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YOUR CORRESPONDENT ACKNOWLEDGES WHERE THAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY WAS INSPIRED BY A T-SHIRT seen @ today's Memorial Day observance here in Winona by Your Correspondent on someone distributing programmes for the same.

Said shirt featuring Old Gloryt inside a silhouette map of the Lower 48, below which the message read in a somewhat elegant script "Faded Glory 2008."

(It's the kind as would be worn by such of a certain class; i.e., such whose patriotic feelings and tendencies are easily-influenced, primitive to the point of crude and can be said, @ turns, to be jingoistic.)

In any case, credit His Fraudulency's Great Within, and their schemes, dreams, machinations and plots for all the more compromising the glory that was the United States of America to the point where weird and unwholesome elements as much from within as from without can quickly undermine the same to the point where that which "patriots" dread all the more--that of the Evil Empire otherwise known as the "New World Order" "usurping our antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity"--can be all the easier accomplished.

Especially when you stop and consider where the Great Within, and their friends weird and/or unwholesome, played upon an easily-manipulate patriot love in Those Who Should Know Better to further inflame racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic and even homophobic feelings under the guise of "patriot love." And even more so when you consider the possibility that such enforced patriotism may be an attempt to evade responsibility as much as liability on the Great Within's part and parcel for not only the quagmire known as the ur-RAHOWA Against Terrorism, but also its contributing casus belli of the Unfortunate Events of 9/11.

(And perhaps Fox Prolefeed deserves some blame for helping contribute to America's Faded and Fading Glory through pandering to the most latent of patriotic feelings in its audience of Those Who Should Know Better.)

So what exactly have they to hide for once, especially as Americans start realising they were handed a bill of goods under the guise of "reclaiming our past honour and glory"?

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EN 'N ANDER DING: Is it just me, or is Kansas being targeted for all the tornadoes they've seen of late as Divine Judgement, so to speak, for harbouring weird and unwholesome types whipping up Hate by invoking His Name (e.g., the so-called "Westboro Baptist Church" of Rev. Fred Phelps)--and for as long as they have?

(As in the 112 years since William Allen White's infamous editorial "What's The Matter With Kansas?" was published in his Emporia Gazette, quickly winning considerable national attention--and, for Kansas, laughingstock status @ the nation's expense perhaps reaching its acme with Doc Brinkley's goat-gland racket in Milford.) 

APOLOGIES, READERS, IF SOME OF YOU FIND THE FOLLOWING TENDING TO SACRELIGE FOR AMERICAN TROOPS on Memorial Day ... but then again, Your Correspondent was thinking @ some length about a routine which the late John Doremus would trot out from time to time on his programme known as "The Litany of the Poilu," "poilu" being French slang for their own troops.

The following is by way of an online transcription of a World War I memoir by Kathleen Burke entitled The White Road to Verdun, and I trust, readers, that such may be found insightful regardless of whose armies one is fighting for, inasmuch as the Litany of the Poilu has that cosmopolitan sort of quality--along with some obvious truths about war:

• Of two things one is certain: either you're mobilised or you're not mobilised.
• If you're not mobilised, there is no need to worry; if you are mobilised, of two things one is certain: either you're behind the lines or you're on the front.
• If you're behind the lines, there is no need to worry; if you're on the front, of two things one is certain: either you're resting in a safe place or you're exposed to danger.
• If you're resting in a safe place, there is no need to worry; if you're exposed to danger, of two things one is certain: either you're wounded or you're not wounded.
• If you're not wounded, there is no need to worry; if you are wounded, of two things one is certain: either you're wounded seriously or you're wounded slightly.
• If you're wounded slightly, there is no need to worry; if you're wounded seriously, of two things one is certain: either you recover or you die.
• If you recover, there is no need to worry; if you die, you can't worry.

THEIR NAME ENDURETH FOREVER

LEST WE FORGET

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FOR THOSE OF YOU IN THE UNITED STATES AS ARE UNAWARE OF IT, this happens to be the Memorial Day Long Weekend.

And for our British friends, this is the Spring Bank Holiday Long Weekend (which replaced the traditional Whit Monday holiday some years ago).

Here in the Minnwissippi, it just so happens to be cool and @ once breezy with thin, hazy cloud muting the sun in its own way ... not to mention our seeing the likelihood of serious storms Sunday afterlunch into evening, with maybe a slight recurrnce on the holiday Monday.

(Speaking of Monday, look for a special treat in this space in recognition thereof.)

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AND DOESN'T IT SEEM AS IF WELD COUNTY, COLORADO HAS BECOME TORNADO CENTRAL IN RECENT YEARS, what with National Weather Servce data noting where the general area thereof has seen more tornadoes than anywhere else in the Continental United States over the last 50 years?

Just yesterday, in fact, that reputation was reaffirmed when a series of tornadoes struck Weld County, causing substantial property damage and @ least one known casualty.

Sorry, Dorothy--Kansas isn't all that infamous for tornadoes as it used to be....

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SO THE TERRIBLE-TEMPERED MR. BANG OF INDECISION 2008 HAS RELEASED HIS MEDICAL RECORDS ahead of the holiday long weekend--as if wanting some sort of cheap and cheerful disractionary from potentially more distressing news likely to develop throughout.

Confirming the likelihood of its distractionary intent is Media Matters for America, which hath it:

In a May 22 article, The New York Times reported that Sen. John McCain's campaign "is set to release 400 pages of medical records, including documents related to his melanoma surgery in August 2000, to a tightly controlled group of reporters on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend." On that day, according to the Times, "the campaign will allow a small pool of reporters access to the records from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. Pacific time in a conference room at the Copper Wind Resort in Phoenix, near the Mayo Clinic Scottsdale. The reporters will be allowed to take notes but not remove or photocopy the records." In separate appearances on MSNBC Live on May 22, NBC News political director Chuck Todd suggested first that the McCain campaign timed the records' availability to minimize coverage of them and later that the campaign would, in fact, be successful in that endeavor. But, in fact, it is within NBC's power to prevent such a strategy from working by actually covering the issue adequately.

During the 9 a.m. ET hour of MSNBC Live on May 22, discussing the scheduled gathering of potential Republican vice presidential candidates at McCain's Arizona ranch this weekend, Todd stated: "I sort of call it a 'shiny object' timing. You know, it's like, pay no attention to this other news that's coming out tomorrow, and that is Senator John McCain's medical records, which could end up becoming a dominating story line for a couple days. Instead, very smartly, the McCain campaign or somebody leaked out the fact that three potential running mates ... are going to be going to the McCains' ranch." Later in the day, during the 1 p.m. ET hour of MSNBC Live, Todd said, "I think it's very helpful to McCain, frankly, that there is going to be a focus on the veep stuff, when the -- so that there isn't obsession on the medical records."

Separately, during the 1 p.m. ET hour of the MSNBC Live, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell said of the announcement regarding the medical records: "That news is likely to get buried at the start of the Memorial Day weekend." 

One issue as still needs to be addressed vis-a-vis The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang's medical state would have to be his mental capacity, considering his prisoner-of-war past and the psychoemotinal cruelty, harm and other indignities suffered @ the hands of the North Vietnamese which could come back to haunt him.

Especially if he unintentionally lets slip some Bad Words or otherwise goes into a spontaneous tantrum live and on camera--or otherwise winds up on YouTube.

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AND STAYING WITH THE TERRIBLE-TEMPERED MR. BANG FOR THE NONCE, it appears as if he may have already lost serious support from the Religiopolitical Right's "hard core," if not already, thanks to his disavowing the endorsement of Rev. John Hagee following some rather infamous remarks tending to trivialise the Holocaust the other day.

Now, if he would only distance himself from his other "spiritual advisor," by name and stylee of Rev. Rod Parsley....

(But then again, if the Religiopolitical Right, in its hard-wired Zealotry and True Belief, starts disassociating themselves with TTMB en bloc, they might want to start reassessing their electoral options, even if it means a wholesale boycott of Indecision 2008 for want of "correct" Presidential material who can kowtow to their articles of faith.)

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AND THE PROMOTERS OF THAT PATHETICALLY AWFUL SINGSONG MEME "CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION! CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION!!" will doubtless be celebrating in the streets of Branson this Holiday Long Weekend @ the news that a Texas state appeals court has thrown out proceedings filed by child-welfare authorities against members of the so-called "Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" @ their Yearning For Zion compound in West Texas.

"Highly incredible" claims were cited in dismissing the charges ... but then again, the "Christian Persecution!" meme crowd will want to take a more cautious approach for the nonce, pending the likelihood of appeal to the Texas State Supreme Court.

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OPEC'S SECRETARY-GENERAL HAS GONE ON RECORD AS SUGGESTING THAT THE HIGH OIL PRICES OF LATE ON THE SPOT MARKETS (reaching a new record of US$135/bbl. just yesterday before settling lower) are not so much the result of reduced crude-oil production (especially among such states not in OPEC) or fields going out of production, or close to it, as speculation among investors.

In evidence, there was cited the Asian socoeconomic meltdown of the mid-late 1990's triggering an outright freefall of crude oil prices within measurable distance.

Which has Your Correspondent wondering if we may be seeing nothing short of Hunt Brothers-stylee behaviour in the crude-oil, natural-gas and refined petroleum products markets involving His Frudulency's Great Within and/or dear and close droogs thereof, unaware all the while that a significant margin call may be coming within measurable distance as they will be unable to cover.

Which, in its turn, will translate into an outright collapse of the petroleum futures markets and, in its turn, crude oil and refined products futures sometime before the July 4th Long Weekend--just as the Hunt Brothers' attempts to corner the silver markets in early 1980 to devious advantage ended when they were unable to meet margin calls.

And you'll never guess what the Great Within and/or their dear and close droogs are using to dommo the petroleum futures markets (or try to):

You guessed it: Ander Mense se Geld.

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IN ANY CASE, APART FROM THE SPECIAL TREAT PLANNED FOR MONDAY TO MARK THE MEMORIAL DAY HOLIDAY, Your Correspondent will essentially be on blogging hiatus throughout the long weekend.

During which he hopes to be setting up his new social networking site for such having connexions to The Waterpark Capital of the World in the form and fashion of:

• such having direct involvement or connexion with the "water business" (as in tourism) on a personal level;
• such residents of the Waterpark Capital as have to deal with the tourist hordes, yet have no direct "water business" involvement (or @ least an indirect such);
• families as have a long-established tradition of vacationing in the Dells region (even before becoming the Waterpark Capital, come to think of it); and
• current and past summer employees of the "water business."

Such, hopefully, being up and running ere the Holiday Long Weekend winds down. Further details as to its readiness will be forthcoming.    

READER, YOU MAY RECALL WHERE, YESTERDAY, I TOOK NOTE OF A PARTICULAR CHAIN LETTER WHICH MAY MAKE THE ROUNDS AGAIN before too long, thanks to the imminence of high unemployment and/or major socioeconomic dislocation which makes such chain letters all the more widely circulated--especially so among lower-income and socioeconomically-vulnerable circles.

The which I posted as a warning more than anything of what to watch out for in your e-mail in case that which is being whispered around does come to pass.

All of which, for the most part, can ultimately be traced back to the folly of His Fraudulency's Great Within.

Notwithstanding where those behind the letter will love to invoke the majesty and authority of 18 USC 1302 and 1341 to create an aura of legitimacy among the unsophisticate, nonetheless the exact opposite is the case.

And with that in mind, may I provide you, as a public service, with the text of 18 USC 1302:

Whoever knowingly deposits in the mail, or sends or delivers by mail:

Any letter, package, postal card, or circular concerning any lottery, gift enterprise, or similar scheme offering prizes dependent in whole or in part upon lot or chance;

Any lottery ticket or part thereof, or paper, certificate, or instrument purporting to be or to represent a ticket, chance, share, or interest in or dependent upon the event of a lottery, gift enterprise, or similar scheme offering prizes dependent in whole or in part upon lot or chance;

Any check, draft, bill, money, postal note, or money order, for the purchase of any ticket or part thereof, or of any share or chance in any such lottery, gift enterprise, or scheme;

Any newspaper, circular, pamphlet, or publication of any kind containing any advertisement of any lottery, gift enterprise, or scheme of any kind offering prizes dependent in whole or in part upon lot or chance, or containing any list of the prizes drawn or awarded by means of any such lottery, gift enterprise, or scheme, whether said list contains any part or all of such prizes; or

Any article described in section 1953 of this title -

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both; and for any subsequent offense shall be imprisoned not more than five years.

(No doubt providing plenty of opportunities for Philadelphia lawyer types to drive coach and horses through, especially with respect to the word "knowingly," by which criminal-defence lawyers hope to derail any case ensuing.)

On to 18 USC 1341:

Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, or to sell, dispose of, loan, exchange, alter, give away, distribute, supply, or furnish or procure for unlawful use any counterfeit or spurious coin, obligation, security, or other article, or anything represented to be or intimated or held out to be such counterfeit or spurious article, for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice or attempting so to do, places in any post office or authorized depository for mail matter, any matter or thing whatever to be sent or delivered by the Postal Service, or deposits or causes to be deposited any matter or thing whatever to be sent or delivered by any private or commercial interstate carrier, or takes or receives therefrom, any such matter or thing, or knowingly causes to be delivered by mail or such carrier according to the direction thereon, or at the place at which it is directed to be delivered by the person to whom it is addressed, any such matter or thing, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If the violation affects a financial institution, such person shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.

As if that weren't enough, such who perpetuate a variant of this scam using PayPal or similar online payment services will likewise invoke these same statutes to, again, create an aura of legitimacy. Unfortunately, though, such would come under 18 USC 1343, which provides as thus:

Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. If the violation affects a financial institution, such person shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both.

(Come to think of it, the Internet would be considered an agency of "wire, radio or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce" for the purposes of this section, inasmuch as the Internet relies on telephonic or CATV wirelines for the transmission and dissemiation thereof.)

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AS IF THAT WEREN'T ENOUGH, you need to consider the likelihood that many versions of The Letter in question will include glowing-sounding testimonials seeking to further the false aura of credibility for the whole, particularly so from the standpoint of earnings likely to be realised.

In matter of fact, however, such making these claims are probably nothing more than "singers" for and on behalf of the real perps behind the scheme, all expected to follow a carefully-prepared and -nuanced script.

Making things all the more difficult to verify is the fact of these endorsers being identified only by a generic city and state address, with no further specifics such as street or other postal address.

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EQUALLY WORTHY OF YOUR RAISING SUSPICIONS ABOUT THE SINCERITY AND EFFECTIVENESS OF THE SCHEME AS A QUICK WAY TO MAKE BIG-BIG MONEY is the use of flawed exponential maths to further create an aura of misplaced credibility.

First, what those who are the "real" distributors of the scheme don't want you to know is that actually earning the sums advertised is conditional upon all who receive the letter actually responding as expected.

And what's more, the odds are stacked against you, as well as any chance on your part of "earning $50,000 in just 90 days with little or no effort:" Considering where you have to send this same letter to five people, who, in their turn, are expected to send same on to five others, and so on ad infinitium, the following will serve to demonstrate what I am saying here:

5
25
125
625
3,125
15,625
78,125
390,625
1,953,125
9,765,625
48,828,125
244,140,625
1,220,703,125
6,103,515,625

Herein lies its fatal flaw and tragedy.

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YOUR CORRESPONDENT WOULD LIKE TO OWE A DEBT OF GRATITUDE TO FINDLAW.COM for providing the texts of the relevant statutes.

Let these be understood by one and all. 

FOR SOME WEEKS NOW, THE EXAGGERATOR HAS EMBRACED AS ITS MOTTO an adaptation of that which was used by the Canadian pulp men's magazine The Colonel, as was published during World War II out of Toronto to take advantage of wartime import restrictions by the Canadian Government of "non-essential" American goods such as pulp magazines of a disreputable sort:

"Don't read the headlines; read The Exaggerator:
Smartness, with a hint of pretension."

(Never mind that The Colonel's forte was raunchy, double-entendre-laden humour in form of jokes, stories and cartoons that were considered hot stuff for their times. Not to mention chauvinistic, come to think of it.)

In any case, back to the point of this essay--which Your Correspondent will let NewsHounds take up (italics from original):

FOX and Friends [on] 5/20/08 continued the story of Ed Gillespie's letter to NBC in which he accused them of deceptively editing an interview by Richard Engel of Bush. This furthers the meme pushed by Bill O'Reilly that MSNBC, NBC News, NBC, and General Electric are part of the liberal media and shouldn't be trusted, the biggest Talking Point of all: Don't trust 'the media,' just US.

Doocy introduced that the interview aired, he believed, on the Today Show on Monday, neglecting to tell viewers it had already aired twice, once with the edited remarks, on Sunday. Alisyn Camerota appeared momentarily to be defending NBC, saying that Bush gave a complicated answer (actually a non-answer) to interviewer Engel and NBC "boiled it down" for the presentation. That said, she added that she thought if you have an exclusive sit-down with the president, you air the whole thing. Oh really? When Bill O'Reilly has had his "exclusives" with Bush they were pre-recorded and edited, as is everything O'Reilly says. (And we know why, don't we?)

Geez, even Brian Kilmeade understood what Bush was saying, and voiced another inadvertant truth: if Bush had just answered the question directly (was he talking about Barack Obama when he made the "appeasement" comments?) this wouldn't be an issue. But like Camerota before him, he didn't let it stand; he added that "there's a problem with the NBC track record and there's a problem with the cable network. It leans way to the left."

Steve Doocy enthusiastically agreed and dredged up another issue, courtesy of Gillespie's enumeration of FOX talking points in his letter to NBC pres Steve Capus, specifically NBC labeling Iraq's internal fighting a civil war. Doocy also noted that David Gregory's program is simulcast on AirAmerica - helloooo! And if you've been watching the Factor, you know O'Reilly has been taking parent company GE to task for doing business with Iranians.

They didn't mention that the interview originally aired on Sunday's "Today" show, including the sentences edited out. It was (still is) available in full on the MSNBC website. The edited version to which Gillespie objects appeared on "Nightly News" Sunday and the "Today" show Monday. Why this is any different than FOX using edited clips of the Hillary Clinton or John McCain interviews has not been made clear. It seems the White House is fully immersing itself in the 2008 election process and using its considerable power in the media for partisan purposes. Just as FOX News has long been the mouthpiece for the administration, the White House is now returning the favor. Distort and amplify, the echo chamber now includes the Oval Office.

How much of this recent ramping up is in response to Howard Kurtz's expose of the scope of the hostilities between the two corporations? Unfortunately for democracy, this kind of narcissistic infighting passes for news and gets good ratings, and it IS sweeps month.

The moral of this story, boys and girls?

"Don't read the headlines; read The Exaggerator:
Smartness, with a hint of pretension."

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IN ANY CASE, YOUR CORRESPONDENT WOULD APPRECIATE YOUR SUPPORT, ESPECIALLY THAT of the fiscal kind.

Which you can do by way of:

• the Virtual Tip Jar (fully encrypted for your safety);
• the online shopping available (featuring Amazon.com, Amazon.ca and Amazon.co.uk);
• joining PayPal (so long as you use it for good, remember); or
• joining one of the following affiliate programmes, especially those of you with a blog or website of your own:

Any way you slice it, Your Correspondent ... and The Exaggerator ... both win in the end.