How the Capitalists' "God" Weaseled Its Way Into the Pledge and Onto Our Currency

I had always known that the "Under God" and "In God We Trust" additions were products of the anti-Communist 1950s, but I never knew how deeply this Eisenhower-era religious revival was manipulated by corporations and big businessmen for their own purposes just like the current perversions of religion by right wingers:




If you can't see the embedded player above, you can listen or read the transcript to Terry Gross's Fresh Air story about Kevin Kruse's One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by clicking here.

March Is Going Out Like a Lamb (i.e., with fluffy and white snowflakes)...

...which reminds me that there are eleven months of the year other than the one coming to an end in need of weather similes.

Some of these may vary if you live in another part of the nation or the world where spring doesn't arrive with a blanket of the cold white stuff, but here's my current list of lesser-known weather similes for the neglected months of the year:

April comes in like a Dandelion and goes out like a Lamb's Ear.
May comes in like a Chipmunk and goes out like a Wolverine.
June comes in like a Caterpillar and goes out like a Puff Adder.
July comes in like a Mosquito and goes out like a Mosquito.
August comes in like Thermidor and goes out like Fructidor.
September comes in like an Itsy-Bitsy Brown Recluse Spider and goes out like an Antibiotic-Resistant Flesh-Eating Bacterium.
October comes in like a Rash and goes out with Full-Face Clown Makeup.
November comes in like the Old Bosses and goes out like the New Bosses.
December comes in like a Tragedy and goes out like a Farce.
January comes in like the Beatles and goes out like the Banshees.
February comes in like a Scimitar and goes out like a Sea Lion.
and, of course,
March comes in like a Lion and goes out like a Lamb.

This is what a nation looks like before American bombs fall.

Meet some of the people whom John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Dick "Dick" Cheney, Bibi Netanyahu, et al. would like to bomb in our name as soon as possible:

I want to travel to Tehran just to have the psychic parakeet at the 3'50" mark of this video tell me my future.

The John Lennon / Ted Cruz Mashup

It's not quite a clown circus yet, but the first clown officially stepped into the ring earlier today at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University (without this piano accompaniment):

If Ted Cruz uses the word "imagine" in vain one more time, John Lennon's heirs will have grounds to sue.

(and if you don't see the embedded music player above, click this link from PRI.org.)

...in which Glenn Gould walks to the window...

... at the 1 minute and 57 second mark (but please watch the whole thing)...

Never Forget Who's Benefiting from America's Endless Wars.

This video from Fahrenheit 9/11 about the businesses that benefit from war is as relevant to the current saber rattling about Iran as it was to our Iraq invasion. (Halliburton isn't the only beneficiary, despite the title of the video.)


And here's your quote of the day from the 2'20" mark of the video:

"War is always good for certain companies, I mean, that are in the war busi...the business of war."  --Sam Kubba, American Iraqi Chamber of Commerce

Video proof that Iraq and Iran are still indistinguishable to some people.

If the US decides to be the volunteer police force for this guy again, maybe we can create another ISIS.

The Twitter Machine Known as @realDonaldTrump Strikes Again

Someone needs to adjust the algorithms driving the Donald Trump Twitter machine. It can't blame everything it doesn't like on Barack Obama, can it?

The Oscars are a sad joke, very much like our President. So many things are wrong!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 23, 2015

When The Donald finally follows through and gets elected to become America's CEO, can we blame everything from the weather to bad reality shows on him just as he blames everything from the Oscars to bad Superbowl plays on President Obama?

My Bold Day-After-The-Oscars Prediction

Within ten years, when people look back at the celebrity worship and backslapping convention held at Hollywood's Dolby Theatre last night, they'll ask, "Did they really overlook Inherent Vice?"

As a diehard Thomas Pynchon fan I had been waiting for Paul Thomas Anderson's film adaptation for months before and after its release. However, the vagaries of feature film distribution haven't brought it to a theatre within a hundred miles of my home yet. But on Oscar weekend I was able to pay to watch Inherent Vice on demand and did so twice. I've never seen a film that benefited so much from rewatching (just as Pynchon's books are all better and richer on second and third readings), and my prediction is that it will quickly become a classic as more people are able to see and share it.

Check back with me on this prediction in 2025 so that one of us can say, "I told you so."

The 2015 True Blue Liberal Blue Ribbon Award : First Call for Nominations

Also available for 49 other states.

If Oscar Sunday tells us anything, it tells us that nothing -- absolutely nothing -- is more important in our compulsively competitive culture than winning awards. So, finally, after more than a decade of preparation, we are ready to finally use our blogging expertise to award one blog the very first True Blue Liberal Blue Ribbon Award in 2015. In addition to the honor of being chosen and a blue ribbon graphic to place prominently (or secretly, or not at all) on one's blog, the winner will also win a pair of mugs, one honoring their home (or favorite) state, and one featuring our entire liberal blue nation.

One of the actual physical prizes.

The process of choosing this year's winner will last until December, with a chance for readers to comment and vote on long and short lists of candidates, but this is the very first call for blog nominations. Add a comment with a URL here on this blog post at TrueBlueLiberal.org or tweet a suggested blog address (your own or someone else's) to @TrueBlueLiberal on Twitter.

There is no need for any information about a blogger's real name or address until a the grand-prize winner wants to claim her or his prizes. I'm going into this process without preconceptions and looking forward to being surprised by a number of bloggers who are presenting unique valuable thoughts in a variety of new ways.