AMONG THE RELIGIOPOLITICAL RIGHT, EXPECT UNSWERVING BELIEF IN FREE-MARKET CAPITALISM AS THE GREAT WHITE FATHER to be a given among their articles of faith--just so long as they supported Traditional Moral and Familial Values per 1950's models (as noted previously by Your Correspondent).

And perhaps the most pathetic example of this in action would have to be the so-called "American Family Association," whose articles of faith extend to a "healthy" and "patriotic" homophobia in defence of G-d, Country and Family--and is infamous for using boycotts to kowtow American capitalism (or try to) into accepting homophobia as one with Good Business Practice.

Witness what People For the American Way's Right Wing Watch had to say the other day:

Just three weeks after the American Family Association declared victory in its boycott against Ford Motor Company, the anti-gay group has a new target: General Motors. From an e-mail alert titled "General Motors Supports The Gay Agenda":

General Motors has made a decision to help promote the homosexual agenda. The automaker supports the gay agenda with advertising in homosexual publications and on the gay TV cable channel LOGO.

GM's Cadillac regularly places full-page ads in The Advocate, a magazine dedicated to pushing the homosexual agenda. The LOGO TV network carries programs promoting the lifestyle.

AFA is urging its activists to sign a petition that GM should "not involved in promoting an aberrant, anti-family lifestyle," but that may be just the beginning for the boycott-happy group.

Which also raises some further interesting issues:

• Since the vast majority of the AFA's membership base tends to be as much auto-dependent as poor, undereducated or homeschooled and easily-influenced, how do we know that the AFA isn't about to recommend that its members, otherwise supposedly united pro Deo, patria et familia, start driving foreign-made cars, especially so cheaper Japanese- or Korean-manufacture nameplates, in defence of "Traditional Morals and Decency"? And what steps will they resort to to avoid attracting suspicions of hypocrisy and doublethink from the blogosphere?
• How do we know that the AFA isn't secretly allied with such groups supporting producerism based on isolationist self-sufficency within free-market capitalist models and paradigms?
• How do we know that the AFA and some of their droogs in that same vein aren't secretly subsidising so-called "Christian mortgage lenders" to buy up foreclosed properties wholesale and resell them to "right-thinking Christian families" on what amounts to "sub-prime" mortgages "to prevent homosexuals from further diluting property values" in "once-proud White Christian working-class communities"?
• How do we know that the AFA isn't really some class of a blackmailing organisation, or otherwise has connexions to elements weird and/or unwholesome (howbeit keeping such suspicions sub rosa to avoid attracting "unwelcome attention [from] those meddling bloggers")?
• How much longer before such entities as are targets of AFA-sponsored boycotts start getting wise and turn the tables on them by charging them with the likes of Racketeering, Blackmailing and Related Conspiracies?
• What percentage of the AFA's membership, let alone their mailing lists, have:
  • postal addresses in ZIP+4 codes with substantial populations of lower-income persons, or are otherwise "culturally-deprived environments" with little or no real possibility for socioeconomic empowerment?
  • e-mail addresses with free online e-mail services (e.g., MSN Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Excite and Mail.com) as can be accessed through public Internet termini such as are found @ libraries and community centres absent affordable Internet access among the Lower Classes?
  • limited or no realistically marketable job and/or life skills, essentially limiting such to an increasingly limited and limiting number of unskilled, labour-intensive positions?
  • limited and limiting consumer purchasing power, complicated by marginal or nonexistant credit histories?
  • histories of alcoholism, drug dependency, dysfunctional upbringing (including abuse and maltreatment), "broken home" scenarios, mental and/or emotional disorders and unstable employment histories?

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IN WHAT COULD BE AN EXAMPLE WHICH WE "MORALLY SUPERIOR" AMERICANS WILL WANT TO EMULATE COME INDECISION 2008, the Zimbabwe Election Commission (ZEC) has announced that longtime dictator Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party has lost significant and measurable numbers of Parliamentary seats in Saturday's elections to Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

More specifically, of 207 contested seats, the vast majority announced to the moment I write this (106, including one independent) went to opposition parties cf. the 94 won by ZANU-PF candidates. And as if that weren't enough, since neither Mugabe nor Tsvangirai won a clear majority of votes (50.1% of ballots cast), whispers in certain circles have it that a special runoff election for the presidential seat may have to be called within measurable distance.

Equally noteworthy is the likelihood of goon squads comprised of troops loyal to Mugabe and/or ZANU-PF spontaneously provoking tolchocking and rozzrezzing and other examples of the old ultraviolence against an otherwise innocent populace if the final results confirm essentially as above, in turn prompting calls with the United Nations for an international peacekeeping mission to prevent further disorder and ensure a peaceful transfer of power in Harare.

All it takes is just one false step.

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AND TELL ME THIS ISN'T QUITE DOUBLETHINK IN A MOST HILARIOUS DEGREE: Russia is airlifting humanitarian supplies to Serbia for distribution (via the Serbian Red Cross) to Kosavar Serbs in a series of three airlifts between Moscow and Belgrade.

Said supplies include canned meats, baby food, powdered milk and bread.

After all, Russia is as dissed as Serbia over Kosovo's recent Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), still insisting that Kosovo is only a province within Greater Serbia and, hence, subject to the control of Belgrade.

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THE PRICE OF OUR HARD-WIRED AIR-MINDEDNESS IN AN OTHERWISE "MORALLY SUPERIOR" SOCIETY: Over recent days, the likes of such airlines as Southwest, American, Delta and United have had to suspend flights by the score because of safety inspections on their fleets as forced reduced capacity numbers across the board.

As if that weren't enough, Hawaiian inter-island air carrier Aloha Airlines would up operations yesterday after 61 years, citing Unfair Competition from upstart go airlines and high jet fuel prices.

And, blaming high jet fuel prices, Delta announced surcharges of:

• $25 for buying tickets over the telephone (officially excused as being one to encourage online bookings);
• $100 for allowing unaccompanied minors to travel on Delta flights;
• $100 for checking oversized baggage; and
• $150 for checking pets.

Meanwhile, the Air Force is looking to develop a jet engine as would use coal-derived jet fuel (yeah, right--but then again, airport tarmacs are going to start smelling rather awful, what with coal-derived fuels generally having telltale odours).

No wonder we've become too complacent in our air-mindedness, and then some....