No Runny Eggs

The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Archive for March 28th, 2008

A moment of Silence

by @ 20:13. Filed under Miscellaneous.

A moment of silence please for Mr. Egg and the team who shall not be named.

Bucky Badger RIP

Roughly half of the olbroad/silent E family of sites is moved to a faster server (make that most)

by @ 19:06. Filed under Miscellaneous.

If you’re loading silent E speaks a bit faster than you have the last several days, that means your ISP has made an update to its DNS to point to the new BlueHost server I spent the afternoon configuring. If not, be patient; it takes a while for DNSes to update.

I do have the files moved over for An Ol’ Broad’s Ramblings as well, but I don’t have the DNS change request in yet. By the end of the weekend, you should be seeing both sites as well as Wales Wisconsin loading significantly faster if all goes well.

Revisions/extensions (8:48 pm 3/28/2008) – Kate’s moved. You don’t necessarily have to update your rolls, readers, and links to take out the /WordPress, but if you don’t see any new posts in your readers by this time tomrorow, please fix your link for her feed to http://olbroad.com/feed.

Things will look just a bit different for a bit

by @ 12:31. Filed under The Blog.

I’m trying to troubleshoot why I can’t quite get silent E’s move right, so I need to change the template for a few minutes.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Revisions/extensions (12:36 pm 3/28/2008) – Back to normal here.

Response to RNC Chair Mike Duncan

by @ 11:11. Filed under Politics - National.

As I noted on this morning’s edition of The Morning Scramble, John Hawkins asked RNC Chair Mike Duncan about those conservatives who might sit out in November (Hawkins’ question in bold, Duncan’s answer in normal type):

Here’s an argument that I don’t agree with, but that I hear a lot: it goes something like this, “The GOP is doing a poor job of representing conservatives. So, what we need to do is deliberately lose in 2008 and then, after a few years of Hillary or Barack in charge, America will be sick of the Left, the GOP will be serious about conservative principles again, and the Party will come back stronger than ever and more representative of conservative views.” Again, I don’t agree with that, but I hear it a lot. What do you say to that?

Well, that is a fallacious argument. It’s also dangerous and let me paint a picture of why. Taken to the extreme, that would return us to 1964 when the Democrats controlled the government entirely.

Look at all the programs that were introduced during that period of time that we’ve had trouble managing, that were are expensive, that have caused us to raise taxes.

So, I think if people sit down and think about turning the entire government over to the Democrats and what that would do to them individually — it would take money away from their families, take jobs away from small businesses, and I think it would be disastrous for our economy. That would be a nightmare in my estimation.

I am not a Party guy, so I’m not overly-wedded to voting for the person with an “R” behind his or her name no matter what. At the same time, I recognize that this is a two-party country, and while the Republican Party mostly tolerates conservatives even as certain elements including its last few standard-bearers stabbed us in the back, the Democratic Party has no desire for anything approaching conservatism.

I also recognize that while conservatism is still the most-popular philosophy in America, it is shared by neither the majority of Americans nor the majority of those who care enough to vote. Indeed, the liberals’ two-pronged strategy of driving people out of the political arena and creating a sufficient number of teat-suckers wholly dependent on government has pretty much borne its fruit.

I personally believe it’s now or never for conservatives in the GOP. I say that knowing we’ve already lost the executive on paper, and knowing the NRCC and NRSC will do everything in its power to save the liberal incumbents. There is a reason I didn’t use “Democrats” in the previous paragraph; it’s a bipartisan rush to liberalism among those in government. Indeed, I’ve called them the bipartisan Party-In-Government.

I note that Duncan brought up the aftermath of 1964. It would have made a bigger impact on me had the out-of-control spending on items the federal government has no business spending a penny on, like health care and education, not repeated itself the last 6 years, mostly under effective Republican control. It would have made a bigger impact on me had the tax rate cuts reduced the government’s take of the economy instead of increased it; indeed, those cuts were sold as not reducing the government’s take.

The only reason I am willing to try one last attempt to turn the GOP to the right is I don’t believe the Democrats will make the same mistake they did in the 1820s and 1850s and allow another party to rise up to challenge it on anything beyond the local level.

The Morning Scramble – 3/28/2008

by @ 9:01. Filed under The Morning Scramble.

I have to thank Ed Driscoll for picking today’s music to surf by….

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNvvUmjTJvs[/youtube]

Random10 gives some love to the winningest driver in racing history.
Doubleplusundead says, “Hawks have to eat too, even if it’s ankle-yappers.”
Kate is so mad at StartLogic for slow site loads and less-than-responsive customer service, she’ll be moving the Ol’ Broad family of blogs (An Ol’ Broad’s Ramblings, silent E speaks, and Wales Wisconsin) off their servers soon. Disclosure, I’ve been trying to get things sped up for them without a lot of success; neither an optimization and repair of the various databases involved nor a significant reduction in the calls to the PHP engine have worked (though I did manage to hack the Silent One’s “non-WP-2.2/2.3-compatible” theme enough to get his local blogroll back with 2.3.3 and get Kate’s blog so that errors aren’t showing up if one goes straight to olbroad.com instead of throwing in the WordPress subdirectory).
Uncle Jimbo heaps praise after praise on Missouri for the VIP treatment of the National Heroes Tour.
– Staying with UJ, he reminds us that, while wars continue until one side or the other suffers enough that the survivors would rather accept surrender than fight, lasting peace comes from convincing the children and grandchildren of those survivors the victors are not the enemy.
John Hawkins and RNC Chair Mike Duncan discuss why conservatives shouldn’t sit out this election. I’ll probably have some further thoughts on that in a bit.
Charlie Sykes cheers the Scorched Earth policy from our gal (of the spring, that is) Hill. Let there be chaos in Denver.
Kathy Carpenter is shocked, SHOCKED WEAC (for those of you out of state, that’s the dominant public teachers’ union here in the land of cheese and beer) would mislead.
– A pair of Patricks (BadgerBlogger and McIlheran) take whacks at State Sen. (and Milwaukee County Executive candidate) Lena Taylor’s (D-Milw.) last gasp sliming of current County Executive Scott Walker. Before you question why I put the “D” behind Taylor’s name and didn’t put an “R” behind Walker’s (he was a Republican Assemblyman before becoming County Executive), the office of County Executive is nonpartisan, while the office Taylor currently holds is partisan.
– Holes in Apple’s armor, part 1 – E.M. Zanotti had her laptop die on her, then discovered Apple’s less-than-customer-friendly return policy.
– Holes in Apple’s armor, part 2 – Gaius reports it took a skilled Apple hacker all of 2 minutes of phishing to crush the Mac’s vaunted security and make it a zombie.
– Disgruntled Truck Triver delivers a trio of toons.
JihadGene channels Kim Jong-Il busting out the tunes while launching rockets.
Gateway Pundit notes Iranian-born Eshan Jami will really push the envelope with the jihadis (and just about everybody else).
Wyatt Earp asks, “Who’s to blame when kids curse?” I would put a content warning on this particular link, but because there are multiple creative uses of characters, I’ll simply slap a PG rating on it.

Revisions/extensions (9:28 am 3/28/2008) – I usually don’t point back to here because, well, you’re here, but for those of you who somehow missed the post below this one, Shoebox explains “subprime” to those of us who didn’t know just how sub it really was. That includes the dolts that gave 75% of those loans a AAA rating.

Bracketology on life support

by @ 7:12. Filed under Sports.

Thanks to a choke job by Bruce Pearl, I finally lost my first Final Four team last night (I usually lose the first one on the way into the Sweet Sixteen). That really put a hit on my bracket, which now has more holes than horse-trader’s mule. The good news is, if Wisconsin beats them all, I’ll beat all the Morons. The not-so-good is I’ll still need help to beat the Bar.

Those of you who took North Carolina or UCLA to be the first #1 out, start praying that Kansas and Memphis don’t choke. If you didn’t vote, Kansas is scheduled to tip first tonight at 8:40 pm, followed by Memphis scheduled at 8:57 pm. Tomorrow, UCLA opens it up at 5:40 pm, followed by North Carolina at 8:05 pm. Word to the wise; if you think we’ll have an all-#1 Final Four, wait until we know which two teams go first. Of course, if we don’t, you’re out of luck.

What does “Subprime” really mean?

by @ 7:00. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Since last fall we’ve heard a lot about “subprime” mortgages.   We’ve seen their troubles impact the housing, stock, and financial markets as well as cause consumers to feel less like spending.   We’ve heard about them and seen their impact but other than some passing references, I haven’t seen specifics about what these loans look like.

I found this article  today that gives some really frightening insight to what a typical subprime loan and  borrower  looks like.  

Warning:   what I am about to share is not for the financially faint of heart!
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