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 May 4th, 2009

GOP convention wrap

by @ 11:02. Filed under RPW Convention.

First, I have to thank the RPW, and especially Kirsten Kukowski, for inviting me to cover the convention for a second time. I’m slowly learning how to actually be a journalist (or at least a semi-reasonable facsimilie) rather than just a pundit. I did manage to grab quick interviews with both of the major candidates for governor, Scott Walker and Mark Neumann, as well as interviews with Rep. Robin Vos and Rep. Paul Ryan.

Judging by the various floor speeches, the elected officials that were in town are learning that trying to be Dem-Lite is not a winning strategy, and that shrinking the size of government needs to be a priority. Of course, that needs to be more than “just words”.

Looking at the legislative focus, it is almost exclusively on the Legislature. In fact, there was next to no talk about the upcoming Senate race against Russ Feingold next year, or of anybody attempting to unseat Steve Kagen. The message of Saturday was that it’s the members that are sitting there this time in 2011 that will redraw all the boundaries.

That brings me to the governor’s race. I admit that I like both Walker and Neumann, and I also admit that, this go-around, I support Walker. Still, I was shocked that nearly 94% of the participants in the WisPolitics straw poll backed Walker, with Neumann getting 25 of the other 28 votes and write-ins Dave Ross, John Schiess and J.B. Van Hollen each receiving one vote.

Of note, neither the other official candidate, Appleton businessman Mark Todd (the third name on the ballot), nor Tommy Thompson (not on the ballot), received a single vote. WisPolitics interviewed several delegates in the wake of a WISN-TV report from Wednesday on Thompson’s interest of retaking his office, and found at best lukewarm support.

Somewhat related, Citizens for Responsible Government said that they were roughly at a third of their goal of 10,000 volunteer petition circulators for a recall of Gov. Jim Doyle, and that they’re currently looking at beginning circulation on June 1. With that start date, that would put the election (either a partisan recall primary if there are multiple candidates in a “recognized party”, or the recall election itself) in mid-September, with any necessary recall election in mid-October. Unlike non-partisan recalls, there is no majority requirement; the highest vote total wins.

Specter VERY offficially a ‘Rat

by @ 9:39. Filed under Health, Politics - National.

Arlen “Scottish Law” Specter (RINO D-PA) completed his initiation into the party of the ass by blaming his mid-life party for the death of Jack Kemp.

News flash for Scottish Law – your old/new party wants to drive the entities responsible for the vast majority of medical advances the last 50 years, the privately-owned drug companies, out of business.

Revisions/extensions (11:29 am 5/4/2009) – Ed Morrissey did some research, and found that, after inflation, government spending on what the Heritage Foundation and the Office of Management and Budget terms health research and regulation increased 46% between 2001 and 2006. That is far larger than the total 23% post-inflation increase in either total government spending or the 36% post-inflation increase in “discretionary” government spending.

Server issues

by @ 8:53. Filed under The Blog.

Over the weekend, Bluehost decided to move me to a newer server (I wish I would’ve been told this). The good news is that the processor is faster. The bad is the php server isn’t quite perfect.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I occassionally get “500” errors now when doing something php-related. Sorry about that.

The other issue was a backroom one, and one I wish I could have prepared for before the trip to La Crosse. With the move, they assigned me a default max filesize upload of 2 MB. My big black camera takes 7 MP pictures which vary between 3 MB and 5 MB, and some of the audio I cut was also larger than 2 MB. Needless to say, I had to burn some time to track down what happened and fix it.

Quote of the day

by @ 8:35. Filed under Politics - National.

From Robert Stacy McCain – “Lie down with Bushes, wake up with Democrats.”

Do read the whole thing, including what he says about Jeb’s comments about abandoning the Reagan principles. News flash to Jeb – I believe the GOP tried that the last 2 election cycles, with predictable results.

What? Don’t They Have “Saved” Jobs?

by @ 5:20. Filed under Economy, Politics - National.

First, sorry I’ve left Steve hung out to dry for the past few weeks.  I don’t want to go into it right now but I’ve been working on a “special project” here in MN for the past few weeks and just haven’t had the time to spend on the blog end.  More on the special project later.

Now, on to our regularly scheduled program.

To my surprise, President Obama has managed to keep his net favorable ratings above the zero level into May.  With the way things were going early in April, I would have bet that he would have dipped below zero by now.  However, not all is good news in the Obama camp.

First, Rasmussen continues to show an eroding net positive rating for the President.  For the past two weeks the net positive, according to Rasmussen Reports, has been bouncing around in the low single digits.  Saturday, the net positive had dropped to just +1.  While the President’s personal popularity remains high there are continuing indications that support for his policies are not.  Which brings me to…

Second, also according to Rasmussen Reports, one of the bluest states around, New Jersey, appears to have an incumbent Democrat Governor who is in real reelection trouble.  Depending upon the poll, current Governor, John Corzine is down by as much 15 points to a potential Republican challenger.  The main issues in the campaign seem all related to the economy in New Jersey.  In fact, Rasmussen makes the statement:

this race could come down to a referendum on the first year of the Obama administration. The economy clearly has hit New Jersey as hard as any other state, with many New York City commuters across the Hudson River being decimated by the financial mess on Wall Street.

I have to say I’m surprised that any Democrat is feeling pressure as a result of Obama’s economic policies.  After all, just last week, President Obama, in his most recent preemption of prime time television in which he answers questions that have as much relevance to the country’s challenges as Simon Cowell does to men’s fashion trends, told us that his economic plans were working.  In fact, he had already identified 150,000 jobs that had been saved or created since the stimulus bill was passed. 

The stimulus bill was signed February 18th, just 10 weeks ago.  With 150,000 jobs already saved or created, that’s 15,000 per week.  At that clip, we’ll see nearly 500,000 more created or saved this year and another 650,000 created or saved prior to next year’s election for a total.  With a total of 1.3 million jobs saved or created by next year’s election, it’s hard to imagine any incumbent being concerned about the President’s economic policy.  1.3 million is a lot of jobs is a lot of jobs!  A lot of jobs; if any of them really exist.  Maybe Corzine should start worrying!

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