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 December 7th, 2009

December Drinking Right – Oh the weather outside is frightful

by @ 19:00. Filed under Miscellaneous.

This is the Emergency Blogging System. It has been activated because Steve doesn’t want to sound like a broken record after last year’s December Drinking Right/Snowpocalypse.

This is your 24-hour warning to make sure you make it to Papa’s Social Club (7718 W Burleigh in Milwaukee) for the December Drinking Right, to commence promptly at 7 pm 12/8/2009. We don’t care if it’s snowing; alcohol makes a great anti-freeze.

This has been an activation of the Emergency Blogging System. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled posts.

Search wars, Pearl Harbor version

by @ 16:58. Filed under Miscellaneous.

(H/T – Ace)

It has become a long-standing joke embarrassment that Google refuses to acknowledge certain historical dates important to Americans. Today is no exception. I’ll let the screencaps of the current home pages of Google, Yahoo, and Bing speak for themselves (at least for the most part; do click the images for the full-sized versions):

Note the complete lack of mention of the significance of the day on Google, and only a single reference to the events of that day (the sinking of the USS Arizona) on Yahoo. What you can’t see on Bing’s screencap are the interactive links:

  • Over the USS Arizona Memorial is a question on what day President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said would live in infamy, which takes one to a “Bingified” copy of a Wikipedia article on the attack on Pearl Harbor.
  • In the harbor to the right of the Memorial is a question on how one can best pay respects to those who died there in 1941, which takes one to a Bing search for “USS Arizona Memorial”.
  • In the harbor to the right of the USS Missouri is an offer for help on locating Pearl Harbor, which takes one to a Bing map showing where the southeast corner of Pearl Harbor is (about a mile south of the USS Arizona Memorial).
  • On the USS Missouri is an invitiation to take a break from war news by viewing “beach pictures” from the area (really a Bing images search of Oahu, the island’s name).

While Bing doesn’t quite get the entire execution right, I do have to give them an A for effort. The rest – an EPIC FAIL!

Revisions/extensions (5:11 pm 12/7/2009) – Welcome Ed Driscoll readers. I guess it helps to have a memorable Tweet – “Say what you will about Bill Gates and Microsoft — they know what day it is and what country they hail from.”

Former Neumann backer James Klauser endorses Scott Walker for governor

by @ 15:43. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

This came into Charlie Sykes’ mailbox a while ago from former Thompson-era Department of Administration secretary James Klauser:

7. December, 2009

Dear Friend:

Jim Doyle, after 8 years, will leave Wisconsin state and local finances in a shambles. In his first term he spent and borrowed; in his second term he spent more, borrowed more, raised taxes and used the Obama stimulus dollars to cover the deficit. Those Obama dollars will soon be gone. Jim Doyle prudently decided not to seek re-election. Instead he handpicked the Mayor of Milwaukee, a former liberal Democrat Congressman, Tom Barrett to run instead. The Doyle team managed to intimidate out of the race any potential serious challenger.

Tom Barrett is a decent, pleasant fellow. He can accurately be characterized as being indecisive and uncreative…sort of bland. However he is very liberal. He makes Doyle’s liberalism pale. Barrett has a record in every public office he has held of increasing spending and raising taxes. The Doyle-Barrett team is hostile to school choice and charter schools; they are opposed to the reforms to welfare initiated by Governor Thompson. The Doyle-Barrett team would continue to allow our transportation infrastructure to erode. After 7 years Doyle-Barrett figured out there are problems with the Milwaukee school system….duh! Their solution…double duh!

Initially Doyle blamed the fiscal mess on the previous administration; now he excuses it because of the national economy. The truth of the matter is it relates to his profligacy and spending/borrowing patterns. The Doyle-Barrett taxes are impeding our economic recovery. Their social policies such as climate change programs are killing jobs.

The Doyle-Barrett team is already working on sustaining liberals in office. Left-wing liberal groups such as Acorn, One Wisconsin and a variety of other front groups are today working in Wisconsin to keep these liberals in power. Obama needs Wisconsin for his re-election. He will be in this with both feet.

While the election is months away it is forcefully underway. 2009 saw the Conservative/Republican candidates compete. Now is the time to come together and support the strongest candidate who has the best chance to win.

I have been impressed with the growth and effort of Scott Walker this past year. He has truly earned his spurs. He is working hard; he has built a great organization; his campaign is drawing more people to it every day. He has sharpened his message. He has maintained his principles and integrity. We can expect the same in Madison.

This campaign will not be easy. The liberal other side is not above fallacious exaggeration and distortion. Scott needs our support to carry forward and win the election in November (which is not that far away). If you have not already committed, I encourage you to join me in endorsing and supporting Scott Walker for Governor. Let’s straighten out the Doyle-Barrett messes. We can believe in Wisconsin again.

Back in April, just before Walker announced he was running, Klauser endorsed Neumann. Last month, after Neumann gained no real traction with the right-of-center crowd, Klauser pulled his support and his wife resigned as the treasurer of the Neumann campaign.

While I am relieved that Walker won’t have to face a serious challenger, I am saddened that the Neumann campaign has flamed out so spectacularily.

PlaceboCare ad – 15 minutes could cost you 15%

by @ 13:36. Filed under Health Care Reform.

(H/T – David Freddoso)

The Employment Policies Institute spoofed a GEICO ad as part of their Rethink Reform site…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuhfLkh0UtQ[/youtube]

Senate hard at work (or is it hardly working) on wrecking the economy

by @ 12:22. Filed under Health Care Reform, NRE Polls.

The Senate held a rare Sunday session, ostensibly to work on PlaceboCare. However, Politico has the scoop on what really went on behind closed doors – the Dems were jonesing on Chinese food while watching football. What, Mr. Days is too public for them?

Seriously, the main focus of that story was on the declining support for a “pure” public option, with a public-private “compromise” beginning to emerge. Guess it’s as good a time as any to put up a poll suggested by Shoebox…

What will be the final issue to split the Dems' support for PlaceboCare?

Up to 1 answer(s) was/were allowed

  • Nothing - Harry will hold them together (47%, 15 Vote(s))
  • Abortion Funding (25%, 8 Vote(s))
  • The Public Option (16%, 5 Vote(s))
  • The Price Tag (13%, 4 Vote(s))

Total Voters: 32

Loading ... Loading ...

Social Security not-so-slow-mo collapse, part (I lost count)

by @ 12:05. Filed under Social Security crater.

Ever since Ed Morrissey figured out that Social Security had started to run monthly deficits back in May, I’ve been on it on-and-off. There’s some bad news, and some REALLY bad news over the last couple months:

  • The FY2009 primary (cash) surplus of the combined funds was $19.356 billion. While that is slightly higher than the summer 2009 Congressional Budget Office estimate thanks to slightly-higher-than-projected revenues, it does not represent any meaningful improvement in the ugly projections for the future. That also was the worst 12-month performance since January 1993-December 1993, and the worst fiscal-year performance since monthly records were kept starting in 1987.
  • The $4.377 billion primary deficit for September 2009 and the $4.829 billion primary deficit for October 2009 were, excepting the anomalous August 1990 performance, the 4th- and 3rd-worst monthly performance (respectively), trailing only 2nd-worst December 2008 and worst-ever August 2009.
  • For the third straight month, both halves of the Social Security “trust fund”, the Old-Age Insurance Fund and the Disability Insurance Fund, ran monthly primary deficits. That stretch has never happened before. Moreover, the prior two times that happened were in December 2008 and November 1993.
  • But wait, it gets worse. That $4.8 billion primary deficit for October made the September 2008-October 2009 12-month primary surplus only $14.902 billion, the worst 12-month performance since monthly records were kept starting in 1987.

Do remember that there is not a single penny set aside in the federal budget to pay cash to either the interest or principal owed to the Social Security “trust fund”.

Revisions/extensions (1:51 pm 12/8/2009) – With a tip of the hat to Ed Morrissey, Chuck Blahous provides some more bad news:

  • October marked the 6th straight month of red ink for Social Security, yet another record-bad performance.
  • Before the CBO’s summer 2009 projection that the fiscal-year cash deficits will begin in 2010, neither the CBO nor the Social Security Trustees had predicted this situation to begin prior to 2012 since 1983.
  • Since 1987, November has been a negative month 11 of the 22 years, and all 6 years following a negative October.

Chuck also explains why this situation is a bad thing far better than I can:

The rising debt that the Trust Fund holds can perhaps best be understood by conceptualizing it as being like a mortgage owed by the federal government, albeit an unusual kind of mortgage in which no cash payments are made by the borrower (the federal government) until the lender (Social Security) needs money. As long as Social Security’s own incoming tax revenue is sufficient to fund its benefit payments, the government is not required make any payments on the mortgage. When Social Security’s incoming tax revenue falls short, however, the government needs to produce extra cash and start paying that mortgage off. The mortgage debt will continue to grow, however, as long as the interest on the debt is greater than the monthly cash payments being made.

An individual analogy may help to make this clearer. If an individual homeowner took out a mortgage and then paid only $1770 on it over six months, when the mortgage’s interest costs alone over that period were $5930, then at the end of those six months that person would owe a further $4160 on the mortgage despite having made several payments. Paying down just a portion of the interest and none of the principal on a mortgage parallels what is happening here. The money obligated to the Social Security Trust Fund continues to rise as the fund accrues interest; but our cash-strapped government now has to deliver additional money to support benefit payments, and has had to do so for half a year.

Revisions/extensions (12:16 am 1/7/2010) – I don’t know how I missed the various typos confusing “billions” and “trillions”. Sorry about that.

Debt-a-palooza, 2010 edition (part 1)

by @ 10:59. Filed under Politics - National.

(H/T – Darleen Click)

Reuters reported on Friday that the monthly federal deficits of $176.4 billion in October (official) and $115 billion in November (CBO estimate) mean that the start of the 2010 federal fiscal year is even worse than the record-deficit-shattering 2009 fiscal year. As Darleen pointed out, that is an annualized deficit of $1.752 trillion.

That is mostly before the effects of items like expanding the homebuyer tax credit to existing homeowners (because the first-time-only version wasn’t loaded with enough fraud, I suppose) or PlaceboCare, or cap-and-tax, or…..

NPR v Liasson/Fox News/Williams

by @ 10:34. Filed under Presstitute Follies.

(H/T – Howie)

Politico has the news that top executives at National Public (read – taxpayer-funded) Radio told Mara Liasson to reconsider her appearances on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report” and Fox broadcast network’s “Fox News Sunday”, all-but-ordering her to watch the network for 30 days to try and convince her to end her appearances on the “more-partisan” network. She did, and to her credit, told them to pound sand.

Poltiico also has this pot-and-kettle moment:

One source close to NPR executives said their discomfort with the Fox appearances by NPR personnel has been long-standing and has intensified over time.

“This has been a building thing. There has been a concern in the upper regions of NPR that Fox uses Mara and Juan as cover” to defuse arguments that the TV network is populated with right-wing voices, said the source, who asked not to be named.

One complaint from NPR executives is that this very perception that Liasson and (Juan) Williams serve as ideological counterweights reinforces feelings among some members of the public that NPR tilts to the left. “NPR has its own issues in trying to convince people that, ‘Look, we’re down the middle,’” the source said. “This is a public and institutional problem that has nothing to do with Mara. Obviously, you can’t give Mara a hard time for what’s coming out of her mouth. … She’s very careful. She isn’t trashing anybody.”

NPR hugs the left gutter of Karl Marx Street.

A date that still lives in infamy – 68 years later

by @ 10:00. Filed under History, International relations, War.

I originally posted this in 2007. Let’s re-run that, and add to it.

Hat-tip for the video – Jawa Howie. Now, watch and remember (or learn if you’re a recent product of public school education):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAnOtWm5OrM[/youtube]

Of course, the lessons are rapidly being forgotten, as Ed Morrissey points out:

It took hundreds of thousands of American lives to defeat both Japan and Nazi Germany in the war that followed — a war that had already enslaved China years before on one side of the US, and half of Europe on the other side. We thought we had learned a lesson on December 7, 1941 ,which was that we had to be prepared to fight a war in order to keep from getting surprised like that again. Of course, we shouldn’t have been surprised at all by Japan’s attack in the first place. They didn’t suddenly become warlike and aggressive on December 6th, 1941, as the Chinese, Manchurians, and Koreans could attest. They had been attempting conquest (and succeeding) for several years in the Pacific Rim. We just preferred to keep our eyes closed in order to keep from doing anything about it. When we attempted to cut off oil to Japan, we discovered that negotiations and sanctions don’t keep war-drunk, expansionist powers from increasing their expansionism.

The lesson from that war is that appeasement and complacency doesn’t keep one from having to fight a war. It usually forces one to fight from an extreme disadvantage. That’s a lesson we have not remembered in dealing with expansionist powers in our own time, even after a second shock like 9/11 after years of complacency in dealing with al-Qaeda. We’re falling back to treating radical Islamist terrorism like a Law and Order episode, and allowing one of the main drivers of radical Islamist terror, Iran, to arm itself with nuclear weapons with no consequences whatsoever.

To that, I’ll add that Red China, which has rather open designs on both Taiwan and the entirety of the South China Sea, is still arming itself to the teeth while holding a rapidly-growing lot of US government debt. What do you suppose will happen if the federal government decides to default on some of that debt held by Red China?

It Might Only Be A Horse!

by @ 5:16. Filed under Politics - National, Presstitute Follies.

While continuing to avoid stories on Climategate, the AP is focused on creating “news” where none exists.

In an article on Sunday, the AP attempts to be the first to announce that Sarah Palin is running for the Republican nomination for President.  They conflate Palin’s book tour appearance in Iowa with a confirmation that she is running for the nomination.  They do this on one simple argument; because Iowa is the first State to have a caucus for the nominations and Sarah Paling is in Iowa, she must be running for President. 

The AP tries to bolster their assertion that Palin is running for President by getting a comment from a “Veteran Republican activist” to chime in.  Says Tim Albrecht:

politicians don’t just happen to stop in Iowa and Palin must know that her visit is seen as a signal she is considering a run.

Mr. Albrecht was previously National Director of Communications for the American Future Fund which does fine work on conservative issues.  However, Mr. Albrecht does live in Iowa.  Not that living in Iowa is bad, Mrs. Shoe and I lived there ourselves for a couple of years.  My point is that when living in a state, people have a way of thinking that that state is the center of the universe especially if it happens to have a claim to fame that is coincidental to the topic being discussed.  To conclude that Sarah Palin is running for President because she has a book tour stop in Iowa would be like Sarah Palin being at her book signing in Minnesota wearing a plaid, flannel shirt and when asked what I thought she was going to do next, I answer “she’s going ice fishing!”

Hey, AP, while the obvious eludes you, it’s apparent that jumping to conclusions doesn’t!  How about this line of reasoning:  Sarah Palin is trying to sell books.  To do this, she is on a book tour to meet, greet and sell her books.  Her publicist has chosen several states and sites that they believe Sarah’s appearance would have a large impact on awareness for the book.  While Palin will sell books in all states, there is no secret that her appeal is higher in red states or states who lean towards small government ideals.  Believe it or not, Iowa fits that description.

The AP could use a bit of sage advice that I heard years ago:  If you hear clip clop, clip clop behind you, it would be silly to assume that if you turn, you will see a zebra.  It’s much more likely that it will just be a horse!

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