NORTH PLATTE, Neb. (AEP) — Communism is making a dangerous reappearance in the Midwest, says the United States Government.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff issued a statement today condemning a recent policy change at the NBC affiliate in North Platte, Nebraska. “By their actions, they are endangering the liberty of every man, woman, and child in the Free World,” said Chertoff. “The United States won a great victory over Godless Communism, and the actions of KNOP-TV in attempting to roll back that momentous triumph of the Forces of Freedom must not be allowed to stand.”
KNOP-TV meteorologist Tara Moore explains the change: “The concept of ‘relative humidity’ does not actually tell anyone how much moisture is in the air. To communicate that information, which is what most people actually care about, you must tell them what the dew point is. So after educating our viewers as what each concept means and how to interpret them, we simply scrapped the relative humidity and now no longer even bother to report it.”
That’s what Chertoff and many others — including Bill O’Reilly, Pat Buchanan, David Duke, and Hillary Clinton — are upset about. “It is not the job nor the responsibility of media outlets to be educating anyone about anything,” says O’Reilly. “When people really need to know something, we’ll tell them.”
Buchanan agrees: “Look, the most patriotic thing people can do is shut up and go to the mall. When you start filling people’s heads with ridiculous notions like accurate communication of information, you’ve started down a slippery slope that can only lead to the end of free-market capitalism.”
Duke said, “I think if you look more deeply here, you’re going to find a plot by the Negroid race to take over the world.”
Democratic presidential candidate and current front-runner Hillary Clinton said, “I am all for people knowing everything they need to know. But it’s not up to some pathetic group of straw-chewing farmers at a podunk television station in the middle of BFE to be deciding what their fellow Deliverance extras need to know. Has anyone at that station ever bothered to take the company tractor into an actual city? Do these rubes out in flyover country even realize that the Earth is not flat, life does not form by spontaneous generation, Jack Daniels is not a sleep-aid for children, and Andy Griffith was not actually one of the Founding Fathers? Instead of nuking Iran, maybe we should start with Lincoln County, Nebraska.”
A spokesman for the Institute for Weather Accuracy (IWA) said, “Actually, if you think about it, their change does make some sense. If you offer a man who is dying of thirst a container of water that is, say, 50% full, how much water are you offering him? It depends on the size of the container. If the container is a whiskey shot glass, you’re giving him half an ounce of water. It the container is a 55-gallon drum, you’re giving him over 27 gallons of water.
“‘Relative humidity’ and ‘dew point’ work the same way. ‘Relative humidity’ doesn’t tell you the size of the container — only what percentage of the container has moisture. But ‘dew point’ tells you exactly how much moisture is contained in the air.”
“Communism, communism, communism, communism!” said Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. “I always thought Stalin’s use of mass murder purges and sending people to gulags in Siberia was heavy-handed and too likely to incite serious public resistance to be of much value for American elites to use to control the population here at home, but I’m now starting to re-think that position. Maybe a healthy dose of brutal Stalinist control is just what this country needs to get its underclass under control. They’re clearly getting a little too uppity for their own good.”
Expanding on the IWA’s statement, KNOP-TV meteorologist Moore explained, “The air temperature is the size of the container. In cold weather, say 20° Fahrenheit, the air can’t hold much moisture. So if the relative humidity is 50% and the air temperature is 20°, then the dew point is about 9°. On the other hand, if the air temperature is really hot, say 95°, and the relative humidity is 50%, then the dew point is about 77°.
“In each of these examples, the relative humidity is 50%. But the differing air temperature gives us different dew point values. The reason a relative humidity of 50% is unbearable in summer yet quite mild in winter is because summer air can hold a lot more moisture than winter air can. Just for purposes of comparison, in tropical rainforests, you typically get dew points in the upper 70s. Here in the U.S., in our most oppressive summer months, we commonly have dew points in the low 70s. Even dew points in the upper 60s generally feel pretty uncomfortable for most folks, though.”
Speaking from his home in Houston, Texas, former House Republican Leader Tom DeLay said, “This is exactly why we have Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. It’s we waterboard terrorists, and torture people by their genitals. It’s why we’re in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s why we passed the PATRIOT Act, and why we give all that money and military hardware to Israel. This country is so out of control right now, we should seriously think about dropping bombs on it and starting over. The population is nothing but a bunch of cockroaches who need to be exterminated if they’re going to start using their brains for anything other than memorizing the Pledge of Allegiance. If ever there were a country in need of a new Hitler, it’s the United States. By God, he’d know how to deal with these scumbags.”
Moore said, “We didn’t just foist this on people. We explained to our viewers what we had in mind, and we worked very hard to make sure they understood the concepts before we instituted the changes. People were given ample opportunities to make comments during the process. We set up a blog on our website, and took telephone comments from folks who don’t yet have internet access. We tried to make sure people were comfortable and engaged in the process, because we felt that’s the essence of democracy. There were a few people who objected all the way to the end, but the majority of our viewers supported the change. And only once we had majority support did we effect the change.”
The Federal Communications Commission has, however, begun proceedings to shut KNOP-TV down. NBC, with whom KNOP-TV is affiliated, recently announced that the little North Platte station would most likely be dropped as a network affiliate sometime within the next few weeks. And even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said he thought the station’s actions demonstrated “poor judgment” and set a “bad precedent” because of their “fundamentally anti-democratic thrust.”
“It is intolerable to allow the kinds of actions in the Free West that we rightly find reprehensible when occurring in totalitarian dictatorships like Chavez’s fascist Venezuela,” said Brown.
At this point, it is unknown what the outcome in North Platte will be. While the community has responded positively to the change, KNOP-TV station owner Hoak Media has indicated it will roll the modification back. In a press release, Hoak said that, “We plan to eliminate any mention of ‘dew point’ from any of our broadcasts, and return to reporting only ‘relative humidity’ within the next few days. We apologize for offending everyone, and we regret that this has become a story at all. We love the United States, and we know everyone else does too.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source within Hoak’s operation said that KNOP-TV meteorologist Tara Moore is expected to be quietly “reassigned” within a matter of days. Ultimately, he expects her to be fired, then blacklisted. “I hope her husband has a good job, their house payment is low, and their kids don’t eat much, because she’s never working in media ever again,” he said.
Experts say community action will have absolutely no impact here, so people are advised to stay at home and do nothing. Except watch TV.