NATIONAL
* Read every word. The part about how Obama behaves and dresses in the White House — You might have to write that off as third rate gossip, until his White House years are over and ex-syncophants start writing books. But I can believe that he is so narcissistic that he reads everything written about him that he can get his hands on. And the other parts are absolutely golden.
* Why? Because Gibson is a largely a Republican contributor, while Martin, its main competitor, is a big Democrat contributor, yet uses the same kind of wood. Because Obama is trying to intimidate people and businesses away from giving money to Republicans. Because Gibson is mostly a non-union shop, while Martin is mostly union.
Just like I bought Madden NFL ’12, even though I don’t have a video game system, don’t care about video games, only because they put a white running back on the cover, (I’ll find someone who would like it as a gift, surely), I’m going to buy some sort of Gibson guitar or instrument or product, even though I have no use for it, just for the politics of it all.
* Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, aka Hot Pants, wants to get sprung free because Muslims should only have to abide by Muslim laws and legal jurisprudence.
If he felt that way, he should have stayed in his precious Muslim portion of Nigeria with the precious Muslim legal jurisprudence he loves so much, instead of spoiling himself among us infidels, trying to kill some of ours in the process.
* Like I said, McCain virtually won the Republican nomination when he won the Florida primary in 2008. WSJ thinks that Florida, a relatively early state in 2012, could virtually decide the nominee again.
* An omission and a distortion — What they omit is that the ACT’s non-profit tax exempt status is being investigated and might be revoked because of Mr. Ferguson’s lavish compensation. And as far as Mr. Caperton, he tries to justify his massively increasing salary by pointing to the College Board/SAT organization’s revenue doubling since his tenure as CEO began in 1999. But the truth of the matter is that a monkey could have been CEO of the College Board and its revenue would have doubled — The reason its revenue doubled is because so many more students are voluntarily or involuntarily taking the increasingly expensive SAT tests and other College Board-designed tests, including the PSAT, the NMSQT and the various AP exams. It’s the whole mania of “everyone has to go to college” and the College Board and ACT Inc are cashing in. Not hard to find hay in a haystack.
* Three problems with Dr. Groseclose’s observations.
First, I don’t think the media bias is as powerful as he seems to think, such that the typical American state would be as red as Tennessee or Texas without it. After all, the MSM in Tennessee is pretty much the same as it is in Massachusetts. I think there are other factors, including racial demographics, to explain why red states are red and blue states are blue.
Second, he designs his political index on a 0-100 basis with Michele Bachmann being a zero and Nancy Pelosi being 100, meaning lower numbers are more conservative and higher numbers are more liberal. This is an example of The Overton Window (the sociological concept, not the Glenn Beck book) at work — What if you’re like me, significantly more right wing than Bachmann? What if you’re more left wing than Pelosi? (I know, it’s hard to fathom, but there is political territory to the left of Pelosi and plenty of people residing in it). I guess those kinds of people just don’t fit in the Overton Window — Michele Bachmann is as “hard right” as anyone has permission to be, (even though she’s mostly a boilerplate lamestream conservative), and Nancy Pelosi as “hard left” as one is allowed to be, though again, she seems to be just another liberal Democrat.
Third, I took his 40-question survey, and I scored a 23. It said that politicians similar to me were Lindsey Graham (14.9), John McCain (15.8), Joe Scarborough (16.4), Jack Kemp (20.4), Charlie Stenholm (D-TX, Congress, 1979-2004, 28.5) and Ron Paul (31.8). Save Ron Paul and Stenholm (don’t know enough about him), I would rather eat bugs than be known in the same breath as those people. I am certainly more right wing than Grahamnesty, McLame, Morning Schmoe and Roll Hemp, even though this fancy algorithm figures otherwise. The reason this methodology puts me in that crowd is because the questions don’t and can’t take this into account — While two different people can vote the same way on one of these 40 questions, they might have different motivations for voting that way. For instance, I voted either positively or unsure on questions about Federal subsidies for delinquent mortgage holders and Federally-forced mortgage contract modifications. Nancy Pelosi would have voted the same way. But the two of us have different motivations — I’m a renter, and I voted that way to keep as many people in their “owned” houses and out of the rental market, to keep the demand for rental units down, to keep rents from shooting sky high. Pelosi voted that way mainly because she’s a big government liberal. But in this methodology of this system, our vastly different motivations aren’t registered, my votes in that regard automatically drags my score upward and closer to Nancy Pelosi.
* You know, maybe one day we’ll quit paying attention to Al Gore.
He’s saying that criticizing his Glow-BULL Warming quackery is some form of racism. By the end of this week, doing so will be the equivalent of advocating or actually carrying out genocide. Except they’ve already made that charge, so in light of that, us people with brains are getting less evil by the week.
* For show. The Rickroller wants the Feds to pay for incarcerating the very kinds of illegal aliens he hearts?
INTERNATIONAL
* Oh my. The Odd Couple are fighting. Sure, Clegg is wrong, but Cameron is a scatter brained hypocrite. Sure, I hope Cameron succeeds in this particular endeavor, but with his past track record, you gotta wonder how serious he actually is.
All I can hope for is that this feud blows up into a full blown fight, the Odd Couple files for divorce, and new elections happen soon. Then let’s hope that voters don’t forget the riots and don’t forget LibLabCon treachery, and vote BNP.
* Qaddafi plus Mugabe. I wonder what’s behind that. At the very least, it will make Obama’s brain blue screen. (Not that that’s a particularly hard thing to do.)
* Like I predicted, the treasure trove of data from the raid that dispatched OBL to his six dozen virgins is now being used to send even more AQ types to their otherwordly rewards. Now hopefully we’ll get this “War on Terror” thing wrapped up, so we can come home and save some lives and money.
* By 2050, Nigeria could have around 433 million people, and thus be the world’s third’s most populous country, behind only China and India. But, as you see here, Nigeria as only 10% of the land mass of the United States.
The only way Nigeria can support 433 million people is through continued Western aid, and by the middle of this century, the white world will be a shell of its current self, both economically and socially, if those same trends continue. And Nigeria’s Chinese overlords certainly won’t come with a humanitarian verve. Not only do I not think Nigeria will get to 433 million, its population will eventually crash. There is no other possibility.
TECHNOLOGY
* Salivating? Don’t. The faster your internet connection gets, the more complicated websites get. It’s Say’s Law — Supply creates its own demand. Back in the Web 1.0 days when websites were relatively simple and most residential users had dial-up, we all looked forward to the days when faster internet connections would make everything on the internet load almost instantaneously. I warned people at the time that it wouldn’t work that way — That the more bandwidth you have, the more complicated websites will get. And that’s just what has happened — Embedded video, complicated style sheets are the two main culprits.
* I believe the conclusion, but I don’t believe the notion that this is all new to the carriers. (See the end of the second page.) The carriers not only know it, but like the end of the first page implies, they’re doing deep packet sniffing. But, I don’t think they’re doing deep packet sniffing to look for viruses and malware and trojans, they’re probably riding herd for the copywrong extremists in some way. Not only that, they’re trying to catch people using non-official tethering apps.
HISTORY
* I want to see this documentary. And yes, I agree, St. Louis urban brick work is probably the most unique in the country. And the bricks themselves are pretty good, too — I understand that until recently, until TPTB cracked down on it, old St. Louis bricks wound up all across the country as part of new housing developments. Houston, I understand, was a big destination.
* This picture is looking northward on 55 just north of Reavis. You can see the St. Louis Arch in this photo, if you’re looking close enough and you know what to look for. I know what to look for, because I knew someone who lived in that area; my mother and that family were good friends. In fact, my three and a half year old self was at that person’s house just a few weeks after this happened. That area is high elevation by St. Louis County standards, and as such you can see the Downtown St. Louis skyline way off in the distance, Arch included, if you look northeast.
You need a hint? Okay, you can see the pedestrian overpass, and you can see the middle leg from the overpass down into the grassy median (which was paved over for extra lanes in the late 1980s.) To the left of that is a large electrial transmission tower in the distance. About halfway in between you see some shiny silver sticking up over the tree horizon. I’m almost certain you’re looking at the Arch directly side-on, and that’s the sun reflecting off of the south leg.
As an aside, we seem to get a lot of media stories re-hashing the Michaels-Leisure wars that erupted after Giordano’s death, the wars lasting for about a year after Giordano kicked the bucket. Something tells me that the media’s motivation is more than just pure historical curiosity — I think there’s a racial motivation going on. “Look, white people, quit denouncing black crime when you’re just as violent.” Except the Michaels-Leisure wars were the last real big time full scale gangey type white violence that I can recall offhand. Of course, the mafia wars in St. Louis now exist under the imprimatur of official city business. But that’s just a minor clerical issue, don’t ya’ know.
MISC
* St. Louis makes the LOL Cats empire.
They’re making a big deal over her having what turned out to be a plastic gun. Doesn’t matter, though, you can get popped in Missouri for Robbery 1st if you’re armed with something that looks like a real gun, or with an instrument or the pretense of an instrument which leads a reasonable person to think you have a real gun, just as much as you can if the gun were actually real.
* Why not exit 420 for something called “Bong Recreation Area?” Well, this is exit 340 off I-94 near Kenosha, Wisconsin, and exit 420 would have to be 80 miles to the south. Except at that point you’re about 8 miles north of the Illinois line along I-94, where the exit numbers reset. To go 80 miles south along that same route, you would be in and around Calumet City and Dolton, South Suburban Cook County, Illinois, at I-94 and Illinois Route 83. And according to the NYT Census Explorer, those are heavily black areas. Which means you can find plenty of Bong Recreation Areas nearby.
