mess is right there, plain to see. But no, it must be Jehovah, must! Well, even if you believed such nonsense, it’s quite the sad and sorry show for the god who ran rampant and drenched in blood in the old days. As the Tiny Dictator would say, Loser!

Going by Lance Wallnau, Jehovah is up to a slightly more impressive intervention, by making Trump an exorcist.

Wallnau said he knows the real reason that millions of people marched against the new president the day after the inauguration: Upon taking office, Trump evicted an evil spirit of witchcraft from the White House, causing that demonic spirit to go out into the general population.

“What I believe is happening is there was a deliverance of the nation from the spirit of witchcraft in the Oval Office,” he said. “The spirit of witchcraft was in the Oval Office, it was about to intensify to a higher level demon principality, and God came along with a wrecking ball [Trump] and shocked everyone, the church cried out for mercy and bam—God knocked that spirit out, and what you’re looking at is the manifestation of an enraged demon through the spirit.”

I have to admit, viewing Trump as a wrecking ball is accurate enough, just not in the way Wallnau meant.

Pat Buchanan is leaving Jehovah on the sidelines, perhaps realizing there’s no point to waiting on supposedly divine intervention, and is busy railing for Trump to break the judiciary for all the horrors they have inflicted on the States:

When politicians don black robes and seize powers they do not have, they should be called out for what they are – usurpers and petty tyrants. And if there is a cause upon which the populist right should unite, it is that elected representatives and executives make the laws and rule the nation. Not judges, and not justices.

Indeed, one of the mightiest forces that has birthed the new populism that imperils the establishment is that unelected justices like Warren and Brennan, and their progeny on the bench, have remade our country without the consent of the governed – and with never having been smacked down by Congress or the president.

Consider. Secularist justices de-Christianized our country. They invented new rights for vicious criminals as though criminal justice were a game. They tore our country apart with idiotic busing orders to achieve racial balance in public schools. They turned over centuries of tradition and hundreds of state, local and federal laws to discover that the rights to an abortion and same-sex marriage were there in Madison’s Constitution all along. We just couldn’t see them.

Goodness. No fuzziness about that agenda, mean, brutal, misogynistic, enshrined with bigotry.

Meanwhile, Trump’s White House should use the arrogant and incompetent conduct of these federal judges to make the case not only for creating a new Supreme Court, but for Congress to start using Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution – to restrict the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, and to reclaim its stolen powers.

A clipping of the court’s wings is long overdue.

Okay, I’m in facepalm overload at this point. I hate to say, but Trump probably will try something like this, and there’s no god to help us if he does.

 

Steve Warburton.

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Steve Warburton is an artist in Australia, with a very interesting perspective. The work is evocative, and I find many of the pieces to be of an expansive nature – for me, they are pieces to ponder, not just savour, and allow all the different layers of associations to come up. There’s a distinct sense of dystopia in many of the pieces, but they are all the more beautiful in their poignancy, and the hope that we do not follow such paths to their inescapable conclusions. Definitely worth spending some time, going through the galleries!

I didn’t include much here, because the galleries are set up for viewing, not borrowing, so have a wander, expand your mind, and let your imagination take you on a trip. Steve Warburton.

Gorgeous Doves!

Charly sent photos of more of his mom’s (and his) work in knipling. Absolutely gorgeous doves! Charly says: These two doves were made in 2011. The first one is my mothers design. After she made it, I asked her if she could do another one with my design, and she did. My input included not only new outline, but I also suggested the use of different colours and different lace /knotting.  The difference in style is quite apparent. The first dove is what would be called “traditional” style, because in this style are made laces, collars, doilies etc.

Pictures are behind glass, so I had to adjust colour saturation and levels to bring the colours out so the pictures look like the real fabric and not too grey. They are actually larger than life on screen, in reality they are only approximately 35 cm (14 inches) diagonally. For completeness’s sake I am also including the templates, I think you might find them interesting.

I definitely find them interesting! Click for full size.

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© Charly, all rights reserved.

Rat Cordery.

People who have small animals know they have a special love for electrical cords. Chez Caine, there are always those rats who are looking to jack on. Part of setting up Athena (the new computing machine), is to deal with cord. For the very fine cord, which runs from the machine to the adapter is a favourite for jacking on. So, that part: slice open black aquarium tubing, place over the cord, secure with electrical tape. This impairs their ability to sense the current running through. For the rest, I cut lengths of cotton cloth, and wrap the cord, followed by a quick wrap of shiny wire, because rats are easily distracted by shiny metal, and will chew on that and forget about jacking on. Got Athena all fixed up, and Hades tested for me – yep, boring. That’s a good thing.

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© C. Ford.

! Pyrography !

Open-mouthed awe here. Watch!

Etsuko Ichikawa is a Tokyo-born, Seattle-based artist who creates mesmerizing abstract “paintings” through the art of pyrography. Specifically, Ichikawa removes fiery, molten glass from a kiln as it glows at 2100° F, and then manipulates it over thick paper, leaving scorch marks and burns. The process is something akin to photography, in which light is recorded on film, capturing and eternalizing the immediacy of a moment.

Full story at Spoon & Tamago. WOW. I want to do that, unfortunately I don’t have the equipment, but who doesn’t like playing with fire?

Oh, that fucking wall.

An agent of the border patrol, observes near the Mexico-US border fence, on the Mexican side, separating the towns of Anapra, Mexico and Sunland Park, New Mexico, on January 25. CREDIT: AP Photo/Christian Torres.

An agent of the border patrol, observes near the Mexico-US border fence, on the Mexican side, separating the towns of Anapra, Mexico and Sunland Park, New Mexico, on January 25. CREDIT: AP Photo/Christian Torres.

The projected cost for President Donald Trump’s border wall continues to rise, and Trump has no good plan to contain it.

On Thursday, Reuters reported that the border wall will be much more expensive than the $10 billion figure Trump repeatedly cited during his campaign or the $12–$15 billion cited by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) last month.

“Trump’s ‘wall’ along the U.S.-Mexico border would be a series of fences and walls that would cost as much as $21.6 billion, and take more than three years to construct,” Reuters reported, citing a U.S. Department of Homeland Security document the outlet obtained.

And it could end up costing even more than that.

“Bernstein Research, an investment research group that tracks material costs, has said that uncertainties around the project could drive its cost up to as much as $25 billion,” Reuters reports.

On Saturday morning, Trump responded to that news by assuring Americans that costs of constructing the wall will come “WAY DOWN” as soon as he gets involved in the negotiations.

<Tweets snipped.>

But Trump’s citation of the reduced cost of F-35s should give no one confidence he’ll be able to bring down the exorbitant cost of his border wall.

That’s because on January 30, Trump took credit for cost cuts to the fighter jets that were already put in place before he got involved. A Washington Post fact-check gave Trump’s claim that he was responsible for cutting $600 million from the F-35 program “Four Pinocchios.”

[…]

Trump has repeatedly taken credit for deals that were in the works long before he won the election or became president. For instance, he’s overstated his role in deals with Intel, General Motors, Fiat Chrysler, Ford, and Sprint to take credit for saving American jobs.

[…]

Last year, Reuters reported that U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents don’t think the type of border wall Trump has long supported is necessary for national security. Instead, they seek better equipment and technology.

Not only is this wall idea the epitome of idiocy, people tend to forget a different cost of such idiocy – the high cost imposed on animals, the environment, and various ecologies. This sort of arrogant assholery is little more than a chest-pounding display of cruelty, a game for bully boys. Unfortunately, such people don’t much give a shit about the planet which gives them life, or the diversity of life on our earth, which has no use for the concrete idiocy of naked apes intent on warring with their neighbours. You can read a bit about this high cost here.

Full story at Think Progress.

“It’s not prison. You can quit,”

CREDIT: iStock.

CREDIT: iStock.

The South Dakota Patriarchy, er, politicians strike again. This time, they are making sure of no protections for pregnant workers. After all, women really shouldn’t be working in the first place, they should be at home, waiting on a man.

On Monday, eight male lawmakers in South Dakota voted down a bill that would have required reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers so they can safely stay on the job.

Instead of offering protections against discrimination, unsafe conditions, and getting fired, one of the men had a different solution for pregnant employees. “It’s not prison. You can quit,” Republican state Rep. Wayne H. Steinhauer, who voted against the bill, said during a hearing, according to Rewire.

“You’ve got a choice every day. You make a choice whether you come to work,” he went on. “And I’m here to tell you, if a person’s not allowing you to breastfeed at work or making appropriate accommodations at work, we can pass this law, but you don’t want to work for that guy. Get the heck out of there.”

Oh, sure, you could pass that law, but you didn’t, because it’s ever so much more important to grind women into the dirt. Much more necessary to drive home just how subhuman you think women are in the first place. It wasn’t quite enough to pass draconian laws stripping women of their bodily autonomy. This is such blatant misogyny that it’s on the stunning side. Nothing like baldly stating that people in the workplace definitely don’t need to aspire to being better human beings. Interesting to note the assumption that the boss would be male. Also the assumption “you don’t want to work for that guy!” Nothing like assuming you know what any given woman should think or want. The fact that people probably need their job doesn’t seem to factor in, either. Seems to me that a whole lot of people would prefer to “not work for that guy”, but they do anyway, because they need their job, and a person can still like their actual job while not liking their boss.

This isn’t about bosses, though. This is about broad workplace policies. It’s about removing discrimination. It’s about protection and recourse in the face of harassment. Little things, y’know. Mr. Steinhauer, you have a choice every day, too. You could show up at work and actually do your job. As that seems inimical to you, perhaps you should get the heck out of there. Go home and wait on the little woman or something.

Think Progress has the full story.

Things You Can Do At the Same Time!

Things

Think Progress has a terrific interview with artist Mari Andrew, and how it’s perfectly okay to talk about fun stuff, or what’s interesting to read or watch, and so on, and still be very concerned about what’s happening on the larger scale. There’s room for it all. There has to be, or none of us will successfully hang onto our sanity, or the hope of continued activism. Have a fun read.

Shiny Insects.

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Think twice before you swat that mosquito. It just might be a delicate glass sculpture, at least if you’re in the presence of Yuki Tsunoda, a young sculptor who shapes glass into insects and plants that are almost exactly to scale.

The 26-year old artist first began working with glass in 2012 when she attempted to visualize the disgust and aversion most people have to insects, especially when they swarm together. But as she studied them more and more she began to take note of the beauty of each individual body part. Tsunoda eventually shifted her focus to emphasizing the beauty of insects by recreating them in realistic forms, and to scale, using glass.

Beautiful work! There’s much more to see and read at Spoon & Tamago.