more cat pictures

EVEN WITH THE NAMESAKE OF McCARTHYISM, SEN. JOSEPH R. McCARTHY (GOP/WI) HAVING BEEN DEAD FOR 51 YEARS NOW, his overzealous brand of anti-Communism--replete as it is with groundless accusations, innuendo, want of evidence and plenty of attempts to prevent the targeted from defending themselves--still lives in certain, howbeit less-enlightened, circles who have yet to realise that the Evil Empire otherwise known as the Soviet Union had collapsed in 1991.

And that the Communist Party, heretofore seen as a Clear and Present Moral Danger, has since taken a minor role in post-Communist Russian politics.

A recent example from the Dark Satanic Mills of Neoconservative Propaganda comes from ConWebBlog, commenting on how McCarthy-stylee anti-Communism is being used to discredit claims made by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan about the excesses of power in His Fraudulency's Great Within, will serve to suffice:

Like that kid in "The Sixth Sense" who sees dead people, Accuracy in Media sees communists. So it's no surprise that Kincaid works up a commie angle as his contribution to the conservative war against Scott McClellan.

In his May 29 AIM column, Kincaid claims that because the publisher of McClellan's book, Peter Osnos, once worked for liberal journalist I.F. Stone, McClellan is obviously "reading from a script prepared by Osnos & Company and the far left." Kincaid adds:

Osnos is the key to understanding the network that is working behind-the-scenes. A former national news editor of the Post, Osnos was an assistant to I.F. Stone in the 1960s. Stone postured as an independent radical writer but was exposed as a Soviet agent in the transcripts of Soviet messages known as the Venona intercepts and by other sources.

Former Soviet KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin had identified Stone as a Soviet agent, but under pressure from Stone's friends in the media later backed away from that precise description. However, in his book, The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West, Kalugin still identified Stone as a "fellow traveler" of the Soviet Union who "made no secret of his admiration for the Soviet system" over a period of many years and had regular contacts and lunches with him.

But Kincaid fails to acknowledge that the alleged evidence linking Stone to work as a Soviet agent is dubious at best.

Kincaid's claim that the Venona transcripts "exposed" Stone as a Soviet agent apparently comes from his buddy Herbert Romerstein, which whom Kincaid penned an article purporting to link Barack Obama to various commies (which WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi ate up without bothering with journalistic niceities like fact-checking). As the New York Times points out:

Charges against Stone, who died in 1989, first surfaced seven years ago, when Oleg Kalugin, a retired K.G.B. general, implicated Stone as having been a Soviet agent. The allegation was received skeptically, and Kalugin subsequently denied it, saying that Stone was merely a friendly "contact" of the K.G.B.'s. But Romerstein--drawing on the Venona documents--argues that Stone had a relationship during the Second World War with a K.G.B. agent named Vladimir Pravdin who served as a TASS correspondent in Washington. In 1944, according to Romerstein, Pravdin cabled his superiors in Moscow that Stone, whose code name was "Blin"--the Russian word for pancake--would continue to talk to him only if he were paid. Stone and Pravdin continued to meet, which proves to Romerstein's satisfaction that Stone must have been paid.

Stone, who had no access to classified information, can't have been an important agent, if he was indeed a Soviet agent of any kind. But he is a crucial figure to Romerstein precisely because he remains an icon to those Romerstein sees as the legatees of the Popular Front. To show that a hero of left-wing journalists, prized for his incorruptibility and "independence," was in fact a paid Soviet informant is to strike close to the heart of the enemy.

Romerstein is decidedly politially motivated to smear Stone, as well as obviously an obsessive anti-Communist, which arguably taints his claims.

Meanwile, Eric Alterman adds: "Despite continuous FBI surveillance of Stone's daily activities and a dogged desire by J. Edgar Hoover to nail him for something, not a single shred of evidence ever emerged to support any spy allegations against him." Alterman further states:

If ex-post facto anonymous FBI conclusions are correct, Stone, a working journalist, had lunch with the Tass correspondent in 1945, back when the United States was still nominally allied with the Soviet Union, having no way of knowing the man's secret identity as a KGB agent. Later, during the 1960s, he had occasional lunches with the Soviet press attaché, who, also unbeknownst to him, turned out to work for the KGB. Remember, it's a journalist's job to seek information and trade opinions with representatives of foreign governments. Remember, Izzy had no access to classified information whatever. Remember, the FBI hounded him for decades seeking to find something to pin on him and found nothing. They could not even connect him in any way to the Communist Party of either the United States or the Soviet Union, though they tried mightily. 

[...]

What's more, in order to make it appear as if [Myra] MacPherson [author of a biography of Stone] has "hanged" Stone, [reviewer Paul] Berman ignores the following, which appears in exactly the same paragraph in the book that he finds so damning: "Did he [Kalugin] have actual information that Stone had ever cooperated with Soviet intelligence? 'No.'" Kalugin said Stone "was just useful like dozens of other [journalistic] contacts." When Paul writes that Stone would "perform tasks"--that is, "find out what the views of someone in the government were or some senator on such and such an issue"--he does not note that Kalugin cannot remember a single thing of importance that Stone might have said. Stone, said Kalugin, was merely "on the fringe" and "just useful, like dozens of other [media] contacts I had." In contrast, he averred to MacPherson, "I knew one guy from Time magazine, for instance. That was a big thing." Kalugin also offers up his opinion that Stone "was a true liberal and not a Communist ... He would not hurt or damage the United States." 

For Kincaid to continue to insist that Stone was unambiguously a Soviet agent is to repeat a false claim. Perhaps Kincaid needs to adjust his meds so he's not seeing commies where they don't really exist.

No wonder there are some who still see "Communist influences" in the Mainstream Media, let alone "Communists" on university campuses and in the Information Stuporbahn.

Unfortunately, their inspiration was a notorious boaster, a drunkard, a disbarred judge and one of questionable credibility generally. Especially considering his lack of substantiating evidence and his unwillingness to let those so accused to defend their names and honour.

And whose career would eventually be ruined by the fallout of Edward R. Murrow's See It Now broadcast of 9 April 1954, eventually to be followed by the Army/McCarthy Hearings that summer as would only be his undoing when he was asked by Jospeh N. Welch "Have you no sense of Decency, Sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of Decency?" on live national television two months to the day later and, by November that year, with the Senate censuring him for "tending to bring the Senate into dishonour or disrepute."

Cirrosis would eventually be Sen. McCarthy's demise on 2 May 1957.

(Ironically, McCarthy's old home patch of Appleton, Wisconsin is now the national headquarters of the John Birch Society, which would manage to carry the McCarthyist torch until their tactics of playing the Communist Party's games were exposed to air and sunshine. And still does, howbeit to a lesser degree compared with its salad days of notoriety in the early 1960's.)   

more cat pictures

"HERE WE GO AGAIN!" IS QUITE RIGHT HERE IN THE MINNWISSIPPI REGION WHENCE YOUR CORRESPONDENT PRODUCETH THIS BLOG: After what appeared to be a nice enough day or two to let recent heavy rains dry out, it looks like another round of serious rainfall could be imminent over the next couple of days.

So much so that a Flash Flood Watch is up through tomorrow evening because the combi of overly saturated ground from previous heavy rains and these new rains could only make a bad situation worse--and then some, especially so in much the same areas devastated last August, if you still recall those floods.

Not to mention other poor-drainage areas and steep terrain.

We could certinly use some seriously dry and @ once mild weather for once--especially before certain weird and unwholesome religious, perhaps in their cups all the while, start pushing the meme about G-d Withdrawing His Divine Endorsement Of America, and using the recent weather as a show of Divine Contempt and Judgement.

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

MEANWHILE, TO PARAPHRASE MARK TWAIN, THE REPORTS OF WISCONSIN DELLS' DEMISE IN THE COLLAPSE OF LAKE DELTON ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED: Damage-assessment teams and engineers are now studying the situation and looking for ways to refill Lake Delton in a cheap and cheerful manner because of its socioeconomic importance to Wisconsin generally and the Wisconsin Dells region in particular.

In the meantime:

• The Lower Dells Boat Tour has resumed operations;
• Both the Original Wisconsin Ducks and Dells Army Ducks are running modified routings of their tours for the time being;
• A modified version of the Tommy Bartlett Show (i.e., only the sky and stage portions) is performing for the time being;
• Those with reservations for resorts and motels along Lake Delton's shore (or what remains of it) are being asked to call ahead, or otherwise consider other accomodation options; and
• For the most part, it's "business as usual"--including the water parks.

Those with further questions can always freecall 1-800-22-DELLS from within North America (or, from elsewhere in the world, +1-608-253-4636 between 08h30 and 21h in UTC-5/13h30 and 02h the next day UTC), or visit this website.

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

AND TALK ABOUT PATHETIC-SOUNDING MEMES CROSSING UNWITTINGLY INTO THE ILLOGICAL: If, as certain Zealots and True Believers of Neoconservatism want us believing, anyone who supports the cause of peace is a closet Communist (and in true McCarthyist stylee, no less), does it necessarily follow that those who support a total and continuous state of war are to be looked upon as True and Patriotic Americans?

If anything, such is nothing short of faulty logic.

In the same vein, perhaps it was time to start asking the Neoconservative element how they expect to finance the workings of government in line with such articles of faith as they have about keeping taxes all the lower just to create jobs--and, in turn, "social stability." And push the question hard upon them until a logical answer is forthcoming.

We have a right to know, do we not?

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

AND FOR THOSE AMONG YOU IN THE "MAKE-WORK/FAKE-WORK" SCAM COMMUNITY SEEKING TO PROFIT FROM THE CURRENT STATE OF SOCIOECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY and danger of mass dislocation by pushing the Old Reliables of "envelope stuffing," "home mailing" and "product assembly" "just to keep people busy" all the more, think about this:

In case you're trying to "spin" your way out of Serious Charges by suggesting where any complaints or challenges of advertising brought against you are only "preventing many thousands from getting badly-needed employment @ this time more than ever," you have only yourselves to blame. Especially if you're the kind insisting that home-mailing work that you offer is "easy [and] pleasant" and can be "done @ your own pace, on your own schedule," knowing consciously all the more that high-volume mailing work has become highly automated to the point where the economies of scale offered by mailroom services (as in not only stuffing envelopes, but also sealing, barcoding, sorting and even traying the mail) in making short work of mass mailing jobs actually negates any serious profit potential for homeworkers doing your mailing work by hand just because you want to save money and keep overhead low.

Which, methinks, amounts to a patsy seeking to ignore Reality--especially because you have problems obtaining business credit from legitimate and recognised channels, or otherwise insist on working on a cash basis.

And Another Thing: That notion about your sending out paycheques every Tuesday so they can arrive in the mails by Friday amounts to wishful thinking, especially considering where:

• letterpost deliveries by the Postal Service are not guaranteed (as opposed to Express Mail);
• delivery schedules are subject to numerous external factors beyond the direct control of the Postal Service (including, but not limited to, weather, acts of G-d, industrial action, staffing levels @ Post Offices and Regional Sorting Centres and availability of transportation); and
• there are no clear assurances that, if you pay your homeworkers in cheques drawn on an account under your name and control (as opposed to teller's cheques or money orders), the same will be timely made good when it finally arrives in the letterposts.

(In the case of teller's cheques and money orders, be aware that you will have to complete a special Treasury form if you purchase more than $3,000 in face value thereof in a single day, subject to daily purchasing limits; the better to prevent the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorism being diluted through the banking system by especially legitimate-looking front businesses. As well, money-order issuers are all the more disapproving of the "structuring" tactic some shady elements use to avoid Treasury reporting requirements.)

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

NO WONDER WE "MORALLY SUPERIOR" AMERICANS DESERVE SUCH CONTEMPT FOR ONCE: Pakistani military leaders have expressed their disapproval over an American military incursion in the Pakistani-Afghani border regions seeking out Taliban militants as led to rockets being launched and hitting the inevitable Innocent Civilian Targets.

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

SOUNDS LIKE ONE OF THOSE COINCIDENCES WORTHY OF RIPLEY: On the same day that three leading high-speed Internet Service Providers here in the United States--viz., Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon--announced where they would "forthwith" block access to such websites and message boards connected with child pornography, French ISP's announced like action against websites, blogs and message boards advocating anti-Semitism, racism, hatred of vulnerable elements, White Christian Supremacy, bigotry and xenophobia.

What would prevent us "morally-superior" Americans from following the French lead for once?    

PERHAPS YOU'VE HEARD THE EXPRESSION THAT CLOWNS CAN GET AWAY WITH TRUTH, especially so in regimes where an overzealous brand of censorship or State control of the media prevails in the presumed name of "protecting the State from her sworn enemies, both within and without."

The fact of which can be traced back to Shakespeare's time, when it was not uncommon for the court fool to be entrusted with secrets of state and other sensitive political information.

And back in the salad days of the Evil Empire otherwise known as the Soviet Union, about the closest one could get to the truth in such a tightly-controlled society was in the official satiric magazine Krokodil ("Crocodile"), as found plenty of targets to lampoon within the confines of official restraints and censorship; after all, as the proverb went, there was no truth in Pravda nor news in Izvetsiya, come to think of it.

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

GROWING UP MYSELF WITH LEARNING AND UNDERSTANDING DISORDERS WHICH, IN THE MINDS OF SOME, were breeding-grounds for schizophrenic tendencies (and led to several diagnoses of the paranoid type against Your Correspondent in the 1980's especially), has led me to develop a cynical sort of take on the conservative status quo holding high carnival--and, in the minds of some Zealots and True Believers, the need to maintain a "stay-the-course" complacency from everlasting to everlasting, and invoke G-d, Country and Family when pressed to explain.

Not to mention having Mein Innkeeper Friend provide some inspiration, particularly so from encouraging me to develop a healthy sort of cynicism and skepticism @ what conservatives depict as truth, and which should be accepted without question or reservation, "silence=acceptance" notwithstanding.

The which explains how I have developed this satiric take on the world such as is reflected here by Your Correspondent @ The Exaggerator from time to time--as a safety valve, so to speak, on frustrations and aggravations on what goes on in the world.

No wonder comedy can sometimes be close to the truth, without being so obvious in its desire of provoking moral outrage. Jonathan Swift was perhaps the best example of using satire to make a literary point, as witness the likes of "A Modest Proposal" and "A Tale of a Tub."

IT WOULD BE INTERESTING TO SEE HOW MANY OF YOU AS READ THIS BLOG REGULARLY WOULD FIND THE ABOVE IN POOR TASTE considering the late Midwestern flooding as drained Lake Delton in the Wisconsin Dells district dry thanks to a storm-created freshet into the Wisconsin River ... and threatens to be the end of another Wisconsin community, Gays Mills, itself just trying to rebuild after last August's flooding.

Which, I suppose, could be considered Divine Judgement upon Wisconsin for the "mere legal formality" of Constitutionally recognising marriage as the sole and exclusive monopoly of between male and female, lest any pseudoreligious Zealots and True Believers with hyperactive imaginations get any ideas.

Ideas, methinks, influenced by Al Cohol more than likely as opposed to Divine Revelation.

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

MEANWHILE, IN CHINA'S SICHWUAN PROVINCE, TWO LAKES AS WERE CREATED BY EARTHQUAKE DEBRIS FORMING IMPROMPTU DAMS are being monitored all the more for signs of imminent collapse as could result in serious destruction downstream on top of the earlier earthquake such.

In one instance, People's Liberation Army troops are blasting holes in the dam to relieve pressure on the ur-superstructure so as to minimise the runoff hazard downstream against the likelihood of outright collapse.

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

TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE OF WHY DECEPTIVE IRONY REIGNS SUPREME ON THE NEOCONSERVATIVE RIGHT: Just how many of you "morally superior" Americans would consider yourselves as "Americans for Prosperity"?

(Especially so when you consider their articles of faith holding that taxes and "undue and unnecessary reguatory burden" are only standing in the way of sustained jobs creation and, in its turn, "social stability;" ergo, the "complete and final" abolition of such "evils" would translate into a return to The Infinite Prosperity of the Universe benefitting all.

(But then again, what would "Americans for Prosperity," in communion with their droogs in K Street, have in mind for replacing taxes as the means to finance the workings of government? Have they valid case studies from the "developed" world in this respect, or what prevents their disclosure?)

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

STICKING WITH IRONY FOR A MOMENT, CANADIAN SMOKERS, FACED WITH PERHAPS THE MOST EXPLICIT HEALTH WARNINGS FOUND ANYWHERE on cigarette packs, a blanket ban on advertising and sponsorships, high tobacco taxes and new regulations forcing retailers to move cigarettes behind locked and opaque shelves "to discourage young people from smoking," are finding in these circumstances some irony in the fact that adult magzines are openly avaiable in convenience stores (just so long as they're in sealed plastic bags and on shelves so high children won't be tempted to look @ same) and provincial governments (especially so Ontario and Québec) have exclusive monopolies on liquor sales and distribution "to discourage excessive consumption."

(Worth noting here is that in Ontario, sales of beer and ale are the exclusive monopoly of Brewers' Retail Stores, which are drab-looking by deliberate design to begin with; wines and spirits are sold only through the Liquor Control Board of Ontario's outlets and, in remote areas, agencies. Meanwhile, in La Belle Province, the Regie des alcools de Québec has the monopoly on spirits and quality wines, whereas beer and table wines can be purchased @ licenced supermarkets and convenience stores.)

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

HOW DO WE KNOW THAT THE NEOCONSERVATIVE ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS WON'T EXACTLY HAVE BLACKMAIL OR INTIMIDATION IN MIND in expecting businesses to Do Their Part in creating "real" jobs (as in unskilled, labour-intensive positions) paying"real" money (more than likely paid in form of Wally World gift cards labelled FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY in the name of encouraging wasteful and unnecessary spending "in the national interest," and without due regard being shown for consumers getting their money's worth, or so expected?

(Especially when the blackmail involves threats of "tax evasion," "breach of trust and confidence," "mismanagement" or other charges being made to scare them into manufactured Corporate Responsibility and Good Corporate Citizenship.)    

more cat pictures

DURING THE SUMMER OF 1957, CBS RADIO PRESENTED THE STAN FREBERG SHOW AS A SUMMER REPLACEMENT FOR THE BEST OF BENNY--perhaps the last great example of comedy on Old-Time Radio, tending mostly to satiric sketches and routines crossing into parody.

On occasion, Stan Freberg would use as running gag the idea of referring to foreigners appearing on the show as "Swiss--that way, we don't offend anybody." (Playing, no doubt, on the neutrality of the Swiss Confederation on the international stage, even if they've resisted membership in the United Nations until some 15 years ago ... and still resists joining the European Union.)

Never mind that Switzerland recognises four official languages (French, German, Italian and Romansch, to be exact), or their storied financial secrecy having been humbled by international campaigns against money laundering forcing some semblance of transparency along the Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich, or even the likelihood of tweaking their monetary policies so as to reduce dependency on the gold standard, or--well, you get the idea.

Still, though, you have to wonder if the idea of referring to foreigners, irrespective of nationality, as "Swiss" so as not to offend anybody does sound a bit interesting. As for how the Lou Dobbs/Glenn Beck/Michael Savage element would react--that's anybody's guess. 

Meanwhile, in case you want to gen up on the latest from across Switzerland, there's always SwissInfo.org, the online portal of Swiss TV/Swiss Radio International for Swiss news, sport, business and culture.

(Did I mention their also having streaming audio?)

Oh, and another interesting thing Swiss: From the mid-1930's until the mid-1990's, they had a rather interesting hybrid of radio and Muzak known as the Telefon Rundspruch, which offered six channels of news, music and light popular programming transmitted over telephonic lines; a necessity considering the mountainous terrain of Switzerland not usually conducive to traditional radio reception.