Smokestack Lightnin’ by Howlin’ Wolf, 1956

The original 1956 Chess Records release. Wolf sure knew how to set a mood.

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Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Second Bill of Rights

It was January 11, 1944, in the middle of WWII, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt enunciated this new bill of rights for industrialized America. FDR unfortunately died in April, 1945, before the war ended and these rights could be enacted.

President Obama should commit this to memory and recite it every time he gives a speech. (As well as try to pass FDR’s programs, of course.) If he did, he’d be reelected in a landslide.

 

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America’s Electile Dysfunction by Steve Bell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright 2000 Steve Bell.

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Cain, Gingrich, Santorum: The GOP Men in Space

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The Truth About Ayn Rand

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Today’s Quote: Reality and Satire

“If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist.”
— Quentin Crisp

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E.P. R.I.P.

Elvis Presley died on this date in 1977 at age 42. (Or else he became John Burroughs, according to some.) Although he didn’t invent rock and roll and he wasn’t the first white musician to sing black rhythm and blues, there’s no doubt about the impact he’s had on modern music. Here are a couple of videos from his 1968 ‘comeback’ TV special where he was almost as good and raw as the Elvis of the mid-’50s when he recorded for Sam Phillips’ Sun Records in Memphis.

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Today’s Quote-to-Quote: Maintaining Danger for Profit

“If the people are not convinced [that America is in serious danger] it would be impossible for Congress to vote the vast sums now being spent to avert danger. With the support of public opinion, as marshaled by the press, we are off to a good start. It is our job — yours and mine — to keep our people convinced that the only way to keep disaster away from our shores is to build up America’s might.”
— Charles Wilson, Chairman of the Board of major defense contractor General Electric and Truman appointee to head the Office of Defense Mobilization, in a speech to the Newspaper Publishers Association, 1950.

“When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.”
— Dresden James

“Corporations care very much about maintaining the myth that government is necessarily ineffective, except when it is spending money on the military-industrial complex, building prisons, or providing infrastructural support for the business sector.”
— Michael Lerner

“The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.”
— Marie Beyle

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Rick Perry’s Texas Jobs Miracle Illustrated

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Republican Vote Hackers of America Ad

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