Just when the country is being threatened by a megalomaniac super villain, Batman dies!

Courtesy of the Hollywood Reporter: 

Adam West, the ardent actor who managed to keep his tongue in cheek while wearing the iconic cowl of the Caped Crusader on the classic 1960s series Batman, has died. He was 88. 

West, who was at the pinnacle of pop culture after Batman debuted in January 1966, only to see his career fall victim to typecasting after the ABC show flamed out, died Friday night in Los Angeles after a short battle with leukemia, a family spokesperson said. 

West died peacefully surrounded by his family and is survived by his wife Marcelle, six children, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Adam West was the Batman of my youth, and even though I fully appreciated Keaton and Bale, I always had a soft spot for the campy 1960's television show.

That was back in the days when television violence could be somewhat censored by an image like this flashing on the screen.

Good times.

Lately the Adam West Batman meme has popped up in all kinds of places including anti-Trump rallies.

Oh yeah, I would have paid Adam West a pile of cash to play that out in real life.

Well I for one am sad to see the passing of an icon.

He will be missed.

However fear not because there is a new generation of heroes to take his place.

A picture, worth a thousand words. #WonderWoman pic.twitter.com/w76cYZNG3y

— IBatman (@BotmunTweets) May 29, 2017

After all children do need heroes, perhaps today more than ever.

New study finds that the KKK facilitated the move of Southern white voters from the Democratic party to the Republican party. I wish I could be more surprised by this.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

The Ku Klux Klan played an active and enduring role in steering southern white voters away from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, according to a new study. 

The white supremacist group resurged to prominence in the 1960s as a reaction to the civil rights movement, and its violent extremism inflamed racial division and polarized communities for generations, according to the study published by the American Sociological Review. 

“It encouraged white voters to prioritize the defense of white supremacy when making voting decisions, upending long-standing Democratic Party allegiances,” wrote the study’s authors. 

The researchers — David Cunningham, professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at Brandeis University, Rory McVeigh of the University of Notre Dame and Justin Farrell of Yale University — studied county voting records in 10 southern states where the KKK actively recruited members in the 1960s. 

Analysis of voting outcomes of five presidential elections between 1960 and 2000 showed a statistically significant increase in GOP voting compared to counties with no established KKK chapter, even after filtering out a range of other factors that could influence voting preferences. 

The study found that counties with a Klan chapter were much more likely to back those two candidates, and adjacent counties without an active KKK chapter of their own were also more likely to support Goldwater and Wallace. 

“The Klan played an active role in encouraging white southerners to prioritize white supremacy over party loyalty,” wrote the study’s authors. 

KKK leaders urged southerners to “form a voting bloc to defeat any n*gger-loving politician that runs for office,” and the group evaluated and supported candidates based on their “authentic whiteness” rather than party ties.

And we wonder why the Republican party seems so racist.

Maybe now is a good time to revisit President Eisenhower's 1961 warning about the Military Industrial Complex.

The man was way ahead of his time.

Mr. Spock's amazing 1968 letter to a young biracial fan who felt isolated and all alone.

In 1968 Leonard Nimoy received a letter from a young fan, that he thought not only required a response but that the response be reprinted in a teen magazine called FAVE so that other bans dealing with similar problems could read it.

Here is how that letter appeared in FAVE in 1968:

Click here if image fails to enlarge.

Click here if image fails to enlarge.

You know I am ALWAYS more impressed by individuals who stood up for equality when it was still risky to do so. In 1968 Leonard Nimoy certainly ran the risk of turning off certain fans who were not yet ready to treat all people the same, but clearly he did not care.

He felt this young person's pain and responded to it like a human being. (Despite being half Vulcan of course.) And that is admirable on ANY planet.

I have always been a fan of Star Trek, and Spock was always my favorite, this just reinforces that I have good taste in TV shows and the actors who work on them.

(H/T to My Star Trek Scrapbook)

Sexual pioneer Hugh Hefner has some very important insights into what our country is going through right now.

Courtesy of (Where else?) Playboy:  

When I wrote The Playboy Philosophy in the early 1960s, both oral and anal sex were illegal in 49 of the 50 states. In 10 of those states, sodomy—which was variously defined but could, in some states, include oral sex—carried a maximum sentence of 20 years. Citizens in Connecticut who engaged in oral sex faced 30 years in prison—60 years for people who lived in North Carolina. In Nevada it could mean life behind bars. It was a time when 37 states outlawed sex between unmarried people and 45 criminalized adultery. Two states even banned heavy petting. 

This is the oppressive world some would have us return to. These moralists say that if sex doesn’t beget children, it’s a sin. Your sex life, your privacy rights and the rights of men and women everywhere are casualties of this belief. In Arizona, under a proposed bill women who hoped to have their health insurer cover birth control would have been forced to provide their employer with proof they were taking the pill for a medical condition—not just for the purpose of avoiding pregnancy. A new Kansas law allows a pharmacist to refuse to sell someone contraception on the grounds that such a sale could violate the pharmacist’s religious beliefs. Similar laws already exist in Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and South Dakota. Lawmakers in Michigan are pushing one of the most restrictive anti-abortion bills in decades, while in Texas and Pennsylvania people continue to demand the defunding of Planned Parenthood centers, which provide health care to countless women. Across America these conservatives continue to assault the rights of gays, whether by denying them the right to marry or, as in Kansas, by attempting to empower landlords, business owners and employers to discriminate against gays on religious grounds. And earlier this year, when a Republican legislator in Virginia told CNN “sodomy is not a civil right,” I thought of Charles Cotner (A man charged and jailed for 3 years in 1965 for engaging in consensual anal sex with his own wife) and wondered how much time we have left before we lose all the advances of the sexual revolution. 

Nearly 50 years ago in the pages of this magazine I warned that “when religion rather than reason dictates legislation, do not expect logic with your law.” Today, in every instance of sexual rights falling under attack, you’ll find legislation forced into place by people who practice discrimination disguised as religious freedom. Their goal is to dehumanize everyone’s sexuality and reduce us to using sex for the sole purpose of perpetuating our species. To that end, they will criminalize your entire sex life. 

This is a religious nation, but it is also a secular one. For decades the American people have found a way to balance religious beliefs with secular freedoms. We have enjoyed freedom of religion as well as freedom from religion. These need not be incompatible. No one should have to subjugate their religious freedom, and no one should have their personal freedoms infringed. This is America and we must protect the rights of all Americans.

It may be hard to imagine that the old man with the much too young "girlfriends," who are clearly nothing more than window dressing used to buoy an image that he has worked a lifetime to promote, was once on the cutting edge of the sexual revolution in this country. But he was.

So despite what your opinion is of the man, you still have to recognize that he certainly knows what he is talking about. And what's more his observations of what is happening to our country, something that he apparently predicted nearly fiftieth years ago, is dead on.

Sarah Palin used to be the Right Wing's wetdream for a Presidential candidate, today she is hobnobbing with the flotsam and jetsam of the Reality TV set.

Courtesy of US Magazine:

Sarah Palin got a two-fold Skinnygirl surprise during her stay at the Westlake Village, Calif.'s Four Seasons hotel on Monday: some complimentary low-calorie cocktails and a visit from the Skinnygirl founder herself, Bethenny Frankel! 

Frankel, who was at the hotel to tape a segment for 102.7's KIIS FM's On Air with Ryan Seacrest, happily posed for a pic with the former Vice Presidential candidate, and together, they enjoyed some poolside R&R. 

"The two looked like they were really enjoying their time together," a witness tells Us Weekly. "Bethenny seemed pleasantly surprised that Sarah was at the hotel. They both were very chatty and friendly with one another. They looked like old girlfriends catching up, relaxing and hanging out."

Gee last night ex-abstinence hypocrite Bristol Palin's reality show debuted to a chorus of boos,Wasilla pimp Todd Palin is scheduled to embarrass himself on an NBC show in August, and now the stage mother from hell is hanging with the queen of sleazy self promotion herself, Bethenny Frankel, a woman who just recently admitted that she and her husband have an open marriage. (Gee Sarah, sound familiar?)

You know I used to wonder what it would look like when Sarah Palin finally hit bottom.

Welp, now I know!

Update:

Captain "Mom Jeans" says I am wrong, and that the Palins have not yet hit bottom, as they have much, much further yet to fall. I stand corrected.

Before there was a President Obama the Right Wing whipping boy was a certain President Kennedy.

Below you will see pages from a vintage coloring book that a TPM visitor found in their deceased mother's belongings.

Apparently the coloring book originally belonged to this person's grandmother.

Take a moment to notice how eerily similar the attacks on JFK, back in the early sixties, are to what Obama is facing today.

Much like the blowback against the Affordable Care Act, JFK's attempts to create Medicare were also met with ridicule and charges of socialism.

The Right Wing also drummed up suspicion concerning JFK's Ivy League advisers. Today they are referred to as the "intellectual elite." Apparently to this group of people intelligence is always suspect.

Being anti-elite also meant being anti-education, and JFK's Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Abraham Ribicoff, was also vilified.

It would appear that this book was published some time after the Cuban Missile Crisis, since Fidel Castro is included. However rather than give JFK any credit for protecting America from a potential nuclear missile strike, the conservatives chided him for failing to capture or kill Castro, and for taking on Big Business.

I have to say that the similarities in how both President Obama and President Kennedy were attacked by the Right Wing are rather startling. My gut instinct is to conclude that the attacks against Obama today are more filled with vitriol and unvarnished hatred, but then I remember the fate of our 35th President and realize the dishonesty of that statement.

And it also makes my blood run cold to realize that all of this, even this child's coloring book, was creating a bogeyman that was easier to hate, and to think of as the "other," before somebody became agitated enough to put a bullet through his head.

Legendary folk singer Pete Seeger joins Occupy Wall Street march. Okay NOW we have a protest!

Courtesy of Spinner:

Pete Seeger has spent decades protesting against war, racial inequaliy and unfair labor practices, and on Friday night , he lent his support -- and voice -- to the growing Occupy Wall Street movement. 

After performing at New York City's Symphony Space, the legendary folk singer fell in with a group of roughly 1,000 protestors and marched more than 30 blocks down Broadway. Upon reaching Columbus Circle, he sang a version of 'We Shall Overcome,' one of the many up-with-the-people anthems he's helped to popularize over the years. 

Joining the 92-year-old music legend were fellow folkie Arlo Guthrie, musician grandson Tao Rodriguez Seeger, bluesman Guy Davis, composer David Amram and singer-storyteller Tom Chapin. 

Throughout the march, Seeger and the demonstrators chanted such slogans as, "We are the 99 percent," a rallying call in the movement against corporate greed.

Here is video of the event.  You can see Seeger and others illuminated by flashes starting around the :50 mark.

Personally as a child of the sixties and seventies I am not even sure how you even HAVE a protest without the presence of Mr. Seeger.

Just imagine how much easier it will be for the Republicans and their corporate masters to refer to the protesters as"hippies" now! Not that they were not already channeling the discriminatory vocabulary of their parents and grandparents from the 1960's in order to attack a movement that clearly scares them now, like those protests scared the Establishment back in the day.

Of course I don't see that as a bad thing. It took young people willing to speak truth to power back in the 60's to bring attention to an unjust war and out of control corporatism to foment a change (Short lived as it was.), and it clearly calls for a similar response today.

Perhaps Gryphen needs to go dig out his old tie-dye t-shirts, and rawhide headbands, and join the revolution.

But then again, haven't I always been part of it?

A blast from the past. Mama Cass Elliot singing "Make your own kind of music".

Check out how groovy Sammy Davis Jr. is with his pre-Rap music gold chains.

I find the sentiment of this song especially inspiring coming form the talented Mama Cass who certainly did not fit the mold of the cute rock chick of the 1960's.