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 June 6th, 2008

Eggs on the road – Week of 6/8/2008

by @ 17:47. Filed under The Blog.

If it’s summer, it’s road-trip season.

Monday, 6/9 – 5:30 pm, AFP Blogger training, Robbins Restaurant, 1810 Omro Rd, Oshkosh.

Tuesday 6/10 – 7 pm, Drinking Right, Papa’s Social Club, 7718 W Burleigh, Milwaukee.

Wednesday 6/11 – 5:30 pm, AFP Blogger training, Lucy Burns Institute, 301 South Bedford, Suite 6, Madison.

I’ve got incoming UPDATE – incoming slid south

by @ 15:12. Filed under Weather.

And this one is a no-shitter…

TORNADO WARNING
WIC079-133-062045-
/O.NEW.KMKX.TO.W.0012.080606T2003Z-080606T2045Z/

BULLETIN – EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
TORNADO WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MILWAUKEE/SULLIVAN WI
303 PM CDT FRI JUN 6 2008

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN SULLIVAN HAS ISSUED A

* TORNADO WARNING FOR…
SOUTHERN MILWAUKEE COUNTY IN SOUTHEAST WISCONSIN…
FAR SOUTHEASTERN WAUKESHA COUNTY IN SOUTHEAST WISCONSIN…

* UNTIL 345 PM CDT

* AT 300 PM CDT…LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT REPORTED A TORNADO 5 MILES
SOUTHEAST OF WATERFORD NEAR THE INTERSECTION OF HIGHWAY 20 AND
BRITTON ROAD IN RACINE COUNTY…MOVING NORTHEAST AT 54 MPH.

* THE TORNADO WILL BE NEAR…
FRANKLIN BY 315 PM CDT…
OAK CREEK AND SOUTH MILWAUKEE BY 320 PM CDT…
CUDAHY…MILWAUKEE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT AND ST. FRANCIS BY 325 PM
CDT…

WHEN A TORNADO WARNING IS ISSUED…IT MEANS THAT STRONG ROTATION HAS
BEEN DETECTED IN THE STORM OR A TORNADO HAS BEEN SIGHTED. IF YOU ARE
IN THE PATH OF THIS DANGEROUS STORM…SEEK A STURDY SHELTER. IF YOU
EXPERIENCE SIGNIFICANT WIND DAMAGE…LARGE HAIL OR TORNADOES…PLEASE
RELAY THAT INFORMATION TO 911.

A TORNADO WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 600 PM CDT FRIDAY EVENING FOR
SOUTHEASTERN WISCONSIN.

LAT…LON 4284 8781 4284 8830 4291 8821 4298 8806
4308 8785 4307 8784 4303 8787 4300 8786
4298 8782
TIME…MOT…LOC 2003Z 232DEG 47KT 4274 8812

$$

BORGHOFF

I’ve got a partial view of the southwest quadrant of the bunker, and I’ve got the laptop. This one’s going to be close!

R&E (3:14 pm 6/6/2008) – Was oddly calm, but now there’s a bit of a breeze again and it’s starting to rain. No real oddity though.

R&E part 2 (3:18 pm 6/6/2008) – Moved to the widest-view southwest window. Raining pretty good, and now the NWS says it’s passing south and now radar-indicated.

R&E part 3 (3:29 pm 6/6/2008) – If I weren’t listening to Ed Morrissey, I’d be chasing. There was a funnel cloud at Hwy K and I-94 15 minutes ago, which is sufficiently south of the bunker. It’s now raining pretty good, and there’s a bit of thunder. Nothing unusual in my little corner of the world though.

Last HamNation

by @ 12:47. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Hopefully it’s just the last Townhall version, but if it truly is the last, MKH is going out in style.

Hopefully the Washington Examiner lets her do a few.

Re: The $64,000 and $382,000 Obama/Rezko property questions

by @ 10:46. Filed under Politics - National.

Jim Geraghty kicked it off by asking why Barack Obama would “overpay” Rita Rezko (Tony’s wife, and yes, THAT Tony) $64,000 for a strip of land on a vacant property she owned next to his Chicago home. Headless Blogger jumped on it and asked why Rezko would “overpay” the previous owner of both parcels $384,000 for that piece of vacant land. I burned much of last night trying to do some digging through both the City of Chicago’s online GIS map and the Cook County Assessor’s office website to see what could be discerned from that.

First, I have to thank Headless for refreshing my memory on some of the specifics of the same-day purchases by Obama and Rezko:

  • There are actually 3 parcels involved; two listed by the Cook County Assessor’s office as 5046 S. Greenwood Ave. (the house Obama purchased and an outlot behind the house and garage containing a second, small house also presumably purchased by Obama), and one listed as 5050 S. Greenwood (the vacant lot purchased by Rezko). At that time, the “main” 5046 parcel was about 10,400 square feet and the 5050 parcel was about 9,600 square feet (side note; CBS2Chicago said that it was 7,500 feet; guess they didn’t check city records too closely).
  • The previous owner of all 3 parcels was looking to sell them all for $2.575 million. On the same day in June 2005, Obama purchased the two parcels at 5046 for $1.65 million ($300,000 less than the asking price), while Rezko bought the 5050 parcel for $625,000 (the full asking price).
  • In January 2006, Obama bought 1/6th of the 5050 parcel from Rezko (about 1,600 square feet) for $104,000 (precisely 1/6th of what Rezko paid for it) despite it being appraised at only $40,500.
  • That purchase not only increased the “main” 5046 parcel size to its current 12,047 square feet and reduced the 5050 parcel to 8,002 square feet, but it caused the combined 5046 southern property line to “jog” south (so much for the claim that he was trying to “balance” the property lines).

Now, the “why”s. Do bear in mind that this is complete speculation, but I suspect that Obama wanted the entire parcel, but didn’t yet have the ability to come up with $2.275 million (the total amount paid to the previous owner). He got his friend Tony Rezko to have his wife buy the vacant parcel with the understanding that he would pay her back as the additional money from his new job as US Senator came in by buying pieces of the parcel and attaching them to his property. That scheme fell apart after Tony was indicted on federal corrpution charges in October, 2006.

I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know whether that scheme violated federal law, Illinois law or Senate ethics rules in addition to smelling as bad as Jones Island after a 3-day rain. However, I do know that, had a Wisconsin politician participated in that scheme, he or she would have faced at a minimum a criminal investigation and likely prosecution.

Revisions/extensions (10:58 am 6/6/2008) – Some more info from a March 2008 article in the Chicago Tribune (H/T – Headless):

The house and the adjoining yard had been owned as a single property, but the owners were listing them separately and asking $1.95 million for the house and $625,000 for the landscaped side lot.

Obama disclosed Friday that someone else already had an option to buy the garden lot. But he said Rezko took over that option after Rezko learned Obama was bidding for the house. Obama said he knew next to nothing about those transactions and does not recall when he learned that Rezko was interested in buying the side lot- or even how Rezko learned it was for sale….

At some point before the property sales closed, Obama toured the home with Rezko for 15 to 30 minutes. Obama said he asked Rezko to assess the property because he was a real estate developer in the area. “He said, ‘I’d be willing to go inside and take a look,’ ” Obama recalled….

Rezko later sold the rest of the lot to one of his former attorneys, who now has it listed for more than $900,000. “It appears,” Obama said, “a sale is about to be consummated.”

Curiouser and curiouser.

High risk, is-there-a reward? – the conservatives edition

by @ 8:30. Filed under Politics - National.

I suppose, with both halves of the Presidential ticket now set, now is as good a time as any to outline the three choices conservatives have with regard to John McCain. I will say out front that I am still undecided on which course I will personally take because all three choices involve the highest of risks with at best a minimal chance of a reward, and I cannot yet see which course offers the better chance of reward.

First, we have to understand how we got where we are. The Republican National Committee and its leadership, from President Bush on down, has made its goal the supplanting of conservatives with moderates as its “base”. While the state parties didn’t quite follow the script as far as the Presidential nomination is concerned, they got the message to promote moderate-to-liberal candidates to the mutual exclusion of conservative ones loud and clear. The folly of that achieved goal is something that deserves its own post, but in case that post slips into the memory hole, I’ll state that there are far more conservatives that can be and are being turned off than there are moderates that can reasonably be expected to become part of the party.

Further, their apparent strategy continues to be “Dem Lite”, with but a couple of not-overwhelmingly-popular differences between the two flavors of what I term the bipartisan Party-In-Government in the forms of the War on Terror and socialism-lite versus socialism-heavy. Again, an expansion on those points is something left to its own thread.

So, what now? The first option is to say, “Screw McCain and the RNC this year; let the RNC come back to me.” That will undoubtedly, even with concentration on individual Congressional races, give the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in Congress. I may not have a lot of memories of the Carter administration, but those that I do have are uniformly bad. Further, I do believe we tried that in 2006, and look at what it got us even with but one statewide/Congressional “R” pickup (Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen) and a whole host of “R” losses.

On the flip side, the RNC will, in all likelyhood, finally understand that they can’t win without conservatives. Of course, if McCain does beat Barack Obama under this scenario, we are truly a group without a home.

The second, related option is to say, “Screw McCain and the RNC; I’m doing a third party.” I strongly believe that it would kill the Republican Party, which in a vacuum would not necessarily be a bad thing. However, we aren’t in a vacuum, and the Democrats have spent the last 75 years preparing for the destruction of the Republican Party. I doubt they’ll make the same mistakes as they did after killing the Federalists in the 1810s and the Whigs in the 1850s and allow either one of the current fringe third-parties or a brand new party to take root.

Also, in the lag time between the mass exodus and the final twitches, I doubt we’ll get a lot of support from the conservatives that have really hitched their wagons to the GOP structure.

The third option is to say, “I’ll swallow the bitter pill and don my noseplugs for McCain so I can get a chance of a seat at the table.” That is generally how politics works. However, once again, we tried that in 1988, 2000, and 2004, and look at what it got us; a party that voted for the largest (in absolute dollars) expansion of welfare in the history of the country, a party that continues to push for amnesty for 20 million illegal aliens in the face of 80% opposition, a party that has adopted the Gorebal Warming line of Bravo Sierra in the face of collapsing scientific support, and a party that is increasingly hostile to conservatives, now going so far as to support center-left candidates to the mutual exclusion of conservative ones for open Congressional seats.

Moreover, McCain is not as accomodating toward conservatives as Bush. Even if we delivered for him, I doubt he’ll even give us the lip service Bush did.

The Morning Scramble – 6/6/2008

by @ 7:03. Filed under The Morning Scramble.

The band is American Hitmen, 5 Marines who served in Fallujah during Operation Phantom Fury, and the song is “Born Again” performed on the National Heroes Tour…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF3FfYwyBbk[/youtube]

  • Ace catches NASA cooking the books (literally) to try to prop up Gorebal Warming.
  • Mondoreb has today’s Obamimation PhotoShops.
  • Moron Pundit does some Obama Demotivation.
  • It must be Obamination Friday; Ed Morrissey catches Barack Obama doing a backflip on Jerusalem. That new bus must have the highest ground clearance EVAH!; now he’s throwing whole countries under it.
  • Just one more Obamination; Sister Toldjah rips him a new one for ripping off the Comfort Inn logo.
  • Dupray celebrates the slaying of the Wicked Witch of the East, Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately, Obama is no Dorothy.
  • Jim Hoft tells Clinton the same thing the New York Congressional delegation is going to tell her Saturday (or whenever she makes her concession speech) by not being there; DLTDHYOTWO. If you need an explanation, search Michelle Malkin’s site.
  • Double-dose of Moron Pundit; he continues his Ask a Moron: Zombie Invasion series. Do catch the previous installments.
  • Speaking of zombies, doubleplusundead has the zombie news wrapup.
  • Ed Driscoll offers some sage advice to commencement speakers – don’t rip off The Onion.
  • Josh Schroeder has a warning for those of you storing beer under CFLs; be prepared to clean up broken glass and cry over spilled beer.

Hint: It’s Not Skull and Crossbones

by @ 5:52. Filed under Politics - Minnesota.

Thursday, Al Gore endorsed Al Franken to be the Democrat candidate for the US Senate  from Minnesota.   The endorsement caused the local, and some of the national media, to be all a twitter.   From the local Star and Sickle:

DFL U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken got a welcome boost on Wednesday with an endorsement from one of the more revered figures in the Democratic Party — former Vice President Al Gore.

Gore, who has become a crusading environmentalist since leaving elective office, sent an e-mail to DFL delegates on Wednesday afternoon that warmly praised Franken, calling him “exactly the breath of fresh air our government needs.”

I really don’t understand all the excitement.

If you’re not aware, Franken has been having some trouble with articles he’s written. The first was a 2000 article for Playboyin which amongst other things, Franken wrote about his son using the internet to write a report on bestiality. Another article, written in 1995has Franken making jokes about rape. Franken’s response to the article is that he did it as a satarist, it was a long time ago and Minnesota people know that that article is not who he is now. Like Barack Obama, Franken also tries to argue that the associations and activities of his personal life are not reflective of who he would be as a political leader. However, the article is so egregious and sexist, that even female Democrat leadership from Minnesota are asking him to remove himself from nomination.

Al Gore, if you remember, had his own problems with Playboy. In his 2000 campaign, one of Al’s California supporters had scheduled a fund raiser at the Playboy mansion. Al spent a great deal of time trying to reconcile his stated belief, that men and women were equal, with the fact that his fund raiser was being held at a place that clearly didn’t portray that perspective. While the venue was later moved, Al could never bring himself to return the contributions he had received from the various Playboy Executives. Like Franken and Obama, Al tried to tell us that the contributions didn’t reflect his views and were only a tiny fraction of the funds raised by the campaign.

So I really don’t understand the excitement of the endorsement. After all, they’re a part of the same secret society. As such, one would expect members of the society to stand and fully support one another.  

What society you ask?   No, I don’t mean the Secret Society of Al’s, I mean the secret society within the Democrat party that believes the objectification of women is a positive attribute.

Roll bloat – blog-moving edition

by @ 0:13. Filed under The Blog.

I thought I had Support Your Local Gunfighter on that bloated roll, but dumbshit me forgot to throw it on. It’s now fixed.

In any case, those of you who have his old Blogger address on your rolls and feed readers, please update it to http://supportyourlocalgunfighter.com/ and http://supportyourlocalgunfighter.com/feed respectively.

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