READER, AN APOLOGY IS IN ORDER @ THIS TIME for the tardiness of posting the quasi-daily comments on the news.

Seems that Your Correspondent was rather tired after some shopping @ the Kmart here in Winona, followed by luncheon @ the Hy-Vee, same city, requiring his taking a nap following his return home. It sometimes hath to be that way.

So, if any inconvenience was suffered by you, my apologies.

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"Mothers of River City! Heed that warning before it's too late! Watch for the telltale signs of DEGENERACY!!! The moment your son returns home from school, does he rebuckle his knickers ...BELOW THE KNEE?! Is there a nicotine stain on his index finger? Is there a dime novel hidden in the corn crib? Is he starting to memorise jokes ... from Capt. Billy's Whiz Bang?! Are certain words starting to creep into his vocabulary--words like "swell" ... and "so's your old man"?

THUS MEREDITH WILLSON HAD PROFESSOR HAROLD HILL WARN THE GOOD MOTHERS OF RIVER CITY, IOWA in The Music Man on both stage and screen that "Ya Got Trouble."

This after warning the community about the presence of a pool table in the community being but the first step towards the Moral Degeneracy of Youth--only to learn soon afterwards that the city's mayor operated the pool hall in question.

(The reference to Capt. Billy's Whiz Bang turns out to be anachronistic: While Mr. Willson's 1956 Broadway musical, becoming a movie in 1962, was set in 1912, it would not be until 1919 that Capt. Willard Fawcett would launch that particular magazine, quickly becoming popular for its "Explosion of Pedigreed Bunk" in the form of risqué and @ times scatological jokes, puns and cartoons.)

I bring up these lines from The Music Man to bring up the likelihood of the so-called "Parents' Television Council" perhaps being its own worst joke in trying to protect Right-Thinking American Families (as in white, middle-class, Levittown models) from "filth and degeneracy" in films and TV in the wake of their winning moral victory from the FCC last week (as in assessing a collective fine of $1.4 million against 52 ABC network stations for showing an episode of the since-decommissioned NYPD Blue as showed brief, out-of-context glimpses of bare buttocks notwithstanding warnings of content prior to the start of broadcast).

I say this because you have to imagine this council's frequent and repeated actions before the FCC perhaps:

• being insincere to the point of raising questions whether their complaints are being made in good faith and without prejudice;
• triggering outbrteaks of spontaneous hysteria exploiting to unfair advantage weak-minded and vulnerable members of the community (usually poor, undereducated or homeschooled and easily-influenced) liable to respond all the more to appeals of this ilk;
• designed solely to cause needless waste of time and resources on the FCC's part, diverting essential resources from more pressing matters (as well as created added work burdens for mailroom and mail intake staffs);
• based solely upon isolated, out-of-context passages;
• relying on identically-phrased, carefully-scripted, even heavily-nuanced, boilerplate messages sent in e-mail alerts; and
• belying the possibility of the PTC having interconnexions with weird and/or unwholesome elements to the point of raising questions of possible racketeering tending to exploit the vulnerable.

Which are questions enough to raise before the FCC, especially considering where it's been acknowledged that the vast majority of "obscenity" or "indecency" complaints so received are phrased almost identically (so raising questions of such being based on boilerplate) and tend, for the most part, to come from culturally-deprived environments (as in the Park & Flush Trailer Park and other bastions of "white trash" poverty, stupidity and ignorance) as are obvious plum targets for the Pseudoreligiopolitical Right's "winning of hearts and minds" efforts.

Never mind the likelihood that these same lower-income areas (@ least to these same Pseudoreligiopolitical Right elements so exploiting) are all the more likely targets for "dumping" campaigns the Extreme Right would love to engage in vis-a-vis pornographically depraved prolefeed.

And deliberate dumping of prolefeed, @ that.

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COME TO THINK OF IT, THERE ARE MORE PRESSING AND OBVIOUS PROBLEMS CONCERNING THE LOWER CLASSES as are deserving your attention.

To have the likes of Fox Noise expect the "right-thinking" to "reject the evidence of eyes and ears" (i.e., pretend they just don't exist--nay, should not exist in the One True Centre of the World, the Universe and the 28 Known Galaxies), as well as pretend to a gross and deliberate stupidity in the name of G-d, Country and Family Values, is nothing short of disgusting.

Yet, @ the same time, Fox Noise wants the Lower Classes to see free-market capitalism as the Great White Father, their Last and Only Hope and Salvation from Enslavement to State Welfare and its Promotion of Socialistic Tendencies.

Hence: Doesn't this make Fox Noise guilty of doublethink, pure and simple?

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

AS THIS WAS GROUNDHOG DAY, there is a great difference of opinion between Punxsutawney Phil (who saw his shadow this morning) and Sun Prairie Jimmy (who did not) over whether winter's exit will follow within measurable distance.

Being Midwestern, Your Correspondent prefers Jimmy's take on the situation.

Hence: Would you rather trust Punxsutawney Phil or Sun Prairie Jimmy? Comments can be left in the usual space, subject to their being tasteful and inoffensive. 

FOR YEARS, IN THE SEVERAL BLOGS YOUR CORRESPONDENT HAS PUBLISHED ON THE INFORMATION STUPORBAHN, he has been a firm believer in using the "open letter" device from time to time to call the widest possible attention to issues of serious import.

The hope, no doubt, of urging readers to share the "open letters" with any and all friends and contacts they may have as a way of getting action taken.

This time, my target in the "open letter" department is such among the Pseudoreligiopolitical Right who are rather slavish in their hard-wired acceptance of Fox News Channel as the One True, Pure and Reliable Arbeiter of News and Information for Right-Thinking Christian Americans (as in, more than likely, the poor, undereducated or homeschooled and easily-influenced).

Please read and pass along, preferably through the "send by e-mail" facility following. However, I will NOT tolerate spontaneously-generated "freeping" campaigns whose sole purpose is to cast discredit or disrepute upon this blog.

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

To whom it may concern:

In view of what may best be described as unswerving Zealotry and True Belief on your part in Fox News Channel being the One and Only Cable News Channel Worth Viewing among Right-Thinking Christian Americans by virtue of its being (to use their rather lame slogan) "Fair and Balanced" (as in presenting a conservative "counterbalance" to other news outlets seen as "liberal-leaning" and, hence--by your way of thinking--"leading to error") ...

And in view of your frequent campaigns crossing the line @ times into misguided or warped hysteria against real or suspected "indecency" or "obscenity" in films and TV programming, much of it designed, for the most part, to increase needlessly the Federal Communications Commission's burden of work to the point of harrassment by proxy with what may best be called baseless, frivolous or otherwise wasteful complaints based on isolated instances as may lack proper context....

Your Correspondent would like of you to consider the following:

First off, to ponder these remarks from the 1922 court case Halsey v. New York Society for the Supression of Vice, considered a landmark in censorship history for these remarks:

No work may be judged from a selection of such paragraphs alone. Printed by themselves, they might, as a matter of law, come within the meaning of the [obscenity] statute. So might a similar selection from Aristophanes or Chaucer or Boccaccio or even from the Bible. The book, however, must be considered broadly as a whole.

(In other words, a work being challenged as obscene or indecent must be considered in the context of the larger whole. The point of which would later be affirmed in the 1973 Miller v. California Supreme Court ruling allowing the use of a "prevailing community standards" test for obscenity, so long as the work in question was taken as a whole.

(That, and same clearly and unambiguously depicting sexual and/or excretory activities and/or organs in a "patently offensive" manner, appealing solely to prurient interest, and utterly lacking in redeeming educational, literary, political or scientific merit.)

Once that's out of the way, I would urge you to visit the websites Fox Attacks: Decency and Fox News Porn, and watch the videos so featured. Especially so on the latter, paying especially close and careful attention to the cut and styling of the dresses worn by female newsreaders.

After seeing the videos in question, I want you to think carefully of the following:

• Why would organisations like yours as speak out all the time about suspected "indecency" in films and on TV continue regarding Fox News as the only "reliable" cable news channel when their female newsreaders wear what you would consider "indecent" or "provocative" dress on camera?
• What prevents your organisations from launching "action campaigns" against Fox News Channel based on the suggestive cut of dress worn by female newsreaders?
• Are you receiving any sort of donations, "hush money" or payola from Fox News Channel, News America Corporation, or any "foundations" or "trusts" so affiliated, on a continuing basis? Is the receipt of such conditional upon your silence towards the same sort of "indecency" you frequently accuse the closely-affiliated Fox Broadcasting network of carrying?
• Why would you continue to support Fox News Channel as the only credible cable news channel worthy of viewing among those you call "right-thinking Americans," knowing consciously (and yet unconsciously) all the while about the "indecent" or "suggestive" dress worn by their female newsreaders?
• Does not your holding such double standards make you, in essence, guilty of doublethink? And what is your defence to the charge?
• Are you, somehow, secretly thinking that the Lower Classes must be somehow lacking in morals, decency or common sense? Have you no shame in this respect?
• Are you now, or have you ever been, an alcoholic, drug addict, sex fiend or maniac, spousal or child abuser, sufferer of loathsome social or mental disorders, chronic and habitual gambler or spendthrift, undischarged bankrupt, or have a record of prolonged time in jails and/or psychiatric hospitals?
• Were you abused in childhood? Was it sexual?
• Have you no sense of Decency, Sirs, @ long last?
• Have you left no sense of Decency--the same Decency you claim to be defending and protecting, and invoking G-d, Country and Family all the while?

Perhaps it was about time that you had some real shame for once, after cooking up manufactured such designed solely to whip up hysteric delusions in such among the poor, undereducated or homeschooled and easily-influenced (not to mention emotionally vulnerable) who you enjoy coveting as a bunch of easily-manipulated droogs.

What will you have to say NOW after you see the Harsh Reality of what you've been supporting all this time?

And what have you to say to the charge of doublethink--which is a rather obvious description of your mindset under these circumstances?

Awaiting your logical and sensible response (preferably through the Comments section), I remain

Disobediently yours,
ILUDIUM PHOSDEX
(die egte artikel--aanvaar geen plaasvervangers)

--commentary remains on tap here @ The Exaggerator.

So, without much ado:

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THE KLAN AND THEIR KIN PROBABLY DON'T KNOW IT, but we have it on the word of a certain J. Edgar Hoover, late Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (not to mention Patron Saint of the Law and Order Movement, especially the kind relying on the depraved and the downright sadisto), that even the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) had designs on establishing a soverign National Homeland along the Tidewater and Mid-South coasts.

Hoover notes this in a chapter of his 1958 anti-Communist masterpiece Masters of Deceit devoted to how the Communist Party sought to exploit racial issues for "winning of hearts and minds" among blacks and National Minorities across the United States based on doublethink; articles from 1948 and 1952 are cited in substantiation, as well as a series of Comintern (Communist International) directives starting in 1928.

Though now seen as an historical relic with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, there are probably still copies of Masters of Deceit around in local biblios and used-book stores, not to mention the Five-Foot Shelves of John Bircher types and other misguided "patriots."

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AND SPEAKING OF THE WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S COLLECTIONS of radical periodicials, Doug Moe, columnist with The Capital Times in Madison, explains their significance to researchers especially in a recent column published in the wake of revelations that GOP Presidential wannabe Ron Paul's name was used on newsletters as carried racist, white-supremacist and productionist propaganda:

Why were these newsletters collected in Madison and almost nowhere else? Because the Wisconsin Historical Society in general and its longtime librarian Jim Danky in particular have worked diligently to catalog all manner of seemingly fringe publications, because as this week demonstrates, you never know what may one day be important.

"We acquired them because we try to cover politics comprehensively," Danky told me Thursday.

They have perhaps the best collection anywhere of leftist, underground publications. And the Historical Society's collection from the political far right was praised in an essay by Chip Berlet in the Sesquicentennial Issue of the Wisconsin Magazine of History.

Berlet, who is with Political Research Associates in Massachusetts, wrote: "There are other collections at libraries and archives around the country, but none offer the range and depth of the collection combined with the cheerful staff knowledge and painless retrievability. The society's periodical collection is a national treasure as far as our staff is concerned, and we mine it frequently. Where else can you find a librarian who asks if the particular type of hate-group newsletter you are looking for is Ku Klux Klan, racial nationalist, neo-Nazi, Third Position, homophobic or Christian Identity?"

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WHY "PATRIOTISM" AND "GOING BACK TO THE LAND" DON'T QUITE MIX WELL: Consider this interesting article from The Public Eye, magazine of Political Research Associates, as illustrates an obscure (yet interesting) article of faith in the Producerist/Populist parthenon best described as "back to the land."

Or, as the Nazis called it, Heilige Blut und Verschmutz ("Holy Blood and Soil").

Which, put simply, calls for "right-thinking White Christian Americans" to evacuate the cities and "return to the land" of rural and small-town America if they expect to see any chance for moral and cultural redemption and salvation based on "Traditional Values" models common to the Producerist agenda. And reinforced with allusions to the likes of Die Voortrek from the Cape of Good Hope to the Highveldt via the Karoo between 1828 and 1838 among the Afrikaner Peoples of South Africa seeking to escape "enroaching British persecution" and "preserve [their] honest and simple ways" as farmers and pastoralists "guided in large part by their simple Calvinist faith," among other hagiographic-sounding bromides having no value save pandering to racist feelings.

Come to think of it, can you imagine a "return to the land" sentiment as a thematic undercurrent of Die Bransoner Muzikschaukultur and its "nutritious patriotism"?

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

SHELTERED WORKSHOPS MUST ENJOY THRIVING ON FEAR about changes brought about by socioeconomic uncertainities brought about by circumstances beyond the grasp of many of their disabled clientele.

I should know. I can relate from experience.

Ahead of the likelihood for contract and subcontract work that sheltered workshops traditionally depend upon becoming rather limited, there will likely be delays in the job assignments being issued to discuss possible alternatives to kill time "just in case," claiming that restrictions attached to the subsidies they receive precludes their laying off employees during slack work situations.

One likely option being the screening of movies likely containing scenes of Extreme or Depraved Ultraviolence that, studies have suggested, could cause psychological or emotional harm in especially such with emotional or developmental disorders as make up the bulk of sheltered-workshop clients. Movies which, in any case, have nothing to do with the sheltered workshop mission of jobs and career training for disabled persons otherwise @ competitive disadvantage trying to find work.

Let alone the fact that the vast majority of sheltered-workshop clients are on piecework positions paid special reduced wages that, based on time studies and related analysis, aren't considered adequate enough to be deemed "substantial and gainful" to seriously consider supplanting Social Security benefits, let alone consideration for work in the community (and requiring all manner of ruses on the facility's part to cover up the "real" reason of their being kept back: to maximise per diem subsidy payments).

In any case, considering where recession is likely and contract or subcontract work that sheltered workshops traditionally rely on from local industries is likely to dry up or otherwise become limited, expect many sheltered workshops to call their clients into Urgent Assembly as will tend to be heavy on emotion-fuelled platitudes and bromides such as these:

• Because of ongoing budget cuts, subsidies which the workshop receives are likely to be cut further all the more.
• To make up for the subsidy cuts, the workshop will likely ask local industries for all the more work "to keep our clients busy," but will be reluctant to do so because of "quality issues," "past-due bills" or some other excuse covering up for the real such: the deteriorating socioeconomic situation.
• The bankers with whom the sheltered workshop banks with will be all the more unlikely to extend lines of credit because of "serious financial problems" on the workshop's part, and what's more, its suppliers are about to insist upon cash payments in advance, further depleting what limited reserves they may have.
• Appeals to their sense of "cooperation" (read: silence excusing a deliberate stupidity) to make sure the sheltered workshop can remain "a beam of sunlight in an otherwise dismal economic picture" locally.

On top of that, clients are all the more expected to look the other way for the sake of "protecting the established order," ordained by "Natural Law" as expects the Upper Classes to "maintain their traditional rights, privileges and powers***entitled them by unwritten law and custom;" anything else will only "undermine a sacred and inviolate law" with the potential for "undermining public confidence and trust" in those among positions of authority and power over time. And anyone trying to work outside The System in finding work should only expect disappointment, especially if their name turns up on "watch lists" secretly issued employers of persons not to be trusted with employment as possible "rabble-rowsers," "troublemakers," "disloyal" or worse.

No wonder sheltered workshops love using scare tactics as a way of keeping their vulnerable clients in a state of fear and paranoia just to maximise their subsidies while work becomes unavailable or severely constrained. Under such circumstances, the excuse expected to be used of clients as to why they have to remain in a no-future milieu is one of "emotional well-being."

How many employers would want to hire psychoemotionally disabled workers off the sheltered workshop system just because they need some "emotional well-being" in the first place?  

AS IF THE FIRST OF THE MONTH BEING ON A FRIDAY WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOUR CORRESPONDENT, it just so happened that he had to get some shopping out of the way, not to mention getting his rent with the local council paid ... his city bus pass for the new month purchased ... and his iced tea maker being cleaned out, it having been awhile since that was given a decent cleaning.

In that last instance, I prefer prepared coffeemaker cleaners over vinegar, which can get to be rather smelly. And in any case, it's one cycle with the solution, followed by two cycles of water to rinse out. (This time around, it's Dip-it Automatic Coffeemaker Cleaner.)

And you wouldn't believe all the hardwater and lime deposits that came forth following the initial cleaning cycle!!

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FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO STILL SEE THE SO-CALLED "RON PAUL REVOLUTION" AS THE LAST AND ONLY HOPE that America has for "liberty, peace and prosperity" in Indecision 2008, the good people @ The Nation have some thoughts about Ron Paul's socioeconomic programme, or want thereof, as should be worth thinking about:

The little man who wasn't there at the Republican TV debates is Ron Paul, the short-of-stature libertarian physician and Congressman. The debate moderators, who are threatening to become the ruin of electoral politics in the United States, almost never turn to ask Paul a question--that is, when he is allowed in the hall to participate.

On the occasions when they do toss a question Paul's way, they seem not to listen when he answers. And when he's finished, they turn away as if he hadn't said anything. Granted, libertarianism is a little outré and can sound as if it is close to anarchism. But there are times when Congressman Paul says things that are worth listening to.

He is the only candidate who brings up what is happening to our money, which is another way of saying that he is worried about why the cost of buying groceries is going through the roof. While the other presidential contenders are silent on the topic, Paul reminds us that "government officials consistently claimed that inflation is in check at barely 2 percent, but middle-class Americans know that their purchasing power--especially when it comes to housing, energy, medical care, and school tuition--is shrinking much faster than 2 percent each year."

Paul is the contender who seems to understand that the Federal Reserve Board is not the Vatican and that its chairman, Ben Bernanke, is not the pope. It's a fixed practice by our politicians to treat whoever is the chairman of the Fed as though he were endowed with infallible powers.

On Wall Street, the sharper ones know better. They understand that lowering interest rates every time the stock market swoons will eventually, or even a lot sooner, bring a world of pain down on us. As it is, thanks to the Fed, interest rates are lower than the rate of inflation. This anomalous condition is called "negative interest," and for savers it means that their money is disappearing even as it rests safely tucked away in certificates of deposit.

For people who understand that their money is evaporating in front of their eyes there is a mighty incentive to rush out to the mall while that money is still worth something. For the moment a stampede to the stores by inflation-spooked people may please the economic pooh-bahs because current theory has it that people will buy lots of stuff, which in turn will create lots of jobs. But after they've spent their retirement money, then what?

Then people can spend their economic stimulus money. Left undiscussed is how the government is going to get the money it plans to hand out to anybody who has a pulse. Maybe Uncle Sam can borrow it from the Chinese or the Arabs--although both groups are losing enthusiasm for making loans to be paid back in ever-shrinking dollars.

Neither the Europeans nor the Brits with their higher interest rate euros and pounds will have much interest in investing in lower-rate dollars. There don't seem to be many people left we can con into bailing us out of a mistake we repeatedly make.

The Federal Reserve Board can print the money, which is exactly what Ron Paul is afraid of. The more it prints, the less it's worth. The US suffered through years of high inflation in the 1970s and, from the standpoint of personal income, has never completely recovered.

If he could, Ron Paul would abolish three-quarters of the government, which works out to meaning that about three-quarters of what Ron Paul says falls into the "impractical dreamer" category. That leaves one-quarter--but that fraction of his agenda is, no pun intended, on the money.

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ON THE OTHER HAND, THE IDEA OF GOVERNMENT-SANCTIONED WASTEFUL AND FRIVOLOUS SPENDING in the name of socioeconomic stimulation (preferably among the Lower Classes, and in such cases preferably by way of Wally World) inspireth these remarks from columnist Jerome Christianson @ the local gazetta, wondering if the idea is really worth it in the end:

Welcome to government by T-shirt slogan: “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.”

With an economic crisis looming, the best our leaders can tell us is, “Hit the stores and hope for the best.”

Talk about Alice in Wonderland economics — first we spend ourselves to the brink of disaster, and now we have the great minds of Washington insisting that with a little help from the Fed we’re going to spend ourselves out of it. Does this make sense?

Let us review: Let’s start with a president deciding to put the Iraq war on the national Visa card; add to that all the folks cheerfully signing on to buy houses they can’t afford with loans they can’t repay, all the while putting $1.10 on the credit cards for every dollar in take-home pay. Meanwhile, if anything in your shopping cart isn’t stamped “Made in China,” it was made in Korea, Indonesia or Vietnam. Gas is up, food is up, heat is up, and our spirits are down.

So how do we cure what ails us? Why Uncle Sugar’s going to send most of us—the ones with jobs and first-world incomes—a nice little check; something to make us feel a little better, at least until Election Day.

Well, all I can say is I sure hope my kids remain childless. I’d feel guilty about borrowing that money from my grandkids. They’re the ones who’ll be paying it back—as if we care.

I tell you, we sure can be a sorry, snively bunch.

Faced with a Depression far deeper and far grimmer than anything most of us have experienced, President Franklin Roosevelt told our grandparents and great-grandparents they had “nothing to fear but fear itself.” Our current president just tells us about all the things he wants us to be afraid of. And, to our shame, we take him seriously.

Other generations were called upon to dig deep and sacrifice for the common good. We’ve been called upon to dig deep and sacrifice for the Gucci at Macy’s.

Think about it. When our country faced down the real Hitler after the real Pearl Harbor—that was after 11 years of the Great Depression, mind you—where did the money come from to build the tanks, the bombs and the B-29s? Uncle Sam hit up the American people, and they bought the war bonds and saving stamps, paid the taxes, put up with rationed gas, rationed sugar and no new cars for the duration. More recently, when Americans asked their president what we could do after Sept. 11, Dubya sent us to the mall.

It says more than we should like it to that we, the American people, are generally identified simply as consumers. When I think about it, more than anything, it brings to mind a nest full of naked, baby birds — beaks gaped open, waiting eagerly for whatever it is that will be stuffed down their throats next.

Not always. We once were a nation of producers—the “Arsenal of Democracy” we boasted, and with every justification. There was a time when people bought and owned what they did in order that they could better do what they did—raise a crop, make shoes, cast steel, build a cathedral. And they did it with pride.

Maybe it’s that pride that made those generations different from ours.

Faced with truly hard times the president and the Congress bought us Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, our own City Hall and, if you look at the curb in the older parts of town you can still find stamped into the concrete “WPA 1936.” This president and this Congress look to buy us a PlayStation or Wii with the money landing in a bank in Shanghai.

And our country is in need of the money politicians are suddenly eager to have us spend—just as it was three quarters of a century ago.

Indeed, the bridges they built then are falling; the water mains they laid then are leaking; the national character they built is crumbling. In the ’30s, the president and the Congress looked for ways to put money into their constituents’ hands—constituents who needed work, needed heat, needed food for the family table. This president promises to veto increased funding for heating assistance, for food stamps, for the unemployed and the Congress will go along rather than risk their promise of big screen TVs to the reasonably affluent.

And no, if the check arrives in my mailbox, I won’t stamp it “Return to Sender.” I’ll just write it off as another example of wasteful government spending, stick it in the bank and go on with my business. I gave it to them once with the intent that they make good use of it—build a road, feed a soldier, buy a textbook—and they let me down. They’re letting us all down.

Better yet: Might I suggest turning over any rebate cheques you get (if @ all) to the Bureau of the Public Debt, using the same as Voluntary Gifts to Reduce the National Debt Held by the Public.

Unless someone out there can show cause why maintaining the National Debt @ such high levels as now ($9 trillion and climbing) is necessary for the sake of National Identity. (You can leave them in the Comments section.) 

And PLEASE, spare us the "political reasons" patsies and platitudes!

HOW A FATALLY-FLAWED NO-BRAINER OF AN "ISSUE" COULD PROVE IMPORTANT IN INDECISION 2008: A recent editorial by Dave Zweifel in The Capital Times (Madison, WI) as is worth sharing:

We're learning once again why government needs to protect capitalism from itself.

Back in the 1930s Franklin D. Roosevelt came to the rescue of the so-called "free market" with a series of new programs and regulations to restore trust in the nation's financial and corporate institutions, whose excesses had thrown the country into the Great Depression and ruined the financial well-being of millions of Americans.

Roosevelt and many of the reformers of his day recognized that the interests of business don't exist in a vacuum, that the fortunes or misfortunes of businesses can have a profound impact on even the most innocent of citizens.

Laissez faire advocates like the late Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman protested, saying that nothing should "interfere" with the "free market" and that unfettered competition would right the marketplace. History has proven them wrong.

Time and time again, corporate America has shown that greed, unless checked by government oversight, will unjustly ensnare the unwary.

We saw it with the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s, we witnessed it with the Enrons and Worldcoms of just a few years ago, and we're seeing it again with the subprime mortgage meltdown.

It would be one thing if the recklessness affected only the companies themselves. But that's far from the case.

Even responsible mortgage holders who have never missed a payment on their loans suddenly find themselves with mortgages that exceed the values of their property because the subprime fallout keeps growing like a cancer.

Now comes the news that countless local governments that depend on the property tax to fund everything from police and fire protection to the public schools are facing devastating shortfalls in revenues because assessment values are plummeting--it's either that or raise tax rates.

In other words, the irresponsibility of the financial marketers is likely to cause significant cutbacks in the quality of public service clear down to the number of teachers for our children.

That shouldn't be allowed to happen and it's why the public--through its governmental institutions--needs to be protected with meaningful oversight and regulation.

History has shown us that greed quickly raises its ugly head when the capitalist community is allowed to use its own devices.

The public--and the well-being of the country--needs to be constantly protected. The lessons are quite clear.

Which, no doubt, the Zealots and True Believers of free-market capitalism with American characteristics being one with the soverignty and soverign identity of the United States, and the defence thereof, will quickly dispute as being nothing short of "subtly-disguised Communism," and suggesting, as per usual, that market-based self-regulation based on industry-specific Codes of Good Practice will "save America from herself" and "lead to a New Golden Age of Industry, Self-Reliance, Personal Responsibility, Thrift based on Cash Economy and a Wholesome and Simple Home Life" as the Lower Classes especially would "wholeheartedly" accept.

Otherwise known as "producerism," the which is explained for you in this online slide show.

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

Soooo, @ the expense of being seen by the Zealots and True Believers, and their fellow-travellers, as nothing more than "creating non-issues out of whole cloth***that nobody is really interested in" in an election year," perhaps it was time to start asking this element a few questions which may be loaded--for a purpose--but which have to be asked nonetheless:

• Can you show any examples from the "developed" world of countries where official policy expects free-market socioeconomic models to predominate? Are they expected to follow self-regulatory models, for the most part?
• Are such self-regulatory models actually translating into lower consumer prices, greater consumer choice, and creation of real jobs and payrolls (even considering Value-Added Tax in some countries)?
• As far as the United States is concered, can you name any examples of industry-specific Codes of Good Practice which the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has "safe harboured" (i.e., determined to be more than adequate regulatory oversight without further Government intervention)?
• In such industries as are covered under these self-regulatory codes, is there actually realistic competition being encouraged, translating into reasonable consumer prices and jobs creation--or are there coded "traps" which secretly encourage cartel behaviour and its excesses?
• How do we know such Self-Regulatory Codes as you would love to see in place will actually encourage healthy competition, wider consumer choices and options, and create jobs, let alone "encourage morality"?
• How do we know self-regulatory codes will actually compel manufacturers and retailers to, "out of the collective goodness of their hearts," lower prices and increase consumer selection overnight, as if magically?
• How do we know you're not secretly asking for reinstatement of "Fair Trading" laws as prevailed until the mid-1960's in the name of "protecting the free market" by way of a "level playing field" excusing such excesses of cartel behaviour as:
  • price-fixing?
  • Reseller Price Maintenance Agreements?
  • "tied-house" agreements prohibiting sale of identical products manufactured by competitors?
  • restricting or otherwise prohibiting brand advertising?
  • controlling manufacture and distribution?
  • deceptive marketing practices such as repackaging essentially the same product under different "brand names," each with supposedly distinct and pecuilar characteristics?
• Would your ideal of self-regulatory models place too burdensome an onus upon consumers encountering defective merchandise or other problems to the point of their bringing complaint?
• How sure can we be that self-regulatory business models will actually improve the quality of life for especially the Lower Classes "heretofore enslaved to State welfare and its subtle tendencies towards Socialism"?
• How would self-regulatory business models actually encourage "a wholesome and simple home life"?
• What sort of checks and balances would you actually have in place as part of these self-regulatory codes to ensure the confidence and trust of manufacturers, retailers and end consumers?
• Are you now, or have you ever been, an alcoholic, drug addict, sex fiend or pervert, chronic and habitual gambler or spendthrift, sufferer from loathsome mental or social diseases, and/or served time in prisons or psychiatric hospitals?
• Have you no sense of Decency, Sir, @ long last?
• Have you left no sense of Decency?

You know where to leave the answers.    

AS TWO RECENT REPORTS FROM THE FOX ATTACKS PROJECT @ Brave New Films have exposed to that proven disinfectant of air and sunshine, Fox Noise has this nasty little repute for having female newsreaders wear sexually-provocative or otherwise titillating clothing on camera, and then for no other purpose than sexual gratification on the part of its audience @ the Park & Flush Trailer Park.

Such, methinks, on deliberate orders of Keith Rupert "himself," and then solely for "keeping the audience in their proper place" short of outright Page Three behaviour. And yet the same forces of the Pseudoreligiopolitical Right seeing Fox Noise as the only credible news channel worth the trust and confidence of "right-thinking Americans" otherwise not expected to know much, who otherwise take issue with all manner of "indecency" to the point of unleashing hysteria causing no end of added work burden for the Federal Communications Commission, have yet to take issue in this respect.

Need I remind these same Elmer Gantry types that "silence equals acceptance;" hence, by your keeping silent on this particular issue of sexual titillation, you are giving lip service to Fox Noise for allowing such as you would otherwise look upon as "indecency."

(I hope to address this further in a forthcoming Open Letter.)

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IN CASE YOU NEED PRECEDENT FOR HOW THE APPEARENCE OF SEXUALLY-PROVOCATIVE DRESS can get one in Dutch, consider the following recent adjudication against European cut-price airline Ryanair by Britain's Advertising Standards Authority:

Ad
Press ads in the Herald, Daily Mail and Scottish Daily Mail were headed "HOTTEST BACK TO SCHOOL FARES."  Underneath the heading was a picture of a teenage girl or woman standing in a classroom and wearing a version of a school uniform consisting of a short tartan skirt, a cropped short sleeved shirt and tie and long white socks.  Body copy stated one way fares to Derry, Belfast, Budapest, Grenoble and Stockholm (Skavsta) were £10 including taxes and charges.  A footnote stated "Book until midnight 23.08.07.  Subject to availability, terms & conditions.  Flights direct from Glasgow (Prestwick)."

Issue
The ASA received complaints from 13 readers.  They believed it was offensive to show what appeared to be a schoolgirl posing and dressing provocatively and that the ad implied there were sexual connotations to the image.

Response
Ryanair said the ad ran in three national daily newspapers with a combined circulation of 3.5 million.  They said that, in that context, they considered 13 complaints was an insignificant number, which they believed clearly demonstrated the overwhelming majority of UK residents did not find the ad offensive.

Ryanair disagreed that the ad suggested sexual connotations.  They believed it was obvious that the image was of a woman fully clothed and that the short skirt and bare midriff were representative of the type of clothing that was fashionable among young women in the UK.  They believed the ad was likely to be found offensive only by the minority of people who were likely to find any such representation objectionable.  They believed the ad was considerably less suggestive than much of what appeared regularly in ads or other promotions in UK media.

The Herald said they had received a complaint from one reader about the ad and that they were not prepared to run it again.

The Daily Mail and Scottish Daily Mail said they had not received complaints direct from their readers but nevertheless would not run the ad again.

Assessment
Upheld
The ASA considered the model's clothing, which included long white socks and a tie, together with the setting of the ad in a classroom strongly suggested she was a schoolgirl.  We considered that her appearance and pose, in conjunction with the heading "HOTTEST," appeared to link teenage girls with sexually provocative behaviour and was irresponsible and likely to cause serious or widespread offence.

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 2.2 (Social responsibility) and 5.1 (Decency).

Action
We welcomed The Herald and the Daily and Scottish Mails's assurances that they would not run the ad again.  We told Ryanair to withdraw the ad and to ensure that future ads complied with the CAP Code.

Fox Noise, for its part, will likely play the patsy that their audience (for the most part poor, undereducated and easily-led) has no regard for decency in the first place; hence, they "deserve" such carefully-scripted doses of titillation and sexual provocation.

Not Only That: Fox Noise doesn't take too kindly towards the poor as an article of faith, as witness these rather uncalled-for comments from Bill O'Reilly:

Satisfied, readers?

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CONSISTENT WITH THIS BLOG'S BELIEF THAT "IT'S A SMALL WORLD, AFTER ALL," and that we "morally-superior" Americans could learn a few things from the broader world @ large, Your Correspondent feels it best to note where the Australian motor club NRMA is calling upon the New South Wales state government to move more of the freight traffic currently hauled by over-the-road trucks to rail transport.

The rationale therefor?

A series of recent accidents involving OTR trucks on the F3 freeway in Sydney's northern suburbs as led to major traffic disruptions near the Hawkesbury River bridge, not to mention traffic diversions onto Old Pacific Highway.

What would stand in the way of us Americans from thinking likewise?

AS THE WEATHER FORECASTS ARE SHAPING UP HEADING INTO THE WEEKEND, including Groundhog Day on Saturday, it appears unlikely that either Punxsutawney Phil or Sun Prairie Jimmy will see their shadows, meaning, according to the auld legend, that spring will be forthcoming within measurable distance.

But then again, there is hardly any scientific validity for this old folklore chestnut.

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"WOULD I LIE TO YOU?!" spake Joe Isuzu in the TV adverts for Isuzu Motors in the late 1980's/early 1990's, in time becoming a catchphrase among such seeking to challenge the credibility of incredible arguments.

Now it seems rather ironic, what with Isuzu Motors announcing that it would be winding up its North American operations by the end of the year, citing declining sales and a weak dollar only getting weaker thanks to His Fraudulency's warped and misguided socioeconomic ideology perpetuating flawed "trickle-down" models.

As they'd say in Bloemfontein, "Sal ek louen jou?!"

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SO MUCH FOR THE IRAQI FRONT OF THE UR-RAHOWA AGAINST TERRORISM TRANSLATING INTO HEALTHY PROGRESS for a post-Ba'athist Iraq:

Comparisons are being made with the telephonic network in parts of Baghdad by certain customers of Telstra, Australia's telecoms company, after reports of repair crews using plastic bags and friction tape to perform line repairs in country areas.

Telstra, for its part, blames "critical shortages" of line repair staff.

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MEMO TO ANTI-ABORTION ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS:

Correct me if I'm wrong (especially all you Snopesters out there), but I read somewhere that 77% of the anti-abortion movement's leaders are actually men.

And what's more, none of them are likely to get preggers.

Which brings up another interesting enquiry:

How many of these men in leadership positions among anti-abortionists can be considered outright chauvinists and/or misogynists?

How many such actually have police records for the likes of:

• indecent sexual assault?
• lewd and lascivious conduct?
• spousal and/or child abuse, neglect or non-support?
• sodomy?
• bestiality?
• rape?
• incest?
• Mann Act violations (as in transporting women interstate for "immoral purposes")?
• drunk and disorderly?
• public indecency?
• crimes relating to prostitution, including, but not necessarily limited to:
  • soliciting or otherwise patronising prostitutes?
  • patronising, or otherwise being found in, houses of ill-repute?
  • pimping?
  • procurement (including use of coercion or force)?
• crimes relating to child pornography, including, but not necessarily limited to:
  • producing, distributing or procuring child pornography?
  • possession of child pornography?
  • soliciting, recruiting or procuring children to appear in child pornography?
  • child sex tourism?

What's more, how many of these same men in question can be considered as:

• alcoholics?
• drug addicts (especially of narcotic or otherwise habit-forming such)?
• mentally and/or emotionally disturbed (especially if they were subjected to sexual abuse, incest or domestic violence in childhood, and have yet to come to terms with same)?
• "sex fiends or maniacs"?
• sufferers of certain loathsome diseases, especially the social such?
• undischarged bankrupts?
• veterans of military service with less than honourable, dishonourable or Section 8 discharges?
• "troublemakers" on privately-circulated "watch lists" of persons not to be given employment under any circumstance?
• "chronic and habitual welfare cases"?
• boasters or such otherwise to be considered as less than credible (e.g., as police informants)?
• such known to associate with "weird and/or unwholesome elements" or among the Dregs of Society?

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COULD IT BE THAT THE SO-CALLED "RON PAUL REVOLUTION" IS ABOUT TO RUN OUT OF STEAM, never mind his campaign's fundraising prowess among the Great Unwashed?

Especially when you stop and consider where, in all primaries and caucuses heading into Super Tuesday, the Libertarian-turned-Republican Presidential maverick and "his message of freedom, peace and prosperity" hasn't quite resonated with GOP voters, usually to the point of Ron Paul finishing with the wooden spoon, or close to it, in the final numbers.

Hence, enough to watch the post-Super Tuesday fallout to see if Ron Paul's campaign announces its winding up for want of interest ... and a larger question looming about what to do with the millions in campaign donations raised to date from the masses.

Not to mention the still-lingering question of Ron Paul's name being associated with a series of newsletters from the mid-1980's on as contain all manner of racist, white-supremacist, jingoist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, xenophobic and (in sum) producerist messages and screeds (for which Mr. Paul denies any association--but, to Your Correspondent, who exactly is Ron Paul fooling? Himself, the publishers of the newsletters in question, his unwitting dupes and suckers, or--who?)

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AND WITH THE "OFFICIAL" GOP PRESIDENTIAL WANNABE FIELD'S JOHN McCAIN IN THE LEAD DELEGATE-WISE heading into Super Tuesday's primaries and caucuses (Minnesota being among the states caucusing on the evening), perhaps it was time to dust off the fact of McCain's connexions to Charles Keating of the now-defunct Lincoln Savings and Loan Association in Irvine, California (and Associated Institutions), and their likelihood of raising questions about McCain's trustworthiness, confidence--and credibility.

Not to mention the Willie Horton of an albatross as still hangs over Mike Huckabee's aspirations, as well as his connexions to weird and unwholesome pseudoreligious elements, his invoking false credentials (pseudo)religious, usw.