Words of the Weasel Part 36

Passed away,  or just passed.  Used in place of die.  A mealy mouthed attempt the make a death sound trivial.  I hope that when I die, my friends and family will not tell people that I "passed".

I'm younger than the median

At least according to this.   All cable news ratings are sinking, especially in the magic, super groovy 24-54 year old group.  Fox remains solidly ahead of the competition, but it's audience is aging.  O'Reilly's Factor median audience age is 72!.  That's old.  I thought I was getting old, but I ain't even as old as O'Reilly's median audience.  I must have some living yet to do.  
   Cable news would pull a bigger audience if they actually got out and reported some fresh news now and then.  Right now they just chew endlessly over stories that we all heard days ago.  Get's old fast.  And channel up is just one click on the remote. 

McLaughlin is a warmer.

Crusty old John McLaughlin, of  the everybody-shouts-at-each-other Sunday pundit show,  believes in global warming.  He appeared on his show, with a copy of Michael  (Hockey Stick) Mann's new book.  Mann is a high priest of warming.  Michael Mann is the guy who emailed "Hide the decline" to a fellow warmer, which came to light in the Hadley climate research unit document leak of a few year's ago.  Mann has been accused of fudging his data to make or create the hockey stick warming trend that is propelling the administration's war on coal. 
   The modern newsie doesn't report facts, he advocates worthy causes. 

Campbell's Soup

Long time favorite.  Good for cooking with, good for something warm on a cold winter day.  Loosing market share, or at least shelf space in markets up here.  Campbell's is loosing on the low end to house brands and on the high end to groovier competitors.
   And on the taste front, Campbell's puts too much salt in their soups.  They taste too salty.  I'm looking at two cans of vegetable beef.  Campbells, which really tastes too salty, and Healthy Choice which tastes better to me.  Read the labels on the back of the can.  Sodium  (dietician speak for salt) 890 milligrams Campbells, 420 milligrams for Healthy Choice.  And Healthy Choice tastes better.
   I'm thinking an old American brand is hurting. 

Resignation II

Following Shenseki's resignation/firing we have the Obama mouthpiece, press secretary Jay Carney resigning.  Wow!.  Here is a guy that gets more air time than Obama himself.  He is in front of the camera's every day, dodging reporter's softball questions.  Despite recent setbacks to the administration the reporters, even the Fox News guys, are failing to ask hard questions, you know the "Who,Where,When,What,and Why" kind.  Instead they ask "What does so-and-so think about what somebody else said" kind of question.
  You would think being press secretary would be fun.  You get a lot of TV exposure, it's easy to look sharp going up against newsies, you don't have to get armies of civil servants to actually do something to justify their salaries, in fact you don't have to produce much of anything at all.  You look good on nationwide TV for just selling the Administration's line.  Indoor work, no heavy lifting. 
   And yet Carney is sufficiently burned out to toss the job when it was his for the rest of Obama's term in office.  I used to do a bit of selling in my time.  The one thing I learned, is to make the sale, you have to believe in the product yourself.  The customer's can read you, they can tell when you are bending the truth (lying), and when they do, that sale is dead.
   Could it be that Carney has lost his belief in the Obama product?  And hence his ability to sell it on TV?

Resignation

Obama was just on TV.  He started out eulogizing Eric Shinseki, and right then I knew that Shinseki was toast.  Obama finally got around to mentioning that Oh By the Way, Shinseki is gone, but I'd figured that out already. 

Survival of the fittest

Consider the dandelion.  It puts up a bright yellow flower to attract pollinating bees.  Without pollination, the species would die out in a season. It's an annual plant after all.
  On the other hand, that bright yellow blossom attracts implacable dandelion pluckers like myself.  I like a green lawn, no bare patches.  Each dandelion spreads out and kills a six inch circle of grass around its root.  I have kept a reasonably dandelion free lawn for many years by merely hand plucking every blossom that shows.  With luck I get the root to come up too, so I know that dandelion is really dead.  I don't use weed n feed, 2-4-D, Agent Orange, or other weed killers, fearing they will kill more than weeds.  So that bright yellow blossom can be a liability as well.