I was reading a website this morning that said the McRib was back. I called McDonalds up here in the Couv and was told that they were NOT back. Boo.

http://www.petitiononline.com/mcrib12/petition.html

>>


The McRib: Is it more myth than a sandwich?
By JOSH EISERIKE
December 15, 2004 12:00 a.m. CST
Sometimes, in the course of American history, something achieves cultural status simply by being mysterious or shrouded in a veil of uncertainty. Conspiracy theorists have their own spin on the Kennedy assassination, the Freemasons and, curiously, a McDonald’s sandwich.
In 1982, the McDonald’s Corp. unveiled a new sandwich oddly titled “The McRib.”
What’s odd is that the McRib is not made of ribs, but composed of boneless meat molded to resemble ribs.
McDonald’s also markets the McRib sporadically. Absent since last February, the McRib has returned to local McDonald’s menus.
“The McRib is made with a tender, boneless pork patty, covered in a hickory barbecue sauce,” says Julie Pottebaum, a McDonald’s Corp. representative.
Pottebaum also says the sandwich has 490 calories, 25 fat grams, 44 carbohydrate grams and 24 protein grams.
There aren’t any additives in the McRib, she said, but it has some extras, such as 10 grams of sugar from the sauce.
There is no regular schedule for the McRib’s erratic appearances, but Pottebaum says the McDonald’s Corp. formats its menu based on customer feedback and preferences.
Still, the McRib exists in a shroud of mystery. Even fans of the sandwich aren’t too certain what exactly they’re putting in their mouths, a rib sandwich without actual ribs.
The McRib occupies a unique place in contemporary American culture. With each triumphant return, the restaurant informs customers “The McRib is Back!” or “By Popular Demand, The McRib!”
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2001 that the pork industry receives a boost when the McRib returns.
The McRib even enjoys a cult-like following. Web sites are dedicated to petitioning McDonald’s to bring back the McRib permanently. Webmasters speculate on what’s actually in the sandwich and why they find it so delicious.
The McDonald’s Web site does not list the ingredients of the McRib along with the contents of other sandwiches. However, McDonald’s’ toll-free telephone number will provide the ingredients to those who ask.
Theories abound as to why the McRib is always returning, never permanently taking its place alongside the pantheon of McSandwiches: Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Filet O’Fish, McChicken and the almighty Big Mac.
“The mysterious meat in the sandwich might be seasonal. I think it has something to do with excess of meat or pork at a certain time of the year,” says Konnor Ervin.
Ervin, the lead singer of Columbia rock band Dr. Woo, is a self-proclaimed McRib fan. Ervin, who eats a lot of McDonald’s food, says if the McRib were a permanent menu item at McDonald’s he wouldn’t eat it whenever he goes to McDonald’s. As it is now, when the McRib is around, that’s the only sandwich he’ll order.
“Part of the allure of the McRib is the mystery and timeliness,” Ervin says. “I like it so much because it comes around at a limited time. That makes it all the more special.”
That’s exactly the kind of marketing strategy McDonald’s is aiming for. By keeping the demand high and supply low, as well as veiling the McRib in a shroud of mystery, it’s become more myth than sandwich. An article from the satirical newspaper The Onion investigated the McRib phenomenon. A newspaper search yielded more articles referencing the sandwich from a cultural or marketing perspective than articles devoted to the sandwich itself. Even “The Simpsons” spoofed the McRib subculture in a thinly guised parody called “The Ribwich.”
Brad Prager is an MU professor of German who has written outside his field on issues of American culture, in articles such as “Towards an Archaeology of Disneyland.” Prager says he used to eat fast food but gave it up entirely after reading Eric Schlosser’s book “Fast Food Nation.” Prager has never eaten a McRib.
“It amazes me that people see a passion for consumption as a product of their own desires when it’s really formed and shaped by the industry itself,” Prager says, pointing to McDonald’s’ Web sites that instruct children to “get happy for a happy meal.”
The McRib is the same dirty, tasteless meat product covered with sugar and perfume that people get excited about, Prager says.
Based on what he’s read about the fast food meat industry, Prager says the air of mystery around the McRib and the rest of McDonald’s is repulsive at best, dangerous at worst.
“The real conspiracy is the air of secrecy. If people knew what was in the McRib they’d stop eating them,” Prager says. To him, the whole meaning of the McRib is about consumption and how cleverly disguised McDonald’s markets its products. “Once you set desire in motion people respond — they feel like something is lacking in their lives. Obviously something is lacking, but it’s not the McRib.”
Chris Hurt, an agricultural economist from Purdue University who specializes in the pork market, says there are three possibilities behind the McRib’s transient existence. First, that the McRib might be hard for McDonald’s employees to cook. Second, Hurt says McDonald’s brings back the McRib when pork prices are low.
“The low costs of pork then helps compensate for the higher costs of preparation,” Hurt says.
Finally, Hurt suggests that customers might get tired of the McRib if it were a permanent food item.
Perhaps. But some McRib fans might never get tired of their favorite sandwich.

To find out what is in a Mc Rib, call 800-244-6227.

The Soros Threat To Democracy

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Monday, September 24, 2007 4:20 PM PT

Democracy: George Soros is known for funding groups such as MoveOn.org that seek to manipulate public opinion. So why is the billionaire's backing of what he believes in problematic? In a word: transparency.

George Soros & MoveOn.org: Exclusive Series

How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely "NASA whistleblower" standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros' Open Society Institute , which gave him "legal and media advice"?
That's right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros' flagship "philanthropy," by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI's "politicization of science" program.
That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly "censored" spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda.
Hansen even succeeded, with public pressure from his nightly news performances, in forcing NASA to change its media policies to his advantage. Had Hansen's OSI-funding been known, the public might have viewed the whole production differently. The outcome could have been different.
That's not the only case. Didn't the mainstream media report that 2006's vast immigration rallies across the country began as a spontaneous uprising of 2 million angry Mexican-flag waving illegal immigrants demanding U.S. citizenship in Los Angeles, egged on only by a local Spanish-language radio announcer?
Turns out that wasn't what happened, either. Soros' OSI had money-muscle there, too, through its $17 million Justice Fund. The fund lists 19 projects in 2006. One was vaguely described involvement in the immigration rallies. Another project funded illegal immigrant activist groups for subsequent court cases.
So what looked like a wildfire grassroots movement really was a manipulation from OSI's glassy Manhattan offices. The public had no way of knowing until the release of OSI's 2006 annual report.
Meanwhile, OSI cash backed terrorist-friendly court rulings, too.
Do people know last year's Supreme Court ruling abolishing special military commissions for terrorists at Guantanamo was a Soros project? OSI gave support to Georgetown lawyers in 2006 to win Hamdan v. Rumsfeld — for the terrorists.
OSI also gave cash to other radicals who pressured the Transportation Security Administration to scrap a program called "Secure Flight," which matched flight passenger lists with terrorist names. It gave more cash to other left-wing lawyers who persuaded a Texas judge to block cell phone tracking of terrorists.
They trumpeted this as a victory for civil liberties. Feel safer?
It's all part of the $74 million OSI spent on "U.S. Programs" in 2006 to "shape policy." Who knows what revelations 2007's report will bring around events now in the news?
OSI isn't the only secretive organization that Soros funds. OSI partners with the Tides Foundation, which funnels cash from wealthy donors who may not want it known that their cash goes to fringe groups engaged in "direct action" — also known as eco-terrorism.
On the political front, Soros has a great influence in a secretive organization called "Democracy Alliance" whose idea of democracy seems to be government controlled solely of Democrats.
"As with everything about the Democracy Alliance, the strangest aspect of this entire process was the incessant secrecy. Among the alliance's stated values was a commitment to political transparency — as long as it didn't apply to the alliance," wrote Matt Bai, describing how the alliance was formed in 2005, in his book "The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics."
Soros' "shaping public policies," as OSI calls it, is not illegal. But it's a problem for democracy because it drives issues with cash and then only lets the public know about it after it's old news.
That means the public makes decisions about issues without understanding the special agendas of groups behind them.
Without more transparency, it amounts to political manipulation. This leads to cynicism. As word of these short-term covert ops gets out, the public grows to distrust what it hears and tunes out.
The irony here is that Soros claims to be an advocate of an "open society." His OSI does just the legal minimum to disclose its activities. The public shouldn't have to wait until an annual report is out before the light is flipped on about the Open Society's political action.

Last Lecture

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119024238402033039.html?mod=hps_us_editors_picks

Dilbert

"The worst of the worst is that Ahmadinejad's country is helping theIraqis kill American soldiers. If Iran ever invades Canada, I think we'dagree the best course of action for the United States is to beconstructive and let things sort themselves out. Otherwise we'd be just as evilas the Iranians. Those fuckers."


http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/09/a-feeling-im-be.html

The Isreal Lobby

"The inability to understand this, what's been called the "existential threat" Israelis face, makes it seem as if Jews—as the stereotype has it—take malicious delight in imposing onerous restrictions on Palestinians. Restrictions designed to protect themselves against those who shelter and abet the murderers of women and children in marketplaces. This is the double standard at work: Jews are somehow more wicked in their desire—and the means they chose—to survive when it forces them to make unwelcome choices.
It would seem to me that those who are untroubled by the prospect of a second Holocaust, to the point of ridiculing concern about it and demonizing the actions taken to prevent it (and this includes quite a few Jews), are engaging in a morally defective form of denial. To view the words of the Israel lobby as a more pernicious force in the world than the deeds of the exterminationists who target Israel is, I was going to say, beyond belief. But alas, it's not, because it's happened before.
As Omer Bartov, the widely respected historian, wrote in the New Republic (yes, the New Republic) in 2004, speaking of contemporary Jew-haters such as those who wrote the exterminationist language in the Hamas charter: "These are people who mean what they say." And "there are precedents for this."

http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/search/ProductDetail/SIGMA/P4304

A little of this and a syringe into the molding of a car window is supposed to total the car. Weird huh?

Fuck Your Couch

To do something so bold simply to be an asshole. The phrase began on an episode of Dave Chappelle, in which Rick James utterly destroyed Eddie Murphy's couch, causing Eddie and his brother, Charlie Murphy to completely pwn Rick by the way of a beatdown administered to his legs.

Rick James grinds mud into Eddie Murphy's new couch.

Rick: Fuck your couch!

Eddie and Charlie Murphy beat Rick's legs.

Rick: Darkness Motherfuckers!

'More Art Than Science' http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aWuWjvhiv8Y4&refer=us

Hurricanes are supposed to get even worse courtesy of "global warming"? It didn't quite work out that way, as Bloomberg reports:

*** QUOTE ***
Hurricane researchers, who forecast seven more storms this season, have flubbed the past two annual estimates because of unusual El Nino and La Nina weather phenomena in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The predictions reflect variables that make this kind of weather forecasting "more art than science," said Eric Blake, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Two of the nine Atlantic hurricanes predicted already have occurred for the season that ends Nov 30. Last year, five storms emerged after nine were anticipated.
*** END QUOTE ***

Remember that: Weather forecasting is "more art than science." Except of course when the forecasters want to dismantle our entire industrial economy. Then it's settled science that no one may even question.

Great News From the UN Media Can’t Possibly Report
By Noel Sheppard September 11, 2007 - 11:05 ET


Whenever the United Nations makes any dire proclamation about the future of the planet, whether dealing with global warming, the environment, war, or poverty, you can be sure media will give it great attention.
Yet, when the World Federation of UN Associations released its extraordinarily optimistic "State of the Future" report Monday, with positive news about literacy, mortality, economic growth, and poverty reduction, the press couldn't care less.
In fact, despite the Associated Press, which true to form cherry-picked one negative finding in this study for its article on the subject, absolutely no American media outlets shared this report's release. Not one.
Fortunately, thousands of miles away, Agence France-Presse felt this astoundingly upbeat study from the Millennium Project was newsworthy (emphasis added throughout, h/t Benny Peiser):
Despite daunting challenges posed by global warming, water, energy, unemployment and terrorism, the world faces a brighter future with fewer wars, higher life expectancy and improved literacy, according to a report released Monday.
"Although great human tragedies like Iraq and Darfur dominate the news, the vast majority of the world is living in peace, conflicts actually decreased over the past decade," says the 2007 State of the Future report.
Becoming clear why you didn't hear about this? But there's more:
It said the world economy grew at 5.4 percent last year to 66 trillion dollars while the global population rose 1.1 percent, increasing the average world per capita income by 4.3 percent.
"At this rate world poverty will be cut by more than half between 2000 and 2015, meeting the UN Millenium Development Goal for poverty reduction except in sub-Saharan Africa", it added.
The world's average life expectancy is rising from 48 years for those born in 1955 to 73 years for those who will be born in 2025, it noted.
On the education front, the percentage of people over the age of 15 that are illiterate worldwide has fallen to 18 percent today, down from 37 percent in 1970, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
This is all unbelievably spectacular news. Yet, in America, LexisNexis and Google News searches identified that only the Associated Press covered this report.
Not surprisingly, AP found the lump of coal amidst all the diamonds in an article dourly entitled "Reports [sic] Says Organized Crime Top Problem" (emphasis added throughout):
Organized crime may have brought in more than $2 trillion in revenue last year, about twice all the military budgets in the world combined, a report issued Monday said.
The "State of the Future" report, published by the Millennium Project of the World Federation of United Nations Associations, said organized crime entities generated income from money laundering, counterfeiting and piracy, and the trafficking of drugs, people and arms.
The AP did decide to put some of the good news from this study in its report in paragraph eight beginning with the wonderful "But":
But the report noted success in tackling other issues, saying the world has made progress on ending poverty, improving access to education and settling conflicts. It also says the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Africa has begun to level off and could begin to decrease over the next few years.
After those two sentences about the good news, the AP went back to focusing on crime.
What a disgrace.


—Noel Sheppard is an economist, business owner, and Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

Adam Al-Ameriki

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/01/22/070122fa_fact_khatchadourian?printable=true

"After introducing regular guests Brooks and Mark Shields, host Jim Lehrer asked their opinions concerning the just-released Osama bin Laden video.
Brooks was second up with this absolutely marvelous observation - video available here

>>
No, ludicrous. I mean, on one hand, he's a malevolent guy who killed 3,000 Americans. But you read this thing, and it's like he's been sitting around reading lefty blogs, and he's one of these childish people posting rants at the bottom the page, you know, Noam Chomsky and all this stuff.
You can't help read it and not laugh at it, occasionally, because it is just absurd. It's flying this way, and that way, weird conspiracy theories, and mortgages, global warming. He throws it all in there.
The one thing that leapt out -- and Bruce Hoffman and the others mentioned this -- was how Western it is. And a friend of mine, Reuel Gerecht, points out that there's this argument that Western ideas never permeated into the Arab world, but in fact it's all -- I mean, a lot of the worst ideas from the West have permeated in, and he's picked up Noam Chomsky, and he's picked up some of the anti-globalization stuff. And that's what infuses this.

Negro QB of the Week

http://nationofislamsportsblog.blogspot.com

the "Bush" report

Left wing journalists and politicians are preparing to lash out at General Petraeus when he reports to Congress. This is in spite of the fact democrats admit we'll have to continue our presence in Iraq for a long time to come. They also acknowledge that there will be a drawdown after the surge is completed and probably more after that.

That sounds exactly like what Bush is saying and Petraeus will say. So the two parties agree, right? Wrong.

The dems still want to make political hay out of Iraq. They really don't care if we win or lose just so long as Bush loses face. And we are seriously thinking of turning over total power to this bunch of anti-American losers?

Nice Bin Laden tape too- it sounds like he read the DNC debate talking points!

Troofer Virus Becoming a Pandemic?
Thu, Sep 6, 2007 at 4:24:12 pm PST

There’s a bad craziness loose in the nation, and a new Zogby poll commissioned by Troofers shows that 42% of Democrats think Bush either caused 9/11 or let it happen.

Screw Loose Change comments on this pathetic poll too.

http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=9745

Cheeto Dust

Cheesy attack leads to assault charges
2 hours, 39 minutes ago

DES MOINES, Iowa - A man has been charged with a cheesy snack attack on his dad, police said. The weapon? A bag of Cheetos. Patrick Hamman, 22, of Des Moines, was arrested on a charge of domestic assault after he threw a bag of Cheetos at his father, Michael Hamman, hitting him in the face Sunday night.

The bag hit his father's glasses, causing a cut to the bridge of his nose, police said.
The police report said "Michael's T-shirt was also covered in Cheeto dust."
Police said Patrick, who lives with his father, admitted that he was on methamphetamine at the time of the argument.

www.littlegreenfootballs.com

Lebanon Kills Hundreds, Destroys Camp, World Yawns
Tue, Sep 4, 2007 at 1:52:18 pm PDT
Lebanon ruthlessly crushed the “militants” of the Nahr al-Bared “refugee camp,” killing (at least) dozens of civilians and hundreds of Islamists and tossing them into mass graves, and wiping out the entire camp. But nobody’s demanding United Nations investigations, nobody’s accusing Lebanon of war crimes, and nobody’s yelling about human rights violations.


BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon said on Tuesday its army killed at least 222 Islamist militants from an al Qaeda-linked group in a 15-week battle at a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon.
The army finally took control of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp on Sunday after more than three months of fierce battles, including air, sea and land bombardment against the entrenched Fatah al-Islam militants.
Defense Minister Elias al-Murr also said 202 militants were captured in the battles and an unknown number were buried in mass graves inside the largely destroyed camp. ...
At least 42 civilians and 163 soldiers were killed, bringing the death toll to 427 — Lebanon’s worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.

Today's Review From
Powells.com
Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael B. Oren
<<>
Read today's review in HTML at:
http://www.powells.com/n/222/pow/review/2007_09_01
Voice your opinion by posting a comment on the Powells.com blog:
http://www.powells.com/n/222/blog/?p=2391
<>>

The Summer of Hate
A review by Doug Brown
Before reading Six Days of War, my American media view of the Six-Day War was that all the Arab countries attacked Israel, Israel pushed the attackers all the way to the Jordan, and then refused to give Gaza and the West Bank back in violation of UN Resolution 242. As is usually the case, history is not so clean. Israel struck first, though who really started the war is a murkier proposition.
After the war, Israel accepted Resolution 242, but most Arab countries didn't. There were heroes and cowards on both sides, as were there hawks and doves. The one thing that is clear is that in June 1967 the doves were shouted down on all sides -- the Summer of Love never made it to the Middle East.
Oren begins his well-balanced overview of the war with a brief history of the creation of Israel, including the wars of 1948 and 1956. Oren places one of the starting points of the Six-Day War with Yasser Arafat's al-Fatah guerilla attacks launched from the West Bank in 1966, and Israel's belligerent response on the West Bank villages that had harbored the guerillas (a lesson still unlearned on both sides). Syrian-sponsored terrorism was causing everyone in the Middle East problems, not just Israel. However, one thing the Arab nations agreed on was Israel's illegitimacy, so when Syria began openly advocating war with Israel, Arab nations were willing to overlook their differences. Egyptian president Nasser formed a mutual defense past with Syria should Israel attack either Egypt or Syria. Syria bombarded Israeli settlements from emplacements on the Golan Heights and talked up war to anyone who would listen. In May 1967 Russia's ambassador met with Nasser and convinced him that Israel was massing forces along the Syrian border in preparation of an attack (they weren't). Nasser kicked UN forces out of the Sinai desert and moved his forces along the Israel border. Israel moved their forces to the border as well.
Everyone rattled their sabers at everyone else. It wasn't a question of whether there would be war; just who would fire first.
Israel's leaders spoke in contradictory terms about the prospect of war. In one breath they would (correctly, it turns out) confidently predict that in the event of war they would defeat their enemies swiftly. However, in the next breath they would say war could well be the end of Israel. Oren calls this self-contradictory position "Samson the nerd." As insurance, Israel made efforts to get the US to join battle if Israel were attacked. Johnson was bogged down in Vietnam, and while offering moral support, merely said repeatedly that if the Israelis attacked first they would be on their own.
Nevertheless, it was Israel's besieged fear of decimation that led them to strike first -- against Egypt, who comprised the greater military threat. In the first few hours much of Egypt's Russian-supplied air force was gone, along with their runways. Through poor preparation and communications, Egypt's forces were quickly routed, many of them abandoning equipment and fleeing on foot towards the Suez Canal. Egyptian radio said the Israelis had attacked (true), that Egypt's forces were pushing them back to Tel Aviv (not true), that Syrian forces were pushing south into Israel (not true, though by treaty it should have been), and that the Israeli attack had been led by US and British air forces (so untrue Johnson referred to it as the "Big Lie"). Israel radio said Egypt had attacked (not true), but kept quiet about the progress of the battle. Israel knew they had a limited amount of time before the UN imposed a cease-fire, and they wanted to attain maximum gains during that window. They feared that if they accurately reported their blitzkrieg progress across the Sinai, the cease-fire would be hastened. Meanwhile Syria, the nation most responsible for initiating hostilities, did nothing except continue the perennial shelling from Golan (though of course Damascus radio claimed Syrian forces were halfway into Israel).
Befitting the title, much of Six Days of War is given over to what happened on each day of the battle, with a lengthy chapter for each day. While Israel made efforts before the war to avert it, once it started they worked harder than everyone to make sure it didn't end too soon. After the first couple of days a cease-fire looked imminent, but Israel found ways of delaying. A common tactic was to put forth conditional cease-fire resolutions that called for Israel to keep the ground gained, which they knew wouldn't be accepted by their opponents. At the end of day four, when a cease-fire seemed to be in place, Israel placed the condition on Syria that all shelling from Golan had to stop. Syria said it couldn't guarantee that some unit might have a broken radio, which was all Israel needed to call an attack on Golan and extend the war two more days.
By the time the firing finally stopped at the end of the sixth day, Israel's forces were at a perimeter three times the original size of the nation. All of the Sinai desert to the Suez Canal was under Israeli control, as were the Golan Heights. And most famously (or infamously), Gaza and the West Bank were no longer under Arab command. Most of Egypt's armed forces were decimated, though Russia built them back up over the next several years.
UN Resolution 242 called for Israel to return to pre-1967 borders, but it also called for Arab nations to recognize Israel. Israel and Jordan agreed; everyone else refused. So Israel sat pat upon their spoils of war, allowing the Arab world to hypocritically paint Israel as an international scofflaw (though most Middle Eastern countries are also technically in violation of the resolution).
Oren suggests that one of the worst outcomes of the war was the fall of secular pan-Arabism, and the rise of Islamic militarism with its embrace of terrorism. The war also made the US and Israel military allies (before the war France and Britain supplied most of Israel's military supplies), which in turn attached America's name to Israel's in the minds of the new Islamic extremists.
Six Days of War, though written by an Israeli, is not a pro-Israel take on the war. While Israel came out well militarily in the war, they don't come out as rosy in Oren's behind-the-scenes view.
However, he avoids conspiracy theories. He makes a good case that Israel's shocking attack on the USS Liberty (it was repeatedly strafed, then torpedoed) was most likely the result of crossed signals and mistaken identity rather than an intentional act against a US warship. Oren feels much of the blame for the war lies with Syria, which to this day has never been called to task for it.
I recommend Six Days of War for anyone wanting to know more about why much of the state of the Middle East is the way it is today.
It has been thirty years since the Six-Day War officially ended, but in many respects it is still being fought - on both sides.

Read the review online at:
http://www.powells.com/n/222/pow/review/2007_09_01