Grand Rapids, Michigan, climate update for August 2017

The back of summer was broken last month, and August showed it:

Max Temp: Actual 88, Mean 92

Min Temp: Actual 47, Mean 47

Av Temp:   Actual 68.7, Mean 70.2

Precip:       Actual 1.72, Mean 3.04

CDD:         Actual 140, Mean 188.

The average of the last twelve ONI values is -0.266, the lingering effects of the five month long Weak La Nina, indicating a very slightly cool ocean in the tropical Pacific over the last year.

I used 22% fewer kWh this August than last, but stayed comfortably cool nonetheless.

It's alright by me if Houston rebuilds, as long as it's like this

Every passing day on which Trump fails to rescind DACA only validates its original executive overreach

Rescind the illegal executive order already, not because its content is wrong, which it is, but because the order is an offense to the constitution.

The Laugh of the Day comes from James Woods, remember him?

A materialist imagines that for the first time in history we are free

Wow, while I wasn't looking utopia suddenly arrived. Reminds me of nothing so much as Millerism.

It never occurs to this guy that "the end of the working class" can mean only one thing. The middle class replaces the old working class and becomes the new working class. And that won't be good for your bank account.

Here:

We can hope for something better because, for the first time in history, we are free to choose something better. The low productivity of traditional agriculture meant that mass oppression was unavoidable; the social surplus was so meager that the fruits of civilization were available only to a tiny elite, and the specter of Malthusian catastrophe was never far from view. Once the possibilities of a productivity revolution through energy-intensive mass production were glimpsed, the creation of urban proletariats in one country after another was likewise driven by historical necessity. The economic incentives for industrializing were obvious and powerful, but the political incentives were truly decisive. When military might hinged on industrial success, geopolitical competition ensured that mass mobilizations of working classes would ensue.

Helen Raleigh sounds the alarm: Antifa is Mao's Red Guard

If you read nothing this year, you must read this:

"How American Anarchy Parallels China’s Cultural Revolution".

"Liberal paradise": aka "prison"

Michigan man and New York man both named "Ramadan" arrested on weapons charges involving storage units

What a coincidence!

Ypsilanti man faces charges stemming from counter-terrorism investigation: Yousef Mohammad Ramadan was arrested by the FBI's counter-terrorism unit Friday

Weapons bust suspect Ramadan Abdullah indicted on 16 charges

Everyone who doesn't support the Constitution should be banned from America, not just the Congress

Come on, equality. What's fair is fair, people.

The shock that is no shock: Open borders fanatics in the libertarian Freedom Caucus like Mark Meadows are OK with delaying The Wall some more

Meanwhile, we get "broken window fallacy" nonsense from The New York Times about Hurricane Harvey

Destroy the previous products of GDP which produced GDP of their own, and presto! More GDP!

Might as well just print the stuff on steroids and spend it.

About 21% of taxpayer money and borrowings is already misallocated to expenditure by the federal government. Some of that is absolutely necessary, but even that is not spent well.

Hurricanes aren't called disasters for nothing.

Here:

Ellen Zentner, chief United States economist at Morgan Stanley, said that although Hurricane Harvey’s impact on national gross domestic product in the third quarter might be fairly neutral, “the lagged effects of rebuilding homes and replacing motor vehicles can lost longer,” providing a lift to gross domestic product in the fourth quarter and beyond.

On the other hand, an extended rise in gasoline prices could have a more immediate effect. Each 10-cent rise in the price of gasoline is equivalent to a $10 billion tax on consumers, Ms. Zentner said, so “should higher prices be sustained, it would rob other categories of spending as dollars are diverted to filling tanks.” ...

The economic impact of the storm will not be clear with any degree of accuracy for a while. But given Houston’s commercial importance — and its perch along a well-trod hurricane zone — economists and others have long taken it for granted that an epic storm would hit the region eventually, so have a head start on the numbers.

Today would be a good day for Trump quietly to sink a few North Korean submarines

There were lots and lots of articles today about a tax reform bill . . .

. . . as if the Obamacare repeal debacle had never even happened.

Laugh of the Day: "Maybe this will chase all the Katrina refugees back to New Orleans"

Seen here in the comments.

Fissures are erupting between BLM and antifa: Antifa accuses BLM in Dallas of being cops

The white antifa in Dallas were told by BLM to take off their masks and go home, shades of "take off your hoods".

Blacks are beginning to call out antifa as KKK.

Now that's progress!

Videos here and here.

Cuckservative schizophrenia at The Weekly Standard: 27 antifa arrests for anti-police violence in Boston, but Trump still wrong

From the August 20th story here, which also misses the growing polarization between antifa and BLM:

The atmosphere of the counter-protest was not as violent as these sentiments. Nor, with the exception of the small antifa group, was there the whiff of militarism that leaks from the alt-right. So President Trump was wrong to characterize the crowd as “anti-police agitators.” ...

In the park, the counter-protesters divided into two camps. The BLM protesters gathered on one side, the socialist groups on another. Eventually, the antifa and the police got to grips. The Police Department tweeted a request that people stop throwing “urine, bottles, and other harmful projectiles at our officers.” Twenty-seven people were arrested.

The victims surrender: Half a million fools march in Barcelona against Islamophobia

From the story here:

"We are here to say we're not afraid, we are united and we want peace," said 59-year-old pensioner Victoria Padilla as she marched. Slogans carried by marchers read "The best answer: peace" and "No to Islamophobia".

Police estimated the march at half a million people.

Members of Spain's Islamic community marched alongside the King and Prime Minister Rajoy, including women wearing hijabs. Speakers gave readings next to a floral display with the words 'Barcelona' and 'I am not afraid' in different languages including Arabic.

Barcelona used to be an outpost of the Frankish Kingdom, but now it embraces the enemy there

Cucks in Catalonia: In Spain the victims pretend there can be unity with the perpetrators

Jonah Goldberg knows a thing or two about self-hatred

In "Behind the monument wars is a plague of self-hatred", Goldberg calls self-hatred a "Western disease". Gee, where'd we catch that?

The mobs of students — and their enabling professors and administrators — renaming buildings and bowdlerizing the language are still products of Western civilization. Even the poseurs who think Googling a few phrases from Karl Marx and wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt make them anti-colonialists are disciples of Western thinkers. Where does Mark-Viverito think her mother’s feminism came from? The Arawaks? For centuries, to the extent that educated Muslims talked about the Crusades at all, it was to boast about how they emerged victorious from them.

But Osama bin Laden and his ilk read too much Noam Chomsky and caught the Western disease of victimization and resentment. That’s the plague sweeping the land now. And tearing down some statues and renaming some streets isn’t a cure, it’s a symptom.