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 October 6th, 2009

Your 2009 American League Central Champs!

by @ 20:54. Filed under Miscellaneous.

twinsHeader

Slight change in the look

by @ 19:10. Filed under The Blog.

Since Shoebox has finally started Twittering (do follow him at @Shoeboxnre), I needed to shoehorn a second Twitter badge on the right sidebar. It’s not a perfect solution because, except at the largest resolutions, you’ll need to scroll to get to the bloated roll, but it works for now.

More Talk About Placebocare

by @ 17:09. Filed under Health Care Reform, Politics - National.

Don’t miss the latest addition of the Senate Doctors show.  Unlike what’s contained in the various iterations of Placebocare, these guys actually know something about health care and how to provide reform that would actually be beneficial to Americans.  You can watch the latest episode below.

Free video chat by Ustream

Welcome to the party ‘Lanche arrivals

by @ 15:07. Filed under The Blog.

I have to thank a few high-profile people for linking here the last couple days:

Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air for the video I shot of him at the Defending the American Dream Summit.

Robert Stacy McCain for me trying to steer you to Part 1 of his reporting from Clay County, Kentucky.

John Hawkins for naming me the Blog of the Day over at Linkiest. For those of you who don’t know what Linkiest (formerly known as Conservative Grapevine) is, it is an aggregator of who’s who in the conservative blogosphere.

Thanks for stopping in, and do stick around and enjoy the posts from Shoebox and me (and the occassional guest-blogger).

A housekeeping note; I hadn’t realized that John had changed the name of Conservative Grapevine. I’ve updated the bloated roll to the right.

Poll-a-copia – something for everyone edition

by @ 14:58. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute and the UW-Madison Political Science Department released a joint poll of 700 Wisconsinites with landline phones polled between September 27 and September 29. A summary of the poll, complete with charts comparing the current poll with previous polls is here, while the full and raw crosstabs are here.

Before I go into the numbers, I did ask WPRI for clarification on whether any pre-determined factors, such as party ID or income, were used to “smooth” the results, and was told that none was used.

  • While those who consider themselves Democrats outnumber those who consider themselves Republicans 33.3% to 25.6% (which moves to a 47.0% D-42.3% R advantage once leaners are included), former Republican governor Tommy Thompson would win a hypothetical matchup against Democratic Senator Russ Feingold 43.1%-39.1%. The summary also notes that the number of self-described Democrats have been declining since last year.
  • While President Barack Obama remains popular in Wisconsin (57.4% at least somewhat approve of his job performance, 40.5% at least somewhat disapprove), the Rasmussen-style Presidential Approval Index (those who strongly approve less those who strongly disapprove) is -0.2. That compares very favorably to Rasmussen’s national daily tracking poll over that same period of 49% approve, 50% disapprove and a Presidential Approval Index of -6.
  • That approval flies in the face of the national “right/wrong track” question. Not only does “wrong track” beat “right direction” 53.7%-36.6%, the summary notes that that Wisconsin is more pessimistic than the nation as a whole.
  • Another contra-indicator of Obama’s “popularity” is the failure of health care “reform” – 34.9% oppose the Democratic plans of Placebocare, while only 28.3% support it.
  • Meanwhile, Governor Jim Doyle is rather unpopular, with 43.2% at least somewhat approving of his his job performance, 52.3% at least somewhat disapproving, and a Rasmussen-style Gubernatorial Approval Index of -23.7.
  • None of the presumptive candidates for governor (Mark Neumann and Scott Walker on the Republican side, Barbara Lawton and the unannounced Tom Barrett on the Democratic side) achieved 51% recognition even among those who say they are ideologically part of that party. Therefore, I won’t comment further on the poll questions relating to the race (general favorability ratings and the primary matchups).
  • The generic Assembly ballot shows a 40.0% Democrat to 35.0% Republican split. However, again there are contra-indicators galore:
    • Contra-indicator #1 – 57.6% say that Wisconsin is on the wrong track, while 32.4% say that things are going in the right direction. Of note, the “wrong track” crowd has increased since last year.
    • Contra-indicator #2 – A plurality of 32.7% of those surveyed say that “improving the state’s economy and protecting jobs” should be the top priority of the Legislature and the governor (I’ll come back to this in a bit), and the 17.9% say that “holding the line on taxes and government spending” is the most important issue represents the second-largest group, ahead of, in order, “more-affordable” health care, other unnamed issues, improving education, fighting crime, protecting the environment, campaign finance reform, affordable electricity and gas prices.
    • Contra-indicator #3 – 57.4% say that they can trust the state government to do the right thing only some of the time, and another 10.7% say that they can never trust the state government to do the right thing.
    • Contra-indicator #4 – 45.6% say that the policies of the state government over the last year have made the economy worse, 34.1% say that they have had no effect, and only 13.4% say that they have made it better.
  • Back to the economy; there is a significant contra-indicator there. 47.6% would rather protect the environment than protect jobs, 38.7% would rather protect jobs than protect the environment, and 9.0% consider both equally-important. However, going back to the most-important issue for the Legislature and governor, while the economy garnered a 32.7% plurality, protecting the environment ranked 6th of 9 issues listed at 1.0%.

As I said, there’s something for everybody.

Revisions/extensions (4:28 pm 10/6/2009) – How could I forget the “Where do you get most of your news” question? There are several interesting items in that:

– Television dominates across most of the categories (49.3% overall, 52.8% of Democrats, 49.2% of Republicans, 46.2% of independents, over 50% of those over 35 years old).
– The Internet (which covers both blogs and online versions of the traditional media) is a distant second overall at 19.6%. However, it has made strong inroads among those under 36 years old (40.0%, which is a plurality in that group), independents (24.0%) and males (23.0%).
– At 15.0%, newspapers barely beat radio (14.7%). Its adherents are mostly old (25.9% of those over 64 years old) and Democrat (18.5%). The bad news for publishers is only 7.5% of those under 36 years old see them as their primary news source.

I really need to make a longer statement on the state of the media, but I will note a couple of things:

– Television is extremely weak in pursuing local and state issues.
– Newspapers, which traditionally have taken the lead in local/state issues, have not only become rather cozy with certain local/state politicians, but have cut their ability to cover local/state politics beyond the bone because of their aging and shrinking readership.
– Nobody has figured out how to consistently make money with a ‘net-based operation.

Placebocare – One Last Thought

by @ 14:21. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Placebocare – You’ll pay the same, maybe more. It tastes good going down but leaves a nasty after taste. You won’t notice that you aren’t getting any better….until it’s too late!

Placebos – a Follow Up Thought

by @ 14:14. Filed under Miscellaneous.

If “Astroturf” is a fake version of real grass roots activism would it be appropriate to refer to Obamacare as Placebocare, a fake version of real health care reform?

First AstroTurf, now Placebos?

by @ 10:32. Filed under Health Care Reform, Politics - National.

Throughout the August recess, town halls across the country, were attended by grass root Americans who told their Representatives that they wanted no part of Obamacare.  As the pressure on the Representatives increased, Nancy Pelosi and other Democrat leaders attempted to discredit the notion that this was real angst, from real Americans, that was being projected towards their Beltway Masters.  Rather, Ms. Pelosi asserted that the angst was all ginned up and that it was not real grass roots but rather AstroTurf.

I think they are astroturf, you be the judge.

Yesterday, President Obama staged another photo op in an attempt to convince folks that the country supports his takeover of health care.  President Obama had 150 doctors attend the photo op.  He tried to use these doctors as representatives of the entire medical industry.  Obama’s logic seems to be that if the doctors say the medicine to fix health care is good, than you should take it.  Except, there’s a bit of a problem with the foundation of his argument.

Turns out, most of the doctors at yesterday’s event (those who brought their white coats and those who had to have one assigned to them) were members of Doctors for America.  Turns out that Doctors for America is not a new group.  Nope, DFA is the new reincarnation of the former Doctors for Obama.

If Doctors for America, formerly Doctors for Obama, had previously drunk the kool-aid for hope and change, is there any credibility in their support for more ingestion of the sugary drink?

If Nancy Pelosi thought the Grass Roots attending the town hall were nothing more than AstroTurf, can I now assume that support from a medical group that had already drunk the kool-aid is not real medicine but just a placebo?

Tuesday Hot Read – WaPo’s “If We Lose Afghanistan”

by @ 9:00. Filed under War on Terror.

(H/T – House Minority Leader John Boehner)

The Washington Post makes the case for trying to win in Afghanistan. That’s right; the Washington Post. The takeaway:

That doesn’t mean the Taliban or al-Qaeda would suddenly get hold of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons — though that is the ultimate danger. It does mean that the larger “Afpak” region that the administration has defined as a focus would be destabilized, along with much of the rest of south and central Asia. As long as the Taliban were a dominant force in Afghanistan, Pakistan would be in danger of succumbing to radical forces. In the likely event that Afghanistan was plagued by an endless civil war — as it was during the Taliban’s last ascendancy — the country would again become a place of proxy conflict among Pakistan, India, Iran and other nations. Not those countries, but the United States would be blamed for the horrendous humanitarian cost — including the brutalization of women that would occur wherever the Taliban gained authority.

Defeating the Taliban and fostering an Afghan government and army that can stabilize the country are daunting tasks that will require years of patience. It could be that even a concerted effort, along the lines proposed by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, would fail. There should be no mistaking, however, what the stakes of this conflict are. Whether or not al-Qaeda regains its pre-9/11 haven, a Taliban victory would be a catastrophe for the United States and its allies.

The reason Al Qaeda was drawn to Afghanistan is that the Taliban actually implemented their idea of a caliphate. The destruction of all non-Islamic artifacts and the mass executions that happened in Afghanistan when the Taliban took over predated Osama Bin Laden’s arrival.

Moron math – How many 16-0 teams can there be?

by @ 7:46. Filed under Sports.

Notropis asked this question in last night’s Ace of Spades HQ MNF open thread:

Here’s a fun math question (or not):

Examine the NFL schedule, and determine what the maximum number of undefeated teams could be, at any point in the season.

Ex: after week 1, I’d guess it’d be 16, unless someone had a week 1 bye.

Since the order of the NFL schedule is too random to properly assign victories between Weeks 2 and 16 (e.g., a team that won in Week 1 may or may not face another 1-0 team in Week 2), it is impossible to answer that without a Cray supercomputer.

However, since the content of the NFL schedule is entirely predictable, we can figure out how many teams can finish 16-0. The schedule of every NFL team is made up of the following:
– A home-and-home series against each of the other three division rivals.
– A game apiece against the four teams of a single division in the other conference.
– A game apiece against the three teams in the same conference that finished in the same divisional order the prior season (i.e. the NFC North champion will face the NFC East champion, the NFC South champion, and the NFC West champion).
– A game apiece against the other three teams of a single division in the same conference.

A single team that goes 16-0 (Team A) eliminates from a 16-0 possibility the other three teams in its division, all four teams of its “interconference” division schedule, the three teams that finished in the same divisional spot the prior season, and the other three teams of its “intraconference” division schedule. That leaves 6 teams in that same conference and 12 teams in the other conference that could go 16-0.

A second team in the same conference that goes 16-0 (Team B) eliminates from a 16-0 possibility its two division rivals that didn’t face Team A, all four teams of its “interconference” division schedule, the two teams that finished in the same divisional spot the previous season that didn’t face Team A, and the team of its “intraconference” division schedule that didn’t face Team A. That leaves just 8 teams in the other conference that could go 16-0.

The first team in the other conference that goes 16-0 (Team C) eliminates from a 16-0 possibility, at a minimum, its three division rivals and the team that finished in the same divisional spot the previous season that didn’t face Team A or Team B. If the “intraconference” division opponents for Team C are not the same as the “interconference” division opponents for Team A or Team B, Team C also eliminates the other 3 teams of that division.

If, however, they are the same, a fourth team (Team D) could go 16-0.

Roll bloat – Let there be change

by @ 0:00. Filed under The Blog.

There’s nothing common about Common Cents Blog. Now only if they would enable the feed, even if it’s just an excerpt, it would be easier to follow.

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