WHICH SEEMS TO BE PRETTY MUCH THE ATTITUDE WITH FOX PROLEFEED AND OTHERS AMONG THE DARK SATANIC MILLS OF CONSERVATIVE PROPAGANDA, as documented in this blog previously.

But enough of that:

The Holiday Long Weekend here in the Minnwissippi managed to turn out rather nice, even to the point of our "lucking out" on severe weather as wound up instead afflicting areas closer to the Twin Cities--Hugo in particular, which saw one casualty and much devastation.

Meanwhile, as I post this, things are rather unseasonably cool for the time of year; in fact, I hear where the Brainerd Lakes area was under a Frost Warning overnight, which is not unusual for northern Minnesota @ this time of year; generally, the last killing frosts in northerly latitudes of The Gopher State will tend to be around June 1st through 10th.

As the week wears on, though, warmer weather should make its presence known--even if it means an odd thunderstorm or two with substantial rain.

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NO WONDER HOMESCHOOLING SUPPORTERS LOVE TO OVERSENSATIONALISE EPISODES OF LeTOURNEAUISM AS CROSS THE WIRES and make the headlines as they occur:

Save The Children, an international relief organisation, hath it in a blistering new report for the United Nations that children as young as six are being sexually exploited to the point of perversion, and then some, by military troops, relief-agency workers and suchlike--usually in exchange for small gifts.

Africa is said to be especially notorious for such activity on a massive scale, with Côte d'Ivore said to be the worst offender thanks to ongoing civil war and its byproducts of social dislocation.

No wonder homeschooling carries the risk of being subjected to episodes of incest as an agency of exercising control and coercion....

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IN A QUASI-RELATED VEIN OF SORTS, Your Correspondent takes note of where the French film The Class took the Palme d'Or of the Cannes Film Festival @ the weekend, the first such for French cinema in 21 years.

Basically put, The Class revolves around the course of a school year in the milieu of a middle school classroom as could be considered a House of All Nations thanks to the multicultural nature and makeup of its students.

Next thing you know, the Kulturkrieg crowd will want to be raising funds to finance a "reply" film therefor, which would be expected to depict a Christian Homeschooling family in what's expected to be hagiographic terms and contexts ... only it turns out being even more dysfunctional than those of Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin and The Kanker Sisters put together, thanks to episodes of abuse and incest packaged as "Christian love" all along.

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RECOMMENDED READING @ THIS TIME, IF ONLY FOR THE SAKE OF POTENTIALLY PROPHETIC INSIGHT (AND THEN SOME): George Packer's brilliant exugenesis in The New Yorker as enquireth whether the conservative political movement may be heading for a major crash-and-burn as Indecision 2008 looms all the closer.

And a crash-and-burn which the conservative movement may be unable to recover from, as its consequences could be far-reaching and then some.

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A NEW PILL FOR "PATRIOTIC" XENOPHOBES WHOSE MINDS ARE STUCK IN THE "MORALLY SUPERIOR" UNITED STATES: City officials in the Sydney (AUS) suburb of Camden have rejected planning approval for an Islamic school there, claiming that its presence would not only worsen traffic and parking problems, but also risks "undermining the traditional social character" of the area.

No wonder there are Zealots and True Believers in the White Male Low Church Christian Power Structure across the English-speaking world all the more--not to mention the White Man's Burden as an agency of the so-called "New American Century."

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IN THE WAKE OF THE RECENT EARTHQUAKE AND AFTERSHOCKS IN CHINA'S SICHWUAN PROVINCE as have now killed (according to official estimates) some 65,000 people and left homeless some 5 million people after their communities were devastated wholesale, some are starting to wonder if such may be the beginning of the end for the Chinese Communist regime and its doctrine of "developing socialism with Chinese characteristics," especially as earthquake survivors complain about the destruction being aggravated by sub-standard construction materials and techniques.

And the corrupt tendencies of local officials and construction workers as accepted bribes and backhanders to look the other way vis-a-vis the shady construction; some survivors as have managed to post onto blogs and comment boards are asking if public officials are more interested in maintaining fancy apartments, high-end cars and stables of concubines @ the expense of public interest and welfare, especially in view of these same revelations.

(BTW, readers, "socialism with Chinese characteristics" is the inspiration for my own term "capitalism with American characteristics," as appears in this blog from time to time in an ironic and @ once sarcastic context as targets the Zealots and True Believers seeing in said capitalistic models and paradigms the "complete and final" empowerment of the "chronically and habitually welfare dependent" out of "unhealthy Socialistic tendencies" they supposedly developed "subtly" and towards--in theory--a Renewed Healthy Respect for Industry, Self-Reliance, Personal Responsibility, Thrift based on Cash Economy and a Wholesome and Simple Home Life. Now you know.)  

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NO DOUBT THE PRECEDING WOULD HAVE TO BE RATHER APROPOS CONSIDERING WHERE Your Correspondent is pleased to announce the opening of his next Big Online Vesch--as in an online social-networking portal for anyone with connexions to Wisconsin Dells.

I call it DellsSpace, and you can find the same (even signing up for it) right here on the Information Stuporbahn.

Especially should you happen to be the sort as is:

• resident in the Wisconsin Dells or Lake Delton communities and who, by virtue of residency, has to deal with the tourist hordes in one way or another (or, for that matter, put up with their presence as a matter of residence);
• a long-time fan of the Wisconsin Dells region, especially to the extent of making the Waterpark Capital a sort of summer home; or
• a past or present summer worker in any of the tourist distractions in the Dells region.

If so, DellsSpace is for you. Your very own portal by which you can share yourself with a profile, a photo album, a video portfolio--even a weblog.

And which you can share your questions or comments through the forums or through the ur-slambook.

So if you're into Wisconsin Dells ... then come into DellsSpace. Especially if the other big-name social-networking sites just left you "crying in the wilderness," so to speak, trying to attract attention.

THERE WAS A TIME, NOT TOO MANY YEARS AGO, WHEN TRAVELOGUE MEANT either Burton Holmes or the Dennis FitzPatrick TravelTalks among American audiences.

That, readers, was before The Travel Channel came along on cable TV.

And it's enough to wonder on Your Correspondent's part just how much longer it will be before we see on The Travel Channel the kind of travelogue production as could be considered "white trash Burton Holmes" such, essentially low comedy with elements of National Lampoon's Vacation, Jackass, Family Guy and (for good measure) the Japanese game show Endurance throughout.

In short, travelogues featuring the (mis)adventures of a dysfunctional family trying to discover the Nobility of America with exercises in sheer obnoxiousness throughout guaranteed to generate cheap laughs in Peoria especially. @ least until Molly McGee, over @ 79 Wistful Vista, hits the remote accompanied by the curt "'Tain't funny, McGee!", only to be further interrupted by the awful, pun-filled stories of The Old Timer (as are highlighted by "That's pretty good, Johnny ... but that ain't the way I heard it! The way I heard it, one feller sez to the other feller, 'Saaayyyyy,' he sez....") or Wallace Wimple ("Hello, folks!") relating his latest tale of woe involving Sweetyface, his tough-as-nails wife.

Or, for that matter, Mayor LaTrivia going into discussions as wind up in hilarious displays of spoonerism.

In any event, expect the travel vids of a "white trash" Burton Holmes to feature some of the tackier specimens of "tourist trap" ever to grace the American roadside, all the old favourites like Rock City, Wall Drug, Weeki Wachee Springs, The Thing, South of the Border, Ausable Chasm, Pea Soup Anderson's and Wisconsin Dells, featuring plenty of hilarity sure to make Peter and Lois Griffin look like Burton Holmes.

Whether the audiences will fall for it is anybody's guess--especially if it gets free publicity from the Kulturkrieg crowd's attacking same for its excesses of low comedy that, in an earlier time, would have prompted the Catholic Legion of Decency to condemn the series.   

A FREQUENTLY-REPEATED BROMIDE AND PLATITUDE FROM THE DARK SATANIC MILLS OF CONSERVATIVE PROPAGANDA SOUNDING RATHER PATHETIC is that the "Liberal Media Establishment" is only making the situation in the Iraqi Theatre of the ur-RAHOWA Against Terrorism look worse, as witness a dearth (or so we're expected to believe) of "healthy" and "positive" news stories about post-Ba'athist Iraq moving towards the path of a free-market sociodemocratic model.

As an example of such pathetic desperation as above summarised, ConWebBlog offers the following:

The headline on Warner Todd Huston's May 9 NewsBusters post howls: 'Outrageous: McClatchy Praises Terrorist's 'Charity Work'." Huston writes:

McClatchy had their hearts go aflutter over Sadr's "humanitarian aid" imagining it to be the "other" softer side of the terror chieftain giving Sadr a nice little bit of free positive publicity quite despite the truth of his murderous actions.

[...]

Don't you love how they give legitimacy to "Sadr City's main humanitarian organization"? This is Muqtada al Sadr we are talking about here. He is 100% backed by one of our biggest enemies in the world, Iran. Yet, here is McClatchy acting as if the Sadrists are a legitimate "humanitarian aid" group.

[...]

This is shameless pandering to a murderer and terrorist.

[...]

Sadr is no humanitarian. He couldn't care less about people other than how he can use them to continue his terrorist activities. Let's put it this way: if a child predator gives a child some candy, should we praise the molester for selflessly feeding the children? Obviously, the molester's motives are to rape the child, so the food is a lure not an altruistic gift! This is the same with Sadr and his henchmen. They are holding a bit of candy out so that they may further rape the people of Iraq.

But, to McClatchy, Sadr is a really good guy because of this supposed "charity work."

Ah, the Depiction-Equals-Approval Fallacy at work.

Of course, the McClatchy article in question doesn't "praise" al-Sadr or call him "a really good guy"; rather, it points out that he is what passes for a functioning government in that area and that public support for his charity work is undermining the U.S. military in Iraq. Huston included excerpts from the article in his post--all taken out of context. Here's what Huston didn't excerpt:

Sadr, the fiery anti-American Shiite cleric, has again emerged as the U.S. military's No. 1 problem in Iraq, as his followers wage an increasingly bloody struggle with American soldiers for control of impoverished, militia-infested Sadr City.

[...]

Analysts point out that Hezbollah's military wing is much more disciplined than Sadr's younger and more fractured movement. But Sadr's charity work helps to maintain popular support for his movement even as its confrontations with U.S. and Iraqi forces plunge places such as Sadr City deeper into chaos.

"It's a reflection of the existing vacuum and the extremely poor capacity of the state to step in and provide these services," said Peter Harling, an Iraq expert with the International Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution think tank.

International aid workers and ordinary Iraqis say that the U.S.-backed Iraqi government is sitting on billions of dollars meant for humanitarian projects. Shiite and Sunni militias have stepped in to fill the gap, assuming control of basic services in neighborhoods they control.

"We would be glad if the government could really provide services," said Ibrahim al Jabri, who oversees the Sadr organization's humanitarian projects in eastern Baghdad, including Sadr City.

"But until now there is nothing provided by the government. It's not possible just to leave people waiting."

Iraqi government efforts to help war victims, by contrast, are a bureaucratic morass. The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs has established a committee to help Iraq's war widows, who are eligible to receive monthly assistance payments of $40 to $80. But advocates say that cases take months or years to wind through the system, and very few applicants end up receiving help.

[...]

Lt. Col. Frank Curtis of the 432 Civil Affairs Battalion in Sadr City is trying to jumpstart reconstruction efforts and help Iraqi officials spend the allocated money for the area. Now they get about 70 people a day at the center.

He acknowledged that the Mahdi Army may pay money to families but said that people are tired of its intimidation campaigns.

"Maybe they pay that money, but what the populace tells us and the sheiks tell us is that basically what they do is they steal their money and restrict where they're allowed to go," he said. "Everybody out there has to pay for the right to live in their home."

Warner, honey: Reporting something does not equal approval of what is being reported. But falsely conflating the two is something MRC writers seem to enjoy doing.

As if that weren't enough, you have to wonder if it's really the Dark Satanic Mills of Conservative Propaganda as are "aiding and abetting" our enemies, especially considering their nuanced tone.

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YOUR CORRESPONDENT ACKNOWLEDGES WHERE THAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY WAS INSPIRED BY A T-SHIRT seen @ today's Memorial Day observance here in Winona by Your Correspondent on someone distributing programmes for the same.

Said shirt featuring Old Gloryt inside a silhouette map of the Lower 48, below which the message read in a somewhat elegant script "Faded Glory 2008."

(It's the kind as would be worn by such of a certain class; i.e., such whose patriotic feelings and tendencies are easily-influenced, primitive to the point of crude and can be said, @ turns, to be jingoistic.)

In any case, credit His Fraudulency's Great Within, and their schemes, dreams, machinations and plots for all the more compromising the glory that was the United States of America to the point where weird and unwholesome elements as much from within as from without can quickly undermine the same to the point where that which "patriots" dread all the more--that of the Evil Empire otherwise known as the "New World Order" "usurping our antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity"--can be all the easier accomplished.

Especially when you stop and consider where the Great Within, and their friends weird and/or unwholesome, played upon an easily-manipulate patriot love in Those Who Should Know Better to further inflame racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic and even homophobic feelings under the guise of "patriot love." And even more so when you consider the possibility that such enforced patriotism may be an attempt to evade responsibility as much as liability on the Great Within's part and parcel for not only the quagmire known as the ur-RAHOWA Against Terrorism, but also its contributing casus belli of the Unfortunate Events of 9/11.

(And perhaps Fox Prolefeed deserves some blame for helping contribute to America's Faded and Fading Glory through pandering to the most latent of patriotic feelings in its audience of Those Who Should Know Better.)

So what exactly have they to hide for once, especially as Americans start realising they were handed a bill of goods under the guise of "reclaiming our past honour and glory"?

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EN 'N ANDER DING: Is it just me, or is Kansas being targeted for all the tornadoes they've seen of late as Divine Judgement, so to speak, for harbouring weird and unwholesome types whipping up Hate by invoking His Name (e.g., the so-called "Westboro Baptist Church" of Rev. Fred Phelps)--and for as long as they have?

(As in the 112 years since William Allen White's infamous editorial "What's The Matter With Kansas?" was published in his Emporia Gazette, quickly winning considerable national attention--and, for Kansas, laughingstock status @ the nation's expense perhaps reaching its acme with Doc Brinkley's goat-gland racket in Milford.) 

APOLOGIES, READERS, IF SOME OF YOU FIND THE FOLLOWING TENDING TO SACRELIGE FOR AMERICAN TROOPS on Memorial Day ... but then again, Your Correspondent was thinking @ some length about a routine which the late John Doremus would trot out from time to time on his programme known as "The Litany of the Poilu," "poilu" being French slang for their own troops.

The following is by way of an online transcription of a World War I memoir by Kathleen Burke entitled The White Road to Verdun, and I trust, readers, that such may be found insightful regardless of whose armies one is fighting for, inasmuch as the Litany of the Poilu has that cosmopolitan sort of quality--along with some obvious truths about war:

• Of two things one is certain: either you're mobilised or you're not mobilised.
• If you're not mobilised, there is no need to worry; if you are mobilised, of two things one is certain: either you're behind the lines or you're on the front.
• If you're behind the lines, there is no need to worry; if you're on the front, of two things one is certain: either you're resting in a safe place or you're exposed to danger.
• If you're resting in a safe place, there is no need to worry; if you're exposed to danger, of two things one is certain: either you're wounded or you're not wounded.
• If you're not wounded, there is no need to worry; if you are wounded, of two things one is certain: either you're wounded seriously or you're wounded slightly.
• If you're wounded slightly, there is no need to worry; if you're wounded seriously, of two things one is certain: either you recover or you die.
• If you recover, there is no need to worry; if you die, you can't worry.

THEIR NAME ENDURETH FOREVER

LEST WE FORGET

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FOR THOSE OF YOU IN THE UNITED STATES AS ARE UNAWARE OF IT, this happens to be the Memorial Day Long Weekend.

And for our British friends, this is the Spring Bank Holiday Long Weekend (which replaced the traditional Whit Monday holiday some years ago).

Here in the Minnwissippi, it just so happens to be cool and @ once breezy with thin, hazy cloud muting the sun in its own way ... not to mention our seeing the likelihood of serious storms Sunday afterlunch into evening, with maybe a slight recurrnce on the holiday Monday.

(Speaking of Monday, look for a special treat in this space in recognition thereof.)

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AND DOESN'T IT SEEM AS IF WELD COUNTY, COLORADO HAS BECOME TORNADO CENTRAL IN RECENT YEARS, what with National Weather Servce data noting where the general area thereof has seen more tornadoes than anywhere else in the Continental United States over the last 50 years?

Just yesterday, in fact, that reputation was reaffirmed when a series of tornadoes struck Weld County, causing substantial property damage and @ least one known casualty.

Sorry, Dorothy--Kansas isn't all that infamous for tornadoes as it used to be....

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SO THE TERRIBLE-TEMPERED MR. BANG OF INDECISION 2008 HAS RELEASED HIS MEDICAL RECORDS ahead of the holiday long weekend--as if wanting some sort of cheap and cheerful disractionary from potentially more distressing news likely to develop throughout.

Confirming the likelihood of its distractionary intent is Media Matters for America, which hath it:

In a May 22 article, The New York Times reported that Sen. John McCain's campaign "is set to release 400 pages of medical records, including documents related to his melanoma surgery in August 2000, to a tightly controlled group of reporters on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend." On that day, according to the Times, "the campaign will allow a small pool of reporters access to the records from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. Pacific time in a conference room at the Copper Wind Resort in Phoenix, near the Mayo Clinic Scottsdale. The reporters will be allowed to take notes but not remove or photocopy the records." In separate appearances on MSNBC Live on May 22, NBC News political director Chuck Todd suggested first that the McCain campaign timed the records' availability to minimize coverage of them and later that the campaign would, in fact, be successful in that endeavor. But, in fact, it is within NBC's power to prevent such a strategy from working by actually covering the issue adequately.

During the 9 a.m. ET hour of MSNBC Live on May 22, discussing the scheduled gathering of potential Republican vice presidential candidates at McCain's Arizona ranch this weekend, Todd stated: "I sort of call it a 'shiny object' timing. You know, it's like, pay no attention to this other news that's coming out tomorrow, and that is Senator John McCain's medical records, which could end up becoming a dominating story line for a couple days. Instead, very smartly, the McCain campaign or somebody leaked out the fact that three potential running mates ... are going to be going to the McCains' ranch." Later in the day, during the 1 p.m. ET hour of MSNBC Live, Todd said, "I think it's very helpful to McCain, frankly, that there is going to be a focus on the veep stuff, when the -- so that there isn't obsession on the medical records."

Separately, during the 1 p.m. ET hour of the MSNBC Live, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell said of the announcement regarding the medical records: "That news is likely to get buried at the start of the Memorial Day weekend." 

One issue as still needs to be addressed vis-a-vis The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang's medical state would have to be his mental capacity, considering his prisoner-of-war past and the psychoemotinal cruelty, harm and other indignities suffered @ the hands of the North Vietnamese which could come back to haunt him.

Especially if he unintentionally lets slip some Bad Words or otherwise goes into a spontaneous tantrum live and on camera--or otherwise winds up on YouTube.

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AND STAYING WITH THE TERRIBLE-TEMPERED MR. BANG FOR THE NONCE, it appears as if he may have already lost serious support from the Religiopolitical Right's "hard core," if not already, thanks to his disavowing the endorsement of Rev. John Hagee following some rather infamous remarks tending to trivialise the Holocaust the other day.

Now, if he would only distance himself from his other "spiritual advisor," by name and stylee of Rev. Rod Parsley....

(But then again, if the Religiopolitical Right, in its hard-wired Zealotry and True Belief, starts disassociating themselves with TTMB en bloc, they might want to start reassessing their electoral options, even if it means a wholesale boycott of Indecision 2008 for want of "correct" Presidential material who can kowtow to their articles of faith.)

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AND THE PROMOTERS OF THAT PATHETICALLY AWFUL SINGSONG MEME "CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION! CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION!!" will doubtless be celebrating in the streets of Branson this Holiday Long Weekend @ the news that a Texas state appeals court has thrown out proceedings filed by child-welfare authorities against members of the so-called "Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" @ their Yearning For Zion compound in West Texas.

"Highly incredible" claims were cited in dismissing the charges ... but then again, the "Christian Persecution!" meme crowd will want to take a more cautious approach for the nonce, pending the likelihood of appeal to the Texas State Supreme Court.

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OPEC'S SECRETARY-GENERAL HAS GONE ON RECORD AS SUGGESTING THAT THE HIGH OIL PRICES OF LATE ON THE SPOT MARKETS (reaching a new record of US$135/bbl. just yesterday before settling lower) are not so much the result of reduced crude-oil production (especially among such states not in OPEC) or fields going out of production, or close to it, as speculation among investors.

In evidence, there was cited the Asian socoeconomic meltdown of the mid-late 1990's triggering an outright freefall of crude oil prices within measurable distance.

Which has Your Correspondent wondering if we may be seeing nothing short of Hunt Brothers-stylee behaviour in the crude-oil, natural-gas and refined petroleum products markets involving His Frudulency's Great Within and/or dear and close droogs thereof, unaware all the while that a significant margin call may be coming within measurable distance as they will be unable to cover.

Which, in its turn, will translate into an outright collapse of the petroleum futures markets and, in its turn, crude oil and refined products futures sometime before the July 4th Long Weekend--just as the Hunt Brothers' attempts to corner the silver markets in early 1980 to devious advantage ended when they were unable to meet margin calls.

And you'll never guess what the Great Within and/or their dear and close droogs are using to dommo the petroleum futures markets (or try to):

You guessed it: Ander Mense se Geld.

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IN ANY CASE, APART FROM THE SPECIAL TREAT PLANNED FOR MONDAY TO MARK THE MEMORIAL DAY HOLIDAY, Your Correspondent will essentially be on blogging hiatus throughout the long weekend.

During which he hopes to be setting up his new social networking site for such having connexions to The Waterpark Capital of the World in the form and fashion of:

• such having direct involvement or connexion with the "water business" (as in tourism) on a personal level;
• such residents of the Waterpark Capital as have to deal with the tourist hordes, yet have no direct "water business" involvement (or @ least an indirect such);
• families as have a long-established tradition of vacationing in the Dells region (even before becoming the Waterpark Capital, come to think of it); and
• current and past summer employees of the "water business."

Such, hopefully, being up and running ere the Holiday Long Weekend winds down. Further details as to its readiness will be forthcoming.