Shift registers are cracked.

OK. But if used prior to another cipher wouldn't it substantially complicate the job of, say, looking for English letter distributions in a test decryption? I like the other explanation of the hash isolating the key bits from the whitening operation and adequately serving the same purpose as another source.

Traditional block ciphers are expensive bleach, take note. Unnecessary.

Expensive how? In terms of CPU time? What alternative makes traditional block ciphers obsolete?