more cat pictures

NO DOUBT THIS COULD BE AN APT DESCRIPTION OF HOW A FEW CHANGES TO THIS WEBLOG COULD ACTUALLY HELP SAME--as in deleting a few javascript-related programmes which were found to have caused visitors to this blog on the overnight to instead encounter a warning "pop-up" stating that Microsoft Internet Explorer was unable to access this blog, and, therefore, it would abort the operation.

In turn leading to the error alert "Internet Explorer could not display the web page," explaining where "the website is encountering problems" as one of the likely reasons therefor.

Anyhow, the problem was found to be in some widgets for Amazon.com, Amazon.ca and Amazon.co.uk, which have been replaced with more conventional banners in the hope of correcting the problem among those of you who are loyal fans of this blog. As precaution, a ticker as appeared @ the top of the page and headline readers for SwissInfo and BBC News, which also used Javascript, were also dropped.

I've also chosen to delete the surveys for lack of response, as well as to improve download speed in the face of these same developments. That, and changed the background music to one tune they should have included in the Surf's Up soundtrack: Jack Nitzsche's 1963 surf-insturmental hit "The Lonely Surfer," IMHO the single best piece of surf rock music ever.

In any event, please let me know what you think of these improvements--or, for that matter, this weblog.

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SPOTTED BY YOUR CORRESPONDENT @ THE POST OFFICE HERE IN WINONA THE OTHER DAY while buying some stamps: A banner reflecting pst-9/11 uberpatriotism reading "Freedom: Cherish it!"

Which is rather ironic, considering where His Fraudulency's Great Within, using the ur-RAHOWA Against Terrorism as the rationale therefor, is seeking to reduce the Constitution as a mere formality worth little more than toilet paper by somehow wanting us paranoid about the prospect of terrorists in the woodwork and possibly under the bed (cf. much the same sort of "patriotic" paranoia in World War II against the Germans and Japanese ... and, during the Cold War, against Communists, howbeit in the latter instance by way of the John Bircher crowd and their weird and unwholesome sputnik types; "sputnik," in case you didn't know--as in the first man-made object to enter space on 4 October 1957--is Russian for "fellow traveller").

And let's not forget there's always the possibility of terrorists here on the home front--if not exactly of the Islamist sort we're forever being warned about, then such hiding behind Old Glory and "patriotism" to pander to racist, white-supremacist or otherwise xenophobically jingoistic mindsets and feeling.

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WITH THE RELIGIOPOLITICAL RIGHT SOMEHOW INTERESTED IN DISPLAYING HOMOSEXUALS AS "FREAKS AND TRAVESTIES OF NATURE" IN FREAKSHOW STYLEE, they would probably think such needs "reinforcement" in the "winning of hearts and minds" department.

As in "lectures" from "right-thinking Christian Families whose lives were shattered by homosexuality," complete with carefully-scripted to the point of coached weeping and bawling and boohoohooing which, in the final analysis, turns out being no better than the Cherry Sisters' rather pathetic excuse for a stage act.

In other words, unintentionally becoming their own worst joke.

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SO MUCH FOR THE NOTION OF "ENERGY SELF-SUFFICENCY" THROUGH INCREASED OIL AND NATURAL GAS DRILLING IN ENVIRONMENTALLY-SENSITIVE ARCTIC AND OFFSHORE AREAS, hoping such will be the "magic bullet" as will drive down gas prices For G-d, Country and Capitalism with American Characteristics.

Especially where oil and gas companies already have significant and measurable numbers of oil and gas leases on Federal lands that they've yet to make use of, and are afraid of having to surrender for failing to take advantage thereof.

So what makes His Fraudulency's droogs in the oil and gas industries afraid of using up what leases on Federal lands they have already first before committing to further drilling, knowing (un)consciously all along that putting oil and gas to market takes as much as 2-3 years' time?

Write Your Congressman.

Or, better yet, if your Congressman has a "town hall" meeting in your area during the current summer recess, broach the question to him or her. (Politely, of course.)

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SHORTLY AFTER THE GERMAN SURRENDER WHICH ENDED THE EUROPEAN PHASE OF WORLD WAR II, SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER GEN. DWIGHT EISENHOWER ordered Allied Occupation Forces to escort Germans through the ruins of Nazi concentration camps and force them (by bayonet point, if need be) to look @ what the Nazi regime carried out in the name of the German People--as in the wholesale extermination of some ten million people (six million Jews alone) deemed "life unworthy of life" as "threatened the integrity of the Aryan Master Race and the Greater Glory of Germany" by the Nazi regime.

And not just Jews, know; others which the Nazis regarded as "subhuman" and fit only for extermination, questionable "medical experiments" or slave labour included:

• those with mental or emotional disorders;
• those with war-related disabilities;
• Russo-Slavic peoples;
• Roma (gypsies);
• Jehovah's Witnesses (known overseas as "Bible Students"); and
• homosexuals.

Your Correspondent understands where the Iraqi Government has acquired title to the private yacht of former Ba'athist leader Saddam Hussein styled Basrah Breeze in French territorial waters off the Côte d'Azur, all the while lying unused and @ anchor--all $155 million (@ current estimates) worth, replete with eight guest suites, gold-plated sanitary fixtures, massive dining and lounge areas, even a private sick bay "just in case" and a modest little ur-helipad, all in the interest of reclaiming Plundered Assets of State.

(It's also emerged that the Hussein family also had a modest little estate along the Côte d'Azur of substantial value, title therefor reclaimed by the Iraqi Government ... yet it may just be the tip of the iceberg, as it were; Iraqi Government investigators are also looking for other instances of Plundered Assets of State from the Ba'athist era, among them private bank accounts in offshore financial centres rumoured to be worth billions of dollars thanks to the interest accrued all the while.)

Anyhow, the Iraqi Government has designs on having the Basrah Breeze become a floating museum and memorial to the excesses of plunder and looting of assets of state and people during Ba'athist rule--with the Grand Opening preceded by forced marches of ordinary Iraqis made to look @ the whole under the watchful gaze (and bayonet points) of Iraqi Colonial Occupation Forces and ponder what was wrought in their name.

All the while admonished not to laugh all along lest such be seen as "showng contempt or disgrace for Iraqi History."

As if that weren't enough, His Fraudulency's Coalition of the Coerced and Misled can also expect substantial war reparations bills from the Iraqi Government within measurable distance, with our own "morally superior" society expected to receive the largest amount therefor.

Not to mention having to find ways on how to repay said reparations while keeping taxes all the lower in the name of creating jobs and, in its turn, "social stability."