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 October 27th, 2008

RIP Dean Barnett

by @ 19:35. Filed under Miscellaneous.

William Kristol reports the sad news that Dean Barnett passed away today at the too-young age of 41. I can’t give a tribute better than Hugh Hewitt’s, so I’ll point you there.

Sorry about the silence

by @ 12:38. Filed under Miscellaneous.

My desktop went 6 feet under over the weekend. It wasn’t entirely unexpected as I had been encountering freezes over the last couple weeks, but the chipset (nForce 4) finally bit the big one Saturday. It also took out the video card and enough of the hard drive that I could not reinstall Windows on it. I don’t know if that also took out the monitor (ViewSonic VX922) as I’ve seen multiple reports that it wasn’t ViewSonic’s most-reliable, but that also bricked on me.

I’ve spent roughly the last 48 hours rebuilding the desktop (not at all fun with Windows Vista), and though I don’t have all the items I really wanted (partly because it was an emergency rebuild, partly because of budget concerns), the new desktop (Core 2 Duo E8500, Intel P35 Express chipset-my biggest compromise, 2 GB DDR2-800 RAM, 500 GB SATA drive) is just about done and almost to where I had the old desktop software-wise. I still need to get a real monitor (been using the HDTV; 1366×768 on a 26″ is UGLY) and a real video card (I HATE onboard video), but it’s alive. I even managed to rescue my catalog of “Dogfights” episodes (which I had to rescue from the laptop).

The biggest bad thing remaining is I’ve lost 2 years of e-mail. Oh well.

Re: Another Poll At RightWingNews.com

by @ 12:18. Filed under Politics - National, The Blog.

Shoebox already gave his answers to John Hawkins’ latest poll of right-of-center bloggers. Answering that was one of the last things I did on the desktop before it bricked (no, not the last, and I’ll put up more on that in a bit). I may as well put up my answers, with the answers bolded and expansions in italics.

1) Who do you think is going to win the election?

A) John McCain – I had to flip a coin here, and it came up heads.
B) Barack Obama

2) Do you think Sarah Palin has been a plus or a minus to the ticket?

A) Minus
B) Plus – Let me put it this way; had McCain picked just about anybody else, he would be down 10 in the non-cooked polls as well.

3) How do you feel about Sarah Palin as a candidate?

A) I really like her! – Even though she does show a bit too much populism, she has shown a willingness to go RINO-hunting.
B) She’s so-so.
C) I’m not a big fan!

4) The Republican Party did poorly in the 2006 election and even if McCain wins is on track to do poorly again in this years Congressional races. If you had to choose between these two options, do you think that’s because they were

A) Too conservative
B) Not conservative enough – I’m a firm believer in Rush Limbaugh’s maxim that conservatism wins when it is actually tried and implemented. That is something singularily not done over the last 3 years by the GOP.

5) Do you believe the mainstream media’s coverage has been"¦
A) Relatively fair and even handed.
B) Slightly biased in favor of Barack Obama.
C) Slightly biased in favor of John McCain.
D) Heavily biased in favor of Barack Obama. – No, really? I could give example after example, after example, but Jon Ham already has.
E) Heavily biased in favor of John McCain.

6) Do you think Barack Obama is"¦

A) Honest (Yes or no?) – I don’t know where my “depends” ended up, but I also noted Obama’s unguarded slip of his one-party Socialism (nee Communism) wishes to Joe the Plumber was brutally-honest.
B) Patriotic (Yes or no?) -I don’t question what is plainly not there.
C) Qualified be President (Yes or no?) – Too bad there wasn’t a “Oh Hell No!” option.

Oh, What the Heck!

by @ 9:45. Filed under Politics - National.

OK, everyone else will have this up on their site and I’m sure it will spin through chain emails.   While I would normally pass on this due to it being “everywhere,” this one just can’t go without comment.   In fact, I’m even going to use my new flashy light thingy to draw more attention!

In case you’ve just returned from several years on a deserted island, next Tuesday is election day.   We can go back and forth between the policy differences between the two candidates but that is wasted time at this point.   If you are at all ambivalent on who to vote for or if you have decided to vote for Barack Obama yet believes that the United States is a light to the world, consider that the next President will get to decide the makeup of the Supreme Court for at least a generation.

Our choice comes down to a candidate who believes the Constitution of the US is the supreme law of the US and should be followed.   Our other choice is a candidate who in the attached piece, states that he believes the Supreme Court should not be bound by the Constitution.   He intimates that it is only the Court’s lack of desire, not their Constitutional ability, to fundamentally  interpret the Constitution to reflect one of any of a number of European countries.

Listen to the piece.

Another Poll At RightWingNews.com

by @ 8:55. Filed under Politics - National.

John Hawkins at Rightwingnews.com has put up another poll of Right-of-Center bloggers.   You’ll find the poll here and my responses below:

1) Who do you think is going to win the election?

A) John McCain
B) Barack Obama

2) Do you think Sarah Palin has been a plus or a minus to the ticket?

A) Minus
B) Plus

3) How do you feel about Sarah Palin as a candidate?

A) I really like her!
B) She’s so-so.
C) I’m not a big fan!

4) The Republican Party did poorly in the 2006 election and even if McCain wins is on track to do poorly again in this years Congressional races. If you had to choose between these two options, do you think that’s because they were

A) Too conservative
B) Not conservative enough

5) Do you believe the mainstream media’s coverage has been…
A) Relatively fair and even handed.
B) Slightly biased in favor of Barack Obama.
C) Slightly biased in favor of John McCain.
D) Heavily biased in favor of Barack Obama.
E) Heavily biased in favor of John McCain.

6) Do you think Barack Obama is…

A) Honest (Yes or no?)
B) Patriotic (Yes or no?)
C) Qualified be President (Yes or no?)

Probably no real big surprises in the poll’s answers.   Yes, I want McCain to win and while I think it can still happen, if I had to put money down today I’d have to say he won’t.   That’s not defeatism, just an assessment.

I had problems answering the honesty question.   There have certainly been things I would consider dishonest answers from Obama.   However, I don’t know that they were in his mind and if I were honest I’m sure I could find equally equivocated answers from McCain that if I was partisan left, I would find dishonest.

I do like Sarah Palin.   She strikes me as genuine.   I don’t get the smarmy meter running to extremes when I hear her talk, unlike nearly every other politician I’ve ever met, left or right.

What Am I Missing?

by @ 5:44. Filed under Economy.

Consider the following sequence of events:

  1. $700 Billion “bail out” package was passed because it was “urgent,” “essential,” “markets would fail without it!”
  2. Wells Fargo, one of the few banks who were smart enough to avoid getting entangled in the subprime messes was “forced” to accept the government’s infusion of capital, even though they didn’t believe they needed it, because if they didn’t accept it now,

    If the company found it needed capital later and Mr. Kovacevich couldn’t raise money privately, Mr. Paulson promised the government wouldn’t be so generous the second time around.

  3. When queried on Friday about the status of the $700 Billion “bail out”, White House spokesperson Dana Perino, said:

    Well, we’ve looked for an opportunity — ever since the bill passed said it was going to take a little bit of time for all of us to dot the I’s and cross the T’s to get all of the policies in place. And that’s taking place right now. We’ve had Neel Kashkari, who is the Assistant Acting Secretary for the rescue package implementation, was on Capitol Hill yesterday talking about the progress.

    What we tried to warn people about across the country is that it’s going to take a little bit of time. We weren’t talking weeks, we’re not talking months — we’re talking just a few weeks for us to be able to hire the contractors. There are so many people that have to be hired and they have to — we have to make sure that we’re getting the right people. And before money can go out the door we want to make sure that those contracts are rock solid and that we’re doing the best we possibly can to make sure the taxpayers are paid back.

    So we’re in that period right now where — we’re waiting for that implementation. We’re closer than we were yesterday. They work as hard as they possibly can. So what I would ask is that Americans be a little bit patient with this program. We do think it is big enough to solve this big problem; it’s just going to take us a little while to get through it.

In the mean time, we have the report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, I referenced it here, that questions whether there ever was a need for the “bail out.” We also have “invested” banks using their funds to buy competitors rather than increasing loans.

All this leads me to this article from the Financial Times:

Credit markets hit by bank debt guarantee

This article outlines how normal, private debt markets are having trouble functioning.   Why?   Well simply because the government has stepped in and made substantial debt guarantees here, there and everywhere.   As a lender, if you have the choice to lend into situations where the government is guaranteeing your loan or lending normally with assets as collateral, you will either only loan with the guarantee or demand such a premium for the asset backed variety that it becomes unworkable.

I’ll admit it’s anecdotal, so was the evidence supporting the cries of urgency, but as time goes on I’m less and less convinced that the “bail out” was/is a good thing.   Commercial lending doesn’t seem to have ever been interrupted; certainly not to the point that Paulson and company led us to believe.   Interbank lending appears to have restarted.   We were told that the “bail out” was essential to save both of those functions yet according to Dana Perino, Paulson was so convinced of its “need” that he didn’t bother to get major parts of the plan in place, let alone details, even 3 weeks after the plan was approved.   Geez, at least the Marx Brothers’ repetitive ineptness was just for movies!

Admittedly, I’ve never been a big government guy.   I’ve cheered on principle, when either the State or Federal government has had to “shut down” due to some budget issue.   But seriously, can someone explain what I’m missing in this and why we should have any confidence that any of these clowns (Democrat or Republican) have a clue that involves anything other than their own political survival?

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