THE OLD MAXIM ABOUT APPEARENCES BEING DECEIVING CAN APPLY EQUALLY TO THE WEATHER--and equally so here in the Minnwissippi region, where sunny (if hazy) skies this morning are expected to give way to showers towards evening and worsening to full-on rain and thunderstorms on the overnight into tomorrow.

Which, come to think of it, is another of those disruptions that area farmers and planters would love to see stopped so they could get the field work in for once, especially so the crops.

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

AND EVEN WITH THE ECONOMIC STIMULUANT PAYMENTS TAXPAYERS EXPECT TO RECEIVE WITHIN MEASURABLE DISTANCE, there's also incentive for farmers and planters to take fields out of production for this year--even considering where high fuel, chemical and fertiliser prices may preclude some from getting corn and/or soybeans planted, or so rumoured.

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

FIVE YEARS HAVE NOW LAPSED SINCE HIS FRAUDULENCY MADE THAT PREMATURE "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" SPEECH OF HIS in connexion with the ur-RAHOWA Against Terrorism--and the ur-RAHOWA is still going on.

And let's not forget where The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang, a/k/a John McCain, has made clear that he wants to maintain the American Colonial Occupation in Iraq for @ least 100 years (in fact, there are recordings available of that crack).

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

STAYING WITH THE TERRIBLE-TEMPERED MR. BANG FOR THE NONCE, an editorial in today's number of the LaCrosse Tribune as takes issue with his market-based "healthcare reform" plans as are based too much on free-market articles of faith which leave the vulnerable all the more so:

Republican Presidential candidate John McCain has come up with what he regards as a free-market health plan. It would be worse than the status quo, and would put people with chronic illnesses at risk.

Here’s what it would do:

Encourage people to go from employer-based health plans to individual plans on the open market.

Use health savings accounts to give tax breaks to people who would use the accounts to pay the high deductibles that the McCain plan would offer.

Have government-run high-risk plans cover people with pre-existing conditions.

There doesn’t seem to be provisions in McCain’s plan to deal with cost, federal Medicare reimbursement or coordination of care for the sickest patients—all issues that Mayo Clinic officials said were important during a meeting Monday with local leaders.

In addition, McCain’s high deductible plans would discourage prevention—unless preventive care were exempt from the deductibles. Studies have shown that if preventive care is not covered, many people will not utilize it. If that happens on a widespread basis, then conditions might go undiagnosed until they were advanced enough to cost more than they would have otherwise.

His plan is not likely to substantially decrease the number of Americans who don’t have insurance.

During a community meeting at the Radisson Hotel on Monday, Mayo CEO Dr. Denis Cortese said Medicare routinely pays the most money to health care institutions that get the worst results. McCain’s plan does not acknowledge this problem, either.

We can’t afford to tinker around the edges of the health care issue. Seeking to end employer coverage without offering an alternative other than the private insurance market would put the sickest people at risk. While McCain proposes government-run high-risk plans for those with chronic conditions, those plans are generally very costly.

We need to make sure that more people have access to health insurance. McCain’s plan just preserves a slightly worse version of the status quo.

In other words, free-market capitalism as Great White Father of the Lower Classes cannot be all that the conservative propaganda machine wants you and me believing--especially when the solutions cross the line into overt Fascism (as in overzealous State interference in the same free-market capitalist paradigm they claim to defend through subsidies to outright droogs and malchiks).

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

THE FUNDAMENTALIST CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS (FLDS), WHOSE TEXAS COMPOUND WAS RAIDED LAST MONTH, may have actually been nothing short of a breeding-ground for the worst sort of hyperjuvenile sexual abuse known--or so Texas child welfare officials are now reporting.

As witness all manner of historic injuries such as bone fractures found among young boys removed from the Yearning For Zion compound, so raising fresh questions of whether corporal punishment was sanctioned as part of the preening process for its inmates becoming nothing less than sex machines in service to G-d, Country and Race.

Dotheboys Hall, anybody?

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

EVEN WITH RAUL CASTRO HAVING REPLACED OLDER BROTHER FIDEL IN POWER IN HAVANA, the May Day procession of the Cuban Communist regime amounts to little more than sham and propaganda excess--even with "reforms" previously announced as allowed (in theory) Cuban "workers" to own cell phones, digital TV's and stay in high-end resort hotels when their real wages are deliberately kept all the lower in the name of "national policy."

Still, though, His Fraudulency's Great Within can't resist the temptation of an October Surprise to sucker the voters "entitled as of right" (as per the recent Supreme Court ruling) into supporting The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang, His Fraudulency's hand-picked successor (in theory)--as in a "shock and awe" insurrection seeking to overthrow the Communist regime across Cuba and install a "democratic" such as is really a shill for K Street-model corporatism. With Fox Prolefeed providing exclusive coverage in a "feel-good," sugar-coated stylee which may let slip some Inconvenient Truths. 

see more crazy cat pics

SINCE TEXAS CHILD-WELFARE OFFICIALS INVADED THE YEARNING FOR ZION COMPOUND OF THE SO-CALLED "FUNDAMENTALIST CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS" (FLDS) early last month, eventually taking care and custody of some 462 girls and women (many of them now revealed to be pregnant or otherwise nursing the fruits of their "celestial marriages"), Your Correspondent has wondered when it would reach the point where certain Zealots and True Believers among the Religiopolitical Right would be playing the rather idiotic singsong meme of "Christian Persecution! Christian Persecution!" (in the key of "Ring around the collar!") in trying to defend the FLDS.

And soon afterward, Your Correspondent's suspicions were (in a way) confirmed.

Which may be but the beginning of this rather pathetic meme's crossing into the overdone by the Dark Satanic Mills of Conservative "Winning of Hearts and Minds" Propaganda: ConWebBlog, an adjunct of ConWebWatch, notes how WorldNetDaily is playing up the meme of the FLDS being a "Victim of Christian Persecution" by way of the MSM:

Earlier this week, WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah offered up a mild defense of the polygamist cult in Texas, mostly in the name of the right of parents to treat children like chattel. Now, another WND columnist, Ilana Mercer, goes full bore in defending the cult and the child-as-parental-chattel concept.

Mercer's April 25 column begins by painting an idyllic picture of cult life as a place where children are "frolicking in the open air on a large compound, doing your daily chores and feasting on hearty homegrown fare," but have now been "torn from their loving mothers" and sent to a world where "you're gagging on a diet of T&A courtesy of MTV and fast-food compliments of your fat foster mom. As the makeshift mom hollers at you to swallow your zombifying meds." In fact, the Texas Department of Child Protective Services has issued strict guidelines to caretakers of the children taken from the polygamist compound, including "No television, movies, Internet and radio especially at first," and no red clothing because the cult believes that red is reserved for Jesus Christ because when he returns, he will be wearing red robes.

Mercer then launches into the child-as-parental-chattel defense, as well as the polygamist cult:

Whether they are "plural" or single, Wicca or just weird, bohemian or bourgeoisie – parents should take the kids and skedaddle when they hear that phrase "in the best interests of the child." It is simply a license for the state to substitute its own judgment for that of the parents. Today, it's polygamist parents – Kool-Aid drinkers is Bill O'Reilly's favored sobriquet. Tomorrow, it'll be the offspring of homeschoolers or global warming deniers.

[...]

Whatever are your voyeuristic fantasies about the sex romps on a polygamist commune, of this you can be certain: Relative to the loose, licentious, libertine and precarious foster-care environment, the children seized in the raid on the FLDS property have led a sheltered, chaste life. The gravest abuse still awaits them.

Right. Apparently, in Mercer's view, being stuck in a relationship as a teen girl with multiple co-wives is not "abuse," nor is kicking teen boys out of the cult for specious reasons and into a world for which they have not been prepared in order to reduce the male population inside the cult. Apparently that's OK with her because it's the parents doing the abusing.

Then again, remember that Mercer defended Michael Vick against the dogfighting charges against him because "all animals are property."

Isn't this, in effect, playing the "Christian Persecution!" meme card right there?

===TO BE CONTINUED===

FEAR AND LOATHING OF HOMOSEXUALS AND HOMOSEXUALITY MUST BE SOMETHING OF AN UNHEALTHY OBSESSION, AND THEN SOME, among the greater conservative community.

Including the "news portals" online perverting the Fourth Estate to serve the Greater Conservative Agenda, contending that such homophobia is actually "healthy" and @ once "Christian."

Case in point: ConWebWatch's documentation of how WorldNetDaily holds homosexuals and homosexuality to contempt and ridicule as "threats to morals, decency and common sense:"

As a conservative website, WorldNetDaily has been by definition generally opposed to homosexuals. As WND shifted its focus from being mostly an anti-Clinton site at its founding in 1997 to pushing a more far-right, aggressively pro-Christian doctrine after Bill Clinton left office, its anti-gay stance became similarly aggressive.

When the Supreme Court overturned an anti-sodomy law in Texas in 2003, WND editor Joseph Farah declared that the justices who voted for it--whom he called the "Sodomy Six"--must be impeached, claiming offense that the justices "found hidden in the U.S. Constitution a right to practice homosexual sodomy," and insisting that the next to be leagalized included "consensual incest," "bestiality" and "homosexual marriage."

WND ran to the defense to a bullhorn-wielding preacher, Michael Marcavage, and his followers arrested for disrupting a gay festival in Philadelphia, claiming, as ConWebWatch noted, that the group was "preaching God's Word" and "peacefully evangelizing" and that a group of gays that confronted them during the festival was "a militant mob of homosexuals," all the while refusing to report the other side of the story--that a prosecutor stated that Marcavage's group tried to demonstrate in front of a stage performance, as well as Marcavage's history of extremist activism--and only barely acknowledged that even the head of the gay festival thought the protesters would never face the 47 years in prison WND hyped as the consequence of their arrest (indeed, the charges were ultimately dropped).

In 2005, as ConWebWatch also noted, WND was a promoter of the contention that a tolerance-promoting video for children featuring famous cartoon characters like SpongeBob SquarePants was designed, as one article stated, to be used by "homosexual activists" to "surreptitiously indoctrinate young children into their lifestyle." WND managing editor David Kupelian complained: "Government schools [the right-wing term for what non-WND employees call public schools] nationwide teach children as young as five that homosexuality is normal--and that disagreeing with this viewpoint brands you as an intolerant 'hater.' The popular culture always portrays homosexuals sympathetically, and often as heroes."

WND's onetime partner for its business page, the now apparently defunct Business Reform magazine, attacked allegedly "pro-gay" companies and praised "anti-gay" companies, adding: "The zombies are out there--in all their pallid effeminacy--and this list is just a brief field manual for their primary strategic positions."

In 2006, WND mischaracterized a new California law that adds "sexual orientation" to the non-discrimination provisions any group accepting state money must abide by claiming that it "tossed out all sexual moral conduct codes at colleges, private and Christian schools, daycare centers and other facilities throughout his state" and "specifically requires 'any program or activity that receives any financial assistance from the state' to support the alternative sexual lifestyle choices." When a writer criticized WND's misleading demonization of the bill and other gay-related legislation, ending with a dramatic flourish about the need to "rid us of the evil lunatics"--in context, not a death threat at all, and the author later emphatically denied that it was--WND editor Joseph Farah called him a "madman," a "poisoned mind," a " bigoted, intolerant rat," "a nutcase calling for my head" and "a hateful little man obsessed with stamping out any and all opposition to the forced homosexualization of America."

Such is the hateful spirit that continues to guide WND's reporting and commentary on gays--denigration of any view that contradicts its consrevative agenda, and an insistence that any mention of homosexuality that is not negative is tantamount to "indoctrination."

A Feb. 20 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh is one example. Unruh highlighted "Massachusetts father" David Parker, who accused teachers of "indoctrinating his 5-year-old son in the homosexual lifestyle." Parker has been in a dispute with Massachusetts schools that began according to Unruh, "in the spring of 2005 when the Parkers then-5-year-old son brought home a book to be shared with his parents titled, "Who's in a Family?" The optional reading material, which came in a 'Diversity Book Bag,' depicted at least two households led by homosexual partners."

Unruh devoted pretty much the entire article to Parker's anti-gay attacks. It's never explained how a book that states the simple fact that homosexual couples exist equals "indoctrinati[on] ... in the homosexual lifestyle," yet Unruh repeatedly quotes Parker using the word: "Teachers are being postured to have a constitutional right to coercively indoctrinate little children." Indeed, Unruh permits no one to respond to Parker's claims, even his Godwin's Law-like assertion (something Unruh is quite familiar with) that "if homosexuality and bisexuality can be taught by public school teachers to children as young as age 5, there is virtually no topic, up to and including Nazism, that educational precedents would not allow to be taught to young children." 

Unruh also described Parker has having been "handcuffed and arrested after objecting to teachers and school managers indoctrinating his 5-year-old son in the homosexual lifestyle." That's not exactly true; while Parker was arrested, it was for trespassing, after he refused to leave his child's school until they agreed to his demand that he be allowed to opt out his child from discussions of same-sex marriage. He spent one night in jail after the arrest -- but only because he refused to bail himself out.

Related articles on ConWebWatch: Free the Philadelphia Facts Out There, Exhibit 31: GayBash SlanderPants Unreformed Gay-Bashing Out There, Exhibit 39: The 'Forced Homosexualization' of Joseph Farah

This controversy made Parker a conservative cause celebre; WND has been highly sympathetic to his side and has denigrated or ignored entirely any contrary view. Columnist Kevin McCullough even claimed in a June 2006 WND column that "10 ... thug-kins" who were "recruited ... to participate in angry anti-Parker demonstrations outside the school" allegedly "grabbed David Parker's 7-year-old son, dragged him behind the corner of the school, well out of sight from school officials, and proceeded to punch him in the groin, stomach and chest, before he dropped to the ground when they then kicked and stomped on him." In fact, the fight was with one other child, not 10; it was over who got to sit where in the cafeteria, not the actions of his father; and the school district noted that "following the incident the boys were observed arm in arm at school and subsequently the child who was hit went to the house of the child who hit him for a play date.")

WND has also continued its streak of distorting Calfornia anti-discrimination laws.

Under the headline "Homosexodus!"--an apparent attempt to capitalize on its similarly silly "Sexpidemic" headline--Unruh wrote in a Dec. 4, 2007, article that a recently enacted California law, passed by the legislature as SB777, was a "newly mandated homosexual indoctrination program." In fact, all the bill essentially does is add "sexual orientation" to a list of characteristic California schools are not allowed to "promote[] a discriminatory bias" against. The word "indoctrination" does not appear anywhere in the law.

Unruh's article is filled with specuation from opponents of the law about what the law "could" do--including claiming that it would ban the words "mom" and "dad"--and Unruh does not allow any state official or proponent of the law to respond to such claims.

WND columnist Olivia St. John made even more egregious (and unsupported) claims about the law in a Dec. 3, 2007, column, claiming that it will result in the state "force-feeding children perverse material and videos vile enough to garner an R-rating in the local multiplex."

WND moved to an different--but still misleading--depiction of the law in a Jan. 11 article, claiming it "would mandate a positive–and no other–portrayal of bisexuals, homosexuals, transgenders and others choosing alternative sexual lifestyles in public schools." The word "positive" doesn't appear in the law, and WND offers no evidence that all non-discriminatory references to homosexuals are ipso facto "positive." Again, alarmist speculation is pushed, and no supporter is permitted to respond.

Unruh took it further in a Feb. 1 article, claiming outright that the law "created a ban on the use of 'mom' and 'dad' in public schools." That's utterly false, based only on alarmist speculation by one opponent of the law that "The terms 'mom and dad' or 'husband and wife' could promote discrimination against homosexuals if a same-sex couple is not also featured" (emphasis added). Unruh even admits that "the law is not a list of banned words, including 'mom' and 'dad'"--yet he claimed it was anyway.

In other words, Unruh is presenting specuation as fact -- a shocking, and shoddy, bit of hack reporting for someone who had a long career with the Associated Press before joining WND.

By an April 11 article, WND was claiming the law was "a legislative plan to mandate only positive messages about homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality in public schools" -- again, failing to explain how non-discriminatory language is "positive."

Other gay-related happenings were the target of WND's bias. A March 8 article by Unruh, carrying the headline "Parents urged to boycott homosexual indoctrination," began this way:

What if homosexuals staged a huge promotion of that sexual lifestyle choice, and no one came to see it? That's exactly what a coalition of organizations is proposing for April 25, this year's "Day of Silence," which is sponsored in public schools across the nation to promote homosexuality.

Unruh makes assumptions, consistent with conservative views on the subject, for which he offers no supporting evidence--that homosexuality is a "sexual lifestyle choice," ad that the "Day of Silence" event "promote[s] homosexuality."

The article is presented with Unruh's usual lack of balance, quoting only conservative critics of the "Day of Silence" who make similarly unsupported claims:

• "'Day of Silence' is about coercing students to repudiate traditional morality."
• "[Under such 'indoctrination,'] we are creating barbarians. Parents want something other than barbarians living down the street."
• "Our schools are supposed to be places of learning, not places of political indoctrination. It is the height of impropriety and cynicism for 'gay' activists and school officials to use children as pawns in their attempt to further a highly controversial and polarizing political agenda." 

Unruh did not offer support for these statments either, nor did he allow anyone to respond to them.

A March 30 article by Unruh made a big deal out of McDonald's "sign[ing] onto a nationwide effort to promote 'gay' and 'lesbian' business ventures" without explaining what, exactly, is so offensive about it.

Unruh appears to do a lot of dog-whistle implication regarding McDonald's being a "corporate partner and organization ally" with the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce; Unruh calls the group a "special interest chamber" and "the 'gay' advocacy organization" which is "promoting the LGBT community first and always" and accused McDonald's of supporting "the agenda of the homosexual business lobby." Unruh even offered a list of what the NGLCC does, including "disseminate news and information central to the success of LGBT businesses, ... ensure increased opportunity and equality for LGBT professionals, ... help LBGT businesses gain more procurement opportunities, ... provide strong lobbying efforts for LBGT business causes."

But what, exactly, is the problem in McDonald's doing this? Unruh never says, beyond the article's overall anti-gay tone. Apparently, Unruh's point is gays are not permitted to operate businesses, or at least forbidden from getting any special assistance in doing so.

Unruh stated, "Other corporate sponsors of the NGLCC include expected names such as Coors Light and Kodak, who have been leaders in advocating homosexuality," but he never explained what the link is between supporting gay-owned businesses and "advocating homosexuality."

Unruh also wrote: "WND reported earlier when Wal-Mart joined the NGLCC, and how the corporation's income later started declining as Christian organizations reacted to the news." In fact, in the December 2006 WND article to which Unruh links, the cause-and-effect is rather tenuous; anti-abortion activist Flip Benham takes credit for Wal-Mart's post-Thanksgiving sales coming in "0.1 percent below expectations." The article described Wal-Mart's tie to the NGLCC as an example of its "developing support for the 'gay' agenda" as well as that it has "not fired a homosexual marketing agency." 

What it appears that Unruh and WND, as well as activists like Benham, really want to do is blacklist gay businesses. Is that really a responsible or moral thing to do? They apparently think so, considering that WND also appears to at least condone the idea of segregating gays from the general population -- to the point of distorting statistics to support the cause.

In a March 25 column warning that homosexuals are "using the public airwaves, public parks and public schools to push deviant sexual practices into the faces of our innocent children," Olivia St. John wrote:

Dr. Gene Abel, medical director of the Behavioral Medicine Institute of Atlanta, compared groups of self-confessed homosexual and heterosexual molesters. A sampling of molestation rates indicated that the homosexuals averaged molesting 150 children each, while the heterosexuals molested 19.8 victims each. 

That relies on an assumption that all same-sex pedophiles are homosexual. In fact, as researcher Mark E. Pietrzyk points out, Abel himself has disproven that assumption:

[M]ost men who molest little boys are not gay.  Only 21 percent of the child molesters we studied who assault little boys were exclusively homosexual.  Nearly 80 percent of the men who molested little boys were heterosexual or bisexual, and most of these men were married and had children of their own. 

This is a distortion of Abel's work that WND has propagated as far back as 2000, when David Bresnahan wrote in an article "excerpted from an in-depth exploration of pedophilia, homosexuality and the Boy Scouts of America in the October edition of WND's sister publication, the monthly WorldNet Magazine" [now Whistleblower]: "Based on data from a study of non-incarcerated child sex offenders, Gene G. Abel, M.D., has found that homosexuals 'sexually molest young boys with an incidence that is occurring five times greater than the molestation of girls.'" But Abel did not label all same-sex pedophiles as homosexuals.

Matt Sanchez

Yet, despite this long history of anti-gay activism and anti-gay smears, WND did something very suprising last year: it hired a man who has appeared in gay porn videos as a correspondent.

An August 2007 article announced that WND had hired Matt Sanchez, a former Marine then embedded as a writer with the U.S. military in Iraq, to "provide WND readers with a glimpse into the Iraq war most Americans have never heard from a press increasingly hostile to the war effort."

Unmentioned by WND: As writer Max Blumental has reported, prior to joining the military, Sanchez acted in several adult movies under names such as Pierre LaBranche and Rod Majors.

WorldNetDaily correspondent Matt Sanchez.

(photo taken from Salon.com)

Also unmentioned by WND was that Sanchez was also reportedly under investigation by the military for fraud. According to an April 2007 Marine Corps Times article, Sanchez was informed in a email from Reserve Col. Charles Jones, a staff judge advocate, that he was under investigation for lying "'to various people, including but not limited to, representatives of the New York City United War Veterans Council [UWVC] and U-Haul Corporation' about deploying to Iraq at the commandant's request." According to the article, the email added: "'Specifically, you wrongfully solicited funds to support your purported deployment to Iraq' by coordinating a $300 payment from the UWVC and $12,000 from U-Haul." Sanchez denied the charges.

Since then, Sanchez has written numerous articles for WND--but at no point has WND told its readers about Sanchez's gay-porn past.

That's puzzling, because not only does it conflict with WND's anti-gay agenda, it's presumably the kind of "seriously compromised personal life" that would presumably disqualify him from employment there because, as editor Joseph Farah himself wrote in February 2005, "WorldNetDaily hires only serious and experienced journalists with the highest standards of ethics–both in their professional lives and their personal lives."

It appears that WND decided that homosexuality isn't as evil as its "reporting" makes it out to be, or at least a tolerable evil when when another cause takes precedence--in this case, support for the Iraq war. After all, Sanchez has been peddling the conservative line on the war--the same service he performed for WND--becoming a cause celebre and receiving the Jeane Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom Award at the 2007 Conservative Political Action Conference in the process. Even after the revelation of Sanchez's gay-porn past, conservatives (like WND) were reluctant to criticize; one blogger played the youthful-indiscretion card and asserted, "The mistakes Sanchez made years ago aren't that important compared to the fact that he's doing the right thing today and standing up to, 'anti-war thugs on campus' at Columbia University."

Even though Sanchez's gay-porn past is quite public, WND hasn't breathed a word of it ot its readers. Perhaps Farah and Co. don't want to damage WND's anti-gay street cred among its right-wing readers--as if that's something to be proud of.

THIS TRADITIONALLY BEING THE INTERNATIONAL DAY OF LABOUR (except, of course, in the United States and Canada, who observe on the first Monday in September), Your Correspondent feels it best to use the occasion to address an issue which the working classes need to think all the more about.

Especially so the dregs of the Working Classes as are usually prime recruits for producerist thought and its articles of faith, reeking as they do of arrogant pride tinctured with contempt for (on the one hand) immigrants and welfare "basket cases" and (on the other) Jews, Wall Street, the City and International Syndicalists as are somehow "squeezing the honest working classes into a serious dilemma."

That issue I refer to is one which certain conservative groups and think tanks hold dear as an article of faith all the more:

None other than "the complete, final and binding denationalisation of a failed and failing State system of Social Security" in the "morally superior" United States.

Said denationalisation expected to be seen as "empowering" the Working Classes especially (and the lower such all the more) into a New Golden Age of Industry, Self-Reliance, Personal Responsibility, Thrift based on Cash Economy and a Wholesome and Simple Home Life which, so this line of thinking went, "was reduced to outright and utter contempt" under the State system as it "promoted dependency" when the Working Classes should be expected to "show some respect for personal responsibility" by saying No to charity as "leading to Moral Error and Weakness," among other common patsies and bromides.

And saying Yes to self-reliance and personal responsibility, preferably through forced retirement savings as involve especially the equities markets "as makes free-market capitalism with American characteristics all the more possible," not to mention ensuring their "rightful role and place" as Great White Father.

Unfortunately, some of its biggest droogs in K Street (especially so the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Hudson Institute) who see denationalisation of State Social Security as its last and only hope for the working poor are hesitant to acknowledge what may be some Inconvenient Truths to such an article of faith when applied to the dregs of the Working Classes somehow expected to "benefit" thereby.

In particular:

• The "retirement savings funds" being dominated by many of the same sworn enemies in Producerist thinking as are seen to be "keeping [the Working Classes] all the more enslaved."
• The likelihood of the Lower Working Classes being "advised" to sign up with such "funds" likely to make inapproriate investments tending to the speculative or otherwise questionable. Likewise with trading tactics such as "market timing," "day trading," "spread-betting" and involvement with "pump-and-dump" scams. 
• The potential for such "funds" being manipulated or perverted all the more by tacit "prudential self-regulation" being sanctioned.
• Fees, commissions and other charges (including such covering advertising and marketing expenses) having potential adverse affect on net returns.
• Loss of uncompensated tax revenue from deductions likely to be encouraged such "investing" in such "funds."
• High-pressure or otherwise inapproriate advertising and marketing strategems, as well as sales tactics lacking adequate and reasonable checks and balances or otherwise prone to abuse.
• General lack of transparency and openness in operations and management of funds.
• Utter disregard for the likelihood of a serious "correction" in the equities markets as are all the more involved in these "funds" having adverse effects on returns.
• General exploitation of the vulnerable element otherwise lacking any knowledge of how the equities markets work, let alone from anti-Semitic Producerist canards and propaganda.
• The whole concept being promoted as "mutual self-help," yet likely to be such in name only (what with the fund managers likely to see profits ensuing all the more, mostly from fee-related revenue).

Hence: To expect that the working-classes will actually see any semblance of "renewed healthy respect for self-reliance and personal responsibility" thanks to Social Security denationalisation amounts to nothing less than a pipe dream with overtures of sick humour.

And to expect that "mutual self-help" will empower the working classes as part of the whole is just nothing but empty words unless given the necessary tools and motivation towards those ends.

Hence, what prevents a serious study of the English friendly society model as something to empower the working classes as a serious Social Security replacement, what with conservative articles of faith making so much about mutual self-help as an agency of empowering the Lower Classes?

Think about it this May Day. 

AS APRIL PREPARES ITS SEGUE INTO MAY UP HERE IN THE MINNWISSIPPI REGION WHERE YOUR CORRESPONDENT IS RESIDENT, it appears rather pleasant and nice outside.

But, come the overnight, expect the likelihood of showers and maybe the odd rumble of thunder or two. Which, for those in areas as have seen all too frequent rainfall translating into quasi-flooding so far this spring, could be like a bad dream constantly repeating itself.

And still, the farmers and planters want some dry weather for once for to get the field work started for once--unless, of course, they elect not to plant much in the way of cereals because of high fuel and fertiliser prices for the most part.

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

SHED NO TEARS FOR ALBERT HOFFMANN, the research chemist for Swiss pharmaceuticals company Sandoz (since becoming Novartis after merger with Ciba-Geigy several years back) who accidentally discovered lysergicides (LSD) during some research into plant fungi's medecinal potential back in 1938.

Hoffmann died @ an old age home near Basel from a heart attack @ 102 years of age--not bad for what could likely be considered the first psychadelic love child after discovering that his new compound produced some spectacular out-of-body sensations bordering on the etheral.

Which, by the late 1950's and early 1960's, would get out of hand for a drug which Herr Hoffmann originally hoped would provide some insights into mental disorders. So out of hand, in fact, that many of the world's soverign countries would step in and ban lysergicides as a narcotic or otherwise habit-forming drug.

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

IT LOOKS AS IF THE EXCESSES OF HANNAH MONTANA MANIA MAY HAVE FINALLY CAUGHT UP WITH MILEY CYRUS, who plays the closet bubblegum country star on the hit Disney Channel series.

As in that quasi-suggestive pose for Vanity Fair's new number, which, in the minds of such like the faltering Christian Coalition, should be grounds enough for Disney Channel to cancel Hannah Montana forthwith under the Morals Clause of her contract (as quoted by Right Wing Watch):

EVEN WITH ALL THE RATHER PATHETIC BROMIDES AND PLATITUDES FROM RACISTS AND WHITE SUPREMACISTS ABOUT THE EVILS OF UNCONTROLLED IMMIGRATION, there is no doubt that these same elements weird and unwholesome want to see the "evacuation" of all remaining specimens of White Christian Afrikanerdom out of South Africa, preferably posthaste.

Likewise with the white Rhodesian expatriate community in South Africa as made its presence known following black-majority rule under Robert Mugabe coming to power in 1980, resident mostly around the Highveldt suburbs of Pretoria and Johannesburg hoping for a return of White Christian Minority Rule in Rhodesia--yet unlikely to see such for the interim.

The whole expected to be "accomodated" as "refugees" based on flimsy and incredible claims that the Afrikaner community is "living in fear of persecution by a Communist-influenced regime***showing reckless contempt and disregard for White Christian heritage, values and honour."

Said groups advancing the "evacuation" of Afrikanerdom already forging connexions with Afrikaner groups in South Africa to prepare the requisite applications for the United States Embassy in Pretoria, or her affiliated consulates in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg, for emigration as refugees, right down to coaching them on the exact tone, nuance and parsing to be used on the applications so as to avoid attracting suspicions @ Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Especially when it emerges that the applications sound virtually identical in explaining their seeking refugee status in the United States.

Not to mention racist and white-supremacist organisations (among them neo-Nazis, "Minutemen" groups and what remains of the so-called "National Alliance") acting as "sponsors" to assist them in settlement in the United States, preferably as farmers and pastoralists consistent with their Calvinist beliefs in an honest and simple life "seriously disrupted" by "British interference" following the gold and diamond discoveries and the Boer War of 1899-1902 for control of the mineral regions.

And yet, these same Afrikaners are unlikely to be aware of such weird and unwholesome associations seeking to "assist" them to "saving the Afrikaner from himself," all along exploiting latent racist sentiments persisting since the abolition of apartheid and the introduction of multi-party democracy in 1994--especially among the poorer specimens of Afrikanerdom likely to be thereby targeted for "evacuation."

Which, all in all, needs to be watched. Especially considering the doublethink inherent.

JOEL McNALLY, A SATIRIC COLUMNIST WHO WRITES FOR THE NEW, "VIRTUAL" VERSION OF THE CAPITAL TIMES out of Madison, Wisconsin, had these comments the other day about a video just posted on YouTube by the Milwaukee Police Department in the hope of obtaining the public's help in identifying suspects in a recent notorious robbery attempt @ a supermarket/liquor store:

The hottest shoot-'em-up filmed in Milwaukee isn't the upcoming Dillinger movie starring Johnny Depp. It's a video posted on the popular Web site, YouTube, by the Milwaukee Police Department.

Police claim they posted the Milwaukee shootout filmed by a surveillance camera at Villard Food and Liquor on the national Web site to seek assistance in identifying an alleged shoplifter involved in the gunfight.

But the thousands of computer hits generated across the country have nothing to do with any sudden, overwhelming desire of the nation's citizenry to assist Milwaukee in cracking down on shoplifting.

The video offers all the sleazy attraction of a particularly horrible car crash.

Also, because all of the parties on both sides of the shootout and a violent beating that preceded it are black, the video apparently has become must-see TV for the nation's racists.

One particularly obscene, racist rant posted on YouTube labels all the participants and even an endangered bystander as monkeys.

"I don't get it," says the writer, who actually has no idea how ignorant he really is. "We gave them jobs, food and a place to sleep. Take them out of the cotton fields and look what happens."

But, of course, the real national and local debate into which the video feeds is the argument over the desirability of carrying handguns.

Gun enthusiasts who equate carrying handguns with public safety consider the video an argument for the more, the merrier. After an apparent shoplifter is surrounded by four men and beaten with a baseball bat, he leaves the store and returns later with a gun.

You see the man striding quickly through the door, determined to create mayhem. Then you see him stop short without even raising his weapon when he sees that the clerk behind the counter has a gun trained on him.

As the customer meekly retreats from the store, however, he turns and begins firing. The store clerk opens fire at the same time. Incredibly, a woman in a green jacket calmly walks between the shooters and out of the store in the middle of the gunfight.

Only fortune and bad aim prevented a public massacre.

Any rational viewing of the video makes it a far cry from an NRA recruiting commercial. In fact, it undercuts just about every argument gun supporters make for the proliferation of handguns.

The video clearly shows how the easy availability of guns escalates an already violent society into a potentially deadly, violent society.

The shootout is the most shocking event in the video. The second most shocking is the violent beating of the man with fists and a baseball bat by four men. Reportedly, it was over the theft of a stick of deodorant.

With guns so readily available, any victim of a one-sided gang beating thinks he has an easy means to even up the score. But, of course, when guns are everywhere, you never know when somebody else is going to get the drop on you.

Gun supporters see that as incredibly good news. To them, it's just great that an angry victim of a beating bent on blowing away store employees was driven away by a hail of bullets in the other direction.

But most of us are far more likely to identify with innocent customers in a convenience store on a Sunday afternoon, when this barrage of gunfire took place.

Do we really want to live in the society that the supporters of concealed carry are so eager to create where such shootouts can suddenly break out anywhere anytime? What kind of public safety is that?

Another one of the basic premises of concealed carry also is refuted by the video.

That is the claim that bad guys with guns will somehow make a rational decision not to use them if they think their intended victims might also be armed.

Golly, do you think anyone would have a clue that a store where shoplifters are beaten with a baseball bat might just possibly have a gun behind the counter as well?

The protection of private property and the shooting of bad guys are so widely supported in our society that some were outraged to learn the police had asked the district attorney to determine whether the store clerk should be charged as a felon illegally in possession of a firearm.

They needn't have worried. A few days later, the deputy district attorney announced the clerk would not be charged, citing self-defense. Prosecutors know juries are unlikely to convict store clerks for protecting their businesses with deadly weapons unless the criminal violations and reckless endangerment of the public are overwhelming. And maybe not even then.

But the next time the Legislature tries to put even more guns on our streets, think about getting caught in the crossfire of more Sunday afternoon shootouts in Milwaukee.