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, 2012

June 27, 2012

I wouldn’t want to be Bo tomorrow!

If you blog about politics, it’s hard not to toss a blog up prior to tomorrow’s announcement re: Placebocare.

I’m on vacation in the great northern parts of Minnesota so this won’t be long. I want it down to play against after the decision is revealed and for posterity…it’s too damn easy to say “yeah, I knew that’s what would happen!”

Placebocare is going down in flames. I say this not because I want it to…I do, but because of the signs along the way.

Ginsberg inkled the decision a few weeks back when she said that the decisions would have “sharp disagreement.” I can’t see her making this comment without the single most important case of the session, and arguably of this generation, in mind.

Second, it appears that Chief Justice Roberts himself will be writing the opinion for the case. There is much rumor on this but it makes sense as he is the only justice who has not written one this go around. I think the fact that Roberts writes the opinion makes the mandate a goner.

As to the rest of Placebocare, I think once the mandate is gone, the Supreme Court will also decide that the rest of the bill needs to go. I think there will be two likely arguments for this.

First, the Commerce Clause has been used as an excuse for Congress to pass legislation on damn near anything they wanted to for the past 40 years or so. “The slippery slope” is no longer a theory, it is real. I think that given that the administration argued for the right to do this under the Commerce Clause, the Supremes will take this chance to council Congress on what is and what is not acceptable to slide under the Commerce Clause door. I would expect Roberts to see this decision as his legacy in the court. I don’t seem him passing up this opportunity to put his stamp on the history of the court.

Second, the Administration gave the Supremes the perfect out on shooting the entire bill as they argued that the mandate was essential to make Placebocare work financially. I can’t remember who, it may have been Roberts, made the astute observation that it was somewhat indefensible of the Administration to ask the Supremes to figure out the financial implications of what should stay or go in the Placebocare law if the mandate was struck. Hell, Nancy Pelosi didn’t even know what was in the bill until it was signed but knew it was a good law. How could the Supremes be more omniscient than Nancy P and Harry R?

OK, so Placebocare is dead, then what?

Well, if you thought Obama was petulant after he got slapped on Arizona, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

If this goes as I see it, Obama is a lame duck. Worse, he’s a dead duck politically. Unfortunately, he will still hold the office of President for several more months. I don’t expect Obama to go quietly into that good night. Rather, like post Arizona, I think we could see petulance at a level not seen since the last of the Roman emperors. We are likely to see all kinds of Executive orders made dealing with administration and fund dispersal of various federally supported medical programs. Obama’s sole intent will be to leave office with a great big “I told you so” sign on his bumper. He will attempt to cause chaos in as many medical programs as possible just to be able to say that his plan would have prevented all of that. In fact, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see him do this and couch it as things he must now do to be fiscally responsible

Obama has shown himself to be a very sore loser. I wouldn’t want to be Bo his dog, tomorrow night!

June 14, 2012

Back-handed Smashes of Justice – The Return

by @ 11:47. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Once again, I’ve been spending far too much time on Twitter lately. Since I’ll be at Right Online tomorrow and Saturday, I figured I best get back in the groove of blogging. What better way than the infamous Back-handed Smashes of Justice:

  • Governor Scott Walker, Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, Senators Scott Fitzgerald and Terry Moulton, and Assemblyman/Senator-elect Jerry Petrowski (standing in for the retired Pam Galloway) easily beat back their recall challengers in the biggest non-Presidential election in Wisconsin’s history. Unfortunately, the Democrats in the city of Racine gave the rest of the county a true raspberry of a going-away “present” by giving John Lehman his revenge against Van Wanggaard, and in the process gave Senate Democrat leader Mark Miller control of an empty chamber for less than 7 months.
  • Once again, Walker held out an olive branch (or should that be a brat?) despite the DPW still holding out hope that the incredibly-biased Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office (controlled by Democrats, with a majority of the staff signing Recall Walker petitions) will indict their ham sandwich. Given all that would do is put Kleefisch in the governor’s mansion, and she is about as popular as he is, I somehow doubt that’s going to happen.
  • Speaking of the recall, President Obama decided to play hopscotch over Wisconsin, choosing instead to attend 6 fundraisers in the greater Twin Cities and Chicago areas the Friday before the election. I can neither confirm nor deny that Obama skipped over Wisconsin because there wasn’t any money in it for him.
  • Speaking of money, the MacIver Institute tracked over $23.5 million in reportable expenditures by Big Labor in their 1-for-6 performance. That’s $23.5 million that won’t be going into Team SCOAMF, and with their failure, it’s also not leveragable, even if the unionistas and Obama were still on money-sharing terms.
  • Oh wait, the AFL-CIO won’t be donating to Team SCOAMF this time around, preferring instead to shore up their fast-eroding base of support.
  • In economic news, it’s almost all bad, despite Teh SCOAMF’s since-expired claim that in the ObamiNation, the private sector was “doing fine”. The “highlights” – unemployment up to 8.2% in May, 69,000 jobs created in May (with April’s job creation revised downward to 77,000), 1st-quarter real GDP growth slashed to 1.9%, corporate profits posting their worst quarter in 3 years last quarter, over 19 million Americans out of work who want a job, consumer confidence diving. It’s only against the basket case of the EU that things are “fine”.
  • Oh yes, the Europeans. Greece can’t form a government (and if they do, they’ll start repudiating debt). Spain received, a day after the IMF said they needed a $50 billion injection to save the banks, a $125 billion injection to save the banks. The first act of the Socialists in France was to cancel a planned rise in the retirement age from 60…to 62. Did I mention that the “austerity” wasn’t exactly austerity?
  • The Brewers are playing down to their competition, getting whipped by the worst teams in baseball, yet somehow holding their own against the best. Unfortuantely, it’s more the former than the latter, and since June 1 went by with the Brewers under .500, we’re waiting for Packers’ training camp. Boo stale beer.
  • The Packers are having a nice mini-camp, complete with a clay-shooting trip. Hooray meat.

I can’t let you go without a trip to Real Debate Wisconsin for a laundry list of voting irregularities in the city of Racine last week Tuesday from Lou D’Abbraccio.

June 13, 2012

Your Shrinkage is Showing!

In the science of thermodynamics we learn that as objects are cooled they shrink, as they are heated, they expand.  I remember enough about high school physics to tell you that the reason for this is that as atoms are heated, they get excited, move vibrate more and the item expands.  The opposite effect occurs when the atoms are cooled.

At this point I must warn you that if you are squeamish about subject matter, you may want to skip a few paragraphs as I am known for being perfectly willing to discuss and have viewed, certain body parts that may not be considered “civil” discussion.  I’ll point out where to rejoin us if you skip ahead.

Most males, beyond a certain age, are intimately familiar with the effects of thermal expansion.  Drop a bunch of teenage males into a cold pool and you will hear a noticeable heightening in their voice tones as thermal expansion, or in this case retraction, works on their genitals.  Drop a bunch of 20+ year old guys into the same cold pool and not only will you hear their voices move up in range but you will hear these voices explaining to the other males how they are really much larger than the slight bump in their swimsuits would suggest.  They will argue that the cold water is having an enormous impact on them.  They will further argue that under normal circumstances, they are much more impressive. OK, if you skipped that last paragraph, you can return now. Last Friday during a press conference, President Obama said,

“The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government. “

As a bit of an aside, for any of you that believe that his was just another of Obama’s “Biden moments” because he didn’t work from a teleprompter, you’re wrong. Obama said clearly what he wanted to say. The proof? Listen to Harry Reid from October of last year…same line. This wasn’t a slip, this comes from Obama’s Socialist belief that government is the source of all economic good:

OK, back to topic…

Obama’s statement received an immediate reaction of incredulity from everyone not living in Obama’s big government bubble, and rightly so. Since then, Obama and his surrogates have been attempting to explain, deflect and walk back the statement.

White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney, took the media to task for asking about Obama’s statement telling them that they should “do your jobs and report on contexts.” This was a follow up to David Axelrod, who traveled the weekend talk show circuit, using the same “context” explanation. Further, he argued that voters knew what the President meant and wouldn’t be sucked in by the Republican’s misrepresentation.

On Wednesday, James Carville basically told the Obama campaign to quit telling people how much he’s done for the economy…they don’t believe it!

Is it just me or do voices of Carney, Axelrod and Carville all sound like they’ve had a dip in cold water?

Meanwhile, like the 20 something standing in a cold pool, Obama continues to explain to us that it’s not really him, it’s the environment around him that makes him look small and ineffective. Using terms like “headwinds,” Obama blames everything including Buuuuuush, Japan, Europe, Congress and others for his inability to fix the economy.

Today, Reuters/Ipsos shows Obama and Romney in a statistical dead heat among registered voters (likely a Romney lead of likely voters for a variety of reasons) in a poll that was taken largely after the Obama statement. The poll also shows Romney preferred over Obama on economic issues.

Also today, Rasmussen has a poll that shows Romney up 3 among likely voters in Wisconsin. This is the latest poll that shows Romney tied or ahead in virtually every battleground state with momentum on his side in each case.

Obama and his spokespeople can continue to believe that the President should not be held accountable for the mess our economy has become. They can continue to believe that they will be able to fool some of the people all of the time. In fact, they may be able to do that….with some people. But, they won’t fool all of the people. In fact, it looks like fewer and fewer people are being fooled by Obama’s litany of excuses. It looks to me that despite his protests, Obama’s shrinkage is clearly visible. It’s time for him to get out of the deep end before he does himself and us any permanent damage.

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