NO WONDER THE ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS IN "WINNING OF HEARTS AND MINDS" (ESPECIALLY THE EASILY-LED SUCH) THROUGH CHEAP AND CHEERFUL PROLEFEED must enjoy living in the heighth of arrogance @ the expense (or so they think) of President Obama in these interesting times--or so they think.

Case in point, per today's edition of The Progress Report, a daily e-mail newsletter from the Campaign for American Progress--specifically, the lead item in the "Under the Radar" section:

RADICAL RIGHT -- LIMBAUGH MOCKS RECESSION DURING SPEECH TO WEALTHY RIGHT-WING DONORS: On Monday night, Rush Limbaugh came to Washington, D.C. to address the President's Club Dinner, a meeting of wealthy donors and supporters of the conservative Heritage Foundation. The audience included Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), as well as various millionaire Heritage Foundation trustees, like Thomas Saunders. After more or less reprising his radio show routine, Limbaugh went on to brag about his $400 million contract with Clear Channel Communications. As he continued to gloat about his program's success, Limbaugh mocked the idea that Americans are suffering. "I've never had financially a down year. There's supposedly a recession, but we've got -- what is this May? Back in February we already had 102 percent of 2008 overbooked for 2009. So I always believed that if we're going to have a recession, just don't participate," Limbaugh said. Limbaugh is no stranger to belittling the poor and dismissing the economic troubles of others. In March, Limbaugh scoffed at a question on homeless children, asking, "Would somebody tell me the last time you saw a kid sleeping under a bridge?" As Media Matters reported, even Limbaugh's employer Clear Channel is struggling under the weight of the recession. Already this year, Clear Channel has "shed nearly 3,000 employees, or 12 percent of its workforce." While Limbaugh jets around the country in his $54 million Gulfstream G550, laughing off the recession, does he realize that his own bloated contract is contributing to the rising unemployment rate?

So, ye Zealots and True Believers in neoconservatism, what justification is there for holding the Lower Classes to ridicule or contempt, your supposedly sacred "unwritten custom and tradition" entitling you to supposed "antient and peculiar rights, privileges and powers***as of Natural Right," not to mention "the Natural Law, the Laws of Nature and of Nature's G-d"?

Doesn't that arrogance sound a little bit like Fascism?

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

MEANWHILE, WHILE GETTING MY HAIR CUT DOWN TO A CREW CUT AHEAD OF THE IMPENDING SUMMER @ THE COST CUTTERS HERE IN WINONA this morning, I decided to get ready, in a small sort of way, for the annual trip to Wisconsin Dells later in the summer by getting myself a bottle of Malibu Swimmers' Water Action Shampoo, which (according to the label) can also be used as a body wash.

I, for one, would highly recommend this for such planning to spend any significant and measurable amounts of time among the waterparks, waterpark resorts and even motel swimming pools and spas of the Waterpark Capital; the rather miniscule cakes of soap stocked in motel and resort rooms, or the shower gels some such have started turning to, are unlikely to do much for hair and skin as have come into contact with the highly-chlorinated water used among the waterparks and the motels For Obvious Reasons, not to mention such chemicals used in whirlpool baths and spas among motels so offering. Even your local dermatologist will tell you that swimming-pool and waterpark-grade chlorine, over prolonged time, can only damage hair and skin, and regular soaps and body washes can make things all the more difficult.

The same can be said for sea water, for those among you still preferring to take your time "down the shore."

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THE MORE EXTREME SPECIMENS OF LOW-CHURCH CHRISTIAN ZEALOTRY AND TRUE BELIEF MUST HAVE THIS FETISH for holding dear as an article of faith anti-Semitism most goodthoughtful (in Orwellian Newspeak, orthodox without question or reservation) in the name of Helathy Christian Love.

Especially the "G-d doesn't hear the prayers of Jews" sort.

Meanwhile, Jay Michaelson, who writes a column for the Jewish weekly Forward entitled "The Polymath," offers up these comments on how Jews and the Talmud approached the issue of the Christus as is rather enlightening and instructive:

The joke, if that’s what it is, goes like this: “You’ll have to forgive us Jews for being a little nervous. Two thousand years of Christian love have worn down our nerves.”

That says it all, doesn’t it? The scars of antisemitism and missionary activity, the pathos-drenched sense of humor, the contempt for Christianity — this is certainly how I regarded our local majority religion as I was growing up. When I was a child, Christianity was like the big, stupid bully: at once idiotic, and overwhelmingly powerful. Couldn’t they see how ridiculous their religion was? A virgin birth? Santa Claus? An Easter Bunny? A messiah who got killed, but actually died for our sins? And yet, these were the people running our country, telling us which days we get off from school and which we don’t, and playing their insidious music every winter.

If the books the Forward receives for review are any indication, I am not alone in my neurosis about Yeshu ben Yoseph. Though nothing, it seems, will match the never-ending torrent of books about the Holocaust, these past few years have seen a small mountain of Jesus books arrive on my desk, most of them not worthy of review. Screeds about how Jesus got Judaism wrong, or how Christians got Jesus wrong, or how much better we are than they are — these are books my younger self would have written.

Surely, some of the Jesus fad is due to the success of David Klinghoffer’s 2005 book, “Why the Jews Rejected Jesus.” (Answer: We’re the chosen people — a nation, not universalists.) But I think a lot of it is also due to our increased confidence as an assimilated minority in the United States. Where once we could have been tortured or burned for not accepting Christ, now we can publish books criticizing him.

It was not always thus. Indeed, the texts discussed in the best book of the recent crop, Peter Schafer’s “Jesus in the Talmud,” were once considered so outrageous that they were self-censored from European editions of the Talmud. Not that the attempt succeeded: Christian authorities burned the Talmud anyway, and antisemitism continued unabated. But the censorship did succeed somewhat; these texts are practically unknown even today.

And they are still somewhat scandalous. What Schafer shows is that the rabbis of the Talmud knew the New Testament well enough to parody it and were concerned enough about the growth of the Jewish-Christian sect to condemn the testament. And they did so in unsparing terms.

The image of Jesus that one gets from the Talmud is that of an illicit, sex-crazed black magician who uses trickery to lead Israel astray. In BT Sanhedrin 103a, Jesus is depicted as a poor disciple who “spoiled his food,” which Schafer speculates may be a euphemism for sexual misconduct: “to eat the dish” being a recognized Talmudic euphemism known for the sex act itself. A later emendation adds that he “practiced magic and led Israel astray.” And the virgin birth is ridiculed as a cover-up of Jesus’ true parentage: His mother was an “illicit woman” (another Talmudic locution), perhaps even a prostitute.

Strong stuff — no wonder they don’t teach it in Sunday school. But fascinating, as well, as long as, of course, we don’t take it too seriously (which, doubtless, some Jews do). The texts Schafer adduces — all of them relatively late, dating to the third- or fourth-century C.E., suggesting a conscious effort to fight the upstart sect — show that the Talmudic rabbis did not reject Jesus for the noble reasons that Klinghoffer and his ilk suggest. At least according to these texts, they rejected him because they thought he was evil, or saw him as a threat.

The most notorious of all the “Jesus texts,” however, is BT Sanhedrin 43a, which describes the halachic procedure of Jesus’ trial and execution. This is notorious, of course, because for nearly 2,000 years, Christian authorities have been blaming the Jews for killing Jesus, even though the New Testament itself makes clear that it’s the Romans who actually did the deed.

Shockingly, however, the Talmud does not shirk responsibility for Jesus’ death. On the contrary, it says that he deserved it and that the Jews did it themselves. Jesus was, the text relates, a sorcerer, an idolater and a heretic who led Israel to idolatry. His conviction was entirely just, and his execution — stoning and then hanging — was carried out in strict accordance with rabbinic law.

Why would the Talmud make such a claim? Schafer speculates it is to undermine the Gospels’ account and empower the rabbis. In the Gospels’ account, the rabbis are tools, almost, of Rome. In the Talmud’s account, they are powerful — so powerful that they condemned the hero of the Christian sect to his brutal death. (Believe it or not, there are actually even more graphic texts, which Schafer includes in his book. Suffice to say, their gruesome account of hell puts even Dante to shame. But I’ll leave that out of this family newspaper.)

What’s fascinating about reading these texts together with Schafer’s careful and thorough commentary is that the ambivalence about Jesus, which I experienced as a young man, seems to be already in place back in the fourth century. On the one hand, Jesus is beneath contempt. On the other, he is dangerously powerful. These texts were written before the church became the most powerful force on Earth, but they wouldn’t be out of place among the books I chose not to include here.

Indeed, I’m sure that there are some readers who may have preferred these comments not be published at all. The texts in Schafer’s book are still dangerous. They still might incite violence against Jews. And they threaten decades of progress in Jewish-Christian relations.

One wonders when, if ever, we Jews will be able to heal from the trauma of Christian oppression and actually learn from, while still differentiating ourselves from, Christian teaching and tradition. Along my own spiritual path, I’ve been amazed at how much I learn from the teachings of other traditions — Buddhism, Hinduism, Paganism, Sufism — yet how jittery I get when it comes to Christianity. Yes, like many Jews, I have an appreciation for the teachings of Jesus, and I even wrote my master’s thesis on Paul and the Talmud. But this isn’t enough. I want to understand Christ the way Christians do — not to become one of them, but in order to enrich my own religious life. I want to learn from them how to have a personal relationship with a personal, humanized, embodied God who cares, and who saves. I want to experience Jesus as a human being enlightened enough to see everyone as holy, even the impure, the leprous and the marginalized. And I want to follow his example, seeing all my fellow human beings and myself as sons and daughters of God.

Four years ago, I developed some of these thoughts in an essay in Zeek magazine. I playfully titled the piece “How I Finally Came To Accept Christ in My Heart,” explaining the irony in the first paragraph. At a conference where the magazines were for sale, someone saw that title, took the entire stack of magazines and threw it on the floor, proceeding to scream at the bookseller for selling missionary trash.

Well, I guess you’ll have to forgive us Jews for still being a little nervous…

As Your Correspondent is fond of quoting the ur-National Hymn of Disneyland and Walt Disney World, "it's a small world, after all ..."

(He acknowledges having visited the former only once.)

DAME RUMOUR, PAINTED FULL OF TONGUES, HATH IT THAT TOPLESS PHOTOS OF SO-CALLED "MARRIAGE DEFENDER" CARRIE PREJEAN ARE EXTANT, and could easily be her undoing with the so-called "National Organisation for Marriage," whose articles of faith call for "protecting the sanctity, sachristy and purity of Traditional Marriage" (as expects the epicene to be little more than sideshow freaks touring less-enlightened parts of the country for cheap laughs among the ranks of Kankerdom thus resident).

How do we know the photos in question are authentic and have not been computer-manipulated or otherwise retouched in any way, shape or form (including the use of programmes like Adobe Photoshop for corrupt and perverted purposes)?

And how do we know these photos aren't really some class of a blackmail scheme?

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

ANOTHER "PATRIOTIC" CAMPAIGN THE ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS IN NEOCONSERVATISM WOULD JUST LOVE, not to mention Bill "No-Spin Zone" O'Reilly pushing heavily on air--from the so-called "People's Republic of China," by way of the British gazetta The Independent (gimme-cap tip to RawStory.com):

In an effort to kick-start the Chinese economy, Communist Party officials are being asked to do their bit – by smoking. In Hubei province's Gongan County, the order has come down from above that local government staff must consume 23,000 cartons of locally made cigarettes every year, which translates into a lung-busting 400 cartons for most council departments, and 140 cartons for each school.

If the bureaucrats and civil servants fail to smoke the required amount, their department risks losing out on its full share of the smoking allowance of four million yuan (US$586,209/C$689,675/£392,000/€439,600/INR28,867,883/¥58,008,353/A$789,389/NZ$1,010,800). Gongan County hopes to retrieve losses from cigarette income tax with the decree, said Chen Nianzu, of the council's cigarette market supervision team. "We are guiding people to help contribute to the local economy," he told The Hubei Daily. Under the measures, workers who do not puff local brands can be fined.

The patriotic smoking drive follows pressure on party officials in Hefei province earlier this year to buy flats to keep the property market afloat.

China has 350 million smokers and millions of people die of smoking-related diseases every year. The government has introduced no-smoking areas and child education campaigns to try to get people to give up the habit.

No wonder conservatives want the Lower Classes smoking all the more, especially when the excise on tobacco can be kept all the lower "in the national interest" and/or "cultural heritage" can be justified as a defence to smoking-law violations.

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

AND TALKING ABOUT "STIMULATING THE ECONOMY," Your Correspondent has a worthwhile reason for all you blog visitors, via EntreCard or otherwise, doing your online shopping here:

Videlicet, his desire to contribute part of the proceeds he can get from your online shopping misadventures towards Reduction of the National Debt, in case you needed clear and compelling reason to shop online generally and @ this hilariously snarky blog specifically.

Or are there clear and compelling reasons for leaving the National Debt alone and taking no action on it in the first place? (And PLEASE, spare us the platitude about "political reasons" justifying no action against said National Debt....)

BEFORE GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS, I'D LIKE TO START BY ASKING HOW YOU VISITORS (BOTH FROM ENTRECARD AND OTHERWISE) FEEL about my dropping the photograph as a lead-in to these postings over recent days, especially so in the interest of improving download speed and time when you so arrive.

Your comments would be welcome and appreciated, be they by e-mail or in the comments section of this item.

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

INDEED, IT WAS ABOUT TIME THAT AMERICAN BUSINESS STARTED TO REALISE THE IMPORTANCE OF PAYING THEIR FAIR SHARE OF TAX LIABILITY after years of living a complacent Life of Riley (so to speak) under the protection and patronage of the GOP and their K Street droogs still maintaining their Zealotry and True Belief in the discredited "low taxes=jobs=social stability and order" Mickey Mouse.

Said jobs too often created offshore, not stateside, absent any sort of clear checks and balances to ensure that the jobs created by said tax cuts were created stateside, notwithstanding the business community's patsy that "we don't want to add costs, we really want to add value--but we're prevented from doing so because of outdated and archaic laws and regulatory burden" subtly excusing relocation of American jobs offshore.

Which is basically @ the heart of President Obama's tax reform proposals as seek to end numerous tax (dis)incentives that too often excused all manner of plant closings (with loss of jobs) stateside as companies used such Zealotry and True Belief in "low taxes=jobs=social stability and order" as a cheap and cheerful back door to move production and jobs offshore.

And which, in the process, has only worsened the National Debt all the worse, as if His Fraudulency's Misadministration playing the patsy of "state secrets" in excusing the (presumed) need to keep the ur-RAHOWA Against Terrorism's costs off-budget didn't make matters worse.

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

IN ANY EVENT, BOTH "THE FOUR HUNDRED" AND THE INDUSTRY THEIR WEALTH MAKES POSSIBLE NEED TO START REALISING that they can no longer go on with their Life of Riley mindset based on flawed equations lacking any connexion to Reality any longer.

That they can no longer count on the protection of their Good and Loyal Droogs in the GOP and K Street, especially with the former's facing clear and present danger of its destruction within measurable distance thanks to its assocations with the weird and unwholesome translating into the likelihood that, if business and capital continue supporting the GOP and its articles of faith in their present form, hoping all the while for Grace and Favour, they risk the prospect of being looked upon as closet Fascist or Nazi sympathisers, with the likelihood that any attempts to defend such associations and connexions could backfire upon them. (But then again, I understand where "the Four Hundred" have traditionally been counted upon by neo-Fascist and neo-Nazi causes as Good and Loyal Supporters, both financial and moral.)

That there can no longer be "political reasons" excusing the National Debt being @ such a high figure as it is now, some $11 trillion and counting.

(That's trillion, with a T.)

As well, they need to realise that, in supporting various "astroturf" movements seeking to whip up contempt against the Obama Administration pro Deo, patria et familia, they're only using the Great Unwashed as outright shills for "the Four Hundred" and their warped notion that they're somehow "entitled as of Natural Right" to certain "traditional rights, privileges and powers***by unwritten habit and tradition," and that the average person should be mindful therefor ... and that anything which seeks to "undermine" these "unwritten traditions" will only "undermine the Natural Order" and, with it, Our Antient and Peculiar Sovereignty and Sovereign Identity as a Peculiar Among the Nations.

Made all the worse by the fact of the Great Unwashed being thus used being, more than likely, "poor white trash" unable to hold down steady employment (let alone find a decent job, unaware that such may be the fault of their lacking realistic and marketable job and career skills), not to mention ignorant and all too easily open to suggestions which may only be dangerous to their own best interests as much as national such. (And yet won't recognise such until too late.)

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

MEANWHILE, SOMETHING WHICH THESE SO-CALLED "TEA PARTY" TYPES OUGHT TO CONSIDER, IF THEY'RE ALL THAT CONCERNED ABOUT THE NATIONAL DEBT AND ITS EFFECTS, might want to be making a donation to Reduce the National Debt Held by the American Public, which I've discussed many times previously in this blog.

Or, for that matter, conducting bake and jumble sales where the proceeds could go to Reduction of the National Debt.

And for those of the "tea party" movement still holding Series E and Series H Savings Bonds and Freedom Shares as have yet to be cashed in (and, more than likely, are no longer earning interest, having reached final maturities for the most part), perhaps they might want to have said bonds redeemed with the proceeds going to--well, you get the idea.

(For those of you who still need to know how to go about it, please let me know in an e-mail.)

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AND JUST IN CASE THE RON PAUL CROWD GETS ITS WAY IN CALLING FOR AN EXTERNAL AUDIT OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM per Generally Accepted Accounting Procedures, may I recommend that, to pacify certain weird and unwholesome extremist types, there be a concurrent inventory, audit and valuation taken of the gold reserves held by the Treasury in the Federal Gold Repository @ Ft. Knox, Kentucky and West Point, New York.

Likewise with the silver reserves held in the Federal Silver Repository @ West Point.

Said valuations to be based on prevailing market prices during the period of the audit and inventory, what with the gold and silver markets no longer subject to fixed-in-law pricing.

And, based on these valuations, considering the possibility of selling off significant and measurable portions of the gold and/or silver reserves, proceeds therefrom to pay down or otherwise refinance the National Debt in significant measure (even if such seriously dilutes the metals markets in the process--and, with it, the wealth of such among the weird and unwholesome pushing gold as a "safe harbour" investment in the face of clear and present socioeconomic dislocation to especially the vulnerable, the unsophisticated, and the easily-influenced, especially so when they wind up on all manner of mailing lists from "patriotic" hatemongering groups within measurable distance of their original enquiry).

Satisfied, ye who call yourselves "patriots" and "Real Americans"?

WHAT SORT OF NORMAL, RATIONAL PERSON CLAIMING TO IDENTIFY WITH THE GREATER CONSERVATIVE AGENDA, LET ALONE ITS ARTICLES OF FAITH, would fall for the likes of such writing quasi-pornographic fiction such as that which News Hounds brings up in the following:

We're going to throw a little something out there, and you may, as we did, find it deeply disturbing. Glenn Beck wrote the following passages in one of his books: “I thought that one day, I would just wake up and realize it was just a stupid fling . . just innocent experimentation... I thought that if I admitted the love I had been hiding, society would reject me . . . .”

“It all started one day when I was twelve . . . That's when I found my true love . . . I had looked this person's way a few times and got that nervous feeling in my stomach – but I had been taught that this love was forbidden.”

“Then came the fair . . . my hand brushed this person's . . . my palms began to sweat . . . my hands began to shake . . . the Ferris wheel came to a complete stop.”

“I looked deeply into this person's eyes, and reached out to softly touch this person's face. I leaned in and I kissed this person.”

“I kissed my sister. First our lips met, seconds later our tongues. I ran my fingers through her silky hair and felt her soft skin. It was the height of passion and the moment I knew who my true love was . . . We knew we had done something so wrong, but at the same time, something so very right.”

“Since then we have met in secret several times . . My sister and I are in love . . . I realize that I am different . . . but am I so different that I haven't earned the right to love . . . I simply ask you to be tolerant.”

“ . . . We will make love.”

“Please do not refer to us as an 'incestuous' couple. Keep the hate language to yourself. We prefer to think of the gift we have been given as 'familial love.'”

“By now, you probably have realized that I am not in love with my sister . . . I wrote this to make a point.”

What you just read were excerpts of a passage (pp. 154-159) from Beck's book, The Real America: Messages from the Heart and Heartland,copyright 2003.

On page160, Beck writes, in explanation: “So, what's the point? Why did I spend a whole chapter talking about a committed loving relationship with my sister? I did it because right now there is an organized ongoing effort to try to bend your values. To slowly shape your deepest beliefs into toleration and eventually acceptance.”

We've been watching Beck for some time now – but ever since we read those passages, we get that “ewww” feeling. Beck could have played out this hypothetical situation in just two sentences: “What if I were in love with, say, my sister? Would it be okay for me to ask the world for tolerance?” But this . . . .

“I thought that if I admitted the love I had been hiding, society would reject me."

“I leaned in and I kissed this person.”

“I kissed my sister. First our lips met, then our tongues . . . I ran my fingers through her silky hair and felt her soft skin . . . It was the height of passion and the moment I knew who my true love was . . .”

"We knew we had done something so wrong, but at the same time, something so very right.”

Just another of Beck's shock jock stunts? Or, as the proverb says, is there a truth here told in jest?

We can't know. But whatever Beck's twisted thinking was in writing it, it's troubling.

To imagine someone like Glenn "The 9.12 Project" Beck writing soft-porn incest fantasia while publicly defending Traditional Morals and Decency has got to have you asking "What kind of a person am I trusting with my prolefeed?!"

And it's enough to have you asking just how heavily the ranks of such who see themselves as "conservatives" are dominated by the likes of weird and unwholesome types, especially in the sexuality department--and especially so the more perverted and depraved varieties such as:

• incest;
• pedophilia (including, perhaps, a few card-carrying René Guyon Society members in the conservative stable);
• bestiality (that's the actual act of carnal relations with an animal);
• zoophilia (that's getting your jollies out of watching animals "doing it," especially without the aid of Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and suchlike);
• klismaphilia (that's getting your jollies out of enemas, in case you ask);
• coprophilia (as in getting your jollies out of urine and/or stools); and
• necrophilia.

WITH MAINSTREAM LENDERS TIGHTENING THEIR LOAN-QUALITY STANDARDS ALL THE MORE, "spam" from so-called "loan offices" or "registered and certified lenders" claiming to make loans @ unbelievably low rates of interest to especially problem risks has become all the more blatant.

And worth avoiding, especially if it emerges that you're asked, as a "mere formality" of the application process, to pay "processing fees" before they can proceed, notwithstanding Federal Trade Commission proscriptions on requiring advance fees for loan or credit applications (and, hence, raising the "red flag" of such likely being based offshore, and excusing such as being "for tax reasons" if and when pushed).

Not to mention being asked to advance a "guarantee" equal to the face value of the desired loan; again, a clear red flag.

Can you discern such a likelihood by the likes of "spam" such as the following:

Good Day,

  I am Mr.Gomma Bruse a registerred and certified lender, Do you need a financial loan help to pay off your bills? i loan out money for both business and personal purpose.At Capital Journey Financial, we give out loans on a clear and understandable terms and conditions,And we give out loans at a low interest rate of 3%.

    Dear readers should note that this offer is for serious minded individual, firms and companies.Do not let this opportiunity pass you by.Get your loan to solve your financial problems and establishing new businesses,Interested individuals, firms and companies should please contact us

via e-mail : [redacted]

  LOAN APPLICATION FORM FILL AND RETURN IT BACK

1) Full Name:.........................
2)Gender:...............................
3) Loan Amount Needed:...................
4) Loan Duration:................................
5) Country:...................................
6) Home Address:...............................
7) Mobile Number:...............................
8) fax Number:............................
9) Occupation:..............................
10) Work Address:..............................
11) Purpose of Loan............................
12) Bank address................................
13) Marital Status:...............................
14) Date Of Birth...............................

Thanks and God Bless,
Best Regards,
Mr.Gomma Bruse

The likely answer: "No."

You're not likely to find out until after you turn in the ur-application and get what amounts to an auto-generated "approval" instructing you to wire the "processing fee" to some address in Canada as turns out to be well outside the corridor of the 401 in Ontario/Autoroutes 20 and 40 in Québec; the better to maximise the Kanker Sisters aspect, methinks.

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

YEARS AGO, TONIC WATER, THANKS TO THE PRESENCE OF QUININE AMONG ITS INGREDIENTS, WAS TAKEN to prevent the outbreak of malaria.

And was widely promoted for relief of colds and la grippe (as in the likes of Bromo-Quinine and Hill's Laxative Cold Tablets having quinine among its active ingredients), until antihistamine-based tablets started to become widely available around the mid-1960's.

Which has Your Correspondent wondering if it might not be a bad idea to take a chaser of tonic water (Schewppes, from past experience, perhaps the best I am aware of) with the aspirin, acetaminophen or other cold- and flu-relief preparations, especially so with the 2009 H1N1 virus now abroad in certain quarters (along with wild and crude rumours connected to same being used for racist purposes targeting Those Who Should Know Better, one of the weirder such, via Michael "Liberalism is a Mental Disorder" Savage, contending that Arab/Muslim terrorists cooked up the virus and used Mexico as an incubator therefor).

Come to think of it, how many of you still remember Bromo-Quinine when it came to cold relief?

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IMAGINE THIS SCENARIO HAPPENING IN OUR "MORALLY SUPERIOR" UNITED STATES, AS IF ALL THOSE LURID CLAIMS ABOUT PRESIDENT OBAMA'S failure to prove his being of native birth per the Constitution weren't tasteless enough:

The wife of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has filed for divorce after 19 years of marriage, contending that the 72-year-old media mogul-turned-politico has developed an unhealthy interest in younger women, especially such deemed attractive enough to stand for various elected offices on the ticket of Berlusconi's Forza Italia party regardless of clear experience to hold the position in question.

For Mme. Berlusconi, the last straw came when the husband was seen @ the 18th-birthday party of the daughter of a close friend.

(There is potential historical precedent here: The first Juan Peron regime in Argentina went into serious disarray following the sudden death of wife Evita from uterine cancer in June of 1952, and despite developing a pseudo-religious Cult of Personality around Evita, Juan "himself" turned to high-end girls' schools in and around Buenos Aires to try and find a successor to Evita for national as much as personal ends--and he almost had it in one Nelly Rivas, whom Peron began to date on occasion to the point of lurid rumours emerging about what really went on inside the Casa Rosita. Which, in due time, would be enough to fuel opposition strong enough to bring down the regime in early 1955.)

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

IS ACTOR DAVID HASSELHOF A VICTIM OF ALCOHOL POISONING @ THE WEEKEND (as Radar Online is reporting) ... or did he simply have a little too much with Al Cohol (as TMZ.com is reporting)?

In any event, Mr. Hasselhof is recovering in hospital ... and just be lucky that it was Hasselhof's 16-year-old daughter who found him unconscious and maudlin Saturday evening.

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

TALK ABOUT STUPID HUMAN TRICKS NOT EVEN DAVID LETTERMAN WOULD CONSIDER BOOKING: A six-year-old girl who was flying alone on Northwest Airlines to visit relatives was found alone @ Sea-Tac International Airport between flights, telling a flight attendant as had just come off duty that she felt tired.

Whereupon the little lady was directed to a Starbucks location inside the Sea-Tac main terminal and was ordered a large coffee with milk and sugar--whose first taste caused the girl in question to turn queasy and sick to the point of blowing chunks.

Now the girl's mother is suing Northwest Airlines for poor judgment in steering her girl to a cup of coffee to refresh herself.

Meanwhile, several years back, there was a brand of coffee in Japan called "Ease Your Bosoms," marketed as being ideal in relieving stress.

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

TELL ME IF THIS MIGHT BE AN IDEAL APPROACH FOR SPURS OFF THE GREATER MIDWESTERN HIGH-SPEED PASSENGER-RAIL NETWORK, such as to Rochester, Minnesota and Green Bay, Wisconsin from the Chicago-Milwaukee-Twin Cities line:

Videlicet, having what the Europeans call "Regio" services, which could be operated with self-propelled Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) trainsets having coach and business-class seating, with provision for a café section offering light meals, sandwiches and snacks--and would have controls @ both ends of the train, so avoiding costly turnaround manouvers.

Taking the CHI-MKE-MSN-MSP corridor as foundation, I could imagine the "Regio" concept applying thus:

• Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison-Wisconsin Dells-LaCrosse-Winona-Rochester, MN
• Chicago-Milwaukee-West Bend-Fond du Lac-Oshkosh-Fox Cities-Green Bay
• Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison-Wisconsin Dells-New Lisbon-Necedah-Wisconsin Rapids (bus connexion to Stevens Point)-Wausau
• Twin Cities-Red Wing-Winona-Marquette/McGregor-Dubuque-Clinton-Quad Cities