Discussing a legislative mandate which compels the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) to develop a comprehensive passenger- and freight-rail study--and suggests several worthwhile possibilities as could have Minnesota becoming a Midwestern leader in regional passenger-rail development.

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

"Don't read the headlines; read (and shop) The Exaggerator: Smartness ... with just a hint of pretension."

The lyrics thereof:

You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, "Who is that man?"
You try so hard
But you don't understand
Just what you'll say
When you get home.

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You raise up your head
And you ask, "Is this where it is?"
And somebody points to you and says
"It's his"
And you says, "What's mine?"
And somebody else says, "Where what is?"
And you say, "Oh my God
Am I here all alone?"

But something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You hand in your ticket
And you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you
When he hears you speak
And says, "How does it feel
To be such a freak?"
And you say, "Impossible"
As he hands you a bone.

And something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones ?

You have many contacts
Among the lumberjacks
To get you facts
When someone attacks your imagination
But nobody has any respect
Anyway they already expect you
To all give a check
To tax-deductible charity organizations.
You've been with the professors
And they've all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You've been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
You're very well read
It's well known.

But something is happening here
And you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you
And then he kneels
He crosses himself
And then he clicks his high heels
And without further notice
He asks you how it feels
And he says, "Here is your throat back;
Thanks for the loan".

And you know something is happening
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home".

Because something is happening
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Well, you walk into the room
Like a camel and then you frown
You put your eyes in your pocket
And your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law
Against you comin' around
You should be made
To wear earphones.

Does something is happening
And you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

(Hat tip to Down With Tyranny for recommending this number. And I think the gut-bucket piano in the background adds its own nice touch.)

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

"Don't read the headlines; read (and shop) The Exaggerator: Smartness, with just a hint of pretension." 

Some worthwhile advice from the good people @ FactCheck.org about chain e-mails sent in (presumed) service to the Greater Political Agenda of Indecision 2008 which you're likely to get through to November in your e-mail inbox:

That Chain E-mail Your Friend Sent to You Is (Likely) Bogus. Seriously.

March 18, 2008

by Lori Robertson

I've noticed that chain e-mails, particularly those about politics, have a lot of things in common: urgent and frightening messages; spelling errors; a tendency to blame mainstream media for not telling the real story; and false, misleading, utterly bogus, and completely off-base claims.

If there was ever a case where readers should apply a guilty-until-proven-innocent standard, this is it. We at FactCheck.org ask the public to be skeptical about politicians' claims. With these e-mails, outright cynicism is justified. Assume all such messages are wrong, and you'll be right most of the time.

Yes, there are a few chain e-mails floating around the Web that are actually true - but not many. And when it comes to messages about the top presidential contenders, truth in e-mail is an elusive quality. In our Ask FactCheck feature, launched late last year, we've looked into several e-mails our readers have sent to us. We're just getting started, but overwhelmingly they have turned out to be false. Snopes.com has been investigating e-mail and other urban legends since 1995, and the site's founders, Barbara and David Mikkelson, have written articles about 31 e-mails about Barack Obama and Hillary (and Bill) Clinton. Only two e-mails were completely accurate. While a handful had elements of truth in them or couldn't be verified, the vast majority were flat-out false.

Another writer who debunks rumor and lore is David Emery, author of About.com's Urban Legends page. He lists seven e-mails about Hillary Clinton and five about Barack Obama. His verdict: 12 false and misleading, 0 true.

We have yet to see e-mails about John McCain, and Emery notes a decidedly anti-Democrat tilt to the bulk of the e-mail chatter. But there's still plenty of time before the election. In 2004, a left-leaning e-mail claimed the Bush administration was quietly pushing legislation to reinstate the military draft. The claim was bogus, but the e-mail prompted such paranoia that a GOP-controlled House overwhelmingly voted down a bill to reinstate the draft just to show that it rejected the measure. Snopes has chronicled two claims about McCain - both were true, and one was a positive story.

In an e-mail to FactCheck.org, Emery says in 10 years of this line of work, he has looked into a thousand or so e-mails. Pressed to give a ballpark figure for how many are true, he responds: "I'd venture to say that less than a tenth of what's circulating out there at any given time turns out to be 100% true. A substantially larger portion - maybe around half of all the emails or a little more - contain a mixture of facts and falsehoods." Then, there's a little thing called "spin." "You can take a string of incontrovertible facts and present them in such a way that they point to a false conclusion."

As for e-mails with political themes, Emery, who has been at this longer than we have, says the phenomenon has increased greatly in recent years, with a marked surge in 2004 with attacks on John Kerry. "I'm tempted to say that Internet rumor-mongering has become, for lack of a better word, 'integral' to the political process over the past few election cycles." Internet-fueled innuendo has prompted stronger and quicker responses from the candidates, says Emery, who adds that it's unclear whether or not any of these e-mails were written by political staffers themselves. "It's possible, and I think even likely, that at least a few of these rumors were started by political operatives, but I'm not aware of any hard evidence of that."

More Popular = More Likely to Be Bogus

We've noticed that the more times something is forwarded, the more likely it is to be false. We suggested this perverse theory when we threw cold water on the claim that the United Kingdom, or the University of Kentucky, had stopped teaching about the Holocaust. E-mails about Obama, for instance, have been particularly popular - they now rank as No. 3 on Snopes.com's list of the 25 Hottest Urban Legends and one rumor holds the No. 1 spot in Emery's top 25. But only one of the e-mails these sites have examined is true - and actually only a certain version of it passes the truth test.

This is the one claiming that Obama didn't put his hand over his heart while the Star Spangled Banner played. That specific allegation is correct, as documented in a photo of presidential candidates at an Iowa steak fry. But it's false, as some versions of the e-mail said, that he "will NOT recite the Pledge of Allegiance nor will he show any reverence for our flag." We debunked this and other legends about Obama early this year after receiving a rush of questions about them. Again, for the record, he is not a Muslim, his middle name is not Mohammed, and he placed his hand on a Bible when he was sworn into the Senate. And he puts his hand over his heart when he says the Pledge of Allegiance. We even have pictures to prove it.

Still, two months after we wrote that story, we continue to get messages from readers asking about his patriotism, his religion, his church and whether he'll take the presidential oath with the Quran.

Often, the message itself includes major red flags that should alert readers that the author is not to be trusted. Here are just a few of what we'll call Key Characteristics of Bogusness:

• The author is anonymous. Practically all e-mails we see fall into this category, and anytime an author is unnamed, the public should be skeptical. If the story were true, why would the author not put his or her name on it?
  
  
• The author is supposedly a famous person. Of course, e-mails that are attributed to legitimate people turn out to be false as well. Those popular messages about a Jay Leno essay and Andy Rooney's political views are both baloney. And we found that some oft-quoted words attributed to Abraham Lincoln were not his words at all.
  
  
• There's a reference to a legitimate source that completely contradicts the information in the e-mail. Some e-mails will implore readers to check out the claims, even providing a link to a respected source. We're not sure why some people don't click on the link, but we implore you to do so. Go ahead, take the challenge. See if the information you find actually backs up the e-mail. We've examined three such e-mails in which the back-up material clearly debunks the e-mail itself. One message provided a link to the Tax Foundation, but anyone who followed it would have found an article saying the e-mail's figures were all wrong. Another boasted that Snopes.com had verified the e-mail, but Snopes actually said it was false. 
  
  
• The message is riddled with spelling errors. Ask yourself, why should you trust an author who is not only anonymous but partially illiterate?
  
  
• The author just loves using exclamation points. If the author had a truthful point to make, he or she wouldn't need to put two, three, even five exclamation points after every other sentence. In fact, we're developing another theory here: The more exclamation points used in an e-mail, the less true it actually is. (Ditto for excessive use of capital letters.)
  
  
• The message argues that it is NOT false. This tip comes from Emery, who advises skepticism for any message that says, "This is NOT a hoax!"
  
  
• There's math involved. Check it. One message that falsely claimed more soldiers died during Bill Clinton's term than during George W. Bush's urged, "You do the Math!" We did. It's wrong.
  

We hope that by writing about some of these messages we can enlighten a few readers and arm some of them with ammunition against their e-mail-forwarding friends. But clearly our battle against the viral e-mail monster has just begun. Months after debunking a popular piece of rubbish about Nancy Pelosi's plan to tax your retirement savings and give the revenue to illegal immigrants, we're still getting questions about whether it could possibly be true. Let me repeat: It's not.

In another item on a common falsehood (but not yet, as far as we know, an e-mail legend), we suggested that a reader try ridiculing his friends to dispel their apocryphal beliefs. And we were serious. If the cold hard truth - or even an ounce of common sense - isn't an effective weapon in combating a bogus notion, what is?

It seems that no matter the facts, the desire to believe some of this stuff is just too strong. Emery, too, has come to believe that there's not enough proof in the world to stop certain political propaganda. "I have come to the conclusion that especially where political rumors are concerned, most people are so locked into a particular world view that they tend to reject any information, no matter how well supported, that contradicts their cherished assumptions," he says. "It's scary, actually how polarized we have become."

In a 2004 report on this topic, our director, Brooks Jackson, called for an end to the e-mail madness, saying, "This cyber-sickness should stop. All it takes is a little bit of common sense and skepticism, some curiosity and a few keystrokes. Nailing these lies can even be fun."

Apparently, lots of Americans didn't heed the call. If you don't find checking out these e-mails to be fun, or just don't have time, I suggest an easier alternative: a healthy use of the delete key.

In other words: Just. Delete. It.

After all, as a friend of mine is fond of putting it, "if you fight with a polecat, you end up smelling like a polecat."

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

"Don't read the headlines; read (and shop) The Exaggerator: Smartness, with just a hint of pretension." 

A short "educational film" thanks to Mystery Science Theatre 3000. VERY funny, and @ once reflective of the Religiopolitical Right's vision of Traditional Family Values--only deflated in MST3K's own way.

(h/t to Brilliant at Breakfast for calling this video to our attention.)

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

"Don't read the headlines; read (and shop) The Exaggerator: Smartness, with just a hint of pretension."

The following was spotted in a discussion thread on Media Matters for America vis-a-vis comments made by Michael "Liberalism is a Mental Disorder" Savage (nee Weiner) claiming that "children's minds are being raped by the Homosexual Mafia."

The which takes the form of a supposed e-mail to Dr. Laura Schlesinger, herself rather notorious for holding homophobic views in the name of "mental hygiene;" I have taken the liberty of tidying up the original for the sake of clarity and neatness:

Dear Dr. Laura:  

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding G-d's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.  I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to follow them.  

a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?  

b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?  

c) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?  

d) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?  

e) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?  

f) Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of G-d if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?  

g) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.19:27. How should they die?  

h) I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?  

i) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev.24:10-16). Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev.20:14)  

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help.

Thank you again for reminding us that G-d's word is eternal and unchanging.

Which just goes to show that overzealous interpretation of Divine Will can only go so far.

A rather hilarious take on "educational" films from our younger days, this time dedicted to illustrating essential(?!) differences in the speaking styles of Barack Obama and John McCain (a/k/a The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang).

Not to mention the interrelated area of semiotics (that's the interpretation of body English) as part of public speaking technique.

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

"Don't read the headlines; read (and shop) The Exaggerator: Smartness, with just a hint of pretension."

...for this interesting suggestion in approaching National Minorities.

(But then again, how would Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and other propagandists for the cause of xenophobia, racism and intolerance react?)

No doubt this may sound like something out of Fox Prolefeed ... but it just so happens to be Keith Rupert's "quality" Fleet Street property, The Times of London, as noted where the German tabloid Bild was urging German vacationers to avoid a number of European vacation spots popular among the British thus:

"Dear Tommies, you don't want to go on holiday with us? No problem - we will play football without you this summer."

That was the gibe yesterday from Bild, Germany's mass circulation newspaper, in an ominous sign that Britain and Germany are cranking up for another summer of poolside conflict.

When David Barnish, 47, won £750 [about US$1,500] compensation last week for an unhappy holiday in Greece - spoilt, he argued, by the overwhelming presence of Germans and the German language - it was time to brush last year's sand off the clichés about German tourists: that they plan their holidays with military precision, storm the buffet and rise at dawn to capture sun loungers at resorts from Majorca to Egypt.

The Sun, which has crossed swords with Bild many times before, led the way with the headline: "Holiday from Helmut - Brits sue over holiday with Germans".

In the old days the Germans would have taken this lying down, perhaps with a tortured grin. Not to laugh it off would have given more life to a second cliché: that the Germans have no sense of humour.

Now, though, they are determined to give as good as they get. Hence the publication by Bild yesterday of a list of resorts traditionally dominated by the British, together with some choice comments on this country's diet, drinking habits and penalty-taking ability.

"Can I get my money back if there are too many Englishmen in my hotel?" asked Bild.

Sadly, no. "Even if the travel company announces in the brochure that the resort is ‘favoured by Germans'," said Uta Stenzel, an expert in German holiday law, "the tourist has to accept the possibility that he will spend his holidays with up to 90 per cent foreigners - above all with the English."

This is bad news for German travellers, who are famed for their readiness to take tour operators to court when they return home, often winning back 30 per cent of the value of their holiday if a cockroach was spotted in the restaurant.

So Bild's advice is simply to avoid the Brits on holiday.

"That's the best solution," Tanja Dauth, of the package company L'TUR, told the paper. "Avoid the best-known English holiday citadels when you book. We advise our customers which nationalities they can expect to encounter in their hotels."

Last weekend some of the German Sunday papers kicked off the "avoid the Brits" game with an analysis of the beaches in Majorca. The worst marks were awarded to Port de Pollença and Magaluf.

"Germans booking there will need to have an understanding of the very special British humour and drinking habits," the analysis said.

"As for those (vomit) stains on the promenade, they are what is left of the previous night's entertainment. The place is suitable for party-lovers who want to learn English on the side."

Magaluf also heads the Bild list of no-go areas - followed by San Antonio in Ibiza, Playa de las Americas in Tenerife, Ayia Napa in Cyprus and Faliraki on Rhodes.

Malia, in Crete, comes with a Bild health alert: "Binge drinking, sex and sand - three things that make this place on the east coast of Crete an attractive destination for the English."

Lest the Germans have a problem identifying the Brits abroad, Bild carried a field guide on its online version. One mildly upsetting picture showed two allegedly British females with their legs open, on sun loungers that they had apparently wrestled from the Germans.

Other anthropological studies offered by the paper include pictures of Britons binge-drinking (described by the paper as "a British invention"), anatomically challenged tourists ("athletically they are a disaster - they can't even take penalties") and Brits tucking into their grub.

And as Bild somewhat cruelly points out, Austria and Switzerland - the venue of this summer's European Championships - will be largely Brit-free zones this year.

What the Bild guide says about other English holiday destinations

Magaluf, Majorca: "For party-lovers who want to learn English on the side"

Ayia Napa, Cyprus: "The Brits prefer to celebrate with the Scandinavians in this former fishing port"

Playa de las Americas, Tenerife: "The hotels are high-rise and the nights are loud"

Malia, Crete: "Binge drinking, sex and sand - three things that make this attractive for the English"

Meanwhile, The Sun reported on the case thus:

A DAD who took his family to a luxury holiday hotel only to find they were surrounded by Germans was awarded £750 by a court yesterday.

David Barnish, 47, forked out £4,000 for the all-inclusive trip to the Greek island of Kos.

But on arrival at the 700-room Grecotel Park hotel with wife Karen and his three daughters, David grew suspicious as he noticed all the unoccupied sunbeds draped with towels - and the sound of just one distinctive accent.

He said: "We tried to join a windsurfing lesson and yoga classes but all the instructions were in German.

"My youngest daughter wanted to attend the kids' club but couldn't understand what was going on.

"Even the TV was in German, except for one channel."

The finance company boss, of Madeley, Staffs, claimed the Thomson break for Karen and daughters Molly, 12, Gemma, 19, and 21-year-old Kim was spoiled because the hotel did not cater for English people.

He said: "We entrusted Thomson with our holiday, going for an upmarket Premier Beachclub hotel for its facilities, but we weren't able to use many of them."

Yesterday Thomson holidays was told to pay David £750 at Stoke-on-Trent County Court for breach of contract.

Deputy District Judge Naish ruled that a customer going to a hotel featured in an English brochure "doesn't expect to have to press for activities to be accessible in their own language".

He added: "The brochure is significantly misleading."

David, who represented himself, said afterwards: "I'm not racist, as equally I wouldn't like my family holiday at a hotel overrun by English."

A Thomson spokesman commented: "We are sorry that Mr Barnish did not feel the entertainment on his holiday was what he expected. However, we are pleased with the outcome."

And if you're wondering how Bild reacted (howbeit in German), klik hier.

Perhaps one of the finest voices to come out of jazz in its formative stages, yet died so tragically young.

And whose message still packs power in this day and age; you can tell it from her voice.

Leonard Pitts, Jnr., of the Miami Herald offered the following thoughts recently on why West Virginia voters from among the ranks of "poor white trash" rejected Barack Obama in their recent Democratic primary--and what exactly belies inherent propensities for prejudice among the "white trash" element generally:

I keep thinking I should be mad at West Virginia.

Not because Barack Obama was recently beaten like a red-headed stepchild--to use my father's expression--in that state's primary. No, I'm thinking I should be upset about why he was beaten. According to exit polls, two out of every 10 voters said race was a major factor in how they cast their ballots.

Jon Stewart of The Daily Show ran a clip of a white woman who explained her refusal to vote for Obama thusly: ''I guess because he is another race. I'm sort of scared of the other race 'cause we have so much conflict with 'em.'' She spoke in the vaguely shamefaced, what're-you-gonna-do? voice of someone who knows she should stick to her diet or stop smoking, but just can't help herself.

You'd think this would have me in a state of high dudgeon, fingers blazing the keyboard in righteous rebuke of attitudes so atavistic and wrong. But I can't. Oh, it's disappointing to see bigotry in Appalachia so vividly displayed. Yet I find it doesn't make me angry.

It just makes me sad.

I feel sorry for them. If that sounds patronizing, I apologize. That's not how it's meant.

It's just that, if the headline here is that Obama was rejected by whites on the basis of race, I submit that's not the whole truth. Pollsters say he was actually rejected on the basis of race by whites who lack college degrees and whose household income is less than $50,000 a year. In other words, he was rejected by the poor and the less educated.

Which is a desription that fits many in Appalachia--and also a vast swath of African America. So for me, the story here isn't simply the old, familiar tale of the nation's stark racial divide, but also another tale, just as old, less often remarked, of how the white poor and the black poor have long been kept at one another's throats as a means of keeping them from looking too closely or clearly at the ways both are maniuplated by the forces of money and power.

And here, let me tell you what I am not saying. I'm not saying all bigots are poor or all the poor are bigots. I'm not saying everyone in Appalachia is poor, or less educated, or atavistic about race.

But I am saying this: The white poor have been victims of a con job going back at least as far as the Civil War, when poor white men were used as cannon fodder for the right of rich white men--I repeat: rich white men--to keep slaves. They were told they fought for state's rights.

From then till now, the white poor have often been the front line of white supremacy. You think people with college degrees and six-figure salaries are out there marching around under pointy white hoods, burning crosses? Hardly.

My point is that race has often been used as a means of distracting and diverting the white poor. They had little in life, nor any realistic expectation of having more.

But the one thing they did have--or so the con went--was whiteness itself. Which meant they had someone to be better than. Someone to look down upon.

This, even though they did menial work under menial conditions, earned menial pay, sent their kids to menial schools, were subject to menial indignities, made do with menial health care and lived menial lives hemmed in by want, ignorance and hunger.

Exactly like those they had been taught they were better than. Exactly like those they had been taught to look down upon.

There are those in positions of political power who can and should be held to answer for the meanness and narrowness of poor people's lives. But they can't and won't so long as those who should be standing together to demand those answers are kept busy fighting one another over superficialities of color and culture.

Those are differences that too often obscure commonalities--of need, of hope and of cause. Over the years, many of us have figured that out.

In West Virginia, at least, two in 10 of us have not.