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 February 15th, 2007

It’s Hen¢AR after all

by @ 20:00. Filed under Sports.

Revised/extended 5:01 pm 2/16/2007 – The reasons just keep on growing.

Just in case you missed the reasons for my final break with Hen¢AR at TheWisconsinSportsBar, I’ll repeat it here:

Let’s review the tape, shall we…with some additional information found after reading Larry McReynolds (revised and updated 4:58 pm 2/16/2007)

  • 2002 Coca-Cola 600 post-race inspection – The Roush Racing #6 Ford is caught 1/8th inch too low after Mark Martin won the race. Penalty – $50,000 fine to crew chief Ben Leslie. Also, then-NASCAR President Bill France announced a plan to start taking championship points away for future violations of NASCAR’s rulebook (in limited circumstances, involving the “big 3” violations of fuel/engine size and horsepower/tires found post-race, NASCAR had disqualified the team and taken away the points earned).
  • 2002 Pepsi 400 (unknown when in the weekend this was discovered)- The Hendrick Motorsports #48 Chevrolet is the first team to have points taken away in the modern penalty era, losing 25 driver’s/owner’s points for being caught with offset mounts for the truck arms (part of the rear suspension). Crew chief Chad Knaus also lost $25,000 in a fine.
  • 2002 New England 300 post-race inspection – The Robert Yates Racing #88 Ford is caught 1/8th inch too low after Dale Jarrett finished 3rd in the race. Penalty – 25 driver’s/owner’s points and $20,000 fine to crew chief Todd Parrott.
  • 2005 UAW-Ford 500 (fall Talledega race) post-qualifying inspection – The Richard Childress Racing #29 Chevrolet is caught with several unapproved changes relating to airflow in and around the trunk area. Penalty – disallowal of the qualifying time, $10,000 fine to crew chief Todd Berrier, 2-race suspension for Berrier, zero driver’s/owner’s points taken away.
  • 2006 Daytona 500 post-qualifying inspection – The Hendrick Motorsports #48 Chevrolet is caught with a trick rear window designed to give an aerodynamic advantage. Penalty – disallowal of the qualifying time, $25,000 fine to Knaus, 4-race suspension for Knaus, zero driver’s/owner’s points taken away from either Jimmie Johnson or owner Jeff Gordon.
  • 2006 Daytona 500 post-qualifying inspection – The Hall of Fame Racing #96 Chevrolet is caught with an illegal manifold. Penalty – disallowal of the qualifying time, $25,000 fine to crew chief Phillipe Lopez, 4-race suspension for Lopez, and 25 driver’s/owner’s points taken away (important because it was a new-for-2006 team). Note; discussions of an alliance between HOF Racing and Hendrick Motorsports had fallen through, and HOF Racing just signed an alliance with Joe Gibbs Racing.
  • 2007 Daytona 500 post-qualifying inspection – The Roush Racing #17 Ford and all three Evernham Racing Dodges are caught with insufficiently-covered holes in the rear wheel wells normally used for the oil cooler. The #17 and #9 suffer the biggest penalties – qualifying times disallowed, $50,000 fines and 4-race suspensions for the crew chiefs, and the loss of 50 driver’s/owner’s points for each driver/team. The #10 and #19 crew chiefs were each suspended 2 races and fined $25,000, with the drivers and owner losing 25 points on each team. As a side note, Ray Evernham, the owner of Evernham Racing, used to be the crew chief on the Hendrick Motorsports #24 Chevrolet before he left to be one of the founding teams for Dodge.
  • 2007 Daytona 500 pre- and post-qualifying inspection – The Michael Waltrip Racing #55 Toyota is caught with what turns out to be jet fuel in the intake manifolds. After the removal of the first intake manifold, Mikey was allowed to qualify, but the same substance appeared after qualifying. Perhaps because Toyota is pumping a LOT of money into Hen ¢AR, the penalty isn’t as severe as it could be; the disallowal of the qualifying time (important because the team was not in the top 35 in owners’ points at the end of 2005), the loss of 100 driver’s/owner’s points, a $100,000 fine for the crew chief, the indefinite suspension of the crew chief and team director, and the seizure of the car. Mikey did ultimately race his way into the Daytona 500.
  • 2007 Gatorade Duel 2 post-race inspection – The Hendrick Motorsports #24 Chevrolet is found to be 1 inch too low after Jeff Gordon won the 2nd Duel. The only penalty – move the #24 from 4th in the grid for the Daytona 500 to 42nd. Jeffy still gets to keep the win, and there will be no points deduction or fines assessed.

See you at the few short tracks remaining in Wisconsin. To hell with Hen ¢AR!

Good luck to Matt; he’ll need it now that the official Hen¢AR team for 2007 has been annointed. I wonder what Hen¢AR will do if he manages to take the 2007 title from poor little Jeffy, Jimmie, and the almost-official Stewie (Jr’s too outspoken to ever be fully-embraced by Brainless France).

Today’s pick-me-up

by @ 18:34. Filed under Politics - National, War on Terror.

With a lot more details and updates over at Hot Air…

Iraqi police got into a firefight with a bunch of Al Qaeda in Iraq members on the road between Fallujah and Samarrah, killed a top aide in that organization and, depending on who you believe, wounded and/or captured one Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, the successor to the very deceased Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

‘Tis nice to know that the ‘Rats in the House still have the Algore sense of timing, with their retreat-and-defeat proposal (“unencumbered” by those “pesky” Republicans who wanted to put a support-the-troops amendment in) coming up for a vote tomorrow.

State of the…

by @ 17:05. Filed under Miscellaneous.

It may seem I’m a bit late with this, but with the various policies from all of the “state of the…” speeches starting to play themselves out, it’s the perfect time to do my own.

First up, the state of the blog. It’s good, as I’ve successfully moved this thing to its own domain and figured out how to drive most of those stuck in the dark ages here. I might not post as much as I want partly because I am running out of steam and partly because I prefer not to use profanity every other word, but that’s a quibble for my 2 readers.

The state of the city of Oak Creek – Not as good. The suckers known as 54% of the voters in November decided to build a Taj Mahal East Middle School at a cost of $28.5 million (which is more than what they paid to “renovate” and vastly expand the suddenly-inadequate high school, then the bombshells started coming out. First, that 36-acre/$1.4 million site that the school district wanted turned out to be a third swamp, so they couldn’t also build the coming replacement for Meadowview there. Then, the NIMBYs struck successfully. I would be cheering, but I realize two things; the costs will go up even more, and their most-successful argument is complete Barbara Streissand. My answer to that argument; where better than a neighborhood for a school? There’s far fewer overprotective parents driving little Biffy and Buffy to middle school than to elementary school, there’s no high-schoolers making the roads unsafe, and Oakwood Road is supposedly a main road, so the “increased traffic” excuse is a canard.

Taxes went up across the board (again), and unless things change drastically, I either need to learn to love grabbing my ankles or bail. Fortunately, all isn’t yet lost, as Mark Verhalen wants to be my new alderman. Just as a reminder, the primary is next Tuesday.

The state of Milwaukee County – Once again, there are just too many tax-and-spend-and-tax-and-spend-and-tax-and-spend-and-tax-and-spenders. I would call for a revolt, but considering not even half of the people in Oak Creek, once the home of the tax revolt, feel taxes are too high, it’s not worth it. I wish Scott Walker the best of luck, and I hope he decides to run for President because it would give us at least one conservative in the race (more below).

The state of Wisconsin – What do $1.7 billion (and counting) and 600 represent? Another two broken campaign promises by Jim “Craps” Doyle (WEAC/Potawatomi-For Sale). If I could avoid swearing, I would comment more on the tax increase represented by the first number, and I’m not at all surprised that instead of cutting another 7,000 state jobs (which is what Craps would need to do by 2010 to actually live up to a campaign promise), he’s adding state jobs. Have to have an excuse to raise taxes, after all.

Meanwhile, JB Van Hollen is proving a big disappointment. I wonder if the ‘Rats in this state knew that he would continue his “see no evil” approach he perfected as US Attorney for western Wisconsin, and decided to give the “Pubbies” a token victory.

The state of the Union – We’re, frankly, falling apart. The conversion of the union to North Mexico continues unabated under Jefe Jorge. The ‘Rats, unsatisfied with the 80% they have been getting, and wishing to live in the slavery of dhimmitude and die under Sharia rather than “suffer” under one more day of liberal RepubicRATism (much less conservatism, which we haven’t really had since 1988), are racing each other to see who can cave to the Islamokazis the fastest. The RepubicRATs, almost to a man, are racing hard to the left while giving less than lip service to conservatism.

Damn, I’m depressed.

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