White Supremacy: Just Background Noise.

Tucker Viemeister.

It’s a forlorn hope, that republicans might stumble over a conscience, discover their humanity and embrace that of others. It really does not seem to matter what the Tiny Tyrant does, there are those who will squink all over, in an attempt to cover over the massive piles of shit left in the wake of the Tiny Tyrant. As we have all been witness to, Trump gets worse, week by week, day by day.

As CNN noted on Friday, in the last four weeks alone, President Trump has fired chief strategist Steve Bannon, fired Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, hired and fired communications director Anthony Scaramucci, publicly shamed his own attorney general and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, banned transgender troops via twitter, made up two phone calls, thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for expelling American diplomats from the country, threatened nuclear war with North Korea, and defended attendees of a white supremacy rally.

And that’s not even half of it.

But Steve Cortes, a member of Trump’s Hispanic Advisory Council, said on Fox News Sunday morning that if Republicans just cut taxes, all of that will be background noise.

“Clearly, he had a tough week. There’s no way around that,” Cortes said.

“All presidents have tough weeks,” Cortes said Sunday. “I believe that will become background noise once we get taxes done, and once this economy starts growing the way it’s capable of.”

Yes, a tough week, brought on by the defense of fucking nazis being “fine people”. You opened your mouth, and Trump obligingly shit in it, and you decided to swallow it. Nice.

[…]

“The economy’s already accelerating. There’s a lot of optimism out there in the country,” Cortes said. “If we can throw tax cuts into the mix, I think this economy can absolutely take off, and then I think we’d see those poll numbers rebound very, very quickly for the president.”

There’s a lot of optimism out and about? Where? Oh, yes, in the crowds of nazis, sure. Everywhere else, not so much. Perhaps you should get outside once in a while. People are not optimistic about an idiotic, ignorant, maniacal bigot being in control of things, for a given value of control. People are not optimistic about not being nuked. People are not optimistic about not getting into yet another fucking war. People are not optimistic about bigotry being elevated to “great america” status. People are not optimistic about the blatant slaughter of all things which could help us avoid the worst disasters of climate change. People are not optimistic about the economy. The list goes on and on.

Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL) made similar comments last week, telling Bloomberg that Trump’s comments about white supremacists were “frustrating” because he wanted to start focusing on tax reform.

“[It’s] very frustrating for those of us who want to start focusing on the issues ahead—tax reform, infrastructure, the debt ceiling,” Ross said. “I wished we would start focusing on those issues, and we need to start healing and bringing people together—instead of peeling back the scabs.”

Right. Your idea of tax reform is handing tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, and you’ve made sure there are zero safety nets for everyone else. That will cheer everyone up for sure. You don’t start healing and bringing people together by announcing that nazis are “fine people” and everything was really the fault of those filthy liberals. The reason those scabs peel back so easily is that there is a massive wound underneath, still oozing blood, covered over, but certainly not healed. Healing does not take place by ignoring a wound. Now the Tiny Tyrant and his henchidiots, like you, Rep. Ross, have dumped toxic wasted in the wound, and you want to talk healing. Isolation, genocide, and subjugation are not things which heal. They do not unite. And those things are what you stand for, handwaving reality, because those people, they don’t actually matter to you.

Think Progress has the full story.

Roadside America.

John Margolies, “Hoot Owl Cafe, horizontal view, 8711 Long Beach Boulevard, Southgate” (1977), taken in Los Angeles.

John Margolies, “Duwamish Drive-in Theater, E. Marginal Way” (1980), taken in Seattle.

It’s impossible to not dream of setting off on a long road adventure while perusing the archives of the late John Margolies. Known for his photographs of America’s vernacular architecture, Margolies spent over three decades driving more than 100,000 miles with his eyes alert for strange sculptures, dynamic signs, and structures fast-disappearing from today’s landscape, from mom-and-pop shops to drive-in movie theaters. His journey culminated in the photo book, John Margolies: Roadside America, published in 2010, which presents a sweeping portrait of the nation through its roadside embellishments. While Robert Frank showed us the often aching realities of the United States in the 20th century, Margolies gifted us with all its weird and its wonderful.

And quite literally, too: in a generous gesture, he placed all his work in the public domain. Now, a little over a year after his death at the age of 76, the Library of Congress has digitized and uploaded the more than 11,000 color slides from his archives so they are more easily accessible. The effort is part of what curator Micah Messenheimer described to Hyperallergic as the Library’s “longstanding commitment to digitizing materials that exemplify American lives and experiences.”

You can read and see much more at Hyperallergic.

Burning Man, It’s Human Sacrifice!

Okay, I love The Wicker Man, one of my fave films. The original, of course. I own the collector’s limited edition director’s cut, and re-watch it now and then. It’s wonderfully irreverent, and Poor Sgt. Howie is so darn uptight. That said, it’s just a movie. Historically, there’s not a lot of proof when it comes to ancient pagans stuffing people into effigies and burning them alive, although this was widely believed to be the case for a good number of years. Burning effigies though, is a time-honoured tradition among humans, and has been done for all manner of reasons. Sometimes, just because it’s fun, and y’know, big bonfire.

Kevin Swanson, pastor and professional nut, has now decided that Burning Man is all about human sacrifice. I’m not exactly sure why, because I am not going to listen to the broadcast. If someone else is brave enough (and with a better connection) to do so, please enlighten me as to any actual reason for this nonsense. Burning an effigy at Burning Man is a defining thing, that much is rather clear in the name of the festival, so I would have thought that was a no-brainer. It’s a tradition, been going on for a long time.

On his radio show last week, right-wing pastor Kevin Swanson argued that the annual Burning Man festival is trying to bring back human sacrifice, but has been unable to do so only “because of the influence of Christ” on our legislators who recognize that the practice is prohibited by Old Testament law.

There’s a helluva lot of sacrificing going on in the old testament, and if most of it wasn’t human, maybe that’s because Jehovah was busy directing this, that, and the other person to indulge in one genocidal slaughter after another. I tend to think that fits the rubric of human sacrifice. Jehovah got pissed at a whole bunch of people, and it was pretty much non-stop killing, with breaks for rape and stuff.

“The only way that we can defend a law, a civil law, against the worship of false gods by way of human sacrifice or animal sacrifice is by applying Old Testament law,” Swanson said. “We don’t serve our foreign gods by human sacrifice or animal sacrifice simply because the word of God doesn’t allow for it and, as Christians, as a Christian worldview, as a Christian legislator, or as a Christian governor, I could not allow it in any given city or state because the Christian worldview only allows for a single sacrifice, and that’s already been accomplished.”

Rats below, that’s quite the word salad you have there, Mr. Swanson. There is no law, civil or otherwise, against worshiping gods of any kind. You’re free to worship anyone or anything you like. As anyone is free to indulge in animal sacrifice when it comes to meals, I don’t see how you get to differentiate over just how someone sacrifices a chicken or such. By the way, Jehovah didn’t have anything against animal sacrifice, it just got up his nose when people sacrificed more to Baal. Then Jehovah would order all those people to be, um, sacrificed.

We don’t “serve our foreign gods”? Who might those be, Mr. Swanson? I thought you subscribed to monotheism. Ah, the christian worldview. You can stuff it, because that is not the worldview held by all people. It’s certainly not held by me.

Swanson said that Burning Man is all about “radical inclusion,” which he insisted is just another name for “radical polytheism [and] radical human sacrifice. This is what they’re headed for. They want to bring human sacrifice back.”

Ooooh, radical inclusion. Sounds good to me. No, it’s not another name for polytheism. Besides, you’re the one talking “foreign gods”. And no one is talking human sacrifice, for fuck’s sake, where do you come up with this shit? Either you’re drinking a right interesting type of Kool-aid, or someone’s slipping something in your coffee, dude.

RWW has the soundcloud, if anyone wants to listen.