THE EXAGGERATOR, NOTWITHSTANDING THE INHERENT OBJECTIONS OF SERBIA AND THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION, WISHES TO USE THIS OPPORTUNITY to extend congratulations and best wishes to the people and nation of Kosovo on its Unilateral Declaration of Independence.

And hopes sincerely that the ethnic Serbian and ethnic Albanian peoples of Kosovo will finally live in amity and peace, with a firm and unyielding commitment to democracy and liberty in the face of uncertainty posed by Certain Other Soverign Powers envious of the UDI.

IN EXACTLY ONE YEAR'S TIME FROM TODAY, TELEVISION BROADCASTERS IN THE UNITED STATES will be required to make the complete and final transition of their broadcast emissions from 525-line analogue standard to digital such.

And it's going to be a rather difficult and trying such for such TV viewers (my Motherdear among them) who would still prefer to eschew cable or satellite TV reception in favour of "pure" FreeVee (i.e., over-the-air broadcast reception, limited largely to the Six Networks [ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, The CW and MyTV], PBS and the occasional independent or Pray TV freecaster, with reception via traditional antennæ), yet want to keep their existing analogue-reception sets inasmuch as newer digital sets are "too expensive" @ this time.

Not to mention the inevitable "common sense" arguments many among the older generation especially enjoy subscribing to.

For them, there is a solution: Vouchers will be available (maximum of two per household) to provide a point-of-purchase credit of $40 each towards the purchase of approved set-top converter boxes as would allow existing analog TV sets to receive digital TV signals now emitted. Said vouchers can be requested online (q.v.) or by freecall to 1-888-DTV-2009 (vox)/1-877-530-2634 (TDD).

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AS IT TURNS OUT, THERE HAPPENS TO BE A "DARK SIDE" TO THE DIGITAL TRANSITION MANY MAY BE UNAWARE OF--in particular such receiving their beloved FreeVee through translator stations as rebroadcast FreeVee signals in mostly rural areas where reception is otherwise difficult, cable is out of the question, and satellite TV is seen as frivolous or otherwise wasteful.

As well as broadcasters holding low-power licences as are:

• designed to target niche audiences not otherwise expected to be served by traditional FreeVee outlets (especially so Fox affiliates); or
• serving mostly as rebroadcasters of Pray TV stations such as Trinity Broadcasting, with the master feed delivered via satellite and, for the most part, reckless and utter disregard for public service in the communities so targeted (usually poor, undereducated and easily-influenced).

For them, the 17 February 2009 deadline to transition from analogue to digital transmission does not apply; however, industry groups and consumer advocates are petitioning the FCC for assistance to help low-power and translator stations make the switch.

The FCC has some comments on this pecuilar issue in this fact sheet, which may be of interest to such operating translator or low-power stations. But then again, some pseudoreligious FreeVee broadcasters have been overheard pushing the patsy that The Digital Transition is really a ruse by which to silence religious broadcasters suspected of promoting "controversial" or "unpopular" views, especially on such non-issues as homosexuality, "protecting the purity of marriage," opposition to abortion and family planning, die Kulturkrieg, etc., usually having little or nothing to do in the first place with religious ministry or evangelisation.

And such pseudoreligious pushing such a platitude must, methinks, subscribe to a martyr complex as fears G-d A-mighty will suddenly destroy their studios and transmission equipment without warning unless the Great Silent Majority "gives till it hurts" to cover transition costs--only to divert the funds to personal use more than likely.

Such is no doubt something worth watching, if only to see the excesses of emotional pathetitude such Elmer Gantry wannabes will resort to.   

A LITTLE-KNOWN SIDELIGHT ABOUT THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CREDIT UNION CONCEPT IN NORTH AMERICA is the involvement of the Roman Catholic Church in the Canadian province of Québec in promoting Alphonse Desjardins' caisse populaire concept as a means of promoting thrift, self-reliance and rural socioeconomic development--particularly so @ local parish level, and with particular attention towards the rank-and-file working classes.

Such, no doubt, calls to mind what I discussed previously about where payday-loan companies tend to be concentrated in lower-income and lower-working-class communities, with an eye towards their deliberate exploitation. (With the suggestion that some such consider reinventing themselves among mutually-based models if the desire is one of promoting socioeconomic empowerment in the poor, undereducated and easily-influenced based on free-market models and paradigms.)

WEEEEELLLLLL--!!!

The Consumerist (ultimately by way of RawStory) makes note of two rather interesting (and yet revealing) studies which show a potentially deliberate interconnexion between payday lenders and such areas of the country where the Pseudoreligiopolitical Right hath major support, both financial and moral.

One of the co-authors of one of the studies suggests the unholy alliance of Politics and Religion may be to blame thus:

When the Christian Right allied itself with conservative Wall Street business interests in the 1980s and early '90s, consumer protection law was placed to the side as an inconvenient sticking point. The laws allowing an astonishing number of triple-digit-interest-rate lenders throughout most of the Christian South and Mormon West are a legacy of that political alliance.

(You can read the studies here and here, and also study some interactive maps developed by Cal State/Northridge which makes clear what these studies found.)

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SO WHAT EXACTLY PREVENTS THE PSEUDORELIGIOPOLITICAL RIGHT FROM SERIOUSLY LOOKING INTO PROMOTING CREDIT UNIONS--or, for that matter, mutual savings banks--if their articles of faith are so gung-ho about promoting self-reliance, personal responsibility and thrift in the Lower Classes they claim to be supporting and defending?

Is it, perhaps, their flawed equation of wasteful and frivolous consumer spending being one with the "antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity" of the United States--never mind that said spending is expected to place greater emphasis on cost over value for money?

Is it the Unholy and Dangerous Alliance of Church, Wall Street and Wally World?

Or what exactly?

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BESIDES, LET'S NOT FORGET THE ROLE OF WHAT COULD BEST BE CALLED FUNDAMENTALIST RELIGIOUS BELIEF in developing the mutual savings bank concept:

Rev. Henry Duncan, a minister of the Church of Scotland (think Presbyterian) in Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire, set up a modest savings bank in 1810 for his parishoners to promote thrift and self-reliance against times of hardship and need. Its basic concepts were:

• Investing the savings thus deposited in only securities of the highest quality;
• Returning any dividends on these investments to the depositors as dividends on their accounts; and
• Entrusting the management of the savings bank, and its investment policies, to a Board of Trustees acting for and on behalf of the depositor/owners.

The concept quickly took off, so that by 1818, 465 mutual savings banks were in operation between Land's End and John O'Groats--182 of them in Scotland alone. And in 1816, the concept crossed the Atlantic with the founding of the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society (PSFS), recognised as the first savings bank in the United States.

Which, in any case, would become the foundations of the TSB Group in Great Britain, created in 1983 by the consolidation of the 16 remaining regional savings banks created themselves following consolidation of the 73 local savings banks in 1975, soon after the Central Trustee Savings Bank (founded 1973) became a London Clearing House member.

Following demutualisation and subsequent share flotation of TSB Group, they would merge with Lloyds Bank in 1995 to form Lloyds TSB.

As the songwriter put it, "everything old is new again."

But when will the Religiopolitical Right learn?  

YOUR CORRESPONDENT UNDERSTANDS WHERE A MAJOR JAPANESE PIANO MAKER goes by the name of Kawai.

Which should not be confused with the Japanese word kawaii, which translates as "cute"--as in synonymous with the likes of characters such as Sanrio's stable of franchises like Hello Kitty, Badtz-Maru and Pokaccho.

In turn inspiring the related Japanese term kita-kawaii, which translates as "gross, yet cute" (as in the kitschier versions of souvenirs and ephemera featuring Hello Kitty-type characters such as are oft sold in shoobie-trap areas).

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THAT MODEL OF "MORALLY SUPERIOR" AMERICAN CULTURAL WHOLESOMENESS KNOWN AS PAT BOONE can't seem to keep his filthy proboscis out of the shady and disreputable when it comes to product endorsements.

You may recall where, around the Bicentennial Year of 1976, Pat Boone appeared in TV adverts for an acne-control product called Acne-Statin which would subsequently be the subject of complaints contending that the product failed to work as advertised, in some cases worsening the acne vulgaris problem among purchasers. And, IIBC, there were several lawsuits contending that Mr. Boone be held liable in connexion.

Now, it's emerged that Pat Boone's dulcet tones are narrating an "informational" DVD offered by Swiss American, as deals in precious-metals coins for investment purposes (and rumoured to have weird and unwholesome connexions themselves), invoking the clear and present danger of socioeconomic collapse as a reason to invest in gold coin all the more @ this time.

How much longer before Pat Boone sees a fresh round of complaints in connexion with his endorsement role?

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THE MANUFACTURERS OF GPS NAVIGATIONAL SYSTEMS must know a good thing when they hear it--as in hiring the likes of celebrities, celebrity voice impersonators and cartoon voice actors to deliver navigational directions to users.

I could just imagine some Garmin or TomTom units featuring the rather cheeky voice of Stewie (Family Guy) Griffin giving directions in that simulated BBC accent of his, preceded by his infamous warning "Obey me, or I shall put you on diaper detail!" and with some of his cheekier bon mots killing time during long stretches of travel between turns.

Even weirder yet: Scooby-Doo.

Sponge Bob Squarepants.

Angelica "Rugrats" Pickles.

Miss Piggy.

Principal Pixiefrog (as in My Gym Partner's a Monkey).

But then again--if you're looking to buy a GPS system for your car, check out the following:

MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT, BOYS AND GIRLS: RACISTS AND WHITE SUPREMACISTS OF A CERTAIN CLASS--usually poor, undereducated or homeschooled and easily open, or otherwise vulnerable to, suggestion--are more than likely to become one-over-the-eight.

Sauced.

Pickled.

Plastered.

Basted.

Carrying three red lights.

Too long in the sun.

Complaining "his shoe pinches him."

Use whatever adjectives you may for alcoholism, reader, no matter how colloquial they can get.

But in the final analysis, alcoholism and racist thinking seems to go together. After all, studies have repeatedly shown where excessive drink can lead to disorder, violence and anti-social behaviour.

And police arrest records of those thus arrested will quite often note where alcohol is or may be an influencing factor.

The same, no doubt, can be said to apply for racist and white-supremacist bull sessions and acts of the old ultraviolence so ensuing. Not to mention a mentality as expects all involved to play dumb in case the police start asking questions, preferably by way of The Fourteen Words encapsulating white-supremacist belief ("We must secure the Existance of our Race and a Future for White Children"), parroted out in a rather obnoxious manner.

Denial expected to be all the more important, especially out of fear that such could cause loss of job, housing, community standing--even the possibility that the children will be removed from the house and placed in foster care with the parents being considered unfit. Not to mention the prospect of "prominent community leaders" being implicated in support of such racist acts, deeds and exploits, "risking further harm to Our Cause and the Community."

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AS IF RACISM AND ALCOHOL WEREN'T AN AWFUL ENOUGH MIXTURE TO SWALLOW, imagine what would happen if a super-secret Ku Klux Klan cross-burning ceremony turned out being nothing short of a Paul Harvey News item under heading "For What It's Worth," usually towards the end of his midday bulletin.

As in the invocation to G-d to show His Approval over the proceedings just before the actual lighting of the Fiery Cross being disrupted by the inevitable show of thunder-and-lightning suggesting that G-d Himself may not exactly be approving of the whole thing, and wants to teach the Klansmen a lesson they won't forget--as in assuming the guise of a Welsh male voice choir of castrati "responding" in the hope of the Klansmen having second thoughts with awful-sounding choruses of "Hatikvah" (the Israeli National Hymn), "'Ndosi Sikeleki iAfrica" (South Africa's post-apartheid such) and (for piece de resistance) "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" (chosen for its associations with the Civil Rights Movement).

The whole being so grating upon the ears of the Klansmen so gathered for ritualistic purposes, an attempt to restart the ceremony further angers Jehovah to the point where He decides to rain upon the venue Nickelodeon's Patent Green Slime containing super-secret compounds as can quickly eat away @ Klan regalia, masks and all--right down to the underwear, and (for added insult) giving all rather awful cases of dhobie itch.

In short, the Klansmen are revealed in their nakedness, enough to send them screaming back to their van, parked some distance away on a nearby road--only to have the misfortune of encountering a police dragnet looking for some class of an escaped ax murderer on the loose, whereupon the Klansmen are arrested for Indecent Exposure--and, turning bottle, acknowledging where they were attempting a cross-burning ritual some distance back, only to encounter G-d disguising his voice singing songs they didn't quite understand, and eventually making them nakie.

On arrival @ the police station, they respond (all together now) with the Fourteen Words to every question asked of them, and in the usual idiotic manner expected of the cause, prompting a request for pre-trial psychiatric evaluations whose eventual byproducts are best left to your imagination.

But not before becoming the talk of the Kaffe-Klatsche set, complete with all manner of "friend-of-a-friend" embellishments as may or may not be credible.

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AND THERE COULD BE OTHER SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES RACISTS AND WHITE SUPREMACISTS NEED TO THINK ABOUT, especially if they turn out being Prominent and Powerful Citizens or otherwise expected to hold positions of public trust and confidence--as the following (howbeit incredible) "WaiWai" item from the Mainichi Daily News demonstrates:

The dirty old man arrested for routinely feeling up the female staff working for the massive education group he headed also had the equally repulsive habit of being an avid Hitler worshipper, according to Shukan Gendai (12/6).

Yasuhisa Tsuzuki, the 71-year-old head of Tsuzuki Gakuen group that ran 40 educational institutions across Japan from elementary schools to universities, was arrested last month for molesting one of his female employees.

"When Tsuzuki saw a beautiful woman he'd soon feel her up. If he took a liking to a woman, it didn't matter if she was a teacher or in admin, he'd call her before him and demand a kiss or bury his face in her bust," an employee of the education group tells Shukan Gendai.

The case for which Tsuzuki was arrested for indecent assault involved him allegedly dragging a 23-year-old teacher into an elevator and violently squeezing her breasts.

"Inside the elevator, the woman resisted fiercely, screaming out so loud it echoed. When the education group conducted an inquiry into the head's behavior, several women complained that he had groped them when they served him a cup of tea. He used to fondle their breasts while they had both hands full with the tea tray and couldn't resist his ministrations," a police insider tells the men's weekly. "By September, there were so many women frustrated by his roaming hands, they submitted a written protest that stated they refused to serve him tea ever again."

And if the allegations of rampant sexual assault weren't enough, those close to the old man--whose early education came courtesy of Japan's wartime military controllers--say there's an even more sinister side to his character.

"Every year, the Tsuzuki Gakuen group would conduct a campaign to enroll more students, which it called the 'Caravan.' Tsuzuki referred to himself as the 'Commander-in-Chief' and issued an order to all female staff to wear white blouses. Whenever any of the women put a jacket or something over the top of their blouse, he'd scream furiously at them to take it off. If there was a teacher with a nice body, he'd go over to them and comment on what a nice set of boobs they had, or ask them to undo a couple of buttons on the blouse to give him a look inside," a former employee of the group tells Shukan Gendai, noting that teams formed in the "Caravan" were also given the same names as famous regiments in the wartime Imperial Japanese Army. "But Tsuzuki worshipped Hitler. He gave his employees pamphlets where he signed himself off as 'Your Hitler.' He even grew a Hitler moustache for a while. When you went up to greet him, it was expected that you would raise your right arm above your head and say 'Heil Hitler!'"

Let this be a warning....