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 January 31st, 2008

Rats debate in LA (let the last body hit the floor)

by @ 18:50. Filed under Miscellaneous.

This one’s not going to be for the squeamish. The ‘Rats are down to the last 2, Hiliary Rotten Clinton and Barack Hussein Osam…er, Obama. As you can tell, I’m already in the spirit (or is that spirits?; who cares at this point, those will be flowing just like the blood). CNN starts in 10 minutes, I’ll start momentarily.

I forgot to add the courtesy lamp is out, so enter at your own risk.

Joining in the insanity:

Hot Air (Allahpundit says it’s nuclear war)
Jim Geraghty (he’s chaneling Michael Buffer)
Michelle Malkin (who’s in charge of the cackle meter)
Roger L. Simon, head of PajamasMedia
Free Republic
The Lizards at Little Green Footballs

The top half of the ticket is solved in the event of a McCain nomination

by @ 18:07. Filed under Politics - National.

Leave it to the Emperor to come up with an elegant, kick-ass solution – write in Fred Dalton Thompson for President. Of course, that still would leave the bottom half to solve. Question; who for the bottom half? It would have to be somebody not in Virginia.

SB380 – Sent back to committee for now

by @ 17:32. Filed under Corn-a-hole, Politics - Wisconsin.

The corn-a-hole lobby and the bipartian P-I-G are still searching for two votes for passage of SB380 according to Mark Belling. Therefore, they sent it back to committee looking to flip 2 to the dark side.

Do not let that happen. Keep on calling and e-mailing your state Senator; tell them “NO!” to a forced replacement of almost every single gasoline engine in the state.

Revisions/extensions (5:43 pm 1/31/2008) – My Anti-ethanol rant page has been rewritten.

Speaking of stopping, the horrid corn-a-hole bill is up in the Senate TODAY!

by @ 10:15. Filed under Corn-a-hole, Politics - Wisconsin.

Revisions/extensions (9:42 am 1/31/2008) – This will be up at the top of the blog until the Senate is done with it (originally posted at 7:43 am 1/31/2008); look for fresher posts below. Also, just as a reminder of how important you the citizen can be, I went back into the NRE archives and found my thanks to, among others, the 17 Senators that killed the previous attempt.

My Senator, Jeff Plale, has an e-mail waiting for him urging him to repeat his rejection of this mandate. Does your Senator have a fresh reminder? If not, make it happen now, they’ll be in session in under 1 1/2 hours.

Revisions/extensions part 2 (5:52 pm 1/31/2008) – They’re two votes short, so they sent it back to committee for a vote hunt, and will bring it back immediately should they find 2 votes. Since they’re going to keep up the skeer, we’re going to have to keep up the skeer. Also, I got too fancy in my math in the second half of the article (thanks for the gentle reminder, Dad29).

Charlie’s all over this attempt to drive Wisconsin-based Briggs & Stratton and Harley Davidson out of Wisconsin’s marketplace for the benefit of the corn-a-hole lobby by eventually requiring 25% of all fuel in Wisconsin come from “renewable” sources in the form of Senate Bill 380. The bipartisan P-I-G fast-tracked this, passed a couple of meaningless amendments, and it’s on the floor of the Senate today.

What, the federal mandate, as odious as it is to the driving public, is not enough for the corn-a-hole lobby? Historically-high prices for corn is not enough? I believe you know the phrase I have for them, and the last part is “…and the combine you rode in on.”

Related to that, Marcus Aurelius has some numbers in his great corn squeezings experiment. While he didn’t provide a specific mileage for driving with regular E0 gas (he’s outside the Algore/Whitman Memorial E10 RFG mandate hell I have to deal with), and the estimated price for E85 in Appleton (based on his calculation on cost per mile, it’s $2.31/gallon) is a heck of a lot lower than it is in Milwaukee (I semi-regularily pass one station that offers E85; it was going for $2.60/gallon during that time frame and now it’s up to $2.85/gallon), I have enough to start running with. Given his rough estimate of mileage on E0 of 15-17 mph, I’ll assume that, just before he began this experiment just before Christmas, he was getting about 14 mpg with his flex-fuel Chevy Suburban. He got 11.1 mpg with 3 fill-ups on E85, and though most of his driving was what the EPA would consider “city” and in and out of 4WD, he did have an extended highway run.

That, my friends, is about a 27% drop in fuel mileage from E0. Given my historic estimate of a 5% drop in fuel mileage between E0 and Algore/Whitman E10, that’s about a 19% drop between that and E85. For one to break even, E85 would need to be about 21% 27% cheaper than regular gas and about 17% 19% cheaper than Algore/Whitman E10. Given E0 gas went for about $3/gallon during that time frame, and Algore/Whitman E10 went for about $2.85 in that time frame, E85 would need to go for about $2.36/gallon during that time frame to be as cost-efficient at the pump as either E0 or Algore/Whitman E10 $2.19/gallon to be as cost-efficient at the pump as E0 and $2.30/gallon to be as cost-efficient at the pump as Algore/Whitman E10 during that time frame. It didn’t even get close to that in the Milwaukee area. Hell, it didn’t even get there for Marcus.

Roll bloat – there can never be enough morons

by @ 10:14. Filed under The Blog.

For those of you who don’t know the definition of “moron” I’m using, it’s a regular over at Ace of Spades HQ. Today’s addition to the roll is Weasel Times and Stoat Intelligencer. Anybody who puts a pancake on Islamic Rage Boy’s head ought to be a regular read.

Early Drinking Right alert

by @ 9:03. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Because Dickie is going to be throwing a righteous Fat Tuesday party on February 5, the executive committee (namely, Fred and the folks who showed up over there) has decided to move February’s Drinking Right to the first Tuesday in February, the 5th. The rest of the particulars remain unchanged (7 pm, Papa’s Social Club, 7718 W Burleigh in Milwaukee).

That means I will not be live-blogging Super-Duper Tuesday. As Sean Hackbarth said before he went to DC, the first fool that liveblogs from Drinking Right will be tossed out. Besides, if McShame rolls, I’m going to need to drink early and often.

Defending the American Dream-Wisconsin Summit – your 10-day warning

by @ 8:39. Filed under Defending the American Dream.

Yes, I know, CPAC is closing the same day, Saturday, February 9, but DAD-Wisconsin is a lot cheaper ($29 for general admission, $15 for students) and closer (Country Springs Hotel in Pewaukee), and we have some rock stars in our own right (including a pair of guest-bloggers here):

Confirmed speakers include:

Paul Ryan,
U.S. Congressman

J.B. Van Hollen,
Attorney General

Scott Walker,
Milwaukee County Executive

David Clarke,
Milwaukee County Sheriff

Mike Gableman,
Judge, Candidate for Supreme Court

Scott Fitzgerald,
State Senate Minority Leadert

Leah Vukmir,
State Representative

Steve Moore,
Wall Street Journal

Dan Schnur,
President, Command Focus

Vicki McKenna,
WISN & WIBA Radio

Todd Berry,
President, Wisconsin Taxpayer Alliance

Patrick McIllheran,
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Leslie Graves,
President, Lucy Burns Institute

Owen Robinson,
Boots and Sabers

Fred Dooley,
Real Debate Wisconsin

So, register already. I’ll be there with the laptop, camera and digital voice recorder, and unlike the DC version in October, I know what settings to have that DVR at to get somewhat-decent audio.

Party in the Oval Office – 1945-2008

by @ 8:18. Filed under Politics - National.

I don’t recall specifically hearing this scary-sobering factoid, but I’ll toss this list out there.

1945-1953 – Democratic Party
1953-1961 – Republican Party
1961-1969 – Democratic Party
1969-1977 – Republican Party
1977-1981 – Democratic Party
1981-1993 – Republican Party
1993-2001 – Democratic Party
2001-(at least 2009) – Republican Party

I started with 1945 because, while Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1944 to a 4th term, his Vice President, Harry Truman, assumed the office near the beginning of the term and thus the term was more his than Roosevelt’s, and the 22nd Amendment term-limiting Presidents was ratified during Truman’s administration, though it did not apply to him.

What is scary-sobering is only once in the last 63 years (64 by the time President Bush is officially term-limited) has a party maintained control of the White House for more than 8 years, and the party in control now is the Republican Party. Of course, the one long-term outlier is the Republican Party.

Presidential Pool: A time of choosing

by @ 6:38. Filed under Politics - National.

Revisions/extensions (11:44 pm 1/3/2008) – This was originally posted 12:51 pm 12/17/2007; I bumped this to the top because the Iowa caucus is today. Also, I redacted Tom Tancredo’s bit; he dropped out after the initial posting.

R&E part 2 (5:08 pm 1/3/2008) – I didn’t realize that with “pretty” permalinks, I had destroyed those that had linked to the page before I bumped this up to the top. Sorry about that. I fixed that oversight.

R&E part 3 (7:58 pm 1/7/2008) – Back to the top again just in time for New Hampshire.

R&E part 4 (5:59 am 1/29/2008) – Cold, hard reality has set in with the ouster of Fred Thompson and Duncan Hunter. At this point, I can’t recommend anybody, but I’ll put this back at the top.

R&E part 5 (6:37 am 1/31/2008) – Call it rationalization, call it what you will, but if the Double Talk Express wants to lie through his teeth, I will do whatever I can to stop him. Also, scratch Rudy Giuliani.

I wanted to do this last week as a companion piece to the “24 campaigning days to Iowa” one, but things got a bit topsy-turvy. John Washburn took me to task for not including Ron Paul in the look at why the top-runners would and would not get their party’s nomination; I’ll briefly explain why not. While Paul’s support is a mile deep, with another $4 million+ money bomb yesterday, in terms of Republican voters, it’s two feet wide, with no real support in any early-state poll.

With that bit of housekeeping out of the way, it’s time to note that there are 17 campaigning days until the Iowa caucuses and climb the molehill. Wisconsin set its too-late-to-matter Republican primary ballot order in a very convenient way for me (H/T – Jib/Badger Blog Alliance), so that’s the order I’ll take the candidates. John, and supporters of Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter, will be glad to know I’ll include them this time.

Rudy Giuliani

Why I could support him: He is very willing to engage in the war against radical Islam, indeed calling it just that. He says he wants to appoint conservative judges. He has a track record of cutting taxes.

What mitigates against supporting him: Oh, where to begin? Let’s start with his unabashed support of Roe v Wade and subsequent court rulings imposing abortion-on-demand from the bench. Instead of cutting spending to match cut taxes, he raised fees. He ran a sanctuary city. He loves the idea of grabbing guns. I could go on all day, but I’m out of time.
The policy takeaway: Given I believe that borders are meant to be enforced, the role of government and especially the judicial branch is to be limited, and the Second Amendment means we the people can defend ourselves against among other things a tyrannical government, I cannot support Giuliani in the primary.

Mike Huckabee

Why I could support him: He won’t attack Christianity or gun owners.

What mitigates against supporting him: Oh, where to begin, part deux? I’ll start with his tax record; he begged for tax hikes while in Arkansas. Staying with taxes, he wants a national sales tax of 30% to replace everything else. He is a lover of big-government solutions to problems. He likes the idea of an intrusive government. He is, at best, terribly naiive on foreign policy and at worst the second coming of Jimmy Carter. Once again, I could go on all day, but I’m out of time.
The policy takeaway: There is absolutely, positively nothing conservative about Huckabee, so I cannot support him in the primary.

Duncan Hunter

Why I could support him: He recognizes we need a secure southern border, and pretty much alone among the candidates, he recognizes the threat that Red China poses.

What mitigates against supporting him: His support of the “Fair”Tax.
The policy takeaway: Hunter is very intriguing.

John McCain

Why I could support him: He’s pretty tough on the war against radical Islam, and very outspoken against pork-barrel spending.

What mitigates against supporting him: Again, where to begin? He does not comprehend the First Amendment. He has a rabid opposition to tax cuts (not to be confused with his opposition to tax hikes). He has a mistaken, though personally-justifiable, aversion to torture and near-torture.
The policy takeaway: Between McCain-Feingold and his opposition to tax cuts to try to force a cut in spending, out goes McCain in the primary consideration.

Ron Paul

Why I could support him: On most domestic issues, he is a Constitutionalist.

What mitigates against supporting him: How many times am I going to ask, “Where to begin?” Let’s start with a complete lack of comprehension of how those outside of the United States think. I’ll toss in a lack of knowledge of world history. He is a goldbug who refuses to acknowledge the Golden Age of Gold has ended.
The policy takeaway: Given I’m an amateur student of history, Paul’s lack of comprehension is a disqualifier in the primary.

Mitt Romney

Why I could support him: All of his flips have been to the right.

What mitigates against supporting him: He who flips tends to flop back (I didn’t mention it earlier, but Michelle Malkin has the transcript on the flopback on amnesty). One of those flips that haven’t happened and indeed was reinforced was his gun-grabbing tendency.
The policy takeaway: If only I could believe,….

Tom Tancredo

Why I could support him: He is the strongest candidate against illegal immigration. He does exhibit some federalist tendencies.

What mitigates against supporting him: He also is the strongest candidate against legal immigration.
The policy takeaway: So close, yet so far.

Fred Thompson

Why I could support him: He’s strong on the war against radical Islam, his tax plan (borrowed from my Congressman, Paul Ryan) is eminently supportable, and he has serious federalist tendencies.

What mitigates against supporting him: He had a significant lapse of reason regarding the First Amendment, and that was only partially remedied.
The policy takeaway: He’s the second-most-intriguing candidate on the issues.


With the policy cases made, I can now take intangibles into account, such as popularity. I would have recommended Duncan Hunter, and indeed, I have donated to his campaign, but he failed to catch on with even the Republican faithful. Similarily, I would have recommended (and did recommend) Fred Thompson, but once again, he didn’t catch on with even the Republican faithful outside the blogosphere.

Taking everything into account, I am recommending Fred Thompson nobody at this time Mitt Romney in the Republican Presidential primary.

Revisions/extensions (11:18 pm 1/1/2008) – Welcome, those of you who followed in from the subtle pimping over at Hot Air. Well, Michael in MI asked for a listing of each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses, and I had noticed a certain lack of collation of same. I am usually a man of few words, but I tried to stick to “hard” items I could verify.

McCain MUST be stopped

by @ 6:35. Filed under Politics - National.

Folks, I don’t know if you paid any attention to last night’s debate, or the McCain/Alito mess, but between McCain saying in private and denying in public that Justice Alito is too conservative, McCain outright lying about Mitt Romney’s position on Iraq when he had the exact same position a couple months prior, and McCain’s double-talk on the Bush tax cuts, he cannot be allowed to get the nomination.

I’m now on my third choice for President, and while I said I wouldn’t support Mitt Romney nearly as much as I did Fred Thompson, I’d rather deal with the flips I do and don’t know than the knives I know will be shoved in my back. Therefore, I’m officially a FredHead for Mitt.

The judicial nail in McCain’s coffin (R&E part 2 – confirmed and bumped)

Revisions/extensions part 2 (12:38 am 1/31/2008, H/T – Allahpundit) – Since Robert Novak has double-blind-sourced this (triple-or-more sourced assuming those two sources weren’t lying about not being John Fund’s source), this thing is back on the top after an initial posting at 1:53 pm 1/28/2008.

I had been unwilling to bring John Fund’s assertion that John McCain would not have nominated Justice Sam Alito to your attention, mainly because, like Bull Dog Pundit, I was concerned that it was unsourced and uncollaborated. However, since Kathryn Jean Lopez has collaborated it and Rich Lowry notes that the Straight Double Talk Express response doesn’t exactly deal with the charge, it’s time to toss it all out there:

More recently, Mr. McCain has told conservatives he would be happy to appoint the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court. But he indicated he might draw the line on a Samuel Alito, because “he wore his conservatism on his sleeve.” (John Fund’s column)

(Steve) Schmidt (of the McCain camp) was a major player in the Alito confirmation fight, and says this: “It’s absolutely false. Sen. McCain was instrumental is helping confirm Justice Alito. We relied on him a great deal during the confirmation process to reassure the American people that Alito was the kind of justice America needed. John McCain was a warrior to get Alito on the bench.” (McCain camp’s response per Rich Lowry)

The non-denial denial isn’t exactly selling. Bryan Preston sums it up best (as usual):

…Second, is Alito really too conservative by McCain’s lights to be a SCOTUS nominee under a McCain presidency? McCain needs to answer this immediately. Different types of conservatives vote based on many things, but judges have to rank in the top five for nearly all of us. While most conservatives have soured on the Bush presidency either because of spending or immigration or this or that policy, most of us still consider Bush’s SCOTUS nominees (minus Miers) to be reason enough to consider his presidency, on balance, worth support and certainly better than the alternatives that were available in 2000 and 2004. If McCain won’t appoint nominees similar to Bush’s, no speech at CPAC will help him repair the rift with conservatives, and conservatives don’t have much reason to support him if he’s the GOP nominee.

If McCain truly does consider Alito to be too conservative, then on judges even Rudy Giuliani is to McCain’s right and would make a less problematic GOP nominee than McCain.

I do take issue with the assertion that Giuliani would be better than McCain on the issue of judges. While Giuliani has said that he would appoint “strict constructionists”, he also signaled that he would reject any potential nominee that does not believe in stare decisis, specifically with regard to abortion.

Revisons/extensions (2:18 pm 1/28/2008) – Byron York got some face time with McCain and asked him point-blank about this:

“Let me just look you in the eye,” McCain told me. “I’ve said a thousand times on this campaign trail, I’ve said as often as I can, that I want to find clones of Alito and Roberts. I worked as hard as anybody to get them confirmed. I look you in the eye and tell you I’ve said a thousand times that I wanted Alito and Roberts. I have told anybody who will listen. I flat-out tell you I will have people as close to Roberts and Alito [as possible], and I am proud of my record of working to get them confirmed, and people who worked to get them confirmed will tell you how hard I worked.”

“I don’t get it,” McCain continued. “I have a clear record of that. All I can tell you is my record is clear: I’ve supported these guys. I went to the floor of the Senate and spoke in favor of them. It’s in the record, saying, ‘You’ve got to confirm these people.'”

I asked whether McCain had ever drawn any distinction between Roberts and Alito. “No, no, of course not,” McCain said.

I asked about the “wore his conservatism on his sleeve” line. “I’m proud of people who wear their conservatism on their sleeves, because they have to have a clear record of strict adherence to the Constitution,” McCain told me. “Remember, in all my remarks, I’ve said, look, we’re not going to take somebody’s word for it. You have to have a clear record of adherence to the Constitution, a strict interpretation of the Constitution. I have said that time after time after time.”

On this issue of the quote/non-quote, the ball is back in Fund’s (and Lopez’s) court. McCain went on to defend the Gang of 14, and gave a piss-poor defense of that. It really is an issue for another post, but it reinforces the basic objections I have with McCain regarding conservative judges.

Republican Presidential nominees, 1956-2004

by @ 0:26. Filed under Politics - National.

James Taranto, who is still running the last surviving element of OpinionJournal.com, the Best of the Web, points out an interesting and disturbing trend in Republican Presidential nominees over the last 48 years. I’ll distill out the two one-person items in that trend, previous nominee (Richard Nixon) and immediate relative of a previous President (George W. Bush), and point out that, except for 1964 and 2000 (which have their own unique “next in line” aspects), Republican nominees have fallen into one (or more) of these three categories:

  • Sitting President (1956, 1972, 1976, 1984, 1992, 2004)
  • Sitting or former Vice President (1960, 1968, 1972, 1976, 1988, 1992)
  • Runner-up in the previous seriously-contested nomination (1980, 1988, 1996*)

* Bob Dole was the runner-up in 1988 and Pat Buchanan finished 2nd in 1992; however, Buchanan did not win a single state in 1992 and had at the end 18 delegates.

In sum, every single Republican nominee the previous 13 election cycles has been either the incumbent or the one with the strongest “next-in-line” case. That’s bad news for those of us who would rather eat broken glass dipped in arsenic and radioactive goo than have John McCain as the next Republican nominee because McCain is undeniably the next in line.

Revisions/extensions (7:50 am 6/21/2008) – I thought I had expounded a bit on the special case of 1964, but I hadn’t. Barry Goldwater actually finished well down in the 1960 election season, but he was the highest-finishing serious candidate to run in 1964, as everybody who finished ahead of him either chose not to run or couldn’t due to death.

Also, I can’t explain why WordPress is claiming there are two comments, while there is only one. Fixed via database hack.

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