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FOR CONSERVATIVE PROPAGANDISTS, AND THE ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS WHO FALL FOR THEIR PROPAGANDA, stereotypes crude and tasteless play a crucial rule in the "winning of hearts and minds" department.

Witness what Media Matters for America discovered on Bill Cunningham's broadcasts of the 23rd and 28th of this month, respectively, vis-a-vis why the poor in an otherwise "morally superior" United States remain so:

CALLER: This guy told me, one of our employees -- not of this company here but some other companies I've worked for -- they told me, they said they've got to have one day off a week. And I said, for what? I just got to have a rest. I said, well, we work five days out of the week. You got Saturday and Sunday, and you can go to church on Sunday to learn about God. But then you got all day Saturday to do what your honey-do list. Well, I've got to have a way -- a day during the week 'cause all my brothers are down at the liquor store. We've got to go down there and hang out.

CUNNINGHAM: Right, in other words, the work ethic, shall we say, is lacking. The reason people are poor in America is not because they lack money, it's because poor people in America lack values, character, and the ability to work hard. And it's got nothing to do with race, it has everything to do with color, and Buzz, things are about to fundamentally change in this country.

I tell you, when you take San Francisco values of Nancy Pelosi, with the Massachusetts values of Barney Frank and hook them up with a political hack from the Daley political machine in Chicago named Obama, this country's gonna take a hard turn to the left and none of the working men and women are gonna like it. Most of McCain's supporters don't have the time to go to a noon rally because we're working.

STEVE MALANGA: There was a certain mentality in the war on poverty, which essentially made the problem worse. With things like welfare -- we changed welfare in the 1960s, we made it permanent. We changed public housing in the 1960s. Public housing had been something people were in temporarily as they were trying to get a leg up and, you know, people who had fallen on hard times and they were then out of it.

We changed those things. We, as a result, created a dependency mentality in a lot of communities, and we made communities worse. And that's the thing that worries me the most, that we're gonna go back to a way of thinking that encourages more dependence and makes communities worse again.

CUNNINGHAM: Well, what community in America is better off with more Section 8 housing and more welfare and more food stamps? Because, unlike many countries in the world, Steve, we have fat poor people. We don't have skinny poor people. Ours are fat and flatulent. So what city in America's been helped by Section 8 housing -- more food stamps and welfare?

[...]

MALANGA: The problem is also with middle-class and upper-middle income parents, too, because in a lot of suburban school districts, they also believe that money is the answer, and you, you know, you want to start a fight in a suburban school district these days, suggest something like vouchers or charter schools as a -- as an alternative and you'll just, you know, you'll start a wicked fight because there's this notion, even among, you know, upper-middle and middle-income parents, that more money is always the answer when we know, for instance, from the example of charter schools in the 1990s, which spend less money per pupil and do a better job of educating, that money isn't the answer.

CUNNINGHAM: Steve Malanga -- the article is "Obama's counterproductive war on poverty." The war on poverty was declared in the 1960s. It was lost in the 1970s. The funding continued for poverty. You know, people are poor in America, Steve, not because they lack money; they're poor because they lack values, morals, and ethics. And if government can't teach and instill that, we're wasting our time simply giving poor people money.

Beg pardon, Mr. Cunningham, but:

• There are studies out there which disprove your Social Darwinist arguments about people being poor because (using your own words, know) "they lack values, morals and ethics," and that the root causes of poverty have nothing to do with lack of morals or decency; and
• Shocking discoveries earlier this year of poor white South Africans reduced to direst poverty as probably prevailed even under apartheid by ANC leader (and Prime Minister-wannabe) Jacob Zuma deflated the apartheid-era notion that white South Africans were somehow "racially and morally incapable" of poverty (as if equating race and morality in the same breadth).

No wonder conservative articles of faith are as hard-wired as they are in their basis on Social Darwinism, whose adherents otherwise take issue with evolutionary thought. So what explains this doublethink anyway?

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SIR ISAAC NEWTON, EAT YOUR HEART OUT: The Royal Academy in Great Britain has announced that it will review numerous proposals put forward to same (some bordering on the outlandish) about how to reverse the effects of Global Warming upon Earth through strategems like sending up orbiting mirrors into space to deflect solar rays, shooting sea spray all the higher to help whiten clouds and shooting desert sand and dust into the atmosphere with artificial windstorms to diffuse sunlight.

Which reminds Your Correspondent of a rather outlandish (yet seriously considered) proposal the British floated during World War II as was code-named Project Habbakuk (after the Biblical character), which sought to create an aircraft carrier out of Arctic ice to fool German air-raid squadrons.

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IMAGINE THIS SORT OF THING HAPPENING TO SOME SPECIMEN OF CONSERVATIVE TALKBACK RADIO HOST here in the "morally superior" United States with a substantial following among the Great Unwashed:

In response to a Rather Notorious Incident involving "wind-up" phone calls containing sexually-suggestive language going to air over BBC Radio 2 last week, and the complaints thus generated from Land's End to John O'Groats, hosts Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand have been suspended without pay for 12 weeks with immediate effect ... and on top of that, the controller responsible for Radio 2 has tendered her resignation, acknowledging where Broadcasting House exercised poor judgement.

As well, the BBC's Director-General, Mark Thompson, issued this statement on behalf of The BBC Trust, which oversees the BBC:

I would like to add my own personal and unreserved apology to Andrew Sachs, his family and to licence fee payers for the completely unacceptable broadcast on BBC Radio 2.

BBC audiences accept that, in comedy, performers attempt to push the line of taste. However, this is not a marginal case.

It is clear from the views expressed by the public that this broadcast has caused severe offence and I share that view.

Since Sunday, I have been in regular contact with the senior executives I tasked with handling this issue.

The investigation that I instructed Tim Davie [director of BBC audio and music] to conduct is nearing completion, and I am returning to London to review the findings and, in the coming days, announce what action we will take.

In the meantime, I have decided that it is not appropriate for either Russell Brand or Jonathan Ross to continue broadcasting on the BBC until I have seen the full report of the actions of all concerned.

This gross lapse of taste by the performers and the production team has angered licence payers.

I am determined that we satisfy them that any lessons will be learnt and appropriate action taken.

I have been asked to report to the Trust's Editorial Standards Committee before the end of this week and will discuss with the Trust the findings of the report and the actions I propose.

Ofcom, the British equivalent of the FCC, has also announced that it would open enquiries into the Ross/Brand incident.

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MEMO TO SARAH PALIN AS MUCH AS THE McCAIN/PALIN CAMPAIGN IN GENERAL, with particular emphasis on their playing the canard that Barack Obama is some class of a closet Socialist or Communist, courtesy of Keith "Countdown" Olbermann in a Campaign Comment on his MSNBC show of the 28th:

Finally tonight, the Campaign Comment, and the real danger when you run a presidential candidate who thinks he's Joe six-pack the Plumber, and a Vice Presidential candidate who thinks she's Huey Long.

It's not that the rhetoric in a desperate flailing last week on the stump can get hyperbolic and dangerous. It's that each person on that campaign hears some of that giddying hyperbolic and dangerous rhetoric and tries to top it.

This has ended up, as it usually does, with one of the desperate candidates going so far to the right that they meet themselves coming back in the other direction.

That'd be you, Gov. Palin. You've finally done it. You've accused Obama of doing something wrong, of being something evil, something you boasted of doing, and being, yourself, just two months ago.

You try to figure out what this might have been, while I go back and talk to those good people over there. The Republicans called Obama a neophyte and then they picked a V.P. nominee with a tenth of Obama's experience.

The Republicans called Obama a celebrity and then they bought that nominee $150,000 in designer clothes. The Republicans called Obama a terrorist sympathizer and then McCain said he was proud to be a friend of Gordon Liddy.

It's like they've been unknowingly endowed with ESP and have been telling their own futures. And now the GOP has selected its last drum-thump for the remainder of the campaign although they said that about the last 17 "last drum-thumps."Obama is a socialist!

Missouri Congressman Todd Akin, speaking near St. Louis:

"This campaign in the next couple of weeks is about one thing It's a referendum on socialism."

Arizona Sen. John McCain, who is apparently still running for President, at Dayton Ohio yesterday:

"Barack the Redistributor.”

Then he realized that sounded like an auto part, so, John McCain at Pottsville, Pennsylvania, later yesterday:

"Sen. Obama is running to be Redistributionist in Chief.”

No, no, go back to the first one.

Nobody you're talking to, even understands what socialism means, Senator.

"Re-dis-tri-bu-shun-ist"is six syllables, and it sounds more like he's recycling newspapers or something. Go simpler, like Michelle Bachmann's only rival for "least stable member of the House of Representatives:" Steve King, R-Iowa, 5th District and 17th Century.

Warming up a crowd at a high school in Sioux City, for Gov. Palin on Saturday, King, who is amazingly still let out of the house each day without adult supervision, said of the Obama candidacy:

"When you take a lurch to the left you end up in a totalitarian dictatorship.”

"There is no freedom to the left. It's always to our side of the aisle.”

"We choose freedom and liberty.”

Presumably that's why the Congressman's party was good enough to torture prisoners, eavesdrop on Americans, suspend Habeas Corpus, demonize dissent, pay news organizations to run favorable stories, and generally come as close to a totalitarian dictatorship as any American president ever has.

To choose freedom and liberty. For Congressman King and invited guests. Not for the country. Can you tell I'm stalling?

I'm trying to give Gov. Palin out there, a couple more seconds to figure out how she managed to get herself, as Shakespeare wrote of people destroyed by their own evil plans, "hoist with her own petard.”

Got it yet, Gov?

Okay, you remember Sen. Obama telling J.T. Plumber that it would help the country to "share the wealth”—a sentiment with which anybody not receiving $150,000 in free clothes would probably agree?

So you went off in Des Moines, remember this?

"See, under a big government, more tax agenda, what you thought was yours would really start belonging to somebody else, to everybody else. If you thought your income, your property, your inventory, your investments were, were yours, they would really collectively belong to everybody. Higher taxes, more government, misusing the power to tax leads to government moving into the role of some believing that government then has to take care of us. And government kind of moving into the role as the other half of our family, making decisions for us. Now, they do this in other countries where the people are not free."

So Gov., Obama's not just a socialist? Not just a re-distributionist re-distributor? Maybe not just a totalitarian? Maybe not just a dictator, he may be a communist?

To paraphrase you in Des Moines, Governor, Obama wants to set up, unlike other candidates, collectively owning the resources. By sharing that wealth and those resources. Collectivist sharing' the wealth socialist communism, I'd say.

And still none of that sounds familiar to you, Governor?

"And Alaska - we're set up, unlike other states in the union, where it's collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs."

Who said that, Governor?

Who was the collectivist share-the-wealther, who was boasting to the reporter visiting from "The New Yorker Magazine,"of having been able to send a check for $1,200 to every man, woman and child in the state since, quote "Alaska is sometimes described as America's socialist state, because of its collective ownership of resources?”

Why, you said that, Governor! You're a share-the-wealth, collectivist, Almost-Socialist-Governor, Governor! Who also believes that income, property, inventory and investments, collectively belonging to everybody else, leads to a misuse of power, and government making decisions for us, turning countries into places where the people are not free.

Places like,  Sarah Palin's America! Governor, all sorts of choice words apply here: hypocrite, double-talker, snake-oil seller, socialist. But let me stick with just one, with which to bid you goodbye. You, governor, are a fraud.

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FOR ALL THE RATHER PATHETIC PLATITUDES, BROMIDES AND PATSIES WHICH THE GOP AND THEIR ELMER GANTRY-STYLEE DROOGS LOVE TO PUSH about America being Morally Superior to All Other Nations by virtue of Christian Heritage and Honour, is it any wonder that our "morally superior" nation and society is all the more in socioeconomic decline and deterioration to such an extent that some observers see Indecision 2008 as all the more important for where we may head next?

As for possible answers to explain how our "morally superior" society got to be this way, consider what The Progressive Curmudgeon blog had to say recently in this regard:

How did it happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance?

Was it charity that permitted mankind's closest living relative to spend two terms as president?

How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering mulyuks succeed?

How were Republican rallies in 2008 drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim and a terrorist?

The US has the world's best universities and attracts the world's finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, unique among the developed nations, learning is a grave political disadvantage in America.

There have been exceptions over the past century: Franklyn Roosevelt, Jack Kennedy and Bill Clinton tempered their intellectualism with the common touch and survived. But Adlai Stevenson, Al Gore and John Kerry were successfully tarred by their opponents as cerebral elitists, as if this were a disqualification to be president. Perhaps the defining moment in the collapse of intelligent politics was Ronald Reagan's response to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential debate. Carter – stumbling a little, using long words – carefully enumerated the benefits of national health insurance. Reagan just smiled and said, "There you go again." His own health program would have appalled most Americans had he explained it as carefully as Carter had done, but he had found a formula for avoiding tough political issues and making his opponents look like wonks.

It wasn't always like this.

This great Republic’s founding fathers – Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and others – were among the greatest thinkers of their age. They felt no need to make a secret of it. How did the project they launched degenerate into George W. Bush and Sarah Palin?

Dumb Is As Dumb Does

On one level, this is easy to answer. Ignorant politicians are elected by ignorant people. US education, like the US health system, is a failure. In the most powerful nation on earth, one adult in five believes the sun revolves round the earth; only 26% accept evolution; two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map; two-thirds of US voters cannot name the three branches of government; the maths skills of 15-year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD.

But this merely extends the mystery: How did so many US citizens become so stupid and so suspicious of intelligence? Susan Jacoby's book The Age of American Unreason provides the best explanation I’ve read so far. She shows that the degradation of US politics results from a series of interlocking tragedies.

One theme is both familiar and clear: Religion generally, and fundamentalism specifically, makes you stupid. The US is the only rich, developed country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing.

Jacoby shows that there once was a certain logic to its anti-rationalism. During the first few decades after The Origin of Species was published, Americans had good reason to reject the theory of natural selection and treat public intellectuals with suspicion. From the beginning, Darwin's theory was mixed up in the US with “social Darwinism” and the British writer Herbert Spencer. Spencer's doctrine, promoted in the popular press with help from Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and Thomas Edison, suggested that millionaires stood at the top of a scala natura established by evolution. By preventing unfit people being weeded out, government intervention weakened the nation. Gross economic inequalities were both justifiable and necessary.

In other words, Darwinism became indistinguishable from the most bestial form of laissez-faire economics. Many Christians responded with revulsion. It is totally ironic that the doctrine rejected a century ago by prominent fundamentalists like William Jennings Bryan is now central to the economic thinking of the Christian right. Modern fundamentalists reject the tested science of Darwinian evolution but embrace the pseudoscience of social Darwinism.

Local Control

But there are other, more powerful, reasons for the intellectual isolation of fundamentalists. The US is alone in giving control of education to local authorities. Teaching in the southern states was dominated by the views of an ignorant aristocracy of planters and a great educational gulf opened.

"In the south", Jacoby writes, "what can only be described as an intellectual blockade was imposed in order to keep out any ideas that might threaten the social order."

The Southern Baptist Convention, now the biggest denomination in the US, has done more than any other force to keep the south stupid. In the 1960s it tried to stave off desegregation by establishing a system of private Christian schools and universities. A student can now progress from kindergarten to an advanced degree without any exposure to secular teaching.

Worse, Southern Baptist beliefs pass intact through the public school system as well. A 1998 survey by researchers at the University of Texas found that 25% of the state's public school biology teachers believe humans and dinosaurs lived on earth at the same time.

This tragedy has been assisted by the American worship of self-education. Though he greatly regretted his lack of formal teaching, Abraham Lincoln's career is repeatedly cited as evidence that good education is unnecessary; all that is needed to succeed is determination and rugged individualism. This might have served people well when genuine self-education movements like the one built around the Little Blue Books in the first half of the 20th century were in vogue.

But in the age of infotainment, it is a recipe for confusion.

Subversive Intellectuals

Besides fundamentalist religion, perhaps the most potent reason intellectuals struggle in elections is that intellectualism is equated with subversion. The brief flirtation of some thinkers with communism nearly 80 years ago has been used to create an impression in the public mind that all intellectuals are communists. Every day, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly rage against the "liberal elites" destroying America.

The spectre of pointy-headed alien subversives was crucial to the election of Reagan and Bush. A genuine intellectual elite – like the neocons, some of them former communists, surrounding Bush – has managed to pitch the political conflict as a battle between ordinary Americans and an over-educated pinko establishment. Any attempt to challenge the ideas of the rightwing elite is successfully branded as elitism.

Barack Obama has a lot to offer the US and the world but none of this will stop if he wins. Until the great failures of the US education system are reversed or religious fundamentalism withers, there will be political opportunities for people like Bush and Palin who flaunt their ignorance.

Which recalls Thomas Gray's poem "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College," perhaps famous for its closing lines:

Ye distant spires, ye antique towers,
    That crown the watery glade,
Where grateful Science still adores
Her Henry's holy shade;
And ye, that from the stately brow
Of Windsor's heights the expanse below
    Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey,
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among
Wanders the hoary Thames along
    His silver-winding way.

Ah, happy hills, ah, pleasing shade,
    Ah, fields beloved in vain,
Where once my careless childhood strayed,
    A stranger yet to pain!
I feel the gales, that from ye blow,
A momentary bliss bestow,
    As waving fresh their gladsome wing,
My weary soul they seem to soothe,
And, redolent of joy and youth,
    To breathe a second spring.

Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen
    Full many a sprightly race
Disporting on thy margent green
    The paths of pleasure trace,
Who foremost now delight to cleave
With pliant arm thy glassy wave?
    The captive linnet which enthrall?
What idle progeny succeed
To chase the rolling circle's speed,
    Or urge the flying ball?

While some on earnest business bent
    Their murmuring labours ply
'Gainst graver hours, that bring constraint
    To sweeten liberty:
Some bold adventurers disdain
The limits of their little reign,
    And unknown regions dare descry:
Still as they run they look behind,
They hear a voice in every wind,
    And snatch a fearful joy.

Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed,
    Less pleasing when possessed;
The tear forgot as soon as shed,
    The sunshine of the breast:
Theirs buxom health of rosy hue,
Wild wit, invention ever new,
    And lively cheer of vigour born;
The thoughtless day, the easy night,
The spirits pure, the slumbers light,
    That fly the approach of morn.

Alas, regardless of their doom,
    The little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come,
    Nor care beyond today:
Yet see how all around 'em wait
The ministers of human fate,
    And black Misfortune's baleful train!
Ah, show them where in ambush stand
To seize their prey the murderous band!
    Ah, tell them they are men!

These shall the fury Passions tear,
    The vultures of the mind
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,
    And Shame that skulks behind;
Or pining Love shall waste their youth,
Or Jealousy with rankling tooth,
    That inly gnaws the secret heart,
And Envy wan, and faded Care,
Grim-visaged comfortless Despair,
    And Sorrow's piercing dart.

Ambition this shall tempt to rise,
    Then whirl the wretch from high,
To bitter Scorn a sacrifice,
    And grinning Infamy.
The stings of Falsehood those shall try,
And hard Unkindness' altered eye,
    That mocks the tear if forced to flow;
And keen Remorse with blood defiled,
And moody Madness laughing wild
     Amid severest woe.

Lo, in the vale of years beneath
    A grisly troop are seen,
The painful family of Death,
    More hideous than their Queen:
This racks the joints, this fires the veins,
That every labouring sinew strains,
    Those in the deeper vitals rage:
Lo, Poverty, to fill the band,
That numbs the soul with icy hand,
    And slow-consuming Age.

To each his sufferings: all are men,
    Condemned alike to groan,
The tender for another's pain;
    The unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
    And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
    'Tis folly to be wise.

Something worth pondering over, and then some, as Indecision 2008 approacheth.

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FIRST OFF, READERS, I SHOULD LIKE TO MENTION WHERE IT MAY OR MAY NOT BE LIKELY THAT I'LL POST ANYTHING INTO THIS BLOG TOMORROW owing to my having a medical checkup scheduled for around the lunch hour. Hence, your patience and understanding would be appreciated if it happens that I'm quite late, or not posting @ all.

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PURELY PERSONAL PIFFLE: Following some cleaning of the oven in my flat recently (which has one of those self-cleaning ovens), I made what, in retrospect, was a gross erratum of spraying some non-stick cooking spray on the grooves for the oven racks so they could move easier.

Which, as it turned out, caused a substantial stain on the oven walls and floor when I decided to do some baking the next day. Said stain causing the oven to be rather smoky enough to turn on the ventilation fan.

In any event, I decided to clean the oven (again) last evening to remove the stain of spilled non-stick cooking spray ... and it did so in about an hour's time.

We're only human.

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JUST BE LUCKY THAT YOUR CORRESPONDENT RESIDETH IN THE MINNWISSIPPI, where it's rather pleasant (if cool) today--as in bright and clear, with most (but not all) of the trees having shed their leaves and the fall colour on the surrounding bluffs is rather pleasant to behold.

I mention this in view of parts of the Northeast seeing an unusually early snowstorm as I prepare this item, with the likes of the Poconos, Ramapos, Catskills and Adirondacks seeing snowfalls in excess of 6-12" (15-30cm) @ higher elevations and rainy, squally conditions closer to the coast.

They could use it, what with reservoirs serving New York City and other Northeast Corridor centres having been depleted to all-time lows over recent months. (As for the Upper Midwest, advance forecast outlooks by the National Weather Service suggest that the winter ahead will be milder than usual, with precipitation levels close to seasonal norms--hence, the likelihood of rain or mixed precipitation all the more, if any.)

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PROOF THAT "TRADITIONAL AMERICAN VALUES," IN THE MIND OF CONSERVATIVES, ARE THOSE OF BIGOTRY, HATE AND XENOPHOBIA, courtesy of Think Progress (emphasis supplied):

Right-wing radio host Dennis Prager spoke before an audience of 3,000 at Minneapolis' Orchestra Hall, during which he attacked the "left" for constructing "a grand edifice of lies about America." One of those lies, according to Prager, is that "equality" is an American value:

Equality, which is the primary value of the left, is a European value, not an American value. Let me tell you that right now. I know this sounds offensive to half of my fellow Americans, because they have been Europeanized in their values. The French Revolution is not the American Revolution. The French Revolution said Liberty, Fraternity, Equality. The American Revolution said Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We have lost touch with what our distinctive American values are. We have distinctive American values.… We have a better value system, and this is being protected by one of the two parties: the Republican party.

Watch it:

It's a good thing Prager was there to explain the ideals behind the American Revolution. Otherwise, Americans might have relied on "Europeanized" documents like the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…

Or if they had looked to the United States Constitution, they may have erroneously thought "equality" was an important American value:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Thankfully, Dennis Prager is here to protect and defend American inequality.

Which is all the more a reminder of the importance of one vote in six days time: Yours.

And the importance of protecting and defending Americanism @ all costs from her sworn enemies, and as much from within as without.

Come to think of it: Since when did the defence of Our Antient and Pecuilar Soverignty and Soverign Identity as a Nation become conditioned on "healthy" and "patriotic" racism, bigotry, anti-Semitism, white nationalism, xenophobia, intolerance and isolationist self-sufficency based on a "pure" ideal of free-market capitalism?

In any case, such should be condemned @ all costs. Especially if such translates into electoral hooliganism by "goon squads" of the weird and unwholesome expected to keep their connexions with the GOP all the more discreet "to avoid attracting scandal"--especially if reported to 1-866-OUR-VOTE on the day, as should be the case.

Not to mention law enforcement agencies.

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REMEMBER THE "DAISIES" AD FOR LBJ IN THE 1964 ELECTIONS? OR "IT'S MORNING AGAIN IN AMERICA" FOR REAGAN'S 1984 REELECTION BID?

In the vein of those two campaign-ad classics comes a 21st-century twist as should be seen by (and shared with) All Right-Thinking Americans still pondering the path America faces on Tuesday:

"Think about it."

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IN THE FACE OF JOHN McCAIN'S DESPERATE ATTEMPTS TO SAVE ELECTORAL CREDIBILITY AND VIABILITY in this the final week of Indecision 2008, Your Correspondent would like to call to your attention this four-part video revealing this self-appointed "maverick" and "reformer" to be nothing less than a liar, a hypocrite--and worse.

And in his very own words, @ that.

Without further elaboration:

Please tell all your friends about it--especially such still insistent and hard-wired in their zeal to support John McCain without regard to facts.

"Truth is mighty, and shall prevail."

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AND REMEMBER TO KEEP HANDY THE FREECALL NUMBER 1-866-OUR-VOTE to report attempts @ vote suppression and intimidation you may come across on the day.

KEITH "COUNTDOWN" OLBERMANN OFFERED THE FOLLOWING CAMPAIGN COMMENT on his MSNBC programme last night, calling upon the McCain campaign to please disassociate themselves with l'affaire Ashley Todd (which, as we all know, has been nothing more than a farce from the get-go designed as desperation for a failing Presidential campaign):

After all, time is of the essence.

(But then again, how sure are we that the McCain/Palin campaign wasn't scripting the whole all the while, kabuki-stylee, even using Ms. Todd as a cheap stooge to carry the whole forward to misguided perfection?)

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NOW WE HAVE WORD OF WHAT THE SACKCLOTH-AND-ASHES CROWD IS BEING EXPECTED TO DO PRO DEO, PATRIA ET FAMILIA in the final hours ahead of the elections, thanks to Right Wing Watch:

Back in August, we noted that the Southern Baptist Convention was launching a 40 day prayer vigil timed to coincide with the election and now it looks like those affiliated with Coral Ridge Ministries will be joining them, albeit with a much more targeted vigil of prayer and fasting:

The foundation launched in honor of famed Christian speaker, broadcaster and leader D. James Kennedy, who founded the Coral Ridge Ministries, has announced a day of prayer for Nov. 3.

"We are about to set a course that will affect our country for generations to come," said a statement from Jennifer Kennedy Cassidy of the D. James Kennedy Foundation.

"For this reason we are calling on all Christian leaders and their congregations to join with us for a day of fasting and prayer the day before the election on Monday, November 3rd," she said ... "We're less than a week until the most important election in our lifetime. Must is at stake that is vital to our nation," she said.

Back in 2007, after its founder D. James Kennedy retired and then passed away, Coral Ridge announced that it was going to de-emphasize its focus on politics in favor of "increasing its worldwide audience to 30 million by 2012, mainly by expanding its Internet, TV and print presence." And that is pretty much what they did for a while, shying away from overt political activities in favor of producing various culture war videos that, while still political in nature, focused mainly on warning Christians that their rights were being suppressed and that their churches were going to be shut down.

But apparently those days have passed.  In fact, if you take a look at Coral Ridge's website, you'll see an open letter [PDF] they have written to the next president urging him to protect the unborn and the protection of marriage, fight hate crimes laws and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, while also prosecuting pornographers and ensuring that America continues to celebrate its "Christian heritage."

My advice: Ignore the appeal for fast and prayer, especially because of the risk of such translating into a Jonestown redux.