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I ACKNOWLEDGE @ THIS TIME WHERE THE LEAD-IN PHOTOS THAT I SELECT FOR THESE ESSAYS WILL SOMETIMES BE IRRELEVANT TO THE TOPICS that I bring up in same ... including in this case, where such is worth illustrating the point that questions need to be addressed about the US$700 Billion Misunderstanding otherwise known as the Paulson Plan to Save Our Antient and Pecuilar Socioeconomic Paradigm and Model Within Free-Market Paradigms.

Which was addressed in my previous posting.

And which, no doubt, has caused John McCain to suspend his electoral campaign so that all the more attention can be directed @ Congressional response to said plan. Methinks such could prove to be a serious mistake for the McCain/Palin "Country First" ticket, not to mention depriving Fox Prolefeed of sustenance to appeal to their Great Unwashed audience.

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AND SPEAKING OF "ETHICAL DRUGS," Your Correspondent is pleased to have you know that The Exaggerator is proud to be affiliate with drugstore.com. the uncommon drugstore.

Not to mention Smallflower.com as well.

In either case, providing your personal care and medical needs from the comfort of your home via the Information Stuporbahn, without the bedlam and confusion (as well as saving considerable fuel in the process).

And your purchases will greatly support this blog and Your Correspondent.

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WORTHWHILE NEW CAMPAIGN TO CONSIDER JOINING, even if it's of an impromptu "grass roots" sort launching by way of the following "letter to the editor" of the Wisconsin Dells Events from the other day:

Make a difference and stop watching FOX TV

We can make a difference simply by what we view on TV.

I hope you will watch the Outfoxxed video, which is accessible on the Internet. It is long and you probably will think that you have heard this before. I did. The difference is that after watching this I feel compelled to take action.

Here are some programs that are sponsored by the FOX network: House; The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Terminator); Fringe; Prison Break and 24.

There are others. I know because I have watched them. I will no longer be watching FOX. Remember the amount of money they make is based on how many people watch. The programs listed above are particularly manipulative, well produced and generate a large viewing. They are slick. Any time you watch FOX, you know where the money is going.

Here are my two cents - it is not as loud as FOX but if enough people get on board we will have a strong populist movement.

FOX(y) philosophy is that it's OK to distort the truth. It's OK to lie, to torture, to take chances with other people's lives and a whole list of other things to save us from some vague threat of domination from Russia, terrorism, communism, liberalism, atheism, gay marriage, abortion, drugs, vitamins and disease. The ends justify the means is the only rational way to deal with these threats.

FOX down plays things that have corporate interest even if they are killing hundreds and even thousands of people such as alcohol, food additives and air pollution. It advocates drilling and money for oil companies in place of real incentives for cleaner energy alternatives that would produce American jobs.

The list goes on. Do you feel apathetic and unable to make a difference? This is exactly the result that supports the driving forces behind this movement. They need your apathy. So sit on your couch and do nothing. Absorb right wing propaganda as is presented by FOX on channel 47 in the Madison and surrounding area. Happy viewing.

Or, let's start a movement. Let's have this movement be inspired by love, not fear. Let's have it respect individuals more than corporations. Let's have it be American in showing that we care about our people without distinction: rich or poor, young or old, Republican or Democrat, black or white, straight or gay, Christian or not. We can make a difference. If you are ready and agree, stop supporting FOX network. I have removed FOX programs from my TIVO programming list.

Luke Metz, Baraboo

Well worth considering, especially during the November "sweeps" as usually sees TV programming @ its most sensationally depraved, @ times tending to the old hound-and-horny.

Pass this along, why don't you?

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THE SO-CALLED "LORD'S RESISTANCE ARMY" MAY NOT EXACTLY BE "JOEL'S ARMY," FOLKSIES, but having been handed the bitter spoils of defeat in Uganda, their troops have started making their presence known in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo exploiting local tribal insurgencies.

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YOUR CORRESPONDENT UNDERSTANDS WHERE THE SAME ROCHESTER COALITION AS OPPOSETH THE DAKOTA, MINNESOTA AND EASTERN RAILWAY'S track-upgrade project (including an entirely new line into the Powder River Basin coalfields in Wyoming) out of health and safety issues for Rochester has gone on record calling for Rochester to see its proper place on a proposed high-speed rail link between the Twin Cities and Chicago.

For such a notion to occur, however, such will require substantial new construction between the Twin Cities and Rochester, which may be all the more difficult to arrange owing to the current socioeconomic debacle making private-sector finance all the more difficult.

Better solution: Upgrade the existing Winona-Rochester portion of the DM&E's line to allow a decent passenger rail service between Chicago and Rochester, using the existing Empire Builder's routing between Winona and Chicago as would permit a twice-daily service (one a day service with coaches and dinette; the other, an overnight train with couchette-type sleepers) similar to what the former Chicago and North Western used to have until the early 1960's with the Minnesota 400 and the Rochester-Minnesota Special, the latter hosting the famous Pullman sleeper Joseph Lister as had special provision for patients on stretchers heading to the Mayo Clinic.

Still, though, a new depot will need to be constructed to serve Rochester, as the original such was demolished around 1990 after having served as the Depot House restaurant and, later, a Salvation Army Thrift Store after passenger service was discontinued.

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ONE THING MORE: The suggestion that you consider buying Savings Bonds or other Treasury securities as an alternative to frivolous or otherwise unnecessary consumption goods in reply to the $700 Billion Misunderstanding should not be construed as investment advice.   

THE GOOD PEOPLE @ THE CAPITAL TIMES (CYBERSPACE, VIA MADISON, WISCONSIN) HAVE SOME SHOCKING NEWS TO REVEAL in the following editorial vis-a-vis Treasury Secretary Paulson's Grand Delusion otherwise known as a $700 Billion Misunderstanding.

Videlicet, that the whole, as originally written, may be--shock!! horror!!--unconstitutional:

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's draft proposal for the bailout of struggling financial services firms sought to make himself the most powerful unelected official in American history through his proposal to take charge of vast sectors of the U.S. economy--setting policy, buying and selling assets, determining whether financial institutions thrive or collapse--with no oversight.

Under Paulson's draft plan, Congress and the courts would have been barred from reviewing or challenging his moves to stabilize financial markets, effectively making him the nation's economic czar.

That's not just a dangerous power grab for economic and political reasons. It's unconstitutional.

Paulson's power grab was specifically spelled out by the treasury secretary in Section 8 of his proposal, which read: "Decisions by the secretary pursuant to the authority of this act are nonreviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

Senate Banking Committee Chris Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who sought his party's nomination for president this year but has arguably emerged as a more influential player in his role as the congressional point man on a crisis that is bigger than an election, pushed back on Monday.

Dodd offered a plan to give Paulson extraordinary--and, frankly, excessive--powers. But the senator also moved to place tighter time limits on the period in which the treasury secretary would be able to exercise those powers, to establish an special inspector general to monitor the program, and to set up an emergency board with two congressional appointees to provide oversight.

Ultimately, Dodd and his compatriots should be able to restrain Paulson's power grab.

But they must be as specific in their constraint of Paulson as the treasury secretary was in his overreach.

Section 8 of the Paulson proposal must be stripped in its entirety.

There can be no vagueness, no gray area.

Otherwise, the treasury secretary would become a more powerful--and unaccountable--figure even than our powerful and unaccountable president. And, as such, he would be operating in direct conflict with the Constitution.

The nation's essential document makes it clear that every member of the executive branch is subject to legislative and judicial review.

Congress cannot delegate its oversight authority to a Cabinet member, even in a time of turmoil. The opening section of the Constitution gives all--emphasis on all--legislative authority to the House and Senate. Under the well-established constitutional doctrine of nondelegation, Congress cannot cede that power in the manner that Paulson's draft plan proposed--or, for that matter, in any manner whatsoever.

"It's hard to run afoul of the nondelegation doctrine, but if anything does, this is probably it," Jamie Raskin, a professor of constitutional law at American University's Washington College of Law, told the Maryland Daily Record, a newspaper that deals with legal issues. "How does Congress just give away $700 billion and tell the secretary of the treasury to figure out the rest?"

Raskin, a state senator, said that the doctrine of nondelegation "was the first thing I thought of when I heard that the administration's entire plan was on three pages and that the third page said $700 billion would be allocated to this purpose (and) programmatic details are to be fleshed out by the Treasury Department."

It is good that Raskin and a few others are reading the fine print.

It is necessary that Congress do the same.

Moral: Share the news with your Congressman.

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AS IF THESE AMAZING(?!) REVELATIONS AS ABOVE WEREN'T DISGUSTING ENOUGH FOR THE WEIRD AND UNWHOLESOME ELEMENT DOMINATING WASHINGTON to stomach without reaching for the old bicarbonate, Right Wing Watch is making note of where the current socioeconomic crisis is being seen by the Religiopolitical Right as a clear and present sign of Moral Breakdown as Threatens to Undermine Our Antient and Pecuilar Soverignty and Soverign Identity as a Pecuilar Among the Nations:

There have been several articles recently suggesting that with John McCain's decision to name Sarah Palin as his running mate, the focus of the election was shifting toward wedge issues like abortion and gay marriage and that the so-called "culture war" was about to be reignited, to the benefit of the Republican Party.

But that was before the economy went into a meltdown and became the primary issue in the campaign.  Of course, just because the focus has shifted away from their issues doesn't mean that the Religious Right isn't desperately trying to find ways of exploiting the current economic crisis to further their own agenda:

While the economy clearly is at the forefront of voter priorities, conservative Christians also draw a connection between traditional social issues like abortion and gay marriage and the economy, said Tony Perkins, president of the Washington-based Family Research Council.

"As there's a breakdown in the family and the family weakens, it's only logical it will hit Wall Street," Perkins said. "A nation cannot be strong just because of a financial structure alone. It has to have strong families and values."

Obviously, as soon as women stop having abortions and gays stop trying to get married and adopt children everything on Wall Street will turn right around.  It's as simple as that.

Which also raises the question: Whence the interconnexion between the defence of Family Values and the defence of capitalism with American characteristics, and vice versa?

As if that weren't enough to send the stomach churning beyond the help of even Prilosec or Zantac, another Right Wing Watch item as relates to the Religiopolitical Right's handling of Indecision 2008 bears noting--in this case, by equating exercise of the vote as one with Christian Witness:

Concerned Women for America recently released its "Election Sunday Package," a webpage full of audio and video resources to help mobilize right-wing voters for November.  Among those resources is this video called "Operation: Rally The Church" in which CWA President Wendy Wright explains that if Christians don't vote, "liberals who mock Christians, support abortion on demand and same-sex marriage, and would prefer that America be weak in the world community" will ruin this country.  She warns that if "citizens ... who love God don't vote, then the people who will be ruling over us in government will continue the slaughter of unborn babies, weaken marriage, and silence those who love God" and thus it is imperative that Christians do vote because all those who have died defending this country are putting "their hope in you ... to keep this a country worth living and dying for":

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.   

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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.

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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?"

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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.)

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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."

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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"?

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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.