TORNADOES THIS EARLY IN JANUARY DOESN'T SEEM QUITE RIGHT: Just last night, a good portion of the Midwest was caught up in unusually-early episodes of tornadic activity for the time of year.

In a swath extending from Branson, Missouri to Kenosha, Wisconsin (for the sake of approximation), major tornadic activity was encountered last night alone in five states, killing two people in Missouri, reducing houses in Wisconsin and Illinois to foundations, disrupting a murder trial when the courthouse had to be evacuated and derailing a locomotive and 12 freight cars, two of which contained hazardous materials; leaks in one car as contained brake fluid caused fumes which forced the evacuation of a nearby unincoroprated community.

In any case, these were the first January tornadoes in Wisconsin since 1967 and the first such in Illinois since 1950, according to weather records.

Meanwhile, around the Minnwissippi region where Your Correspondent resideth, the situation has been fog aggravated by rapidly-melting snow in the face of unseasonably mild conditions--in turn, triggering the risk of ice jams on tributary streams aggravated by all-too-rapid snow melt conditions.

It makes you wonder whether we may already be seeing what Al Gore's been warning us about all along.

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CONSERVATIVE ZEALOT/TRUE BELIEVER PROJECTION ALERT: It's well-known that clauses in a number of oaths taken here in the United States require a willingness to support and defend the same "against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

On the latter do I wish to address this item.

For some reason, the Zealots and True Believers in the conservative propaganda camp love to claim that liberal- or Progressive-leaning causes and their True Believers should be seen as "sworn enemies" of the United States, and, hence, ought be regarded with fear, loathing and suspicion.

And, if need be, being subject to what may turn out being malicious prosecution for treason, especially when the conservative propaganda machine lacks compelling evidence to prove that the acts of "treason" in question meet the constitutionally-defined standard in Article III, section III(a) of the United States such (as in "making war against the United States, or, in adherence to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort").

Let alone the prospect that such "evidence" may be coerced, perjured or otherwise based on hearsay.

Which leaves Your Correspondent wondering if these specimens of hyperconservative Zealotry and True Belief, in questioning such as are exercising constitutionally-protected guarantees of free speech and press absent declaration of a State of Emergency dictating suspension of civil liberties, are actually engaging in projection--as in shifting blame on others to avoid attracting suspicion on themselves.

Somehow, the conservative propaganda machine should consider themselves as enemies of the United States for all they've been doing to sow discord and enmity in especially Those Who Should Know Better.

Not to mention suggesting that the hoi polloi should accept the conservative line "without question or reservation"--in other words, practice a willful and deliberate orthodoxy (or, in Orwellian Newspeak, being "goodthoughtful") as excuses stupidity, excusing said stupidity as necessary for G-d, Country and Family.

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Besides, it only takes just one mentally-disturbed person @ the likes of a conservative-sponsored media event (or, for that matter, some "music show" of the Branson model idealised by the forces of cultural conservatism as Amerikanischer Realkultur's acme and perfection) to cause trouble as can get out of hand and cause civil disorder, chaos--or worse.

History has shown this to be a fact.

And don't expect such a possibility to be the monopoly of liberals or Progressives: Conservative Zealotry and True Belief, and the propaganda of same, can easily be enough to appeal to certain weird and unwholesome elements who could turn out being mentally unstable enough to disrupt things. Especially so those among the target audiences of the ilk of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Fox Noise (as in poor, undereducated or homeschooled and easily-influenced "white trash") who could easily be set up to carry out disruptive acts, deeds and exploits which could "officially" be labelled as Notorious Terrorist Acts dictating a State of Emergency.

All the while taking devious or unscrupulous advantage of their mental state being easily subject to exploitation.

Followed by the real perp(s) being given safe passage into Canada, along with regular remittances conditional upon their silence in what transpired, paid off through "pure trusts" based offshore "for tax reasons," to use a rather lame bromide.

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LET THIS BE A WARNING, EVEN IF FROM "DOWN UNDER:" India's current test cricket series against Australia has been mired in a racist spat which nearly threatened to suspend the series after India's XI threatened to return home in the wake of racist comments from Indian cricketer Harbhajan Singh directed @ Australian counterpart Andrew Symonds.

For which remarks Singh was handed a three-Test suspension by the International Cricket Council for conduct detrimental to the sport and racist behaviour, in whose wake the Board of Control for Cricket in India (the Indian governing body therefor) threatened to suspend their current Test series with Australia unless the suspension was reversed--until calmer heads prevailed.

(The Board of Control is appealing the ICC's ruling, mostly out of national honour.)

Let this be a warning for all of sport, never mind arguments about racism being necessary to the defence of "national honour and identity."  

MEMO TO CERTAIN ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS ON THE "EDUCATIONAL" FRONT: Especially so those among you questioning the legality, statutory or otherwise, of free public education just to push the likes of questionable supplantation in such guises as "school choice" and Christian homeschooling--

First off, may I remind you of the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Which extends, inter alii, to educational matters.

With that in mind, and for the sake of example, may I call your attention to the likes of clauses 1 and 2, Article XIII, of the Minnesota  Constitution:

Section 1. UNIFORM SYSTEM OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. The stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it is the duty of the legislature to establish a general and uniform system of public schools. The legislature shall make such provisions by taxation or otherwise as will secure a thorough and efficient system of public schools throughout the state.

Sec. 2. PROHIBITION AS TO AIDING SECTARIAN SCHOOL. In no case shall any public money or property be appropriated or used for the support of schools wherein the distinctive doctrines, creeds or tenets of any particular Christian or other religious sect are promulgated or taught.

If you need another example, let me call your attention to Article X, clause 3, of Wisconsin's Constitution:

The legislature shall provide by law for the establishment of district schools, which shall be as nearly uniform as practicable; and such schools shall be free and without charge for tuition to all children between the ages of 4 and 20 years; and no sectarian instruction shall be allowed therein; but the legislature by law may, for the purpose of religious instruction outside the district schools, authorize the release of students during regular school hours.

As if that weren't enough, consider Iowa's Constitution, article IX, part 1, clause 15 (in perintent part):

The general assembly shall have power to***provide for the educational interest of the state in any other manner that to them shall seem best and proper.

What have you to say now, confronted with evidence by example?

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AND THEY STILL SAY AMERICAN CULTURE IS "MORALLY SUPERIOR" TO ALL OTHERS: The military junta who governs the so-called Union of Myanmar recently announced that it was raising the annual excise on satellite dish receivers from the equivalent of US$5 to US$800--this, perhaps, out of fear that Knowledge (especially coming from overseas) must be some class of a Loathsome Disease as threatens the antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity of the Union of Myanmar.

(More than likely, such should be read as threatening the Divine Right of the status quo.)

For 2008, the BBC's annual licence fee for owners of colour TV sets between Land's End and John O'Groats is set @ £135.50 (equivalent to US$268.29; payable monthly, that works out to £11.29 [US$22.35]/month); black-and-white set owners pay a licence fee of £45.50 (US$90.08).

And yet the forces of cultural conservative Zealotry and True Belief see public television and radio as "failed social experiments***unlikely to continue generating taxpayer value"!

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NO WONDER THE LOU DOBBS CROWD MUST BE DROOLING IN ENVY: Russian migration authorities have announced where, in the interest of "protecting the jobs of native Russians," the annual quota for migrant workers from the Commonwealth of Independent States (as in the former Soviet Republics since becoming soverign in their own right) seeking work in Mother Russia in 2008 is to be cut by two-thirds; i.e., from 6 million permits last year to just 2 million this year.

How do we know the Zealots and True Believers aren't seriously considering similar measures when it comes to foreign guest workers on J2 student visas as part of their "hidden agenda" for Indecision 2008?

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AAAHHH, THE WONDERS OF PSEUDOSCIENCE (AND THEN SOME): When it comes to pseudoscience, or--for that matter--perversion of scientific thought and belief, perhaps one of the weirdest branches thereof would have to be the belief that the Soviet Union and its "fraternal sister republics" had about historical research being one with scientific such.

"Historical Science," as it were.

The which could be considered a likely defence among such engaging in Holocaust denial and their cousins among the apologists for apartheid South Africa and/or Rhodesia (the latter since restyled Zimbabwe), Nazi Germany and the Confederate States of America, in case questions start being asked in Certain Scholarly Circles.

Case in point for perverting science along "historical" lines: The so-called "Institute for Historical Review," itself rather notorious in its time for trying to pervert history based on "scientific" models to challenge whether Nazi Germany's "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem" (as in The Holocaust) ever happened, let alone whether some six million Jews from across Nazi-occupied or -controlled areas of Europe were killed off in the name of Hitler, Germany and an idealised "Aryan Master Race."

(I say "in its time" because, in recent years, the Institute has fallen into serious disarray following lawsuits charging that its true properitors--in particular Willis Carto, himself a major player in the cause of hate and extremism thanks to his so-called "Liberty Lobby" and the now-defunct hate tabloid weekly The Spotlight--misused Institute funds and diverted them to personal or otherwise improper use. As if that weren't enough, its pseudoscholarly journal, The Journal of Historical Review, has been in concurrent hiatus; likewise with their annual conferences featuring the creme de la creme of Holocaust denial, Nazi apologia and "patriotic" racism and anti-Semitism.)

How much longer before the Neocon/Fascisti element starts resorting to "historical science" as a propaganda weapon?  

SINCLAIR LEWIS COULD BE WRONG: Civil disorder and violence in Pakistan following the "insider" assaination of opposition leader Benazhir Bhutto has threatened to undermine the likelihood of Parliamentary elections within measurable distance without their being seriously undermined.

Meanwhile, in Kenya, a church was firebombed with some 30 people holed up inside to escape post-election violence triggered by rumours of the result having been rigged or manipulated by the Nairobi powers-that-be to favour the status quo and its climate of corruption, cronyism and worse.

Which is enough to wonder if America's Indecision 2008 could be marred by displays of Extreme Ultraviolence which turn out to have been cooked up by goon squads with connexions to His Fraudulency's "inside of the inside" (some sort of a "redemption for value" scam, perhaps?)--all the while officially explained as Notorious Terrorist Acts, never mind where the real perps are suddenly given safe passage to some third country on fake passports and substantial payoffs to keep the whole quiet.

In any case, compelling His Fraudulency to suspend the elections "in the interest of maintaining public order and safety," handing over law and order, in effect, to the inmates of the asylum--as in "vigilance committees" predominated by the weird and unwholesome and with mindsets up there with the Ku Klux Klan and The Black Legion as mandate their highly-secretive regalia in carrying out their exercises in racially-selective "law-and-order" sadisto under cloak of darkness.

Themselves paid off by--you guessed it--"the inside of the inside."

Remember, folks, "it CAN happen here."

And remember, too, that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

But such is no excuse to justify sadisto misadventures with racist overtures, especially where Al Cohol (usually "strong" beer) comes into the argument.

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IF YOU THINK AMTRAK SHOULD BE EUTHANISED AS A FAILED SOCIAL EXPERIMENT ...: One of the pet arguments of the K Street crowd is that the national passenger rail operator Amtrak should be put out of its misery "for the sake of the good taxpayers***seeing no real or viable taxpayer value" in maintaining rail passenger service.

In the process, expecting the motorcoach industry, "out of the goodness of its heart," to step in and provide "more cost-efficent" services intercity.

Unfortunately, however, such thinking would only benefit, for the most part, Greyhound, which itself is seeing its motorcoach network truncated wholesale to save themselves any chance of profitability, leaving many smaller communities without other decent transportation options save for shared-taxi or van services as would provide connexions to the nearest city of consequence still lucky to have Greyhound services.

Or, for that matter, Megabus, which offers cheap (as little as $1 one-way, with advanced reservations) motorcoach services on "hub-and-spoke" networks in the Midwest (based out of Chicago) and West Coast (based out of Los Angeles).

And let's not forget the Chinese motorcoach services (known in the Chinese by a term which translates into the colourful-sounding "wild chicken trucks") operating along the Northeast Corridor, by and large.

What exactly would it take to force a forced-matrix brand of motorcoach competition as would satisfy K Street in these circumstances?

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GERMAN EFFICENCY IS WONDERFUL DEPARTMENT: One of the more popular character traits often cited among the Germans is that which holds where the Germans are masters of efficency to the highest degree.

And perhaps the best examples of German efficency I can come across would have to be in the oral-hygiene department, particularly when it comes to mouth rinse. When you get right down to it, the Germans have it worked out so that just a few drops of concentrated mouth rinse, added to water, does as effective a job in getting rid of bad breath (including "morning breath") as already-prepared brands like Listerine, Scope and Lavoris.

And you get value for money in the bargain: Just one bottle of mouth rinse concentrate, when diluted with water according to directions, will go longer than a large-size bottle of straight Listerine. And the compact size of the bottle means less to pack when you travel.

Fortunately for Your Correspondent, The Exaggerator is proud to be affiliated with Smallflower.com, the online version of Chicago's famous Merz Apothecary, where you can buy such esteemed German brands of mouth rinse concentrate like Odol and Nur 1 Tropfen (One Drop Only), which you can find out more about by clicking on the image as meets your fancy:

 

IN TERMS OF CONSERVATIVE ARTICLES OF FAITH FOREVER SEEING THE LOWER CLASSES as nothing better than parasites and Threats to the Morals and Decency of the Working-Classes, some of their more pathetic remedies towards "moral correction," if you can call it such, can be considered rather illogiocal in and of themselves.

Especially considering where the inevitable foundation these same conservatives have, almost always, is in free-market capitalism with American characteristics as the Great White Father, so to speak, that would "release [the poor, welfare-dependent and National Minorities in particular] from helpless enslavement to failed social welfare policies" as led, so this thinking goes, to "error and illogic" based on Socialistic or otherwise "un-American" beliefs.

Making things all the more difficult, understand, is the fact of the Lower Classes having few or no realistic consumer-education skills, all the while leaving them @ the risk of second-rate merchandise @ higher-than-necessary prices (the point of which Wally World and the "dollar stores" are likely to dispute), credit (if they're lucky) tending to be on less-than-favourable terms and their buying power being all the more limited and limiting.

No doubt making the Lower Classes all the more vulnerable to scams and misguided expectations from such who seek to take advantage of their circumstances. Even if Fox News Channel expects the Lower Classes to see themselves as Real Americans in their xenophobic closed-mindedness and limited purchasing power.

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And all too often, these same conservatives just hope to see these same Lower Classes as no better than easily-manipulated guinea pigs for all manner of "social experiments" expected to show that free-market capitalism would save them from themselves--with a little Pavlovian conditioning, subliminal messages and other potentially harmful psychological techniques tending to exploit.

One likely such would involve their dearest article of faith: The "complete and final" denationalisation of State Social Security towards free-market models expected to "promote healthy respect for industry, self-reliance, personal responsibility, thrift and a wholesome and simple home life."

As in looking for ways to "advise" such finding work only because of workfare or other targeted job-assistance schemes (e.g., Job Corps, School-to-Work, Vocational Rehabilitation, Emergency Economic Redevelopment, Displaced Worker Retraining) that they should consider "retirement savings funds" based on Latin American models preferred by K Street because State Social Security "has failed to produce proper respect for self-reliance and personal responsibility among [their] kind" all along.

Which, it just so happens, fails to recognise that the Lower Classes have no idea of how the equities markets as would play an intergal part in private Social Security work save for latent anti-Semitic platitudes and patsies.

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Another unlikely delusion in the same vein:

Cooking up all manner of "savings campaigns" only playing up the crudest of stereotypes suggesting where the Lower Classes can't make wise use of their money, instead wasting such on liquor, illegal drugs, junk food, lottery tickets and "wasteful and frivolous" purposes rather than "a wholesome and simple home life" based, these same Zealots and True Believers would suggest, upon "The Cotter's Saturday Night" by Robert Burns (Scots; 1759-1796).

Only to find ways to have such "savings" so "invested" diverted to improper or otherwise dangerous ends which result in nothing but loss of capital (as in so-called "High Yield Investment Programmes"), as well as looking for tools and answers to use in explaining:

• how such funds invested in response to these "savings campaigns" will be used;
• whether such funds will be used wisely;
• how much return can be expected; and
• how those so enrolled can access their funds, and when, without having to needlessly jump through hoops.

Try and figure....

I HOPE YOU DON'T MIND, FOLKS, the fact that, heretofore, Your Correspondent had been posting most of his essays in this new blog on a "postdated" basis; i.e., for posting @ a later time.

Circumstances, though, prompt moi to try posting "on the fly," as it were.

The which I will get to shortly.

But first: I thought I'd let you know of an informative and worthwhile series forthcoming as will be of especial interest to certain scions @ the Elmer Gantry Institute of Religiopolitical Theology challenging the legality as much as the constitutionality of free public education, and proscriptions on the use of public monies to fund religious or otherwise sectarian systems of education (including, methinks, Christian Homeschooling curricular material), and hope to use the courts to make their case (unaware of the likelihood for same being dismissed as frivolous, vexatious or otherwise unwise use of court time and resources).

And the form of challenge? Actual clauses from the several State Constitutions on the points @ issue.

So do bookmark this site, and please tell your friends about this forthcoming series of importance. Remember: "The truth is mighty, and will prevail."

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COULD BRITNEY SPEARS BE THE NEXT FRANCES FARMER? Recent news reports about the mental and psychoemotional breakdown of singer Britney Spears, culminating in her current 72-Hour Hold for psychiatric evaluation in the wake of a recent court ruling forcing her to surrender legal custody of her children to her former husband, excesses of sensationalism and unhealthy attention in some prolefeed channels notwithstanding, may be enough to Your Correspondent's mind to recall the tragic life of actress Frances Farmer (1914-1970), once billed as a likely and promising rival to Greta Garbo ... only to see her career collapse all the more by virtue of psychiatric ill-treatment, cruelty and the overdomineering designs of her publicity-seeking mother.

Her notriety, if you could call it that, could first be traced to 1931, when, as a high school student in Seattle, she won $500 in an essay contest for her essay "God Dies," wherein she challenged the existance of The Deity openly--and, in the process, began attracting the attention of critics as were quick to label her as a "Communist sympathiser," "pinko" and worse.

Soon afterwards, Farmer would win a competition sponsored by the Communist-leaning magazine New Masses as included an audition on Broadway and passage to Moscow for a visit to a theater there. On her return, she would attract the affections of dramatist Clifford Odets, in time appearing in the stage version of his play Golden Boy on Broadway.

Hollywood quickly expressed interest, with Paramount signing Farmer to a stock seven-year contract as was common in Hollywood's Golden Age; too often, however, Paramount would farm out Frances Farmer to other studios, quickly earning resentment of The Hollywood System on her part. And before long, she would wind up getting rather forgettable B-picture roles until some misadventures with tequila on the set of the Monogram Pictures production No Escape earned her the wrath of the courts--and loss of plum roles.

By the end of 1942, a chain of headline-generating incidents would mean the end of Frances Farmer's Hollywood prospects:

• Her arrest for drunk driving, driving with high-beam headlights in a wartime dim-out zone and assaulting the arresting officer.
• Failing to meet with her probation officer led to her infamous arrest in the nude from her suite @ the Knickerbocker Hotel in Santa Monica, drunk and screaming Billingsgate. On arrival @ the police station, she used an obscene term in describing her profession.
• Following her sentence to penal servitude, with the judge essentially "throwing the book" @ Miss Farmer, she screamed obscenities @ police officers and press reporters, even kicking the camera of a press photographer to the point of causing damage.
• Her mother, back in Seattle, would essentially sign her death warrant vis-a-vis Hollywood by suggesting that she be placed in a private insane asylum for treatment, or what passed for it in those days.

In time, however, Frances Farmer would become a has-been, eventually being committed to the Washington state asylum in Steliacoom and, in the process, suffering all manner of psychiatric abuse, cruelty and indignities @ the hands of medical staff and orderlies, including witnessing episodes of lesbian rape as a means of asserting power and authority and being tricked into doing sexual favours. (Her own sordid account was, fortunately, recorded for posterity in her memoirs, Will There Really Be a Morning?, published following her death from cancer in 1970. Alone.)

Reduced to a shell of her former self following her undergoing an icepick lobotomy in 1948, it would be ten years before Frances Farmer would find the strength to return to Hollywood for one last film appearence in The Party Crashers; soon afterwards, she would move to Indianapolis, where she hosted a teatime movie programme on a local TV station until shortly before her decease.

So: Could it be likely that the ghost of Frances Farmer may be ready to haunt Britney Spears before too long, as if her younger daughter Jamie Lynn's being enciente wasn't making things difficult enough?

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THERE IS NO ROYAL ROAD TO ENERGY SELF-SUFFICENCY: Even with much of the attention in the oil and gas industries being drawn to the Bakken field across western North Dakota and eastern Montana, perhaps the single hottest area for oil and gas exploration right now, don't expect that area alone to be the "magic bullet" as winds up seeing oil prices falling below $100/bbl within measurable distance.

Which begs the question of whether certain elements of His Fraudulency's "inside of the inside" may secretly be playing the crude-oil futures markets with all the recent cuts in military pay and benefits, and hoping to make a cheap and quick killing in the process.

As if that weren't enough:

Parade, the Sunday rotogravure magazine supplement, had a rather embarrassing item recently about the real cost of developing energy self-sufficency based on maintaining dependency upon oil and gas--costs to health and environment, it turns out.

On the one hand, extraction of crude oil and natural gas ex-wellhead requires all manner of toxic chemicals as can affect drinking water quality, including benzene, arsenic and mercury. And in some of the older fields approaching the end of their productive life, producers have been known to add other toxic substances to boost what little output may still be extractable.

But, thanks to the petroleum industry's connexions in Congress, wellhead owners have exemptions from mandates in the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Air Act, among other environmental-protection laws; this extends to exemptions from requirements for reporting toxic-material releases.

Add to that complaints of many living close to oil and gas wells of all manner of health problems as include painful blisters, headaches, nausea, nosebleeds and even cancers, for which the oil and gas industry will likely suggest that complaints thereof are probably "hypochondria" or "psychosomatic" in the hope of avoiding liability.

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Back to the Bakken field for a moment: For want of suitable facilities for processing natural gas ex-wellhead, flaring off gas therefrom seems to be more the rule than the exception, so explaining why the nighttime skies of western North Dakota especially might be a little brighter without the Northern Lights taken into account.

Even if it means wasting substantial quantities of natural gas in the bargain.

(Historical Sidelight: Following the Turner Valley naptha gas discoveries in the Canadian province of Alberta in the mid-1920's, flaring off wellheads was so common, it was said that one could read an evening paper on the streets of nearby Calgary without recourse to artificial light.)

There is no royal road to energy self-sufficency, Your Fraudulency....    

MIKE HUCKABEE'S INCONVENIENT TRUTH, METHINKS?

Excellent video by way of Jesus' General:

Unfortunately, the family of a former client of The ManKind Project is suing the outfit after their relative committed suicide allegedly because of practices at the camp. It's hard to understand how these rituals produce desired results (revealed in a letter from the victim to the sheriff):

* Blindfolded walking tours in the nude
* People blowing sage smoke in his face while 50 or so naked men danced around candles
* Men sitting in a circle discussing their sexual histories while passing a wooden dildo called "The [N4BSK]"
* Naked men beating cooked chickens with a hammer

Once you go that far around the bend, it wasn't surprising to read about this other bit alleged therapy at all, as described by a wife whose husband bailed on the program:

"So, everyone was sitting Indian-style in a big circle in the lodge when the man leading the group said, 'if you wish, you may reach over and grab your brother's [N4BSK]. If your brother doesn't want your hand there, he can remove it.' Well, my husband told me he just froze. And, from that point on, he just wanted out."

I'm sure this will all be cleared up at trial, with expert testimony on these proven techniques.

This cult-like national program is a $650 weekend boot camp where participants--mostly straight--are greeted by large, intimidating men dressed in dark clothing and faces painted black. During their stay, the men are forced to take cold showers, survive on about four hours sleep, and subsist on very little food. In follow-up meetings, the activities include shaving another man's face, kidnapping a member of another camp group and changing clothes with other men. The idea is to help them get in-touch with their feelings and uncover and heal deep wounds that are barriers to successful lives.

WHAT CRITICS OF "IMMIGRATION REFORM" REALLY DON'T WANT YOU KNOWING ABOUT THEIR AGENDA: With racists and white supremacists having largely won the propaganda war over designs on reforming American immigration laws, and invoking some of the crudest stereotypes known for "winning of hearts and minds" purposes on the subject, in recent months, there seems to be one thing missing in this propaganda skirmish.

And perhaps by deliberate omission more than anything, come to think of it.

As in seeking to dust off the Natal Dictation Test (in which intending immigrants from especially "inferior" or "undesirable" groups were required to translate from dictation by the examining officer, and sight unseen, a short test sentence into a "civilised"--preferably European--language as part of the screening process), originally created by the Natal government (now part of South Africa) in 1897 but made infamous by the Australians' "White Australia" immigration policy (of which the same was an integral part and parcel thereof bewteen 1902 and 1958), as part of American immigration policy vis-a-vis "inferior" and "undesirable" peoples.

Put simply, the Natal Dictation Test was designed as a deliberate setup against "inferior peoples" (particularly from racial or religious standpoints) in favour of what were then seen as "morally superior" White Christian European such (who were not otherwise subject unless questions were raised of their holding "dangerous" political views) when it came to immigration.

Witness, as example, the test statement administered by immigration examiners in Western Australia in 1908:

Very many considerations lead to the conclusion that life began on sea, first as single cells, then as groups of cells held together by a secretion of mucilage, then as filaments and tissues. For a very long time low-grade marine organisms are simply hollow cylinders, through which salt water streams.

(As will be seen, such test statements was designed to push a subtle message of whites being seen as "preferred" immigrants over such regarded to be "inferior.")

Regrettably, though, those pushing "immigration reform" these days are afraid to acknowledge among their articles of faith:

1. Their pushing a racist ideal and message; and
2. Their seeking to use discredited standards and tests (among them the Natal Dictation Test) to weed out "undesirable" immigrants solely on racial or religious grounds.

In any event: Maybe it was time to ask the Lou Dobbs crowd whether their calls for "immigration reform" include the Natal Dictation Test being applied arbitrarily against "inferior" and/or "undesirable" groups.

And whether such a test would require the translation into "civilised" languages from the English (including, we may safely assume, Afrikaans, Vlaams, Breton, Manx or even Yiddish).

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HOW BEST TO GET THE LOWER CLASSES AWAY FROM THE VIDIOT'S LAMP OF DIOGENES: It's well-established that the poor, undereducated/homeschooled and easily-influenced are all the more susceptible to holding anti-Semitic viewpoints and articles of faith.

Not to mention watching some of the trashier specimens of TV programming, never mind their belief that Jews are somehow secretly controlling the New York-Hollywood Axis of Evil "to weaken and undermine Traditional Christian Moral and Familial Values," so a pet platitude used by such Who Should Know Better hath it.

As if somehow thinking that the electromagnetic rays coming off the TV screen were in the same league as "schizophrenic germs" as a suspected agency of "mind control" @ its crudest. (Remind you of the 1950's-era "ministry" of Oral Roberts, who claimed that G-d charged Roberts to channel radio/TV broadcasting waves for faith-healing purposes?)

Which brings to mind this suggestion:

In such instances of TV programming where a Content Advisory (along with ratings information) is deemed necessary (because of excessive levels of language, sexual subjects or violence which "right-thinking families" would be expected to object to pro Deo, patria et familia)--same usually presented @ the start of the programme, and also coming out of commercial breaks--might I suggest that the Content Advisory be broadcast in Yiddish, both aurally and on screen (in the latter instance, using its traditional written form of the Hebrew alphabet).

After all, Yiddish is a common language among European Jews, particularly in everyday situations as opposed to the sacred (where Hebrew would take precedence), and besides, not many among the Lower Classes harbouring anti-Semitic feelings would be expected to understand Yiddish save for some colloquialisms as have worked their way into English.

What could be a better way, then, to get the Lower Classes away from the vidiot's box and making better use of their lives for once--preferably away from beer parlours and other dives of lowest repute which the Lower Classes would traditionally expect to frequent?