A Fox News viewer, the early years

Safety first!

Be vigilant America, threats are everywhere.

Huh?

Everything they told us was going to happen under Communism has come true under capitalism.

Banana propaganda

We propped up violent dictatorships in central and south America so you cold have bananas, now do the right thing and eat more of them you ungrateful outs.

Big news!

 "Hello?  What?  Have heard the big news?"

 "They talked abut this blog...

 "...and Dr. Monkey's Tumblr blog on a podcast of Gweek."

"They get down to talking about both of them in earnest in the 26th minute of the podcast."

This is my third time being featured on Boing Boing.  And yes, it's very nice to be recognized for my work.  I always knew if I liked the stuff I scan and post, then others would like it as well.  Yes, I sent Mark from Boing Boing an email thanking him for spotlighting my blogs.

What liberal media?

How conservative is my local newspaper?  It's so right wing that on the morning after Obama got re-elected they ran a huge picture of Romney on the front page above the fold with the headline Romney Wins Big in East Tennessee.  Never mind that Romney got his ass kicked in the rest of the country, no, what was important to the knobs at the Johnson City Press was making sure their Republican overlords feelings weren't hurt.  And that's the reason I don't subscribe and rarely read my local right wing 'news' paper, it's too Republican for me.

And the editorial page is always full of letters to the editor from local crackpots.  So I decided to write a satirical letter to them in the style of most of their other letter writers.  I decided to cover a subject near and dear to the whack job's hearts, guns.  Here's the letter I originally sent to them:

It has come to my attention that people are being denied their second amendment rights in the Johnson City Public Library and in all Mountain States Health Alliance facilities. There are signs on the doors of these establishments that say that carrying a handgun inside their premises is prohibited. Now, I'm sure this kind of thing is happily approved by Phil Roe and Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the soft on crime crowd, but to me, it's a life threatening situation.

People must be allowed to defend themselves in the library against those who would try to turn them gay by reading poetry at them or by making them read those 'Twilight' books. And in the hospitals, people must be allowed to stop 'do gooder' hospital staff from forcibly implementing Obamacare.

If people aren't allowed to carry their guns every where they want, then next thing you know they'll be forced to surrender their firearms to Communists, United Nations 'peacekeepers,' and to atheists. Come on Tri Cities, let's do something about this or they'll take away our right to bear arms.

And here's the letter they printed:

Notice the difference?  No?  You'd be forgiven if you did because it's just a minor change.  And that change is they took out the name of my local teabagging Congressman who they adore at the Johnson City Press.  Yeah, they live to protect Rep. Phil Roe (R-Fox News).  

Periodically they'll set up tables at local stores or events and give papers away to entice people to subscribe.  When they ask me if I want a free paper I always decline on the grounds that if I want to read Republican propaganda I'll go to the RNC website. 

Watch this

Seriously, you'll thank me after you do. It's brilliant.

Other things the CIA planted, oops, 'found' in bin Laden's compound

• Cases of pork rinds.
• A pallet of Jack Chick tracts.
• Love letters to Miley Ray Cyrus.
• Merkins.
• Lightly used fleshlights.
• Mike Huckabee posters.
• Pamela Geller love dolls.
• Love letters to Billy Ray Cyrus.
• A copy of The Satanic Verses.
• Elton John's Greatest Hits on cassette and 8 track.
• Bacon Bits.
• A letter from George W. Bush.
• One of those 'Hang in there Friday is coming!' motivational posters.
• Love letters in the sand.
• Two tiny Indonesian boys.
• Natalee Holloway's corpse.
• Nancy Grace's sense of propriety and shame.
• Two fingers of Two Fingers tequila.
• A signed copy of Jonathon Livingston Seagull.
• Signed copies of Ted Nugent and Ray Stevens CD's.
• Various copies of Superman comic books.
• Mouse poop.
• Janet Jackson.

Hearts and minds

Over at my retro/vintage blog I just posted some great propaganda posters that I scanned from a book I got at the library. Some of them prove, like the one above, that good design is timeless.

A different view

I love these Soviet era paintings about World War 2. They give a whole different view on the conflict that shaped so much of the 20th century and it shows that the people who lived in the USSR were just like us, decent folks who loved and fought for their country even if they didn't always agree with their government. You can see more of these great paintings by clicking here.

Saving kids, one book at a time

I bought a bunch of kid's books at a friends of a local library sale today. Some of them are bizarre picture books, some are artsy picture books, and some of them, well, let's just say it was a good thing I bought them before they landed in the wrong little hands. Here's a smattering of some of the more subversive ones:
In case you can't read the title of that book it's Menstruation and it was written by a dude. That's right, a dude. I wonder how many times he rode his menstrual cycle.

Funny, you never see books celebrating the fact that Mommy and Daddy stay together in a marriage for the sake of their ungrateful brats who'll dump them in a shoddy nursing home the first chance they get.

Another example of the sick twisted effort to taint our American minds with the filth that is the metric system. Thank Jeebus that the fluoride in our water and the ink we absorbed through the lining of our anuses from the colored toilet paper President Reagan made us use kept our resolve strong and we were able to reject the attempt to make us adopt that socialistic European measurement system. We dodged a huge bullet on that one, no thanks to people like Jimmy Carter, Tom Brokaw, and Joyce DeWitt.

Sure, the above book looks cute and fun but it's yet another attempt to tempt our children into an alternative sexual lifestyle. Bestiality Avenue is a dead end street, so stay away from the off ramp that leads to it.

And finally, when will the Amazon lesbians in the media stop trying turning our girls into men? Young ladies don't need to fight, they need to learn how to snag jobs and pay bunches of money in Social Security taxes so the Social Security Administration will stay solvent long enough for us old geezers to keep collecting it until we die.

It's a damn good thing I'm looking out for your kids and working to keep them from seeing this propaganda. Otherwise they'd be all full of fancy book learnin' nonsense and they'd start spouting off that evolution stuff and shit.

It's like she's staring into your soul

I found this great photo of a girl from East Germany circa 1968 on Flickr. I'm not sure if I could love it any more than I do now. And yes, that's her in the new banner photo.

Film making at it's finest

My friend Joseph F., The Smartest Man in the World, told me about a great website called the Prelinger Archives. It's a collection of old propaganda, advertising, entertainment, and personal hygiene films from the '30's, '40's, and '50's. It's got classics like "How To Be Popular" and "New Girl in the Office" and many many many more. I can see myself wasting many an hour or two watching those classics. The movies are all public domain so you can watch, download, and embed them for free on your blogs. For some reason I could not get the embed to work on my blog, maybe one of you code people can email me the fix so one day I can use them on here.


Anyhoo, go watch a blast from the past!

I may be a left wing progressive liberal but I'm not an ass

If you really think that life under a Democrat President is going to be much different than it is now, then I hate to burst your bubble. The next President, if he or she is from the Democratic party, may have more respect for the Constitution and for other branches of government but they will not be much different than what we've got now. Sure, they'll be a little more transparent and they'll hold a few more press conferences but by and large what we've got now is about what we're gonna get later.

And the reason is that the Democrats and the Republicans both suckle at the teat of lobbyists and major multi national corporations because as someone once said, money is the mother's milk of politics. Through the years the Democratic party has shifted right and are now about where the Republicans were in the mid to late 1960's. The Republicans on the other hand, to differentiate themselves from the Democrats and to please their new Reich wing religious base, have moved further right. But all members of both political parties still need money to buy those ads to get themselves reelected, they still need money to pay for those yard signs, they still need money to pay for those endless campaigns, and who provides all that money? Multinational corporations like Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Smith Kline Beecham, Ford Motor Company, Exxon Mobil, and the list goes on.

The people in power in Washington DC have shown time after time that they will do whatever it takes to get reelected. They'll take money from most anyone to keep themselves in power. And why shouldn't they? They make a good salary at what they do, they get their ego's stroked and they get idolized by a certain amount of people, and they get all kinds of benefits. And then, if by some miracle an incumbent loses, he or she can turn around and go to work for a lobbying firm.

I vote Democratic in my local and state races, though I never voted for the Republican in Democrat clothing Governor we have in our state now. I usually vote Democrat in national elections as well. But just because I vote that way does not mean I support all the things the Democrats of today stand for. I vote Democrat because I can't stomach voting Republican and I can't vote against my pocketbook and against my ideals. Since there is no socialist/labor party in this country, I am forced to vote Democrat and I hold my nose while I do so.

So, I just outed myself as a socialist. That's socialist with a small "s." I'm not a National Socialist, National Socialists are the Nazis and the Nazis were right wing fascists/corporatists. I'm not a Socialist, Socialists are better known as Communists and I'm not a Communist. I'm a socialist and a socialist believes in some free enterprise but they also believe that the government should be operating some businesses and industries for the common good of all. I believe the government should own and operate all the utilities, especially electricity and water, and they should own and operate all facets of health care. Contrary to the propaganda we get in this country about socialism, the socialist form of government works fine and it is the dominant form of government in Europe. Countries like Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, Britain are all socialist countries of one degree or another and they do just fine. They all still have robust private enterprise yet the government still owns and operates some of the essential industries. I'll bet that if you asked people living in those countries if they wanted to go back to private health care they'd say, "Hell no." Socialist forms of government just make more sense to me and they seem more equitable than what we've got in the USA now.

Years ago the Democratic party was nearly a socialist party but they veered off to the right in order to stay in power and now they have become multinational corporation money loving whores. Are all Democrats money grubbing whores? No. Are all Republicans Reich wing Jesus lovers who hate it when two dudes kiss? No. But by and large elected officials of both parties will do whatever it takes to stay in power, anything from going against what the core of their party stands for and wants, case in point the top ranking Democrats who were briefed on water boarding years ago and who did nothing to stop it then, to taking money from big pharmaceutical firms while they write legislation that benefits big pharma.

Am I being a cynical old fart? Probably, but I've lived long enough to see certain patterns emerge and fade and reemerge. I've seen the political cycles and after a while they all start to look the same. So, how do we break out of this rut? How do we break the grip of the multinational corporations on our government? Well, it's going to take something along the lines of another Great Depression. It's going to take another huge financial crisis that shakes us up like the Depression did. Only when people finally wake up and see that they're slaves to their credit card debt and to Starbucks and Wal-Mart and that their elected representatives aid and abet all the corporate shenanigans will we ever be ready to change our system.

Having said all that, I still believe in working for social and economic justice and that maybe, just maybe, we can convince enough of our fellow countrymen that the path we're on now is not the correct one. Myabe we can change things without a huge economic melt down, I'm hopeful but I'm not going to hold my breath.

we live in EAST GERMANY

One of the reasons why I got my scanner was so I could scan and save things like this on the worldwide interwebs forever. I picked this little children's picture book up in a thrift store in Asheville, NC for .50 and it blew me away. It was published in the UK in 1985 and it's a piece of propaganda genius. It's an alleged look at the lives of some ordinary average East German citizens. They all extol the virtues of living in a Communist country that had to build a wall to keep it's citizens from fleeing to the west. If history is correct, and why wouldn't it be, then about half of the people in this book were informing on their friends, family, and neighbors to the secret police. However I'm inclined to think that 100% of them were Stasi snitches due to the fact that the government had such a tight control over the media in the former DDR and there's no way they would have let a writer talk to anyone who they did not approve of.



This is one of my favorite profiles in the book. It's a profile of a minister who has some odd ideas about religion, though I love her comments about fighting for peace and justice. Click on the picture to read her profile. (For some reason Blogger sucks ass today and you can only click on the second picture to make it bigger, so if you want to read all about this minister you'll have to go to the Flickr link I give below. Sorry.)
I've posted the rest of the people's profiles on Flickr if you want to see them. My other favorites are the hostel manager who looks like a sex offender, the Socialist rock band leader, and the little gal who is a gymnast. They really are a great snapshot into Cold War propaganda.

(On a weird related note, my blog buddy UberMILF put a link to a Dean Reed song in a comment on my religion post today. Dean Reed, for those of you who are not aware, was a cheesy American singer who was bigger than Elvis in the Soviet Bloc. He lived there for years and years and he died there as well, under mysterious circumstances. I guess great minds must think of East Germany at the same time.)

The Soviets...

...turns out they were a different breed from us after all.