Grand Rapids, Michigan, climate update for September 2017

Max Temp: Actual 96, Mean 89

Min Temp: Actual 41, Mean 37

Av Temp:   Actual 66.5, Mean 62.7, YTD Actual 53.9, YTD Mean 51.1

Precip:       Actual 0.66, Mean 3.55, YTD Actual 24.98, YTD Mean 26.28

CDD:         Actual 136, Mean 75, YTD Actual 708, YTD Mean 685

In short year to date we are slightly warmer and dryer than the mean.

Average temperature is running 5.5% ahead of mean and cooling degree days about 3.4% ahead of mean. The rain deficit is running about 4.9% behind the mean. For average temperature year to date, compare some of the hotter years 2012 at 56.4, 1931 at 54.2 and 1921 also at 56.4, the average of which is 55.7. We are still 3.2% cooler than that in 2017.

Last season's average ONI value was -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. The preliminary read of the first value in the new season is -0.1.

Despite the heat wave we experienced in September, I still used 8% fewer kWh this September than last and stayed comfortably cool.

Chicago's resident spokesman for Big Brother, Eric Zorn, proclaims anti-Americanism is the true patriotism

In The Chicago Tribune here:

I resent that Trump has chosen to use what was a minor controversy about a few kneeling football players into a major wedge issue.

Not just because it flagrantly insults the concept of liberty that true patriotism embraces, but also because his focus threatens to turn standing for the national anthem into a partisan act. It’s the same bit of branding judo he’s trying to perform on the expression “Merry Christmas.”

Average candidate cost to win a Senate race in 2016 was $10.4 million, $1.3 million to win a House race

At least according to the story here.

The figure nearly doubles when factoring in outside money for winning Senate seats. Apparently outside money doesn't matter much for House seats:

Outside groups are a relatively unimportant factor in most House races, unlike in the Senate.

NYT: 110 million Americans have an STD, nearly 34% of the population

Story here:

The incidence of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis is increasing, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 110 million Americans now are infected with a sexually transmitted disease.

Complaints about Senate gridlock aren't new, it's just the Republicans' turn

Over 200 bills are stalled awaiting action in the Republican-controlled Senate, according to a story at The Hill.

That's nothing compared to 2010 when the Democrats ran the whole show. Over 400 bills languished then unactioned in the Senate.

The problem isn't a bug, it's a feature.

The Senate is designed to slow things down. But the Senate sets its own rules, and could speed things along by changing them without doing any offense to anything except the tradition of doing as little as possible. And generally speaking, the less they do the better, since what they produce sucks most of the time.

Ruth Buzzi Ginsburg says Hillary lost in 2016 because of sexism, doesn't mention why Hillary lost in 2008

Black sexism, the hate that dare not speak its name.

Here:

CBS’s Charlie Rose asked Ginsburg at an event Tuesday night if she thought sexism contributed to Hillary Clinton’s loss to President Trump in 2016. “I have no doubt that it did,” she replied. Ginsburg said that while there were many elements that led to Clinton’s loss, sexism “was a major, major factor.”

It was all Revenge Porn: Hugh Hefner, the original cuck, is dead at 91

From the story here:

"I had literally saved myself for my wife, but after we had sex she told me that she'd had an affair. That was the most devastating moment in my life."

Remember the Tim Tebow controversy from 2011, kneeling in prayer on the field?

People criticized Tebow at the time for ostentatiously injecting religion into football.

Now blacks protesting during the National Anthem by kneeling are committing not just an act of Tebow cultural appropriation, they're turning it upside down, turning it into an act of defiance.

While Tim Tebow merely defied censoriousness, blacks in the NFL are defying us. 

Black football players rape white girls on US college campuses, but in England Somalis do it in the streets

Roy Moore clobbers Trump's chosen candidate Luther Strange, giving the lie to the "cult of Trump"

Disgraceful bitch Hillary: "Hopefully Trump hasn't ordered the killing of journalists"

Quoted here:

ROSE: He’s an authoritarian?

CLINTON: He has tendencies toward authoritarianism.

ROSE: So, he’s no different than Putin?

CLINTON: Well, hopefully he hasn’t ordered the killing of people and journalists and the like.

New record number of new cases of sexually transmitted diseases set in US in 2016: 2.098 million

1.600 million chlamydia

0.470 million gonorrhea

0.028 million syphilis

Story here.

But once again these are new cases. Existing cases of chronic infection are not discussed. Those number in the many tens of millions.

We're doomed: Only 64% say stand for the National Anthem

But that 64% is treated as good news here.

It's not. 36% support for this depth of disrespect for the very symbol of the country at such a high level of the culture, if one may be forgiven for characterizing football that way, is an ominous sign of impending breakdown.

This is the consequence of unfettered immigration combined with leftward political and social drift.

Told ya: Trump to raise lowest tax bracket from 10% to 12%

Story here:

Top White House and GOP leaders have agreed to raise the lowest individual tax rate from 10 to 12 percent, paired with doubling the standard deduction, 5 senior Republicans tell us.

The standard deduction becomes the football in this scheme. If the doubling survives intact, which is hardly certain, down the line someone can say it must be reduced, without advocating a change in the bracket percentage and voila, you've got a nice little tax increase on the poorest members of society without directly raising taxes.

This ridiculous tinkering with rates and deductions just continues ad infinitum since 1913.

As with the Obamacare repeal efforts, there are no guiding principles informing the tax reform debate.

Mandating health coverage at the federal level is tyrannical, and so is the income tax, quite apart from its deliberate inequalities.

Trump kept insisting on a replacement for Obamacare as well as a system of progressive taxation during his speechifying.

There's no there there. 

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee joins the Kneegrow Football League

The Negro Football League is even dumber than you thought

In America we don't need a cleric to tell us what we already know

The top 10 refugee-sending countries according to Amnesty International

Amnesty International, here:

Syria

Afghanistan

Somalia

Sudan

South Sudan

Democratic Republic of Congo

Myanmar

Central African Republic

Iraq

Eritrea

Average country IQ:

83

84

68

71

71

78

87

71

87

85

___________

Average: 78.5

US Average IQ: 98
Germany Av.: 99

German AfD comes in a strong third, Social Democrats crash, Merkel forced to form coalition with FDP and Greens

The UK Telegraph reports here:

The SPD’s decision to return to opposition has limited her options, with a three-way coalition with the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Greens the only obvious option.

However, the FDP is unlikely to countenance the EU reform objectives of France's Macron, and the Greens want to shut down the coal plants Merkel relies on after she shut down the nuclear plants in the wake of Fukushima, which the FDP opposes, making life very difficult indeed for Frau Merkel.

Meanwhile the anti-Islamist AfD is set to take seats in the parliament, the first time the right has been represented there since 1961.

Laugh of the Day: Trump's chief of staff patrols White House perimeter to keep Trump IN