The Flickr Mikelee Image Generatr

pluralistic.net/2025/04/29/cheaters-and-liars/#caveat-emp...

hree men playing cards and having a drink. The men are dressed in long trousers and shirts. One man passes a card to another player with the card between his toes under the table, unbeknownst to the third player. The card-passer has Trump's hair and orange skin. The card-receiver wears a MAGA hat. The background is a heavily halftoned, desaturated, waving US flag.

Norm Knight, director of Flight Operations at NASA's Johnson Space Center, left, Vanessa Wyche, acting NASA associate administrator, center, Mike Lee, NASA Deputy Manager for Mission Management and Integration, and other NASA and SpaceX leadership, watch the landing of the booster after launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission with NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov onboard, Friday, March 14, 2025, in the control room of SpaceX’s HangarX at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission is the tenth crew rotation mission of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. McClain, Ayers, Onishi, and Peskov launched at 7:03 p.m. EDT, from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. Photo Credit: (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

Mike Lee, NASA Deputy Manager for Mission Management and Integration, monitors the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission with NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov onboard, Friday, March 14, 2025, in the control room of SpaceX’s HangarX at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission is the tenth crew rotation mission of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. McClain, Ayers, Onishi, and Peskov launched at 7:03 p.m. EDT, from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. Photo Credit: (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

Mike Lee, NASA Deputy Manager for Mission Management and Integration, monitors the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission with NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov onboard, Friday, March 14, 2025, in the control room of SpaceX’s HangarX at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission is the tenth crew rotation mission of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program. McClain, Ayers, Onishi, and Peskov launched at 7:03 p.m. EDT, from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. Photo Credit: (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

pretending Trump's only downside is "mean tweets" is like saying Hitler's only flaw was a bad mustache

5-13-2023

5-13-2023

Flags waving at the State Capitol building in UT

Americans have lost confidence in their government. We no longer trust our legislators and the Supreme Court to solve our country’s problems: income inequality, affordable health care, a woman's right to decide what’s best for her health, the economy, and climate change. Governance has become a series of battles. It’s no longer just political ideology. We are at war over cultural issues while our politicians ignore our basic needs.

The morals of our GOP legislators and their sycophants are just as important as their economic policy. How can we trust a party that Alex Patton, a Florida-based Republican consultant and pollster, has characterized as a party that “has become mean and driven by emotion on whom we dislike.”? “But,” he says, “that is the driving force in American politics right now.” That is the driving force of the GOP, not the Democrats. This is not an example of the equality of "bothsidesism."

In my essay, “It’s Time to Release Our Own Kraken!” I outlined the history of the Republican Party’s “below the belt” tactics. They continue to be underhanded to this day. But with the low level of civility in our present polarized country, many Republican legislators now in office have hit new ethical lows.

As a visual artist who has spent over a decade creating posters about the sorry state of American political discourse, this year I began a new series of portraits, “Faces of the Republican Party.” The men and women in this series deserve to be taken to task for their unwillingness to compromise, belief in conspiracy theories, and disdain for the LGBTQ+ community, women’s rights, and our children’s education. The purpose of our government is to solve our nation’s problems. It’s not a place for personal vendettas or manufactured cultural issues.

“Faces of the Republican Party” is not a partisan series of portraits. Merriam-Webster defines the word as “a firm adherent to a party, faction, cause, or person, especially one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance.” The people depicted in these images are the partisans. Instead, my series is a documentary and op-ed showcasing the facts in 2022. All of these people had a hand in trying to overthrow the government. These images are MAGA Republicans who put their blind allegiance to Donald Trump and their careers ahead of the needs of the American people.

The results of the 2022 midterm elections showed we are tired of autocratic and self-absorbed politicians. We would simply like our officials to do the jobs we elected them to do. Everyone deserves a piece of American Exceptionalism. As it stands, there is nothing exceptional about the tribalism these people promote.

Republicans are perfect examples of Patton’s “driving force.” This force is dirty, mean, misogynistic, selfish, and wastes our tax dollars. These people are just a small sampling of individuals responsible for the loss of credibility and faith in America’s institutions. And worse, they couldn’t care less.


Feel free to pass this poster on. It's free to download here (click on the down arrow just to the lower right of the image). Each has a special Creative Common's copyright that allows you to share these images as long as there is attribution, no derivatives, and you do not use these for commercial purposes.

See the rest of the posters from the Chamomile Tea Party! Digital high res downloads are free here (click the down arrow on the lower right side of the image). Other options are available. And join our Facebook group.

Follow the history of our country's political intransigence from 2010 to 2020 through a eight-part exhibit of these posters on Google Arts & Culture.

Tumalo Falls near Bend Oregon is a gorgeous 97 foot cascade on Tumalo Creek in the Deschutes National Forest. My lovely wife and I visited it in October 2021 arriving a short time after sunrise. The deciduous foliage along the banks of the creek was well on the way to changing to its fall coloration.

The last time I was there was in 1999 and I shot it with a 35mm film camera. Some destructive fires hit this area in the 1970's and 1980's, including a very destructive one in 1970. It's quite striking for me to see the difference from my older images to my current ones. I don't have many of my own images that are that far apart in the same location. The creek bank was much more sparce on my first visit. It's certainly grown back quite alot in the 22 years or so since I was last there, which is beautiful to see!

I opted to process this image for a bit of a “painterly” look as standing there on this morning certainly gave me a feeling of looking at a gorgeous piece of nature’s art!

This image captures a vibrant sunset behind some tufa formations near Wendel in Lassen County, California, USA. The Honey Lake Valley region is filled with very interesting geology. Honey Lake, considered a “dry” lake even as it contains a good bit of water throughout much of the year was once part of a larger inland sea known as Lake Lahontan. These tufa; large calcium carbonate deposits where once was an underwater spring; are believed to be left behind after Lake Lahontan dried up eons ago.