YESTERDAY AFTERLUNCH INTO EVENING GOT QUITE RAINY TO THE POINT OF THREATENING here in the Minnwissippi--so much so that a Tornado Warning was posted for around the dinner hour yesterday evening here in Winona County.

Whether a tornado actually touched down or no is not known to Your Correspondent; nonetheless, sirens were wailing in and around Winona @ the dinner hour as a potent storm passed this way.

And its effects can be felt as I write this: The rain has moved on, with cloudy skies and cooler conditions prevailing.

And staying in Winona for the moment, the town could be heading for a brief period of quiet with last week's commencement exercises @ Winona State University followed by those of St. Mary's University of Minnesota this Saturday and, before too long, those of Minnesota State College/Southeast Technical's Winona campus. I say "brief," readers, inasmuch as we will be seeing the Minnesota Beethoven Festival and the Great River Shakespeare Festival later on this summer for the culturally-sophisticated ... and Steamboat Days for the Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin types.

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NOW TELL ME THIS ISN'T THE KIND OF REPORT that the GOP's super-secretive "dirty tricks" squad would love drooling(!!!) over for cheap and cheerful ways by which to:

• intimidate especially lower-income and National Minority groups from voting in November, especially considering the recent Supreme Court ruling allowing states to mandate photo-bearing identity documents being shown as part of the electoral process; and
• ensure "guaranteed" victory for The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang among the "right-thinking" sort of voters (read: White Male Christian Freeholders) on Election Day.

Especially when you have the ilk of "citizen militia" and "lone wolf" operatives who can be trusted to do the pis aller all along ... and, @ the same time, can be trusted to keep quiet about the whole being for G-d and Country in exchange for substantial payments from super-secret "pure trusts" based offshore.

Know-Nothings, in other words, expected to know all along that they are acting in the GOP's name and behalf, all along walking a tightrope known as doublethink.

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WITH NEW RUSSIAN STATE PRESIDENT (AND DROOG OF THE PREVIOUS SUCH, VLADIMIR PUTIN) DMITRI MEDVEDEV HAVING TAKEN OFFICE, perhaps it was time to start asking if Mr. Medvedev is the real McCoy when he speaks about liberalising business and socioeconomic policies and easing restrictions on media freedom and freedom of speech as part of his agenda.

Or whether he's really the Charlie McCarthy, as it were, to Putin's Edgar Bergen.

"Actions speak louder than words," President Medvedev....

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SOMETHING FOR THE ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS IN THE PHONY KULTURKRIEG SERVING NO USEFUL PURPOSE but fuelling the Dark Satanic Mills of Conservative Propaganda, by way of Yahoo News (ultimately via Agence France-Presse):

Singer Cliff Richard was robbed of victory in the 1968 Eurovision Song Contest because Spanish dictator Francisco Franco rigged the vote, a documentary to be aired Thursday claims.

Richard's song "Congratulations" was the runaway favourite but was beaten in the contest, held that year in London, by just one point by Spanish contestant Massiel, who sang "La La La".

According to the documentary, music and television executives sent by Franco bought the rights to series that never aired and signed little-known acts in other European nations in return for Eurovision votes.

Spanish public television journalist Jose Maria Inigo told the documentary that the Franco regime "had a great need to win recognition, even if it was only in one area."

The documentary will be aired on Thursday night on La Sexta channel but excerpts were available on the Internet.

At the time, the winner of the competition--in which musicians from nations across Europe compete each year--was decided by a jury comprised of members from each of the participating countries.

Richard said he was pleased at the possibility of being declared the winner four decades later.

"If, like they say, they believe there is evidence that it was I that was the winner, there won't be a happier person on the planet," he told newspaper the Guardian. "It's never good to lose, never good to feel a loser."

"I've lived with this number two thing for so many years, it would be wonderful if someone official from the contest turned around and said: 'Cliff, you won that darn thing after all,'" he told the Guardian.

"Congratulations" topped the charts in Britain and several other countries, selling over one million copies.

Eurovision, launched in 1956, has evolved onto an annual music extravaganza with a television audience of 100 million. The contest has helped lift artists from obscurity to celebrity.

Swedish band Abba won in 1974 with "Waterloo" setting them on the path to global stardom. Canadian singer Celine Dion's win in 1988 for Switzerland, singing "Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi" or "Don't Leave Without Me", helped to launch her career.

The winner of the contest is now selected by votes cast by telephone and text messages by television viewers. 

As reminder, folks, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is STILL dead!!!

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CALL ME A BIT SCREWY, READERS, but for some reason or another, I was imagining the other day what it would sound like if the slogans of Homer D. Poe's ("You can do it. We can help.") and Lowe's ("Let's build something together"), the two biggest of the "big box" homecentre chains, were translated into Engrish.

And thanks to PigeonD.net's wonderful English=>Engrish Translator, Homer D. Poe's "You can do it. We can help" becomes "It is possible to do that. As for us it is possible to help."

And Lowe's "Let's build something together" becomes "What probably will be made together."

EDITORIAL FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES (HAT TIP TO BARTCOP E!) as needs no further elaboration, yet deserves to be shared among the "right-thinking" among you blog readers out there across the Information Stuporbahn:

Americans don’t have to wait for the statistics to know these are very hard times. For the fourth month in a row, the economy lost jobs in April. The economists said the contraction was not as bad as expected—20,000 jobs were shed versus an anticipated loss of 75,000. Not as bad as expected is cold comfort.

The latest employment report shows other deepening problems for American workers, including slower wage growth, cutbacks in hours, a sharp increase in the number of part-timers who would prefer full-time work and lengthening spells of unemployment.

The White House response to the pain is to wait and see if things get even worse before calling for help for the unemployed. On Friday President Bush said that his administration had anticipated the slump and would combat it with tax rebates that were passed last February as part of the economic stimulus package.

There is no guarantee, however, that the rebates—which are just now being distributed—will spur the economy as hoped. Rather than spend the money, many indebted consumers are likely to use it to pay down debt, and some people, justifiably fearful of job loss, are likely to save it.

Besides, there’s no more time to wait and see. In April, the number of Americans who had been out of work for at least 27 weeks (26 weeks is when unemployment benefits run out) rose to 1.35 million workers. In the past year, 2.74 million jobless workers have exhausted their benefits.

Job loss is clearly a hit to families’ finances and, in the aggregate, to consumer spending and economic growth. Job loss coupled with the exhaustion of unemployment benefits leads not only to personal desperation, but will further damage consumer confidence, already sorely tested by the housing bust, the credit crunch and soaring prices for food and gasoline.

What is needed—now—is for Congress to extend jobless benefits for people who exhaust their initial 26 weeks of payments. Research is unequivocal that bolstered jobless benefits are more effective stimulus than tax rebates. They also have the advantage of being targeted to people in need.

The extension could be attached to the supplemental spending bill for the Iraq war, which may come before Congress as early as this week. Predictably, President Bush is balking, mainly because of his wrongheaded belief that tax cuts are the best solution to all problems.

The White House has also asserted that with the overall unemployment rate hovering around 5 percent, joblessness is not yet bad enough to warrant an extension of unemployment benefits. But in prior recessions, benefits had already been extended when long-term unemployment reached the current level. And in recent recessions, the unemployment rate didn’t peak until the recession was basically over. Waiting for the rate to rise before extending benefits is almost sure to result in offering too little help, too late—deepening the pain of the recession.

Congress erred by not extending unemployment benefits in last February’s stimulus package. Lawmakers and Mr. Bush now have a second chance to fix that mistake. They must not squander it.

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YOUR CORRESPONDENT SAYS GOODBYE TO IRVINE ROBBINS, who was responsible for making quirky ice cream flavours like Pralines and Cream, Rocky Road, Jamocha Almond Fudge and Here Comes Da Fudge household staples from Maine to Mauna Loa, Point Barrow to Key West by way of Baskin-Robbins, the chain of ice cream shops which were founded when ice cream shoppes owned by Robbins and in-law Burton Baskin merged in the early 1950's.

In the process, creating the famous "31 Flavours" gimmick ("a flavour for every day of the month," as it were) which, officially, has translated into some 1,000 such in its 63-year history.

I will admit to having had a fetish for Baskin-Robbins back around the age of six, during residency @ Station 64 of University of Minnesota Hospitals; there was a Baskin-Robbins shop close by the hospitals, and it was not uncommon for case workers to occasionally take me over there for a cone. (The site is now occupied, it turns out, by Wangensteen Hall, which houses the U's School of Medicine.)

It must've been years since Your Correspondent last stepped foot in a Baskin-Robbins, in all honesty; probably because there aren't any such near Winona.

Rest in peace.  

see more crazy cat pics

CERTAIN PEOPLE OF MY ACQUAINTENANCE ARE OF THE OPINION THAT, WHEN IT COMES TO THE CONSERVATIVE PROPAGANDA MASHEEN and its perpetrators, it may actually be better to simply ignore them and not respond @ all; the argument here being that the Rush Limbaugh/Fox Prolefeed/Chris Matthews crowd gets their jollies from all manner of attacks and criticism so directed, forcing them to "push their buttons" and intensify their attacks every time fresh criticism is so directed.

On the other hand, so this line of thinking goes, simply ignoring them and their line of propaganda will, in due course and measurable distance, only frustrate the messengers to the point of paranoia for want of response or attacks.

Which begs the question of whether this means we should essentially act village-idiot-stylee stupid (howbeit as a "protective cover," we should explain), or otherwise pretend to stupidity or disinterest in current events.

Otherwise known in Orwellian Newspeak as "goodthought" (i.e., an unswerving and unyielding orthodoxy, practiced as it were second nature, accepting the Prevailing Official Line without question or reservation).

Which begs the question of whether acting "village-idiot-stupid" is any way to respond to the Religiopolitical Right's propaganda, and its channels therefor. Which, come to think of it, runs counter to the argument of "silence=acceptance."

YOUR CORRESPONDENT WAS PERHAPS ONE OF THE FIRST TO QUESTION THE TERRIBLE-TEMPERED MR. BANG'S SUGGESTION of a summer suspension of the Federal gas tax to bring down gas prices, and the illogic thereof.

As in "good concept, but no sense"--which, in case any of you ask, was inspired by something read on Engrish.com recently about humourous Japanese T-shirts with English-language messages.

And it seems there is emerging editorial, as much as political, opposition to such a concept, considering where the Federal Highway Trust Fund is financed from gas tax revenue. In the former instance, Dave Zweifel, Editor Emeritus of The Capital Times in Madison, WI, as just last week "went virtual," had this to say--and ponder over:

It's one of the dumbest ideas to come down the pike in a long time.

I'm talking about John McCain's plan to give America a summer-long gasoline tax "holiday" to ease our pain at the pump.

Republican McCain would have the U.S. stop collecting the 18.4˘-per-gallon excise tax, ostensibly to make it "cheaper" for all of us to jump in our cars and go traveling this summer. That Democrat Hillary Clinton would buy into this scheme speaks volumes about her priorities as well.

The United States has already fallen dangerously behind in maintaining its infrastructure. Interstate bridges are falling down, highway maintenance is far behind schedule, and mass transit is being starved for funds. This is hardly the time to put a bigger dent in the country's ability to fund transportation needs.

To his credit, Barack Obama has called the McCain plan a terrible idea. It's so bad that it ranks right up there with George Bush's tax cuts for the rich, which McCain once opposed but now favors. Those cuts have served to starve much-needed domestic programs while doubling the national debt, which the country will have to face up to sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Clinton defends her support of McCain's tax holiday because she would balance the loss in revenues by enacting an excess profits tax on oil companies. Admittedly, that's a bit more responsible than McCain's proposal, but it fails to address the real issue. We ought to be discouraging the consumption of gasoline and oil, not encouraging people to use more. Besides, good luck getting that excess profits tax through the current administration.

It would be far better to enact an excess profits tax to fix those cracks in the highway bridges and to improve mass transit so Americans don't have to buy so much $3.60-a-gallon gasoline.

Those who keep tabs on the oil industry are convinced that the price is actually going to be four bucks a gallon by the height of the summer travel season. That 18.4˘ "savings" would quickly be swallowed up by the oil industry.

Meanwhile, we would fall further behind not only in fixing our highways, but in doing what we should have been doing for decades now: finding ways to use less gasoline.

Good concept, but no sense reaffirmed.

Pass this along to all you know online....

BLAME IT ON THE INFORMATION STUPORBAHN AND SATELLITE RADIO, AMONG OTHER FACTORS: Shortwave radio broadcasting is about to become an endangered species.

And newer technologies, such as online and satellite radio stations, are dooming shortwave to the point of its becoming a museum piece before too long--a novelty, come to think of it.

I bring this up in the wake of news that the BBC World Service, one of the more famous worldcasters, is gradually abandoning shortwave radio broadcasting in favour of rebroadcaster affiliations with local broadcasters (who would receive the signal via satellite), online radio and satellite radio services; BBC World Service discontinued shortwave transmissions to North America in 2001 and just recently ended shortwave broadcasts to the Caribbean and Central and Eastern Asia.

And it's not just the BBC World Service as has abandoned shortwave:

• Around 1995, the Voice of America shut down the last of its shortwave transmitters, replacing shortwave broadcasts with transmission over local broadcasters.
• Swiss Radio International moved its worldcasts to online and satellite radio in 2004, and replaced their traditional shortwave service with the online portal SwissInfo.org.
• Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty have left the air, their shortwave transmitters long silenced.
• German worldcaster Deutsche Welle has reduced its shortwave throughput and is moving to online radio and affiliations with local broadcasters.
• Public broadcasters in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan, Finland, Korea and Portugal have phased out shortwave broadcasts altogether.

As for shortwave broadcasters from the United States, the lion's share tend to be of a non-commercial religious nature (Adventist World Radio, WWCR Nashville and Fundamentalist Broadcasting Network come to mind), mostly because of FCC objections to shortwave radio broadcasters targeting stateside audiences for the most part. Not to mention stateside shortwave broadcasters' lineups getting rather weird, as the industry paper Radio World noted a few years back:

Without ratings, it is difficult to impossible to sell commercials. As a result, profit-minded U.S. SW stations make their living by selling airtime to whoever wants it. Typically, this tends to be religious or political groups.

The religious programmers run the gamut from mainstream to fringe, while political programmers range from Cuban dissidents to right-wing militia groups. In some cases these programmers work live in the station's studios. However, it's more typical for them to send in prerecorded programs on cassette, CD or MiniDisc, or to send in their shows by phone or, increasingly, over the Internet.

The cost? "We charge anywhere from $25 to $65 an hour, depending on the time of day and the number of hours purchased," said Allan Weiner, WBCQ owner and general manager. Based in Monticello, Maine, the station uses three converted commercial/military transmitters, some home-built antennas and a 1950s-vintage mobile home converted into a studio building.

At WRMI in Miami, Jeff White sells airtime for $1 a minute. Meanwhile, WWCR in Nashville, Tenn., charges anywhere from $15 for 4.5 minutes to $160 for 59.5 minutes, depending on whether you're buying on a one-day, weekly or Monday-through-Friday basis. With four 100 kW transmitters - a single 50 kW transmitter is considered to be the bare minimum by the FCC - WWCR has more reach and a more sophisticated transmission/production plant than WCBQ or WRMI.

Thus, given the FCC's restriction on domestic broadcasting, the issues of propagation, audio quality and static associated with amplitude-modulated shortwave and the lack of a measurable audience, the commercial SW market is not one for the faint-hearted.

Add the general public's lack of awareness of the medium - "People ask me all the time how they can pick up Radio Miami International on their AM/FM receivers," White said with a shrug - and one can see it's a tough business.

"The handful of truly commercial stations may generate anywhere from less than $200,000 a year to perhaps a few million," he added. "These are not Clear Channel-type operations."

Paying the bills

These broadcasters are willing to put up with poor production quality and content; this comes with the turf of selling airtime blocks. They can tolerate downright weird shows.

"I remember one show where the guy was doing a chant to the angels," White said. "He just kept chanting the same thing over and over again for 15 minutes."

In fact, U.S. SW broadcasters are willing to put up with almost anything from their clients, as long as they pay their bills.

"It is still a free country and they have a right to say a lot of things," said WWCR General Manager George McClintock.

"We pretty much let anyone say what they want," said Weiner. "Our listeners demand that we be as open and free speech as possible. They crave it. They demand it."

Besides, "The FCC doesn't really monitor the content on U.S. shortwave," White said. "I don't think they see that as their mission or concern. They are more worried about whether a station's technical parameters are correct."

That said, U.S. shortwave broadcasters often suffer grief from their clients' programming. Even radio's renegades have their limits.

For instance, WWCR learned that neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel was using his airtime to deny the Holocaust. "We threw the program off," said McClintock. Zundel had been broadcasting in German, and WWCR's operators didn't understand what he was saying.

Even so, many Americans associate U.S. shortwave with far-right broadcasts. This is ironic, given that most of what McClintock calls "militia money" stopped flowing to shortwave broadcasters when the dreaded year 2000 finally arrived. Apparently the New World Order's "non-collapse," in McClintock's words, severely hurt the militias' ability to solicit donations from listeners.

All in all, U.S. SW broadcasters operate in a strange, Twilight Zone kind of world, but one that they relish. Passport's Magne believes that U.S. shortwave broadcasters enjoy it so much that they don't want the FCC to loosen its archaic restrictions on domestic shortwave.

"The truth is that they like it the way it is," he said. "If the rules were changed, it could open the floodgates to more competition."

An unfair accusation? Not according to WRMI's White.

"We discussed changing the rules at the National Association of Shortwave Broadcasters' convention a few years ago," he said. "In fact, the FCC asked for our help in doing so. However, after some discussion, a lot of people came to Magne's conclusion: that we're all better off just leaving things as they are. After all, under the current regime, the FCC pretty much leaves us alone. If the rules were changed, then they might get serious about enforcing them."

"If it works for you, leave it alone," said McClintock. Granted, the FCC shortwave rules are "as loose as a goose," he said. But "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

And, of course, you've got pirate shortwave broadcasters all over the place....

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BUT THEN AGAIN, FOR THOSE OF YOU STILL LOOKING @ SHORTWAVE RADIO, check the following out:

THERE IS A BIT OF THE PERSONALLY EMOTIONAL IN WHAT I AM ABOUT TO DISCUSS: I have an older brother, by name of Doug, who resides outside Mobile, Alabama and has been retired from the Navy for almost 30 years now.

Who, in the last couple of years, came down with a form of cancer associated with exposure to asbestos or related products (e.g., asbestos insulation in water pipes aboard ship)--in medical terms, mesothelioma.

Which Doug thinks he picked up by way of his Naval service aboard the battleship USS Oklahoma during the Vietnam War period, what with the insulating pipes below decks especially having asbestos ... and for which he's receiving treatment @ the VA Medical Centre in Mobile.

The which was brought up recently in conversation with some close friends of mine discussing family developments ... in turn shifting to a broader likelihood of whether an entire generation or two of Navy veterans as served aboard ship (in particular below decks) may have unwittingly developed mesothelioma as a byproduct of Naval service thanks to exposure to asbestos-based insulating material dating to less politically- and medically-sensitive times.

Not to mention the possibility that Navy veterans with service @ sea for the most part may have higher-than-average rates of risk for developing mesothelioma cf. the general populace--or, for that matter, other occupations where risk of exposure to asbestos or asbestos-containing components was considered "part of the job" (among them plumbers, steamfitters, insulation contractors and heating/cooling-system contractors) and among the hazards of the game.

And whether Navy and Marine Corps veterans can apply for, let alone obtain, compensation for service-connected illnesses, injuries or disabilities thanks to asbestos exposure and ensuing mesothelioma.

Making you wonder if mesothelioma may rival veneral diseases as among the more common maladies of those serving @ sea, never mind the latter likely being contracted during shore leave liasons with Mrs. Warren's Profession and its practicioners.

IN SPITE OF THE PROBLEMS AS PREVENTED MANY OF YOU ACCESSING THIS WEBLOG MUCH OF YESTERDAY, I hope this finds you fine and well, readers.

Even if Your Correspondent did quite a bit of sweeping up grit from the low spots of the motel's car park and driveway--grit which accumulates following rainwater drying off, and then some. Not a very pleasant sight to look @ in all honesty.

Otherwise, somewhat mild and a tad breezy as I produce this item, with the likelihood for some thunderstorms later this afterlunch into evening and tomorrow morning.

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JUST SO YOU DIDN'T FORGET, letterpost rates in the United States will be going up from Monday, as follows:

• Domestic letters: 42˘ for the first ounce, 17˘ each additional ounce or fraction thereof.
• Domestic postcards: 27˘
• International letters and postcards (airmail to all destinations): 72˘ per half-ounce to Canada or Mexico; 94˘ per half-ounce to all other countries. (Mail addressed to American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the United States Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Republic of Palau or the Federated States of Micronesia goes @ domestic letter rate. Likewise with APO/FPO addresses for United States military and some diplomatic personnel overseas.)
• Priority Mail: $4.80 for up to 2 pounds.
• Express Mail: $16.50 for up to 8 ounces.

(Those with more questions may want to visit the United States Postal Service website, or freecall 1-800-ASK-USPS.)

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IS THERE AN ECHO IN HERE? (PART I): Brave New Films and MoveOn.org would like to call your attention to the following video, as reveals what amounts to an "echo chamber" with dog-whistle overtones on Fox Prolefeed vis-a-vis whipping up war hysteria against Iran, using the same lame bromides and platitudes to justify the original ur-RAHOWA against Iran:

Having seen it, ask yourself if we, as a supposedly "morally superior" nation and society, can afford further war fanaticism of the crudest and most pathetic sort (considering The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang's late admission that the "real" reason for said ur-RAHOWA is to maintain dependency on oil imports as one with soverign identity).

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IS THERE AN ECHO IN HERE? (PART II): Further from MoveOn.org is this rather interesting challenge for you, dear reader, to spot discernible differences, ideological and otherwise, between His Fraudulency and The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang.

(Good luck finding any as would make the difference come Indecision 2008's climax in November.)

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PUTINIST RUSSIA, DOMINATED AS IT IS BY WEIRD AND UNWHOLESOME ELEMENTS AND SYNDICATES AS IT IS, can't help but find new and innovative places by which to conceal their ill-gained wealth @ the expense of a post-Soviet people and society risking the likelihood of living under a new brand of xenophobic fanaticism as would make the Soviet era look like Disneyland by comparison.

One rather unlikely venue is in real estate along the Gold Coast of southeastern Queensland, Australia, some 30 mile south of Brisbane, the state capital, as the crow flieth. Especially so beachfront or beachview apartment in the likes of such "in" areas as Tweed Heads, Surfer's Paradise and Mermaid Beach.

The prospect of which, according to the BBC World Service, leaves local police agencies rather leery about money laundering (especially where proceeds of crime, corruption or graft are involved) being behind such large-scale Russian investment, not to mention many of the big investors being weird and/or unwholesome elements more than likely.

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IT APPEARS LIKELY THAT THE CYCLONIC DEVASTATION AS AFFLICTED THE SO-CALLED "UNION OF MYANMAR" @ THE WEEKEND may have been more serious than initial estimates first suggested:

New official estimates suggest that the death toll may have exceeded some 15,000, with many thousands more left homeless--and a corrupt and incompetent military regime facing heat diplomatically for understimating the extent of the devastation, let alone developing any semblance of logistics for delivering relief within its official self-reliant ideology.

That, and a national plebiscite called for the weekend to approve or otherwise reject a new and hastily-drafted constitution which, in theory, is expected to establish a timetable for the restoration of democracy.

Could it be that the Myanmari military regime may be about to collapse as a consequence of underestimated cyclonic devastation? Stay tuned.

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REMEMBER THAT APPEARENCE BY FRINGE GOP CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE TONY ZIRKLE @ a neo-Nazi gathering in Chicago recently in honour of Adolf Hitler's birthday, making all manner of Julius Streicher-stylee remarks claiming that Jews dominated the pornography business?

As Right Wing Watch notes, it's probably the tip of a more sinister and just as menacing iceberg, so to speak:

Tony Zirkle’s 15 minutes of swastika-draped fame were widely reported last month, when the Indiana congressional candidate spoke at an American Nazi Party celebration of Adolf Hitler’s birthday. Zirkle, whose campaign warns of a link between Jews and pornography, offered the comical explanation that, despite the oversize Hitler portrait and Nazi flags directly behind him, the swastika armbands of the men on either side of him, and the words “Seig Heil” on the cake, “he didn't believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn't Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.” The candidate was duly reviled by his opponent in the Republican primary race, as well as by everybody else, as an isolated racist crackpot.

However, the report on the matter by the right-wing WorldNetDaily—a product of the anti-Bill Clinton Arkansas Project that now hosts columnists such as Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan, and Chuck Norris—offered an unusual twist. After reviewing the story and printing a number of random comments from other websites (a common journalistic technique at WND), the article tried to put it in a kind of context: "Other congressional candidates have raised eyebrows with their speeches, too," it stated. But its only example was a quote from Rep. Keith Ellison comparing the time after September 11, 2001, when the Bush Administration asserted new executive privileges, to the time after the burning of the Reichstag, when Hitler consolidated his powers.

While Ellison took heat for using the metaphor, there is, to put it mildly, a pretty obvious distinction between making a rhetorical comparison of your opponents' tactics to historical events in Nazi Germany, and actually forging an alliance with present-day Nazis based on apparently shared values. So why did WND choose this as its only attempt at context?

Ellison, of course, was the first Muslim member of Congress, and after his election in 2006, the Right launched an effort to portray his presence in Washington as a dire threat to the nation. WorldNetDaily offered obsessive coverage through dozens of flimsy, paranoid articles with titles such as “Doubts grow over Muslim lawmaker's loyalty” and “Muslim congressman called 'security' issue.”

Since WND is so desperate for an example of an anti-Semitic political figure, it’s fortunate that Ted Pike provided a timely reminder. Pike, head of the National Prayer Network, has been a frequent source of quotes for WND whenever the site covered proposed federal hate-crimes protections, most recently in December.

Pike is best-known, however, for pushing out anti-Semitic propaganda along with his father, a radio talker in the 1980s. As People For the American Way reported in a press release from 1989, Pike was warning that there was “a tendency toward Jewish domination of society,” that “Jewish international bankers” were behind the Bolshevik Revolution, and that the state of Israel was “the first stage in Satan’s plan to take this world from Christ and give it to the Antichrist.” Twenty years ago, Pike was warning that the Jewish motivation behind hate-crimes legislation was to silence churches; today, he warns of the “homosexual agenda.”

We were reminded of Pike—and his place as a privileged WorldNetDaily commentator—after he sent out an e-mail alert two weeks ago complaining that the Southern Poverty Law Center had cited the National Prayer Network as a hate group:

Jewish activist groups want to increasingly broaden the terms "hate" and "anti-Semitism" to include evangelicals.…

Jewish activists thus display a truly hateful intent—to harm Christians and deprive them of freedom. Such activists work to warp public and government perceptions of Christian conservatives—demonizing us as potential sources of “homophobic,” anti-Semitic bigotry and possible violence. SPLC alleges a 48 percent increase of threat from the "radical right" since 2000. Jewish attack groups such as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, American Civil Liberties Union, and People for the American Way, smear “homophobic” evangelicals as being part of this “threat.”

After defaming Christians as "haters," Jewish supremacists want to actually outlaw Christian political activity and evangelism. The ADL created hate crime laws that will particularly outlaw reproof of sodomy and evangelism of non-Christians, especially Jews.

Which begs the question, dear readers, of where it necessarily follows that America's "antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity" is conditioned by an unswerving and fanatically unyielding brand of hate, bigotry, intolerance, xenophobia, homophobia and anti-Semitism--all to be conveniently packaged as "Christian Patriot Love" if and when the need requires.

Especially considering a target audience of the vulnerable and marginalised who, themselves, are easy targets for such fear and hatemongering in the first place.

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(Thanks in the meantime to Pigeond.net's English-to-Engrish Translator for making the preceding possible. I hope you liked this interesting new approach to apologising for what happened to this and other Blogdrive-hosted blogs for a time today.)

(WITH APOLOGIES TO SMUDGE FROM SURF'S UP THERE for the quote in the subject of this posting....)

Shortly after World War II, an ultra-conservative and @ once anti-Communist group published a treatise entitled The Road Ahead, which gained wide circulation thanks to Reader's Digest later reprinting same in condensed form, as no doubt helped shape the likes of the John Birch Society, the unholy terror of anti-Communist excess in the early 1960's especially.

One of its most widely-quoted lines was that which suggested that "a strike should be considered an offence against society," as if suggesting that America's "antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity" was conditioned by the defence of laissez-fare free-market capitalism based on corporatist models (which saw Industry expected to pacify Labour enough to the extent that the latter would not need to join "Communistic" labour unions), only to be ill-sorted thanks to Benito Mussolini's Fascists in Italy, who approriated corporatist thought.

And it seems there are still those who still see strikes--or, for that matter, industrial action of any kind by workers--as Crimes Against Society, as was the case among Communist regimes, with the added evil of such being looked upon as "giving aid and comfort to International Terrorism."

ConWebBlog explains:

Did you know that exercising your constitutional rights to take part in a strike is the same thing as terrorism?

That's what Lowell Ponte thinks. From his May 2 Newsmax column:

On May 1 a little-reported act of domestic terrorism struck the United States.

It cost our economy between $1 and $2 billion, equivalent to the theft of up to $26.66 from every American family of four–money you and your family will be paying in higher prices.

Even more troubling is that those who conspired to assault us have not been arrested, jailed, or even removed from their high-security-risk positions.

[...]

What happened along the West Coast on Thursday was sabotage designed to send an ideological message–and to intimidate both companies and politicians with a display of disruptive union power.

Two years ago Americans were concerned that the Persian Gulf nation Dubai was acquiring facilities in American ports, and that this might somehow open us to an increased risk of Islamist terrorism. These are not the only potential terrorists.

What terrorist event is he frothing over? The one-day May 1 work stoppage by dock workers on West Coast ports in protest of the Iraq war. Ponte offers no evidence to back up his assertion that the strike "cost our economy between $1 and $2 billion." Indeed, a 2002 report on the possible effects of a port strike projected a $4.7 billion impact in lost wages over a four-week strike, going on to note:

[A]ttempts to track down the source of the $1 billion a day and $2 billion a day figures widely quoted, which in each case turned out to be inaccurate reporting. To actually lose a billion dollars a day for two weeks, "we'd have to sink the ships," said [report author Patrick L.] Anderson, "the impact here is large enough to be reported without exaggeration."

Nevertheless, Ponte went on to claim that "In October 2002, the ILWU flexed its muscle through a work slowdown that cost shippers up to a billion dollars a day."

The rest of Ponte's column is largely guilt by association, attacking the alleged "radical leftist ideology" of the founder of the longshoreman's union. Ponte concluded: "We should remove security risks and saboteurs from America's ports, starting with the 6,000 longshoremen who conspired to cause May Day's shutdown."

Ponte isn't the only conservative to have recently expressed unorthodox views about constitutional rights. Last week, the Media Research Center's Brent Baker declared that "the First Amendment doesn't apply in North Carolina" because a couple of TV stations there decided not to air an inflammatory anti-Obama ad.

Come to think of it: Since when did workers participating in industrial action become seen as one with "security risks and saboteurs," let alone "giving aid and comfort to the enemy," which is considered treason?

And besides: Methinks Lowell Ponte must've been drinking the old Kool-Aid (as it were) reading Matt Sevetic's I Was A Communist For The FBI (which would later become a radio drama starring Dana Andrews and a movie starring Frank Lovejoy) and/or Herbert Philbrook's I Led Three Lives, not to mention the aforementioned The Road Ahead and other specimens of enforced McCarthy-era patriotism, for way too long off his Five-Foot Shelf....

Thanks, Smudge, for being spot-on right with the "dirty trash can full of poop" remark.