SOME RAIN SHOWERS LAST EVENING GIVING WAY TO SUNSHINE THIS MORNING as I produce this latest edition of my own comments in lapidary weblog form ... and the holiday long weekend forecast is calling for generally nice weather, with maybe a rumble of thunder to round off the weekend on the holiday Monday.

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THE SO-CALLED "UNION OF MYANMAR" AND ITS XENOPHOBICALLY-WARPED REGIME MUST BE ON THE BRINK OF COLLECTIVE PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENIA as they observe three days of nationwide mourning for the victims of Cyclone Nargis nearly a fortnight ago--never mind the local authorities failing to issue proper and timely warnings beforehand, let alone prepare evacuations to safety.

Making the schizophrenia even worse is the news that the World Bank will be unable to release reconstruction funds to the Myanmari regime in view of their having been in arrears on repayments for some ten years previous ... in the process forcing the regime's "inside of the inside" to seek out weird and unwholesome financial circles such as the triads from Hong Kong and/or Macau or even the Japanese yakuza to obtain reconstruction funds which, even then, the regime is unlikely to repay in view of such elements charging arbitrarily higher interest rates on the tightest of repayment schedules.

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BLAME IT ON HIS FRAUDULENCY'S ONGOING MADNESS FOR JUSTIFYING UR-RAHOWA AGAINST INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM and its justifying subtle and discreet harrassment of harmless residents stateside ... but the "morally superior" United States was able to only score 97th on the Global Peace Index of 140 soverign nations.

Of which Iceland, Denmark, Norway, New Zealand and Japan make up the top five.

Iraq, obviously, takes the "wooden spoon."

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AND CAN YOU JUST IMAGINE THE MOST XENOPHOBICALLY DEPRAVED AND PERVERTED ELEMENTS OF AMERICA'S "MORALLY SUPERIOR" SOCIETY being especially interested (and then some) in the online coverage of the ongoing ultraviolence across South Africa against Zimbabwean refugees and migrants--and for weird and unwholesome reasons?

(As in finding ideas and inspiration for cheap and cheerful tactics to whip up the old ultraviolence in culturally-deprived environments having significant and measurable populations of "chronic and habitual" welfare cases, "illegal" immigrants and National Minorities in general which--so they hope--will flare up into full-on RAHOWA.

(Especially interested: Not just the usual suspects of the Klan, neo-Nazis and other white-supremacist types, but also super-secretive "dirty tricks" squads with connexions to the GOP, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and their associates weird and unwholesome. And more than likely using coded messages on their radio programmes playing the agent provocateur role, let alone avoid attracting suspicions from "meddling Secular-Progressive bloggers.")

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AND TALK ABOUT THE GOP BEING THE DEFENDERS AND GUARDIANS OF TRADITIONAL MORAL VALUES, DECENCY AND COMMON SENSE, or so their official propaganda insists:

Congressman Vito Fossella (GOP/NY) will announce his resignation today in the wake of ongoing scandals further revealing the depths of depraved GOP hypocrisy--in Fossella's case, being arrested for DUI and same indirectly revealing where he was engaging in les liasons dangeruses with another woman while still "happily married."

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RECENT "WINNING OF HEARTS AND MINDS" COMMERCIALS FROM THE AMERICAN PETROLEUM INSTITUTE CALLING FOR FURTHER ENERGY SELF-SUFFICENCY which you may or may not have seen on the ilk of CNN, MSNBC and Fox Prolefeed may be omitting a material fact which you and I ought to know about:

Videlicet, that the policies being thus advocated are based all the more on "wise use" strategems which turn out being wasteful, counterproductive and inefficent to the point of fraud, waste, corruption and mismanagement holding high carnival @ the expense of the masses.

Come to think of it, isn't the concept of "wise use," as in the Wise Use Movement, rather oxymoronic to the point of perverted? 

TODAY, THE 20TH OF MAY, MARKS SOMETHING OF AN IMPORTANT ANNIVERSARY to Your Correspondent.

Because it was on this day 15 years back, 20 May 1993, that my father passed away @ 78 years of age, brought about by emphysema and heart failure aggravated by years of tobacco use on his part.

I still recall him smoking unfiltered Pall Malls wholesale when I was growing up ... only to be forced to quit around 1971-2, whereupon he started turning to chewing tobacco just to kill time.

But he had to quit that, too.

And for his last 2½ years or so, he had to be on oxygen to help with his breathing. Not just oxygen bottles, but also an oxygen concentrator (as converts ordinary air into pure oxygen, the process of which Mein Innkeeper Friend was unable to understand).

And it was largely because of dad's smoking, and the toll it was taking on him, that I have chosen (and wisely) never to take up smoking, even with my mental condition and the stereotype suggesting that "mental defectives" need to smoke all the more so their medications can work more efficently "by providing a synergistic action" as opposed to a mere catalytic such.

(The truth of the matter is that such is not the case; "tars" in cigarette smoke actually absorb the active compounds of many anti-psychotics and anti-depressants--known pharmacologically as monoamine oxidase inhibitors, MAOI's for short--in the bloodstream, rendering such all the more ineffective among mental cases who smoke. Besides, how many psychiatrists and Community Mental Health Workers actually advise their clients to smoke just so their "meds" can work more efficently in the face of established medical evidence that smoking carries serious health risks?)

Meanwhile, Motherdear (herself set to turn 87 in June, G-d willing) is hanging in there in her widowed state, even considering all manner of health problems ensuing in her widowed state as have included:

• episodes of gout;
• loss of liver and pancreatic function to crystallisation, with onset of Type II diabetes;
• surgery to remove some growths in her throat (non-cancerous, in case you're wondering), the scar tissue therefrom known to flare up from time to time;
• surgery on her back to correct spinal problems;
• hip-implant surgery as still shows its effects, thanks to the poor quality of physical therapy she was given post-surgery;
• cataract-removal surgery in one eye as didn't quite heal properly, what with the cataract thus removed being larger than average; and
• emergency surgery to reopen her bowels as were blocked by scar tissue from past internal surgery, recovering in hospital for nearly two months (the which has somehow weakened her since).

Fortunately, though, a Home Health Aide calls on her every weekday except Wednesdays to check up on her and help with household tasks (Wednesdays being left open for medical checkups and other appointments); shopping is left to a brother who lives nearby.

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AND AS WAS THE CASE WITH A MAJOR REUNION ON THE FATHER'S DAY WEEKEND OF 1992, which was the last chance many of us in the family had to see Mom and Dad together (as was her wish all along), this Labour Day weekend will see another reunion of the greater Reed family.

As was the case in '92, the venue will be Camp Winnebago near Caledonia, a facility providing summer camping opportunities for the developmentally challenged.

And if past precedent is anything, many of us are probably wondering if this may be the last opportunity we may see Motherdear ere she passes away....

CERTAIN COMPANIES WHO OPERATE UNDER THE DELUSION OF BEING SOMEHOW "ESSENTIAL" OR OTHERWISE "PROTECTED" FOR ONE REASON OR ANOTHER must have this fondness for whipping up climates of paranoia and fear among employees, acting all along in the fear that someone might actually undermine their organisaton from within to the point of "causing scandal or disgrace***undermining public confidence and trust" all the more.

Especially if the "essential" or "protected" claim is designed solely for keeping employees in line and to scare them out of complaining outside of administrative channels without "exhausting administrative powers" beforehand--complete with all manner of stalling tactics which could be cover for manipulating or otherwise perverting the enquiries.

Likewise with weird and unwholesome religiopolitical elements, especially considering Indecision 2008.

With that in mind, the following "WaiWai" item per the Mainichi Daily News from out Tokyo way (even if questions exist about the credibility or authenticity thereof) may offer some insight on how one can wreck things from within:

A pair of pub operators in suburban Tokyo have been collared by the cops for allegedly employing a handful of 14-year-old girls to work as nightclub hostesses, according to Nikkan Gendai (5/12).

Hiroshi Asada, 36, the owner of the Peach Girl pub in Tokyo's Kasai, and Hiroshi Yasuda, 29, the establishment's manager, were arrested for breaking the Child Welfare Law, and police accuse the pair of employing junior high schoolgirls to toy with the bar's male clientele--with at least four of the 10 girls believed to be no older than 14.

"The junior high hostesses were paid ¥3,000 an hour and worked three to four days a week, getting there at opening time and finishing around 1 in the morning," a police investigation insider tells Nikkan Gendai.

Peach Girl was located in a building not far from Kasai Station on the Tozai Line subway, and at first glance appeared little different to any of the thousands of other hostess clubs in cities across the country.

"There were only ever about six or seven hostesses working at any one time, so it wasn't that big. And most of the hostesses were pretty homely, none of them were top-class beauties," an employee at another hostess bar in the same building tells the lowbrow afternoon tabloid.

"From about the summer of last year, though, there were whispers going around that Peach Girl had the youngest hostesses of anywhere around. Some customers deliberately headed to the bar because they knew there were junior high schoolgirl hostesses working there. The pub boasted of its young hostesses to get more regulars."

Indeed, the child cheesecake service worked wonders for Peach Girl's books, with the club estimated to have raked in as much as ¥5 million a month, a phenomenal amount for a small suburban pub.

The schoolgirl exploitation finally ended when cops picked one of the young children up on the streets as she staggered around drunk one night after a hostessing shift.

"When officers questioned the drunken schoolgirl, she told them she had a part-time job working as a nightclub hostess," the police insider tells Nikkan Gendai. "She'd spent most of the night drinking so hard she was nearly off her face."

It just goes to show that one careless slip can do plenty of damage....

WEIRD AND UNWHOLESOME TYPES AS TURN OUT BEING RACISTS, WHITE SUPREMACISTS--NOT TO MENTION CLOSET APOLOGISTS FOR APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA--are fond of whipping up racist and xenophobic feelings from time to time against Hispanics by suggesting that the Mexicans have secret designs on La Reconquista (as in reclaiming such parts of the United States as were previously under Mexican control) bordering on "race war."

The idea, it turns out, is nothing new.

Witness the infamous Zimmermann Telegram as would be the last straw forcing the hand of the United States into World War I on 6 April 1917; decoded from German ciphers 0075 and 13040, which were broken by Room 40 of British naval intelligence, the same read as follows (emphasis added, and with thanks to Wikipedia):

On the first of February, we intend to begin unrestricted submarine warfare. In spite of this, it is our intention to endeavor to keep the United States of America neutral.

In the event of this not succeeding, we propose an alliance on the following basis with Mexico: That we shall make war together and make peace together. We shall give generous financial support, and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. The details of settlement are left to you.

You are instructed to inform the President [of Mexico] of the above in the greatest confidence as soon as it is certain that there will be an outbreak of war with the United States and suggest that the President, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence with this plan; at the same time, offer to mediate between Japan and ourselves.

Please call to the attention of the President that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England to make peace in a few months.

Wikipedia continues the discussion vis-a-vis the notion of a Mexican reconquista in the face of American entry into World War I:

Mexican President Venustiano Carranza assigned a general to assess the feasibility of a Mexican takeover of their former territories. The general concluded that it would not be possible or even desirable for the following reasons:

• Attempting to re-take the former territories would mean certain war with the United States.

• No matter how "generous" it was, Germany's "financial support" would be worthless. Mexico could not use it to acquire arms, ammunition, or other war supplies, because the United States was the only sizeable arms manufacturer in the Americas. The Royal Navy controlled the Atlantic sea lanes, so Germany could not possibly supply any quantity of arms.

• Even if Mexico had the military means to re-take the territory it would have had severe difficulty accommodating and/or pacifying the large English-speaking population.

Carranza formally declined Zimmermann's proposals on April 14, by which time the U.S. had declared war on Germany.

But then again, if the Mexicans were to seriously consider reconquista, how do we know their munitions and materiél aren't coming from the likes of Cuba or other unstable sources of supply?

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HOW'S THIS FOR "DEFENDING THE SANCTITY AND PURITY OF MARRIAGE" as the sole and exclusive monopoly of between man and woman, especially so considering the California Supreme Court's ruling that The Golden State's constitutional proscription on same-sex marriages is actually unconstitutional?

"QT" in the Chicago Sun-Times had this to say on the issue the other day:

Overlooked chapters

The pastor of a megachurch in Point Loma, Calif., rallying "traditional marriage" supporters against a court ruling that would allow gay marriage in the state:

"It's a spiritual issue, a religious issue. Marriage originated in the Bible."

Exactly.

And as long as we're at it, where is the constitutional amendment requiring that, in accordance with Exodus 21:1-6, any slave who marries while a slave and then is freed must leave his wife behind with the owner of the slaves?

The traditionalists have dropped the ball on this one.

That ought to be something worthy of "swift-boating" the Elmer Gantry Institute for Advanced Religiopolitical Theology with vis-a-vis Defending the Sanctity and Purity of Marriage....

AN ANONYMOUS MESSAGE POSTER TO THE BLOG "DOWN WITH TYRANNY" DESERVES A HAT TIP (SO TO SPEAK) FOR CALLING THE WORLD'S TIMELY ATTENTION (and that of Your Correspondent) to the following video and Open Letter about the reckless excesses of a reckless and misguided ur-RAHOWA itself founded on flawed premises, said ur-RAHOWA already having brought Our Beloved Nation into international discredit and disrepute, not to mention manifest injury upon our "antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity" in the process:

An Open Letter To President Bush:

My nephew, Lt. Keith Heidtman, was killed in Iraq on Memorial Day 2007 when the helicopter he was flying took on heavy enemy fire and crashed just north of Baghdad He left behind a loving mother, father, stepfather, sister, long-time girlfriend and scores of friends and other family members.
Keith was a soldier. He went where he was ordered and he did what he was asked. He did willingly and honorably and was an American hero in the truest sense of the words. Yet, he was in a war propagated by deceit and a misuse of authority - your authority Mr. President.

As Commander-in-Chief you have had at your service some of the finest and bravest troops in world, but you have failed in your obligation to lead them judiciously.

After 9/11 you had overwhelming global support in what should have amounted to a creditable attack on terrorism around the globe. Instead you have soiled the memories of those who died that day in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania by pursuing a personal agenda. Your drive to get into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussien has only served to sidetrack the legitimate War on Terror, to squander valuable American resources, to dismantle American diplomacy and, worst of all, has cost the lives of over 4000 American men and women you chose to put in harms way.

Where is your sense of honor and shame? How many more kids have to die because you can't admit to your mistakes?

It is the average citizen that has done most of the fighting, dying, suffering and mourning in this war. It is the average citizen that you have failed to represent fairly, honestly and compassionately.

Mr. President, your Oath of Office has been a sham. Do you even remember twice swearing to the best of your ability to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States?

During your tenure you have used the Office of the President mostly for personal gain. You lied to Congress and the American public regarding the purposes for invading Iraq; you've conducted illegal wietaps of American citizens; you've used torture against prisoners of war in direct violation of the Geneva Convention; you've held people prisoner without charging them or providing for legal representation. The list continues to grow and your support in this country continues to dwindle.

Mr. President, in your zeal to find and punish those who would seek to do damage to United States, have you ever tried looking in the mirror?
My family, like well over 4000 other American families, has had their hearts torn to shreds. Keith and the rest of these brave men and women made the ultimate sacrifice for their country which is an honorable and heroic deed. Yet, they were also let down by the leaders of this country who have served less than honorably.

Mr. President, you once said that you're "the decider," but it has been the American people that have had to pay for your erroneous decision making.. The price has been way too steep.
Keith, You will live in our hearts forever.

T. O'Brien

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MEMO TO READERS: Your Correspondent urges you to share this Open Letter with your online circle--but do so responsibly. "Spamming" only undermines to the point of casting discredit.

Remember: "Knowledge is Power." But don't try qualifying that with the argument that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." 

AFTER A SOMEWHAT SUNNY MORNING, SKIES OUT THIS WAY ARE STARTING TO CLOUD OVER, AS IF RAIN COULD BE ABOUT TO START any minute now in this the Minnwissippi.

Which is what the forecast calls for into the evening, and with conditions improving in time for the Memorial Day long weekend.

No doubt the farmers and planters want some seriously dry conditions for once....

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IF YOU THINK THE "MORALLY SUPERIOR" AMERICANS HAVE THE GLOBAL MONOPOLY ON COMPLAINTS AND GRIPING ABOUT FOREIGNERS "STEALING" JOBS from the native-born, in the process worsening already-serious unemployment levels ... consider the plight of post-apartheid South Africa.

There, over the course of the last few days, violence against foreigners--mostly Zimbabweans fleeing the breakdown of the Robert Mugabe regime--has reached chaotic extremes, especially so in and around Johannesburg, where the lion's share of refugees migrate to to find decent jobs.

And as was the case in Kenya following disputed Presidential elections over the holiday season last year, refugees are finding where churches are not exactly safe places of refuge from the ultraviolence: Several churches where refugees have taken shelter were themselves attacked by goon squads blaming the foreigners for high unemployment, chronic housing shortages and criminality.

(Sounds almost like certain elements here in the "morally superior" United States Who Should Know Better, no?)

But then again, let's not forget where the apartheid regime sanctioned the wholesale import of black "guest workers" for mining positions from across Africa, reinforced by the likes of influx control, the pass laws and the beerhall system to keep black workers all the more in deliberate poverty and ignorance...

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HOW DO WE KNOW THAT THE FOLLOWING GRAND DELUSIONS OF NEOCONSERVATISM aren't really coming by way of the influence of Al Cohol, let alone Serious Mental Disorders which the messengers thereof are reluctant to face?

1. The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang suggesting @ the weekend that America is turning all the more conservative, and will remain conservative (as it were) "now, tomorrow, forever."
   (Even if it means perverting Holy Scriptures to justify a connexion, howbeit faulty, between Low Church Christianity and free-market capitalism as Great White Father.)
2. The Neoconservative bumper-sticker slogan-cum-article of faith "Government is not the solution; government is the problem."

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AND HOW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR HIS FRAUDULENCY TO ESCAPE CHARGES OF DOUBLETHINK over energy policy (let alone its cousin of blackwhite) considering where:

• on the one hand, he unsuccessfully called upon Saudi Arabia to increase export oil output heading into the summer Busy Season in the "morally superior" United States; but,
• on the other hand, he suggested to the World Economic Forum in Sharm el-Sheikh days later that the increase in Saudi oil output which he had requested (howbeit unsuccessfuly) would have actually been inadequate to meet American energy use requirements?

(Not to mention still insisting that as-yet-untapped oilfields in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge along Alaska's North Slope can help meet the Lower 48's oil and gas requirements, notwithstanding where getting these same fields into production will take about 2-3 years time to permit the installation of requisite infrastructure ... and even then, said oil reserves are unlikely to meet American energy requirements beyond the proverbial drop in the bucket.

(Isn't he, perhaps, forgetting about the capped-by-deliberate-design wells in the Williston Basin of North Dakota? What would it take to have those wells uncapped and brought into production short of further tax "incentives" which would only worsen the National Debt?)

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AND SPEAKING OF THE BUDGET DEFICIT, the "official" Government estimate, based on "careful and cautious estimates" (read: deliberate accounting tricks serving only the Great Within and their droogs among Neoconservatives generally) is $162 billion.

USA Today, for its part, begs to differ: Using generally-accepted accounting procedures--the same ones followed by the Fortune 500 and the Inc. 250, as a matter of fact--the same deficit turns out to be a massive (now don't laugh) $57.3 trillion (which, itself, may be a bit misleading as such includes Social Security and Medicare obligations for the next generation in the calculations).

Guaranteed to be a propaganda talking point by the Ron Paul crowd in calling for the "complete and final reinstatement of sound money policies;" i.e., returning to pre-1933 monetary policies as required the dollar's linking to gold @ a rate of $20.67/troy ounce @ 20 dwt. (pennyweight) or 480 grains to the ounce.

Making the "gold dollar" worth 1.0335 dwt./24.804 grains (there are 24 grains in the pennyweight, know).

(But then again, one contributing factor to the notorious German hyperflation following World War I was the Allies having seized much of the Reichsbank's gold reserves for war reparations, so forcing the Germans on paper currency as would eventually become worthless.)  

more cat pictures

FOR SHEER CRUDITY OF PARANOIA ABOUT THE LOSS OF "ANTIENT AND PECUILAR RIGHTS, PRIVILEGES AND POWERS" ENTITLED RULING ELITES in certain regimes, natural disasters seem to bring out the worst in regimes.

Which, come to think of it, reflects the situation in China and the so-called "Union of Myanmar" following a recent earthquake and cyclone, respectively, with wholesale death and devastation.

Or so Naomi Klein explains for The Nation, which you can read about right here.

And which could provide some worthwhile lessons for we "morally superior" Americans heading into Indecision 2008.