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.
Since Sister Toldjah has gone down with a nasty bug, she hung out the guest-blogger sign, and invited Phineas and me to cover for her while she gets healthy again.
Get well soon, ST, and the rest of you stop on in over there. Once again, I’ll try to do some exclusive content for her and hopefully remember to repost it here when the comments time out, while doing some other stuff here. In fact, I’ve just put up a look at the media poll question from the WPRI/UW poll from the weekend.
Charlie Sykes of 620 WTMJ here in Milwaukee named the Norwegian Nobel Committee the winner of this week’s Almost-Somewhat-Not-Quite-Deep-Enough Tunnel Award.
For those of you not familiar with the Deep Tunnel Award, it’s named after Milwaukee’s not-quite-deep enough Deep Tunnel, which was sold as a couple-million-dollar solution preventing sewage overflows into Lake Michigan and the local rivers during all except the 100-year rainfall while allowing portions of Milwaukee and Shorewood to keep combined sewers, and which turned out to be a $1 billion+ boondoggle that doesn’t even stop overflows from a twice-yearly rainfall and which is causing parts of downtown Milwaukee to sink into the ground. As Charlie says every Friday about 11:40 am when he awards it, it’s awarded to “the person, politician or institution who…is the most full of it”.
The Nobel Committee did beat out some stiff competition from:
– Wisconsin State Senator Jim Sullivan (D-Wauwatosa), who is using a toughening of the drunk-driving laws to raise taxes.
– Congressman Steve Kagen (D-WI), who doesn’t want you or his fellow Congressmen to be able to view bills before they’re voted upon.
– Milwaukee County Board Chair Lee Holloway, who doesn’t let little things such as Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker explicitly telling David Duke to his face that he has no place in the Republican Party get in the way of comparing Walker to Duke.
I haven’t been able to keep up with all the moves Alexander/Rabbit has been doing, but at least this time he only changed the name. Of course, since I didn’t keep up with the previous move, I had to do both in the bloated roll. In any case, a Little off Main is back in business.
I’ll simply let Jim Geraghty deliver the kicker (note; I somehow missed this yesterday, as did the rest of you given the lack of notes in Open Thread Thursday, so “today” is actually “yesterday”)…
The New York Times, today:
President Obama’s national security team is moving to reframe its war strategy by emphasizing the campaign against Al Qaeda in Pakistan while arguing that the Taliban in Afghanistan do not pose a direct threat to the United States, officials said Wednesday.
That’s right; Obama is preparing to hand Afghanistan back to the people goat-fuckers whose wholescale destruction of non-Islamic religious symbols, use of soccer fields as mass public execution venues, and subjugation of women that would make even Iran’s Mad Mullahs blush made Afghanistan the number one place for Al Qaeda to relocate after they got kicked out of Somalia.
(H/T – Allahpundit)
No Runny Eggs has obtained the first draft of the award resolution:
Whereas Barack Hussein Obama II took the office of United States President on January 20, 2009 on the promise of Hope and Change, and…
Whereas Barack Hussein Obama II promised surrender to the Islamokazis, and…
Whereas Barack Hussein Obama II gave new hope to Communists worldwide, and…
Whereas Barack Hussein Obama II has encouraged Iran to pursue nuclear weapons with which it will wipe out the biggest threat to the Religion of Pieces, Israel, and…
Whereas Barack Hussein Obama II has ended American Exceptionalism,…
Therefore, we the idiots of the Nobel Piece Committee award Barack Hussein Obama II the Nobel Piece Prize.
I wish I were kidding about either the award or the reasoning, but the only thing that is semi-tongue-in-cheek is that first-draft resolution.
Revisions/extensions (7:19 am 10/9/2009) – Hot Air commenter reaganaut answers the inevitable baseball question – “Well, now we know Obama will win the AL Cy Young for throwing out that pitch.” What other undeserving awards will Obama get?
R&E part 2 (8:56 am 10/9/2009) – (H/T – Doug Mataconis) Daniel W. Drezner did one better by getting into the final deliberations of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. It is a must-read.
R&E part 3 (9:07 am 10/9/2009) – Read about just some of the nominees that lost out to President Present. What didn’t they do that Teh Won did? They didn’t support Communism and Radical Islam. In fact, several of those who didn’t make the final cut oppose Communists and Islamokazis.
R&E part 4 (9:26 am 10/9/2009) – Dr. Dave lists the new qualifications for the Nobel Piec…er, Peace Prize.
R&E part 5 (10:50 am 10/9/2009) – Steve Padilla over at the Los Angeles Times’ Top of the Ticket blog came through with the full text of the Nobel announcement:
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.
Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.
Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.
For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world’s leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama’s appeal that “Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.”
Oslo, October 9, 2009
Damn if that isn’t close to my exclusive first-draft resolution.
R&E part 6 (12:46 pm 10/9/2009) – A couple more for the linkage:
– Phineas put up a few more of Obama’s “accomplishments”, as well as the “qualifications” of a few recent Piec…er, Peace Prize winners.
– Slublog broke out the Slushop. I’ll give you just one of them; you’re going to have to go to Ace’s place for the rest.
R&E part 7 (12:57 pm 10/9/2009) – I bow to the master of Teh Funny, Iowahawk, who got a copy of Obama’s invitation to the Nobel Peace Player’s Club.
R&E part 8 (7:20 pm 10/9/2009) – I called this one even before I posted it here (see my first comment at the Hot Air thread) – The Wall Street Journal agrees with my assessment that it was an award for the end of American exceptionalism:
The Norwegians are on to something. In a mere nine months, the President has promulgated a vision for the U.S. role in the world that breaks with both Republican and Democratic predecessors. Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, called America the “indispensable nation” a decade ago. Ronald Reagan called it a “city on the Hill,” an example to the world.
Mr. Obama sees the U.S. differently, as weaker than it was and the rest of the planet as stronger, and so he calls for a humbler America, at best a first among equals, working primarily through the U.N. The world’s challenges, he emphasized yesterday, “can’t be met by any one leader or any one nation.” What this suggests to us—and to the Norwegians—is the end of what has been called “American exceptionalism.” This is the view that U.S. values have universal application and should be promoted without apology, and defended with military force when necessary.
Once again, the two doctors of the Senate, Sen. Tom Coburn, M.D. and Sen. John Barrasso, M.D, will be taking to the Ustream airwaves at 4 pm Central (5 pm Eastern, 3 pm Mountain, check your watches on the Left Coast). They’ll likely be talking about the Baucus non-bill and the CBO’s scoring of said non-bill.
If you missed it; here’s the show courtesy YouTube…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNdmGFzF-ME[/youtube]
Revisions/extensions (6:13 pm 10/8/2009) – Replaced the Ustream video of the previous show with the YouTube video of the current show.
The short version of why they hate Robert Stacy McCain is – “They’ve gone mad”. Slightly-longer version:
– He’s figured out how to make the transition from the oldest of media (specifically, the still-good Washington Times to the newest of media, the blogosphere.
– He’s still doing actual shoe-leather journalism.
– He throws out links better than anybody, and I mean ANYBODY, I’ve seen (especially in the mirror).
Despite that, or probably, because of that, Rachel Maddow brought back an old and false charge of racism (funny how that always seems to be the prefered card of the Left), which a West Virginia paper repeated like any good parrot (never mind said paper has gone to the mat time and time again to defend their former-Klansman Senator).
I had the privilege to run into R. S. a couple months ago. He is simply a great person.
Well, Shoebox is likely going to get an inch of snow between Friday night and Saturday, and a wintry mix is slated to fall on top of the bunker Sunday night, so it’s a winter song…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aWRdXoxlEA[/youtube]
Have at it.
Michelle Obama was a slave. Who knew? Damn, she’s done well for herself.
Now that the dust has settled on the selection of the 2016 Olympics, some of the delegates are providing some insight on why the Chicago bid failed. According to this article, a Pakistani IOC member said that one of the reasons Chicago lost out was that entering the United States could be:
“a rather harrowing experience.”
President Obama was quick to point out that as President, things will change:
“One of the legacies I want to see is a reminder that America at its best is open to the world.”
Even the President of the US Travel association took the feedback seriously:
“When IOC members are commenting to our President that foreign visitors find traveling to the United States a ‘pretty harrowing experience,’ we need to take seriously the challenge of reforming our entry process to ensure there is a welcome mat to our friends around the world, even as we ensure a secure system.”
I’ve traveled to a few countries and have had the opportunity to experience how non residents are treated by their entry port agents. I’ve also watched how our entry agents treat non residents entering the US. I’m hard pressed to say that in comparison to other countries, entering the US is difficult. Based on my observations, describing the US entry process as “harrowing” could only be done by someone who felt that a hangnail was a “harrowing” medical malady.
The only people who would generally find entrance to the US as “harrowing” are those who are attempting to do so illegally. The irony is that Chicago is a sanctuary city and doesn’t care what the legal or illegal status of some one’s entry to the US was so even that shouldn’t have been an issue. Maybe, in all the focus on themselves, the Obama’s forgot to mention that as a selling point to the IOC?
Hardly an issue goes by that the left doesn’t invoke “the children” as a reason to see things their way.
Healthcare Placebocare – It’s the Children
Stimulus plan – It’s the Children
Cap and Trade – It’s for the Children
Has the left ever seen anything that was bad “for the children?” Apparently so.
In this audio posted by Breitbart, President Obama’s Safe School Czar, the same guy who seems to be generally OK with Man/boy relationships doesn’t know rape when he sees it, knows that heterosexuality is bad for the children. At a 2000 GLSEN event, Kevin Jennings made the accusation that:
“Kids are being aggressively recruited to become heterosexual in this country.”
What? No! How dare they!!!
Oh….wait. That’s a good thing isn’t it? Not according to Kevin Jennings. Listen to the whole clip below.
H/t Breitbart
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 – 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!
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?
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.
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?
(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.
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.
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.
My allergies are acting up too much to head out for the game, but I’ve got the not-so-big screen tuned into Channel 12.1 (or 34.1 if your PSIP is not working right) here in Milwaukee. I’ve got the iPod Touch fired up to keep up on Twitter, but the main focus will be on the Packers whupping up on the Vikes.
Shoebox undoubtedly has a different take on that since he’s on the other side of the Mississippi (BTW, I see 3 picks, including a pick-6).
[No Runny Eggs is proudly powered by WordPress.]
