SPRING JUST SEEMS TO TAKE ITS OWN SWEET TIME MAKING HER PRESENCE FELT, LET ALONE ACKNOWLEDGED, HERE IN THE MINNWISSIPPI as makes the home of Your Correspondent.

As in: Where it got up to around 75 degrees under filtered sunshine yesterday, this morning we woke up to skies threatening rain and a temperature 25 degrees cooler. (There was some showery rain this morning, but that has since passed.)

Meanwhile, things should get fine (in theory) as the day wears on, with maxima of around 65 expected. And the current forecast for the weekend calls for the Minnwissippi seeing a slight chance of rain, but otherwise halfway decent with maxima trending around 55-60 degrees.

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IT'S NO WONDER JOHN McCAIN'S SOCIOECONOMIC AGENDA VIS-A-VIS HIS PRESIDENTIAL ASPIRATIONS is one of "staying the course" with the Club for Growth's flawed logic suggesting that low taxes=jobs=social stability.

Especially so among the "chronic and habitual" welfare "basket cases" seen to be "needing healthy empowerment towards developing a healthy respect for industry, self-reliance and personal responsibility" within free-market capitalistic models and paradigms.

Put another way:

see more crazy cat pics

Am I on to something here, readers?

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ZIMBABWE MUST BE IN REALLY DESPERATE CIRCUMSTANCES, AND THEN SOME, if reports of what amounts to a new "dirty war" against innocent civilians in reprisal for supporting the opposition in recent elections (results of which are still subject to "confirmation"--i.e., manipulation by the "inside of the inside" of ZANU-PF) are independently verifiable.

As the BBC notes:

Post-election violence has displaced 3,000 people, injured 500 and left 10 dead, according to MDC secretary general Tendai Biti.

Human rights groups say they have found camps where people are being tortured for having voted "the wrong way".

But Mr Chinamasa denied that anyone had died in political violence.

Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said that of the 10 people reported dead, only four names had been supplied and "of these three no basis whatsoever while the fourth is still under investigation and will be concluded soon", he was reported as saying by the state-owned Herald newspaper.

Zimbabwe's church leaders are also calling for intervention to prevent the violence reaching genocidal proportions.

"If nothing is done to help the people of Zimbabwe from their predicament, we shall soon be witnessing genocide similar to that experienced in Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and other hot spots in Africa and elsewhere," leaders of the main denominations said in a joint statement.

"We appeal to the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the African Union and the United Nations to work towards arresting the deteriorating political and security situation in Zimbabwe," a statement said.

Further embarrassing Harare is news that the Chinese-flagged vessel An Yue Jiang, carring arms and ammunition destined for Zimbabwe, has been refused docking permission by several African nations; in response, the Chinese owners of the vessel may consider returning to its home port of Guangzhou without offloading the martially-loaded cargo.

Meanwhile, you can just imagine His Fraudulency's Great Within (and especially so its "inside of the inside") secretly studying news reports of post-electoral intimidation across Zimbabwe for inspiration on how to cook up civil disorder following Indecision 2008, especially among the Lower Classes and National Minorities--especially if the Great Within has some close droogs among illicit "citizen militia" and "patriot" organisations who can be counted upon as agents provocateur most reliable.

Who can be expected to deny any and all knowledge of everything if and when pushed with the Nuremburg Patsy--"I was only following orders."

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MANY OF YOU READERS, I SUPPOSE, WOULD SYMPATHISE WITH REMARKS BY BOLIVIAN PRESIDENT EVO MORALES about the wealthy interested only in buying fancy, fuel-inefficent cars rather than showing any empathy or concern for the hungry and suffering--especially so now more than ever, as more and more of the world's cereal grains are being diverted to biofuel production, not to mention more and more of the world's arable lands being diverted to biofuel-crops production.

Motherdear, for her part, would.

Never mind where viable alternatives to diverting cereal grains for biofuel exist, notably Jerusalem artichokes (which are actually close relatives of the sunflower) and switchgrass, both of which can be converted into a high-quality grain alcohol which can be incorporated into E85 as well as being a viable ersatz gasoline. Come to think of it, how many of the ethanol production centres currently configured to produce ethanol from cereal grains can be modified to produce ethanol from Jerusalem artichokes?

(Not to mention a variety of bitter hazelnut which can be planted to not only help control soil erosion following flood-generated landslips, but can also produce a viable form of biodiesel. Killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.)

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SUCH IS THE POWER AND INTRUSION OF THE SAMSUNG GROUP IN SOUTH KOREA'S SOCIOECONOMIC LIFE AND CULTURE that local television gave exhaustive coverage to the shock announcement that Samsung CEO Lee Kun Hee had decided to resign for the greater glory of the consumer electronics chaebol, as family-run Korean cartels are commonly referred to.

This in the wake of charges that Mr. Lee used his position to evade millions of dollars in taxes and breaching public trust and confidence; charges that he used his position to build up a "slush fund" to buy off judges and politicos were dismissed.

Imagine Halliburton having as much power and intrusion over American socioeconomic development, especially so heading into Indecision 2008....

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SO MUCH FOR BILL "NO-SPIN ZONE" O'REILLY'S DEMANDS FOR BOYCOTTING FRANCE AS A "PATRIOTIC" MOVE to shame them for non-support of the ur-RAHOWA Against International Terrorism: The BBC is noting where the Chinese Government is seeking to use the Information Stuporbahn to whip up xenophobic sentiment against France in response to the recent protests during the Olympic Torch Relay's Paris leg over China's "cultural genocide" campaigns in Tibet:

Blogs, internet forums and text messages circulating in China have urged consumers to boycott French goods in response to the protests that accompanied the torch relay in Paris.

Popular anger at chaotic scenes which saw pro-Tibet protesters grab the flame from Paralympic fencer Jin Jing has been inflamed by detailed accounts posted on the internet by eyewitnesses.

The blog EastSouthWestNorth translated the most notable of these posts from popular Chinese internet forums and newspapers.

One bystander waiting by the Seine for the torch to pass found himself involved in the scuffle for the torch. He recounted his experience on popular Chinese-language forum Tianya.

"The brave girl lowered her head and used her back to shield the torch. The thug pulled her shoulder back and hit her... Tears rained out of my eyes. I was sad and angry. Here was an unarmed girl who was handicapped, and the thug had to hit her?"

The anger and the bewilderment at the actions of the protesters is palpable in one of the response posts: "Who is abusing human rights? Who is bringing violence to this world?"

Lists of products and brands to boycott, including Louis Vuitton and French retailer Carrefour, have been widely circulated.

Blogger Wang Jian Shuo says several of his friends have started to boycott French products and describes the impact of recent events on his own thinking: "If you need an example, I am the person in China who were turned from pro-France to anti-France within few days... I don't think France is a friendly country at all."

But then again, how do we know such comments were not cooked up under officially-issued "guidance" to ensure "conformity to the official line"?