Monthly Archives: July 2017

Look, its Sabo, the conservative guerrilla artist of Los Angeles. A rare sighting. Sort of.

Hewas spotted this weeksmotheringrent-a-bike baskets withMake America Great Again stickers in one of the most liberal cities in the country. On a wall between two movie ads, heslapped upposters of President Trump in the lotus position, serenely raising two middle fingers to whomever.

And stuckto a sidewalk bench, before Sabodisappeared back into semi-anonymity: REPUBLICANS ARE THE NEW PUNK.

The news profiles saySabo, 49,works under darkness adorninga city that overwhelmingly wantedHillary Clinton forpresidentwith posters of her wearingan ill-fitting thong, tattoos and nothing elsebefore the election; andportraying the transgender icon Caitlyn Jenner as a monster clownfrom the movie Itearlier this year.

But Mondays spottingtook place in broad daylight, so afilm crew couldfollow Saboaround.

Peopleused to doubt Sabo even existed, so novel wasstreet art with conservativepolitics,David Weigel wrotefor The Washington Post in 2015.

He rosefrom obscurity on the streets ofLos Angeles to become a minor starin 2015 by encouraging Sen. Ted Cruz to run for president.

The artist had portrayedCruz asa muscled rebel against conventional politics, covered in prison tattoos.

The Texas Republican did run for president, and Sabo a retired Marine who named himself after a round of ammunition lent the candidate his urbanstreet cred, absorbing fame in exchange.

Sabowas then all over Fox News and CNN, and ever since has stoked his celebrity with artwork perfectly synced to the spasms of national politics.

[How Ted Cruzs street artist gets it done]

Sabo hasmanaged this evenafter some of hisracial-slur-filled tweets made newsin early 2016, promptingCruz to stopselling his works.

But the artist would go on to find other muses.

Saboslatest round of attention a short documentary withRuptly and a profile in the Guardianlast month follows him as he plasters Los Angeles in pro-Trump art, his latest guerrilla campaign.

At the beginning of his fame,heopenly despised Trump.

Hes a circus clown, the artist told the Daily Beastin early 2016, when he began selling posters ofTrump as Il Douchin military garb The Reich Choice.

Despite his early disdain for the man who is now president I just didnt think we had the luxury of taking a chance of electing a reality star, he told The Post Sabo used the Republicanslikeness to poster-bomb an L.A. art showsupporting Democratic candidate Bernie Sandersin January of that year.

In Sabos imagination and the walls around the gallery Trump was depicted asa human finger, rising from the center of a disembodied fist.

Trump-as-middle-finger was not an ambiguous statement, Sabo told The Post. It was asymbol of contemptfor the art world.

More than any ephemeral political fury, Sabo is fueled by disdain for his fellow artists. Hesettled in Californiaafter a stint in the Marines in the 1980s, he told The Post, and studied art in Pasadena before moving to Los Angeles, where the liberal culture scene turned his stomach.

For eight years, Obama was dropping missiles on wedding parties, he said. A lot of these artists in L.A. were doing pretty pictures. They werent doing anything.

Prime example: Shepard Fairey, whose art essentially became Obamas campaign poster. AndSabo is more often compared to Banksy a conservative inversion of that world-famous street artist and his progressive causes.

[Banksys striking new mural imagines Steve Jobs as a Syrian refugee]

But Banksy works in true anonymity; the world has never seen his face.

Sabos face wasfully visible graying beard and calm smile in a photo that ran above aCNN story on Election Day, when the artistdeclared he would be voting for theman he once calledIl Douch.

One thing Trump consistently did was attack the media and attack liberals, Sabo explained toThe Post. I fell in love with the guy the minute I realized.

His conversiondidnt seem to hurt his credibility. Sabo appeared on Fox News with Tucker Carlson in February, after plastering Hollywood with posters attacking the Oscar lineup as unwatchable movies from unreadable books.

Carlson called it a pretty coherent critique of Hollywood.

But two months later, Sabo would be poster-bombing the same Fox News host asCarlson prepared to interview Caitlyn Jenner about transgender rights under President Trump.

Sabo put upfake movie posters around the studio:Tonight on Tucker Carlson. IT.

And so it goes: a cycle of bombastic street art, offensive tweets and surprisingly polite interviews with the same media that Sabo says he loves Trump for attacking.

Heis no longer the only conservative street artist in Los Angeles,the Guardian noted when it profiledhim last week,and some on the right consider Sabo a showboater.

For his part, he portrayed himself to the magazine as more introspective than his art suggests.

The blacks, the Jews, the underdogs no one has a bigger heart for them than me, Sabo told the Guardian.

On the phone with The Post, Sabo said he told the same Guardian reporter that he would happily kill liberals along with militant Muslims when the great culture war came.

That line wasnt inthe profile.

Anyway, Sabo is pushing up on 50 now, a little tired of the media rounds, he says, and he no longer stalks the streets of Los Angeles every single night.

Hes thinking of taking a few months off to study up on the latestPhotoshop techniques, he said.

The artistsanonymity has withered a bit under all the media attention, too. His neighborsall pretty much know who he is, he said.

The girls upstairs are probably social justice warriors, Sabosaid. A Mexican-Mexican Latina chick, and a blue-haired writer, both super liberal. They both tolerate me. We just wont talk politics that much.

And looking back onall his artwork, he is not without second thoughts about some pieces.

The posters depicting Jenneras a monster, for instance.

I thought it was a funny idea, but I knew it was hurtful, he said.I dont care if youre gay. I dont look down upon you or anything like that.

Sabohas since designeda sequel to that series. Restroom woman symbols, he explained, with male genitals coming out of the figures dress.

IT, the stickersread.

Sabohasnt put them on display yet; heisnt sure he has the heart. A tweet from last week suggests otherwise. And anyway,youcanbuy them on his Web store.

More reading:

Banksy takes on Brexit in new mural

Fearless Girl ignites debate about art, Wall Street and the lack of female executives

10 years after his graffiti campaign, the artist known as Borf paints a new life

How Yayoi Kusama, the Infinity Mirrors visionary, channels mental illness into art

Originally posted here:

Meet the guerrilla artist plastering a liberal metropolis with pro-Trump posters - Washington Post

Trumps Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity has asked the states to hand over data from their voter rolls. According to Axios, that includes voter information regardingfelony convictions, military status, and voter history. They have set a deadline for the middle of July.

However, the outlet reports that the commission is getting pushback from mainly liberal states such as California, Virginia, Connecticut, and Vermont with some refusing to comply altogether and others handing over what is publicly available. However, some red states, such as Oklahoma and Kentucky (which is headed by a Democratic governor), have also pushed back againstthe effort.

Trump has frequently highlighted alleged cases of voter fraud and has even claimed that he would have won the popular vote in the 2016 election if the number of illegally cast votes wasdiscounted. In May he signed an executive order setting up the commission to investigate those reports.

However, the states objecting have said they wont comply if they believe the effort is more likely to produce voter suppression rather than the stated goal of election integrity.

Californias Secretary of State, Alex Padilla, objected in part to anti-immigration hardliner and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobachs appointment as vice chair of the commission.

His role as vice chair is proof that the ultimate goal of this commission is to enact policies that will result in the disenfranchisement of American citizens, he said.

This entire commission is based on the specious and false notion that there was widespread voter fraud last November, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a close Clinton ally, said in a statement. At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trumps alternative election facts, and at worst is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression.

It is not clear how such a commission could be used to commit voter suppression. States such as Alabama, Missouri, and Kansas have said they would provide the information, Axios reported.

Groups that highlight alleged cases of voter fraud referred to McAuliffes statement as posturing.

McAuliffes posturing should surprise no one. Every time someone takes a good look at Virginias voter roll, they find evidence of election crimes that his policies inspired, Logan Churchwell, spokesman for the Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity group, told The Washington Free Beacon.

Adam Shaw is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY

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Liberal States Get Jittery as Trump Looks to Clamp Down on Voter Fraud - Breitbart News

Pope Francis shook-up the Vatican's administration Saturday by replacing the church's top theologian with whom he often clashed.

Pope Francis chose not to renew the five-year term of 69-year-old German Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Mller, who headed the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, which is responsible for defending Catholic doctrine.

Instead, the pope has turned to the department's deputy, Archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer. Like Francis, Ladaria is a Jesuit with a more liberal view of theology.

The pope has upset conservatives by suggesting that a ban on remarried divorcees taking Holy Communion could, in carefully scrutinized circumstances, be overcome without the traditional annulment. Mller, one of the pontiff's chief critics, said such an approach undermined Catholic dogma on the permanent natureof marriage.

In 2015 Mller was among 13 cardinals who signed a secret letter to the pontiff complaining that a meeting of bishops discussing family issues was stacked in favor of liberals. The letter was leaked to the media, embarrassing the signatories.

Pope,cardinal spar

German theologian Wolfgang Beinert said Mller and Francis never got along.

"They are chemistry-wise two different people who are incompatible by nature," he said. Beinert described the pope's decision to cut ties with Mller as a "punishment."

A priest, who works at the Vatican, and knows both Mller and his replacement, Ladaria, said the latter will get along with Pope Francis much better.

"They speak the same language and Ladaria is someone who is meek. He does not agitate the pope and does not threaten him," said the priest, who didn't want to be identified.

Since becoming pope in 2013, Francis has given hope to more progressive voices inside the church who want him to push ahead with his vision for a more tolerant church that focuses more on mercy than on a strict enforcement of rigid rules, which they see as outdated.

Mller's ouster was the second major shakeup at the Vatican this week. On Thursday, Francis granted Vatican hardliner Cardinal George Pella leave of absence to return to his native Australiato face trial on sexual assault charges.

The absence of Mller and Pell, the two most powerful cardinals in the Vatican, after the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, will likely create a power vacuum for the conservative wing in the Holy See hierarchy.

Mller was also allegedly lax in addressing sexual abuse cases that have come before the Vatican. During his tenure victims from Latin America, Europe and beyond came forward to press their cases.

Last year the pope confirmed there was a 2,000-case backlog, and he set about naming new officials in the congregation's discipline section to process the overload.

bik/jm (Reuters, AP, dpa)

The rest is here:

Pope Francis drops conservative German Cardinal Mller for more liberal option - Deutsche Welle