more the engrish!

@ THE EXPENSE OF BEING PERCEIVED AS RATHER ANNOYING TO THE POINT OF IRKSOME, YOUR CORRESPONDENT NEEDS TO REMIND ALL OF YOU that protecting the purity and integrity of the electoral process, especially so tomorrow week, matters all the more.

Especially with whispers going around in certain circles about wild and sinister schemes to pervert the final results "by whatever means necessary," and excusing such as necessary for G-d and Country.

To those ends, may I ask your remaining all the more vigilant for schemes afoot in this the final week of the campaign to prevent duly-registered voters from exercising electoral franchise by way of weird and unwholesome means, and to contact law enforcement agencies posthaste; electoral interference is still a penal offense.

Not to mention the freecall Election Protection Hotline, 1-866-OUR-VOTE, if you spot anything amiss. (Especially should you have a camera phone as can record especially notorious instances. If the lines are busy, keep trying until you break through.)

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

FOR ALL THAT JOHN McCAIN'S CAMPAIGN MAY BE WHINING ABOUT HIS PRIMARY OPPONENT, BARACK OBAMA, BEING SOME CLASS OF A CLOSET SOCIALIST, Jesus' General has these worthwhile observations worth pondering over:

...Just about every Republican political campaign accuses Democrats of socialism and communism in some fashion, though they rarely come out and actually use such labels anymore. Instead, they usually rely on codes like "big government" and expect voters to get the message. Now that the alleged virtues of "small government" are out of fashion, new words for the same idea have to be found. What makes this attack interesting is just how bizarre and contrary to reality it is – not that any of his other personal attacks have exactly been "reality based," but the charge of socialism is so much further removed from reality that it almost makes all his earlier campaign moves seem rational by comparison.

Of course, by any educated and informed perspective (read: elitist, and therefore irrelevant), none of Barack Obama's policies come anywhere close to "socialism." He's just about as far removed from socialism as John McCain himself is, but that doesn't matter. Few of McCain's supporters actually know what socialism is. This includes the intelligent ones (I recently had a conversation with a man whose career was tied to finance and investments, yet he sincerely believed that socialism and communism were the same thing) as well as the not-so-intelligent ones (I saw a man interviewed by the BBC who said America had been fighting against socialism "since 1776"). They also don't care.

For conservative Republicans, "socialism" isn't so much a label for a particular economic theory or a set of economic policies as it is a code word for godlessness over Christianity, racial and economic equality over white, Protestant domination, collective action over individualism, internationalism over American exceptionalism, and so forth. Earlier, related complaints about "welfare" had the added benefit of being implied attacks on racial equality and giving blacks a chance at getting out of poverty.

Communism is generally taken to mean about the same thing, only a bit more extreme in terms of being anti-American, so I'm surprised that Obama hasn't been more explicitly labeled a communist as well. Trashing others as "red" in some fashion is an old and reliable Republican tactic that hasn't been made explicitly in many years. Maybe McCain is pining for the good old days when open, unapologetic red-baiting was more commonplace?

This is certainly why it doesn't matter to McCain that he hasn't pointed to anything in Obama that is "socialist" which hasn't also been promoted and/or supported in the past by Republicans like Ronald Reagan and...John McCain himself. John McCain derides tax credits as "socialist" even though Ronald Reagan described the Earned Income Tax Credit as the "single greatest anti-poverty measure" in America (and so increased it). John McCain's own health care proposals rely heavily on tax credits. Progressive taxation has been a feature of the American income tax system since there has been an income tax, and taxing the wealthy more than the poor is neccesary to any just political system. But so what?

Complaints about "socialism" aren't a serious, substantive criticism of any of Obama's policies. And frankly, I doubt many conservatives know any more about those policies than they do about socialism; instead, they are just an attempt to attack Obama as "the other" – liberal, educated, black, concerned about poverty, concerned about race, etc. Accusing someone of being a socialist is a means by which conservatives can give the impression that they are making a serious criticism while in reality just attacking someone for being too "different."

Conservative voters aren't really fooled by this; on the contrary, they are fully complicit in the tactic by not caring whether those being attacked are genuine socialists and simply responding to the dog whistle as their political masters have trained them to do. They don't want to like people who are too "other," and they certainly don't want to vote for them. Conservative politicians give them the perfect excuse with complaints about socialism or welfare: voters have the opportunity to vote their baser, bigoted prejudices while pretending that they are really moral, decent citizens.

And making things even worse is that McCain lacks credible evidence to make the interconnexion between Obama and socialism per se. Pure, unadulterated McCarthyism, plain and simple.

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

THOSE OF YOU WHO THOUGHT REP. MICHELLE BACHMANN MAY HAVE LOST ANY CREDIBLE CHANCE FOR REELECTION WITH HER CALLS UPON THE FOURTH ESTATE to look for real or suspected "un-American tendencies" upon liberal-leaning Members of Congress--that was just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

It's now emerged that, during her first attempt @ Congress in a 2005 byelection, she was overheard making nativist-sounding remarks @ a campaign appearence (kudos to Brave New Films, ultimately The Uptake, for this amazing discovery):

Not only nativist, but also xenophobically irrational, as if suggesting that America was somehow Divinely Ordained to be Morally Superior to All Other Nations by virtue of the interrelationship between the defence of its Antient and Pecuilar Soverignty and Soverign Identity and that of free-market capitalism with American characteristics (as if implying that the two were intertwined, not to mention reversible if need be).

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

THE IDEA OF ISRAELI FORCES LAUNCHING A SHOCK ATTACK ON IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAMME AS A DELIBERATE "OCTOBER SURPRISE" to manipulate the American vote over to the McCain/Palin ticket may want to be ruled out for the time being. Here's why:

• Interim Prime Minister Tzipni Livni (Kadima) has called early elections for just after Haunukkah, meaning that the campaigning could get too easily distracted by shock military action somehow being kept secret "so as not to influence the elections unduly."
• Said early elections being dictated by Ms. Livni's inability to form a Grand Coalition in the Knesset led by her Kadima party and its close rivals, Labour, after the minority Orthodox Jewish party Shas balked @ being part of same.
• Rumours @ the weekend that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinjad had suddenly taken ill and would be unable to carry out official functions for the interim.
• Interest being expressed by opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) to lead a caretaker government in the interim.
• The general tightness of the scheduling vis-a-vis American elections, and rumours surfacing about such an attack, and the timing therefor, being a cheap election-influencing tactic.

(Or could it still happen, and we may not know about it until the last minute before said elections?)

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

MEMO TO SUCH CONSIDERING "MYSTERY SHOPPER" WORK IN THE FACE OF LOOMING SOCIOECONOMIC MELTDOWN AND MASS UNEMPLOYMENT: The idea of earning big-big money simply by completing "mystery shopping" assignments once or twice a week sounds tempting on the surface ... until you learn that such is really "bait" for an outright scam.

Specifically, the "fake cheque" scam, where you're asked to cash a cheque for a substantial sum, keep 12-15% as "commission" and wire back the residue to what turns out being a "pigeon drop" address outside the United States--followed by completing a short and polite "consumer satisfaction" survey.

Only the cheque you're asked to cash is a fake, becoming evident some days later when your bankers call to let you know that a substantial cheque you deposited recently had insufficent funds, holding you liable for not only the face value, but also overdraft and NSF charges as can actually be substantial to the point of depleting your account. (Not to mention such having been written against non-existant accounts.)

Which is not a very pleasant thing to face, especially if you're tempted to fall for "mystery shopper" offers advetised in local recyclable "shoppers" and "pennysavers" or online through the likes of Craigslist--and all the more so because you can't hold down traditional positions due to circumstances outside your direct control (age, disability, history of mental disorders, local economic conditions, need to care for infants or elderly relatives) and need to supplement any State welfare benefits you're entitled to.

Against this backdrop, consider where there are "mystery shopper" positions available on a "free no cost" basis ... however, know that they're unlikely to pay any more than $50 per completed assignment, and that such, depending on your area, may be few and far between; hence, think of "mystery shopper" work as a way to earn some extra pocket money rather than a serious, sustained income. You can learn more by visiting this helpful website, which includes names and contacts (and, in some cases, website links) for honest, above-board companies who actually hire "mystery shoppers" as required, and where you can also search for "mystery shopping" assignments in your area, and how much they pay on completion of the tasks @ hand.

Think about it if you're still thinking about "mystery shopper" work as a quick and easy way out of socioeconomic uncertainty, especially where promise of big-big money is used as lure.

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

ONE THING MORE: Such among the "traditional family values" crowd as are pushing the notion of Clean Family Films for the sake of attracting "right-thinking" investors are probably thinking more about such being a tax device rather than a serious entertainment business.

Especially if the finished product turns out to be so bad to the point of poor box office ensuing (or, for that matter, the same going direct to video almost immediately), the production venture winds up claiming substantial losses as a tax writedown in the hope of claiming a substantial clawback.