THE OLD MAXIM ABOUT APPEARENCES BEING DECEIVING CAN APPLY EQUALLY TO THE WEATHER--and equally so here in the Minnwissippi region, where sunny (if hazy) skies this morning are expected to give way to showers towards evening and worsening to full-on rain and thunderstorms on the overnight into tomorrow.

Which, come to think of it, is another of those disruptions that area farmers and planters would love to see stopped so they could get the field work in for once, especially so the crops.

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AND EVEN WITH THE ECONOMIC STIMULUANT PAYMENTS TAXPAYERS EXPECT TO RECEIVE WITHIN MEASURABLE DISTANCE, there's also incentive for farmers and planters to take fields out of production for this year--even considering where high fuel, chemical and fertiliser prices may preclude some from getting corn and/or soybeans planted, or so rumoured.

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FIVE YEARS HAVE NOW LAPSED SINCE HIS FRAUDULENCY MADE THAT PREMATURE "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" SPEECH OF HIS in connexion with the ur-RAHOWA Against Terrorism--and the ur-RAHOWA is still going on.

And let's not forget where The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang, a/k/a John McCain, has made clear that he wants to maintain the American Colonial Occupation in Iraq for @ least 100 years (in fact, there are recordings available of that crack).

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STAYING WITH THE TERRIBLE-TEMPERED MR. BANG FOR THE NONCE, an editorial in today's number of the LaCrosse Tribune as takes issue with his market-based "healthcare reform" plans as are based too much on free-market articles of faith which leave the vulnerable all the more so:

Republican Presidential candidate John McCain has come up with what he regards as a free-market health plan. It would be worse than the status quo, and would put people with chronic illnesses at risk.

Here’s what it would do:

Encourage people to go from employer-based health plans to individual plans on the open market.

Use health savings accounts to give tax breaks to people who would use the accounts to pay the high deductibles that the McCain plan would offer.

Have government-run high-risk plans cover people with pre-existing conditions.

There doesn’t seem to be provisions in McCain’s plan to deal with cost, federal Medicare reimbursement or coordination of care for the sickest patients—all issues that Mayo Clinic officials said were important during a meeting Monday with local leaders.

In addition, McCain’s high deductible plans would discourage prevention—unless preventive care were exempt from the deductibles. Studies have shown that if preventive care is not covered, many people will not utilize it. If that happens on a widespread basis, then conditions might go undiagnosed until they were advanced enough to cost more than they would have otherwise.

His plan is not likely to substantially decrease the number of Americans who don’t have insurance.

During a community meeting at the Radisson Hotel on Monday, Mayo CEO Dr. Denis Cortese said Medicare routinely pays the most money to health care institutions that get the worst results. McCain’s plan does not acknowledge this problem, either.

We can’t afford to tinker around the edges of the health care issue. Seeking to end employer coverage without offering an alternative other than the private insurance market would put the sickest people at risk. While McCain proposes government-run high-risk plans for those with chronic conditions, those plans are generally very costly.

We need to make sure that more people have access to health insurance. McCain’s plan just preserves a slightly worse version of the status quo.

In other words, free-market capitalism as Great White Father of the Lower Classes cannot be all that the conservative propaganda machine wants you and me believing--especially when the solutions cross the line into overt Fascism (as in overzealous State interference in the same free-market capitalist paradigm they claim to defend through subsidies to outright droogs and malchiks).

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THE FUNDAMENTALIST CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS (FLDS), WHOSE TEXAS COMPOUND WAS RAIDED LAST MONTH, may have actually been nothing short of a breeding-ground for the worst sort of hyperjuvenile sexual abuse known--or so Texas child welfare officials are now reporting.

As witness all manner of historic injuries such as bone fractures found among young boys removed from the Yearning For Zion compound, so raising fresh questions of whether corporal punishment was sanctioned as part of the preening process for its inmates becoming nothing less than sex machines in service to G-d, Country and Race.

Dotheboys Hall, anybody?

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EVEN WITH RAUL CASTRO HAVING REPLACED OLDER BROTHER FIDEL IN POWER IN HAVANA, the May Day procession of the Cuban Communist regime amounts to little more than sham and propaganda excess--even with "reforms" previously announced as allowed (in theory) Cuban "workers" to own cell phones, digital TV's and stay in high-end resort hotels when their real wages are deliberately kept all the lower in the name of "national policy."

Still, though, His Fraudulency's Great Within can't resist the temptation of an October Surprise to sucker the voters "entitled as of right" (as per the recent Supreme Court ruling) into supporting The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang, His Fraudulency's hand-picked successor (in theory)--as in a "shock and awe" insurrection seeking to overthrow the Communist regime across Cuba and install a "democratic" such as is really a shill for K Street-model corporatism. With Fox Prolefeed providing exclusive coverage in a "feel-good," sugar-coated stylee which may let slip some Inconvenient Truths.