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John Butler: Changing the world one animation at a time

10.23.2014

01:37 pm

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Animation

Politics

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Award-winning speculative fiction animator John Butler, one half of the Butler Brothers, will be making a rare appearance at the Exchange Rates Expo in Brooklyn, New York from October 23rd to 26th. John will be exhibiting alongside artist and filmmaker Patrick Jameson and artist Ellis Luxemburg, as part of the Glasgow’s Queen’s Park Railway Club at the Fuchs Projects, 56 Bogart Street.

Exchange Rates is an international expo of art and art galleries in around the Bushwick area of Brooklyn presenting work by exchange artists from around the world:

Conceived and produced by arts organizations helmed by artists and curators in Bushwick, Brooklyn and London, England, Exchange Rates—known also in this inaugural iteration as The Bushwick Expo—is an international exposition of artworks and curatorial programs in which host spaces in one art community open their doors and share their walls with kindred spaces on visit from elsewhere.

Some exhibits will be integrated, some collaborative yet autonomous, some even spontaneous or virtual.

The rates of exchange, as such, will fluctuate, while the currencies of exchange—ideas and culture—remain fixed.


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As regular readers to Dangerous MInds know, I am a big fan of John Butler’s work and have been banging the drum for his speculative animations for some considerable time. For those who don’t know his work, Butler, to give a snapshot, is a hybrid of J. G. Ballard, John Carpenter via Stanley Kubrick—an imaginative and intelligent dystopian, who has an exacting and precise style to his animated films.

Today, Butler will be premiering his recently completed speculative science fiction animation, the so-called Amazon cycle of four films (a reference to working practices of the company rather than the South American river) contained in Descention along with The Terminal Node. Butler’s recent work examines the processes by which capitalism uses technology to dehumanize a workforce.

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As Butler explained via email:

Descention draws a straight line from military robotics to retail cybernetics, from DARPA to Amazon.

Refusnik, G.O.L.E.M., M.O.N.A.D. and Mutator are all episodes in an adaptive odyssey that evaluates human utility in the age of artificial indifference.

Through a series of mutations, the human candidate is gradually purged of all non-essential attributes in an attempt to meet the imperatives of growth.

This process of adaptive degradation eventually leads to the distillation of human demand into an intelligent algorithm, fully able to realise it’s own destiny.

It is similar to The Incredible Shrinking Man except that his mutation is driven by the market rather than radiation.


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Below the Butler Brothers Descention which will be screened at Exchange Rates. More information here.

Posted by Paul Gallagher

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10.23.2014

01:37 pm

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‘Like Punk Never Happened’: Remembering Smash Hits, the ‘totally 80s’ pop magazine

10.23.2014

12:30 pm

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Fashion

Music

Pop Culture

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Topics | Dangerous Minds (5)
Culture Club on the cover of Smash Hits, July 19, 1984

Music magazine Smash Hits started out in 1978 and was a mecca for pop fans. It had a strong rotation of writers back in its heyday such as Dave Rimmer (author of the 1985 book, Like Punk Never Happened), Mark Ellen (MOJO), Steve Beebee (Kerrang!) and Neil Tennant of The Pet Shop Boys. Regular content included interviews and pictorials but Smash Hits also published some fun features like “Bitz” (a smattering of industry information like fan club addresses and such), and was filled with pages of lyrics to the current top 20 songs (you know, so you didn’t have to keep trying to write them down on your own). There was always a centerfold spread, and in addition to the magazines eye-catching covers they also ran a special “back cover” with glossy photos of hot at-the-time artists like Limahl the spiky-haired vocalist for Kajagoogoo or the Thompson Twins.

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Limahl of Kajagoogoo, May 24th, 1984

In 2009, Smash Hits superfan Brian McCloskey, an 80’s kid who had hung on to his copies of Smash Hits since youth, decided to rescue his collection from his parents’ attic at his childhood home in Derry, Ireland. McCloskey had the magazines shipped all the way to his home in California, tracked down copies he was missing in his collection from the magazines inception, then took on the painstaking process of scanning and uploading every page of every issue he had to his blog, Like Punk Never Happened. McCloskey’s collection of Smash Hits represents every issue of the magazine from 1979 to 1985.

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Big Country, April 14th, 1983

As I can’t help but admire his dedication to this pop-culture gem, I contacted McCloskey to learn more about his recollections from the early days of Smash Hits.

Smash Hits took music very seriously, but they didn’t take musicians seriously. A very sensible distinction. I think that people have either forgotten or didn’t realize to begin with that Smash Hits was quite a serious magazine. During their peak years they would receive thousands of letters - handwritten letters! You could read great interviews with real artist like Paul Weller or Ian Dury. After the magazine’s redesign at the end of 1981, the snark really took over. I’m glad that the my archive has reminded, or opened people’s minds to the early days of Smash Hits.

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Gary Numan, September 1983

Smash Hits continued to publish issues well after its official decline in the early 90’s, then ceased its print run in February of 2006. McCloskey updates his site with new vintage issues every two week and hopes to continue posting issues beyond 1985 with the help of fellow fans. I highly recommend you get comfortable, set your Pandora station to “80’s Pop,” then head over to McCloskey’s blog and lose yourself for a few hours. A number of images published during the years 1982-1984 from Smash Hits follow.

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The Belle Stars, February 3, 1983

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Cyndi Lauper and Thomas Dolby lyric sheet, March 29th, 1984

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Scritti Politti lyric sheet, June 7th, 1984

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Thompson Twins, November 24th, 1983

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Billy Idol, July 19, 1984

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Adam Ant lyric sheet, December/January 1982

Posted by Cherrybomb

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10.23.2014

12:30 pm

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The surreal teapots of Richard T. Notkin

10.23.2014

11:59 am

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Art

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Teaset “Iraq 2007”, 2007

According to the biographical narrative of sculptor Richard T. Notkin, the Helena, Montana-based artist has been creating surreal and politically charged ceramics for almost 40 years. Of note in Notkin’s long career is his fondness for creating odd-looking teapots; an affinity that was born from his early love of Chinese Yixing teapots. Notkin was so enamoured with his subject that he spent most of the twelve years between 1983 and 1995 creating surrealist-looking teapots. Notkin’s works are also meant to represent his disdain of politics, war and other important societal issues.

Notkin on why he chose the teapot as a way of expressing himself:

Although the vast majority of my work created between 1983 and 1995 consists almost entirely of teapots, I consider myself a sculptor with a strong commitment to social commentary. My chosen medium — the material I love to work with — is clay. The vessel is the primal “canvas” for the ceramic artist, and my vessel of choice is the teapot, the most complex of vessels, consisting of body, handle, spout, lid and knob. This allows me the widest latitude in juxtaposing the many images I use to set up my narrative pieces.

Notkin’s works have been displayed by museums across the world, including locations in New York, Los Angeles, London and Japan. I’m especially fond of the teapots that follow.

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Light bulb teapot (variation #6), 1984

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“Nuclear Nuts” teapot (variation #12) 1987

More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb

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10.23.2014

11:59 am

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Gidget Goes to Hell: Meet enigmatic punk/New Wave legends Suburban Lawns

10.23.2014

11:34 am

Topics:

Music

Punk

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Topics | Dangerous Minds (18)
Su Tissue on the cover of Slash Magazine, 1979

They don’t make them like this anymore. One of the great Californian punk/new wave bands, Suburban Lawns was formed by singers, multi-instrumentalists and CalArts students Su Tissue and Vex Billingsgate in 1978. Joining with drummer Chuck Roast and guitarists Frankie Ennui and John Gleur—in Long Beach, of all places—they called themselves the Fabulons and Art Attack before choosing the name Suburban Lawns.

A former Doors roadie named E.J. Emmons produced their first two self-released singles, “Gidget Goes to Hell” and “Janitor,” as well as their classic self-titled album on IRSTopics | Dangerous Minds (19). It is an outrage against common sense, basic decency and public opinion that this stone masterpiece has languished out of print for decades. The band’s final EP, Baby, also enriches collectors’ hoards.

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I don’t have any evidence that Ray Manzarek ever said “Su Tissue was a shaman,” but if he didn’t say it, I bet he wished he had. For my money, she is the single most fascinating and enigmatic figure of the West Coast punk scene, Darby Crash be damned. Tissue released a solo album of piano recordings called Salon de Musique in 1984, after Suburban Lawns broke up, but her trail runs cold following an appearance in Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild. (Demme and Jack Cummins had co-directed a video for “Gidget Goes to Hell” that Saturday Night Live aired in 1980.) Wherever she is, I hope she’s enjoying her studiously showbiz-free life.

There’s not a lot of the group represented on YouTube. Here’s the gorgeous video for “Janitor,” directed by Denise Gallant, a video graphics pioneer who invented an analog video synthesizer in the 1970s. It may not seem like it now, but when this came out, it was positively high tech-looking!


More Suburban Lawns after the jump…

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Posted by Oliver Hall

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10.23.2014

11:34 am

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I’d kill for that dress: Gorgeously gothy mourning attire from 1815-1915

10.23.2014

09:21 am

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Fashion

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Evening dress suitable for late mourning, from around 1861

The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently announced a breathtaking new exhibit, “Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire”—upper-class women’s widow couture, if you will. The clothing ranges from 1815 to 1915, when the death of a husband was met with strict social expectations among the English (and sometimes American) elite. During the Victorian era, a widow was expected to observe a year and a day of “full mourning,” during which she would refrain from “society” activities, veiled and wearing simple black dresses. After that, there was a nine-month period where she could drop the veil and incorporate small adornments, like jewelry or a trimmed hem. Then came “half-mourning,” where she could add grey, purple or a little white—this lasted three to six more months.

If a woman did not observe proper mourning etiquette (especially if she was still young and pretty), she would usually be considered not only gauche, but downright libidinous. Additionally, if the mourning attire was too flashy, she could also be judged as advertising her new singledom—scandalous! Widowers on the other hand, were just expected to wear dark clothes for an unofficial amount of time, and they could remarry in as little as a few months without fear of judgement.

If you can’t make it to the Met, you’re in luck! Almost all of their archives are searchable online, and I have compiled an exhibit for you right here. I even added some pieces that aren’t on display, including a dress worn by Queen Victoria herself. Kind of makes you long for the days when people died from a seasonal flu, huh?

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1870, with veil

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1880, not on view

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Posted by Amber Frost

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10.23.2014

09:21 am

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In My Time of Buying: Pricey Led Zeppelin scarves designed by Paul Smith

10.23.2014

09:06 am

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Fashion

Music

Tags:

Topics | Dangerous Minds (24)

In the 1970s nearly every glam rock band or teeny-bopper pop star had a tacky range of merchandise for sale that usually included a white silk scarf with the name of the band emblazoned on it, such as “Slade” or “David Cassidy” or “The Osmonds,” “Sweet” or the “Bay City Rollers” which fans would hold aloft with religious devotion during concerts. Now this idea of a fan scarf has been taken one step further in an unusual collaboration between Led Zeppelin and British fashion designer Paul Smith.

The talented Mr. Smith has produced a series of six “exceptional limited edition” scarves to coincide with the release of Led Zeppelin’s nine remastered albums. Six scarves are now available: five depicting the covers to the first five Led Zeppelin albums, and a sixth featuring the band.

The design of the artwork for the first three releases – “Led Zeppelin”, “Led Zeppelin II” and “Led Zeppelin III” – has been reinterpreted on three different scarves each measuring 1.5 metres by 1.5 metres. Translating the intricacy of the renowned imagery onto fabric proved a challenging task but, by taking a different approach to each scarf, Paul Smith has come up with three truly unique items.

A photographic weaving technique has been employed for the largely monochromatic “Led Zeppelin”, with the red detail being added using a fine fil coupe yarn. The eight colours of the “Led Zeppelin II” artwork demanded an alternative approach and four different quality yarns were combined to reflect the richness of the colourful design. The psychedelia of “Led Zeppelin III” is depicted with a combination of boucle and merino wool to exquisite effect.

(The spinning volvolle from inside the Led Zeppelin III album cover probably would have made for the best textile design, but what do I know?)

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Further designs for Led Zeppelin IV and Houses of the Holy, which “have been jacquard woven onto two further scarves and a brand new spectacular design has been created for the sixth scarf,” are also available.

The scarves come in limited editions of 50, and cost $665 (£395) each, which is slightly over the current exchange rate of $632.

You’d have to be as rich as Jimmy Page is to afford these things! I suppose once these babies sell out the next stage may be a cheaper mass produced version for the less well heeled Zeppelin fan? No?

Who would have thunk that the lowly fan scarf would one day become an expensive high fashion statement?

More after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher

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10.23.2014

09:06 am

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Oops—Hitler’s face finds its way onto Swiss coffee creamer lids

10.22.2014

08:09 pm

Topics:

Food

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Topics | Dangerous Minds (27)

Oh my. Unsuspecting Swiss citizens on their morning commute looking to make their coffee more tasty were unexpectedly confronted with the face of the twentieth century’s most iconic representation of evil, Adolf Hitler, on their miniature packets of coffee creamer. A subsidiary of Migros, a Swiss retail behemoth, produced the coffee creamer packages, which had both Hitler and Mussolini on them.

According to the New York Times, Tristan Cerf, a spokesman for Migros, said that “the mishap occurred when an outside company asked ELSA, a dairy manufacturer that is one of Migros’s subsidiaries, to supply a series of 55 coffee cream containers based on vintage cigar labels, two of which featured the dictators.”

“I can’t tell you how these labels got past our controls,’’ Mr. Cerf said. “Usually the labels have pleasant images like trains, landscapes and dogs—nothing polemic that can pose a problem.” As the Times reported, “In coffee-loving Switzerland, labels from the mini-cream containers are cult collectibles, and producers often seek new and inventive ways to enhance their appeal.”

On Wednesday, the coffee creamer packages caused a minor sensation on the Internet. The Migros immediately parted ways with Karo Shipping, the company responsible for them. After the existence of the dictator portraits was broken by the Swiss commuter newspaper “20 Minutes” Migros immediately apologized and referred to it as an “unforgivable blunder.”

The designs should never have been shipped, said Migros spokesperson Luzi Weber. Chosen by Karo Shipping, they were adopted before anyone had examined them closely. “In future, we will tighten our controls for these products drastically,” Weber said. A total of 300 boxes, each containing 200 coffee cream portions, were sold. However, the two dictators would recur only four times per package.

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Because the Karo Shipping managing director Peter Waelchli described the coffee creamers in various media reports as “not a problem,” Migros immediately broke off business relations with the company, which is located in Bern. “The image is one of many in the series of cigar bands, which is on the collectors’ market for two years,” said Waelchli. The picture was selected from a book about cigar bands. Waelchli can not understand how—after two years—it is suddenly such a big deal in the media. “Sure it’s bad, what happened under Hitler,” Waelchli said. “Even today people do bad things—in Syria people are being beheaded.”

“These statements are unacceptable to us,” said Weber.

Thank you Susan Stone!

Posted by Martin Schneider

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10.22.2014

08:09 pm

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Idiot foodies pranked into lovin’ McDonald’s

10.22.2014

05:52 pm

Topics:

Amusing

Food

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Before hitting “play” on this video, please click on “settings” and then select “subtitles.”

Two Dutch pranksters from Life Hunters TV decided to hit up the annual culinary food convention in Houten to see if they could deceive foodies and “high-end food experts” with their supposed restaurant’s new “organic” alternatives to fast food. All these two guys did was go to a local McDonald’s to buy some artery cloggin’ fixins, chopped up the Mickey D’s into neat little squares and then stuck some toothpicks into the food. That’s all.

So were the foodies impressed with this duo’s new line of organic fast food? You betcha! One “expert” remarked:

“I feel some warmth releasing in my mouth. There a lot of different tastes!”

Yes and all of those different tastes swirling around your palette have names that sound like something you heard in chemistry class…

You’ll be pleased to know that at least one of the “experts” tasting the McDonald’s fare thinks it:

“Tastes like chicken.”

Several thought it tasted even better than “real” McDonald’s!

Before hitting “play” on this video, please click on “settings” and then select “subtitles.”

Posted by Tara McGinley

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10.22.2014

05:52 pm

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The kid from the ‘Balloon Boy’ hoax made a metal video. And, surprise! (not really) it’s awful

10.22.2014

05:28 pm

Topics:

Kooks

Music

The wrong side of history

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Topics | Dangerous Minds (30)
The Fingered it Out album cover

Or should I say kids, because young Falcon Heene (the boy who never was flying over Colorado in a balloon back in 2009) has put together a metal band with his brothers Ryo and Bradford called Heene Boyz. As you might have already guessed, the young lads are being managed by the man very same man who orchestrated the whole balloon fiasco (with the help of his wife Mayumi), their father Richard Heene.

Falcon Heene, now eleven is the trio’s vocalist and brothers Ryo (age thirteen on drums), and Bradford (age fifteen on guitar) are currently trying to bill themselves as the “youngest metal band in the world,” a distinction that the Heene Boyz technically share with Brooklyn middle-schoolers Unlocking the Truth who are all now between the ages of twelve and thirteen, as well as Japanese band Baby Metal who are all about fourteen now. But I digress.

Topics | Dangerous Minds (31)

Their big song is called “Balloon Boy No Hoax.” A title that sounds exactly like it was written by an eleven-year-old whose name will always be synonymous with “Balloon Boy.” Remarkably, as the snappy title implies, the lyrics to the song attempt to denounce the fact that “Balloongate 2009” was a hoax in the first place. The boys even take a lyrical swipe at journalist Wolf Blitzer (“Who the hell is Wolf?”). Blitzer was the lucky journo who got to interview the family during a night when he was guest-hosting for Larry King on October 15th, 2009, the same day the hoax went down. When Blitzer asked Richard Heene to clarify what his son was doing hiding in the attic of the family’s garage, he obliged and asked Falcon (who was only six at the time) to respond. The kindergartner answered “You guys said we did this for the show.” (At that point, Richard Heene put on his best dog and pony show in an attempt to deflect Blitzer’s repeated requests to get Falcon to repeat the massive VERBAL BOMB he had just dropped. Heene got all defensive and the rest is history. Both parents spent a short time in jail and Richard Heene’s probation period ended last year.

Topics | Dangerous Minds (32)

So without further adieu, here’s “Balloon Boy No Hoax” from the album Fingered it Out. And yeah, they made a video for the title track and it’s even worse than the song.

Yeah Mr. Heene, your kids are going to turn out just fine.



Via Metal Sucks

Posted by Cherrybomb

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10.22.2014

05:28 pm

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Rightwinger wants South to form conservative nation with no gays or Hispanics and call it ‘Reagan’!

10.22.2014

04:52 pm

Topics:

American-style (Republican) Christianity

Amusing

Idiocracy

Kooks

Stupid or Evil?

U.S.A.!!!

Tags:

Topics | Dangerous Minds (33)

Former Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush speechwriter, Pentagon official, novelist, TV commentator, columnist and idiot Douglas MacKinnon appeared yesterday on The Janet Mefferd Show to promote his new book, The Secessionist States of America: The Blueprint for Creating a Traditional Values Country . . . NowTopics | Dangerous Minds (34).

It seems that MacKinnon, who you might see on Fox News from time to time, was inspired by the recent referendum in Scotland to consider what might happen in America in a similar(ish) circumstance, after a recent poll found that nearly one quarter of us would like to secede (although not necessarily for the same reasons).

According to The Raw Story:

[MacKinnon] told the religious conservative host that southern states – starting with Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina – should leave the United States so they can implement a right-wing Christian system of government.

MacKinnon envisions other states joining, but he hopes to leave out Texas because “there have been a number of incursions into Texas and other places from some of the folks in Mexico.”

Sure the Confederate states got a bit of a bad rap back in the Civil War days, but hey, that was then and this is now, right?

MacKinnon told his host that the Southern states had “seceded legally” and “peacefully” before the Civil War and that it was President Lincoln who was in the wrong. The rightwing pundit also recommended that the newly-formed country be dubbed “Reagan,” in honor of his old boss.

Although slavery was not mentioned during the program, he’s got a major problem with gay civil rights. MacKinnon took up the “persecuted Christian” canard with a passion, declaring:

“If you do believe in traditional values, if you are a Christian, if you are evangelical, if you do believe in the golden rule, then you’re seeing all of this unravel before our eyes daily,” he complained.

Nope, no gayz need apply for a visa to “Reagan,” and you doggone Lat-teen-o-types, apparently you ain’t welcome either (hence the Texas snub).

Here’s some excerpts from the interview as posted by Right Wing Watch:

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10.22.2014

04:52 pm

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