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.
Remember, some animals are always more equal than others, especially in Socialist societies…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MzB-ThDegY[/youtube]
If it’s Thursday, it’s time for me to really slack off on my blogging, and instead depend on your generosity. Have at it.
(H/T – Van Helsing)
Tom Petri is an original co-sponsor to an abomination of an act called the Water Protection and Reinvestment Act of 2009, authored by Earl Blumenauer (D, or is that Moonbat-Oregon). According to the short summary provided by Blumenauer, the various local units of government can’t come up with $534 billion in “needed” drinking water/wastewater infrastructure improvements over the next 20 years without raising taxes incredibly on the locals. So, what’s Blumenauer’s and Petri’s solution? Raise $534 billion in federal taxes over 20 years (or $26.7 billion per year) on those same locals! The dirty details:
Oh, and don’t think you can make your own soap and escape the tax man like “Big Alcohol” and “Big Juice”. They’ll tax you on the estimated retail value of your homemade soap.
Is there nobody in east-central Wisconsin that will challenge Petri?
(H/T – JammieWearingFool, from whom I shamelessly stole the headline)
An article in NationalJournal.com’s CongressDaily perfectly illustrates why Shoebox put up “Obama worship” as one of the categories:
“Let’s just lay everything on the table,” (Sen. Chuck) Grassley (R-IA) said. “A Democrat congressman last week told me after a conversation with the president that the president had trouble in the House of Representatives, and it wasn’t going to pass if there weren’t some changes made … and the president says, ‘You’re going to destroy my presidency.’ “
There’s several different ways to take this one. JWF wonders if waaaahmbulances are covered under ObamaCare. Given they’re the prefered mode of transportation for the perpetually-aggrieved, I’m sure there’s a full subsidy.
Regarding the inevitable “Two Minutes Hate” that is about to be ordered, I have to wonder who is going to be in bigger trouble for proving that it is all about Emperor Obama I – Grassley for letting that slip into the press, or the unnamed Dem Congressman who leaked it to Grassley.
As for the destruction of Obama’s Presidency, I wouldn’t be particularily bothered if health care was, as Sen. Jim DeMint said, his “Waterloo”, though the stall at the gates of Moscow is a more-accurate historical description. After all, while Waterloo was the end of Napoleon, his failure to take Moscow before General Winter and General Mud took hold was what made Waterloo possible.
Finally, we just learned which of the government-takeover plans Obama wants to happen – the Heavy plan in the House.
President Obama will once again face the preprogrammed withering onslaught of questions from the compliant skeptical press this evening. We’re being told that amongst other things, President Obama will be telling us that six months into his term, he has saved the economy.
Originally, tonight’s press conference was to be held at the White House. However, I’ve been told that due to the importance of tonight’s message, the President has decided to change venues. The new venue for tonight’s presser is shown here:
(H/T – Jim Geraghty, who has to have earned a TRQ with this gem – “Heed my words, for dey are da chilling sounds of your Toom.”)
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports on the latest Quinnipiac poll, which has Sen. Arlen Specter (RD) barely beating presumptive Republican challenger Pat Toomey, 46%-45% 45%-44%. Worse for Specter, and the Democrats, are some of the other results:
– Specter has lost the independents, both specifically against Toomey and against Candidate X.
– Specter’s approval ratings are 47% positive, 46% negative (the highest negatives ever and the lowest positives since Specter/Toomey Round One in 2004).
Now, who insisted on backing Specter right up until his betrayal, and who insisted on trying to find a moderate-to-liberal to try to replace said turncoat moderate-to-liberal?
Revisions/extensions (7:41 am 7/22/2009) – I need caffeine because I originally posted the wrong percentages.
R&E part 2 (8:24 am 7/22/2009) – The raw numbers are now available from Quinnipiac (H/T – Allahpundit/HotAir Headlines), and they’re not encouraging for the Penn Dems:
– Specter bumped up his lead over Joe Sestak in the Dem primary from 50%-21% at the end of May to 55%-23% now.
– Toomey also whups up on Sestak, beating him 39%-35% (the end-of-May poll had Sestak up 37%-35%).
– While Specter does beat Peg Luksik, who only draws 6% to Toomey’s 47% in the Republican primary, by a 47%-40% margin, a near-majority say that he does not deserve re-election (49% no, 40% yes).
– Speaking of Luksik, she would lose to Sestak head-to-head 39%-30%.
R&E part 3 (8:57 am 7/22/2009) – Via Moe Lane, it actually looks like the NRSC finally realized the inevitable and endorsed Toomey on July 14. As someone who wanted the NRSC to stay out when it was Toomey vs. Specter in the primary, and with a very minor challenge to Toomey shaping up, I’m not entirely happy that the NRSC is in at this point, even if they’re backing a good candidate.
R&E part 4 (9:27 am 7/22/2009) – More quotable Geraghty – “Toomsday is coming.”
Shoebox ran with a Newsmax story saying that, in terms of percentage, voter turnout went down between the 2004 and 2008 Presidential elections, the first time that has happened since 1996. I decided to try to do some analysis of the numbers the Census Bureau has been collecting since 1980, focusing on the past two elections. The numbers are, shall we say, “interesting”:
There’s a lot more info than I can digest. I did, however, manage to get a state-by-state comparison put into an Excel spreadsheet, which also includes the total number of adults in each state, whether they are citizens, legal aliens, or illegal aliens.
I gave you a video earlier from a town hall meeting in Delaware hosted by Republican Congressman Mike Castle. The previous video showed him getting grilled about health care reform. Here’s another piece from the same meeting. This time the natives are upset about Cap and Trade.
Listen as Castle tells the forum that the Cap and Trade bill was really too complicated for anyone to “absorb” and that he relied on what Democrat leadership told him about the bill.
Listen as people laugh at Castle as he states that “he reads all legislation.”
Listen as Castle states that he received more calls in opposition to the bill than for it yet he still voted for the bill!
Folks, the August recess will be here in just a couple of weeks. Many of your Congresscritters and Senators will be holding similar townhall meetings during this recess. Make sure and attend these. If you’re folks have been voting properly, make sure and give them positive reinforcement. If they haven’t, take some notes from the folks in Delaware!
Finally, note to the GOP: If you think folks are safe just because we’re so pissed off with the Democrats, think again. We don’t care what party you belong to. If you are stupid enough to support the government take over of America, whether it be Cap and Trade, health care, auto manufacturers or any of a number of other areas, repent now because you are just as useless to us as any Democrat!
This time in Maryland as Senator Ben Cardin holds a town hall. And this time it’s an African American questioning the wisdom of big government. It ain’t going well for the Borg Collective!
There’s lots of bad news today for President Obama. Gallup’s recent polls show that by any measure, President Obama’s policies are now being considered a failure by the American people:
- By 49%-47%, those surveyed disapprove of how he is handling the economy, a turnaround from his 55%-42% approval in May. The steepest drop came from conservative and moderate Democrats.
- By 50%-44%, they disapprove of how he is handling healthcare policy.
- A 59% majority say his proposals call for too much government spending, and 52% say they call for too much expansion of government power.
- Expectations of the economy’s turnaround are souring a bit. In February, the average prediction for a recovery was 4.1 years; now it’s 5.5 years.
Some are referring to this sudden drop and his chips all in approach to passing health care reform, as being the President’s Waterloo, the moment at which he wins no more. I’m betting however, that with his enormous ego and narcissism, if asked, President Obama would refer to this as his Arnold Schwarzenegger moment. If questioned about whether he might need to change his position on some of these issues I have no doubt the President would answer, “I’ll be Barack!”
One of my roles with a previous employer was to develop compensation plans for various sales groups. As I would work with the sales management it seemed that invariably they would tell me that if we paid more for a particular aspect of the plan, they would be able to get the sales team to achieve that goal. Just as invariably, when I would hear their line, I would respond with a question, “Is the problem that you can’t do it unless you get paid more or is the problem that you won’t do it unless you get paid more?” I think you can see the dilemma this left the sales management folks in.
As he cranks up his rhetoric in an attempt to save his health care reform initiative, President Obama told us today that we need to pass health care because it’s the only way to reduce costs. His exact quote was:
We all know there are more efficient ways of doing it..
implying that only with the passage of health care reform would costs be reduced. Ironically, he said this on the same day that it was found that the Agriculture department had paid nearly double the going rate for plain old ham.
It’s interesting that when President Obama refers to cost savings in health care he is referring to cost savings in Medicare and Medicaid. As the health care debate got started, President Obama identified three areas where money could be saved: blackmailing drug companies via FDA approvals, to reduce drug prices, ration treatment to patients by forcing “increased productivity” of physicians and not paying for run of the mill issues that are treated in emergency rooms. By doing just these three things, President Obama claims that $313 billion could be saved!
Medicare and Medicaid are programs that are completely administered by the government. Rates for physicians are dictated by the government, procedures and drugs covered are dictated by the government. With complete control over these programs wouldn’t it seem to be simple for President Obama to save his $313 billion simply by saying “make it so?” In fact, the exact changes that President Obama proposes are changes that these programs have implemented to varying degrees in the past.
Continuing to cry that only the nationalization of our health care is the only way to reduce costs leaves me asking just one question of President Obama; are you telling me that without taking more of my money you can’t or won’t save money in health care?
Census: Voter Turnout in 2008 Lowest in 12 8 Years
For all the attention generated by Barack Obama’s candidacy, the share of eligible voters who actually cast ballots in November declined for the first time in a dozen years. The reason: Older whites with little interest in backing either Barack Obama or John McCain stayed home.
The decline in percentage turnout was the first in a presidential election since 1996. At that time, voter participation fell to 58.4 percent — the lowest in decades — as Democrat Bill Clinton won an easy re-election over Republican Bob Dole amid a strong economy.
Class, what did we learn?
1. Give us “the next guy in line” again and we’ll sit out again!
2. Give us someone who looks no different than a Democrat on many issues and we’ll sit out again
Oh and:
Minnesota and the District of Columbia had the highest turnout, each with 75 percent.
3. If you have a crappy GOP candidate, even if we don’t sit out we won’t vote for them.
Revisions/extensions (8:12 am 7/21/2009; steveegg) – Newsmax didn’t exactly fact-check the numbers, which caused the error struck through above. According to the Census Bureau, the 2000 turnout percentage was lower than 2008’s. It still is, however, the first drop in voter turnout percentage since 1996.
Related to that, I’m sifting through the Census Bureau’s turnout numbers going back to 1980.
No, this isn’t a new ABC prime time show!
The only two trained physicians in the Senate have been holding video conferences for the past few weeks. Senator Coburn of Oklahoma and Senator Barrasso of Wyoming have been discussing the various “health care reform” proposals and answering questions sent in by people via email, youtube and other means.
You can see past episodes of the Senate Doctors here.
You can watch tomorrow’s edition live at 3 PM Central here:
Streaming live video by Ustream
President Obama is feeling the heat on this issue. Make sure and stay atop of the issue and the facts by watching the Senate Doctors!
(H/T – Charlie Sykes)
In the current issue of WPRI’s Wisconsin Interest, Ken Lamke makes the case that a primary battle between Scott Walker and Mark Neumann would actually be good for the GOP’s chances of retaking the governor’s office in November 2010.
The prospect of a primary contest between Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker and former Congressman Mark Neumann for the Republican nomination for governor in 2010 greatly enhances the GOP’s chances of defeating Gov. Jim Doyle next year.
At least the historical record of the past 45 years of Wisconsin elections leads to that conclusion.
Each of the six times that incumbent governors or U.S. senators were defeated since 1962 occurred when the nominee of the out party emerged from a contested primary rather than having the nomination handed to him by running unopposed in the primary.
Lamke goes on to point out that the major advantages of having a contested primary is that the participants get near-monopoly media coverage, and that they get to hit the incumbent without the incumbent getting to hit back. While the latter isn’t quite true, the return fire is necessarily split between the primary participants.
Of course, winning a contested primary does not always translate to success in the general election.
Sometimes these party leaders are not so much interested in having their party nominee knock off the incumbent as they are in having the specific candidate they support win the nomination.
They really don’t care if their party wins in November—that is, that the primary candidate whom they haven’t backed goes on to beat the incumbent. In fact, they sometimes strongly oppose that outcome, although they won’t say so. Almost by definition, they are not really “party” leaders as much as they are supporters of a particular candidate.
The state GOP leadership, as well as the vast majority of the county party leaderships, changed significantly since 2006, to the point where the 2009 convention was “All Walker All The Time”. However, I’m already starting to see a similar dynamic. The old guard, while officially in the minority among the leadership, is still quite infuencial outstate, while a lot of Walker supporters are already firing “I’ll never support you” broadsides at Neumann.
Astronauts deal with flooded toilet in orbit
The bathroom lines at the already crowded space shuttle and space station complex got a lot longer Sunday because of a flooded toilet.
One of two commodes aboard the international space station broke down, right in the middle of complicated robotic work being conducted by the two crews.
Update: All sphincters can relax now!
Falling personal approval ratings, falling support ratings for major initiatives, falling confidence for the party he leads all should give President Obama some pause when considering whether he is representing the interests of the American people.
The attached clip seems pretty representative not necessarily of the issue but of the passion and concern, that generating amongst many folks of all political persuasions, that I talk to. While only one incident, this did occur in Delaware. Last I looked Delaware wasn’t close to being a Red State.
Folks, here are a couple of the original “Harry and Louise” ads that ran showing the problems with the original “health care reform” proposed by the Clintons. If you watch the ads, you’ll note that the issues haven’t changed. What was common sense then still holds true today:
In case you haven’t noticed the subtle messages in the Day By Day cartoons lately (or you’re visiting the mobile version of this place), Chris Muir is holding the 2009/2010 Support DBD Event. There’s 5 levels this time around instead of 4, and a Sam In Red figurine that’s a $67 option for the bottom 4:
– The Jan Level ($1-19) gets you pdfs of 3 ‘Gang of 4’ Posters and jpgs of 3 Propaganda Posters.
– The Zed Level ($20) gets you that plus pdfs of 7 ‘SmallMatters’ trial strip (c1998) and
pdfs of 2 ‘PaintedWomen’ Posters.
– The Sam Level ($40) gets you that plus a third ‘PaintedWomen’ Poster.
– The Damon Level ($125) gets you all that plus a Signed Original Toon Script & Toon (for the first 365 only with the toon on heavy stock suitable for framing), 8 Signed Prints of ‘PaintedWomen’ Posters printed on heavy stock, signed, and ready for framing, and 4 Magnet Full-Color Cards of all 4 Characters.
– The new Su excelencia Don Manuel Luciano de la Portago y Verrillo Level (starting at $150) gets you everything except the toon script/toon combo, but adds a Sam in Black figurine.
If only I could do triple figures, I would’ve moved up from the Sam Level I did last year. Instead, I stayed at the Sam Level. If I can kick in to keep the best daily comic strip out there around another year, you can too!
Phineas decided that, with the shrinking amount of money being left for the non-public-sector economy, he couldn’t pay TypePad anymore for his blogging. That means Public Secrets has a new home – http://pubsecrets.wordpress.com/.
What do the Health Care Reform Act, the world’s oldest profession and this picture have in common?
A: In each case, someone is slipping someone the wiener!
H/T Olbroad
Between joining the climate change bandwagon with Nancy Pelosi
And now, positing that Sotomayor may be a moderate:
“The person who has testified this week is dramatically more moderate than the person who made those speeches,” he said before delivering a speech at the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council. “It will be very interesting to see how she winds up as a justice.”
Newt Gingrich has lost all credibility with me as understanding any part of the Democrat’s modus operandi.
Is Newt really so out of touch that he doesn’t understand that liberals like Obama and Sotomayor have no compunction about saying anything necessary to get themselves elevated to the role they seek? Does Newt not understand that “I didn’t say that,” “I didn’t know” and “I’m sorry if anyone felt offended” are standard phrases that have been accepted by the left as absolving all members of any responsibility, at least momentarily, of anything that they had done or said in the past?
Newt, to be clear, the likelihood of Sotomayor being moderate is the same likelihood that man is responsible for climate change. In case you can’t do the math, it is zero!
We are doomed to repeat it…
From the 1934 Chicago Tribune. The Names have changed, the issues haven’t!
There’s no Kev with the change of venue to DC, but Uncle Jimbo launches into a douchebag of an Army major, a linguini-armed CinC who is a baseball poseur, and various Socialist hits. For those of you with weak ears, you may not want to play the video because of more than a few vulgarities. The rest of you – enjoy!
[youtube width=”560″ height=”340″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lduW_u7qlcw[/youtube]
For those who have read this blog for a while, I’ll give you a moment to put your teeth back in and pick yourself up off of the floor.
Ready?
In a speech to AARP about the proposed national health care plan, Joe Biden said:
“And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable,” Biden said at the event on Thursday in Alexandria, Va. “It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s completely unsustainable. Even if we wanted to keep it the way we have it now. It can’t do it financially.”
For once, I absolutely agree with Joe. The current course is unsustainable. We need to make changes soon or we’re going to be in a whole heap of trouble!
Think I’m just some two bit blogging hack who’s just throwing another opinion to the ether? Don’t think my opinions is that valuable? Well, don’t trust me then, trust the head of the Congressional Budget Office.
In his testimony to Congress and in his blog, the Director of the CBO said:
the federal budget is on an unsustainable path, because federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run. Although great uncertainty surrounds long-term fiscal projections, rising costs for health care and the aging of the population will cause federal spending to increase rapidly under any plausible scenario for current law. (emphasis mine)
That’s right, shocking isn’t it. The federal budget is on an unsustainable path. The CBO goes on to explain what the problem with the budget is….take one guess at what is causing the unsustainable problem:
Measured relative to GDP, almost all of the projected growth in federal spending other than interest payments on the debt stems from the three largest entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. For decades, spending on Medicare and Medicaid has been growing faster than the economy. CBO projects that if current laws do not change, federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid combined will grow from roughly 5 percent of GDP today to almost 10 percent by 2035. By 2080, the government would be spending almost as much, as a share of the economy, on just its two major health care programs as it has spent on all of its programs and services in recent years.
And this is before putting another $1.5 Trillion minimum of additional costs into the budget for the national health care program!
Later in his speech, Joe went on to lie again telling the folks that they would be able to keep their existing health plan if they wanted:
“They’ll be a deal in there so there’s competition, so what you’ll have in there is you’ll have the ability to go in there and say, ‘Now look, this is the policy I want. This is the one,” Biden said.
Someone should get Joe a copy of the House bill or a subscription to Investors Business Daily. If he had either, he would note the following:
When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee
It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states
“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.
Joe did have one last comment that I agree with him on:
“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation,” Biden said.
Yes, Joe. If we continue down this path and are lucky, we may only go bankrupt as a nation. My bet is that if we follow the advice of you and yours, we’ll commit national suicide!
Yesterday, Apple broke the ability of Palm’s Pre smartphone to sync with iTunes. It would be as if Google had somehow figured out how to fully-implement MSHTML in Google Chrome, and then Microsoft shut that off in Chrome to protect the elements of MSHTML that are only available in Internet Explorer.
Of course, the Apple fanboys, the same ones that would be the loudest whiners (yes, even louder than the Google fanboys) if Microsoft did that, are happier than pigs in wet shit that their company is making the mistake it did with MacOS – namely, shutting out any and all third-party developers. I hope they’re happy with a 10% market share for iTunes/iPhone in 5 years.
Senator Barbara Boxer attempted to use the traditional Democrat tactic of identity politics on Black Chamber of Commerce CEO, Harry Alford. Unfortunately for Babs, Harry hadn’t gotten the memo that said that all US Citizens of African heritage must think alike and that all US Citizens of African heritage must support all policies posited by the first President with African heritage. Fortunately, Mr. Alford called Babs on her racist remarks. Unfortunately, she’s either too dense
Enjoy!
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