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THANKS TO CONSIDERABLE SOUTHERN WINDS TODAY AS COULD REACH 45 MPH IN THE ODD GUST OR TWO, the Minnwissippi region couldn't be happier to see springtime arrive in dead earnest seriousness.

@ least Your Correspondent thinks so, considering where milder temperatures than recent days can be discerned along with the wind having a kindness as was not there yesterday, paraphrasing Shakespeare there for a moment.

In a related note, he'll be working tomorrow @ the house of Mein Innkeeper Friend raking lawn, so if you don't exactly notice an essay straight away, you will know why.

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TALK ABOUT GOOD CONCEPT, BUT NO SENSE--WITH SUBTLE OVERTURES TOWARDS CHEAP POLITICAL PLOY, and then some:

Your Correspondent hath it that Senator (and GOP Presidential candidate presumptive) John McCain (a/k/a The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang) is calling for a special tax holiday on Federal fuel taxes during the summer driving season; the better, in theory, to drive down fuel costs and "help taxpayers."

I say "good concept, but no sense" because such turns out to, in the end, translate into a significant shortfall in the Federal Highway Trust Fund, itself financed by the Federal gas tax ... which, in the end, only translates into further serious deferred maintenance on American highways and bridges which can only make our transportation problem worse. Has Sen. McCain considered that possibility, let alone look for ways to compensate for the ensuing Highway Trust Fund shortfall without "needlessly" raising taxes, consistent with prevailing conservative articles of faith?

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AND WITH NYMEX LIGHT SWEET CRUDE OIL FUTURES HITTING A NEW RECORD HIGH OF SOME $113/BBL., it seems rather ironic that the ongoing oil and natural gas discoveries in the Bakken field of extreme western North Dakota, extreme eastern Montana and into the Canadian province of Saskatchewan are making barely any dent into the oil markets.

Especially considering where, by some estimates, some 500 million barrels of recoverable crude oil may exist in the Bakken field ... and quite a quantity of cubic feet of natural gas, much of which is now flared off @ wellhead.

The problem, no doubt, being a lack of decent storage and pipeline facilities which would transport the Bakken field's production to terminals and refineries, many of which are shut down or otherwise producing @ reduced levels (perhaps deliberately, methinks, and then excused as being necessary "to stabilise market prices," with tax incentives likely coming into the bargain).

And yet again, there are several oil companies as make it a point of pride to avoid buying their crude from politically-unstable regions, notably Amerada Hess, Kerr-McGee, Marathon, Murphy Oil (Spur) and Sinclair; no doubt they might be especially interested in the Bakken fields as a new and viable source for American crude oil supplies consistent with their business practices.

Until and unless the news of the Bakken field's potential turns out causing indigestion in the crude-oil markets to the point where the price eventually falls below the $100/bbl. benchmark.

Come to think of it:

How do we know His Fraudulency's Great Within isn't secretly investing substantially in crude oil futures, hoping to make substantial windfall profits before he leaves office--yet unlikely to realise that developments in the Bakken fields could make things worse?

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THINGS WHICH SHOULDN'T HAPPEN (IN THEORY) TO GOOD CHRISTIANS, LET ALONE ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS: His Fraudulency has let slip from his very lips over ABC Television the fact that he had authorised the use of torture as an interrogation tactic against real or suspected terror suspects.

Officially to be excused as "preemptive war," theoretically preventing further Notorious Terrorist Attacks while officially whipping up terror-related hysteria and paranoia "just to keep people scared"--reinforced, as required, with the obligatory dose of patriotism.

And which could wind up, with one fatal slip of the pen, being used against innocent and blameless Americans in ways that could rival the Nazi regime's reaction to the unsuccessful plot against Hitler on 20 July 1944--as in charging blood relatives of those who were actually involved with the assaination attempt with "complicity" and "disloyalty," subjected to the indignity of show trials in a hastily-arranged "people's court" as was a front for the actual back-room pronouncements of guilty which led, inevitably, to hanging from piano wire off abattoirs' hooks.

Which is enough to prompt this petition drive @ Democrats.com calling upon Congress to timely launch impeachment proceedings against His Fraudulency for explicitly authorising torture in violation of various international treaties and conventions to which the United States is signatory. Treaties which the "inside of the inside" of the Great Within want regarded as no better than toilet paper.

THE PEOPLE, UNITED,
WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED!

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AND JUST HOW SURE ARE WE THAT IT'S NOT AMERICAN TROOPS AS ARE REALLY BEHIND the recent spate of "terrorist" bombs going off in the Sadr City district of Baghdad, blaming Iraqi militias for such in what could really be "false flag" campaigns to justify furthering the cause of ur-RAHOWA all along?

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OHHHH, THOSE FRENCH--or as Bill "No-Spin Zone" O'Reilly wants us to think, " the cheese eat the surrender monkey:"

The French National Assembly is now considering legislation as would make it an offense to "publicly incite extreme thinness," particularly so in the couture department; the better to prevent bad ideas (as in anorexia nervosa) being promoted in the impressionable.