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TALK ABOUT THE NEED TO DEFEND FREE SPEECH WHILE @ THE SAME TIME HAVING TO BALANCE SUCH WITH THE BYPRODUCTS OF HATE: Witness what Media Matters for America noted in another of Jerome "Swift Boat" Corsi's attempts to whitewash his latent contempt of democracy in book form, howbeit pathetically:

Appearing on the August 16 edition of C-SPAN's Washington Journal, Jerome Corsi, author of The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality (Threshold Editions, August 2008), asserted that, if Sen. Barack Obama were elected president and someone were to write a book critical of him or to publish "a cartoon like The New Yorker," "Obama might just have to create a department of hate crimes and put them in jail." Responding to a caller's assertion that "we cannot question Obama," Corsi stated:

Ma'am, you make some very interesting points. Senator Obama is now appearing to have the thinnest skin of anybody I've ever seen run for president. And, you know, it reminds me because--if this is the reaction for writing a book, and remember, I did not commit a crime. I wrote the book. And under the First Amendment, that's supposed to be protected and allowed. And it's a critical evaluation of Senator Obama.

But it has been pointed out, there has been many, many--how many critical books of George Bush have there been? And George Bush doesn't come unglued at the people who write those books. It raises questions in my mind. If Senator Obama is reacting this ballistically -- this out of control, I mean, bouncing off the walls insanity, you know, concocting fake pictures of books that were never written attacking this -- 40 pages. Why didn't they write 140 pages? Because I wrote a book.

What's--how is Senator Obama going to sit in the Oval Office and handle a crisis? I mean, all an enemy of the United States has to do is write a book about him and he'll go insane--or put a cartoon like The New Yorker with Senator Obama, Muslim garb--and Hillary [sic] dressed as a--you know, a black militant.

And Senator Obama might just have to create a department of hate crimes and put them in jail. Where is the sense of humor here?

Which is enough for Your Correspondent, for one, to ask whether conservative notions of "traditional values" they claim to be upholding and defending include hate, bigotry, intolerance and xenophobia--all of which can be excused as "healthy" and @ once "patriotic" if and when push comes to shove.

Especially so hate targeting National Minorities.

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"WE MUST HAVE CULTURAL, NATIONAL AND RACIAL INTEGRITY," or so the so-called "Council of Conservative Citizens" hath it in its eighth principle.

Which prompts Your Correspondent to ask if this excuses reducing National Minorities to objects of fun crossing into ridicule under the banner of "cultural and racial heritage," especially so in such forms as blackface minstrel shows, dialect comedy playing up stereotypical traits of character, men-only "smokers" replete with sexist banter and deauchery and suchlike.

All the while presenting the "racially and morally superior European-American White Low Church Christian" as "morally and racially incapable" of being reduced to the same levels expected of National Minorities, let alone humour and ridicule.

Not to mention seeing Branson as The Acme and Perfection of Our Morally-Superior Amerikanischer Realkultur, never mind its crossing @ times to the excesses of Nazi German "folk culture festivals" under the sponsorship of the Kraft durch Frude ("Strength Through Joy") programme as part of the greater Nazi agenda of promoting a renewed and yet "healthy" appreciation for Germany and things German ... not to mention the obligatory interconnexion with the "Aryan Master Race" ideal.

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YOU'VE PROBABLY HEARD BY NOW ABOUT FOCUS ON THE FAMILY TRYING TO DISTANCE THEMSELVES FROM A RECENT VIDEO OF THEIRS urging their poor, undereducated, easily-influenced and socioeconomically-marginalised minions and droogs to pray for heavy rains on the night Sen. Barak Obama is set to deliver his acceptance speech @ the Democratic National Convention, and excuse such as being for G-d, Country and Family, notwithstanding where YouTube has picked up on same to give such continued currency even after Focus pulled same from their website (and subseqently took same down).

No doubt attracting the notice of Keith "Countdown" Olberman (thanks to Good As You):

Ironic as it seems, it turns out that Colorado Springs, where Focus on the Family and suchlike specimens of pseudoreligiopolitical "ministries" are based, is now under a Flash Flood Watch owing to heavy rains as I write this, among other points in central into southeastern Colorado well into the Sangre de Cristo and Wet mountain ranges.

Perhaps G-d is expressing His Objections and Displeasure @ such a pathetic request all along, methinks. And no doubt Focus on the Family deserves such treatment for once.

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AS HIS FRAUDULENCY AND HIS GREAT WITHIN RESORT TO ALL MANNER OF EVASIVES TO PROTECT THEMSELVES FROM THE LIKELIHOOD OF IMPEACHMENT, one of his best drookies early on in the ur-RAHOWA on Terrorism, Pakistani President Perez Musharaf, could face just such a prospect in the Pakistani Legislature as early as Tuesday, when the two biggest coalition parties thereof plan to introduce articles thereof.

But there may be the possibility for Musharaf to avoid the indignity thereof by resigning and lying low before said proceedings are launched.

What would basically prevent His Fraudulency from looking into the possibility of simply stepping down to spare Our Beloved Nation further harm and embarrassment in the wake of revelations that he may have authorised outright forgeries to excuse the ur-RAHOWA as is making America, in effect, a Gangster Nation all the more (with G-d and Country being used as patsies in defence therefor)--especially such as may come from the "New World Order" we're all expected to fear and loathe in the defence of Our Holy and Beloved Nation?

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TALK ABOUT ASSOCIATING WITH THE DREGS OF SOCIETY, AND THEN SOME: Jerome "Swift Boat" Corsi, in the interest of promoting his much-discredited screed The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality to the widest audience possible, has been caught appearing on the online radio hatecast "The Political Cesspool with James Edwards" once previously, and is slated to make another appearence tomorrow on same.

(If you don't believe me, read what the Southern Poverty Law Centre had to say in their Hatewatch blog on the topic.)

As if that weren't enough, "The Political Cesspool" has known and notorious connexions, ideologically in particular, to the so-called "Council of Conservative Citizens" (CCC), successor in ideology and spirit to the White Citizens' Councils across the South during the Civil Rights Era as catered to a more genteel element of White Privilege and Power feebly seeking to maintain their "antient and pecuilar rights, privileges and powers***by whatever means necessary" (unlike the Ku Klux Klan, whose membership base was mostly Joe Sixpack types fond of using fear, intimidation and the old ultraviolence in service to the defence of their arrogant hubris).

Whose Articles of Faith are as follows (by way of Media Matters for America, deserving of the old hat tip), along with a dissection in italics of what their real meaning obviously is, technically known only to the CCC's "inside of the inside" and which denial of its knowledge is essential under pain of "serious consequences:"

1. We believe the United States is a Christian country. (As in Low Church, Fundamentalist-Primitive theology placing greater emphasis upon the laity, not to mention their overzealously literal interpretation of Holy Scripture excusing poverty, fecundity and stupidity.) 
2. The United States is a sovereign and independent nation. (No; make that Lord and Master of the World, the Universe and the 28 Known Galaxies, to be more specific.) 
3. We believe the United States is a European country and that Americans are part of the European people. (Remind you of Nazi Germany's notions of Lebensraum and the "Aryan Master Race"?) 
4. The United States is a constitutional republic. (Not so much per the United States Constitution as by Divine Revelation, which expects the Presidential role to be one of a superdivine "Prophet, Seer and Revelator" and Congress as a mere "rubberstamp" of such Divine Revelation, never mind said revelations likely involving certain hallucinogenic substances to achieve the proper mindset--and the steps taken to avoid attracting suspicion along these lines.) 
5. We believe in States' Rights, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and the Bill of Rights. (In case they didn't know it, the Bill of Rights already recognises States' Rights in the Tenth Amendment and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in the second such; hence, a clear case of redundency. In the case of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, how do we know such doesn't excuse a sadisto, "law-and-order" mindset with racially-selective overtures?)
6. The traditional family is the basic unit of human society. (As in the dysfunctional middle-class Levittown model holding the paterfamilias as Lord and Master, wife and children subservient--and to be kept all the more so "by whatever means necessary," including rape, incest, even floggings excused as "Christian Love.") 
7. Private property and free enterprise are the foundations of our economy. (Based, no doubt, on the Ayn Rand model expecting Self-Regulatory Codes of Good Practice to be "safe-harboured," notwithstanding such containing subtle traps excusing cartel behaviour and its debauched excesses, which can only cause harm to business and consumers in equal measure. Not to mention excusing a mindset seeing free enterprise as the Great White Father of the heretofore "enslaved to welfare" Lower Classes.) 
8. We must have cultural, national, and racial integrity. (Which is clearly in the same league as Nazi Germany and, in its own way, apartheid South Africa. Come to think of it, how many of the CCC's highest-level officers and directors could be considered apologists for the apartheid regime, or otherwise have "special associations" with the Volkstaat movement popular among Unreconstructed Afrikanerdom?) 
9. A strong national defense is imperative. (Based, no doubt, on a BDSM mentality which sees the "morally superior" United States as a dominatrix in the stereotypical black leather getup. See also point #2.) 
10. Our nation needs an "America First" Foreign Policy. (Code, methinks, for America as Lord and Master; see point #2 and the previous.) 
11. Our nation needs "America First" Trade Policies. (Which are, it turns out, up there with Japan's practice of setting better-quality consumption goods aside for export @ subsidised rates, leaving the local market with overpriced second-quality goods. Not to mention reeking, as required, of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" which Japan was pushing before World War II, based on replacing a Eurocentrist colonialism across East Asia with a Sinocentrist such manipulated to give unfair preference to Japanese zaibatsu cartels as stood all the more to benefit while the areas thus controlled were seen as no better than sources of raw material and cheap labour.) 
12. Traditional education should remain under local control. (As in a syllabus based on apartheid South Africa's National Christian Education model, with school boards dominated by the Dregs of Society using "Christian Patriot Love" as cover for their degenerate ways, funding based on "block grants" lacking any oversight by willful and deliberate design--not to mention "outs" to discourage public oversight.)  
13. We advocate strong and just law enforcement. (As in the racially-selective, sadisto stylee of the Black Legion, operating under cover of darkness and in extreme secrecy. Not to mention a deliberate emphasis on pain and suffering in the name of Law and Order by way of such implements of mayhem as steel-toe bovver boots, numchuks, brass knuckles, blackjacks, bullwhips, Molotov cocktails, switchblade knives--and, if necessary, fear and loathing. Its operatives being arrogant Joe Sixpack types acting under delusions of "Redemption for Value," and taking extreme pains to avoid attracting suspicions while acting in the name of Law and Order--and getting away with murder, rape, sodomy, arson, and other infamous displays of Extreme Ultraviolence, usually to be followed by a beer-fuelled bullfest and "prayer meeting.") 
14. English is the official language to be used in public discourse in America. (Their preferred standard, no doubt, being Noah Webster, notwithstanding where his American Dictionary [1828] was far from original; I recall reading somewhere that Mr. Webster's real intent was not so much to create an "American" language as to expurgate Dr. Samuel Johnson's famous dictionary--"cleaning the Augean Stables," as Webster once explained it--of "profanes and ribaldry" in line with his notions of a new form of English befitting a republic. Prior to the dictionary, Webster tried his hand @ expurgating the Bible, but without commercial success.
(And note that I refer to The American Dictionary, as opposed to popular belief suggesting that it was called Webster's Dictionary; methinks confusion with Samuel Johnson's such is to blame. And though "Webster's Dictionary" is still widely used, court rulings over the years have held where such cannot be copyrighted nor trademarked.)  
15. We believe in the protection of our environmental and natural heritage. (How do we know such isn't in conflict with point #7 above, which excuses wasteful, counterproductive and even cartel mindsets in the name of a "pure" capitalism?)

I hope that this lays bare the facts. But--if I wound up causing harm to CCC members by what I have just revealed, don't come crying to me.

Any questions?

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SO MUCH FOR THE TERRIBLE-TEMPERED MR. BANG, A/K/A JOHN McCAIN, making clear his desire to "completely and finally" reverse Roe v. Wade, and excuse such as being for G-d and Country.

How do we know his "real" desire in wanting abortion proscribed outright isn't one of wanting to maintain a socioeconomic model and paradigm in decline--as in the labour-intensive, unskilled Luddite model?

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IS IT JUST MOI, OR IS IT REACHING A POINT WHERE THE ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS of hyperconservatism, aided and abetted by their preferred propaganda medium of Fox Prolefeed, would love to see poverty, fecundity and stupidity held up as virtuous?

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SPEAKING OF HOLDING UP STUPIDITY AS VIRTUOUS, I can relate where the likes of mental-health clinic psychiatrists and caseworkers with sheltered workshops and Vocational Rehabilitation wanted our kind to assume we had no opinions on especially "controversial subjects or topics," that we should accept the status quo without question or reservation lest we face the prospect of insanity hearings in the session court.

Or, worse yet, face the prospect of losing eligibility for welfare or Social Security benefits for "disloyalty" or "outspoken tendencies."

Looking back, the notions still haunt me from the recesses of my memory from time to time.

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IN EXPECTING THE FREE MARKET TO BE THE GREAT WHITE FATHER OF THE LOWER CLASSES IN PARTICULAR, methinks the Zealots and True Believers therefor, in the stylee of Fascist Italy, would like to have certain companies deemed "essential" or otherwise "strategic."

Such designed only for the sake of requiring consumer complaints against same to be handled through administrative channels before referring such to the Better Business Bureau or other consumer-protection channels--but only after showing "exhaustion of administrative powers" all the while, onus being arbitrarily placed on the consumer all the more.

Who's expected to play into nothing short of a crass parody of the Japanese kabuki drama, what with its stylised and carefully-scripted traditions and conventions, by having to approach companies so "protected" by an ur-Soverign Immunity in a particular manner and stylee which borders on the overly prissy, complete with "guidance" on how complaints should be phrased and (even more so) nuanced.

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TELL ME THE FOLLOWING DOESN'T TAKE THE CAKE FOR TAKING PATRIOTIC ZEAL TO A NEW LOW, AND THEN SOME, by way of Rush Limbaugh and, ultimately, Think Progress (emphasis supplied): 

But now we read that Michael Phelps is burning and using 12,000 calories a day, while the Democrats are trying to alert everybody to the dangers posed by energy. The Democrats and left are now demonizing oil, they're demonizing our own ability to be energy independent. They don't want us to be able to get our own independent sources of oil or natural gas. Yet, look at Michael Phelps. […]

American consumption for the greatest production and the greatest rewards, why, that is fine if we do this in sports. However, if we consume and produce exceptionalism in goods and services for others, including ourselves, then somehow we are committing a sin.

Which, in effect, ranks up there in the pathetitude sweepstakes with apartheid South Africa's "Make Babies for Botha" campaign in the mid-1980's aimed @ increasing white birth rates in the name of "patriotic and racial duty."

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THE RELIGIOPOLITICAL RIGHT'S UNEASE WITH JOHN McCAIN'S LIKELY VICE-PRESIDENTIAL OPTIONS to the point of "values voters" perhaps boycotting the Presidential elections may actually be a back-door "blessing in disguise" for the Barak Obama camp, if Right Wing Watch articles here and here are any indication.

But then again, remember that "bad leaders are elected by good people who don't vote." Especially because some are of the view that Indecision 2008 may be all the more important for the future of our antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity, and whether the "New World Order" will "undermine" same.

For more information on voter registry, see what Project Vote Smart has in store in this respect. And to avoid the prospect of "caging" come November, you may want to inspect the Electoral Register in your precinct and check same for outdated or inaccurate information, and correct any such.

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A CLASSIC EXAMPLE OF AN AUTHENTIC "BLOOPER" FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF THE LATE KERMIT SCHAEFER, who made a career out of collecting, and putting to gramophone popdisks, such specimens of broadcast lapses linguć until it emerged that several of his "blooper" album collections actually contained reconstructions or outright fakes (the fact of which wasn't clearly disclosed to purchasers), was the overzealous announcer (Metropolitan Opera radio host Milton Cross being frequently named) who urged his listeners "and now, stay stewed for the nudes" when he meant "...stay tuned for the news."

How much longer before we hear, heading into the late local news bulletin, "and now, stay stewed for your local nudes"?

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NO WONDER THE CONWEB'S SO-CALLED "NEWS PORTALS" CAN'T QUITE BE TRUSTED AS CREDIBLE SOURCES OF NEWS AND INFORMATION, let alone prolefeed, and in more ways than one.

Let Right Wing Watch explain it all for you:

The AP's Nedra Pickler caught the right-wing website WorldNetDaily in particularly fine form yesterday while researching a story about Jerome Corsi, a serial liar and 9/11 conspiracy theorist who writes for the site:

"Corsi writes for World Net Daily, a conservative Web site whose lead headline Thursday was "Astonishing photo claims: Dead Bigfoot stored on ice."

[Right Wing Watch was first to report the Corsi/Bigfoot nexus yesterday]

Pickler also quoted an Obama spokesman, whose review of Corsi's new book–if it even counts as a book–was less than positive:

"Jerome Corsi is a discredited liar who is peddling another piece of garbage to continue the Bush-Cheney politics he helped perpetuate four years ago," said Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor. "His is just one of what will likely be many more lie-filled books rushed to print this election cycle, which are cobbled together from debunked Internet sources to make money and advance a partisan agenda. We will respond to these smears forcefully with all means at our disposal."

If WorldNetDaily is any indication, there is apparently money to be made in running a debunked Internet source, especially when you run fabulous ads like these:

Ours is not the sort of blog as would accept questionable or otherwise disreputable affiliate programmes of the ilk above illustrated; the better to protect you, dear reader. On the other hand, though, Your Correspondent invites you to avoid bedlam and confusion for the sake of going environmental, for starters:

(For other online-shopping opportunities--and I mean such of the kind as are worth your time, money and bandwidth--just see the left-hand side of the screen. And your purchases will, in reasonable measure, help support Some Good Causes.)

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"Money is the root of all evil."
Why not invest yours in United States Savings Bonds?

(Or, for that matter, contribute towards reduction of the National Debt, just one of the Good Causes which this weblog is committed to supporting from the proceeds of online shopping.)

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YES, WHAT IS THERE TO THINK ABOUT FOR THE SAKE OF THIS BLOG AS THE WEEKEND APPROACHETH?

As in the final weekend of state fairs in West Virginia and Wyoming (as close on Saturday) and Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Missouri (as close on Sunday), not to mention the opening such for state fairs in California and Kentucky--and also, for our Canadian friends, the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE, a/k/a "The Ex") in Toronto.

Next week sees, in addition to the Minnesota State Fair, openings of state fairs in Nevada (from Wednesday until the 24th) and, until Labour Day, such in Alaska and New York (on Thursday) and Colorado, Maryland, Nebraska and Oregon (on Friday).

The Exaggerator wishes good luck to all competitors, be they in Open Class, FFA or 4-H competitions.

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CONTINUING WITH THE RUSSO-GEORGIAN WAR, IT APPEARS AS IF RUSSIA IS CLAIMING GEORGIA FIRED THE FIRST SALVOS THEREOF--HOWBEIT VIRTUAL, and by way of cyberattacks on Russian Information Stuporbahn servers from what Moscow claims are Georgian-based hackers.

Has anybody considered the possibility that the "Georgian hackers" were really remotely-controlled from American "botnets" with connexions to the Great Within, all the while expected to deny that such is really nothing short of a "false flag" campaign for corrupt and sick political purposes?

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AND ANOTHER THING:

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) hath it that some 118,000 Georgian nationals (especially so in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, both @ the heart of the conflict) have become refugees or otherwise displaced in consequence of the Russian bestiality, creating a potentially serious situation for relief agencies.

Which is enough to ask how racists and white supremacists would regard ethnic Georgians from the standpoint of "European Peoples" being "racially and morally superior," and the defence of their "antient and pecuilar status" being one with that of American "soverignty and soverign identity, antient and pecuilar."

(The Nazis, of course, were likely to place ethnic Georgians in the same "sub-human" category they regarded the Russo-Slavic peoples generally.)

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WHY ENERGY SELF-SUFFICENCY AS A MATTER OF NATIONAL IDENTITY MATTERS ALL THE MORE: Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens has gone on record as not only calling on both major Presidential candidates to show commitment to articles of faith towards energy indepenedence ... but has also suggested where crude oil prices on the commodities markets are all the more likely to see a floor of $100/bbl. within measurable distance.

Making my previous Appeal to Reason on energy self-sufficency all the more important, as well as worth sharing all the more--especially so with your Congressional Delegation, what with the GOP's Congressional Majordomos calling for timely action on the offshore drilling issue, and their threats for forcing a shutdown of the Government unless a vote on same is called within measurable distance.

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KUDOS THE HUMMER AGENCY IN WEST HARTFORD, CT who is wisely dropping the line (and letting remaining stock go @ fire-sale prices), to switch over to selling mopeds and "plug-in" electric automobiles after Labour Day, citing gas prices likely to approach $5/gallon all the more prompting "right-thinking" motorists to reconsider fuel-inefficent SUV's in favour of fuel-efficent mopeds with 60 MPG and more, depending on manufacturer.

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MEMO TO FOX PROLEFEED, WITH PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO CARL CAMERON: May I refresh your memories @ this time with the following remarks made on the Your World with Neal Cavuto broadcast of the 12th instant, as transcribed by Media Matters for America (emphasis added)--and don't get any ideas that these are somehow "misquoted" or otherwise "not in proper context:"

Senator McCain today in York, Pennsylvania, here at the York, Pennsylvania, fairgrounds, had a crowd of about 2,000 people, and when the Straight Talk Express rolled into the actual facility, a big crowd roaring. Senator McCain opened his remarks talking about his conversation with the Georgian president, talking about the crisis there, saying that he believes that there is a true strategic imperative for the world to take notice and make sure that Georgia is protected because of its oil pipeline, one that does provide energy access across the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea -- a very, very important position for energy independence for the United States to make sure that those sorts of things are protected.

In our interview, we talked with him at length, and he suggested that it is entirely likely that the United States failed to recognize the threat of Russia and, particularly, its former president Vladimir Putin.

Uh, Mr. Cameron--since when did oil pipelines connecting Kazakh and Azerbaijani oil fields to Black Sea terminal ports via Georgian soverign territory become "very important for energy independence for the United States"?

Shouldn't you know that "energy independence" essentially calls for policies based on self-sufficency from purely domestic sources? (You may want to think here about North Korea's long-standing belief in juche--"self-reliance"--as one with the national and soverign identity of an essentially isolationist and Stalinist regime with deluded notions of its own importance reeking of projection.)

And what prevents your making a timely apology for this erratum of fact?

"Orders from [your] superiors," as in Keith Rupert Murdoch?

Fear of being exposed as poor judges of geography?

Fear of "public trust and confidence" in Fox Prolefeed being all the more compromised, knowing (un)consciously all the while that some of your most avid viewers are probably poor, undereducated, easily-influenced and socioeconomically-marginalised?

Or what otherwise obstructs the common courtesy of an apology when false, misleading or erroneous information is exposed to air and sunlight? 

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ED GARVEY, WRITING IN THE NEW IMPROVED "VIRTUAL" VERSION OF THE CAPITAL TIMES (MADISON, WI) THE OTHER DAY, offers some worthy advice for those following the poll numbers in Indecision 2008 for cluedos as to who will win.

Better let Mr. Garvey explain it all for you--and be sure to share it with your friends and e-mail circles:

A couple of weeks ago, I raised questions about presidential polling in general and the Quinnipiac University's polling in particular. Should you rely on polls or not? I was chastised by a University of Wisconsin political science prof for raising questions about Quinnipiac's polling. Not since I questioned papal infallibility in sixth grade have I been dispatched to the corner so vigorously. I was even told to apologize to Quinnipiac.

I have no beef against Quinnipiac and I wish them well. But I wish them and all the other pollsters more transparency in polling.

Polling is a big part of campaigns. For example, if a poll shows that your candidate's negatives are higher than his positives, David Broder, Charlie Cook, and other Washington establishment types will write off your guy and then the big contributors won't give any more money. Your candidate is finished, washed up, kaput, all based on polling data that, I dare say, is not verified by anyone.

Give old Quinnipiac a rest. Look instead to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and its most recent article based on a poll issued by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute on Aug. 7. The headline screamed that only 17 percent of voters in Wisconsin think the country is "headed in the right direction," whatever that means. Bad news for McCain? Maybe, but read this and think again: "Despite a poisonous climate for the party of the president, the same survey puts Republican John McCain within shouting distance of Democrat Obama in the state." So the poll is good for McCain. He is swimming up stream but making progress despite Bush's terrible numbers.

The poll may be accurate but it may be gibberish. More to the point, it may be a calculated effort to influence results by helping a favored candidate. What is WPRI? Who pays the bills? Where does it get its money? Who sits on the board? I looked in the Journal Sentinel article for some explanation of WPRI. The story was written by a veteran journalist who must know the institute is a front for the arch-conservative Bradley Foundation. WPRI admits on its Web page, to its credit, that the Bradley Foundation has contributed millions to it. (Right-wingers have, in fact, given over $8.4 million to the institute.) The Journal Sentinel tells us WPRI is "a local think tank that has been polling in the state since the late 1980s." Thank you very much, but why not tell the readers the board of the Bradley Foundation is so far to the right they can't even see the highway let alone the yellow line marking the middle of the road?

The only quote is from Jim Miller, president of WPRI, and he makes it clear that McCain has his work cut out for him. Miller didn't say why the poll was released, who paid, or the actual questions asked. Is WPRI setting up the public to see "a tightened race" in Wisconsin as the GOP convention rolls into our post-Labor Day consciousness? If McCain is 5 points behind in September, WPRI can remind us how low his party was in early August--the "big mo" is on his side. Too cynical? I don't think so.

WPRI tells us that war and the economy are top issues. (They needed a poll to figure that out?) How does the Journal Sentinel deal with the fact that this poll shows a much closer race between the candidates than other polls? "Experts caution about comparing different surveys taken by different pollsters." And the cow jumped over the moon. Who are these anonymous "experts" and who selected them, the Journal Sentinel or the Bradley Foundation?

Once again, who pays, who frames the issues, who designs the questions, who decides when to poll and whether to release the results? Ask and you shall not receive. Seems to me we need a "truth in polling" rule. Who is behind the curtain? Would information about WPRI and its relationship with Bradley have permitted a more critical reading of the Journal Sentinel story? I think so and, I have to admit, I remain skeptical about papal infallibility.

In other words, "read between the lines."

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IN THE WAKE OF THE RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY'S CLAIM THAT THE REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA'S TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY AND SOVERIGNTY IS ESSENTIALLY REVOKED, such begs this question of Your Correspondent:

If The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang (t/n John McCain) was claiming the other day that "we [i.e., the presumaly Right-Thinking American Peoples] are all Georgians" (as in showing "wholehearted and unswerving solidarity" therefor, not unlike that shown for Belgium following the German invasion and rapine thereof during World War I), then where are all the displays of the Georgian flag as a visible display thereof?

Which, for the interested, is as thus (hat tip to Flags.net):

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NO WONDER THE ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS IN RACISM AND WHITE SUPREMACY HAVE REASON TO BE PARANOID--BE VERY PARANOID, come to think of it:

Just-released Census Bureau estimates suggest that, by the 2020 Census, whites will be a "minority majority" (so to speak), making up 46% of the American population--which will be rounded out by substantial increases in Latino populations (30%), thanks to immigration and higher average birth rates among Latino peoples.

Blacks (15%) and Asian/Pacific Islanders (9%) will round out the American demographic of 2020.

Is it any wonder that racists and white-supremacists are urging Right-Thinking White Low Church Christians to prepare for the Coming Battles in case Barak Obama is elected President come November "to reclaim our antient and pecuilar rights, privileges and powers" based on flimsy "rights by conquest" arguments more than likely?

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SOMETHING FOR THE ZEALOTS AND TRUE BELIEVERS IN FREE-MARKET CAPITALISM AS GREAT WHITE FATHER TO THINK ABOUT AND PONDER, courtesy of Fortune magazine (via CNNMoney.com), about how far Zimbabwe's economy is being dragged all the closer to collapse--and, more than likely, its antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity under Robert Mugabe's excesses of power:

If purchased on the newsstand in Zimbabwe, the issue of Fortune you're holding would have cost you 270,543,825,555 Zimbabwean dollars. But don't worry about pulling your Weimar-era wheelbarrows out of storage. As of July you could pay for your magazine with three newly issued $100 billion bills.

This is what Robert Mugabe's government considers a reasonable strategy for coping with an inflation rate of more than 2,000,000%. Faced with the prospect of issuing ever more cash, Zimbabwe has opted for simply issuing bigger cash. And perhaps anticipating unwieldy arithmetic problems at the cash register, the government has also announced a longer-term plan to dispense with the zeroes entirely, turning $10 billion into $1.

The essential clumsiness of these responses betrays the government's lack of experience in remedying any policy problem with actual policy. Historically Mugabe's favorite, if only, policy tool is small and steely and comes in a variety of calibers. But at whom to point the gun? Market forces fail to manifest themselves in the form of persons who can be threatened with death and dismemberment.

Sticking a fork in dissidents

If anyone is to blame for the economic crisis, it's Mugabe himself. In 28 years he has managed to take one of the wealthiest countries in sub-Saharan Africa and ruin it in a stupefying variety of ways. He annihilated the agricultural sector (once a leading exporter of corn and tobacco) by seizing commercial farms and giving them to cronies who failed to use the land. In 1998 he prosecuted a kleptomaniacal war in the Congo, spending $1 million (U.S.) a day in hopes of stealing enough land and resources from the Congolese to make a profit. When Zimbabweans have tried to vote him out of office, he has punished them with violence and economic repression. A passage from "The State of Africa," by Martin Meredith, recalls the explanation offered to citizens for cutting off their food supplies: "First you will eat your chickens, then your goats, then your donkeys. Then you will eat your children, and finally you will eat the dissidents."

But most of the dissidents left the country before anyone could stick a fork in them. The exodus of skilled workers crippled the economy further. Businesses lost management and assets, while unskilled workers became refugees in neighboring countries that didn't have the money to support them- the latter transforming Zimbabwe's economic crisis into a regional one.

That Mugabe has any resources left to plunder is a function of what is increasingly a remittance economy. Zimbabwean memoirist Peter Godwin points out that members of the diaspora are keeping Mugabe in power when the money they send back to friends and relatives gets confiscated. "Often that money doesn't even physically get home," says Godwin. Zimbabwe's schools and health-care system have collapsed, but there's enough money left to pay for Mugabe's personal priorities: his mansions, wife Grace's shopping sprees, and loyalty-buying salary hikes for his security forces.

While Zimbabwe's self-destruction is extreme, other countries have managed to whip hyperinflation. Dollarization - a switch to a foreign currency - is one preferred remedy. Another remedy involves restraining government spending, a practice known as "shock therapy."

The first option is politically embarrassing for Mugabe (one can't very well issue daily polemics against the West and then adopt its dominant currency), and Mugabe is constitutionally incapable of the second. His only quick fix, then, as international pressure mounts and he is forced into talks with the opposition party, is to start from scratch - to move the decimal point a few spaces. But as long as he stays in power, there's nothing to stop the currency denominations from spiraling upward again as assets leave the country on the backs of the people. When will the moment of reckoning finally be at hand? When the bribery money runs out, as it surely will, his control of the military will erode, and Mugabe may find himself in a position familiar to the people he has oppressed- looking down the barrel of a gun.

Can we expect much the same warped and misguided excesses under a McCain Presidency, excused all the more as the defence of American Honour and Patriot Love in the face of an Evil Empire known as the New World Order prepared to "usurp our traditional soverignty and soverign identity without warning or notice"?

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SOMETHING WHICH THE TRUE BELIEVERS IN THE BOYCOTT BY THE SO-CALLED "AMERICAN FAMILY ASSOCIATION" AGAINST McDONALD'S for "refusal to play neutral in the culture wars [by] tacitly supporting the Homosexual Agenda" ought to think about for once:

In their overzealous defence of free-market capitalism as one with the defence of G-d, Country and Family--not to mention trying to interweave same with the defence of American soverignty "antient and pecuilar"--it seems the AFA must be yearning for idealised times as can be no more.

A time when Fair Trading laws and Reseller Price Maintenance Agreements were considered acceptable in the interest of protecting smaller retailers from "predatory competition."

A time when every city of some consequence had, not Wally World on the fringes, but the likes of a Woolworth's, Kresge's, Kress, Ben Franklin, McCrory's, Grant's, Murphy's or TG&Y downtown, usually with a lunch counter whose fare tended to what now would be called "comfort food" based on the "roast-and-two-veg" model. Usually to be complemented, especially in smaller communities, by agents for direct-selling companies like Watkins, McConnon's, Rawleigh, Furst-McNess, Fuller Brush and Jewel Tea.

A time when Walgreen's (and, for that matter, pretty much every drugstore) had a soda fountain/lunch counter in much the same vein as Woolworth's and kin, as above.

A time when the grocers were usually smaller "mom-and-pop" stores and supermarkets meant A&P, Kroger, Safeway, National Tea, Piggly Wiggly or some regional chain like Red Owl in the midwest, Winn-Dixie in the southeast or First National Stores in the Northeast.

A time when home mortgage loans were the domain of building-and-loan associations and consumer loans were on the Morris Plan, requiring two comakers "to guarantee creditworthiness" and the purchase of Installment Thrift Certificates equal to the face value of the loan on weekly payments.

Not to mention a time in which women were essentially no better than sex machines @ the will of the husband, who could legally get away with spousal abuse and rape (in fact, you may recall my mentioning previously an obscure Alabama law as allows husbands to beat uncooperative wives with "a stick no larger than the thumb," length not otherwise specified) and children were essentially plum targets for abuse @ the whim of the parents, any reports thereof to be dismissed as "less than credible" ... not to mention anyone holding contrarian views openly setting themselves up for commitment proceedings to the state hospital based on hearsay evidence.

Is this what America means to the "American Family Association" and the True Believers thereof, usually poor, undereducated or homeschooled, easily influenced and socioeconomically marginalised to the point of vulnerable?

more cat pictures

IF THERE'S ONE REASON WHY THESE ELECTIONS ARE ALL THE MORE IMPORTANT FOR DETERMINING THE FUTURE COURSE OF OUR BELOVED NATION, not to mention our presumably "morally superior" society (or so the Zealots and True Believers in Neoconservatism want us believing and accepting as an article of faith in True Americanism), consider especially how "compassionate conservatism" wants to view the Lower Classes:

With nothing but contempt. Pure, unadulterated contempt.

Reflected all the more in lower-income communities being deliberately targeted all the more, thanks to "regulatory relief," for the likes of:

• liquor stores;
• adult-oriented businesses;
• taverns, bars and nightclubs;
• lottery outlets;
• second-rate grocery and convenience stores with limited selection;
• "liberal credit" stores;
• "dollar stores;" and
• "sub-prime" loan companies.

All based on the delusion conservatives have that the Lower Classes cannot be expected to make wise decisions, and all the more so because Natur made them inferior all the more ... and, hence, their need to be kept all the more so by special rules and laws to keep them all the more in control.

Notwithstanding all manner of platitudes and bromides in their propaganda about the "last and only hope for saving the Lower Classes from themselves" being "empowerment" by way of the free market and mutual self-help, in effect expecting the Lower Classes to figure out the solution for themselves without any sort of outside help "lest they develop tendencies towards dependency"--a real cop-out right there, as the Lower Classes obviously need assistance to establish the groundwork for mutual self-help programmes, as well as technical support.

Which is enough to ask where it follows that only the free market can save the Lower Classes all the more while dumping upon them the worst excesses therefor in the name of "defending the Natural Order" as excuses the perpetuation of such inferiority, any and all profit ensuing restricted to an "elect***entitled as of right" based on "unwritten habit and custom," expected to take precedence over statute law.

Said "unwritten habit and custom" expected to be based on "the Natural Law, the Laws of Nature and of Nature's G-d" if and when pressed.

So where ought the Lower Classes turn if they expect any chance towards empowerment beyond Vice, Intemperance, Folly and Waste, and the establishments so perpetuating, profiting from deliberate misery?