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.
This is the Emergency Blogging System. It has been activated because Steve’s out decimating the walleye population of Ontario. SEEK SHELTER!
Just because Steve’s out of the country, that doesn’t mean that we can’t have an open thread. It just means that the liquor’s all locked up (or more-likely, all drunk up). Go crazy, but not too crazy, because Godzilla will be storming back in here bright and early (perhaps even this early) Saturday.
Does your job give you little satisfaction?
Does it fail to challenge you in any way?
Do you have a boatload of benefits?
Do you think the union gives you job security?
Sooner or later somebody finds a better way, one that grows business and cuts costs. Even the government is doing it these days.
But in February, the city provided her with help. An automated ranger, if you will, now dispenses day fishing permits. It resembles a ticket machine you might have seen at a trolley stop.
“You press a button for the number of tickets you want, and then you insert payment and get a slip. It prints the date and time,” Felchlin said.
Before the machine was installed, Miramar Reservoir was closed on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. But now the public has the opportunity to fish from shore seven days a week. Besides generating much-needed revenue, the automated ranger is also user-friendly.
Pretty scary huh? The government has figured out that you don’t actually need people to shuffle paper. Before long, they’ll discover that you don’t need paper, either.
So, has our poor ranger friend got a Plan B?
“Even if they programmed this to sell boat permits, they still need someone to issue boats,” Felchlin said.
I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, Lori. Haven’t you seen any of the latest car commercials, with all the fancy robots moving about? Sooner or later somebody is going to program one of them to stack boats. You’re better off studying to be a robot mechanic.
Walleye fishing is extremely good this year in Minnesota.
Lake Mille Lacs has been especially hot this year, with anglers catching their 4-fish limit within the lake’s slot limit.
Conservation officers say the fishing has been so good, one group of anglers was caught with 15 walleyes and that is way over the limit. Now those anglers face up to $1,200 in fines.
With any luck, uncle Steve is enjoying the same experience.
It’s Monday. That means it’s time for more fishing bloopers!
Revisions/extensions (steveegg – 6:36 pm 6/2/2007) – Embed added…
I may be out of comm range, and I may be out of the country, but I’m not too far out to not remember those that gave all so that we may be free.
Thank you.
Gosh, I hope Steve’s trip is going well.
Revisions/extensions (steveegg – 6:32 pm 6/2/2007) – Yep, it went well. ‘Tis good that the Canucks don’t have Jim “Craps” Doyle’s (WEAC/Potawatomi-For Sale) DNR on their docks because we would have been launching daily. Oh, and here’s the embed…
I found a guy who Steve might want to seek fishing advice from this weekend.
Sorry that I couldn’t embed. WordPress still doesn’t like me.
Revisions/extensions (steveegg – 6:29 pm 6/2/2007) – Let’s try embedding again…
I’ll be out on the Great Walleye Hunt of 2007, so until I’m back roughly this time next Saturday, enjoy the words of wisdom from Patrick, Aaron and Fred.
Have a good Memorial Day.
You’ll have to find these on your own next week, but don’t say you don’t know where to look because I’m leading you to the water this week:
– The Peeps are back on HamNation. Content warning, there is a jihadi peep this week, and there is a “forward-looking statement”, so MKH and Katie cannot say that no peeps were harmed in the shooting of this week’s HamNation.
– Today’s Vent turns up the heat on Homeland Security North Mexico Assimilation Secretary Michael Chertoff and leaves him extra crispy.
Dunno if we’ll have a Friday Freefly, but he’s busy writing a story about his experiences in the Waterborne Infiltration Course, and put up part 1.
Scratch my previous claim that I’m actively blocked by the ChiComs. While going through my logs this morning, I found this (everything that could identify this visitor beyond the city and country of the visitor in question has been redacted to protect him/her, while the URL of the page that was screen-capped has been redacted to protect me) –
(click for the full-sized pic)
Last I checked, Beijing is the capital of Red China.
I could take it as bad news that my constant bashing of the murderous thugs hasn’t blocked me, or I could say that No Runny Eggs is helping to replant the seeds of freedom that were ripped up, run over and shot down in Tianemen Square back in 1989.
One of the FReepers I mentioned in the last post, expatguy, has a blog called An American Expat in Southeast Asia. If this post on Pelosi’s road trip to Damascus and an unnamed foreign diplomat’s reaction was all he had, I would still add the blog to the roll, but that isn’t it. I’ll leave it to you to go read the entire blog.
(H/T – HAL9000 at Free Republic)
Surprise, surprise, surprise. If it’s the end of May and North Korea isn’t getting their way, it’s time for a missile shoot into the Sea of Japan (note for those confused by the Korean references, they call it the East Sea). Because those missiles were anti-ship missiles, it is speculated that the launches were in retaliation for the launching of South Korea’s first Aegis destroyer. Nonetheless, South Korea (for reasons that are incomprehensible) and Japan (because the missiles were reportedly short-ranged missiles that couldn’t reach Japan) weren’t exactly concerned.
Of particular note are a series of posts at FR between FReepers AmericanInTokyo and expatguy, a couple of Americans on the far side of the Pacific, starting at #10. Just a sampling (this one from #39 by expatguy) –
Had lunch with a Eastern European diplomat today, we were talking about Iraq and the WOT ~ and he said to me ~ “You guys can’t even defend yourselves from being invaded by Mexico … what makes you think you can succeed in Afghanistan or Iraq?”
I highly suggest reading that thread.
Thoughts, AB?
(H/T – CDR Salamander)
You might want to read the latest e-mail from Michael Yon, who has been in the “irretreviably-lost” (if you believe the Dhimm crowd) Anbar province for quite a while, that Glenn Reynolds put up, as well as the follow-on correspondence. First, part of Yon’s e-mail:
Otherwise, 2-7 hardly have fired their weapons. Today, I accompanied LTC Doug Crissman, the commander, to three meetings with Iraqi police and civilian leadership. The meetings were important but thankfully more administrative than combat oriented. Subjects included police recruitment and local politics, and actually seemed more difficult to navigate than “simple combat.” And to think that only in January of this year, this city was a daily battle. Today, there are clear signs of development and the civilian population was out shopping. In addition to basic services being restored, the city of Hit has rebuilt its library. Citizens had stored away the books during the war here. They are preparing to re-stock the library. Glenn, you know that I do not hesitate to deliver bad news. I have no bad news to deliver today. The town of Hit clearly is doing much, much better. “Anbar the impossible” might be possible after all.
Next, a bit of Captain Michael Mulvania’s letter:
I’m actually sitting about 30 feet from Michael Yon as he types his dispatches, here in the town of Hit, Al Anbar province. As one of the soldiers in Task Force 2-7, I have to say it’s really heartening to have a journalist of his caliber out here reporting with us. Hit, along with Anbar generally, has settled down tremendously in the 4 months I’ve been in country this tour. It’s surreal to compare my first two months in downtown Ramadi – incessant gunfire, explosions, and unending violence – to the peacekeeping and institution-building we finally have underway here in Hit. You wouldn’t get that reading the papers, with their constant focus on the (obviously tragic) sectarian violence in Baghdad, but frankly what has happened in Anbar is near-miraculous – it’s a story that deserves to be reported far more heavily than it has so to date.
Isn’t it interesting how we’re not hearing much of anything out of Anbar anymore since we certainly seem to be succeeding there? Gee, could ABCCBSNBCCNNNYTWPMJSDhimmiRATsetal be more interested in defeating President Bush, the Republicans and conservatives than protecting people that want to just live from those that want to kill everybody, whether American or Iraqi, that isn’t 110% in agreement with them? Do note that I did NOT include Time. Even though Joe Klein did manage to sneak in a cheap shot or two, he did notice that we are making some serious progress against Al Qaeda in Anbar.
A couple of minor things in the commenting department:
– For those of you using the preview comment function, I’ve made it a bit clearer that you’re previewing your comment and that it is not saved.
– I’ve also made it a bit clearer on what HTML you can use, including a handy link to an off-site reference page. If you insert HTML character/symbol codes, WordPress will pass that along as HTML and render the appropriate character/symbol.
How to increase the cost of gasoline while appearing to be in favor of reducing it in 4 easy steps:
Step 1 – Slap a 2.5% tax on every gallon of gas sold in Wisconsin. I’ve already exploded that one, but I bring it up again because the WMC took a look at what Jim “Craps” Doyle figured gas prices will be in Wisconsin ($2.70/gallon) and said that it would add 7 cents/gallon. They’re closer, but at an average of $3.50/gallon, it would be 9 cents/gallon.
Step 2 (with a hat tip to Sean Hackbarth) – Sue OPEC, as most of the House, including the entire Wisconsin delegation voted to do yesterday. The only way to get any sort of judgement against OPEC (side note; the “C” stands for “Cartel”) is to sue domestically because the international courts the Left is so fond of would properly laugh us out of there, and the only way to enforce that judgement is to invade and occupy each and every member of OPEC (not that I would necessarily be against that). Talk about your “blood for oil”.
Step 3 (with a hat tip to Peter) – Just as oil companies begin to think about finally expanding refining capacity in a meaningful fashion, threaten to mandate a fivefold increase in the use of corn-a-hole in a bid to meet President Bush’s irresponsible call to reduce gasoline consumption 20% over 10 years and threaten to make that mandatory, which has the (un)intended consequence of having those oil companies drop plans for expanding refining capacity. Never mind that a 20% drop is impossible, especially with millions of fresh illegal aliens pouring across the border seeking to cash in on the next coming amnesty. Never mind that this country simply cannot increase corn-a-hole production fivefold (the best it can do is a doubling, and that’s already in the works).
Step 4 (from the same New York Times article linked to above) – Threaten federal penalties (on top of state ones) for price gouging, while ignoring market reality. Gee, price controls worked SOOOOOO well in the 1970s </sarcasm>.
What’s missing? Incentives to increase domestic production for one. Any effort to reduce the 47 (or is it more now?) flavors of Algore/Whitman Memorial RFG for another.
Dunno if I’ll ever trim the roll, but I do need to add a couple more blogs –
– CDR Salamander. Dunno why I didn’t put him on before, especially since someone I trust keeps on recommending him.
– One Man’s Opinion. Don’t forget to guess in his weekly “Name That Country” series.
Revisions/extensions (9:58 am 5/25/2007) – I won’t quite say that the bozos that run the Great Firewall of China are frauds, but when my logs show a visit from Beijing, I can’t say that I’m banned by the ChiComs.
I’m proud to join John McAdams, Aaron, Dad29 and The Asian Badger in saying that my blog has been banned in Red China. I wonder what in the series of posts about the ChiComs triggered it; could it be that I call them ChiComs, or perhaps I use the term Red China to refer to the mainland…oh, I know, it’s because they’re still Communist thugs.
We really need to come up with a cool graphic so show the Communist mass-murderers in Beijing fear our words so much, they won’t let their subjects view them.
Not that I’m expecting anything from this, especially after ignoring it for a few weeks, but have at it.
(H/T, or is that blame? – Wendy)
As Allahpundit said about the once-lethally adorable polar bear, Knut, don’t say I didn’t warn ya.
4 white lions were born this past weekend at a French zoo to increase the world’s white lion population by over 10%. Taking a page from Knut’s mother, the cubs’ mother abandoned them after birth; while the zoo’s staff took a page from the Berlin Zoo and adopted the male and 3 female cubs.
I wonder if the envirowhackos will say that these lion cubs should be clubbed like they wanted done to Knut because their mother rejected them.
Though I didn’t note NRE’s first blogiversary, and I won’t note it’s second/third/fourth/so on and so forth, it’s good to see some people care when their blogs hit certain ages:
– Boots and Sabers turned 4 today.
– An Ol’ Broad’s Ramblings hit the magical 1.
– Tomorrow, bRight & Early hits 2 with a special edition of First Cup Radio.
Congrats on getting your blogs another year older and wiser.
I really have to thank whoever brought my Wisconsin-specific missive to WPRI’s attention. I’m not nearly as well-connected or as polished as the 20 people who wrote the “official” responses or Lance Burri (case in point, I’m just now linking to his answer), but the question is something that has been troubling me since the 2006 elections.
I guess I had best step up the quality and quantity several notches now that I have a wider audience.
The question is exceedingly simple, but the answer is about as complex as the lengthy explanation of Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Indeed, it’s so complex, I won’t deal with the national answer in this missive because some of the issues nationally are quite different than in Wisconsin (that, and I really owe the TownHall version of the blog something).
There are three basic elements of conservatism; social, judicial and fiscal. Usually, these three elements are mutually-supporting, but they are anything but synonymous. A couple of quick examples – is it judicially or fiscally conservative to support the “war on drugs”? No, but it is socially conservative. Is it judicially or even socially conservative to support a state-imposed limit on how much a local government can raise taxes? Depending on whether it is a statutory or constitutional limit, not necessarily, yet it is undoubtedly fiscally conservative.
Social conservatism, at least among the populace, is as alive and well as can be. The two referenda that were on the ballot in November both passed handily. On issue after issue, the majority of the populace at least professes to believe in the conservative position. However, the Republican Party, the only one where social conservatism is at least tolerated, has taken social conservatives for granted for years.
Judicial conservatism is somewhat in a state of flux. Whenever voters are given a choice between someone who doesn’t believe in judicial activism or a soft-on-crime approach and someone who does believe in judicial activism and a soft-on-crime approach, they opt for the former. Tempering this is the fact that there are so few contested judicial elections, especially once there is an incumbent. This allows judges to “grow” in office and see their mandate to be a “Lawgiver-In-Black”. We’ve seen this most-recently with Pat Crooks. Crooks “grew” into a Lawgiver-In-Black, reportedly because he didn’t want to face a challenge from Wisconsin’s trial lawyers. He ensured that he didn’t have any opposition in his re-election bid.
That brings us to fiscal conservatism. In my lifetime, there has been exactly one successful bid in Madison to actually reduce spending in Wisconsin – the Wisconsin Works welfare reform. One could try to claim that the 2/3rds school-finance shift to the state in exchange for limits on how much school districts can jack up taxes is fiscal conservatism, but even before the various referenda are taken into account, the net result was a shift of the money source to the state and a resultant massive increase in spending.
Outside of a micro-revolt that happened in southern Milwaukee County in 2002 that was the direct result of a massive pension scandal at the county level, and perhaps the ouster of then-Senate Majority Leader Mary Panzer over her failure to bring TABOR to a vote (which failed spectacularily when Glenn Grothman immediately went native), there has been no widespread successful voter “revolt” against high taxes. True, school bonding referenda have occassionally gone down in defeat, but when a $93 million referendum passes in tiny New Richmond, and $20-$30 million referenda routinely pass even in the heart of that revolt, one can fairly say that there is no sense of fiscal conservatism amongst the populace.
Is it any surprise that the Republican Party has paid no more than lip service to fiscal conservatism? From the Republicans’ abandonment of Scott McCallum when he proposed getting rid of shared revenue in 2002 to the aforementioned Panzer burying of TABOR in 2004, to the 2-year failure to pass the TPA the last 2 years to the current push by the Assembly Pubbie leadership to accept tax increases, Wisconsin Republicans have never been fiscal conservatives.
Why do they pay lip service to fiscal conservatism? Politics, pure and simple. The Democrats have the social and fiscal liberalism bases locked up tight. Most social conservatives are, almost by necessity, also fiscal conservatives. They have, in a bit of irony, taken to heart Gerald Ford’s words of warning – “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”
So, what’s my final answer? At least in Wisconsin, conservatism as a political movement is not only out of gas, but on life support, and will remain so as long as the Republican Party (or its successor) takes social conservatives for granted. Further, even though it is not popular, as long as fiscal conservatism gets short shrift, any gains from gearing toward social conservatives will be at best temporary.
I’ve been seriously-remiss in collating this, which ought to give you a second hint of my upcoming “unrequested” answer (if that poll over on the left side didn’t give you enough of a hint). Let’s briefly summarize what the Week 2-4 folks (revisions/extensions – I really need a calendar) said…
– John McAdams, the Marquette Warrior said that foreign-policy conservatism, which he described as “a vigorous response to terrorism and to terrorist regimes”, took a drubbing, but that the seeds to a resurgence of conservatives in the Republican Party and by extension politics have been planted.
– Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, speaking out of the “public” side of his mouth, said that conservatism, including tax cuts, was alive and well (side note; the political side of Huebsch’s mouth has been rather busy giving lie to this assertation – many thanks to Owen for exposing the Assembly’s version of Mary Panzer).
– Assemblywoman Leah Vukmir said that the Pubbies needed to return to fiscal as well as social conservatism.
– Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker said that a return to the principles of less government and personal liberty is what is needed, and that he’s hopeful that the Pubbies will do so quickly.
– George Lightbourn, one of WPRI’s said that a refocus away from the partisan political and onto individualism is what’s needed.
– Messmer Catholic Schools President Brother Bob Smith said we got “a bad tank of fuel on its present journey”.
– State Senate Minority Leader Scott Fitzgerald blamed the 2006 losses in Wisconsin on the Pubbies’ inability to credibly sell itself as the party of lower taxes, smaller and cleaner government, and economic freedom and promised that the Senate Pubbies will learn the lesson this time.
– WPRI President James H. Miller wonders if conservatism is out of oxygen because there are no new conservative ideas, and holds up the upcoming State Supreme Court battle between Louis Butler and whoever (if anybody) steps up to challenge him as the decisive battle.
– Marquette Law School Dean Joseph D. Kearney sticks with his area of expertise, the law and judiciary, in saying that conservatism is anything other than out of gas, but goes off the rails in defending the Kelo decision (side note; it was the larger populace that allows him to say that conservatism survives on the federal judiciary because we defeated Harriet “Mushroom” Miers).
– State Senator Glenn Grothman outlined 3 areas where conservatives can make inroads on the liberal base – affirmative action, the alliance between the Left and teachers’ unions, and social engineering (side note; whatever happened to the issue that put Grothman in the Senate, taxes?)
– Mark Neumann noted that there are two flavors of conservatives – the “pocketbook” conservatives who will vote for anybody that espouses limited goverment and low taxes, and the “hot button” conservatives who will not look further at a candidate who does not pass “their” issue. He went on to say that almost no conservative ran on either the pocketbook or the biggest 3 “hot button” issues (abortion, gay “rights”, 2nd-Amendment rights), and that the pendulum will swing back to the conservative points of view. Of note, nowhere in his missive did he use the word “Republican”.
– Christian Schneider brings out a bit of Dennis York in his answer – “I’ll tell you when I’m done with this burrito.” Seriously, he points out that “(t)rue fiscal conservatism remains the ‘Big Idea That’s Never Been Tried’ in Wisconsin.” (Side note; I need to highlight this answer.)
– Scott Niederjohn and Mark C. Schug, economics professors at Lakeland College and UWM (respectively), focus on the health care “crisis” and the failure of education of basic free-market economic principles.
– Thomas C. Reeves, another fellow at WPRI, outlines an 8-step program to counter the near-term conditions that leave Democrats in “excellent” shape.
– Deb Jordahl says that it wasn’t conservatives that left the Republican Party, but the Republican Party that left conservatives.
These quick synopses don’t do the essays justice, so go read them. I’ll almost certainly take at least some of them apart for further analysis when I get back from my fishing trip next week (that’s right, the guest-bloggers are going to make a comeback, so business will likely pick up here :-) .
Revisions/extensions (9:10 am 5/23/2007) – Not only do I need a calendar (that was the first revision), I need to pay closer attention to my subscribed feeds. Lance Burri gave a pep talk worthy of Vince Lombardi, or at least Mike Holmgren. I guess that’s the antithesis of my missive above.
Well, everybody else is writing about it, so I might as well too. There are two significant directions that this could go, and I honestly can’t decide which one to take it. Let’s first start off with the “just business” canard that WTMJ almost tossed out there. Frankly, I didn’t find the show appealing enough to listen to. She just couldn’t make the transfer between the printed word and the spoken one. Judging by the ratings, most people agreed with me.
Counterbalancing that, the time slot she was in is truly the dead time of radio. Almost the entire potential audience is doing something else, whether that is watching TV, out eating, out at the bar, or out at the game. Indeed, that last factor, specifically the fact that WTMJ airs the Brewers, Bucks and Badgers, made it harder for Jessica to cultivate an audience because half her shows are pre-empted. She also came quite cheap, as she was a part-timer. I can’t imagine Dennis Miller’s syndication price being that cheap, especially since, unlike with Jessica’s show, WTMJ has to pay Dennis’ syndication company a significant amount for the shows that aren’t aired.
That leaves the flap that Tim Cuprisin and his fellow-traveler lefties used to bludgeon WTMJ into something like submission, the bit where a chicken substituted for Eugene Kane, the resident racist at the Journal Sentinel. My, oh my, how fast the firing line has moved to mere criticism of black racists. Worse, WTMJ management made it clear that’s the new line. If that truly is the line, I don’t expect Dennis’ show to last very long, because he is an equal-opportunity ripper.
They could’ve saved themselves a LOT of problems by keeping Mark Reardon around.
Just in case you guys forgot, today is the BBA Spring Shoot at McMiller’s. The shoot starts at 10 am, and Smith, Wesson, and me will likely be a bit late. The best way to get there from the Milwaukee area –
– Take I-43 southwest of Milwaukee to Hwy. 83.
– Turn right on 83, and head to County Hwy. LO on the north side of Mukwonago.
– Turn left on LO, and proceed to Hwy. 67.
– Turn left on 67, and follow until County Hwy. EE splits off.
– Turn right on EE, head a short distance, and the entrance to McMiller’s will be on your right.
See you there.
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