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

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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?