SINCLAIR LEWIS COULD BE WRONG: Civil disorder and violence in Pakistan following the "insider" assaination of opposition leader Benazhir Bhutto has threatened to undermine the likelihood of Parliamentary elections within measurable distance without their being seriously undermined.

Meanwhile, in Kenya, a church was firebombed with some 30 people holed up inside to escape post-election violence triggered by rumours of the result having been rigged or manipulated by the Nairobi powers-that-be to favour the status quo and its climate of corruption, cronyism and worse.

Which is enough to wonder if America's Indecision 2008 could be marred by displays of Extreme Ultraviolence which turn out to have been cooked up by goon squads with connexions to His Fraudulency's "inside of the inside" (some sort of a "redemption for value" scam, perhaps?)--all the while officially explained as Notorious Terrorist Acts, never mind where the real perps are suddenly given safe passage to some third country on fake passports and substantial payoffs to keep the whole quiet.

In any case, compelling His Fraudulency to suspend the elections "in the interest of maintaining public order and safety," handing over law and order, in effect, to the inmates of the asylum--as in "vigilance committees" predominated by the weird and unwholesome and with mindsets up there with the Ku Klux Klan and The Black Legion as mandate their highly-secretive regalia in carrying out their exercises in racially-selective "law-and-order" sadisto under cloak of darkness.

Themselves paid off by--you guessed it--"the inside of the inside."

Remember, folks, "it CAN happen here."

And remember, too, that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

But such is no excuse to justify sadisto misadventures with racist overtures, especially where Al Cohol (usually "strong" beer) comes into the argument.

*************

IF YOU THINK AMTRAK SHOULD BE EUTHANISED AS A FAILED SOCIAL EXPERIMENT ...: One of the pet arguments of the K Street crowd is that the national passenger rail operator Amtrak should be put out of its misery "for the sake of the good taxpayers***seeing no real or viable taxpayer value" in maintaining rail passenger service.

In the process, expecting the motorcoach industry, "out of the goodness of its heart," to step in and provide "more cost-efficent" services intercity.

Unfortunately, however, such thinking would only benefit, for the most part, Greyhound, which itself is seeing its motorcoach network truncated wholesale to save themselves any chance of profitability, leaving many smaller communities without other decent transportation options save for shared-taxi or van services as would provide connexions to the nearest city of consequence still lucky to have Greyhound services.

Or, for that matter, Megabus, which offers cheap (as little as $1 one-way, with advanced reservations) motorcoach services on "hub-and-spoke" networks in the Midwest (based out of Chicago) and West Coast (based out of Los Angeles).

And let's not forget the Chinese motorcoach services (known in the Chinese by a term which translates into the colourful-sounding "wild chicken trucks") operating along the Northeast Corridor, by and large.

What exactly would it take to force a forced-matrix brand of motorcoach competition as would satisfy K Street in these circumstances?

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GERMAN EFFICENCY IS WONDERFUL DEPARTMENT: One of the more popular character traits often cited among the Germans is that which holds where the Germans are masters of efficency to the highest degree.

And perhaps the best examples of German efficency I can come across would have to be in the oral-hygiene department, particularly when it comes to mouth rinse. When you get right down to it, the Germans have it worked out so that just a few drops of concentrated mouth rinse, added to water, does as effective a job in getting rid of bad breath (including "morning breath") as already-prepared brands like Listerine, Scope and Lavoris.

And you get value for money in the bargain: Just one bottle of mouth rinse concentrate, when diluted with water according to directions, will go longer than a large-size bottle of straight Listerine. And the compact size of the bottle means less to pack when you travel.

Fortunately for Your Correspondent, The Exaggerator is proud to be affiliated with Smallflower.com, the online version of Chicago's famous Merz Apothecary, where you can buy such esteemed German brands of mouth rinse concentrate like Odol and Nur 1 Tropfen (One Drop Only), which you can find out more about by clicking on the image as meets your fancy:

 

IN TERMS OF CONSERVATIVE ARTICLES OF FAITH FOREVER SEEING THE LOWER CLASSES as nothing better than parasites and Threats to the Morals and Decency of the Working-Classes, some of their more pathetic remedies towards "moral correction," if you can call it such, can be considered rather illogiocal in and of themselves.

Especially considering where the inevitable foundation these same conservatives have, almost always, is in free-market capitalism with American characteristics as the Great White Father, so to speak, that would "release [the poor, welfare-dependent and National Minorities in particular] from helpless enslavement to failed social welfare policies" as led, so this thinking goes, to "error and illogic" based on Socialistic or otherwise "un-American" beliefs.

Making things all the more difficult, understand, is the fact of the Lower Classes having few or no realistic consumer-education skills, all the while leaving them @ the risk of second-rate merchandise @ higher-than-necessary prices (the point of which Wally World and the "dollar stores" are likely to dispute), credit (if they're lucky) tending to be on less-than-favourable terms and their buying power being all the more limited and limiting.

No doubt making the Lower Classes all the more vulnerable to scams and misguided expectations from such who seek to take advantage of their circumstances. Even if Fox News Channel expects the Lower Classes to see themselves as Real Americans in their xenophobic closed-mindedness and limited purchasing power.

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And all too often, these same conservatives just hope to see these same Lower Classes as no better than easily-manipulated guinea pigs for all manner of "social experiments" expected to show that free-market capitalism would save them from themselves--with a little Pavlovian conditioning, subliminal messages and other potentially harmful psychological techniques tending to exploit.

One likely such would involve their dearest article of faith: The "complete and final" denationalisation of State Social Security towards free-market models expected to "promote healthy respect for industry, self-reliance, personal responsibility, thrift and a wholesome and simple home life."

As in looking for ways to "advise" such finding work only because of workfare or other targeted job-assistance schemes (e.g., Job Corps, School-to-Work, Vocational Rehabilitation, Emergency Economic Redevelopment, Displaced Worker Retraining) that they should consider "retirement savings funds" based on Latin American models preferred by K Street because State Social Security "has failed to produce proper respect for self-reliance and personal responsibility among [their] kind" all along.

Which, it just so happens, fails to recognise that the Lower Classes have no idea of how the equities markets as would play an intergal part in private Social Security work save for latent anti-Semitic platitudes and patsies.

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Another unlikely delusion in the same vein:

Cooking up all manner of "savings campaigns" only playing up the crudest of stereotypes suggesting where the Lower Classes can't make wise use of their money, instead wasting such on liquor, illegal drugs, junk food, lottery tickets and "wasteful and frivolous" purposes rather than "a wholesome and simple home life" based, these same Zealots and True Believers would suggest, upon "The Cotter's Saturday Night" by Robert Burns (Scots; 1759-1796).

Only to find ways to have such "savings" so "invested" diverted to improper or otherwise dangerous ends which result in nothing but loss of capital (as in so-called "High Yield Investment Programmes"), as well as looking for tools and answers to use in explaining:

• how such funds invested in response to these "savings campaigns" will be used;
• whether such funds will be used wisely;
• how much return can be expected; and
• how those so enrolled can access their funds, and when, without having to needlessly jump through hoops.

Try and figure....

I HOPE YOU DON'T MIND, FOLKS, the fact that, heretofore, Your Correspondent had been posting most of his essays in this new blog on a "postdated" basis; i.e., for posting @ a later time.

Circumstances, though, prompt moi to try posting "on the fly," as it were.

The which I will get to shortly.

But first: I thought I'd let you know of an informative and worthwhile series forthcoming as will be of especial interest to certain scions @ the Elmer Gantry Institute of Religiopolitical Theology challenging the legality as much as the constitutionality of free public education, and proscriptions on the use of public monies to fund religious or otherwise sectarian systems of education (including, methinks, Christian Homeschooling curricular material), and hope to use the courts to make their case (unaware of the likelihood for same being dismissed as frivolous, vexatious or otherwise unwise use of court time and resources).

And the form of challenge? Actual clauses from the several State Constitutions on the points @ issue.

So do bookmark this site, and please tell your friends about this forthcoming series of importance. Remember: "The truth is mighty, and will prevail."

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COULD BRITNEY SPEARS BE THE NEXT FRANCES FARMER? Recent news reports about the mental and psychoemotional breakdown of singer Britney Spears, culminating in her current 72-Hour Hold for psychiatric evaluation in the wake of a recent court ruling forcing her to surrender legal custody of her children to her former husband, excesses of sensationalism and unhealthy attention in some prolefeed channels notwithstanding, may be enough to Your Correspondent's mind to recall the tragic life of actress Frances Farmer (1914-1970), once billed as a likely and promising rival to Greta Garbo ... only to see her career collapse all the more by virtue of psychiatric ill-treatment, cruelty and the overdomineering designs of her publicity-seeking mother.

Her notriety, if you could call it that, could first be traced to 1931, when, as a high school student in Seattle, she won $500 in an essay contest for her essay "God Dies," wherein she challenged the existance of The Deity openly--and, in the process, began attracting the attention of critics as were quick to label her as a "Communist sympathiser," "pinko" and worse.

Soon afterwards, Farmer would win a competition sponsored by the Communist-leaning magazine New Masses as included an audition on Broadway and passage to Moscow for a visit to a theater there. On her return, she would attract the affections of dramatist Clifford Odets, in time appearing in the stage version of his play Golden Boy on Broadway.

Hollywood quickly expressed interest, with Paramount signing Farmer to a stock seven-year contract as was common in Hollywood's Golden Age; too often, however, Paramount would farm out Frances Farmer to other studios, quickly earning resentment of The Hollywood System on her part. And before long, she would wind up getting rather forgettable B-picture roles until some misadventures with tequila on the set of the Monogram Pictures production No Escape earned her the wrath of the courts--and loss of plum roles.

By the end of 1942, a chain of headline-generating incidents would mean the end of Frances Farmer's Hollywood prospects:

• Her arrest for drunk driving, driving with high-beam headlights in a wartime dim-out zone and assaulting the arresting officer.
• Failing to meet with her probation officer led to her infamous arrest in the nude from her suite @ the Knickerbocker Hotel in Santa Monica, drunk and screaming Billingsgate. On arrival @ the police station, she used an obscene term in describing her profession.
• Following her sentence to penal servitude, with the judge essentially "throwing the book" @ Miss Farmer, she screamed obscenities @ police officers and press reporters, even kicking the camera of a press photographer to the point of causing damage.
• Her mother, back in Seattle, would essentially sign her death warrant vis-a-vis Hollywood by suggesting that she be placed in a private insane asylum for treatment, or what passed for it in those days.

In time, however, Frances Farmer would become a has-been, eventually being committed to the Washington state asylum in Steliacoom and, in the process, suffering all manner of psychiatric abuse, cruelty and indignities @ the hands of medical staff and orderlies, including witnessing episodes of lesbian rape as a means of asserting power and authority and being tricked into doing sexual favours. (Her own sordid account was, fortunately, recorded for posterity in her memoirs, Will There Really Be a Morning?, published following her death from cancer in 1970. Alone.)

Reduced to a shell of her former self following her undergoing an icepick lobotomy in 1948, it would be ten years before Frances Farmer would find the strength to return to Hollywood for one last film appearence in The Party Crashers; soon afterwards, she would move to Indianapolis, where she hosted a teatime movie programme on a local TV station until shortly before her decease.

So: Could it be likely that the ghost of Frances Farmer may be ready to haunt Britney Spears before too long, as if her younger daughter Jamie Lynn's being enciente wasn't making things difficult enough?

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THERE IS NO ROYAL ROAD TO ENERGY SELF-SUFFICENCY: Even with much of the attention in the oil and gas industries being drawn to the Bakken field across western North Dakota and eastern Montana, perhaps the single hottest area for oil and gas exploration right now, don't expect that area alone to be the "magic bullet" as winds up seeing oil prices falling below $100/bbl within measurable distance.

Which begs the question of whether certain elements of His Fraudulency's "inside of the inside" may secretly be playing the crude-oil futures markets with all the recent cuts in military pay and benefits, and hoping to make a cheap and quick killing in the process.

As if that weren't enough:

Parade, the Sunday rotogravure magazine supplement, had a rather embarrassing item recently about the real cost of developing energy self-sufficency based on maintaining dependency upon oil and gas--costs to health and environment, it turns out.

On the one hand, extraction of crude oil and natural gas ex-wellhead requires all manner of toxic chemicals as can affect drinking water quality, including benzene, arsenic and mercury. And in some of the older fields approaching the end of their productive life, producers have been known to add other toxic substances to boost what little output may still be extractable.

But, thanks to the petroleum industry's connexions in Congress, wellhead owners have exemptions from mandates in the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Air Act, among other environmental-protection laws; this extends to exemptions from requirements for reporting toxic-material releases.

Add to that complaints of many living close to oil and gas wells of all manner of health problems as include painful blisters, headaches, nausea, nosebleeds and even cancers, for which the oil and gas industry will likely suggest that complaints thereof are probably "hypochondria" or "psychosomatic" in the hope of avoiding liability.

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

Back to the Bakken field for a moment: For want of suitable facilities for processing natural gas ex-wellhead, flaring off gas therefrom seems to be more the rule than the exception, so explaining why the nighttime skies of western North Dakota especially might be a little brighter without the Northern Lights taken into account.

Even if it means wasting substantial quantities of natural gas in the bargain.

(Historical Sidelight: Following the Turner Valley naptha gas discoveries in the Canadian province of Alberta in the mid-1920's, flaring off wellheads was so common, it was said that one could read an evening paper on the streets of nearby Calgary without recourse to artificial light.)

There is no royal road to energy self-sufficency, Your Fraudulency....    

MIKE HUCKABEE'S INCONVENIENT TRUTH, METHINKS?

Excellent video by way of Jesus' General:

Unfortunately, the family of a former client of The ManKind Project is suing the outfit after their relative committed suicide allegedly because of practices at the camp. It's hard to understand how these rituals produce desired results (revealed in a letter from the victim to the sheriff):

* Blindfolded walking tours in the nude
* People blowing sage smoke in his face while 50 or so naked men danced around candles
* Men sitting in a circle discussing their sexual histories while passing a wooden dildo called "The [N4BSK]"
* Naked men beating cooked chickens with a hammer

Once you go that far around the bend, it wasn't surprising to read about this other bit alleged therapy at all, as described by a wife whose husband bailed on the program:

"So, everyone was sitting Indian-style in a big circle in the lodge when the man leading the group said, 'if you wish, you may reach over and grab your brother's [N4BSK]. If your brother doesn't want your hand there, he can remove it.' Well, my husband told me he just froze. And, from that point on, he just wanted out."

I'm sure this will all be cleared up at trial, with expert testimony on these proven techniques.

This cult-like national program is a $650 weekend boot camp where participants--mostly straight--are greeted by large, intimidating men dressed in dark clothing and faces painted black. During their stay, the men are forced to take cold showers, survive on about four hours sleep, and subsist on very little food. In follow-up meetings, the activities include shaving another man's face, kidnapping a member of another camp group and changing clothes with other men. The idea is to help them get in-touch with their feelings and uncover and heal deep wounds that are barriers to successful lives.

WHAT CRITICS OF "IMMIGRATION REFORM" REALLY DON'T WANT YOU KNOWING ABOUT THEIR AGENDA: With racists and white supremacists having largely won the propaganda war over designs on reforming American immigration laws, and invoking some of the crudest stereotypes known for "winning of hearts and minds" purposes on the subject, in recent months, there seems to be one thing missing in this propaganda skirmish.

And perhaps by deliberate omission more than anything, come to think of it.

As in seeking to dust off the Natal Dictation Test (in which intending immigrants from especially "inferior" or "undesirable" groups were required to translate from dictation by the examining officer, and sight unseen, a short test sentence into a "civilised"--preferably European--language as part of the screening process), originally created by the Natal government (now part of South Africa) in 1897 but made infamous by the Australians' "White Australia" immigration policy (of which the same was an integral part and parcel thereof bewteen 1902 and 1958), as part of American immigration policy vis-a-vis "inferior" and "undesirable" peoples.

Put simply, the Natal Dictation Test was designed as a deliberate setup against "inferior peoples" (particularly from racial or religious standpoints) in favour of what were then seen as "morally superior" White Christian European such (who were not otherwise subject unless questions were raised of their holding "dangerous" political views) when it came to immigration.

Witness, as example, the test statement administered by immigration examiners in Western Australia in 1908:

Very many considerations lead to the conclusion that life began on sea, first as single cells, then as groups of cells held together by a secretion of mucilage, then as filaments and tissues. For a very long time low-grade marine organisms are simply hollow cylinders, through which salt water streams.

(As will be seen, such test statements was designed to push a subtle message of whites being seen as "preferred" immigrants over such regarded to be "inferior.")

Regrettably, though, those pushing "immigration reform" these days are afraid to acknowledge among their articles of faith:

1. Their pushing a racist ideal and message; and
2. Their seeking to use discredited standards and tests (among them the Natal Dictation Test) to weed out "undesirable" immigrants solely on racial or religious grounds.

In any event: Maybe it was time to ask the Lou Dobbs crowd whether their calls for "immigration reform" include the Natal Dictation Test being applied arbitrarily against "inferior" and/or "undesirable" groups.

And whether such a test would require the translation into "civilised" languages from the English (including, we may safely assume, Afrikaans, Vlaams, Breton, Manx or even Yiddish).

*************

HOW BEST TO GET THE LOWER CLASSES AWAY FROM THE VIDIOT'S LAMP OF DIOGENES: It's well-established that the poor, undereducated/homeschooled and easily-influenced are all the more susceptible to holding anti-Semitic viewpoints and articles of faith.

Not to mention watching some of the trashier specimens of TV programming, never mind their belief that Jews are somehow secretly controlling the New York-Hollywood Axis of Evil "to weaken and undermine Traditional Christian Moral and Familial Values," so a pet platitude used by such Who Should Know Better hath it.

As if somehow thinking that the electromagnetic rays coming off the TV screen were in the same league as "schizophrenic germs" as a suspected agency of "mind control" @ its crudest. (Remind you of the 1950's-era "ministry" of Oral Roberts, who claimed that G-d charged Roberts to channel radio/TV broadcasting waves for faith-healing purposes?)

Which brings to mind this suggestion:

In such instances of TV programming where a Content Advisory (along with ratings information) is deemed necessary (because of excessive levels of language, sexual subjects or violence which "right-thinking families" would be expected to object to pro Deo, patria et familia)--same usually presented @ the start of the programme, and also coming out of commercial breaks--might I suggest that the Content Advisory be broadcast in Yiddish, both aurally and on screen (in the latter instance, using its traditional written form of the Hebrew alphabet).

After all, Yiddish is a common language among European Jews, particularly in everyday situations as opposed to the sacred (where Hebrew would take precedence), and besides, not many among the Lower Classes harbouring anti-Semitic feelings would be expected to understand Yiddish save for some colloquialisms as have worked their way into English.

What could be a better way, then, to get the Lower Classes away from the vidiot's box and making better use of their lives for once--preferably away from beer parlours and other dives of lowest repute which the Lower Classes would traditionally expect to frequent? 

IF YOU CAN'T BE EXPECTED TO TRUST THE NEW YORK TIMES, THEN WHO SHOULD YOU TRUST? Think Progress makes note of some rather condescending remarks conservative mouthpiece and shill Bill Kristol has directed @ The New York Times in past, in the wake of the "newspaper of record" having hired Mr. Kristol as a conservative-leaning essayist.

Consider:

"It's no accident that The New York Times has to have a special reporter assigned to the conservative beat. They cover it sort of like a foreign country, to explain to the editors and the readers of The New York Times what's going on in that strange world of conservative America, which is two-fifths of the country." [Fox News, 5/30/04]

"I'm not sure, if you're against a war in Iraq, that you want The New York Times carrying your cause," Mr. Kristol said. "Because it's like, 'Oh, great! The Upper West Side doesn't want a war!'" [NY Observer, 9/15/02]

"Colin Powell is not a New York Times liberal, you know. Colin Powell is for a strong, assertive American foreign policy." [Fox News, 7/28/02]

Not exactly strong enough meat? Consider this item from the Weekly Standard, a close ideological relative of Fox Noise targeting the intelligentsia, or what conservatives would make of them (cf. Fox Noise being in the mold of the Nazi-era tabloid weekly Der Sturmer, as took a "written-so-you-can-understand-it" approach to anti-Semitism which appealed to the Dregs of Nazi German Society--schoolboys especially).

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

Let's not forget where "the Dirty Digger" "himself," by true name Keith Rupert Murdoch, has this fondness on the Anglo-Australian front for offering a "two-track" approach to the old Fourth Estate.

As in a broadsheet "quality" paper appealing to "the Four Hundred" types, tending heavily to a more intellectually-leaning editorial line ... and a tabloid "red-top" pandering to the hoi polloi, appealing heavily to the crudest and most latent of prejudices so inherent with liberal doses of carefully-scripted sensationalism having little or no relation to The Big Picture. (And did I mention the soft-porn Page Three cheesecake?)

All in all, enough to ask:

If conservatives don't want us regarding The New York Times as the Newspaper of Record on ideological grounds especially, then what would they recommend as the ideal "right-thinking" alternative? Der Sturmer, perhaps?

*************

HOW'S THIS FOR PUTTING CHRIS GRIFFIN'S "EVIL MONKEYS IN THE CLOSET" TO WORTHWHILE USE FOR ONCE? With so much having been written about the likelihood of a roomful of monkeys being able to generate the works of Shakespeare, given the opportunity, Your Correspondent was thinking the other day whether this could have applied in the glory days of Old Time Radio.

In particular, said roomful of monkeys being able to come up with an episode of the radio drama series Dr. Christian, which, unique among radio programmes in the genre's glory days, actually invited listeners (starting in the 1941-2 season) to submit scripts for possible broadcast--and for which listeners could win cash prizes of up to $2,000 for their best adventures revolving around the show's milieu of River's End, Minnesota, where the good doctor's office and surgery were located @ Oak Street and River Road.

The title character itself was played by Jean Hersholt, a Danish-born actor who was well-qualified for the role, having played a character loosely based on Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe of Dionne Quintuplets fame in two movies as starred the Quintuplets, The Country Doctor (1935) and Reunion (1936). If anything, Dr. Christian drew much inspiration from (and plenty of parallels with) Dr. Dafoe and his north-country rural medical practice, what with the stories involving plenty of interaction with the local folk and all they were going through in their lives.

Which made the show especially popular among Bible Belt listeners for some reason or another, never mind where the show, title notwithstanding, didn't include religious messages in the plot or storyline.

*************

THOUGHTS WHILE CRUSHING ALUMINUM CANS FOR RECYCLING: Unusual among TV-station signoff messages would have to be the following, by way of CFPL-TV London, Ontario:

IF IT'S AN ELECTION YEAR, THEN THERE'S BOUND TO BE TROUBLE: If recent rioting in Pakistan in the wake of Benazhir Bhutto's assaination (perhaps one which Your Correspondent is likely to see as some class of an "inside job" by the forces of the Pakistani status quo) and Kenya in the wake of delayed election results as gave victory to the incumbent (and raising questions of State-sanctioned vote-rigging and fraud) is any indication, Your Correspondent just has to wonder whether the United States won't be immune from such a scenario.

Especially when you consider the kind of candidates the established political parties have lined up, and the GOP's offerings tending to include some weird and unwholesome types, including @ least one amen-snorter type who still sees homosexuality as a Serious Mental Aberration as much as a Moral Risk to Our Antient and Pecuilar Soverignty and Soverign Identity as a Nation and a Reconstructed Libertarian (or so he thinks), who, it turns out, happens to have a racist past that he hesitates to openly acknowledge unless the Hansard act comes into play--let alone his fundraising prowess by way of an element who may be unaware of the "real" candidate to whom they're supporting fiscally, let alone morally.

And still, there's one thing that unites the GOP as an article of faith: That abortion=murder.

That Life Begins @ Conception.

Never mind the same crowd thinking that sex education only warps Easily-Influenced Juvenile Minds and Promotes Sexual Promiscuity, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

*************

SOMETHING ANTI-ABORTIONISTS OUGHT TO EXPECT, if not the complete and final reversal of Roe v. Wade, might want to be the ghost of a certain Nicolae Ceauçescu making his presence known when they least expect it.

Never mind that the Weekly World News is no more, the anti-abortion element may want to consider just such a possibility.

Ceauçescu, after all, was the ultimate basket case of the Warsaw Pact and COMECON states in the salad days of the Evil Empire propaganda we were expected to accept as paranoia in the name of G-d, Country and Morality during his 1966-1989 rule as Romanian Communist Party leader. Not only that, Ceauçescu had "pro-life" policies that would make the GOP giddy, notwithstanding the anti-Communist legacy the GOP maintained:

• A mininum of five children per married couple.
• Pregnant women required to under monthly gynecological examimations and "political instruction" (as in reminding them where their pregnancy should be seen as one with Serving the Greater Glory of Socialism).
• Large families being given preferential treatment in apartment assignments, lower rents and better ration allowances. As for such not wanting to bear the burden of caring for their offspring, there were State orphanages as were willing to take the unwanted in, no questions asked.
• A blanket ban on sex education, family planning, contraception--and, obviously, abortion and pornography--all of which were seen to "promote decadent bougeois tendencies contrary to Socialist Victory."

And for what?

Ceauçescu hoped to achieve the Final Onset of Pure Socialism well ahead of the Soviet Union and its "compliant" Warsaw Pact/COMECON satellites--never mind evidence suggesting that such a "pro-life" policy would only produce a labour surplus over time, dangerous to a politicoeconomic agenda which saw mass unemployment and idleness as among capitalism's failings and undoings.

Perhaps it was time to ask your local anti-abortion activist just what they hope to achieve by having the United States reestablish a blanket ban on abortion. Especially so from a socioeconomic standpoint, considering where the same element holds dear as an article of faith free-market capitalism being the Great White Father of the Lower Classes.

*************

WHAT STUPID TRICKS WOULD YOU DO TO GET HANNAH MONTANA TICKETS DEPARTMENT: You may have heard about where a Dallas mother may have coached her six-year-old daughter into cooking up an essay sure to guarantee plenty of weeping and wailing and boohoohooing on the part of the judges in a recent prize contest as offered tickets to a forthcoming Hannah Montana concert in Big D as prizes.

The essay in question made much about how the poor family's paterfamilias had recently been killed in combat in the ur-RAHOWA Against Terrorism in Iraq.

Only it just so happened that the paterfamilias didn't exist, especially after a close check of military casualty records from the Iraqi Front didn't turn up the name in question.

Meaning that the tickets she won had to be forfeit to another contestant ... and the mother has egg on her face.

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

And speaking of the ur-RAHOWA being a Major Election Issue in Indecision 2008: Notwithstanding recent opinion polls ahead of the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primary suggesting where "pocketbook issues" (as in such brought about by the Subrpime Mortgage Meltdown and its aftereffects on the Greater Conservative Agenda) may matter more among intending voters than ur-RAHOWA, John "Big Story" Gibson @ Fox Noise wants us "right-thinking Americans" begging to differ. As quoted by NewsHounds (emphasis added):

So even though today's carnage was on the other side of the planet, it really did strike close to home, and all Americans should be worried about what happens now. The way Americans can deal with this crisis is to carefully consider their vote. This election is about the same issue the last election was about... the War on Terror. It's not about health care, and as important as our economy is, it's not about that either.

(Never mind that these remarks were in the wake of Pakistani opposition leader Benazhir Bhutto's assaination.)

*************

SO YOU'D LIKE TO COMMENT HERE IN "THE EXAGGERATOR"? Well, that's welcome and appreciated.

In fact, Your Correspondent would appreciate it if you, readers, left your two cents' worth to these items here @ The Exaggerator; such is, perhaps, one of the best ways to show support for what Your Correspondent has to say.

But then again, Your Correspondent would appreciate it if you avoided the following in your comments; he intends to delete such outright if he discerns any of the following, know:

• Obscene or indecent language, especially so the so-called "Seven Dirty Words" and variants thereof.
• Ethno-racial, ethno-religious and sexual slurs, insults and taunts.
• Pandering to latent bigotry, hatreds and prejudice, never mind where the larger desire is "patriot love," by appealing to negative or otherwise offensive stereotypes.
• Messages containing linkbacks to adult-oriented, sexually-explicit and hatemongering websites.
• Messages of a purely commercial nature, or which are likely to be construed as "comment spam."

Otherwise ... feel free to share what you have to say.

Debate among yourselves.

It'll help keep this new weblog humming along.