IT JUST SEEMS RATHER BIZARRE TO FIND THE FORECAST CALLING FOR A RAIN/SNOW MIX, WITH MAYBE SOME SNOW ON GRASSY SURFACES on the overnight, here in the Minnwissippi.

In early April.

And this on top of the likelihood of serious snow melt from recent snows northerly of the Twin Cities which, under the right circumstances, can only worsen the likelihood of flooding later on in downstream areas of the Mississippi River and tributaries like Winona.

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AND STAYING WITH MISSISSIPPI RIVER FLOODING FOR THE MOMENT, it's starting to look that way on the Lower Mississippi River (i.e., south of its confluence with the Ohio River @ Cairo, Illinois) as I write this: Two Mississippi cities on the Mississippi, Vicksburg and Natchez to be exact, are bracing for the onset of serious flooding in the next few days sure to rival the storied flooding of 1927 in those parts.

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TELL ME THIS ISN'T THE KIND OF LAW BILL "NO-SPIN ZONE" O'REILLY AND SUCHLIKE OF HIS ILK WANT TO SEE UPON AMERICA in the name of "promoting a healthy patriot love" for America above all else, and especially so among the vulnerable:

None other than an adaptation of Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, as provides thus (hat tip to The Unrepentant Marxist blog for the English text thereof):

1. Public denigration of Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and three years.

2. Public denigration of the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the State, the military or security structures shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and two years.

3. In cases where denigration of Turkishness is committed by a Turkish citizen in another country the punishment shall be increased by one third.

4. Expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute a crime.

Which doesn't quite sit well with the European Union in Turkey's desire to enter the EU; hence, a movement under way by the governing (yet embattled) AK Party to modify Article 301's provisions so as to only ban "insulting the Turkish People and Nation."

Never mind where Turkish hypernationalists on both sides of the Bosprous support Article 301 in its present form.

How much longer before Fox Prolefeed and their droogs push for "calls to action" towards legislation in Congress banning "insults to Americanism," never mind where the whole may be legally defective under the First Amendment or otherwise owing to a lack of clear defining tests?

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SO MUCH FOR THE RATHER PATHETIC-SOUNDING PATSIES ON THE RELIGIOPOLITICAL RIGHT ABOUT "CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION" as sound like a broken record, and then some:

How are they reacting to the removal from the Eldorado compound of the so-called Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints of some 400 women and girls over recent days on suspicion of abuse, maltreatment, rape, incest and indecent sexual liberties with minors?

Are they going to start whining "Christian Persecution! Christian Persecution!" (in the key of "Ring around the collar!") vis-a-vis the claims of "child sexual abuse" in the compound, not to mention claiming that the original charges of a 16-year-old girl having issue by her 50-year-old husband are "wildly exaggerated fabrications***discrediting honest, Bible-believing Christians"?

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NEWS CERTAIN TO SEND THE ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS IN GOLD-BASED MONETARY POLICY BALLISTO, and then some:

In response to certain serious pressures being put upon the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by way of the current socioeconomic situation (as can be blamed on His Fraudulency in particular), said IMF is studying the possibility of selling some 13 million troy ounces of its gold reserves (about 12% thereof, by one estimate) on the metals markets--which, @ the current NYMEX spot market price of $926.80/ounce, would translate into US$12,484,400,000 overall.

The which the IMF hopes to use to deal with a $400 million shortfall in its own reserves and purchase United States Government debt securities.

Provided, however, that Congress--and, for that matter, the majority of the 185 soverign nations as are IMF member states--approves.

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FOR A COMMUNITY LIKE WINONA, HAVING A SIGNIFICANT POPULATION OF SUCH HAVING POLISH DESCENT (AS WELL AS PRIDE IN THEIR POLISH HERITAGE), what I'm about to mention ought be discussed with nothing less than disgust on the part of such scions of the Polish-American community having strong ties to their ancestral homeland:

The BBC has learned of an epidemic of overt and conscious racism in Polish soccer, never mind where Poland is a co-host for the 2012 European Cup Soccer Championships.

Which BBC Sports Editor Mihir Bose can best explain:

Racism may never be fully eradicated from football, but what I found during an investigation into the problem in Poland was truly shocking.

And this in the country that will co-host the 2012 European Football Championship.

I found racism that was strident and in your face in a way it never was in Britain, even in the very bad old days of English football in the 1970s and 80s.

Then, as one of the regular football reporters at the Sunday Times, I spent my Saturdays at football matches and had several first-hand experiences of racism.

Much of it was very unpleasant. But in Poland it was on a different, deeper and much nastier level.

In a street in central Warsaw, not far from the hotel where I was staying, there was a lot of graffiti about 'white power' and the Ku Klux Klan, all associated with the city's main team Legia Warsaw.

And this wasn't the only place where the problem was evident.

One evening, as myself, my cameraman and producer were going about central Warsaw filming our piece for Inside Sport, we were approached by a skinhead who said he was a Legia fan and made it clear that he was a racist and keen to broadcast his view.

As I interviewed him he told me to go back to my country, meaning India, the land of my birth. He would not look me in the eye as we spoke and at the end of my interview, refused to shake my hand.

He may have been an exhibitionist and, I must stress, Polish passers by were embarrassed by what he said and tried to distance themselves from him.

But talking to many people, including those running football in Poland, he did not seem untypical of a certain section of Polish fans.

Indeed, the president of Legia Warsaw, Leszek Miklas, an impressive and honest man, readily admitted that 15-20% of his club's fans were neo-Nazis.

Legia are banned from Europe because of the violence of their fans. His explanation for such deep-seated racism was that Poles are not used to seeing people of different colours or cultures in their country.

Perhaps the most chilling example of how embedded racism is in Polish football was when I met Jacek Pulski of Never Again, the Polish equivalent of Kick it Out.

We had agreed to meet in the Stalin-built Palace of Culture and Science in central Warsaw, where I expected his offices to be located.

No he said, he did not have his office there or anywhere else in Warsaw. Partly through lack of funding but, more importantly, if they had an office, Jacek was fearful it would be a firebomb target for racists.

We then spent some time driving round Warsaw to find a cafe where we could talk in peace.

He showed me photographs taken during Polish football matches in the last two years where brazen images of neo-Nazi symbols had been displayed.

This not only included the White Legion banner of the infamous skinheads of Legia Warsaw but, most chillingly, a picture of away fans in a lower division league match forming a human swastika in the stands.

He then told me the story of the black player who had been hospitalised by a third division club's supporters, despite scoring two goals. And all because they did not want an Afro-Caribbean in their side.

He told me that I, because of my brown skin, would not be safe in more than two or three grounds in Poland.

I was made very welcome at Legia Warsaw. But there were areas of the ground I was told I could not go into because of the colour of my skin.

This was confirmed when I met Dixon Choto, the Zimbabwean international who plays for Legia Warsaw.

Before meeting him I had spent some time watching his team-mates train. This could have been a training session anywhere - people of different colours united by football.

But, as we walked round the stadium, he pointed to a stand where his friends and family were not welcome because of the colour of their skin.

He also told me I should not go there as I would not be safe. He also said he had his share of monkey chants and bananas being tossed at him. This happened more at away matches now.

Worse still, he said when he reacted to such racism on the field of play, Polish football authorities called him to a disciplinary hearing, where the opposition manager said he did not hear the chants, despite being heard loud and clear by Dixon's wife, who was at home watching on television.

I went to a Legia Warsaw home match at the Polish Army Stadium, where the team fielded black players without any visible problems, although I was not able to go anywhere near the stand, which takes up a whole side of the ground, where the 'ultras' gather.

Before the match I had been to a bar near the ground where the hardcore supporters meet.

It was made clear by some fans, who feared for my safety and that of my crew, I should leave.

I managed to speak to these moderate fans who did not deny that racism existed but insisted that Poland was not alone in having this scourge.

So what does this mean for 2012?

Dixon told me frankly that Poland was not ready to host Euro 2012. Pulski agreed, although he hoped the tournament would highlight the issue and help the country tackle its racism problem.

Polish competition organisers accept there is a problem at league level, but say national team supporters do not display racist behaviour, despite photographic evidence I was shown that suggested the contrary.

They are confident that 2012 will pass without incident.

Poland needs heavy financial investment to get its infrastructure ready for 2012. The Polish media are already expressing worries about how this will be done.

But tackling such deep-seated racism in time to welcome a Europe of all colours may be much more difficult than building roads and stadia.

Something which the Greater International Polonia (as in the Polish diaspora) ought confront and challenge, and take exception to, largely for the sake of solidarity with their ancestral homeland and people. 

1. The sole judge of whether a work is obscene or not shall be the average person applying the prevailing standards of the community in which the work is being challenged.
2. The work in question must clearly and unambiguously depict sexual or excretory activities and/or organs in a patently offensive manner.
3. Taken as a whole, the work must clearly be shown beyond reasonable doubt to:
   1. appeal to prurient interests; and
   2. be utterly without redeeming educational, literary, political or scientific merit.

The point of which was first addressed in the courts in the 1922 ruling Halsey v. New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which thus established legal precedent that a work being challenged as obscene must be considered as a whole:

No work may be judged from a selection of such paragraphs alone. Printed by themselves, they might, as a matter of law, come before 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.

Which, to the forces of Kulturkrieg on the Religiopolitical Right, can easily be exploited, methinks, by recruiting some poor, undereducated and easily-influenced specimen of "white trash" to act as "singer," so to speak, for the sake of some court challenge such an element may want to launch in a fit of overzealous hysteria for their own selfish purposes of attention and little else.

One who can be easily paid off to the point of taking unscrupulous advantage of their unfortunate financial circumstances, as well as influenced through mind-control techniques as are somehow out of the "Church of Scientology" playbook to ensure proper degree of subtleties, nuances and shades of meaning as would influence the court all the more.

As for the community in which to challenge said works as "obscene," expect such to find certain socioeconomic backwaters of deliberate poverty and ignorance--the sort not even Wally World would want to locate in, even with financial incentives--having "zero tolerance" standards for obscenity based on "unwritten habit and tradition" (a/k/a common law) influenced by overzealous Low Church cultural influence to the point of interference.

Not to mention finding a jury pool of such specimens of poverty and stupidity who can easily be paid off to render a ruling of Obscene in the end, even if such risks charges of Perverting the Course of Justice through Jury and/or Witness Tampering and Conspiracies related, let alone attempts by the "sponsors" (so to speak) of the action to avoid arousing suspicions by "meddling bloggers" and suchlike that such untoward perversions were going on.

Which, all in all, reduces the whole concept of Kulturkrieg to nothing less than a "Groucho war" which needs to be watched out for--especially such designed solely to attract publicity and "winning of hearts and minds" among Those Who Should Know Better, as well as trying all manner of ways to avoid arousing suspicions as would expose the whole to be farce.

FOR ALL THE ISLAMOPHOBIC VITRIOL AND HATRED SPEWED FORTH ON ESPECIALLY CONSERVATIVE-LEANING MEDIA OUTLETS, much of it tending to discreet (yet obvious) racism and bigotry of the highest order, the Islamophobes may want to start seeing the errors of their ways when they consider where a major revision of the Holy Qur'an (the Muslim sacred text) is now being developed in Turkey as would bring its language and message to modern forms.

Which, come to think of it, would be up there with the 1952 publication of the Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible in terms of bringing the Judeo-Christian sacred text into modern contexts, notwithstanding the occasional anti-Catholic conspiracist propaganda claiming that the RSV and subsequent revisions of the Bible (including the more recent New International Version) were secretly funded by the Vatican to "confuse and mislead the Christian faithful away from the pure Word of G-d" in the King James Version, archaic language and all.

(BTW, the King James was not the first translation of Holy Writ into English: Some 20 years before the KJV first came out, William Wycliff came out with the first such; he would eventually be charged with hearsay.)

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AS IF THE IDEA OF ISLAM EXPECTED TO SANCTION SEXUAL SEGREGATION WAS GROUNDS ENOUGH to further excuse such "patriotic" Islamophobia, it's interesting to note where women have started becoming imans in several countries, including here in the "morally superior" United States.

Not to mention a Sufi mosque near New York City allowing men and women together during Friday prayers, and with a female iman leading the prayers.

And a Muslim midrasa in NYC having boys and girls together in the same classes, the headmaster thereof citing one the Prophet Muhammad's injunction that women should be on the same intellectual level as men--even if women are expected to remain modest.

That, and a female iman coming out with a "correction" of a much-debated passage in the Qur'an which traditionally contended that husbands had the obligation to beat wives as didn't fall into line; in her view, such is the result of misinterpretation of an Arabic term which has long been translated as "beat," but could also be translated as "leave."

Take that, "patriotic" Islamophobes! 

A RECENT ITEM IN THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTRE'S HATEWATCH BLOG noting recent "educational" campaigns into illegal immigration sponsored by the Alabama branch of the hyperconservative Eagle Forum, concludes thusly:

Phyllis Schlafly, who heads the Eagle Forum, has also been a major proponent of the dominant conspiracy theory now animating the anti-immigration movement—the so-called "North American Union," a supposed plot by global elites to surrender American sovereignty in a planned merger with Canada and Mexico. Schlafly has called for a congressional investigation into the North American Union and for the disclosure of supposedly secret documents related to the non-existent union.

How do we know the "supposedly secret documents" in question aren't really forgeries produced by disinformation squads in the pay of, or otherwise directly connected with, extremist causes and movements? (As a matter of fact, the likes of Microsoft Word and suchlike produce documents so authentic-looking, even authorities on questionable or forged documents can be easily fooled--and then some.) 

And Another Thing:

Are these same elements weird and unwholesome, perhaps, aware of the fact that the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a popular work on the Five-Foot Shelves of extremists, has consistently been discredited as an anti-Semitic forgery of the highest order?

AFTER WHAT TURNED OUT BEING A RATHER MILD AND PLEASANT SATURDAY HERE IN THE MINNWISSIPPI, things turned downhill in the weather department starting yesterday.

Even with occasional episodes of hazy sunshine, rain was pretty much the rule yesterday and into this morning (howbeit mixed with snow as melted before it could accumulate onto grassy surfaces more than likely, yet nonetheless making the roads and walks wet.)

And as I write this, things are rather cloudy and dreary looking, with maybe some showery rain possible towards the evening. That, and a rain/light snow mix suggested in the forecasts for tonight into tomorrow morning.

But still, though, Your Correspondent had his bicycle tuned up and ready for another season the other day, so will be starting to use that a little more unless obviously rainy conditions dictate otherwise.

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THE CONSPIRACISTS ARE PROBABLY CRYING IN THEIR PINTS OF MILD ALE over the news that the tragic 1997 accident as killed Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed was caused by grossly negligent driving on the part of both chauffeur Henri Paul and the flocks of paparazzi in hot pursuit.

In other words, putting paid to already-discredited conspiracy theories involving The Duke of Edinburgh and MI6 (and perhaps even some involvement from the Lyndon LaRouchenik element) cooking up the whole for the sake of G-d and Crown.

Meanwhile, The Duke of Edinburgh checked himself into hospital @ the weekend complaining of a chest infection, staying a couple of nights for observation. (One should consider the fact of His Royal Highness being 84 years of age, making him all the more vulnerable to illness.)

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"A role model? No! But I do consider myself someone that kids should look up to."

THUS OBSERVED TANK "THE SHREDDER" EVANS IN SURF'S UP IN EXPLAINING THE PRICE OF HIS CELEBRITY (as in nine-times-running winner of the Big Z Memorial Surf-Off Classic on Pen Gu Island, never mind his resort to the devious and dishonest to achieve such attention).

I bring this up in view of the hero and role-model status being accorded Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern in the wake of her remarks about homosexuals being "a greater threat [to American soverignty and soverign identity] than terrorism" being exposed to air and sunshine, in turn revealing something about the warped religiopolitical priorities of the GOP in Indecision 2008 (as in homosexuality being a Higher Priority than socioeconomic dislocation and its effects on the poor, undereducated and easily-influenced).

Howbeit in the wrong sort of circles, as People For the American Way's Right Wing Watch notes:

After Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern’s anti-gay speech—in which she warned that the “homosexual agenda” is “the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam”—was made public and Kern became the center of attention, some right-wing activists rushed to her defense, including Matt Barber of Concerned Women for America and Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth, the sources she cited for proof that gays are out of destroy America. CWA’s Barber complained that Kern had been subjected to “tremendous assault” by “homosexual anti-Christian hate groups.”

But the Oklahoma chapter of CWA has its own take:

An Oklahoma State Representative is being "jammed" by homosexual activists and a sympathetic media for taking a stand on homosexuality, and she is not backing down.  The term "jamming" refers to the public smearing of Christians, traditionalists or anyone else who opposes the "gay" agenda.

According to CWA Oklahoma director Linda Caswell, “Rep. Kern represents the vast majority of Oklahomans.”

Yeah, right--"the vast majority of Oklahomans" as are poor, undereducated or homeschooled and easily-influenced. Not to mention dependent upon Fox Prolefeed for "news and information" tending to the discredited and disreputable.

Returning to Right Wing Watch, it's now emerging that Rep. Kern is playing the "victim of persecution" card to whip up sympathy and win points in the "hero and role-model" department among as much the Religiopolitical Right as their droogs among the weird and unwholesome:

At least a thousand people attended a rally in the Oklahoma capitol for state Rep. Sally Kern, who recently became a right-wing celebrity after ranting about how gays are a bigger threat than terrorism. In her speech, Kern called homosexuality “the death knell for this country,” warned of a sinister “gay agenda” of indoctrinating “two year olds” and “infiltrating city councils,” and associated gays with “deadly” diseases. Unsurprisingly, the legislator has been catching some flack for her over-the-top anti-gay broadside, but according to Kern and her supporters, criticism of Kern (including angry e-mails, “many of them filled with profanity and vulgarity”) is proof of the persecution of the Religious Right.

From the Oklahoman:

"I told the people when I was running for this office that I was a Christian candidate and that I believed we were in a cultural war for the very existence of our Judeo-Christian values,” said Kern, who was elected to the House in 2004. "This situation proves that I was right. We are in a cultural war; this is for real.”

Concerned Women for America’s Matt Barber, who has helped promote Kern as a right-wing hero and who recently cited blood donations as proof of the “gay agenda” Kern warned against, said Kern had been the victim of “tremendous assault” by “homosexual anti-Christian hate groups.” After the rally, he portrayed this “persecution” as biblical:

People with traditional values who value God's design for human sexuality will not be intimidated and bullied into silence.  Political correctness can never trump truth. Sally Kern stood for truth, and she was hated for it. She was persecuted for Christ, but the Body of Christ was there to lift her up.

Likewise, Kern herself claimed the mantle of St. Paul in his imprisonment by the Romans:

"This is not about me," Kern said at the rally, which spilled over from the first floor rotunda to the building's second and third floors. She is the wife of Olivet Baptist Church pastor Steven Kern in Oklahoma City. "It's about the church having the right to speak out for the redeeming love of Jesus Christ Who died to set us all free from sin. The Lord gave me a verse I've been claiming. Philippians 1:12, 'I want you to know that what has happened to me has really served to advance the Gospel.'"

The Religious Right has long sought to claim that Christianity is under attack by nefarious forces in the form of whatever policies and politics it disagrees with, as a way to convince people to go along with its far-right platform. Presenting Kern as the victim of a “gay hate campaign” neatly deflects the obvious criticism that Kern, Barber, and the others have been waging their anti-gay “hate campaign” the whole time.

That, and the likelihood of Rep. Kern's perhaps developing a martyr complex which can be deployed "when the proper time comes" to whip up "healthy" homophobic as can be neatly excused as "Christian Patriot Love."

But then again, there's also the risk that Rep. Kern could be used for potentially dangerous purposes and ends. As in being controlled to the point of manipulation by her handlers on the Religiopolitical Right, who can easily be expected to bring in busloads of "sponatenous popular support" to rallies where she's expected to deliver the same notorious message night after night, unaware that she may be risking emotional collapse.

The whole thing, it turns out, being a scripted farce serving not so much homophobic purposes as the Elmer Gantry Institute of Religiopolitical Theology.

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A HIGH-RANKING HEALTH OFFICIAL IN NEW ZEALAND, WHERE BUTTER CONSUMPTION IS PERHAPS THE HIGHEST ON EARTH, is calling for a "health tax" on butter, describing it as, in his words, "pure, natural poison" that poses as much a public health risk as smoking or drinking liquor.

Try suggesting such an idea in Wisconsin, where sentiment for dairy products has traditionally been rather strong--strong enough, in fact, to justify a long-since-abolished ban on sales of coloured margerine--and expect to be dunked in a Wisconsin Dells wavepool pretty quickly.

"I AM A WAR CRIMINAL; I BOMBED INNOCENT WOMEN AND CHILDREN."

Those were the exact words from the very lips of John McCain in an interview with the CBS News weekly magazine 60 Minutes in 1997.

The same John McCain who is the GOP Presidential candidate presumptive for Indecision 2008, subject to the formal confirmation @ the GOP National Convention in the Twin Cities this fall--unless it emerges that McCain is a real serious basket case rivalling The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang in the old Toonerville Folks comic, raising serious questions as to McCain's mental capacity, or want thereof.

As if that weren't enough, consider the following video (hat tip to Brave New Films) as evidence of John McCain's irrationality--evidence which any and all would-be McCain supporters ought to watch with an eye towards reconsidering their positions:

And, having just seen this video, you still see John McCain worthy enough (and then some) to continue His Fraudulency's deluded notion of the Presidential role being, in effect, that of a superdivine "Prophet, Seer and Revelator" who, for all we know, is probably on drugs or alcohol?

Now do you see the reasons why John McCain needs to be "swiftboated" all the more?

see more crazy cat pics

• My "real" mother was a "village floozie" who "kept the afterbirth and threw away the baby" after I was born, only to be saved "out of the goodness of Christian charity."
• My "real" father was an alcoholic "ne'er-do-well" who frequented said "village floozie" on regular trips into town.
• My "unfortunate condition" was the result of a none-too-successful abortion attempt on my "real" mother (back when I was born, in 1961, abortion was still Verboten under the law; hence, it would have been a back-alley coathanger such, with Jack Daniel's the only anesthetic).

(There were also some other such in the same vein as above, howbeit resorting to crude and tasteless language as is unfit for this sort of blog.)

In any case, such stories were picked up from less-than-credible sources having no clear knowledge about my own parents, as had just moved into town after selling the farm between Caledonia and Hokah in late 1978 or thereabouts. And probably made them up just to cast discredit upon myself and my character.

For the record, my late father (he died 20 May 1993, aged 78 years, from emphysema and heart failure) was sober since back in 1949, thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous ... and my mother (who, G-d willing, turns 87 in June) was no floozie or suchlike; she had nine kids (a tenth having died in infancy) and, in spite of direst distress, managed to do the best she could to bring them up. (In my own case, I was referred to institutional and foster care settings starting from the summer of 1968 because of a prenatal brain injury caused by my mother's being injured in an accident during pregnancy triggering dyslexic conditions.)

Does this set the record straight?