more the engrish!

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE RECENTLY ISSUED A LONG-RANGE WEATHER OUTLOOK HEADING INTO THE WINTER MONTHS FOR THE MIDWESTERN STATES as suggested that, in contrast to last winter's excesses of heavy snow and chilly temperatures (as were put down to the presence of a La Nina pattern), this winter could be milder than usual in the temperature department with precipitation @ or near normal levels.

And if it turns out that the precipitation is rain, for the most part, expect such to be something of a blessing in disguise for highway road crews: North American Salt, a major producer of road salt, announced that a shortage of road salt could be possible this winter because last winter's extreme weather stretched supplies to the limit, not to mention the likelihood of serious budget cuts affecting snow and ice control.

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

NO WONDER CONGRESS AND MANY OF THE "RIGHT-THINKING" AMERICAN PEOPLES ARE NOT VERY HAPPY WITH HIS FRAUDULENCY'S GRAND DESIGNS on a $700 billion rescue package of the banking and mortgage-lending system in the name of G-d, Country and Socioeconomic Stability--all without the common courtesy of transparency, checks and balances or proper oversight.

Imagine, if you will, bankers and securities dealers going on a two-day strike to protest the rescue package as proposed--which happens to be the case in India, where a two-day strike has been called by unions representing 900,000 employees @ state-owned banks (in particular the State Bank of India) over proposals to denationalise and merge many such institutions, never mind the potential for delays to the clearing system.

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

BOLLYWOOD 1, HOLLYWOOD 0: Warner Brothers lost a battle in the Indian courts to stop the upcoming release of a new Bollywood "comedy of terrors" (to use its promotional tagline) entitled Hari Puttar, claiming that its title sounded too similar to its highly-successful Harry Potter franchise to the point of risking audience confusion.

The court, for its part, disagreed, contending that "Hari" was a common Indian male surname, and "puttar" was the Hindu and Punjabi word for "son." The BBC further elaborates:

The Delhi High Court also said that consumers who read the Harry Potter books, written by JK Rowling, were sufficiently educated to know that Hari Puttar was different, the agency quoted the lawyer as saying.

Hari Puttar tells the story of a 10-year-old boy who moves to England with his family and becomes involved in a plan to save the world.

The film is due to be released across India on Friday 26 September.

It was meant to hit Indian cinemas on 12 September, but its release was pushed back because of the court case.

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

AND STAYING IN INDIA FOR A MOMENT, ITS SUPREME COURT UPHELD A LAW IN ORISSA STATE BANNING LEPERS AND CONSUMPTIVES FROM CONTESTING OR HOLDING ELECTIVE OFFICE @ municipal level in response to a lawsuit filed in 2005 by two municipal counsellors who were subsequently disqualified after they were found to have the contagious, yet treatable, disease known as leprosy.

Two of the justices were of the opine that the 1950-vintage law was promulgated in the interest of public health and safety, but advocates for the disabled, lepers and those of low caste were outraged @ the ruling.

Something to think about in the wake of GOP designs to carry out further schemes of "voter caging" against especially the poor and National Minorities in the guise of "protecting electoral purity and integrity." That, and the elections laws of several states still proscribing "morons and idiots" from voting.

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

IT'S MY UNDERSTANDING THAT THE FBI HAS OPENED ENQUIRIES INTO THE DEBAUCHED EXCESSES OF "SUB-PRIME" AND "ALT-A" MORTGAGE LENDING as tended to fraud or deception on the part of both borrowers and investors alike.

Said enquiries looking into not only certain mortgage lenders specialist in "sub-prime" and "Alt-A" lending (as targeted such with poor, marginal or non-existant credit standards), but also Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG and Lehman Brothers (from the standpoint of marketing securities on which said mortgages were made possible to less-sophisticate investors).

Might I suggest that the G-Men also consider looking into the involvement of His Fraudulency's Great Within and their droogs in K Street, especially so the Zealots and True Believers in what may best be described as "pure capitalism" being a Great White Father (so to speak) of the Lower Classes, "empowering" them out of "helpless enslavement" to "failed and failing" systems of State welfare and towards a new Classless Ownership Society based on American free-market models, experience and paradigms, in all of this. Especially so the likelihood of such being Indictable Offences against especially a certain John McCain, which should be considered grounds for disqualification were he to win the Presidential election.

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

AND SPEAKING OF McCAIN'S VICE-PRESIDENTIAL WANNABE SARAH PALIN, you have to wonder if we may be seeing in her nothing short of Eva Duarte Peron (1919-1952), second wife of Argentine majordomo Juan Peron (1895-1974), reincarnate, what with both having a certain charisma designed to appeal in particular to the impoverished working classes.

Never mind where Eva Peron's model was based on a neo-Fascist "Third Position" model (as sought to develop agro-industrial self-reliance after years of Argentina being an export-reliant economy based too heavily on "oligarchic" foreign investment, pacifying the working classes with low-cost vacations, free medical and dental care and generous assistance through an affiliated "foundation") and Sarah Palin's such is based on the heretically deviant "Dominionist" brand of Pentecostalism reinforced by an idealised "pure capitalism" unlikely to be reconciled with Scriptural authority despite numerous attempts.

But remember, too, that "Evita," as the official propaganda made her out to be, died suddenly of uterine cancer, which would unwittingly be the beginning of the end for the first Peronist regime in the Argentine: Drought, poor harvests, inflation, loss of export markets, the Nelly Rivas affair (and related rumours that he was turning the Casa Rosa into a teen brothel) and labour unrests, combined with Pope Pius XII's excommunicating Peron in June of 1955 for his attempted campaign against the Catholic clergy (not to mention related attempts to legalise divorce and prostitution, and destigmatise bastardy), would eventually be his undoing by that October.

Following several years of exile, Peron would reclaim power in 1973, only to die of heart failure a year later.

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

ANOTHER REASON WHY YOU CAN'T TRUST WALLY WORLD WITH YOUR SHOPPING REQUIREMENTS: Mein Innkeeper Friend hath it that most of the TV's on sale there--especially so the last of the analogue sets to be manufactured before the transition to digital transmission next 17 February--are really rebuilds of factory rejects from various manufacturers, hastly cobbled together and sold under new and largely unfamiliar brand names out of China or India so they can be dumped onto the Great Unwashed on the cheap as are unaware of the final transition from analogue to digital broadcasting standard.

Especially so the kind who are still hard-wired to FreeVee for reasons of cost or conscience, and will need to purchase a set-top converter box to ensure a seamless transition of reception (all along unaware of an incentive scheme to help with costs of purchasing converter boxes). That, and new issues in and of themselves over who will be able to provide repair service in case problems develop, let alone whether said sets have any sort of manufacturer's warranty or reasonable facsimilies thereof.

Something which needs to be investigated.   

more animals

AS IF TREASURY SECRETARY PAULSON'S MANUFACTURED APPEALS TO NATIONAL HONOUR AND UNITY WEREN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR WINNING OVER the collective hearts and minds of Congress over to His Fraudulency's Grand Design of a $700 billion bailout plan for the very mess His Fraudulency's Great Within created all along ... along comes this rather hilarious satire from All Spin Zone, as takes the form of a Nigerian "419" scam letter:

Dear [your name goes here]:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion USD. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gramm, lobbyist for UBS, who (God willing) will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a former U.S. congressional leader and the architect of the PALIN / McCain Financial Doctrine, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. As such, you can be assured that this transaction is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully,

Minister of Treasury Paulson

Share this with your friends and your Congressional delegation.

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

ALSO WORTH YOUR TIME is the following video, courtesy of Americans United for Change, as asks the pressing question of our time: "Is History about to be made, or could History be repeating itself?"

¢
more animals

WHY THE GOP'S CURRENT MEME OF "DRILL, BABY, DRILL!!!" MAKES NO LOGICAL SENSE, LET ALONE PUSHING THE INSANITY BUTTON for the sake of exploiting crude patriotic feelings in the vulnerable and easily-led who are all too easily tempted to regard Fox Prolefeed as all the more credible:

Since the onset of Hurricane Ike upon the Texas Gulf Coast, itself a major centre of oil production and refining, caused shutdowns of production brought on by Hurricane Gustav to be extended, parts of the Former Confederacy, especially so Atlanta and Nashville, have seen long lines and shortages of supply @ gas stations and convenience stores--not to mention higher-than-average prices. The which, officially, has been blamed on the likes of unwarranted panic buying, mass hysteria helped in large measure by the Information Stuporbahn, and hurricane damage to a major refined products pipeline connecting refineries near Houston to Music City.

Oil companies are resorting to road, rail and barge transport to maintain some semblance of supply in the interim, noting where it may be weeks before repairs are completed to said pipelines.

(In contrast, gas prices in the Minnwissippi, as set by an ur-gentleman's agreement "to control harmful and dangerous competition," have been below average: Currently, they are $3.449/gallon [91.12¢/litre] for regular unleaded, $3.469/gallon [91.6¢/litre] for super unleaded and $3.569/gallon [94.3¢/litre] for premium unleaded; E85, where available, is priced @ $2.849/gallon [75.3¢/litre] thanks to subsidies.)

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

GROVER NORQUIST--YES, THE SAME GROVER NORQUIST BEHIND THAT SMART-ALECKY NEOCONSERVATIVE ARTICLE OF FAITH calling for reducing the level of government "to the point where we can drown it in the bathtub" (and, methinks, play the Andrea Yates card as follow-up)--must certainly be smiling (yes!!) @ the news that GOP Presidential wannabe John McCain has made no secret of essentially corporatising certain "non-essential or non-strategic" sectors of the United States Government to the free market.

Which, come to think of it, essentially amounts to handing over certain sectors of State responsibility to certain close droogs in the campaign-finance department as reward for Good and Loyal Service, with the competitive-bidding process usually required being reduced to "a mere formality***only encouraging intrusion."

But which, in the end, could only mean opportunities for the Evil Empire (as in the "New World Order") to exploit ensuing circumstances as could be used to carry out what misguided "patriots" and Others Weird and Unwholesome have long feared: The "New World Order" "usurping our antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity as a Pecuilar Among the Nations," which the paranoia machine should start to realise is all the more inevitable under a McCain/Palin Administration. Besides:

A McCain/Palin victory come November means that the economy can only get worse before it can get better--if that.

"Spread the word."

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

CAN YOU IMAGINE SEVERAL PROMINENT AND POWERFUL MEMBERS OF HIS FRAUDULENCY'S CABINET SUDDENLY RESIGNING EN BLOC, HIS FRAUDULENCY ALL ALONG resorting to denial and paranoia (and, in the end, John Barleycorn) as an ur-no confidence vote in the $700 billion Paulson Plan to Save Our Antient and Pecuilar Banking and Socioeconomic Model without the common courtesy of checks and balances?

Such is the case now in South Africa, where eleven ministers of President Thabo Mbeke's Cabinet have resigned en masse in response to the African National Congress (ANC) essentially relieving Mr. Mbeke of his powers and duties over charges that he interfered with the courts to influence same into dropping criminal charges against his political rival, Jacob Zuma, himself expected to become President following elections scheduled for next year.

What would preclude similar circumstances here in the "morally superior" United States--possible "harm to the elections"?

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

AS IF THE RELIGIOPOLITICAL RIGHT'S REFUSING TO RECOGNISE WHERE SO-CALLED "AVERSION THERAPY" AS A WAY TO "CURE" HOMOSEXUALITY is now medically discredited because of its dangers for psychoemotional harm, Jesus' General has this interesting Open Letter about reports where Brigham Young University, the Mormons' preeminent institution of higher learning, may have engaged in experiments to that (presumed) effect:

President Thomas S. Monson
Prophet, Seer, and Revelator
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

Dear President Monson,

I wrote your predecessor, President Hinckley, awhile back after the Church refused to join gentile churches in opposing torture. In that note, I applauded our beloved Prophet for refusing to sign onto a letter backing anti-torture provisions in the 2006 Defense Budget. I thought his response was perfect when he made it clear to the flock that "The church has not taken a position on any proposed legislative or administrative actions regarding torture."

Now, people are asking me why the Church is politically active in measures to deny marriage equality The Gay. Pointing to the Church's decision to be an official sponsor of ProtectMarriage, the people behind Measure 8 in California and the huge amounts of money Mormons have poured into Arizona's Prop. 102, they wonder why the Church can be so against love and so ambivalent about torture.

I'm worried we may be seeing the beginnings of a huge public relations problem. We need to get out there now with our story and put all of this into its proper context. We must tell the public there is no hypocracy here, and that our hatred of The Gay and our love for torture are indeed all part of the same issue: supporting traditional forms of marraige.

It's time to begin trumpeting our success in using forms of torture to turn The Gay into good, God-fearing, heterosexual elders and sisters of the Church. Yes, I'm talking about the aversion therapy experiments conducted at BYU in the Seventies (and perhaps into the Nineties).

We could begin by publicizing the stories of those who participated. As you can see, they are very compelling:

They explained to me that they would place a heparin lock in my wrist and hook an I.V. up to that, and I would be put in a room alone with a phlethesmograph on my penis that would measure my physical arousal so that when I got an erection they would know. Then they started showing me gay pornography. I don't remember if there were films or not, but I do remember stills. I was supposed to go through a stack of photos of nude men and come up with men that I thought were attractive.

No, I was 15! I was only 15 years old. I mean I'd seen like a Playboy before, but I'd never seen sex before at all. They were going to show me this gay pornography and using the I.V. they would inject a drug into me during the gay pornography to make me start vomiting. Then they would switch the pornography over to heterosexual sex and inject a euphoric drug into me to get me to associate euphoria with heterosexuality. I look back on that and think that I would have taken the electric-shock therapy had I known about it since I'm extremely phobic around vomiting.

[...]

Alot of times BYU security would catch people in compromising positions on campus. Those people would have the choice to either be kicked out of school and have their families notified about what they had done or they could go through this therapy. We had quite a few people who were going through it. There were others in the therapy who felt so much guilt for being the way they were or they had been promised that if they underwent the therapy they would be able to marry and have children and they would be turned. Of course they had to have the desire to change, and if the therapy failed which it always did, it was their fault for the failure since they didn't have enough desire.

Anyway, they would come in usually three times a week. I would be behind a glass one-way mirror, and they would be on the other side of it. They had their choice to look at pornographic magazines or watch porno videos. We would tape electrodes to their groin, thigh, chest and armpits. We had another machine that would monitor their breathing and heart rate. If there was a difference in their heart rate when looking at homosexual pornography, we would turn a dial which would send a current to shock them. If they were a new patient, we would use a very low current. From the reaction that I saw there were muscle spasms which looked very painful.

After that was over, we would switch the pornography over so that it was a man and a woman having sex, and we would play very soothing music in the background to try and get the mind to relate to that. For the people that had been doing the therapy longer we turned the voltage way up so that you could see burn marks on the skin and quite often they would also throw up during the therapy.

Here's another account:

Um, hm. And the program was called aversion therapy.

And what did they do in this program of aversion therapy?

He had me go into Salt Lake City and go to an adult bookstore and find pornography that I found erotic, or whatever. And then I had to bring it back to him and he ... . I don't know if it was a BYU photo lab or what, but [the pornography] was turned into slides and then they would put electrodes first on my hands–and I have burns.

You have burns on your hands? Oh, I see those burns.

That's from those. And then they're on my arm and my torso. At first.

What year was this, Jayce? Give me a time frame.

It was '94, the last five, six months of 1994.

[long pause] At first we didn't use the slides or any visual type of stimulation. He just told me to fantasize. And as I was trying to fantasize or whatever, trying to do what he wanted me to do, randomly they would send shocks. And that happened for, like, the first three weeks. And that was about six sessions. And then the slides were ready.

OK, let me see if I understand this. You were told to fantasize male-male eroticism?

Uh, huh.

And then they would send random shocks into your body which caused these scars on your body and on your hands?

Um, hm.

OK. And then what?

[long pause] Then there would be slides. [long pause] There were more electrodes this time and they were on ... . [pause] This is kind of embarrassing. [pause] I mean, they were all ... . I was in a position where they could tell if I was being aroused or not. It was very obvious. And then if there was any kind of arousal whatsoever I would be shocked. And then that happened for about two months.

OK. I'm gonna to ask you a really personal question. Did they also have an electrode on your penis?

Um, hm.

And is there scar tissue there?

Uh, huh. [long pause]

That happened for at least eight sessions. Probably actually about sixteen because it was two months that we did just that form. And then the electrodes were all [in] the same places, but then I had the control that when I was being shocked I could press this plunger or button or whatever and a picture of a woman would come up and the electrodes would stop.

OK. Now, this took place on BYU property?

Um, hm.

OK. Where at? Do you know?

It's the Smith Family Living Center. It was in the basement.

In the basement?

Um, hm.

At BYU?

Um, hm.

The last two months, that's what we would do. And that was only once a week. And then one day I was driving to Provo and I just couldn't get off the exit. I couldn't do it anymore. And so I just turned around and went back to Ogden and told my bishop that I was fine, that I was OK and he said, "If there's anything left, your mission will fix that." And so I left for my mission ... .

Telling these stories serves two purposes. First, it sends a message that being The Gay is so terrible, the Church is willing to scorch a man's little soldier in order to stop it. And second, Jesus wants us to torture people sometimes, so get with the program.

Hey, maybe torture would be useful for missionary work too. Have you considered it? It seemed to work well for the Catholics in Spain.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Elsewhere: My inner Frenchman followed through on this vow and officially became an apostate.

more animals

CREDIT BRAVE NEW FILMS FOR BRINGING TO ATTENTION THE FOLLOWING COMMERCIAL AGAINST McCAIN/PALIN, AS PRODUCED BY "A CONCERNED PRIVATE CITIZEN" who would like you to spread the word:

For those among you who insist upon substantiation of the claims made in the ur-ad, see for yourself here, here und here, as you prefer. And be sure to pass it along--but do so responsibly.

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

IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T HEARD, POLICE RAIDED THE TONY ALAMO MINISTRIES COMPOUND NEAR TEXARKANA @ THE WEEKEND as part of enquiries into suspicions of child sexual abuse and child pornography being carried on therefrom.

Which could be considered byproducts of what the Southern Poverty Law Centre's Intelligence Report broke just last fall--and which they reminded everyone of thusly in the Hatewatch blog when the story first broke Saturday evening:

As detailed in the Fall 2007 issue of the Report, Alamo in recent years has argued that girls should marry once they start menstruating, even if they are as young as 10. In a 2006 radio broadcast, he said: “God impregnated Mary when she was about 11 years old. So the government idiots, the people that don’t know the Bible, what you’re going to have to do is get a hold of God now, you’re going to have to get up there and cuff him and send him to prison for statutory rape.”

In early 2007, Alamo cited the alleged promiscuity of 1st-graders as grounds for marrying them before the age of legal consent. “I’ve found out from people’s parents that their daughter started having sex when she was 6 years old and had sex every day of her life,” he said in another broadcast. “So right there, by the time she’s 15 years old, she’s had sex thousands of times. I mean, this is just reality.”

The Report’s story also explores the Alamo cult’s strange background and its leader’s raging hatred for Catholics and homosexuals. Alamo has blamed Catholics for “every filthy thing,” including communism, Nazism, the two world wars, the Jonestown massacre, drugs, prostitution and pornography. He has also attacked his many detractors in Fouke, saying that God would “destroy” what he characterized as his “Vaticanite” critics.

Which raises the question, readers, of where Rev. Alamo gets such a notion that first-graders' showing signs of "sexual promiscuity" was grounds enough for urging their being Married Too Young--as in @ the onset of the menarche.

How do we know it isn't Al Cohol as is providing the inspiration?

WITHOUT DOUBT, THE BIG DEBATE ABROAD THIS DAY IS OVER HOW BEST TO APPROACH (AND TWEAK UPON) TREASURY SECRETARY PAULSON'S GRAND DESIGN of what he (aided and abetted by His Fraudulency) sees as a "necessary" restructuring of the banking, financial and mortgage-lending industries in the United States made all the more so by--wait for it--the Great Within's delusory beliefs that regulatory relief will actually "empower" in particular the Lower Classes--especially such deemed "chronic and habitual welfare cases***unwittingly conditioned into embracing Socialistic, Communistic or otherwise un-American beliefs and value-systems" because of State welfare.

That it would open the doors to greater selection of new and innovative banking and mortgage products, @ lower prices than before.

And that it would empower investors into maximising their returns through new and innovative investment vehicles previously available only to bankers and the super-wealthy.

All of which, it turns out, can be traced back, in one way or another, to none other than the self-proclaimed "maverick" of Indecision 2008, by name of John McCain. (See for yourself what The Nation has to say in this respect. Not to mention some revealing new information the MSM is afraid to disclose, For Reasons You Need to Understand, that the same AIG insurance group whose Govermnent bailout The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang is criticising actually gave money to his so-called "Reform Institute;" talk about your hypocrisy there!)

Not to mention wondering how such can be financed without recourse to higher taxes, to be excused as being "in the national interest" (as in the belief that low taxes=jobs=social stability), as well as having to maintain an extremely costly ur-RAHOWA in Iraq and Afghanistan Against International Terrorism while expecting the public to maintain their daily routines as a "preemptive" measure against further infamous attacks.

In short, a $700 billion misunderstanding, and then some.

One suggestion I have: This holiday season, consider giving Savings Bonds instead of wasteful and frivolous consumption goods as gifts to your friends as one way to show how such a Noble Delusion can be financed. Said bonds can be purchased in Series EE (paying market-linked rates) or Series I (paying an inflation-linked rate adjusted regularly), and are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government.

(If you still have old Series E or Series EE bonds in the attic or safe, consider trading those in on Series HH bonds; those are the only way Series HH bonds can be acquired.)

Or, for that matter, United States Treasury securities through the Treasury Direct scheme; they can also serve as worthwhile holiday-season gift options to the wasteful, the frivolous and the otherwise impractical of consumption goods.

(Unless, of course, you can show cause why we need to purchase wasteful and unnecessary consumption goods @, say, Wally World rather than invest for the good of the Nation.)

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

IN ANY EVENT, THINK TWICE ABOUT WHETHER BUYING WASTEFUL AND UNNECESSARY APPLIANCES OR TOYS FOR THE HOLIDAYS IS REALLY NECESSARY in the face of what could be a serious and volatile socioeconomic situation ... and put those monies, instead, into Savings Bonds or other Treasury securities, where such will actually serve useful purposes for the Nation--and, over time, will translate into a generous return.

They can be purchased, for the most part, through your local bankers, or you can open a Treasury Direct account online. Also ask your employer if they offer the Payroll Savings Plan, as allows you to put aside part of your pay for Savings Bond purchases.

Employers who may be looking for worthwhile holiday gift ideas for their employees or loyal customers may want to consider giving Savings Bonds or other Treasury Securities this time around; such could help make a difference for once, and could be much better than frivolous or unnecessary consumption goods.

Otherwise ... what stands in the way?

And pray, whence the idea that constant and unnecessary purchases of consumption goods is necessary to the defence of Our Antient and Pecuilar Soverignty and Soverign Identity as a Pecuilar Among the Nations?

YOUR CORRESPONDENT, HIMSELF MENTALLY AND EMOTIONALLY DISABLED TO A POINT WHERE NORMAL EMPLOYMENT IS DEEMED NOT VIABLE, has himself been subjected to what amounts to psychoemotional abuse under the guise of "therapy" by the likes of psychiatrists with Community Mental Health Centres, sheltered workshop counsellors and Vocational Guidance Counsellors with Vocational Rehabilitation.

In particular the likes of fearmongering statements such as these:

• "The only way many employers would be willing to hire disabled people is if, and only if, they were given greater flexibility to use Independent Contractors, using them only as needed, and paying them less than mininum wage."
• "Employers in the community would like to hire disabled people, but as things stand now, they are prevented by assorted legal restrictions from doing so."
• "Holding outspoken beliefs, or showing outspoken tendencies, can be sufficent grounds for your welfare and Social Security benefits being cancelled or revoked. Hence, keep your mouth shut and your nose clean."
• "Being outspoken will only sap your strength."
• "The law requires disability recertification through a Trial Work Period being completed every seven years."
• "Being outspoken is a clear sign of mental illness."
• "Those of your kind who speak out are all the more likely to undermine public confidence and trust in certain agencies, institutions and schemes of the State deemed Essential or otherwise Strategic."
• "Outspoken people are all the more likely to spread Schizophrenic Germs, infecting whole communities to the point of an epidemic of insanity ensuing."
• "Companies prefer locating in communities with a high level of Mental Purity." (Alternately, "Companies would rather not locate in areas with high populations of troublemakers and mental cases.")
• "If companies were allowed to freely hire disabled people, employers could risk legal action charging Unfair Labour Practice, Reverse Bias and/or Union-Busting from those who were let go just to hire your kind."
• "You would be better off taking night-shift work so you can not only get a better chance of being hired, but also free up your days for needed therapy."
• "In some cases of serious mental disorders, medication can help."

And perhaps one of the weirdest of lies I can recall being subjected against me was in the fall of 1981, shortly after my return from a misguided referral interstate to Eau Claire, Wisconsin by Minnesota Vocational Rehabilitation for jobs training and evaluation as eventually resulted in referral to a Day Treatment programme which was nothing short of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four on earth, with abuse packaged as "therapy" which was so awful, I have since been considered unsuitable for traditional employment in the community: In the interest of expediency, Vocational Rehabilitation placed me in a board-and-care home (since closed) which was nothing short of Bedlam from time to time, reinforced by an insistence on utmost cooperation if we were expected to be in the good graces of management.

That lie was suggesting that I was directly responsible for such acts, deeds and exploits as led to the closing of a local children's home in 1976, as if suggesting where said children's home was something of an Essential or Strategic Institution in the Public Interest--all the while lacking credible evidence as would substantiate the connexion. Not to mention suggesting that I lie down on the nearby railroad tracks and let the next train pass over and kill me "to spare the community further embarrassment."

(If truth be known, the reason said children's home closed was not because of "troublemaking" on my part, but because of the structural condition thereof precluding cost-efficent remodelling to bring the same up to prevailing fire codes--in fact, such was in a historically-significant structure here in Winona--and a general paradigm shift away from the institutional model and more towards foster care vis-a-vis those with emotional and developmental disorders motivated largely by cost and changing social attitudes.)

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

NOW THAT HIS FRAUDULENCY IS CALLING ON CONGRESS TO PASS AN $800 BILLION PACKAGE TO BUY DOWN BAD MORTGAGES and otherwise save face for the Great Within's Grand Delusions of regulatory relief towards a Classless Ownership Society being one with empowering the Lower Classes especially, there could be serious questions already emerging.

Which prompts Credo Mobile to come out with the following letter to share with your Right-Thinking Droogs (and responsibly, know):

Subject: No blank check for Wall Street.

Dear Friend,

Congress is on the brink of making a one-sided deal to give George W. Bush a blank check to bail out his droogs--offering nearly (or perhaps more than) a trillion taxpayer dollars to Wall Street to cover its bad debts. That works out to somewhere between $2000 and $5000 from every American family. So what do the taxpayers get in return?

Nothing. No new regulation or oversight to help avoid this kind of crisis in the future. No public interest givebacks to help people whose homes are in the hands of the banks. Perhaps most shockingly of all, the taxpayers get absolutely no share in the profits if and when these finance giants bounce back, even though we are now assuming a great deal of the risk.

This is worse than a bad deal - this isn't a deal at all. This is a blank check to some of the richest companies in the world.

I just signed a petition calling on key members of Congress to impose a few sensible conditions to this bailout in order to protect the American people--I hope you will too.

Please have a look and take action.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/no_blank_check/?r_by=912-1603185-2vR2O8x&rc=paste

Thanks!

So what stands in the way?

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

LASTLY, A FURTHER APPY POLLY LOGGY IS DICTATED IN LIGHT OF CONTINUED PROBLEMS TODAY ON BLOGDRIVE'S PART as prevented this blog from displaying for much of yesterday--essentially continuing on what happened Saturday after some hardware on their end failed.

These were outside my direct control, know, and I apologise for any inconvenience you may have suffered.

more animals

FIRST OFF, AN EXPLANATION IS IN ORDER FOR WHY IT WAS THAT I WAS UNABLE TO POST MATERIAL YESTERDAY UNTIL LATER IN THE DAY: Some hardware on Blogdrive's end failed, forcing them offline for some while.

(Which, however, did not affect member blogs like this one, which were still up and running.)

Please understand that the problem is being rectified @ this time, so expect some delays in seeing these items posted in real time.

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

HARD TO SAY IF THIS COULD BE THE END OF THE NOTORIOUS TONY ALAMO MINISTRIES, but their compound in Fouke, AR was raided last evening by Federal and State authorities in response to rumours that Tony Alamo Ministries was dabbling in the old kinderporn.

Charges which Rev. Alamo denies, claiming his "deeply-held beliefs" are "under attack" by what he called "the Anti-Christ Government," never mind where Alamo's pseudoministry has been described as an Evil Cult preying upon children and Other Vulnerable Elements of Society.

(Some further interesting insight into Tony Alamo Ministries was had last fall by the Southern Poverty Law Centre in their Intelligence Report; the article itself is worth reading in the wake of these new developments.)

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

AND SPEAKING OF SO-CALLED "DEEPLY-HELD BELIEFS" AS A PATSY OF THE RELIGIOPOLITICAL RIGHT WHICH CAN SERVE AS A LEGAL DEFENCE if and when required--Right Wing Watch takes note on how same is being deployed in their propaganda for Indecision 2008:

The Religious Right has spent the last several months savaging Barack Obama and his Christian faith, calling it everything from “deceitful,” to “woefully deficient,” to outright "phony." They have gone over the tenets of his faith with a fine-toothed comb and demanded that he sit down with them and explain, in depth, his Christian beliefs and how they influence his political positions. 

But now that Sarah Palin has emerged on the scene, they have suddenly dusted off their age-old complaint that questions about a candidate's faith and "deeply held beliefs" are off-limits and that any such inquiry is a sign of anti-Christian bigotry: 

Governor Sarah Palin is undergoing increasing scrutiny by those aiming to use her church and religious beliefs as a weapon against her. Over the weekend, a biased Associated Press article attacked her church for promoting Focus on the Family's "Love Won Out" conference which will be held this Saturday in Anchorage. The conference will teach a biblical message on sexuality and assist those seeking to overcome same-sex attractions. We can probably expect more attacks of this nature. How the McCain campaign responds is critical in maintaining the intensity and enthusiasm that swept through social conservatives after Gov. Palin's selection as the VP nominee. In the past, there has been an overwhelming public backlash against those seeking to impose a religious litmus test on candidates and judicial nominees. Several years ago, Senator Schumer (D-NY) experienced this backlash when he attacked judicial nominees for holding "deeply held personal beliefs." The McCain campaign must stand firmly against efforts to make Gov. Palin's faith a disqualifier. There should be no reluctance in any party to be identified as someone who holds "deeply held personal beliefs."

If FRC really is so upset about people trying to use a candidate's "church and religious beliefs as a weapon" against them, maybe they should take it up with James Dobson and Focus on the Family.

Next thing you know, expect the Religiopolitical Right to start using "dearly-held beliefs"--or, even better yet, "deeply- and dearly-held beliefs"--as a patsy crossing on canard to suggest that the defence of a mythological White Male Christian Power Structure is one with the defence of Our Traditional Christian Heritage and Identity. Especially when delivered in a condescendingly-sarcastic tone and nuance which may conceal psychopathic intentions.

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

WITH BANKERS AND LENDERS ALL THE MORE LIKELY TO START TIGHTENING LOAN AND CREDIT STANDARDS IN THE FACE OF A SERIOUS SOCIOFINANCIAL MELTDOWN caused, no doubt, by the Grand Delusions of His Fraudulency's Great Within suggesting that a combination of "stay-the-course" socioeconomic policies, low taxes and regulatory relief will help ensure Complete and Final Victory in the ur-RAHOWA Agains Terrorism, it was only a matter of time before "spam" e-mails began surfacing from what can best be regarded as disreputable channels claiming to offer "cheap loans" @ low rates of usury without regards to credit history.

Typical of which was the following, as received by Your Correspondent (with necessary redactions):

FRED FINANCIAL HOME is the leading provider of Loans any where any time
.
Get a loan for bills, car repairs, travel or vacation, credit repair, PCS
expenses, furniture, home repair, and all your other needs Loans are available from $2,000 USD to $5,000,000 USD,Personalize your loan with Flexible terms at competitive rates.

If for any reason you are not completely satisfied, return your loan
within 15 days at no cost to you.
Contact us today on our email [redacted] with the following
details:

Names:
Monthly Income:
Home Address:
Phone No:
Fax No:
Country:
Loan Amount ($):
Loan Period:

Regards,
Mr Fred Duke
Chairman / F.F.H.

N.B
All Interested Applicant are to Contact the Company Email below
[redacted]

And it makes you wonder just how these "loans" (if @ all extant) are financed; methinks one likely possibility is that such "lenders" are really using such as a front for Laundering the Proceeds of Crime or Terrorism @ the expense of vulnerable persons needing consumer finance, but unlikely to know where to turn for fear of "not meeting current lending standards."

In turn bringing up the following item per Media Matters for America offered in the interest of insight:

Neil Cavuto, host of Fox News' Your World, conflated giving home mortgages to minorities with risky lending practices, suggesting that efforts to increase homeownership among minority borrowers contributed to financial problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Discussing the decision by the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency to place Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship, Cavuto asked Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA) on September 18, "[W]hen you and many of your colleagues were pushing for more minority lending and more expanded lending to folks who heretofore couldn't get mortgages, when you were pushing homeownership ... Are you totally without culpability here? Are you totally blameless? Are you totally irresponsible of anything that happened?" Cavuto later said, "I'm just saying, I don't remember a clarion call that said, 'Fannie and Freddie are a disaster. Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster.'"

Previously, on the September 16 edition of Your World, Cavuto said to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD): "[Y]ou wanted to encourage minority lending -- obviously, a lot of Republicans did as well. There was a lot of -- expand lending to those to get a home," Cavuto went on to ask, "Do you think, intrinsically, it was a mistake, on both parties' part, to push -- to push for homeownership for everybody?"

Besides, it's my understanding that Fox Prolefeed has this nasty repute for being a paid shill for the articles of faith of His Fraudulency's Great Within, in particular the empowerment of the Lower Classes out of "chronic and habitual" dependency on renting in "the projects" and into a "healthy and nutritious" respect for owner-occupancy housing as one with True Patriot Love in All Thy Sons Command.

Enough to make you wonder if what Fox Prolefeed wants out of "the projects" is essentially conversion, Singapore-stylee, of rental units therein into owner-occupied housing, provided the tenants were of Good Moral Character--in other words, unwed mothers, those with past-due traffic tickets or other criminal fines, tax evaders and others deemed "parasites of the state" need not apply.