MOTHER'S DAY WEEKEND IS HERE, AND IN THE MINNWISSIPPI, IT'S CLOUDY, BY AND LARGE. With maybe some rain possible heading into the evening.

Which the farmers and planters would rather not have any more of so they could get the spring fieldwork done for once. And seriously, even if they're hesitant about planting corn or soybeans because of high fuel and fertiliser costs.

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STARTING IN THE MID-1970'S, MANY SOFT DRINK MAKERS SWITCHED OVER FROM SUGAR TO CORN-BASED SWEETNERS to cut costs and keep prices down.

Now, with so much of the corn being diverted to biofuels, it looks as if many soft-drink makers are about to return to real sugar before the summer is out. Which could be a blessing in disguise, what with much of the complaints about obesity aggravated by soft drinks having come since corn sweetners began to be in widespread use.

As for biofuels, sugarcane waste is a pretty reliable source--particularly so in Brazil.

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SOME OUT THERE HAVE BEEN WONDERING IF THIS SUMMER MAY SEE SOME CLASS OF AN INFAMOUS TERRORIST ATTACK WHICH COULD THEN BE USED by His Fraudulency's Great Within to justify extending the Iraqi Theatre of the ur-RAHOWA Against Terrorism into Iran.

As was the case with Iraq, the justification therefor being based on flimsy or incredible evidence.

How do we know this "terrorist attack," if it comes off, won't really be some class of a "false flag" action which the Great Within can cook up to whip up another round of the crudest in forced patriot love not seen since the Unfortunate Events of 9/11, especially when a "redemption for value" blackmail scam vis-a-vis illicit "militias" and "lone wolf" sleeper cells can be deployed for deceptive purposes?

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NEWEST TARGET OF THOSE IN THE ELMER GANTRY CAMP WHO LOVE TO THROW OUT THAT SINGSONG MEME OF "CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION! CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION!" for no purpose other than selfish vanity and warped patriotic delusion, by way of the LaCrosse (WI) Tribune (ultimately via the Wisconsin State Journal of Madison):

NECEDAH, Wis. — Two people have been charged after a Juneau County sheriff's deputy found a family living in a home with the body of a 90-year-old woman decomposing on the bathroom toilet.

Tammy D. Lewis, 35, and Alan A. Bushey, 57, both of Necedah, each were charged with two felony counts of causing mental harm to a child, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday. Lewis also faces one count of obstructing police.

The two, who are also known as Sister Mary Bernadett and Bishop John Peter Bushey, along with the dead woman, Magdeline Alvina Middlesworth, were part of a small Bible-based church led by Bushey, Juneau County Sheriff Brent Oleson said.

Investigators are trying to determine if they were defrauding Middlesworth, Oleson said, and additional charges against the two are "a very real possibility." He said there is evidence Middlesworth provided financial support to the church and to Lewis and her family.

Lewis and Middlesworth were not related, he said, but had been living together with Lewis' 15-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son about 3 1/2 years.

Oleson declined to call the church a cult but said "I guess in my mind I don't know of any faith that sanctioned his teachings."

Bushey had been living in the area about 11 years, Oleson said, did not have outside employment and had built a chapel on the back of his home, which is about a half-mile from where Middlesworth and Lewis lived. He said Bushey's church had few members; only eight were at a Mass about two months ago.

He said Bushey's church was not affiliated with the Queen of the Holy Rosary Mediatrix of Peace Shrine, which is less than a mile from Middlesworth's home. The shrine itself is not a recognized part of the Catholic Church.

[***]

According to the criminal complaint, the sheriff's office was asked Wednesday to check on Middlesworth's welfare by her sister, Bernice Metz, because Metz had not heard from her in "some time."

Lewis initially told a deputy Middlesworth was on vacation, but after the body was discovered admitted she had been dead for about two months, according to the criminal complaint.

Lewis said she had been helping Middlesworth put on an undergarment when she passed out in her arms, then left the elderly woman propped on the toilet after Bushey, whom she referred to as her "superior," said to leave her there and pray.

Lewis claimed to authorities that "God told her Alvina would come back to life if she prayed hard enough." Bushey told the deputy "Lewis was obedient and served the Lord just as she should."

The complaint states incense was used to cut down on the stench in the home, and Lewis said she and her children were using a bucket in a closet as a bathroom.

The 12-year-old boy later told investigators that after Middlesworth died, Bushey told him her appearance "was the result of demons attempting to make it appear that Alvina would not come back to life."

The boy also reportedly said Bushey told him if Middlesworth's death was discovered, he and his sister would have to go to public school and get jobs because the woman, whom the boy referred to as his "grandmother," paid the bills.

The girl made similar statements to investigators, according to the complaint.

Both children are in protective custody, Oleson said, and physically healthy.

In court Friday, bond was set at $50,000 cash each for Lewis and Bushey, and they were ordered to have no contact with the children or each other.

(BTW, the Queen of the Holy Rosary Mediatrix of Peace Shrine is connected to the schismatic American National Catholic Church, an Old Catholic group whose supporters--mostly poor, undereducated and easily-influenced--contend that one Mary Ann VanHoof saw Our Lady in the summer of 1950, and in the process supposedly received messages warning that the Soviets were preparing to set off World War III within measurable distance via the Pacific Coast. Messages as were quickly dismissed by the Roman Catholic Church as "insincere" and designed solely to attract the tourist trade, even if substantial crowds arrived in Necedah on August 15th that year to see the supposed apparitions, which were dismissed as little better than a bluish haze.

(By that fall, Miss VanHoof began losing substantial support, especially after she collapsed and hit her head on a statue of Our Lady of Fatima during a Rosary procession and radio stations in Milwaukee were asked by Church authorities to stop carrying VanHoof's broadcasts. In 1975, her supporters were placed on interdiction, one step short of out-and-out excommunication in terms of Church sanctions, meaning they could not receive any Church sacraments save that of pennance.

(Miss VanHoof herself died in 1984, heretic to the last.)

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HAVE YOU SEEN THOSE COMMERCIALS FROM THE SO-CALLED "AMERICAN COALITION FOR CLEAN COAL ENERGY" DEPICTING SUPPOSED AVERAGE JOE/JANE TYPES voicing their "support" for energy self-sufficency based on increased construction of power stations using so-called "clean coal technology"?

I, for one, would have to treat such as suspicious, especially when you consider these supposed "True Believers" are really actors coached into reading from carefully-nuanced scripts (in which case FTC requirements, under more conventional circumstances, would require the on-screen disclosure "actor portrayals" or suchlike).

Not to mention this same "American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy" being another guise for the equally-so-called "Americans for Balanced Energy Choices," identified as an industry front group with intent to mislead or confuse.

In view of where both the National Advertising Division (a consilium of the Council of Better Business Bureaux and major advertising-industry groups) and the FTC regard issue or advocacy advertising as outside their purview because of possible First Amendment conflicts, perhaps it was time for the Secular-Progressive Blogosphere to raise their objections to the ACCCE's advertising because of the deception issues I have just addressed.

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COME TO THINK OF IT, THE EXAGGERATOR IS PROUD TO CONSIDER ITSELF part of the Secular-Progressive Blogosphere, never mind Bill "No-Spin Zone" O'Reilly's contentions about Secular-Progressives somehow in league with His Satanic Majesty.

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AND IT LOOKS AS IF THE GOP WILL LIKELY FACE SERIOUS CASH-FLOW PROBLEMS in trying to "swift-boat" Barack Obama's Presidential campaign, never mind where they claim to be acting for G-d and Country: Ongoing financial irregularities with the GOP could mean that broadcasters may require the GOP's campaign committee to pay for their ad time in cash, especially when it turns out that all except a hard-core "inside of the inside" can be trusted to keep the GOP afloat.

Until it emerges that they're probably a "fifth column" seeking to undermine the GOP from within.

In any case, perhaps it was time for the GOP to open its books for once and reveal the extent of its financial problems--especially before creditors demand cash payments (and no, they won't accept so-called "Liberty Dollars" "secured" by lead ingots from the Monongahela Metal Foundry spray-painted to look like gold or silver).