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 July, 2008

July 2, 2008

Minnesota Senate – Will Jesse Run?

by @ 13:00. Filed under Politics - Minnesota.

On July 1st and for the next 2 weeks, the window to file is open, should one want to be on the November ballots.   The MN media is now atwitter as it tries to read the tea leaves to determine if Jesse Ventura will file to run for the US Senate seat against incumbent Norm Coleman and Dem endorsed Al Franken.

In this interview  by the Rochester, MN ABC affiliate, Ventura’s former campaign manager, Dean Barkley pontificates on whether Ventura will run, the issues he will face and his prospects for the race.

On whether Ventura will run, Barkley says:  

I know his arguments pro and con of what’s going through his mind. If I had to guess I think it’s more likely he’ll run than not. He knows the opportunity is there. He’s not stupid. He knows this is probably a historic opportunity for an independent to win this senate seat.

I’d agree that with Coleman, a well documented RINO who would get Conservative votes not just with a nose held but with full Hazmat suits on, and Al Franken, a candidate who makes Alec Baldwin appear logical and even tempered, running there is room for the incredibly  enigmatic voters of Minnesota to go for an independent. The problem is that Ventura isn’t independent. While he could claim “independence” when he ran for Governor, this time he has a record. A quick review of his record as Governor will show that while he talked as an independent, he governed mostly aligned with the Left.

When queried as to how Ventura would be able to compete in a campaign that has become the most expensive in Minnesota history, Barkley says:

He’ll just have to go out and be Jesse. Just tell them the truth; tell people what he’s thinking, what he thinks is wrong

And there’s the rub. Most onions would have skins determined to be impenetrable in comparison to Jesse’s. Barack Obama would have a better chance of being considered “just one of the guys” in an Evangelical, NRA meeting in Pennsylvania than Jesse would of the vast cross section of Minnesotans. Jesse as Jesse is what took him from Minnesota’s man of “Hope and Change” to a historical political oddity.

Some may fantasize that Ventura will be able to do to the Senate race what he did to the Governor race. They believe that Jesse will be able to invigorate a section of the electorate to vote where they had normally not done so.    That, along with a dissatisfaction with the two party system, would put Jesse over the top. The problem with this thinking is that the invigoration has already been done by Barack Obama. The young folks who Jesse brought to vote are already in. The other problem is that unlike the first time around, Minnesotans now  know Jesse.

In the end, other than some good theatre, it probably doesn’t matter much whether Jesse runs or not. A recent poll by KSTP-TV  shows that Coleman is polling ahead by 12 points if only he and Franken run. Coleman has a 10 point lead over Franken and Ventura finishes a distant third if he enters the race.

If Jesse decides to run, he will likely find Minnesotans following the famous Chinese proverb: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!”

Deciphering Mugabeese

by @ 5:51. Filed under International relations.

After being challenged about the validity of the recent “election,” a spokesman for Robert Mugabe, “president” of Zimbabwe said that any one who questioned the election could “go hang!”   He followed up that simple retort with one that was more illustrative:

They can go and hang a thousand times.”

Some reporters have been puzzled as to the meaning or the need to “hang a thousand times.” After all, shouldn’t one hanging do the job? The answer is quite simple: Yes, most brutal, thug dictators would find it sufficient to silence their critics with one hanging.   I believe “presidential ” spokesman George Charamba was just recognizing the obvious and trying to cover his bases. I mean if you’re a brutal, thug dictator and you can’t manage to rig an election to get 99.9% of the vote on the first try, how likely is it that you’ll be smart enough to manage to kill someone on the first hanging try?

Weather Forecast: Cooling in Nevada

by @ 5:51. Filed under Politics - National.

You may have missed this bit of fun between Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell. It took place last week during a discussion regarding allowing a 10% reduction in payments to medicare physicians. If you haven’t heard it, take a quick listen.

So Harry Reid thinks the Senate should just go along with his desire because the President’s approval rating is low. In Harry’s mind, a low approval rating removes any claim the person has on the ability to think critically and develop good policy.

OK, I’ll play!

The latest poll for Harry shows that his home state approval rating is down to 41%…quite amazing when you consider he’s Senate Majority leader and has represented the state for years. One would expect that on his home turf, Harry would get some sympathy, not the case.

On the other hand, Mitch McConnell’s latest approval rating from Kentucky, put him at 57%. I’d say that’s pretty comfortable for a Senator who is part of a party on the outs.

I guess if Harry’s point is “He who has the highest rating wins,” he loses. The same would be true if we were to look at Congress’s approval rating versus the President’s or any other comparison you’d like to make.

So Harry’s on the south end of approval ratings both at home and nationally…and that was before this:

Last I looked, tourism is Nevada’s largest industry. Tourism, especially Nevada’s, is dependent upon people traveling to do the touring. Harry thinks every time someone starts a car, a plane, a train or pretty much any other mode of transportation that can move you faster than 40 MPH for more than a couple hundred miles in one shot, is just “making us sick.”

I’m guessing that even with the heat wave going through Nevada, Harry could be receiving a very cool reception at any July 4th activities.

 

Not the Ones We’ve Known

by @ 5:04. Filed under Miscellaneous.

And yet another Democrat leader, this one from Durham County, NC,  arrested for alleged improprieties…not that that’s unusual anymore.   Another thing that is no longer unusual for the Democrats is someone at a mic ready to throw you under the bus.   Watch as a Democrat Senator from NC does that do the alleged wrong doer.

As I wrote a couple of weeks back,when Al Franken tried to apologize for his sexist writings by saying he wasn’t the Al Franken he had know for 57 years, I’m convinced the Dems have issued an election manual that gives the “that’s not the person I’ve known,” as a key talking point. How else to explain it’s use in multiple states and multiple levels of elections.

As much as I hate to give advice to the competition, I think they’ve hit on something. As the Dems continue to respond to the hard core left and ignore the demand from the American Public to Drill here, Drill now, pay less, they should use their talking point direction as a campaign slogan. I’ve even prepared a bumper sticker for them:

July 1, 2008

The Morning Scramble – 7/1/2008

by @ 7:33. Filed under The Morning Scramble.

Don’t confuse the size of this with normalcy; I won’t be back until tomorrow and that’s going to be a recovery day.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4rPIjWqMRc[/youtube]

  • Jim Hoft relays the predictabe result of the attempt of the ‘Rats, led by Nobody’s Senator, Herb Kohl and the worst doctor around, Steve Kagen, to sue OPEC.
  • Peter questions southeast Wisconsin’s (and northeast Illinois’) very-own special blend of Algore-Whitman Memorial RFG. While it is 14 cents/gallon more than uncontaminated gas, thanks to the 8-year-old threat by Jim “Craps” Doyle (WEAC/Potawatomi-For Sale) to sue Big Oil if they passed that along to just those of us in SE Wisconsin, the entire state is paying 7 or so cents/gallon more than they should. Maybe I should just make stupid lawsuit threats the theme :-) .
  • Second dose of the Gateway Pundit on gas (sue me; I’m on vacation); he is sick of Dingy Harry Reid’s answer to energy. You want an energy crisis, give him a compliant President (wait, we are about to).
  • Lawhawk delivered Wesley Clark his own copy of Bus & Driver yesterday. Guess I was a bit off on the timing.
  • Jim Lynch isn’t letting the fact that Clark got tossed under the Obamination Express get in the way of his latest caption contest.
  • Laughing Wolf links Barack Obama, Clark and not-under-the-bus William Ayers.
  • Jim Geraghty applied some inflationary and non-inflationary math to Barack Obama’s claims that he only got $12,000 as a community organizer. Throw in the car, and Obama started out better than the median income; and he only got richer.
  • Brief break from the Obamination Express; James T. Harris confirms there is a lot of money in “charity work” in the black community.
  • Back to the Obamination Express; Emperor Misha I rips the Official Washington Paper Paint-Catcher of the Obamination, Washington Post™, over their dis of the part of “flyover country” I happen to be in (or at least the state).
  • James Wigderson found another curdled set of words from Obama past their expiration date; his former federalist stance on gay marriage.
  • I’m not done with the ‘Rats yet. Kathy Carpenter notes they skipped town without forestalling a 10% cut in Medicare rates scheduled because of a formula that requires fee cuts when spending exceeds established goals. (Un)fortunately, President Bush bailed them out.
  • William Teach confirms the ‘Rats are all about misery.
  • Sister Toldjah caught a ‘Rat pining for the glory days of the Great Patriotic War (no, not the American Revolution, or the Civil War, but the Soviet front of World War II).
  • Plebian has what the ‘Rats believe are the most-dangerous things in the world. Unlike Scrappleface, 90% of it’s true (it’s only missing Rush Limbaugh).
  • Paul Socha is rooting for chicken wire for the protesters at the ‘Rat convention.
  • JammieWearingFool notes that it would feel just like home to a couple of Durham ‘Rats who are part of a Satanic cult busted for kidnapping, rape and assault.
  • Okay; I’m done with the ‘Rats, but we’re not done with politics. Doubleplusundead (filling in on Conservative Grapevine this week) has this week’s dose of GOP Senate FAIL. Trent Cave-A-Lott taught Mitch McConnell well (relatively-speaking).
  • The letter-writing Brad V says that Bobby Jindal just saved his national political future by vetoing the 100% pay increase for Louisiana’s legislature.
  • Christian Schneider has women who are not his wife mad at him because he dared to question Wisconsin’s policy of giving the ‘Rats an 8-Assemby-seat and 2-Senate-seat head start in any given election. Guess it’s time to rename that organization League of Women DemocRATic Voters.
  • Josh Schroeder has an investment opportunity for you. Of course, Six Flags will first have to find a way to shut up the family of a youth who climbed a pair of well-marked fences and found himself on the fatal end of a roller coaster without losing a lot of money.
  • Michelle Malkin and See-Dubya tag-team the sad state of education today.
  • Let’s close off with some humor. Lemur King answers the question, “Why do we laugh at misfortune?”, with some potatoes.
  • Anwyn asks, “What is Christie Brinkley proliferating?”

A Conservative SCOTUS? Horrors of Horrors!

by @ 5:03. Filed under Idiotorial of the Day.

So claims E. J. Dionne in his latest lament that the United States is founded on a set of laws rather than the whimsy and momentary brain flatulence of any given Congress or President.

First, Dionne claims that the Right’s last option is the court. He claims that via SCOTUS, the Right will obstruct the will of the people even once new “Progressive” measures, according to two UNNAMED “influential journalists” (at least in Dionne’s mind) “had been overwhelmingly approved both in Congress and at the polling booths.”

Dionne’s comments are laughable for so many reasons.

First, it’s the Left that has been using SCOTUS for years to create law out of whole cloth. The most obvious of these is Roe versus Wade. Additionally, Justices like Breyer think the Constitution isn’t enough for us. Breyer thinks we should look to foreign laws for insight and direction.

Second, Dionne uses the example of the Conservative court holding FDR’s New Deal Program at bay as evidence of how a Conservative court could be obstructive.   As with all good liberals I’m sure that Dionne believes that the outcome always justifies the means.   In Dionne’s mind, it is simply inconvenience that the Conservative judges were fighting the New Deal because they saw no place in the Constitution that the Federal government had authority to enact such legislation.   Heck, for the Left, it was the “right” thing to do, it didn’t matter if it was the Constitutional thing to do.

Finally, Dionne raises the  spectre that the Right could dismantle or block  issues that he believes could result in the undoing of America:

It’s not hard to imagine the cases that conservatives would bring against laws passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by a President Barack Obama. Why wouldn’t a movement that has tried to eviscerate wetlands laws and the Endangered Species Act challenge cap-and-trade legislation aimed at dealing with global warming?

If Congress ever passed a “card-check” law to make it easier for unions to organize, those who never much liked the minimum wage or collective bargaining would certainly try to overturn the new labor right in court.

And what would be the legal fate of new regulations on banking called forth by the economic devastation of the subprime mess, or bank bailouts that may be necessary to keep capitalism on track, or mandatory mortgage renegotiations to keep citizens from being thrown out of their homes?

This is going to take a while but let’s look quickly at what Dionne is so fearful of:

Wetland law evisceration: I seem to remember the Constitution providing for a thing called Private Property. Confiscatory taking is another  Constitutional no no. Wetland laws violate both of those provisions.

Endangered Species Act: See “Wetland law Evisceration”

Cap and Trade: Do we really need to discuss that any further? OK, See “Wetland law Evisceration”

Card Check law: Dionne apparently falls into the category of “all votes should be private and counted, at least once, maybe more, unless they are for Republicans or when supporting direct employer/employee relations.”

“May be necessary to keep capitalism on track” – Here’s the dirty little secret, Capitalism works best when government stays out. Capitalism doesn’t need to be kept on track, government needs to quit trying to dictate outcomes. The folks in the old Soviet Union found out out poorly government planned economies worked. Heck, even the Chinese have had to open the doors, grudgingly so, to pieces of Capitalism so that their economy can grow to support their expanding population.

The Constitution has proven to be the most prescient document ever created by men. However, if Dionne is really so disappointed with the wisdom incorporated in it, the Framers even provided for a means to change it……by getting “overwhelming” votes from the People’s representatives followed by confirmation by the people. Of course, all of that takes time and may cause people to fully think through the implications of such a significant action.   Maybe, just maybe, that too was the Framer’s intent!

I wonder if the Framers ever forsaw people like Dionne. People who are so unappreciative and dismissive of their work while chosing to remain ignorant of what it actually contains?

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