FOR PERHAPS THE THIRD TIME THIS WEEK ALREADY, YOUR CORRESPONDENT IS FOUND in the snug of his apartment here in Winona, Minnesota because of seriously cold weather conditions outside.

As I write this, it's -18 degrees Fahrenheit (-28 Celsius), and a wind chill close to -30 in the bargain. Hence, out of safety concerns, Your Correspondent feels it best to stay home and post these comments a little earlier than usually expected among you regulars.

Meanwhile, last night, I decided to go to the Hy-Vee supermarket here in Winona to pick up on a few groceries--and in deference to the cold weather, he felt it necessary to take taxicabs to and from. One cabbie, in fact, acknowledged that, with Wednesday night being Hot Wings Night @ many bars here, such is sure to attract collegians especially seeking some refuge from the cold.

*************

AMERICAN "SUB-PRIME" MORTGAGES MAY PROBABLY BE THE LEAST OF SOCIÉTÉ GENERALE'S PROBLEMS @ the moment: France's second-largest banking house is reporting a major fraud to the tune of US$7.1 billion (€4.84 billion), carried out by a rogue trader @ its Paris futures desk over the course of the last year or so.

On top of that, Société Generale is acknowledging further losses to the tune of US$3 billion (€2.04 billion) from investments in the American "sub-prime" mortgage market.

Expect the anti-Semitic conspiracists to be harping all over this one, especially in such channels targeting Those Who Should Know Better.

*************

DID I HEAR THAT CORRECTLY--SEAN HANNITY ACTUALLY WANTS "RIGHT-THINKING" WHITES TO "speak out" in racist terms for the sake of "fairness and balance" when it comes to race relations?

NewsHounds notes where Rev. Jesse Lee Patterson, as was on Faux's Hannity and Colmes Tuesday night, was suggesting where whites ought to do their fair share of racist thought for once. See for yourself:

White supremacist sympathizer Sean Hannity has also embraced Duane "Dog" Chapman. In fact, I can't think of a single white person who has gotten in trouble for racist language in the past several years whom Hannity has not defended.

Hannity spent not one moment considering any harm that may have been done by [Rev. Calvin] Butts' allegedly racist comment in favor of complaining about the fact that whites don't have the same "advantage." Hannity barked in his bullyboy voice, "What happened to Trent Lott? Reverend Sharpton has made multiple statements over the course of his career that have been over the top and out of line. Jesse Jackson has, Louis Farrakhan is an outright racist and anti-Semite, based on the things he's said over the years, as far as I'm concerned. Democrats can have Robert Byrd as their leader in the Senate. Why does the double standard exist? How do you change that?"

Peterson's answer was not to overcome racism. He wanted white people to have the same "privileges" as blacks. "The reason that the double standards exists is because white Americans are afraid. They are afraid of being called a racist. And anytime you are afraid, your enemy will overtake you… And I'm giving white folks permission to start speaking up. I'm a black American. I love my country. I love what's right and I know that it's only the truth that's gonna bring 'em to change and until that happens, it's gonna continue."

Hannity didn't mind that Peterson was advocating more racist speech as an antidote to the kind of talk Hannity purported to deplore. No, Hannity was concerned that he might get in trouble for doing what Peterson had just advocated. "But, you see, if you're a radio host or a television host and you say something that is deemed inappropriate. For example, where did any of these people that went after Don Imus, why didn't they go after Calvin Butts for saying 'Go to hell, white man?'"

"Because he's black," Peterson said consolingly. "I'm telling you, because he's black. There's a double standard and white Americans are afraid."

Next thing you know, expect white supremacist Zealots and True Believers to be pushing the card that whites need to "serve their race" by speaking out in racist terms all the more.

*************

THINK OF THE UR-RAHOWA AGAINST TERRORISM AS A WAR FOUNDED ON LIES, and then some:

A new study has found no less than 935 lies and misstatements of fact being used by His Fraudulency's Great Within to justify the ur-RAHOWA on the Iraqi front in particular, the same first being fabricated following the Unfortunate Events of 9/11 (for which the Great Within has yet to acknowledge complicity, let alone justify same as grounds for whipping up enforced patriotism and justifying supression of civil liberties under flimsy patsies).

As if that weren't enough, one essayist to BuzzFlash is suggesting where His Fraudulency is using Usama bin-Laden the same way the Oceanic police state in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four used Emmanuel Goldstein: i.e., as The Enemy of the People to whom all hate needs to be directed, and must further be channeled into Healthy Patriot Love.

Let's not forget where the Nazis used lies and distortions of fact to provoke the opening salvos of World War II on 1 September 1939.

*************

IF WE ARE TO BELIEVE CONSERVATIVE EDITORIALIST AND TALKBACK RADIO HOST MICHAEL MEDVED, it appears as if conservative talkback radio may have become its own worst joke, and @ the expense of Angry White Men Eating Krispy Kreme Donuts Like Outright Gluttons as were expected to accept their lies, half-truths and distortions as Holy Writ.

And, come to think of it, may be digging its own grave within measurable distance, if not already. Case in point: Thanks to a campaign led by Brave New Films, several major companies have pulled their advertising from Michael Savage's programme, itself one of the more notorious sewers on the airwaves of "healthy" homophobic, Islamophobic and generally xenophobic thought.

So expect The Savage Nation to become the first casualty among the high-profile conservative radio shows before too long, largely for want of advertisers willing to support "patriotic" hate.

Next thing you know, expect other conservative talkback loudmouths to acknowledge on air that their shows were really nothing more than fraud and farce upon you, the Great Silent Majority who fell for such "analysis" as should have really been considered "entertainment" (cf. Edward R. Murrow's "wires and lights in a box" speech before the Radio and Television News Directors' Association's 1958 convention in Chicago that, in the minds of some, may have further ruined his career @ CBS, of which the following is an excerpt):

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

Stonewall Jackson, who knew something about the use of weapons, is reported to have said, 'When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.' The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival.

In any case, boys and girls, expect plenty of "conservative" talkback radio shows to start letting slip their Inconvenient Truth in the stylee of the preceding remarks--and its audience starting to slip away just as the hosts resort to desperation tactics, unlikely to realise the damage already having been done (cf. the scene towards the end of Surf's Up where Reggie Belafonte gets upset that his entire stable of surfing penguins is abandoning him in favour of the "born-again surfah" Big Z, followed by his onetime talent scout Mort Abramowitz pulling off Reggie B.'s hairpiece, as if to show what kind of a fraud he was all along).

=============

REMINDER TO MEMBERS OF THE ACADEMY eligible to vote via the postal ballot, as will be mailed out next week and are due by 17h PST (UTC-8) on 19 February:

For Best Animated Feature: Surf's Up.