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NO DOUBT ABOUT IT: THE ELMER GANTRY INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED RELIGIOPOLITICAL THOUGHT CAN BE COUNTED ON AS GOOD AND LOYAL DROOGS for the McCain/Palin ticket in Indecision 2008, no doubt enough to bring up the likelihood of the Religiopolitical Right hanging with the weird and unwholesome.

Case in point: This item from Right Wing Watch about the rather rambling comments of late from Dr. James "Focus on the Family" Dobson:

Today, James Dobson dedicated his radio program to reading out, word for word, Focus on the Family's October newsletter [PDF] in which he explains why he is now supporting the McCain-Palin ticket, though he continues to insist that he is not offering an endorsement:

It's probably obvious which of the two major party candidates' views are most palatable to those of us who embrace a pro-life, pro-family worldview. While I will not endorse either candidate this year, I can say that I am now supportive of Senator John McCain and his bid for the presidency.… In recent weeks, I have received some measure of criticism from those who feel that my "change of heart" toward John McCain is unwarranted. I understand those views and concede that the Senator continues to embrace positions that concern me. I don't apologize, however, for reevaluating our options in this election year.

Dobson then lays out the four developments that caused him to change his mind: the Saddleback Forum; the GOP platform, Obama's "liberal views," and McCain's decision to pick Sarah Palin as his running mate: 

Here is a woman who is a deeply committed Christian, and who is pro-life not only with regard to her policies, but in her personal life. She and her husband welcomed their latest child, Trig, into the world even though he was diagnosed with Down syndrome while still in the womb. Approximately 90 percent of babies with Down syndrome are aborted, but Governor Palin carried her precious child to term and now loves and cares for him despite the challenges associated with a special needs child. Similarly, her teenage daughter, Bristol, who became pregnant out of wedlock, could have bowed to cultural pressure to seek an abortion. Instead, she and the father plan to get married and raise their child together. Governor Palin has been married for 20 years, and by all accounts, she is a portrait of Christian motherhood and womanhood.

Of serious concern to Dobson is the possibility that Democrats in the next Congress will unleash a "wave of anti-family, pro-homosexual legislation," such as ENDA, which are direct threats to Christians: 

Large portions of the agenda promoted by homosexual activists will also be enacted. The implications for a federal hate crimes law are clear. People speaking against homosexuality have already been prosecuted under hate crimes laws both in the United States and abroad. If a federal hate crimes law passes, there will be little to prevent the government from endeavoring to control and curtail religious speech, especially from the pulpit. It is entirely possible that a pastor could be charged with inducing a federal hate crime simply by preaching from one of the many biblical passages that address homosexuality.

Dobson is likewise motivated by the importance of determining the future of the Supreme Court:

The importance of [electing a pro-family, pro-life President] cannot be overstated. Between 2009 and 2012, there will likely be two or more opportunities for the President to nominate new justices to the Supreme Court. Some court watchers say there could be as many as four resignations. That alone should give us serious pause as we consider for whom to cast our votes. In the months ahead, the Supreme Court will likely hand down rulings that will impact America for generations to come. We need a President who will nominate conservative, strict-constructionist judges to the Court. If that doesn't happen, the highest court in the land could become stacked—even more than it already is—with justices who will endeavor to legislate from the bench and impose a liberal agenda on the nation. It will likely affect the definition of marriage, religious freedom, and the protection (or lack thereof) of life in the womb.

As [Kyle] noted last year when Dobson was threatening to bolt the GOP if Rudy Giuliani secured the nomination, petulant threats from him are becoming an election year tradition … and just like with every other threat he's issued to the party, when crunch time comes, Dobson eventually falls back in line.

Or is it that the Religiopolitical Right's lackeys will be more than likely voting for the Constitution Party's candidate, Chuck Baldwin?

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MEANWHILE, YOU MAY WANT TO BE ON THE WATCH FOR "SPAM" E-MAIL FROM COMPANIES CLAIMING TO OFFER UNSECURED BANK CREDIT CARDS in spite of past credit problems or no established credit, yet without naming specific bankers ... and all the while claiming that "approval is guaranteed."

I say this in light of anecdotal reports emerging in the wake of the imminence of socioeconomic collapse suggesting where leading bankers were imposing tighter credit-quality standards for VISA and MasterCard issues stateside ... and could refer many such with problem credit to offshore issuers with (theoretically) looser credit-acceptance standards.

And for a price, besides.

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SOMETHING NEW FOR TO MOCK JOHN McCAIN WITH: Revelations @ RawStory.com connecting John McCain to a supposedly anti-Communist organisation with known connexions themselves to racists, anti-Semites and white supremacists--even if it was some 30 years previous.

As if that weren't enough, Gwen Ifill, who moderated the Vice-Presidential Debate last Thursday, may have been set up by the Zealots and True Believers of Neo-Conservatism, as RawStory.com explains:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had announced during Thursday's debate that she "may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear."

In other words, she "blew me off I think is the technical term," moderator Gwen Ifill of PBS said Sunday.

Palin avoided answering questions 10 times by being non-specific or simply pivoting away to another issue, Politico reported.

Ifill explained to NBC's Tom Brokaw how the event had been presented beforehand compared to what actually happened on stage.

She said that if the candidates decide they are not going to debate one another, "there is very little a moderator can do other than say, 'No, no, no, listen, please answer the question."

Furthermore, Pat "700 Club" Robertson has posted this letter to his Good and Loyal Droogs warning of an election-tilting "October Surprise" in form of "pre-emptive" Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, notwithstanding the clear and present likelihood of biased, manipulated or otherwise unbalanced coverage (for which historical precedent exists). (Too, there is also the possibility that the claims Robertson makes may have been aided by Al Cohol more so than a sincere belief in the Christus. Or, for that matter, certain hallucinogenic substances.

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PROOF OF THE MAXIM THAT "BAD LEADERS ARE ELECTED BY GOOD PEOPLE WHO DON'T VOTE:" Your Correspondent hath it that the McCain/Palin ticket, in their desperation to protect what remains of their dignity ahead of Indecision 2008 in the face of faltering public confidence and trust in their articles of faith, is dredging up (again) all manner of crude and pathetic smear stories supposedly connecting the dots vis-a-vis Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama and Weather Underground founder-turned-community activist William Ayers, knowing consciously and yet unconsciously that the stories have been discredited and neglect to mention clear facts:

1. That the Weather Underground's attacks occured while Obama was still in his childhood;
2. That the Federal case against Ayers was subsequently dismissed;
3. That Mr. Ayers has since renounced terrorism and violence; and
4. That the interrelationship between Ayers and Obama is one of shared support for community activism.

Not to mention the fact of a McCain/Palin tickt only risking further clear damage socioeconomic before any viable recovery can ensue (if that), considering their belief in the discredited articles of faith suggesting that deregulation, contracting out of non-essential services and keeping taxes all the lower without regard to the National Debt "just to create jobs" as are probably vapourware ... which can only mean further likelihood for the "New World Order" to exploit the American situation to hasten their desire for One-World Government based on Socialist Beliefs all the sooner.

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MEANWHILE, WHEN IT COMES TO FURTHER EFFORTS TO DISCREDIT THE OBAMA/BIDEN TICKET, AND TRY TO EXCUSE SAME AS BEING FOR G-D AND COUNTRY, Snopes.com wishes to call to your attention Urban Legends about a supposed online video featuring Senator Obama in Compromising Positions, e-mails of which are really nothing more than tricks to sneak viruses onto your computer ... and one connecting Obama to a class-action lawsuit "forcing banks to make loans to poor people."

Both of which have varying degrees of credibility, as will be evident on reading them.

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AND TALK ABOUT ELECTORAL DIRTY TRICKS GALORE: In keeping with this blogger's belief that "it's a small world, after all," after Disneyland and Walt Disney World, the Israeli daily Ha'aretz reports thusly on a group of Austrian high-school students who chose to vote for right-wing politicos following a pilgrimage to the Nazi death camp site @ Auschwitz ahead of their recent elections:

An activist in an Austrian organization commemorating the Holocaust, who traveled last month with a group of 16-year-olds from his country to visit the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland, found to his horror that the youngsters were planning to vote for the extreme right wing political parties in the Austrian elections.

The activist, in his twenties, said that despite their far-right leaning, the teens expressed a genuine interest in learning about the Holocaust, and approached the tour with the appropriate seriousness.

The election, in which far-right parties doubled their representation at the end of last month, was the first election in which the young students were eligible to vote. The activist said he overheard the students saying they were planning to vote for Heinz-Christian Strache's Freedom Party or Joerg Haider's Alliance for the Future of Austria - "because of the foreigners."

It was in fact those who were most interested in learning about the Holocaust were the ones who led this trend, said the activist. In response, the group's counselors tried to stress in their discussions the relationship between the lessons of the past and judgments on the present - but were unsuccessful. "The youngsters were unable to make the connection," the activist reported with regret.

Though the unprecedented success of the far-right in the recent election has many Austrians worried, it did not come as a surprise. It is a product of the larger parties' failure to maintain a stable government, a growing hatred for foreigners in the face of immigration from Eastern Europe, and a long-standing legacy in Austria of denying responsibility for the crimes of the Third Reich.

Massive efforts, some more genuine than others, to reverse this legacy have been undertaken in Austria over the last ten years, with some positive, but insufficient, results. For example, the question of the ownership of artwork displayed in a large exhibition at Vienna's Leopold Museum sparked an impassioned national debate. Austrian Culture Minister Claudia Schmied announced that legislation over the last decade regarding the return of artwork looted by Nazis to its rightful owners was not adequate, and allows museum patrons to circumvent the requirement to return the works. Her call to expand the legislation was met with strong opposition and with heated public and political discussions.

On the other hand, projects directly examining Austria's civilian responsibility for the fate of the Jews during the Holocaust have been flourishing recently. A large portion of these projects has been initiated locally by ordinary citizens, academic bodies, artists and NGOs. Thus, when residents of Vienna's Servitengasse Street began inquiring about the fate of the Jews that inhabited their homes before the Holocaust, the project turned into a large-scale research venture which included the name of every street resident and the contacting of their remaining relatives around the world. The project's findings were recorded in a book, a documentary film and an impressive memorial erected on the busy street.

Austria's denial of its role in the Holocaust can be attributed to an exonerating document that the allies signed in November 1943. The Moscow Declaration, signed by the foreign secretaries of the Governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, maintained that Austria was the first free nation to be victimized by the Hitlerean aggression. However, though Austria comprised 12 percent of the population of the Third Reich, 30 percent of the Nazi's victims were exterminated there.

The activist who let the group of students on a tour of Auschwitz summed up the experience, saying that the stance of Austria's far-right political movements does not only stem from an unwillingness to confront the past, but primarily from an inability to analyze the past in reference to the present. "The problem in Austria," he said, "is that though the education system teaches history, it has abandoned altogether the aspect of civics. In its absence, the students simply fail to comprehend the foundations of democracy and the direct link between preserving those foundations and the prevention of repeating historical tragedies."

A lesson, no doubt, worth learning from. And, come to think of it, a warning.

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THINK ABOUT THIS: What if there was a civil uprising on in your country, its capital was being besieged by almost-constant attacks by rival insurgent and terrorist factions--and nobody cared about it, let alone gave a darn?

Such is the situation in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, as the BBC elaborates:

The world should be shocked at the systematic destruction of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, and its residents, says lobby group Human Rights Watch.

The organisation told the BBC the city had become a zone of free-fire between government and insurgent forces.

It said if such a situation was happening anywhere else in the world, like Georgia or Lebanon for example, it would be considered a travesty.

Instead Somalia was the most ignored tragedy in the world today, HRW said.

Meanwhile, a group of 52 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has issued a statement saying the international community had "completely failed Somali civilians".

The aid groups estimate that almost 40,000 people had been displaced from Mogadishu in the last few weeks, with 1.1 million uprooted in the last nine months.

Meanwhile, certain misguided elements Who Should Otherwise Know Better will say that the Somali situation is "of no worthwhile interest to the average Joe Sixpack," as opposed to questions about Barack Obama's supposed want of Morals, Decency or Common Sense, which (so this same crowd expects us to accept as fact) only white European-American Christians can be expeted to have ... and that European-Americans are "racially and morally incapable" of committing Infamous or Heinous Crimes on the same level as "inferior races."

Come to think of it: After watching the following video, what would make you reconsider voting for McCain/Palin come November?

And since when should we "right-thinking Americans" have "no worthwhile interest" in matters where America is not directly involved, or otherwise does not affect Our Antient and Pecuilar Soverignty and Soverign Identity, and the defence thereof?

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IF THERE BE THOSE AMONG YOU READERS WHO WOULD FIND THE ABOVE PHOTO AN INADEQUATE EXCUSE TO KILL TIME AND SPACE ON A RATHER DREARY SUNDAY EVENING here in the Minnwissippi as looks as if it could rain ... please feel free to leave your comments.

AS IF SUGGESTIONS THAT HIS FRAUDULENCY AND AL-QAEDA SHARE EQUAL BLAME FOR THE CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER OF AMERICA'S SOCIOECONOMIC AND MORAL COLLAPSE within measurable distance weren't good enough, along comes a newly-released video from al-Qaeda's propaganda division, As-Sahab, delivered in flawless English by American-born al-Qaeda fellow-traveller Adam Gadahn (a/k/a "Azzam the American"), as makes note of the imminence of American socioeconomic and moral collapse thanks to the ur-RAHOWA Against Terrorism and its ensuing misadventures in large part.

As quoted by CNN.com:

The enemies of Islam are facing a crushing defeat, which is beginning to manifest itself in the extending crisis their economy is experiencing. The crisis, whose primary cause, in addition to the abortive and unsustainable crusades they are waging in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, is they are turning their backs on Allah's revealed laws, which forbid interest-bearing transactions, exploitation, greed and injustice in all its forms and demand the worship of Allah alone to the exclusion of all false gods, including money and power ... 

(Remember, boys and girls, that His Fraudulency wanted America to behave as if nothing had happened following the Unfortunate Events of 9/11 in the hope of preventing further Infamous and Notorious Terrorist Attacks while fighting the greater ur-RAHOWA Against Terrorism--all the while keeping taxes low to create jobs and, in its turn, create social stability.

(In theory.)

Come to think of it: How do we know this latest video isn't really a CIA forgery produced under lettres de cachet on His Fraudulency's signature "just to keep people scared," let alone further whip up racist and xenophobic "patriotic" feelings in especially the easily-led?

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WHICH BRINGS UP THE FACT OF THE NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK IN TIMES SQUARE, NEW YORK, HAVING TO BE RECONFIGURED in order to reflect the fact of the National Debt Outstanding now exceeding $10 trillion--which the current versions thereof are unable to accomodate.

Which can be put down, no doubt, to:

• the ongoing misadventures of His Fraudulency's Great Within officially known as the ur-RAHOWA Against Terrorism;
• an insistence that Americans continue behaving as normal, while remaining all the more alert and cautious to real or suspected acts, deeds or exploits of terrorism, both from within and without; and
• the prevailing belief that low taxes=jobs=social stability, subject to the prevailing belief that the free-market capitalist model (to paraphrase Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science) "has always met, and will always meet, every human need."

And let's not forget John McCain's playing ideological footsie with Grover Norquist and his cherished belief to "decrease the size of government in the point we may dampen that in the bathtub"--and then play the Andrea Yates card to justify the whole.

No wonder John McCain is resorting to the desperation card to maintain a Government-Protected GOP Monopoly on Power, Authority, Trust and Confidence, notwithstanding such only risking its exploitation by the "New World Order" as would usurp Our Traditional Soverign Identity as a Pecuilar Among the Nations. Marc Ambinder's blog @ TheAtlantic.com explains:

It looks like the deadlier final attack might come not from John McCain, as advertised, but from Barack Obama, with his McCcain-will-cost-you-more blitzkrieg. McCain's already on extremely weak footing regarding the economy. 

By eliminating McCain's one economic trump card, that he is a tax cutter and Obama a tax-hiker, Obama's pounding on those coffin nails.

This is why the "Barack Obama is lying to voters and is a dangerous terrorist pal who can't be trusted" response is coming from the McCain campaign; their only hope is to erode trust in Obama's attacks the way Obama eroded trust in McCain's attacks. 

One worry for Republicans is that McCain has already gone too negative too quickly; you never pull out the strongest punches against your opponent until the very end; it's hard to get tougher than the kindergarten ad... or over-the-top statements about Obama not being fit to lead.

Which raises the question of whether the only ones Republicans consider "fit to lead" are white male European-American Low Church Christians.

Likewise with the electorate, provided they are also owners of Real Property on Free and Clear Title.

Never mind that, in Low Church theology, the role of the clergy is all the more deemphasised as part of the emphasis on direct participation in the sacraments of the service, which only opens the door for the ranks of the clergy (more than likely drawn from the laity, know) being dominated by weird and unwholesome types.

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GETTING BACK TO THE NATIONAL DEBT ISSUE, such would be as good a time as any to remind you online shoppers that Your Correspondent does still intend to give part of the commissions and proceeds he may get from online shopping (including such sales from The Exaggerator Collection, the new CafePress-powered e-boutique) to Reduction of the National Debt.

Which may be something to think about for those among you still insisting on purchasing frivolous and potentally unnecessary consumption goods for the end-of-year festive season in the name of National Economic Cohesion--not to mention saving time, fuel, bedlam and confusion.

Unless, however, someone among you can show good cause why donating to reduction of the National Debt is not a Good and Worthy Cause, let alone justifying keeping the National Debt above $10 trillion for reasons other than those too easily excused as "political." 

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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).