No Runny Eggs

We here at No Runny Eggs have decided to make famous (or infamous as the case may be) some of the people and events that shaped the past year. Today, we start with the nominees for Jackass of the Year. We’ll each choose the person who we think was the biggest jackass in 2010. Some of us may agree, some of us may not.

The rest of the NRE Awards schedule is:

• Thank You for Existing, which will be announced on 1/2.
• Dumbest Thing Said, which will be announced on 1/3.
• News Story of the Year, which will be announced on 1/4.
• Person of the Year, which will be announced on 1/5.

And the nominees are…

Brett Favre (from steveegg) – I could have gone with the safe political picks of the architects of the POR Economy (Pelosi, Obama and Reid), or their Wisconsin acolytes Jim “Craps” Doyle (WEAC/HoChunk-For Sale) and noted slumlord/abuser of Milwaukee County Board Supervisors/acting Milwaukee County Executive Lee Holloway, but this isn’t just a political blog. At the beginning of the year, I said that Favre would do to the Vikings what he did to the Packers and Jets, and I was right – he held out of training camp. Worse (or better, depending on one’s point of view), he finally proved he was human, but only after he broke every record there was to break from consecutive games started to fumbles.

Alan Grayson (from realdebate) – The leftwing bomb thrower who claimed conservatives just wanted people to die, called his opponent Taliban Dan and deliberately took statements out of context to make scurrilous campaign ads. Grayson then actually had the cojones to complain about a negative ad directed at him claiming his kids could see it. Enjoy your retirement you putz, you earned it.

364,598 South Carolinians (from Shoebox) – This is the number of people who voted for Alvin Green for the South Carolina Senate Seat.  The fact that; Green had been indicted on a pornography felony, hadn’t held a job for 13 years and considered manufacturing action figures of himself “economic development”, all could be overlooked  by nearly 30% of South Carolina voters, proves without a doubt that you can fool some of the people all of the time.  It also proves that for at least 30% of voters, party affiliation and skin color mean more than capability of doing the job….and that goes for the South Carolina Senate race as well!

Eric Holder (from Phineas) – Let’s see… He sues the State of Arizona for trying to enforce a law that the federal government refuses to enforce. He tries to move the trial of Khailid Sheikh Muhammad to New York City, regardless of public sentiment or public safety. He carries on with the trial in federal court of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani for the embassy bombings, even though the judge threw out his key witness, assuring us there would be no problem. Then he loses the case. Finally, we have the revelations of racial bias in the enforcement of civil rights laws at the Justice Department, apparently tolerated Holder, if not encouraged by him. For this, I think he is a truly worthy Jackass of the Year.

Stan Cox and Ryan Brown (from Kevin Fischer) – Why is it liberals aren’t happy unless they’re unhappy, taking all our comforts away? During July 2010, as a stifling heat wave was gripping many parts of the nation, Stan Cox wrote a book entitled, “Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Condtioned World.”

In a book review for the lefty web site, Salon.com, Ryan Brown wrote:

In the last half century, air conditioning has joined fireworks, swimming pools and charred hamburgers as a ubiquitous ingredient of an American summer. It’s no exaggeration to say it has changed the way this country functions, shaping everything from where we’re willing to live (Las Vegas, anyone?) to the amount of sex we have (more: It’s never too hot to get it on when the A.C. is blasting). Nine out of 10 new homes in this country are built with central air conditioning, and Americans now use as much electricity to power our A.C. as the entire continent of Africa uses for, well, everything. It has so thoroughly scrambled our way of life that when the National Academy of Engineering chose its 20 greatest engineering accomplishments of the last century, A.C. not only made the list, it clocked in ahead of spacecraft, highways and even the Internet.

But as science writer Stan Cox argues in his new book, the dizzying rise of air conditioning comes at a steep personal and societal price. We stay inside longer, exercise less, and get sick more often — and the electricity used to power all that A.C. is helping push the fast-forward button on global warming. The invention has also changed American politics: Love it or hate it, refrigerated cooling has been a major boon to the Republican Party. The advent of A.C. helped launch the massive Southern and Western population growth that’s transformed our electoral map in the last half century. Cox navigates all of these scientific and social angles with relative ease, providing a clear explanation of how A.C. made the leap from luxury to necessity in the United States and examining how we can learn to manage the addiction before we refrigerate ourselves into the apocalypse.

That no good A.C.! Why should we live and work in comfort! And who knew A.C. was such an integral part of the immense success the GOP enjoys!

Maybe Stan Cox and Ryan Brown, my Co-Jackasses of the Year and their disciples should step to the plate and be the first to live outside, eat outside, sleep outside, work outside when the thermometer is hitting 100.