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To whom it may concern:

I can understand where your opposition to abortion, contraception and family planning is based on the argument that Life Begins @ Conception, No Ifs, Ands or Buts; ergo, by this line of thinking, Abortion=Murder, not to mention contraception being "unnatural interference" with the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.

However, I think it was time to ask you about an issue indirectly related to banning abortion, per your greater articles of faith, yet which deserves to be addressed nonetheless:

You may or may not recall news items following the collapse of Nicolae Ceauçescu's basket-case Communist regime in Romania towards the end of 1989, as part of the general collapse of the Iron Curtain in Central and Eastern Europe, about the delusions of said regime seeking to hasten the Final Onset of Pure Socialism through:

• Requiring all married couples to give birth to @ least five children;
• Requiring all pregnant women to undergo monthly gynecological examinations, as included bromide-laden lectures about her serving the Greater Glory of Socialism all the while and advice that if she didn't want to care for her offspring, she could leave it with State orphanages;
• Offering larger apartments and better ration allowances to larger families; and
• Proscribing abortion, contraception, family planning and even sex education, all seen to be "tending to promote decadent bougeois tendencies" seen as incompatible to the Advancement of Socialism among the proletariat.

Policies, know, implemented by decree following Ceauçescu's coming to power in 1966, and brutally enforced by the Securitate secret police.

Policies which, in the end, would be its undoing, especially having failed to realise until too late that such a policy would translate, in time, to a major surplus of workers to available jobs in a centrally-planned, Communist socioeconomic model and paradigm as relied all too much on Five-Year Plans for the most part--in other words, wholesale "social parasitism" (to use a Communist-bloc catch-all phrase describing such without work or otherwise "leading an immoral, idle or dissolute life") as was the making of the State all along, and for which her "Soviet sister republics" would be unlikely to accomodate even as "guest workers" just to pay off past-due foreign debt on an "in-kind" basis.

And this while Ceauçescu demolished whole sections of Bucharest wholesale for a Grand Redesign as included the grandiose Palace of Socialist Glory and Victory of Socialism Boulevard ... bulldozed whole villages flat to rebuild them as nothing more than apartment-block travesties officically known as "agro-industrial complexes," all along driving his people into starvation ... and accumulated a rather substantial collection of the crudest and most perverted pornography known.

With that as background, then, I would like to ask:

1. Is your larger desire in seeking to ban abortion "completely and finally" nothing short of economic (as in creating a pool of poor, undereducated or homeschooled and easily-influenced Joe Sixpack working-class types)?
2. Over time, would you call for a "complete and final" ban on immigration in the interest of "protecting American workers and American jobs"?
3. Would such a blanket ban on abortion include outright disincentives to industry vis-a-vis updating plant and machinery (or, put another way, keeping American industry all the more labour-intensive in the name of "industrial heritage"), especially so from the tax standpoint?
4. Given your element's known objections to expanding State welfare on the grounds that such amounts to nothing more than admitting Moral Error and Weakness, how can you expect especially lower-income families to care for all the children you forced on them out of their own potentially limited and limiting resources exclusively?
5. How can you expect a free-market capitalist socioeconomic model and paradigm to absorb all the surplus labour resulting over time?
6. Are you going to force pregnant women to have mandatory monthly gynecological examinations, replete with all manner of bromide-laden lectures about their serving American and Christian Patriot Love?
7. Would such policies give undue preference to so-called "European-American" peoples which your racist and white-supremacist friends would consider "racially and morally superior"?
8. How do we know such policies are not really a rehashing of the worst excesses of apartheid South Africa, in particular campaigns in the mid-1980's to increase white birth rates under the slogan "Make Babies for [then-Prime Minister P.W.] Botha"?
9. Are you also expecting the schools to replace sex education with "race studies" classes in the stylee of Nazi Germany?
10. How do we know that such a desire to create essentially a nativist brand of capitalistic self-sufficency will not result in the overt sanctioning of prostitution not unlike Nazi Germany's Lebensborn programme as sought to create a genetically-superior "Aryan Master Race" as would ensure the continuity of the Nazi regime?
11. What exactly would preclude your acknowledging openly that the whole desire in banning abortion is nothing short of intitutionalised racism and nativism, pure and unadulterated?
12. Are you now, or have you ever been--
1. an alcoholic?
2. a drug addict?
3. a gambler?
4. a chronic and habitual spendthrift?
5. an Undischarged Bankrupt?
6. a spousal/child abuser?
7. a sex fiend or maniac?
8. a regular parton of adult-oriented businesses?
9. a prostitute or other employee in the sex trade?
10. a known or otherwise infamous criminal with a police record?
11. diagnosed with a loathsome mental illness, defect or disease?
12. committed involuntarily to a state institution for the mentally-defective or insane?
13. diagnosed with a Loathsome Social Disease?
14. repeatedly dismissed from employment for reasons including alcoholism, drugs, repeated tardiness or "insubordination"?
15. associated with weird and/or unwholesome elements as include racists, white supremacists, and suchlike (many of which could themselves be alcoholics, drug addicts, gamblers, spendthrifts, and other undesirable types)?

We await the answers--TRUTHFUL answers, come to think of it.

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MEMO TO READERS: In common with numerous other Open Letters in the past on this blog, Your Correspondent urges you to share this with your friends and e-mail circles--but to do so responsibly (as in avoiding "spamming," if you can help it; "spam" can only cause Open Letters like this, and that which they serve to advance, to backfire).  

ANYHOW, IT'S BEEN QUITE AWHILE SINCE YOUR CORRESPONDENT WAS IN "SATURDAY SCRATCHPAD" MODE FOR THE SAKE OF THIS BLOG, so I thought I'd use this particular approach this time around.

First off, Thursday marked my own 47th birthday, which, when you get older (or so my Motherdear tells me), gets to be just another day on the calendar. As it turned out to be, come to think of it; as the old witticism has it, "we grow too soon old and too late smart."

As yet, no birthday cards in the letterposts; seems the family must be forgetting (or are they, with lives of their own?).

As for the highlight therefor, or what would pass for it, I took dinner with the Grand Buffet @ the Hy-Vee here in Winona. They always have some delicious food there, even on a mundane occasion like my own birthday as had me enjoying:

• two bacon cheeseburgers, topped with steak sauce;
• a bowl of chicken noodle soup;
• some pork loin roast, with mashed potatoes and gravy;
• a fried chicken breast;
• some cheesecake for dessert; and
• iced tea to drink.

The whole costing (with tax) $10.95. What better could you want, especially absent other decent buffet-stylee options in town like Old Country Buffet? (I admit to being fond of the buffet type of place or dinner, and try not to ask.)

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

THE ONSET OF CHILLY WEATHER, ALONG WITH THE ONSET OF FALL COLOURS AND FROST, seems to be enough for moi to start thinking a little more about heartier stuff for the dinner.

Like creamy wild rice soup with diced ham and turkey breast, and some heated-up Italian bigio (peasant's bread) to dunk into the soup every now and then--perhaps my single favourite Saturday-evening supper when fall colours come around, even if it means soup for dinner over the next several days by way of the leftovers.

Just call me a wild rice soup kind of guy. Typically Minnesotan, come to think of it.

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NO DOUBT THE ARCHIE BUNKER/ALF GARNETT CROWD WILL BE DANCING IN THE STREETS OF BRANSON TODAY over the news of O.J. Simpson's having been found guilty in his latest trial over charges of robbery and theft from a sports-ephemera dealer previously.

Especially considering their ilk known to use O.J. as "evidence" of the "criminal predisposition" of blacks solely for their own bigoted ends, as if thinking that so-called "European-American Christians" were racially and morally incapable of committing heinous or otherwise infamous crimes--which, as we all know, dear reader, is not exactly the case.

(Especially if said "European-American Christians" were of the Low Church stylee of theology and discipline, emphasising as it does a more direct approach of worship and an unscrupulously literal reading of Holy Writ to the point of reckless interpretation. That, and the potential for clergy, or reasonable facsimilies thereof [coming as they tend to from among the laity], perverting their positions of authority and power through the use of sexual coercion or cooptation that same will try to evade liability for by invoking the Clergy-Penitent Privilege defence.)

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AS FOR TRYING TO CALL ATTENTION TO THIS WEBLOG WITHOUT RESORTING TO THE ILLEGAL OR UNETHICAL, AS IN THE WHOLESALE USE OF "SPAM"--er, "bulk e-mail marketing," as the element wants it referred to--what would stand in the way of using the old-reliable letterposts?

Which is my preferred approach to do so ... almost always to especially independent motels and hosteleries; my preference for independent motel and resort properties, as opposed to major chain such like Best Western, Hilton, Holiday Inn and the several brands under the Choice Hotels umbrella, is purely out of personal belief that one should not have to kowtow to a cookie-cutter formula which can quickly leave one insane over time vis-a-vis their travels on the road, that variety is the spice of life.

Which I've done in the case of the United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Great Britain, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, to take some especially noteworthy countries I've directed my efforts towards. And especially so such whose names tend to the whimsically corny or otherwise predictable.

It's just the way I prefer to avoid the risk of this blog being shut down for Terms of Service (ToS) violations involving use of "spam" (unsolicited bulk e-mail) for promotional purposes in connexion, notwithstanding the obnoxiously glowing generalities used by the "spamming" community suggesting that such is a more cost-efficent and "environmentally-friendly" (let alone "carbon-neutral") form of website marketing than search engines (and optimisation therefor), banner and click exchanges, even link swaps. (Besides: Setting aside the obvious likes of dubious and disreputable websites, how many websites do they know of as use "spam" exclusively to generate consistent and profitable traffic levels from time to time?)

That, and giving work to letter carriers, post office sorters and even mail clerks @ airport mail termini as probably need it all the while in this age of cyberposts.

TT4N.... 

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THIS PARTICULAR SPECIMEN OF ENGRISH DESCRIBING A CHEMICAL TOILET PERHAPS APTLY (AND APPRORIATELY) DESCRIBES THE EXCESSES OF ANTI-SEMITIC VITRIOL prevailing of late in response to the current socioeconomic situation, and the dangers to the economy so posed--as per the following press release from the Anti-Defamation League, as monitors this kind of online chatter:

ADL Reports Surge in Anti-Semitic Messages on Online Finance Sites in Response To Money Crisis

New York, NY, October 2, 2008 … In the wake of the collapse of major investment banks and the government's proposed bailout of financial institutions, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is reporting a dramatic upsurge in the number of anti-Semitic statements being posted to Internet discussion boards devoted to finance and the economy.   Hundreds of anti-Semitic posts regarding Lehman Brothers and other institutions affected by the subprime mortgage crisis have been submitted to discussion boards dealing with finance, with many more arriving by the minute.  The messages rail against Jews in general, with some charging that Jews control the government and finance as part of a "Jew world order" and therefore are to blame for the economic turmoil.   Anti-Jewish invective also has surfaced on a wide variety of blogs and conspiracy Web sites, according to ADL, which monitors anti-Semitism on the Internet through its Center on Extremism.  And similar messages have also appeared on neo-Nazi and white supremacist Web sites and Internet forums, which frequently seek to exploit current issues in an effort to spread anti-Semitism to potential recruits.   "We know from modern history that whenever there is a downturn in the global economy, there will be an upturn in the level of anti-Semitism and bigotry, and that is what we are seeing now," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "The age-old canards about Jews and money are always just beneath the surface.   As we witnessed after 9/11, whenever there is trouble or uncertainty in the economy or world events, Jews become the scapegoats, and ugly anti-Semitic canards are given new life."   Examples of some of the more virulent anti-Semitic posts to mainstream Finance message boards include:   "(Jews have) infiltrated Wall Street and Government and have ruined our country." "What is a GS Jew?  Goldman Sachs?  Jews are greedy, rotten slime balls." They (Jews) love money nothing else, no faith or religion can be so heartless to their victims." That's how they work they short the stock all the way making billions and then cover right it up sell and then taxpayers to the rescue and it is true all those institutions are ran by Jews …." More While operators of the most popular finance message boards, including those hosted by Yahoo! Finance, have been quick to remove offensive comments, the rate at which new posts are arriving prevents them from removing all of the objectionable material before it is widely read.  In many cases, other individual members of the groups have immediately responded against the anti-Semitic comments, decrying the messages as bigoted, inappropriate and categorically false.  In recent weeks since the crisis started to unfolded, many Internet users have reported their concerns directly to ADL.   "The good news is that providers of Internet services and moderators of message boards and even individual users are quick to react whenever anti-Semitism enters the discussion," said Mr. Foxman.  "The service providers are responsive, and in most cases the offensive messages are quickly removed.  But in many cases -- especially with online discussions that occur in real time and are closely followed by large groups of users -- the damage is already done."   Similar anti-Semitic sentiments about the economy are appearing with great frequency on white supremacist Web sites such as Stormfront, the largest Internet forum for white supremacists and neo-Nazis.  Posts and discussions on Stormfront have included references to Jewish control of the banking industry and suggestions that Jews hold complete power over government and the financial services sector.   Wrote one poster on Stormfront of the collapse of Lehman Brothers:  "No doubt many of the board of directors, which is usually composed of the major shareholders that wield power, are still largely Jewish … I would imagine the likelihood of the Fed etc. bailing the company out depends largely to what degree it is Jewish owned."

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WITH YOUR CORRESPONDENT HAVING BEEN BUSY MUCH OF THE DAY ALREADY with the likes of crushing down aluminum cans for recycling @ the motel here in Winona ... followed by some shopping for stamps, a replacement bicycle seat and some bathroom cleaner and liniment from Watkins' outlet here in Winona ... it seems as if he was unable to get to this blogging duty.

Even with the news that His Fradulency has given his John Hancock to an improved(?!) version of the Paulson Plan to Save Our Antient and Pecuilar Banking and Socioeconomic Model from Danger of Collapse, which, in the end, could mean that Joe Sixpack's leding options will, once again, more than likely be Morris Plan reincarnate.

(Morris Plan, in case you ask, was the brainchild of a Norfolk, Virginia lawyer named Arthur J. Morris [1881-1973], who perfected the pioneering system of consumer finance with the first such bank opening in 1910 based on these articles of faith:

1. Character, plus earning power, is a proper basis of credit.
2. Loans made on this basis of credit must carry the privilege of repayment over a period long enough to match the earning power of the borrower.
3.Money so borrowed should always be for some constructive and useful purpose.

(In any case, loans made under the Morris Plan required the would-be borrower to have two co-signers guarantee the loan, which iself would be secured on the purchase of Installment Thrift Certificates repayable on a weekly basis equal to the value of the loan.)

And, in any case, is certain to guarantee that the runup to Indecision 2008 will certainly be hot and vitriolic.

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AND SPEAKING OF LAST NIGHT'S VICE-PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE, methinks the approach the GOP's choice therefor, Sarah Palin, may have been too perky for her own good, belieing the prospect of her only regurgitating GOP talking points to carefully-prepared scripting long enough to wonder if she was becoming little better than the Chatty Cathy of the Vice-Presidential debate.

That, and her repeating nothing more than the same platitudes of the McCain/Palin ticket suggesting that Complete and Final Regulatory Relief would be the Last and Only Hope for Empowering the Fundamentals of the American Economy (as in the Working Classes, by and large poor, undereducated or homeschooled and easily-influenced, especially so by the likes of Fox Prolefeed and other less-than-reputable media outlets) into a New Golden Age of Industry, Self-Reliance, Personal Responsibility, Thrift based on Cash Economy and a Wholesome and Simple Home Life rooted, methinks, in poverty, fecundity and stupidity.

That, and the fact of Ms. Palin's pastor being perhaps the biggest fan of witches and witchcraft since the Salem Witch Trials of 1690.

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BACK TO THE IDEA OF USING THE FREE MARKET AS A WAY OF EMPOWERING THE SO-CALLED "FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ECONOMY:" Hasn't the GOP actually gone on record pushing the mutual self-help model as the best way of empowering the Working Classes towards Industry, Self-Reliance, usw.?

(That, of course, before the Unfortunate Events of 9/11 distracted everything to the point of setting the framework for nothing short of an ur-RAHOWA to not only whip up enforced patriot love, but also keep especially the Lower Classes scared and paranoid.)

Hence, what exactly would preclude giving serious consideration to a revival of classical concepts of mutual self-help as tools of empowerment among the Fundamentals of the Economy, such as mutual savings banks, building societies and friendly societies? Fear, perhaps, that such concepts would be "inconsistent with American experience and values" by their supposedly "tending to Communism" solely by virtue of mutual ownership and shared responsibility?

Fear that the "elect***entitled as of right" would lose "certain antient and pecuilar rights, privileges and powers traditionally entitled them by the Unwritten Law, the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God"?

Fear based on the old-school psychiatric belief that Knowledge is some class of a Loathsome Social Disease which, left "unchecked" (preferably through highly-sedating medications), could only "blossom into full-blown insanity" as could bring down such in Positions of Power, Authority, Confidence and Trust? (Hence, so this line of thought goes, requiring "a thorough and constant application of Proper Mental Hygiene" preferably based on a "fight-fire-with-fire" approach essentially tending all too heavily to a mix of fear and medications just to keep costs all the cheaper. Not to mention all manner of false hopes suggesting that medications are the magic bullet towards sanity, especially so a supposed New Generation theoretically expected to "control mental disorders more efficently, with far fewer side effects than medications now in use," and supported on anecdotally glowing-sounding reports of clinical trials involving one or two such "New Generation" meds.)

Or what sort of fear exactly?  

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Ashes to ashes, Jah's too funky,
We know Major Tom's a junkie,
Strung out in Heaven's high,
Hitting an all-time low....

--chorus from "Ashes to Ashes" by David Bowie

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THE RELIGIOPOLITICAL RIGHT, IN ITS DESIRE TO ATTRACT ATTENTION REEKING OF TROUBLEMAKING WHICH THEY EXCUSE OFFICIALLY AS "CHRISTIAN WITNESS," enjoys playing the meme of "Christian Persecution!" from time to time to advance their flawed proposition that America is, was, and will forever be, a White European-American Christian Nation, the defence thereof being that of her Antient and Pecuilar Soverignty and Soverign Identity as a Pecuilar Among the Nations ... and, in a way, that of free-market capitalism with American characteristics.

As if suggesting where the three were interrelated and intertwined, with barely any substantiation.

Latest example of such a pathetically distracting meme in action, thanks to Right Wing Watch:

"We as Christians, We are Persecuted and Oppressed"

That was the entirely predictable message at [Wednesday's] press conference, organized by Chaps Gordon Klingenschmitt in Richmond, VA to protest the "forced resignations" of six police Chaplains who refused to deliver non-denominational prayers at department-sanctioned, public events:

The ministers and the Family Foundation of Virginia held a news conference yesterday to assail [state police Superintendent W. Steven] Flaherty's directive and Kaine for backing it.

"The recent decision by Superintendent Flaherty and its subsequent endorsement by Gov. Kaine is an act of anti-Christian hysteria based on a flawed decision by a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court that has yet to be upheld and is, in fact, in conflict with other circuit court decisions from around the country," said Victoria Cobb, Family Foundation president. "The policy clearly violates the First Amendment-protected rights of free speech and religious freedom."

Cobb and the ministers said that barring the state police chaplains from using the name Jesus Christ is, in effect, a violation of those chaplains' rights because their religion calls upon them to pray to Jesus Christ.

"In our belief, it's not even a complete prayer" without appealing to Jesus Christ, said Rev. Rob Schenck, of the National Clergy Council ... ["So how do we end a prayer unless in the name of Jesus Christ? We are pleading with the governor . . . to reconsider the magnitude of this thing."]

Former Navy Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt, who said he was discharged from the Navy for praying to Jesus Christ, sent Kaine a letter signed by 86 ministers, asking him to revise the policy for state police chaplains.

Klingenschmitt told Kaine that the policy amounts to religious discrimination and "anti-Christian persecution."

...

Hashmel Turner, the Fredericksburg councilman and minister whose prayers to Jesus Christ sparked the court case, attended yesterday's press conference.

He said he has given up leading prayers before council meetings because of the court's ruling.

"We as Christians, we are persecuted and oppressed," Turner said. "We have to support these chaplains that are being persecuted."

Those in attendance also announced that they intend to follow through on Klingenschmitt's threat to hold a pre-election rally that "could impact the national election" and will be doing so with a "statewide prayer rally" outside the Executive Mansion on Nov. 1.

Not bad for the same element likely to identify themselves with the "persecuted and oppressed" Afrikaner Peoples of South Africa to the point of raising funds for their "evacuation" and "resettlement" in the "morally superior" United States, the hope being one of reestablishing honest and simple lives as farmers and pastoralists as were "disrupted" by the Voortrek, the gold and diamond discoveries, and the Boer War, only to reclaim some glimmer of hope under apartheid--and, so the story goes, faces new "disruption" by a "Communist-inspired regime***in reprisal for apartheid," or so the official story will go.

(Never mind the likelihood of their fundraising efforts having to be "diverted to more pressing needs" @ the last minute, thus dropping hints of the whole "noble and glorious effort" being a sham.)

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ON THE OTHER HAND, MAY WE BE REMINDED OF GEORGE WASHINGTON'S FAMOUS 1790 LETTER TO THE CONGREGANTS OF TOURO SYNAGOGUE (CONGREGATION JESHUAT ISRAEL) in Newport, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, which speaks for itself:

To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport,
Rhode Island.

Gentlemen,

While I receive, with much satisfaction, your Address replete with expressions of affection and esteem; I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you, that I shall always retain a grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced in my visit to Newport, from all classes of Citizens.

The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet, from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security. If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good Government, to become a great and happy people.

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my Administration, and fervent wishes for my felicity. May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.

G. Washington

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IN SEEKING REPUBLICAN SUPPORT IN CONGRESS FOR HIS FRAUDULENCY'S LAST HOPE FOR A GRAND DELUSION-AS-LEGACY, otherwise known as the $700 billion bailout of what he and his droogs in the Great Within wrought for purely ideological purposes and ends, they may be forgetting something from their own platform of articles of faith for Indecision 2008.

Which The Capital Times (cyberspace, via Madison, Wisconsin) would like to call your attention to editorially (with emphasis added):

Republicans were divided over how to respond to an economic crisis of their own making. John McCain's economic guru, Phil Gramm, successfully deregulated the financial services industry; President Bush and Tom DeLay's Congress implemented the plan, and then, with the 2008 election approaching, the economy they created was tanking.

After years of reading from the same tattered page of discarded free-market theorizing, the Grand Old Party seemed suddenly off message, with McCain saying he would fire Bush appointees and--depending on the hour--either backing or opposing a $700 billion bailout of banks proposed by the Republican president's man at the Treasury Department.

Republican senators and members of the House are all over the board, so much so that Democratic candidates were beginning to exploit the divisions.

In Oklahoma, for instance, Democrat Andrew Rice, a state senator who is mounting an aggressive challenge to veteran Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, embraced criticisms of the bailout plan by Inhofe's Republican colleague from Oklahoma, maverick conservative Sen. Tom Coburn.

"I couldn't agree more with Senator Coburn," declared Rice. "And we should all be asking ourselves, what has Jim Inhofe, who's been in Washington 22 years, done to avert this crisis?"

All this Republican-on-Republican warfare could get a little confusing for a party loyalist.

Where to turn for clarity?

How about the freshly approved Republican platform.

In the extensive section on the economy--which opens with a pledge to "empower" the "Sabbath collection plate"--there is actually a rather prescient section on how best to respond to mortgage meltdowns and economic turbulence.

"We do not support government bailouts of private institutions," the platform affirms unequivocally. "Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself. We believe in the free market as the best tool to sustained prosperity and opportunity for all."

So there you have it: the official, if now all but forgotten, Republican line on the bailout.

An article of faith no doubt seconded by Fox Prolefeed and Fox Prolefeed II, let alone various conservative-leaning blogs and "news portals" as include the Usual Suspects (viz., WorldNetDaily, NewsMax, Drudge Report, Accuracy in Media, NewsBusters, Media Research Centre, OneNewsNow) seeing as their ultimate desire "the final acme and perfection of the free market" in a "pure" form.

You guessed it--a free-market based solely on self-regulation which only excuses cartel behaviour through manipulation of certain clauses in the relevant codes, while officially regarding the free market as the Great White Father Empowering Those Heretofore Enslaved into Socialist or Otherwise Un-American Thought By Way of State Welfare with Greater Choices, Wider Selection and Lower Prices.

Can the GOP, perchance, Please Explain this state of doublethink?

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AND IT SEEMS RATHER IRONIC FOR CULTURAL CONSERVATIVES TO PRACTICE WHAT AMOUNTS TO DOUBLETHINK in their regarding Amerikanischer Realkultur to be The One True and Morally Superior such (howbeit absent a clear defining standard save its seeing Branson's music shows as the "acid test" therefor, so to speak) ... yet, on the other hand, taking exception to the "unhealthy excesses" of sex and violence, usually reinforced with sugar-coated anti-Semitic pandering.

But then again, take a look @ the following excerpt from a Japanese game show (hat tip to the Brog @ Engrish.com) and try not to think for a moment "There but for the grace of G-d go I," as the Zealots and True Believers in American Cultural Supremacy want you and I thinking:

(Never mind, of course, where certain aspects of what I refer to from time to time as Die Bransoner Muzikschaukultur in this blog are replete with dog-whistle appeals to racist jingoism in the "home folks" stylee, the better to appeal in particular to the same types regarding Fox Prolefeed to be the only credible source of news and information available. Who, it turns out, are Branson's target audience, mostly on cheap bus tours.)

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SO, IN ANY EVENT, THIS MARKS THE 47TH BIRTHDAY OF YOUR CORRESPONDENT, having come into the world by way of Caledonia, Minnesota on 2 October 1961.

The Big Story of that day was Roger Maris of the New York Yankees deflating the great Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs in a Major League Baseball season by hitting his 61st such the day previous--which, until recent years, was qualified by an asterisk in the official records as took note of the expansion of the major leagues with the expansion Los Angeles Angels, New York Mets, Houston Colt-45's (since restyled the Astros) and the "new" Washington Senators (now the Texas Rangers), the original such becoming the Minnesota Twins.

Thus explaining the title of the HBO original movie 61* a few years back as reconstructed the race to beat what many baseball fans regarded as a Holy of Holies in the record books.

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AS IF THAT WEREN'T ENOUGH, OCTOBER 2ND IS ALSO THE NATIONAL DAY in the African nation of Guinea, which became soverign in its own right three years to the day of my birth previous (1958, to be exact)--which became rather legendary for the remark of Guinean independence leader Sekou Torre to then-French President Charles deGaulle suggesting where "we would rather have poverty in freedom than riches in slavery" (i.e., French colonial rule).

BBC reporter Will Ross had these erstwhile observations on the state of the first French-speaking soverign state in sub-Saharan Africa marking its 50th year soverign in its own right:

Nowhere illustrates Guinea's recent demise better than the train station in Conakry.

Completed in 1914, the construction of the 700km (435 miles) track to Kankan was a French project partly to aid with the export of fruit.

But the trains ground to a final halt in May 1995.

They may have stopped 13 years ago but several of the workers still sit around the station, which now hosts a variety of businesses from tailoring to welding.

"When we left school the railway was in good condition and it was a great way to get around the country," recalls Fode Bangoura, who still runs the defunct depot.

"My father worked on the railway and it was a good job and that's why I also joined, but as it fell into disrepair it became more and more difficult to keep it going."

Despite this setback, Mr Bangoura is still proud of the country's history.

"We are very proud of the 50th anniversary. I was seven years old at independence. Our parents danced all night and so we joined in."

However, 89-year-old Mohamed Bashir Toure was not dancing or singing at the time.

"I was very happy with the French," he said with some frustration.

"Life was good then. We had all we needed and I voted to stay with the French.

"Now we lack electricity - everything is ruined."

Mr Toure would even welcome the return of the French - a comment that brings giggles and cries of "colonialist" from his relatives.

It seems he is not alone.

"I would welcome them back with open arms," says Fanta Kande who runs a food canteen in Conakry.

"I think independence was a huge mistake. If the French came back and worked with us and ran things in order to help us then why not?"

Guineans are by and large extremely proud of their independence history but people are sick and tired of bad governance and the problems that brings.

"We have no electricity or safe water," says medical student Oscar Loua Tokpagnan.

"We are in a difficult situation because when the students complete [school] it's almost impossible for them to get a job."

[***]

President [Lansana] Conte's independence anniversary message on state radio was only marginally more audible than his predecessor's address 50 years ago, and it gave little reason for renewed optimism.

Reading his script tentatively, Mr Conte promised to use dialogue in order to find what he called the appropriate solutions to the country's difficulties.

It was neither passionate nor convincing.

In Conakry's port I realised there are trains that still work in Guinea - bringing the country's minerals for export.

Guinea has enormous mineral wealth and the country's fortune over the next 50 years depends to a large extent on well these resources are managed.

But the track record on that score is appalling, with alarming levels of corruption.

The lack of enthusiasm for this 50th independence anniversary is hardly surprising.

Guineans continue to hope for a change of leadership and fortune.