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THAT MAY BE PUTTING IT A LITTLE HILARIOUSLY, MIND YOU, especially considering where this will be the last post for 2009 here @ The Exaggerator; in line with an established tradition on my part, Your Correspondent will be taking a break from blogging over the Christmas-New Year's holiday fortnight after this post goes up.

More on this presently.

ONE THING THAT WILL CERTAINLY BE MISSING FROM THE COMMERCIAL BREAKS DURING THE SUPER BOWL XLIV WORLDCAST: Pepsi has announced that, for the first time in 23 years, they will not be buying ad time during the Super Bowl, traditionally the haven of legendary one-off adverts that people quickly talk about--and, in some cases (notably Apple Computer's "1984" such), become icons in their own right.

Cited as reasons therefor were the desire to "test the waters" of new media such as the Information Stuporbahn (where Pepsi is preparing a new online campaign), as well as Pepsico's involvement in a Corporate Responsibility initiative as would provide $9 bln in microfinance to regenerate culturally-deprived environments.

Which has you wondering just who in the soft-drink industry would be willing to take Pepsi's place in Super Bowl worldcast advertising, especially considering where a 30-second spot can set companies back as much as $2.5 million (and they want to make every dollar count all the more); by contrast, time rates for infomercials (especially so overnights and on slow weekends) is almost like winning MegaMillions.

CONSIDERING THE PREDICTABLY DRY, ALMOST FORMULA-WRITTEN, TONE AND NUANCE COMMON TO CONSERVATIVE AND OTHERWISE RIGHT-WING-LEANING BLOGS, Your Correspondent wonders if there must be some class of a subscription-based e-mail or RSS feed service conservative bloggers have available to them as supplies prepared, scripted and carefully-nuanced "talking points" to feature consistent with the Prevailing Conservative Line ideologically.

Which, when you get right down to it, are expected to parrot the "big lie" that conservative articles of faith seem to hold dear as one with Truth, especially when the expected target audience is composed, by and large, of the Ignorant and Unwashed Masses as are easy suckers for "tea party" "movements" and suchlike appealing to their simple patriotic emotions and feelings.

Emotions and feelings, it turns out, rooted in nativism, racism, xenophobia, isolationist self-sufficiency not unlike North Korea's Juche Idea and emotional excesses acting as a binder of sorts.

STOP ME IF YOU'VE ALREADY HEARD ABOUT THE 4-YEAR-OLD BOY OUT CHATTANOOGA WAY who drank up the beer in his father's cooler ... broke into a neighbour's house, stealing all the Christmas presents in so doing ... broke into another house, stealing a girl's dress (which the boy promptly put on) ... and was seen by police walking in an inebriated state for a 4-year-old boy.

And the boy's explanation therefor: "He wanted to go to jail just so he could see his father," who is now in penal servitude.

IS IT JUST ME, OR HAVE THERE BEEN FANTASIES OUT THERE ABOUT BACK WHEN SMOKING WAS CONSIDERED SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE, and someone had the (in hindsight, not-so-)bright idea of lighting up their after-dinner cancers with the flames of the burning brandy per the Christmas pudding ... or, for that matter, the cherries jubilee ... and managed to get away unscathed?

(Even when the cancers involved were "roll-your-own" types, and the tobacco of choice went by such names as Bull Durham, Bugler, Duke's Mixture, Kite, Top, Prince Albert, Velvet, Edgeworth, Half & Half ...)

Oh, yeah, and Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer....

AS I MENTIONED @ THE BEGINNING OF THIS POST, READERS, Your Correspondent is now on hiatus from blogging, by and large, for the holiday fortnight. Inevitably, he needs some time away from blogging to not only celebrate the holidays, but also to recharge his creative batteries in the process.

Accordingly, he will resume blogging, Deo volente, on 4 January 2010.

However, in the interest of maintaining "brand awareness," so to speak, for this particular blog, he may engage in limited-scale Entrecard dropping in the interim; as for yourselves, I trust that your holiday season experiences, however they be celebrated--Christmas, Kwanzaa, Festivus, New Year's, whatever--are enjoyable in their own way. And best celebrated responsibly and in moderation, as Your Correspondent would like to see you returning in 2010.

Not to mention taking some time to get last-minute holiday shopping out of the way here in this blog's online shopping section--which, for the most part, may have to mean gift cards or vouchers because merchandise orders placed now and requiring holiday delivery will require expedited shipping (which costs accordingly; be sure to check the shipping section of the relevant e-shops for details).

And, lest I forget, using this opportunity to thank all of you for your loyalty, devotion and support of The Exaggerator throughout the rather interesting times as have marked 2009, with the sincerest hope that such will continue into 2010 and, perhaps, beyond.

"...and that is is a way."

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AND NOW, A MESSAGE OF IMPORTANCE DIRECTED IN PARTICULAR TO SUCH SPECIMENS OF CONSERVATIVE "WINNING OF HEARTS AND MINDS" claiming to represent what you call "Real Americans" who, for the most part, are poor, undereducated, ignorant, socioeconomically-displaced to the point of being deemed unsuitable for worker retraining and easily-influenced, known in the common vernacular as "poor white trash" (which, come to think of it, is what they are), let alone their Honour and Virtue (or what you think passes for it):

If, as you love to claim in your radio and/or TV broadcasts, you sincerely care for the interests of your beloved "Real Americans" who are regular viewers and listeners of your programmes (as the case may be)--many of them small-town/rural and lower working class "white trash," as a matter of record--I would like to pray ask you @ this time:

• What justifies your maintaining an arrogant, haughty, Robin Leach-stylee culture and lifestyle such as you forever condemn as "elitist" and "arrogant," not to mention "out of touch with Real America"?
• What justifies the five houses you have (@ least two of which have to be vacation houses) as are largely in mothballs for extended times, let alone being rather ostentatious in and of themselves?
• What justifies the stable of fuel-inefficient automobiles (SUV's, for the most part) you have as opposed to more proletarian models? Is it, perhaps, your toadyism to the so-called "Wise Use" crowd using same as patsy to excuse the wasteful as one with the Defence of Our Antient and Peculiar Sovereignty and Sovereign Identity?
• What justifies the private helicopters and/or executive jet aircraft as are more than likely sitting idle @ some general-aviation airport save for the one or two times a year same are more than likely to be used?
• What justifies the first-class airfares you forever insist on being "entitled" to while suggesting that your audience should waste fuel driving around in less-fuel-effieicent automobiles made all the more so by deliberately deferred maintenance?
• What justifies the servants, maids, chefs, gardeners, even concubines on your staff when you're probably capable yourselves of doing much the same things you hired them for (never mind their probably being here illicitly or otherwise overstaying their J-2 student visas)?
• What justifies the ostentatiously garish to the point of arrogant displays of Savile Row (let alone Brooks Brothers) tailoring, the Rolex watches, the Asprey's or Tiffany's diamond jewellry, the charge accounts @ the likes of high-end retailers like Lord & Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue, Harrods, Tiffany's, Selfridge's, Galeries Lafayette--or, for that matter, the mysterious cartes noire from VISA and/or American Express, and the cachet so associated, all the while expecting your legions of the easily-led to depend all the more on Wally World and charity thrift shops?
• What justifies the high-end vacations in Palm Beach, Sedona, Montserrat, Monte Carlo, Cancun, wherever, and your insistence on no less than the most expensive suite available while expecting your working-class droogs to get by on deliberately reduced wages pacified by the crudely jingoistic brand of True Patriot Love in All Thy Sons Command such as you enjoy promoting?
• What justifies the offshore bank accounts and investment funds you stash your proceeds away in--"tax reasons," perhaps, or is that too easy a platitude which could unwittingly get you in trouble if what you see as "the wrong channels" got word, all the while scaring your less-sophisto audiences into buying gold "till it hurts" for fear of Major Socioeconomic Collapse in the face of the "New World Order" which you know, and I know, and I know, and you know, to be an Emmanuel Goldstein to keep the "morons and idiots" in line?
• What justifies the likelihood of your escaping the Reality which you're only compounding on what you see as your Happy Little Vegemites, so to speak, with debauched excesses of alcohol, narcotic or hallucinogenic drugs, chronic and habitual excesses of potentially wasteful and unnecessary shopping, gambling @ the high-roller tables in Las Vegas, Monte Carlo and Macau (and maybe losing your fortune without warning) and other "anti-social tendencies" you forever rail against to your legions of the ignorant and unaware? Is it, perhaps, your own dysfunctional upbringing and background (including, perhaps, episodes of incest or other forms of sexual abuse)?
  
• What justifies, all in all, your selfish, heartless, arrogant contempt of the very same "Real Americans" you forever insist on representing the "best interests" of, never mind that the policies you represent (and excuse as one with Saving America From Herself) have actually posed clear and present harm, and then some, to those you so dearly cherish (howbeit privately) as "suckers" and "dumb idiots" willing to parrot the bumper-sticker-slogan "talking points" you hash out every weekday, not caring a whit about the Greater Collective Good of the Poor and Marginalised you see as easy prey, even if it means causing serious psychological harm or distress which you'd easily dismiss as "the price of being The Voice and Conscience of Real America"?
• And One Thing More: "Have you no sense of Decency, Sir, @ long last? Have you left no sense of Decency?"

(The gas station referred to was among several other business enterprises in Muscatine under Baker's umbrella, legendary for offering gas @ prices 1/3 less than the "chain" gas stations--or so it was advertised. Baker also ran a cut-price department store with mail-order service; all promoted, as with the Baker Institute [as the pseudo-hospital was officially known], over radio station KTNT ["Know The Naked Truth"], the affiliated TNT Magazine and the weekly tabloid gazetta Midwest Free Press. Federal Radio Commission action forced KTNT off the air in 1931, citing excessive signal interference with other stations and excessive self-promotion.

(Following prolonged legal action, Baker would attempt to regain past glory by relocating his cancer clinic to Laredo, Texas--and, across the Rio Grande in Nuevo Laredo, his new high-powered radio station, XENT. Still later, he attempted to return to past glory, a la Muscatine, by reopening his "hospital" in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, complete with the same old claims of "Cancers and Tumors Cured Without Surgery, X-Ray or Radium***We Do Not Cut Out Any Organ." By 1940, Mexican broadcasting regulators would force XENT off the air, eventually forcing Baker into obscurity; towards the end, he had designs of reclaiming past radio glory by way of an offshore radio station in "pirate ship" stylee off the Florida coast.)

ALL IN ALL, THEN, I HAVE THIS MUCH TO ASK: What defence do you have for all your arrogance @ the expense of the ignorant and the easily-influenced as make up your Secret Squadron as can be counted on, or so you hope, to Reclaim America From Herself? (And PLEASE, we can do without your usual noblesse oblige platitudes in circumstances such as this.)

(Memo to Readers: You're strongly urged to pass this along through the several social networks you subscribe to, as well as through e-mail circles you may have--but do it responsibly; "spam" will only cause this appeal to backfire and be turned against Your Correspondent, who has limited income and resources for a legal defence.)

"...and that is is a way."

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SOMETIMES, IT'S PROBABLY BETTER TO AVOID ANY SERIOUS ATTEMPTS @ NEWS DISCUSSION, AS IS THE USUAL PRACTICE OF THIS THINKING(?!) BLOG, especially when you're posting somewhat later than usual.

As is, again, the case today, what with not just the usual morning routine @ the motel I do for, but also a meeting to set up resumption of mental-health therapeusis and some business to take care of uptown (as in picking up a rather interesting book from the biblio via Interlibrary Loan), followed by another specimen of lunch buffet @ Sammy's Pizza.

Whereupon I returned to my flat, and started the laundry.

Which, in any case, translates into the inability to go into the regular strain of business common to this blog today; I trust, readers, that you will accept this. And that you'll finish off some new holiday shopping for new beautiful life, such as here:

MEANWHILE, YOUR CORRESPONDENT WOULD LIKE TO SAY "THANK YOU" TO SUCH as have been shopping by way of this blog's Twitter adjunct over recent days ... and will continue doing all in his power to make your new shopping for new beautiful life possible.

As reminder, he hopes to contribute part of the proceeds so generated, for one, to Reduction of the National Debt in the United States, in case you need good cause to do your online shopping here, for the holidays or otherwise.

"...and that is is a way."

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THE RELEVANCE OF THE PRECEDING PHOTO TO WHAT I'M ABOUT TO MENTION is probably best left to you, reader.

As in a just-released study from "Down Under" which hath it that having about two cups of coffee or tea per diem (this included decaffeinated such) could actually help prevent the onset of Type 2 diabetes.

But then again, as Yates's Wine Lodge in Blackpool reminds us, "moderation is true strength"--and this could apply to coffee and tea for the sake of this item.

IDEAL SUGGESTION FOR DEFLATING THE OVERZEALOUS EGOS OF FOX PROLEFEED HOSTS WITH PARTICULAR APPEAL to Those Who Should Know Better, especially so the ilk of Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity:

Videlicet, having the aural portions of the more pathetic segments of their respective shows replaced with the likes of such illustrious(?!) musicians as Alessandro Moreschi, the only known Castrato to have his voice recorded for posterity (but then again, remember that the recording technology used in 1908-09 was rather crude and primitive by modern standards) ... and for those unaware of what Castrati were, they were male singers who were deliberately emasculated @ a tender young age in the (howbeit discredited) belief that castration would ensure such fine and pure singing voices that church choirs and operatic companies were in demand for between the 17th and mid-19th centuries, when the Vatican outlawed the "abominable practice" by Papal Edict.

(Those wanting to know more about the whole Castrati phenomenon are kindly directed to this interesting website as explains it all for you.)

Alternately, imagine The Glory(????) of the Human Voice, as exemplified by Florence Foster Jenkins, without question the single worst operatic diva ever to (dis)grace the stage, giving Fox Prolefeed its just desserts as vocal mashup. (Especially so when you consider that a New York City record shop, as shall remain nameless, has this repute for playing Miss Jenkins 15 minutes before closing time every evening as a warning of sorts for shoppers still inside the premi to clear out.)

HOW NOT TO EARN A VIABLE LIVING OFF EBAY AND SUCHLIKE WEBSITES: Your Correspondent understands where three people involved in a British-based eBay scam vis-a-vis cheap Chinese-manufacture golf clubs and requisites being palmed off as top-end goods, defrauding consumers to the tune of some £375,000 in the end, have been convicted in a London court of Consumer Fraud and Online Fraud.

As if that weren't enough, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security has announced the results of a series of raids over recent days in 41 major cities across the country, as well as a parallel operation by Mexican authorities, code-named "Operation Holiday Hoax"--as in the seizure of 700,000 specimens of counterfeit goods to the value of $26 million, including consumer electronics, DVD's, Christmas ornaments, clothing and other consumption goods.

IN THE INTEREST OF CLEAR SOCIOECONOMIC RECOVERY AND JOBS CREATION WITHIN PREFERABLY MEASURABLE DISTANCE, President Obama is now pressuring banks (stopping short of out-and-out blackmail--for the moment, FYI) into making more small-business loans and offering small-business credit.

And applying what could best be called a quid pro quo best described as "Look, you got financial help from the Good Taxpayers to avert serious socioeconomic collapse; now, we expect you to do your part and make loans available to small business all the more."

And we know the GOP's scripted response: Insisting that only "complete, final and binding" tax cuts and regulatory relief (the latter expected to encompass arbitrarily "safe-harboured" Industry-Based Self-Regulatory Codes of Good Practice unwittingly excusing cartel behaviour) will create REAL jobs (unskilled, labour-intensive positions, with incentives to actually discourage investment in new equipment and plant "just to protect jobs") as pay REAL money (gold-backed, following discreet "currency reforms" expected to "promote personal responsibility" by forcing thrift all the more among the Workers through "savings plans" paying, @ best, less than 1% p.a.)--yeah, right.

"...and that is is a way."

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2009 SEEMS NOT TO HAVE BEEN THE BEST OF YEARS FOR ITALIAN PRIME MINISTER SILVIO BERLUSCONI, as if conflict-of-interest issues vis-a-vis Italy's public broadcaster RAI and his Mediaset cartel weren't distressing enough already to the Italian People and Nation:

First off, you had the Italian Court of Cassation ruling that Signore Berlusconi was not entitled to immunity, sovereign or otherwise, for Serious Crimes and Misdemeanors under Italy's Constitution, in effect restarting a Milan-based frauds trial in connexion with financial improprieties @ Mediaset.

Followed, soon afterward, by revelations in the Corriere della Sera (which, thankfully, is not a Mediaset property) suggesting that the Prime Minister had certain Dangerous Liasons with younger women while still happily(?) married, forcing his longtime wife to take steps towards outright divorce for Adultery.

And more recently by a wave of anti-Berlusconi marches across Italy with especial emphasis on the infidelity charges; additionally, one protester suggested that La Cosa Nostra was somehow in it with Signore Berlusconi all the while, thereby raising serious questions of his credibility as Italian head of state.

Just yesterday may have come the coup d'grace, as it were: A protester whom police described as "mentally unstable" ouside a political rally in Milan whence Signore Berlusconi spake moments before threw a ratty-looking souvenir sculpture of the Milan Cathedral @ the Prime Minister's face, sending him to hospital for observation.

As I write this, Signore Berlusconi remains in hospital, where medical staff suggest that he has difficulty eating as a byproduct of the attack; he's expected to remain in hospital for a while yet.

NO DOUBT THE AYN RAND CROWD IS CERTAIN TO BE ALL OVER THE NEWS OF THE DEATH OF ECONOMIST PAUL SAMUELSON @ THE WEEKEND following a short illness; he was 94 years of age.

Winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for Economics, and whose 1949 text Economics is still widely used in universities (with the requisite revisions every few years or so), the one thing as would have the Ayn Rand types (and their Fox Prolefeed II epistles) drooling in their Luscious Glory of Atrocity Propaganda For G-d, Country and Family (if and when asked to Please Explain Themselves) is their using recently-recorded comments from the BBC where Mr. Samuelson is quoted as saying that our "morally superior" United States has largely lost its traditional role of socioeconomic dominance, with China and India now expected to dommo the world's socioeconomic picture within measurable distance.

And America being seen as taking a minor role, anathema to such specimens of misguided Zealotry and True Belief forever seeing America as The Once and Future Lord and Master of the World, the Universe and the 28 Known Galaxies, with an Unswerving and Unyielding Defence of Capitalism Essential to the Defence of this Role--especially so that rooted in Self-Regulatory Codes of Good Practice as unwittingly excuses Cartel Behaviour ... and excusing it as being For G-d, Country and Family.

"Say nothing but good about the dead," as the proverb hath it. But when will Fox Prolefeed II in particular learn?

FROM THE FILE KNOWN AS "TO EVERY RULE, THERE IS AN EXCEPTION:" Chilean Presidential election results (@ least in the first round, as just concluded yesterday) hath it that the center-right candidate Sebastian Pinera, himself a prominent Chilean business tycoon, has won a not-so-clear (44%, to be exact) plurality in same.

Which, as it turns out, is forcing a second round ballot sometime early next year against Pinera's closest runner-up, former President Eduardo Frei; Frei's left-of-center agenda seeks to continue that of outgoing Socialist President Michele Bachelet--I say "outgoing" because the Chilean Constitution prevents Ms. Bachelet from seeking another four-year term right away.

In contrast, Pinera's business-driven agenda (itself expected to be based on his business experience and acumen, including a commercial TV station and part of its leading soccer club), calling largely for tax cuts and regulatory relief, expects Chileans to see "guaranteed" annual growth of 6% per annum during the four years of his tenure, which (if successful) would make it the first time since 1958 that Chileans have voted in a conservative-leaning President by peaceful means (in contrast to the use of military coup d'etat as Gen. Augusto Pinochet used in 1973 to topple the Marxist such of Salvador Allende-Gossens).

Here again, expect Fox Prolefeed to be slavishly drooling over Sebastian Pinera in what passes for international coverage thereon, and thereby expect Right-Thinking Real Americans to study and emulate Senor Pinera as one with Reclaiming America From Herself By Free-Market Principles.

NEED WE REMIND OURSELVES THAT WITH ZEALOTRY AND TRUE BELIEF (ITSELF ROOTED IN GROSS IGNORANCE) HOLDING HIGH CARNIVAL @ THE GOP OF LATE, we as "REAL Americans," as opposed to the imitation Fox Prolefeed and suchlike prefer trotting out on occasion, should realise that our abject enslavement to the GOP's agenda through fraud and trick on their part should serve as reminder that we need to recognise the power and majesty of the ballot paper as much as education and knowledge as essential and important to Democracy's defence.

Especially considering where the GOP and their "tea party" drookies are stopping @ nothing to reclaim that which they lost in the last two Congressional elections--and "by whatever means necessary," even if it means lies, distortions of truth, perverted invocation of patriotic icons and historic personages, manipulated propaganda (especially such intended as prolefeed) and emotionally-driven distractionaries such as Sarah Palin in particular personifies.

Not to mention the adoption of Communist/Fascist/Nazi/Christian Nationalist propaganda tactics and methodology in their support, as well as super-secretive internal admiration for the repressive tactics of late in the so-called "Islamic Republic of Iran" vis-a-vis reputedly staged "news footage" screened on state television over the weekend of "student protesters" supposedly "desecrating" the Holy and Sacred Portrait of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomieni (in essence, per Iranian thought, "desecrating [Khomieni's] name and memory") during recent rioting (and for which the "ringleaders" thereof are facing "trials" as may be perverting the principles of justice; in their defence, they claim the "footage" in question was staged and manipulate for propaganda ends).

In any case, the GOP needs to be reminded, especially so in the runup to Indecision 2010, that the ends don't always justify the means--especially such rooted in Glenn Beck's 9-12 Project mantra "WE Surround THEM" as has unwitting roots in the "encirclement," a/k/a "rural," strategy of Mao Zedong vis-a-vis the Communist revolution in the so-called "People's Republic of China." Said strategem was explained thus in a recent paper for the Combating Terrorism Centre of the U.S. Military Academy @ West Point vis-a-vis approaches to dealing with al-Qaeda and the Taleban:

Mao [Zedong] argued that the vanguard party needed to engage the masses, who in China were predominantly “poor and blank” peasants. These peasants provided the perfect launching pads for establishing pockets of resistance in the periphery. Although Mao’s long-term goal was to actually overthrow the urban centers of capitalist entrenchment, his immediate objective was to encircle these centers with strategic footholds and wage stealth, pinpoint strikes.

No wonder Glenn Beck's agenda for "reclaiming America from herself" has Communist antecedants and precedent, even when he whimpers "Communism!" under Mentholatum's influence on Fox Prolefeed night after night.

"...and that is is a way."

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