Sacred?
We're seeing a misuse, more precisely an inverse use, of the word sacred.

The hole left by the Twin Towers is called sacred by defenders of America who are trying to stop the Cordoba Arab Victory Monument. I understand their impulse, but it's backward and counterproductive.

What happened on 9/11 was a desecration of our Christian soil by filthy Arabs acting on behalf of a vicious Stone Age anti-god.

It is only sacred to the idolatrous Arab vermin, who now own the site.

Calling this spot sacred implies that we are on the same side as the Arabs. The term is thus fully appropriate when used by Grand Vizier Obama and Pasha Bloomberg, who are on the same side as the Arabs. But the term shouldn't be used by Americans. When we call the site sacred we only show ourselves to be weak and sad and pathetic, incapable of responding to the desecration.

If an American government had existed in 2001, it would have responded by desecrating Mecca and Medina with 100-megaton bombs, then filling the radioactive craters with 100 megatons of bacon and whiskey.

Mutually Assured Desecration.

This is a war between religions, not just an opportunity to whimper and snivel and display teddy bears.

Or rather it would have been a war between religions if Sultan Bush hadn't unconditionally surrendered to his Arab vermin masters.
  ¶ 11:14 AM

  Is this an inside joke?
Thoroughly puzzled by the new ad for Discover Card. The basic theme isn't new: Americans are tired of reaching Hindus with fake American names when they call for service, and Americans are tired of seeing call center jobs go to Hindus.

Discover claims that its call centers are actually in America, which is a valid selling point. But the 'optics' are completely puzzling.

After you hear the Hindu male who claims his name is Peggy, you've formed an accurate image of the slender dark-skinned guy with a mustache, sitting in a vast boiler room with hundreds of cubicles.

The reveal is entirely different: Your Favorite Professor. Looks vaguely Jewish, curly hair, small beard, comfortably plump, amused smile, wearing a cardigan, sitting in a professorial office.

Huh? I understand why they can't show the Hindu reality in visual terms. ACLU would rip them to shreds. But why use good old Prof Weinberg?

= = = = =

A few minutes later: Oh, now I get it. I was over-analyzing. They used the surprising image because it works. The ad stuck in my brain more specifically than other ads, and it stuck with a pleasant association to the brand. What more could an advertiser want?
  ¶ 8:28 AM

  Egg quality
Some are asking whether eggs have gone too far down the road of low cost and mass production.

It's a good question.

First, we certainly pay less for eggs now than in previous decades. See this picture of a 1950 store. The best eggs (toward the right) are 49 cents a dozen, which inflates to $4.32 in today's cash. Safeway's eggs today cost less than half that.

Second, even aside from the lack of FDA inspection, the quality has definitely dropped. I started cooking for myself in 1970. Since I was a hippie-dippie vegetarian at the time, I fried a lot of eggs. Through the '80s I didn't cook much; I was busy and had plenty of money, so I mostly ate in restaurants. Around 2000, belatedly realizing the benefits of a good breakfast, I started cooking eggs again and immediately noticed a difference from the previous eggs. [Comparison is always easier across a gap than through a continuous period.] The 1970's eggs had consistently hard shells; I could always break them cleanly. The post-2000 eggs are much more fragile and inconsistent; it's way too easy to leave bits of shell in the pan.



Would I pay twice as much for better eggs? Yes.
  ¶ 6:19 PM

  Eco-bandit
This guy is in the same business as Algore and Maurice Strong, but he does it more directly and a lot less profitably.

Police are looking for a man who robbed a bank in Coeur d'Alene Friday evening. It happened at 6:00 p.m. at the Wells Fargo Bank branch on East Appleway.

Witnesses said a man entered the bank and threw cloth re-usable grocery bags at the tellers. The suspect demanded they hurry up and fill them. The man waved around a large caliber handgun. He then left the bank with an some cash. He was last seen riding a gray three-speed bicycle south on Government Way from Appleway.

You'd think a bike-riding bandit couldn't stay ahead of the cops, but this guy has managed 8 bank robberies over the last few months, all on his bike.

If they do finally pin him down and convict him, he's going to catch hell in prison. Criminals have a strong sense of vehicular status. A robber who drives a Kia instead of a Caddy will be humiliated; a three-speed bicyclist will quickly acquire a roomy rectum.
  ¶ 6:35 PM

  Sun is in charge as always!
Professor Polistra was impressed by the (nearly) continuous 200-year record of temperature and storminess at Armagh, Ireland. If we really want to look at climate scientifically, we should be dealing with just a handful of reliable records like this, instead of trying to cover the earth with a grid of "adjusted" (falsified) data.

The WUWT folks were focused mainly on temperature, but Prof P has been thinking more about overall conditions correlated to sunspots.



The upper chart is the "storminess" record from the Armagh data, spanning 1796 to 2002. The lower chart comes from an online chart of sunspots, with the horizontal axis of years aligned exactly the same.

After the gap (in the 1830's) it's a good match. You don't need to mix in any other factors, neither CO2 nor the El Niño-style oscillations.

The sun does it all.

The Svensmark theory tells us that more sunspots should mean somewhat less cloudiness on average, which means the surface gets a little warmer. Here we see more 'storminess', which includes wind and rain, at the times when the sunspots would make the surface warmer. The 'rain half' of storminess seems a little counterintuitive, but storminess depends more on upper-level wind currents and temperature gradients, not so much on the amount of available moisture.

= = = = =

Update: News today about the Farmers Almanac prediction for this winter. They see mild winter for the East, somewhat milder and drier than average here in inland NW, and blizzards in Midwest. They use sunspots and lunar phases for their predictions, which means they're right most of the time.

Most interesting part of the article was a response from one of the Official Crimatologists at NOAA:

Ed O'Lenic from NOAA's Climate Prediction Center said the scientific community doesn't accept tides, planetary alignment and sunspots as effective predictors of temperature or precipitation, but he stopped short of calling the almanac's meteorological methods a bunch of hooey.

"In science you have to have an open mind. Someday, someone could conceivably find some scintilla of evidence that it's useful," O'Lenic, chief of the operations branch, said of the almanac's methodology. "For the time being, we have to stick with what produces results for us."

This is one of those deliciously Orwellian glimpses into the murderously diseased cranial appendages (I can't say minds) of our infinitely evil Communist Masters.

(1) "In science you have to have an open mind."

and then immediately,

(2) "Someday someone could find some scintilla of evidence..."

Some scintilla? Comrade Eddie m'boy, you fucking snobbish dickhead, look at the chart above, which is just packed with scintillae of real evidence. Of course you wouldn't be able to read it anyway, since it consists of actual data derived from actual observations, which is Kryptonite to your monstrous Godzilla-like compound eyes.
  ¶ 5:54 PM

  Taking the First
The "discussion" of the Cordoba Victory Monument And Terrorist Training Center in NYC has degenerated into one standard line: "The Muslims have the right to place the mosque there, but is it right?"

It's a tiresome line and a tiresome play on words, but it points to a basic understanding by most Americans.

By analogy: When a defendant in court or a witness in a Congressional hearing Takes The Fifth, we understand that he is actually guilty, and we also understand that he is getting a privilege we wouldn't get in ordinary life. Though court decisions have tried to reinforce the delusion that not guilty means the same thing as innocent, tried to state ever more starkly and rigidly that you are not allowed to draw any conclusions from common sense, juries persist in applying common sense. Thank God.

In this case we understand that the Mohammedans do not have the right to place a Victory Monument And Terrorist Training Center on the site of their victory, or any other place for that matter. We understand that previous legitimate governments of America (i.e. govts prior to the Bush-Obama Dynasty) did not allow enemies to build military bases and propaganda stations on our land in time of war. And we understand that the Mohammedan enemy is getting a privilege that no Christian ever gets.

In this case Pasha Bloomberg and Grand Vizier Obama are Taking The First: misusing the Constitution as a tool to destroy common sense and destroy America.

We are still unwilling to state the plain and obvious truth: Just as trial judges who overturn valid jury decisions are illegitimate, just as appellate judges who overturn valid public referenda are illegitimate, a "government" that insists on giving the enemy more privileges than it gives to Americans is traitorous, treasonous and illegitimate.
  ¶ 9:04 AM

  A middle-size step
News item, via the China-sucking boys at NRO who obviously don't like it:

The Obama administration, vowing to crack down on countries such as China that it says help subsidize exports of cheap goods to the U.S., introduced 14 measures to toughen enforcement of trade laws.

Proposals offered yesterday include changes to make it harder for individual companies to be excused from country-wide duties, adjustments in methods of anti-dumping calculations and alterations to how labor rates are calculated when determining if products are being sold at artificially low prices.

“Generally, this is targeted at China, and China will see it as such,” said David Spooner, a former Bush administration official who is now a trade lawyer with Squire Sanders in Washington and represented Chinese companies in a tariffs disputes. “The aim is to raise the price of goods from China.”

Good. Better would be unilateral 20% tariffs on all Chinese shit, but we're not going to see that. Best would be a blockade, but we're not even going to imagine that.
  ¶ 5:00 AM

  Media as jihadis
Dan Gainor has reached the same conclusion that Polistra came to a couple weeks ago. The media in DC and NY are active and conscious participants in Jihad.
  ¶ 10:09 AM

  Realignment
Can't quite pin it down, but there's a distinct change in two of the main brand-R talkers lately.

Rush is sounding notably more populist: almost pro-union, focusing more on religion and nationality, less on taxes and spending.

At the same time, Jerry Doyle is moving away from populism toward pure Mitch McConnell Repooflican talking points. "Taxation is theft!" and "Yeah, Bush may have spent a few unnecessary pennies, but Obama is spending $4,356,987,113,581.23 every minute!!!!!!" and all that trivial partisan crap.

Wonder if the change has something to do with female influence? Rush was married recently, and Doyle lost his long-time girlfriend at about the same time.

Hypothesis: Female influence = less attention to raw numbers and more attention to the actual welfare of Americans?
  ¶ 6:21 AM

  He said, she said
Predictable coverage of the stem-cell decision by Royce Lamberth, who has been the SOLE LEGITIMATE Federal appellate judge for many years. (How has he continued to hold office, I wonder? He rules for the Constitution and against the Party fairly often in important cases. Why hasn't he already been crazified or honey-trapped by the Party?)

The "news" media are telling us about all the researchers who will lose funding because Judge Lamberth has now enforced the existing law. They don't tell us what those researchers have accomplished, because they haven't accomplished shit. They also don't tell us about the accomplishments of adult stem-cells, because that line of research has yielded many actual cures without needing to kill babies.

And the "news" media are formulating the decision in a predictable way: "Lamberth says that Federal law requires the funding to stop."

No, he doesn't say it, the law says it.

Congress could change the law to satisfy the Cult of Death, but that's not going to be easy, thank God. Congress hates to change any law, preferring to let the judges handle that job; and many of the Dems who would like to kill babies are held back by their majority-Catholic constituents.
  ¶ 5:06 AM

  Egg panic
Another day, another panic.



The national media have given out an ever-increasing set of 'plant codes' that indicate the bad eggs. I looked at the last package of eggs I bought. It has the Lucerne brand, which is supposedly among the brands from the bad Iowa plant. The number on the end of the box isn't among the set of bad codes, but it doesn't resemble the pattern that the media gave. Supposedly the plant codes have a pattern like P1939, but the only number on the end of this package is 205D. Is this a different kind of code? Is the bad code hiding elsewhere? Nothing in the news stories answers this question.

I got the answer the next time I went to Safeway. The store has lots of big signs telling customers that the Wash state Safeway stores get their eggs from in-state sources, not from the bad Iowa plant.

Okay, so no problem here. I trust Safeway because I've seen them yank food from the shelves in previous recalls of other products. When it's bad they pull it; when it's good they sell it.

But why don't we get this info from the local media? Supposedly the whole point of having newspapers and TV stations is that the media have the time, expertise and authority to find out what's happening.

None of the local media bothered to do this; they'd rather spread a panic about food that is not sold here. Their actual job is to spread lies and panic, not to inform the citizen.

= = = = =

CORRECTION!

As of noon 8/23, KREM-TV has finally done the right thing, talking to local grocers and picking up local information.

According to the Spokane Regional Health District, they have treated 7 confirmed cases of salmonella illnesses related to eggs since January 1. SRHD officials say that number is about average, or perhaps one or two more than normal. It is unknown whether the illnesses were caused by eggs eaten in restaurants or at home.

KREM 2 News spoke with several grocery stores, and most managers confirmed either none of the contaminated eggs were sold in their stores, or they do not carry the eggs that have been recalled.

Bravo KREM!
  ¶ 8:11 AM

  The scam
I'm finally convinced that there's nothing Neo about Neocons. They were New York leftists before they 'converted', and they're still doing leftist work. Fake conversion. They're still Commies, and they're now taking revenge for what Reagan did to Russia.

Reagan steered Russia to spend itself into oblivion and to use up its armed forces in Afghanistan. Now these New York Neo-Coms (beginning with Comrade Bush Senior) have steered America to spend itself into oblivion and to use up its armed forces in Afghanistan.

How do they do it? Exceptionalism is the keystone of the scam, as Orlov sees clearly.

Here's how a homeowner would implement Exceptionalism. He would put a sign in his front yard:



And why is the homeowner not at home? Because he's busy building houses and plumbing systems in some foreign country, to help the burglars and bums in some other country become Exceptional by observing his Exceptionality at first hand.

There's nothing Neo or new about Exceptionalism. In earlier times it used to be called "Abject Surrender".
  ¶ 10:44 AM

  Gaians discover fire!!!!!
The self-stupefied civilization-destroying Luddites may be backing off on their bloodthirsty desire to turn the clock back beyond Neanderthal times. Maybe they'll be satisfied with the Bronze Age?
  ¶ 10:08 AM

  Untuning from cable


Since switching from cable TV back to antenna, I've noticed an interesting change of attitude. Shouldn't have been a surprise, since Polistra has been preaching the idea repeatedly ... but in human thought it's always the Delta that matters, the change from one mode to another, and I hadn't experienced the change in this direction before.

Here's the diff:

When you have about 50 choices available, each choice has low value, low 'sticking power'. You always assume that something better must be just around the next corner on the clicker, so you keep clicking. Most of the time, nothing better is available, but you don't really stop to notice this fact. Hope overcomes experience and you just keep clicking, seeking Nirvana.

When you have about 5 choices available, each choice has more weight. You can hold 5 options in memory, so you know what's around the corner. Most of the time, nothing better is available, so you shut off the TV. But if the current channel is fairly good, you'll stick with it and allow a bit more room for appreciation; your attention is focused here instead of trying to be everywhere.
  ¶ 2:23 PM

  Mother-in-law, new car, cliff * 3
I have triply mixed feelings about the rape accusations against Julian Assange of WikiLeaks.

(1) Such accusations are usually false, and in ordinary circumstances I'd automatically distrust the prosecutor more than the accused. But in this case, even if the accusations are false the target is so wonderfully deserving. An arrogant Commie asshole who presumes to decide which secrets shall be leaked, while carefully concealing his own methods from press scrutiny.

(2) It's good to see a dirty trick played against this dirty trickster, but why in the world can't we simply charge him with espionage and pursue him on that basis? He has unquestionably committed espionage, and that would be a much more straightforward accusation.

(3) The Afghan war is such a stupid and suicidal mission for the US that I'm happy to see it halted in any way possible; but Assange's espionage unfortunately won't weaken the DC government's resolve. If anything it will strengthen their desire to continue consuming our resources and soldiers, just to prove a point.
  ¶ 8:35 AM

  North neglect
After certain kinds of brain damage a patient may exhibit left neglect or right neglect. He can still see things on that side of the body, can still move that side, but only when he consciously focuses. Most of the time he won't notice things on that side and won't deal with events there.

The city and media of Spokane have a similar problem with the north half of town, which is large, well-established and broadly lower middle class. Addresses in this area seem to be unknown. The media generally skips stories here, or mislabels the location, sometimes describing it as West, sometimes as Downtown, sometimes as East.

Heard a prime example last week on a local "about your money" investment show. The host was describing the subjective nature of value, using Spokane real estate as a metaphor. He was saying that a house on the South Hill would sell for 25% more than a precisely identical house in the Valley, because the South Hill has prestige. His sidekick asked "What about the North side?" and the host said "Well, we don't need to mention that, do we?" in a condescending tone that would be instantly readable by outsiders to mean "The North side is the black part of town." But it isn't! In fact there's only one small concentration of blacks in Spokane, and it's within the South Hill. There are poor and rich areas, low-crime and high-crime areas scattered everywhere. (Spokane is uniquely scattered and homogenized, as Polistra described here.)

Yet for this investment show host, along with the rest of the ruling class, the North side is just intolerably unimaginable. Terra Incognita. Here be dragons.



Another example: The city website had been listing a construction project on the west end of Wellesley, scheduled to start Aug 16. Since Monday the media have been "reporting" that this section of Wellesley is now closed, so you need to take the detours listed on the signs.

Trouble is, the west end of Wellesley has not been closed. Nothing is happening there; no roadblocks, no equipment, no detours. The city hasn't even put up the usual pre-project announcement signs warning us that the street is about to be closed for repairs. And the bus line hasn't issued a Rider Alert, which they generally do when a detour is scheduled.

I was puzzled, so I emailed one of the TV stations yesterday. It appears that they actually read the email (though they didn't bother to reply to a non-existent resident of a non-existent area) and they also must have checked with the city, triggering a brief wake-up from its Northwest Neglect.

Today the morning traffic reports are no longer "reporting" that this part of Wellesley is closed, and the city's website now says that the project will start Aug 30.
  ¶ 5:33 PM

  Nice touch
The owner of OtrCat.com sent an unusual 'brochure' to his regular customers today.

Many of our listeners have mentioned the benefits of exercise while listening to old time radio shows. It's never too late to make healthy lifestyle changes and everyone can benefit from moving their body. While listening to old time radio shows while exercising, you will be done before you know it.

If you are new to exercise, try walking around your living room 3 times a week while listing to a 5-minute radio show like Five Minute Mysteries or Ellery Queen Minute Mysteries. After a couple of weeks, move on to 15-minute radio shows like the 5-part Yours Truly Johnny Dollar series. When you are feeling stronger, try walking for longer lengths of time to 30-minute radio shows like Dragnet or your favorite radio drama.

Honor your body and know where your physical limits are. Modify workouts to fit your needs. Remember any activity is better than none, even if that just includes tapping your toes to old time radio shows!

Happy Listening and Happy Health!
Jon

Excellent advice, mixing commerce with public service in a way that was common in radio before TV knocked it out. Though not really personal, it shows a concern for the well-being of his customers that you rarely hear from businesses today.
  ¶ 5:36 PM

  No, that's not stimulus
Some interesting discussion at NRO today on FDR vs Obama, and the effects of Keynes and stimulus.

For some reason this clarified a point that Polistra has almost made before, but didn't quite hit square.

Here's another try:

What FDR did was not Keynesian stimulus. He didn't simply pour money into the economy and hope it bubbled up elsewhere. What FDR did was permanent rebuilding.

He started with an America where both agriculture and industry were running into problems, an America where too many good people were jobless.

One problem was an out-of-control investment system that served its own purposes at the expense of industry and farmers. FDR changed laws to clamp down on Wall Street, forcing it to serve the real economy better.

Another problem was an infrastructure that prevented agriculture and industry from expanding. We needed better roads and wider distribution of electricity to make automobiles, farm shipments, and labor-saving gadgets more practical. FDR set about improving the road system and electric system. Those expenditures are what we now call 'stimulus', but they bear exactly zero relationship to the modern use of stimulus.

And of course the rebuilding was designed to create the maximum number of family-supporting jobs.

What we're doing now is the opposite. Instead of regulating the banks, we're stimulating them to do more evil. And instead of rebuilding necessary parts of our infrastructure to encourage industry, we're just funding Federal and State government programs, stimulating them to continue spending wildly for no particular gain. (We are, however, building new infrastructure in enemy countries like Iraq and Pakistan, so they can fight against us more effectively in the future.)

We're not removing roadblocks and we're not building roads.

Polistra has already given the recipe for an FDR-style transformation of modern America.
  ¶ 1:48 PM

  No, we're not the fucking fools. You are.
News item:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans increasingly are convinced — incorrectly — that President Barack Obama is a Muslim, and a growing number are thoroughly confused about his religion.

A poll finds that nearly one in five people, or 18 percent, think Obama is Muslim, up from the 11 percent who said so in March 2009. The proportion who correctly say he is a Christian is just 34 percent.

The largest share of people, 43 percent, said they don't know his religion. That's an increase from 34 percent in early 2009.

The survey was conducted by the Pew Research Center and its affiliated Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Interviews took place before the controversy erupted over whether Muslims should be permitted to construct a mosque near the World Trade Center site.

Incorrectly????? First of all, AP is supposedly a secular news agency, not a branch of God's mind. If you're privileged with direct information from the Godhead, you might know whether one man is a Christian or a Mohammedan. Since you are only reporters who claim to disdain all religions, you have ABSOLUTELY NO BASIS to look into a man's heart and soul.

Confused???? There's quite a bit of circumstantial evidence that Pasha Obama is Mohammedan, and not much evidence that he's Christian. As Polistra noted during the election, Obama's biological father was in "my Muslim faith", which gives Barack a birthright membership; and Barack was raised in "my Muslim faith" for several years in Indonesia. Later he spent 20 years in Rev Wright's "church". Rev Wright was a Black Muslim before he called himself a Christian, and his preaching by all accounts was much closer to Malcolm X than to Christ. Pasha Obama seems far more comfortable in the culture and language of "my Muslim faith" than in the culture and language of Christianity.

Most convincing to me: When an important man starts out as a Mohammedan and then converts to an infidel faith, whether it's Christian or Buddhist or Atheist, the imams of the world issue fatwas against this apostate. If Pasha Obama truly converted, where are the fatwas?

= = = = =

Turning off the snark for a moment: The media standard of "correctness" shows how far we've gone down the road of Who-ism, the Cult of Personality. In their cranial cavities, Pasha Obama is a Christian because he says he's a Christian. That makes it an absolute fact of Nature, as simple and unarguable as gravity. Why exactly? Because any statement made by a Party Member of Royal Blood is a Fact of Nature. The King said it, I believe it, that settles it.

Statements made by non-Royals are the exact opposite. If Clarence Thomas was heard saying "Two plus two equals four", AP would handle it as follows: "Clarence Thomas, who somehow has the notion that he's somehow allegedly a Supreme Court justice, though we know better, has said the most bizarre and weird thing you could imagine. He said (are you ready for this?) he said that Two Plus Two somehow equals Four. Oh, ha ha ha ha hahahahahaha, can you believe the insanity? Everyone knows that Two Plus Two equals Four, not 'Four' as the idiot Clarence Thomas stupidly allegedly claimed. Hey idiot Clarence! Hey Uncle Tom Uncle Clarence Boy! Hey Boyyyyy! You're supposed to be a Christian, Boyyyyy. Haven't you ever heard of the commandment against Bearing False Witness, Boyyyyy? Well then, why are you trying to convince us of a falsehood like Two Plus Two Equals Four? Huh? Huh? Can't answer the question, can you, Uncle Boy? Gotcha! Gotcha! Gotcha!!!!!!!!"
  ¶ 7:24 PM

  Appointed better than elected?
Not exactly a trend, but still an interesting combination.

Supposedly, a politician elected with a good margin has 'capital', has the 'tailwind of public support' behind him, enabling him to take actions that offend the bureaucrats and elites.

Also supposedly, a politician who fell into office more or less by accident should lack 'capital', and should be timorous and cautious, letting the bureaucrats and elites run him.

Well, who are the courageous politicians this year?

Jan Brewer of Arizona, state Attorney General who fell into the governor's office when Comrade Napolitano was chosen as head of the federal Heimatssicherheitsdienst. Brewer immediately started to fight the Feds on immigration and hasn't weakened yet.

And now Gov Patterson of New York, who fell into office when Spitzer was honeytrapped. Patterson was clearly meant to be a weak pawn, yet he's now speaking courageously against the Cordoba Victory Arch.

Brewer and Patterson are both speaking for a huge percentage of the public, which means they are operating with the traditional 'tailwind'; they are behaving as the strong elected official supposedly should do.

But the elected officials in both cases are standing against the people, running with the treasonous bureaucrats and elites, behaving as the weak accidental politician supposedly should do.
  ¶ 3:25 PM