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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.

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NOW TELL ME IF THE FOLLOWING CONSTITUTES A DOUBLE "OCTOBER SURPRISE," HAPPENING AS THEY DID IN SUCH CLOSE PROXIMITY just late yesterday:

• Announcement by the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) of the arrest just last week of two neo-Nazi skinhead sympathisers (aged 18 and 20), and detention without bail, in connexion with a plot to dispatch Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama as the climax of an orgy of assaination and decapitation of blacks across the South; the numbers 88 (neo-Nazi code for "Heil Hitler") and 14 (as in "The Fourteen Words," the simple encapsulation of white-supremacist beliefs) figured prominently in the whole scheme.
• Senator Ted Stevens (GOP/AK) having been found guilty of Corruption and Perversion of Office by failing to properly disclose payola from oil companies in connexion with a summer home back in The Last Frontier--this on the heels of a potentially close Senate campaign up that way.

(In the former instance, though, expect the neo-Nazi and white-supremacist crowd to be screaming "Entrapment!!!" @ the news, or otherwise suggest that the whole was a fabrication by the Obama Presidential campaign to hasten victory.)

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SO MUCH FOR THE McCAIN/PALIN CAMPAIGN'S ARTICLES OF FAITH SEEING A NEW GOLDEN AGE FOR THE SO-CALLED "FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ECONOMY" (otherwise known as the Working Classes) based on "stay-the-course" complacency with tax cuts "just to create jobs" and "regulatory relief:"

Consider the following takeoff on the Budweiser "Wassup?!" adverts (thanks to Brave New Films):

No wonder Indecision 2008 may be Our Most Crucial Such we face as a Pecuilar Among the Nations; hence, make sure your voter-registry information is accurate and timely to avoid possible problems @ the polling station on the day.

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AND TALK ABOUT THE DESPERATION COMING FROM THE DARK SATANIC MILLS OF CONSERVATIVE PROPAGANDA AND ENLIGHTENMENT in trying to "guarantee" their desideratum of nothing less than sure victory for the McCain/Palin ticket--same, perhaps, coming by way of secret homosexual favours to be kept all the more so.

ConWebBlog elaborates:

It's clear that the ConWeb cares nothing about facts when it comes to Barack Obama. It's demonstrated again with its overheated misinterpretation of, and outright lies about, a statement Obama made in 2001.

Obama said:

I mean, I think that, you know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order in, as long as I could pay for it, I'd be OK. But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

And, to that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way that, generally, the Constitution is a charter of [unintelligible] liberties -- says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf, and that hasn't shifted.

And one of the -- I think the tragedies of the civil rights movement was, because the civil rights movements became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing, and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And, in some ways, we still suffer from that.

In full context, Obama was saying that the civil rights movement relied too much on the court system to advance its agenda instead of promoting change from the bottom up, and the Warren Supreme Court was not as radical as right-wingers claim it to be because it refused to take up "more basic issues of political and economic justice."

But that's not what the ConWeb will tell you Obama said.

NewsBusters' P.J. Gladnick howled that "Barack Obama explicitly calls for the 'redistribution of wealth'" in the interview -- which he doesn't. NewsBusters' Mark Finkelstein claimed Obama said "he laments the Supreme Court's insufficient radicalism in pursuing redistribution and refers to the civil rights movement's failure to develop a better strategy to bring about wealth redistribution as a 'tragedy[']" -- which he didn't.

David Patten wrote in an Oct. 27 Newsmax article:

One of the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement is that it failed to lead to income redistribution in the United States, Barack Obama appears to state in an audio excerpt of a Chicago public radio program recorded in 2001.

Obama, who then was an Illinois state senator, also stated that people continue to “suffer” because there is no government program to take money from the rich and redistribute it to Americans who are less well off.

Also wrong. 

Susan Jones asserted in an Oct. 27 CNSNews.com article that "The audio clip makes it clear that redistribution of wealth, or 'redistributive change,' is something Obama’s been aiming at for years." Again, not true; Obama could have been referring to political power as well, or exclusively. Similarly, Terry Jeffrey asserted that Obama "expressed disappointment that the Supreme Court 'never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth.'"

The Media Research Center's Seton Motley cited "damning new evidence of Illinois Democratic Senator and Presidential nominee Barack Obama's radical views on how we need to 'break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution' because it 'doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.'" Obama didn't say that.

Motley also quotes MRC chief Brent Bozell saying of this story: "We will monitor who does - and doesn't - cover this story, and we'll document it." We'll be doing the same thing -- but monitoring and documenting how Bozell and his fellow travelers lie and mislead about Obama's words.

UPDATE: Newsmax's Phil Brennan severely misinterprets Obama's words, turning Obama's declarative statement that the Warren court "didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution" into a false question by putting words in Obama's mouth, under the headline "Obama Attacks Founding Fathers, Constitution":

According to Obama if the Constitution "didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and [the] Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties." [emphasis added]

Obama didn't say "if the Constitution"; that's a fabrication by Brennan. Yet Brennan lies that Obama "shows a shocking ignorance of the purpose of the United States Constitution" and "would have sent shivers up the spine of Thomas Jefferson, et al."

UPDATE 2: WorldNetDaily joins the parade, falsely claiming that Obama "said in a radio interview the U.S. has suffered from a fundamentally flawed Constitution that does not mandate or allow for redistribution of wealth."

In other words, a "stay-the-course" complacency based on "unwritten tradition" taking precedence over statute law excusing enforced class distinctions, racism, inequality of society, usw., is necessary to the defence of Our Antient and Pecuilar Soverignty and Soverign Identity as a Pecuilar Among the Nations--according to conservative thought.

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THE PARANOIA OF THE ELMER GANTRY ELEMENT ABOUT HOW BARACK OBAMA COULD LEAD TO A NEW WAVE OF "CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION" rivalled (or so they think) by the likes of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacree seems to know no limits.

Witness the following observation from Janet Folger Porter's column in WorldNetDaily for today, as quoted by ConWebBlog:

To all those who name the name of Christ who plan to willfully disobey Him by voting for Obama, take warning. Not only is our nation in grave danger, according to the Word of God, so are you.

How so? I would like to ask.

And isn't this up there with the paranoia that the Afrikaner Peoples of South Africa were fed by the National Party, the Reformed Church, the Broderbund, the Voortrekkers youth movement and other bastions of Afrikanerdom @ its most hubris-weighted about what might happen to Our Dear and Beloved South Africa were apartheid to be abolished?

Next thing you know, expect many of the more pathetic specimens of the Low Church (especially so the Primitive variety) to call for all-night prayer vigils starting with the eve of the elections to prevent an Obama victory "as will only lead America to Her Decline and Ruin" bordering on hysterical, even emotionally-depraved, excess ... which could get out of control if the final result is for Obama/Biden.

The whole dominated by "religious" tending to be alcoholics, drug addicts, sex maniacs or otherwise emotionally unstable in the vein of Rev. Jim Jones. And, like Rev. Jones @ the Jonestown compound in Guyana 30 years ago next month, paranoid enough to drive the faithful into Death Before Dishonour, or so they think.

Which is something law enforcement authorities may want to be on the que vive for, especially so in certain bastions of extreme poverty, fecundity and stupidity where overzealous Fundamentalist or Primitive religious beliefs hold high carnival among the vulnerable and socioeconomically-marginalised element.

more the engrish!

@ THE EXPENSE OF BEING PERCEIVED AS RATHER ANNOYING TO THE POINT OF IRKSOME, YOUR CORRESPONDENT NEEDS TO REMIND ALL OF YOU that protecting the purity and integrity of the electoral process, especially so tomorrow week, matters all the more.

Especially with whispers going around in certain circles about wild and sinister schemes to pervert the final results "by whatever means necessary," and excusing such as necessary for G-d and Country.

To those ends, may I ask your remaining all the more vigilant for schemes afoot in this the final week of the campaign to prevent duly-registered voters from exercising electoral franchise by way of weird and unwholesome means, and to contact law enforcement agencies posthaste; electoral interference is still a penal offense.

Not to mention the freecall Election Protection Hotline, 1-866-OUR-VOTE, if you spot anything amiss. (Especially should you have a camera phone as can record especially notorious instances. If the lines are busy, keep trying until you break through.)

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FOR ALL THAT JOHN McCAIN'S CAMPAIGN MAY BE WHINING ABOUT HIS PRIMARY OPPONENT, BARACK OBAMA, BEING SOME CLASS OF A CLOSET SOCIALIST, Jesus' General has these worthwhile observations worth pondering over:

...Just about every Republican political campaign accuses Democrats of socialism and communism in some fashion, though they rarely come out and actually use such labels anymore. Instead, they usually rely on codes like "big government" and expect voters to get the message. Now that the alleged virtues of "small government" are out of fashion, new words for the same idea have to be found. What makes this attack interesting is just how bizarre and contrary to reality it is – not that any of his other personal attacks have exactly been "reality based," but the charge of socialism is so much further removed from reality that it almost makes all his earlier campaign moves seem rational by comparison.

Of course, by any educated and informed perspective (read: elitist, and therefore irrelevant), none of Barack Obama's policies come anywhere close to "socialism." He's just about as far removed from socialism as John McCain himself is, but that doesn't matter. Few of McCain's supporters actually know what socialism is. This includes the intelligent ones (I recently had a conversation with a man whose career was tied to finance and investments, yet he sincerely believed that socialism and communism were the same thing) as well as the not-so-intelligent ones (I saw a man interviewed by the BBC who said America had been fighting against socialism "since 1776"). They also don't care.

For conservative Republicans, "socialism" isn't so much a label for a particular economic theory or a set of economic policies as it is a code word for godlessness over Christianity, racial and economic equality over white, Protestant domination, collective action over individualism, internationalism over American exceptionalism, and so forth. Earlier, related complaints about "welfare" had the added benefit of being implied attacks on racial equality and giving blacks a chance at getting out of poverty.

Communism is generally taken to mean about the same thing, only a bit more extreme in terms of being anti-American, so I'm surprised that Obama hasn't been more explicitly labeled a communist as well. Trashing others as "red" in some fashion is an old and reliable Republican tactic that hasn't been made explicitly in many years. Maybe McCain is pining for the good old days when open, unapologetic red-baiting was more commonplace?

This is certainly why it doesn't matter to McCain that he hasn't pointed to anything in Obama that is "socialist" which hasn't also been promoted and/or supported in the past by Republicans like Ronald Reagan and...John McCain himself. John McCain derides tax credits as "socialist" even though Ronald Reagan described the Earned Income Tax Credit as the "single greatest anti-poverty measure" in America (and so increased it). John McCain's own health care proposals rely heavily on tax credits. Progressive taxation has been a feature of the American income tax system since there has been an income tax, and taxing the wealthy more than the poor is neccesary to any just political system. But so what?

Complaints about "socialism" aren't a serious, substantive criticism of any of Obama's policies. And frankly, I doubt many conservatives know any more about those policies than they do about socialism; instead, they are just an attempt to attack Obama as "the other" – liberal, educated, black, concerned about poverty, concerned about race, etc. Accusing someone of being a socialist is a means by which conservatives can give the impression that they are making a serious criticism while in reality just attacking someone for being too "different."

Conservative voters aren't really fooled by this; on the contrary, they are fully complicit in the tactic by not caring whether those being attacked are genuine socialists and simply responding to the dog whistle as their political masters have trained them to do. They don't want to like people who are too "other," and they certainly don't want to vote for them. Conservative politicians give them the perfect excuse with complaints about socialism or welfare: voters have the opportunity to vote their baser, bigoted prejudices while pretending that they are really moral, decent citizens.

And making things even worse is that McCain lacks credible evidence to make the interconnexion between Obama and socialism per se. Pure, unadulterated McCarthyism, plain and simple.

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THOSE OF YOU WHO THOUGHT REP. MICHELLE BACHMANN MAY HAVE LOST ANY CREDIBLE CHANCE FOR REELECTION WITH HER CALLS UPON THE FOURTH ESTATE to look for real or suspected "un-American tendencies" upon liberal-leaning Members of Congress--that was just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

It's now emerged that, during her first attempt @ Congress in a 2005 byelection, she was overheard making nativist-sounding remarks @ a campaign appearence (kudos to Brave New Films, ultimately The Uptake, for this amazing discovery):

Not only nativist, but also xenophobically irrational, as if suggesting that America was somehow Divinely Ordained to be Morally Superior to All Other Nations by virtue of the interrelationship between the defence of its Antient and Pecuilar Soverignty and Soverign Identity and that of free-market capitalism with American characteristics (as if implying that the two were intertwined, not to mention reversible if need be).

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THE IDEA OF ISRAELI FORCES LAUNCHING A SHOCK ATTACK ON IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAMME AS A DELIBERATE "OCTOBER SURPRISE" to manipulate the American vote over to the McCain/Palin ticket may want to be ruled out for the time being. Here's why:

• Interim Prime Minister Tzipni Livni (Kadima) has called early elections for just after Haunukkah, meaning that the campaigning could get too easily distracted by shock military action somehow being kept secret "so as not to influence the elections unduly."
• Said early elections being dictated by Ms. Livni's inability to form a Grand Coalition in the Knesset led by her Kadima party and its close rivals, Labour, after the minority Orthodox Jewish party Shas balked @ being part of same.
• Rumours @ the weekend that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinjad had suddenly taken ill and would be unable to carry out official functions for the interim.
• Interest being expressed by opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) to lead a caretaker government in the interim.
• The general tightness of the scheduling vis-a-vis American elections, and rumours surfacing about such an attack, and the timing therefor, being a cheap election-influencing tactic.

(Or could it still happen, and we may not know about it until the last minute before said elections?)

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MEMO TO SUCH CONSIDERING "MYSTERY SHOPPER" WORK IN THE FACE OF LOOMING SOCIOECONOMIC MELTDOWN AND MASS UNEMPLOYMENT: The idea of earning big-big money simply by completing "mystery shopping" assignments once or twice a week sounds tempting on the surface ... until you learn that such is really "bait" for an outright scam.

Specifically, the "fake cheque" scam, where you're asked to cash a cheque for a substantial sum, keep 12-15% as "commission" and wire back the residue to what turns out being a "pigeon drop" address outside the United States--followed by completing a short and polite "consumer satisfaction" survey.

Only the cheque you're asked to cash is a fake, becoming evident some days later when your bankers call to let you know that a substantial cheque you deposited recently had insufficent funds, holding you liable for not only the face value, but also overdraft and NSF charges as can actually be substantial to the point of depleting your account. (Not to mention such having been written against non-existant accounts.)

Which is not a very pleasant thing to face, especially if you're tempted to fall for "mystery shopper" offers advetised in local recyclable "shoppers" and "pennysavers" or online through the likes of Craigslist--and all the more so because you can't hold down traditional positions due to circumstances outside your direct control (age, disability, history of mental disorders, local economic conditions, need to care for infants or elderly relatives) and need to supplement any State welfare benefits you're entitled to.

Against this backdrop, consider where there are "mystery shopper" positions available on a "free no cost" basis ... however, know that they're unlikely to pay any more than $50 per completed assignment, and that such, depending on your area, may be few and far between; hence, think of "mystery shopper" work as a way to earn some extra pocket money rather than a serious, sustained income. You can learn more by visiting this helpful website, which includes names and contacts (and, in some cases, website links) for honest, above-board companies who actually hire "mystery shoppers" as required, and where you can also search for "mystery shopping" assignments in your area, and how much they pay on completion of the tasks @ hand.

Think about it if you're still thinking about "mystery shopper" work as a quick and easy way out of socioeconomic uncertainty, especially where promise of big-big money is used as lure.

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ONE THING MORE: Such among the "traditional family values" crowd as are pushing the notion of Clean Family Films for the sake of attracting "right-thinking" investors are probably thinking more about such being a tax device rather than a serious entertainment business.

Especially if the finished product turns out to be so bad to the point of poor box office ensuing (or, for that matter, the same going direct to video almost immediately), the production venture winds up claiming substantial losses as a tax writedown in the hope of claiming a substantial clawback.

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To whom it may concern:

May I recommend to you @ this time that you may want to seriously reconsider including the likes of Fox News Channel and/or Fox Business Channel as part of your cable-TV advertising buys now and henceforth.

And for reasons which are well-documented on film and on the Information Stuporbahn, for the record.

However, in case you need clear and compelling reasons to reconsider including Fox News and/or Fox Business in your cable advertising buys, they include clear and compelling patterns of:

• Resorting to borderline softporn for no worthwhile purpose other than to distract audience attention, not to mention use thereof without clear editorial justification.
• Pandering to the crudest and most primitive of prejudices and stereotypes of the poor, immigrants and National Minorities in its reportage--in some cases, depicting such only in a negative and potentially dangerous light.
• Reckless and utter disregard for Truth and Journalistic Integrity in the name of being "fair and balanced" in the face of an imagined "Liberal Media Conspiracy" which reeks of anti-Semitism last seen in Nazi Germany (especially so the weekly tabloid Der Sturmer, notorious in its own right for crude, easily-understood anti-Semitism which may have made the Holocaust all the worse).
• Clear and compelling patterns of hypocritical doublethink without clear editorial justification, reinforced by a "reject all evidence of eyes and ears" mindset.
• Failing to clearly disclose to viewers possible editorial conflicts of interests or "cash-for-comments" setups (in the latter instance, as in payola made to Fox News by the K Street element to push their current "talking points" in the guise of news or commentary), with possible detrius to journalistic integrity and independence.
• A notorious tendency towards vitriolic attack on the part of newsreaders and hosts, which, combined with a target audience for both networks composed mostly of lower-income, undereducated or homeschooled, easily-influenced and socioeconomically-marginalised "white trash" with few or no real job or career skills for a 21st-century socioeconomic model and paradigm, could unwittingly and unconsciously expose not only Fox News and Fox Business, but also News America Corporation (the parent company of both networks in question), to serious criminal as much as civil liability if the tone and tenor of said remarks were to translate into serious action--especially sadistic ultraviolence which, in the right circumstances, can translate into what racists and white supremacists have long held dear as an article of faith: Videlicet, RAHOWA (RAcial HOly WAr), whose sole and only aim is to "reclaim" (as they see it) a White European-American Christian monopoly on power, authority and business "as is their natural birthright," only to be seen as "thwarted" by "Jewish treachery***as threatens to undermine and destroy Christendom." (Not to mention failing to recognise the clear and present danger of exposure to liability.)
• The target audience of both networks having limited purchasing power beyond dollar stores, "liberal credit" retailers, convenience stores with limited grocery selections, "sub-prime" consumer loan and mortgage companies and used-car dealers using high-pressure sales tactics, made all the more galling by Fox News and Fox Business forever insisting that free-market capitalism with American characteristics is, shall we say, the Great White Father of the Lower Classes.

I hope, in so doing, that I have convinced you all the more of the need to reconsider your including Fox News Channel and/or Fox Business Channel in your advertising buys, now and in future. For, in continuing to buy advertising time on either or both networks, you may unwittingly be giving tacit endorsement and sanction to potentially dangerous, sinister and un-American articles of faith as are a staple of their "news" programmes, which include, but are not necessarily limited to:

• racism;
• bigotry;
• anti-Semitism;
• nativism;
• isolationism;
• xenophobia;
• marginalisation of the poor and vulnerable; and
• incitement to violence, criminality, anti-social behaviour and war.

Otherwise, what stands in the way of making a wise and logical choice for the sake of healthy and responsible broadcast journalism which can only divide, rather than unite, Our Nation, than simply dumping Fox News and Fox Business as part of your media buy?

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MEMO TO READERS: Your Correspondent, as is usual practice with these Open Letters, urges you to share this with your friends and others in your e-mail circles--and, hopefully, with such as are known and notorious advertisers on Fox News and/or Fox Business.

However, please avoid "spamming" indiscrimminately; after all, "spam" can only hurt a campaign to the point of undermining any semblance of effectiveness.