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 posts by steveegg.

February 18, 2010

Poll-a-copia, Senate edition

by @ 17:13. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

Rasmussen Reports expanded and extended upon their Russ Feingold-v-Tommy Thompson matchup last month, this time including the two announced Republican challengers. The quick-and-dirty numbers:

– Thompson 48%, Feingold 43% (up from a 47%/43% Thompson advantage last month)
– Feingold 47%, Terrence Wall 39%
– Feingold 47%, Dave Westlake 37%

As Rasmussen noted, incumbents who can’t get to 50%, especially against a couple of people little-better-known than John Doe, are in trouble. Of note, the “undecideds” in all three matchups are, to within the margin of rounding, equal to the margin between the major candidates.

Roll bloat – Fedoras, cannoli, and cameras

by @ 5:40. Filed under CPAC, The Blog.

One of the great things about CPAC is that one meets new great people. Things haven’t even officially started, and DaTechGuy crossed my path. (Un)fortunately, in addition to the fedoras and the cannoli, he brought his camera, and shockingly, it didn’t break with me on the wrong side of it.

February 17, 2010

Pre-CPAC Hot Read Part Deux – Jimmie Bise and Stacy McCain CPAC guide

by @ 10:11. Filed under CPAC.

Jimmie Bise, who like me attended his first CPAC last year, wrote a guide for rookies making their first appearance (bullet points here):

1) Dress for Success…and a Lot of Walking.
2) Prioritize.
3) Grabbing Grub:
4) Prepare for Brushes with Conservative Fame:
5) Love the Nightlife, But Not Too Much:
6) Remember Why You Came:

Meanwhile, Robert Stacy McCain has the plan for sneaking into the big events:

Yeah. Then there’s Plan B: Hang out with me in the hotel lobby bar, saunter down to the main ballroom right after the crowd reaches fire-code capacity, then I’ll tell my buddy the security guy that you’re a VIP and — presto! — you’re in like Flynn.

For some reason, Plan B works best when the alleged VIP is an extremely attractive woman. And here’s the thing: Even if Plan B doesn’t work, we just go back to the lobby bar, which is where all the real fun is, anyway.

That’s a Plan B I can get behind.

I wish I had that guide last year, but I lived, overspent, and learned. Catch you on the flip side.

Pre-CPAC Hot Read – Troglopundit looking for a million hits

by @ 9:33. Filed under Miscellaneous.

The most-famous caveman blogger to ever come out of Baraboo, Lance Burri, needs your help. The TrogloPundit is about to turn one, and he seems to be of the mind that he should be as popular as Robert Stacy McCain:

As many of you will have noticed, the past 355 days have not – repeat not – placed TrogloPundit in contention to join the fabled Million Hits in a Year club. That’s why I’m telling you about my anniversary a day short.

See, it’s not too late. All we need is…well…about six hundred and seventy-six thousand hits between now and 11:59 pm tomorrow. That’s it! Okay, a little more than that, I think. Make it six hundred and seventy-seven thousand hits, just to be safe. And that’ll make One Million Hits!

Go. Hit Trog again and again and again. Most of you haven’t seen him when he is REALLY desperate. I have. It’s not a pretty sight, completely unlike this shameless theft from Trog…

February 15, 2010

Good-bye, Sen. Bayh

by @ 11:05. Filed under Politics - National.

(H/T – Ed Morrissey, who tipped me for finding something in Indiana law regarding what happens if there is no Dem primary)

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza reports that Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) will not seek re-election. This surprising move comes as the deadline for qualifying for ballot access in the May partisan primary approaches. First, a quick review of the ballot access qualifications and timeline (from pages 16-17 of the 2010 Indiana Candidate Guide):

  • A candidate for either the Democratic or Republican nomination for US Senate must get 4,500 signatures on a petition of nomination, with 500 coming from each of Indidana’s 9 Congressional districts.
  • The county voter registration office in every county where a petition was circulated must receive the petitions for certification no later than noon local time Tuesday, February 16.
  • The certified petitions must be filed with the Elections Division of the Secretary of State’s office in Indianapolis by noon Eastern Friday, February 19.

Now, you might say that leaves the Democrats in a lurch if nobody can get on the ballot. However, Indiana also contemplated a scenario where one of the major parties might not have anybody qualify for a partisan primary ballot (pages 9-10 of the Candidate Guide – all emphasis in the original):

If No Candidate Runs In a Major Party Primary

On occasion, no candidate will file for the Democratic or Republican Party nomination to an office before a primary election. If this occurs, the vacancy may not be filled before the primary. (IC 3-13-1-2)

Immediately following the primary election, the political party may begin the process of filling the ballot vacancy. However, no political party is ever required to fill a ballot vacancy, even if an individual wishes to run as a candidate for the vacant nomination.

For federal, statewide, and state legislative candidates, the state chairman of a political party calls a caucus of the precinct committeemen within the district…. (IC 3-13-1-6; 3-13-1-7; 3-13-1-8)

A person who wishes to be selected by the caucus to fill a ballot vacancy for a federal, statewide, state legislative office, judicial office, or the office of prosecuting attorney must file a CAN-31 form with both the caucus chairman and the Election Division….

The deadline for the Democratic or Republican Party to conduct a political party caucus to fill a vacancy existing on the general election ballot resulting from a vacancy on the primary election ballot is Wednesday June 30, 2010 (IC 3-13-1-2; IC 3-13-1-7).

As Ed noted in Update IV of his post, “…(T)hat process is almost certain to produce a liberal ideologue — the exact opposite of what Indiana Democrats need for the midterms.”

Monday Hot Read – Jon Ward’s “Paul Ryan explains his votes for TARP, bailouts and tax on AIG bonuses”

by @ 9:20. Tags:
Filed under Politics - National.

Last week, Matt Lewis hit Paul Ryan on a trio of “not exactly” fiscally/small-government conservative votes at the end of the previous and the start of the current Congress. Jon Ward asked Ryan directly about each of the three votes (quotes from Ryan, with interjections from me breaking up the blockquotes):

You know I don’t hear it here at home that much. You’ve got to remember Obama won my district. Dukakis and Gore won my district. Clinton won my district. So I don’t come from, you know, a red area. So I think it’s important to keep in mind where I come from. I don’t hear that here.

It may not exactly be “that much”, but I will verify that Ryan has heard it from the district (specifically me). I will point out that before Mark Neumann finally broke through in 1994 (after failing miserably in 1992 and narrowly losing in a special election in 1993) and before Ryan made it a “safe R” district, the district was a very-safe Democratic district represented for years by Les Aspen.

TARP. I’ll take one at a time. I believe we were on the cusp of a deflationary spiral which would have created a Depression. I think that’s probably pretty likely. If we would have allowed that to happen, I think we would have had a big government agenda sweeping through this country so fast that we wouldn’t have recovered from it. So in order to prevent a Depression and a complete evisceration of the free market system we have, I think it was necessary. It wasn’t a fun vote. You don’t get to choose the kind of votes you want. But I just think as far as the long term objectives that I have — which are restoring the principles of this country — I think it was necessary to prevent those principles from being really kind of wiped out for a generation.

I know a lot of people don’t like to hear it (especially those with short memories), but support for/opposition against TARP, at least in its originally-conceived form of being a very-temporary holding of real assets that could not be dumped on the open market without the open market crashing, was a far closer call than the 20/10 vision of history made it.

Auto. Really clear. The president’s chief of staff [Josh Bolten] made it extremely clear to me before the vote, which is either the auto companies get the money that was put in the Energy Department for them already — a bill that I voted against because I didn’t want to give them that money, which was only within the $25 billion, money that was already expended but not obligated — or the president was going to give them TARP, with no limit. That’s what they told me. That’s what the president’s chief of staff explained to me. I said, ‘Well, I don’t want them to get TARP. We want to keep TARP on a [inaudible]. We don’t want to expand it. So give them that Energy Department money that at least puts them out of TARP, and is limited.’ Well, where are we now? What I feared would happen did happen. The bill failed, and now they’ve got $87 billion from TARP, money we’re not going to get back. And now TARP, as a precedent established by the Bush administration, whereby the Obama administration now has turned this thing into its latest slush fund. And so I voted for that to prevent precisely what has happened, which I feared would happen.

It’s a question of semantics here. Does one see that particular vote (which died in the Senate) as a “limit the damage” attempt or an opportunity to stand in complete opposition? Do remember that, at the time, Ryan’s hometown was home to a GM truck assembly plant, and that Chrysler had an engine plant in the district.

Would “limiting” the cash available for that bailout to $25 billion stopped the government takeover of GM and Chrysler? I don’t know. However, it would have prevented the Treasury from providing the debtor-in-possesion financing that greased the nationalization skids.

The whole AIG thing, you know that was — you know I obviously regret that one. I was angry at the time because I was worried that all these companies were jumping into TARP thinking they could use TARP as a way to best their competitors, as a way to get cheaper credit, to get money at cheaper rates, at the expense of their smaller competitors. And so I was seeing TARP as sort of a new tool of crony capitalism, and I thought it’d be a good signal to send to the large banks who were jumping into this thing, who really didn’t need it: ‘Stay away from this, don’t get in bed with the government, even though it might in the short term give you a leg up on your competitors, you’ll be burned. That was what was running through my mind at the time, given the fact that we had about six hours notice on the vote, and our lawyers were telling us that it was not a bill of attainder. Now when a week went by, and our lawyers had a chance to read it more clearly and carefully, they reversed their opinion of the bill and said it was in fact a bill of attainder, which therefore should not have passed…. The other thing that bothered me was the Democrats were in a real political pinch, because Chris Dodd wrote in the exemption for those bonuses in the bill, and they were on the hook for it. And they were trying to get themselves off the hook and Republicans on the hook. And that bothered me too, was just the political cynicism behind it bothered me and I didn’t want to give the Democrats that as well. So those were the thoughts running through my mind when I had to make more or less the snap judgment on that bill.

The “don’t get in bed” portion of that was the off-the-record answer I alluded to last week (which, going back through the archives, was not exactly off-the-record). The fact that Ryan admitted he made a mistake is new, and refreshing.

February 14, 2010

Snow on the ground. Acting like a fool with all that snow on the ground.

by @ 21:15. Filed under Global "Warming".

(H/Ts for the retreat by the acolytes – Ed Morrissey, and H/T for the sea-level mismeasurement – JammieWearingFool)

There have been three four items of interest over the weekend regarding the implosion of the religion of Gorebal “Warming”:

That first item is significant because it blows up one of the “other” indicators the IPCC is using to justify their warming claims while admitting to the contamination problem in the third item – the amount of snow cover.

Also note that none of the sources are from American media. To be fair, USA Today noted the snowfall that I sourced directly from the NWS (though they excluded Hawaii because the search hadn’t been completed). The other two items both come from British media. Interesting, isn’t it?

Revisions/extensions (9:28 pm 2/14/2010) – And the hits just keep on coming.

Daytona 500 random thoughts

by @ 20:07. Filed under Sports.

– First things first, congratulations to Jamie McMurray for winning the longest Daytona “500” (or should it be Daytona 520?) in history. That was some serious driving to come back from bad-loose midrace. I wish Roush had been able to hang onto him (or get rid of David Ragan).

– We almost could call it the Roushketeer Invitational. In addition to McMurray winning it, we had Greg Biffle 3rd, Matt Kenseth 8th (more on him in a bit), Carl Edwards 9th, Jeff Burton 11th, Mark Martin 12th, Ragan 16th and Kurt Busch 22nd.

– While the 8th place finish for Kenseth was good considering up until the last restart he had been bascially mid-20s all day and half the night, it’s not exactly how I’d draw it up – “Let’s put the wrong shocks in the car, run wicked-loose all day, get a Darlington stripe, replace the shocks after the first red flag, chew up the splitter just before the second red flag, fix that after red flag #2, and then hang around in the back of the lead pack until the white flag, which won’t be until lap 207.”

– Speaking of all day and half the night, that was an epic pavement fail in turn 2. You just can’t have potholes appearing right where the right-side tires need to be on the bottom groove. I don’t care what Tony Stewart and Edwards say – it’s time to repave the track. Oh, and repaving just a portion just isn’t going to cut it. Trust me on this one.

February 13, 2010

Nationwide opener random thoughts

by @ 20:23. Filed under Sports.

– I agree with Jeff Gluck (late of Scene Daily, now at SBNation.com) that something needs to be done with rained-out qualifying. There were inarguably a few good cars that missed out on the race because they were unfortunate enough to be way down on the qualifying draw.

At the very least, NASCAR could have the go-or-go-homers qualify and start behind the “guaranteed” drivers. It would be better if NASCAR would be open to moving qualifying from its scheduled time to get it in.

– Related to that, Jack Roush (likely with some cash from Paul Menard’s dad John) bought Menard’s way into the race after the new-for-2010 #98 team drew the 49th position in the qualifying order and initially got frozen out after the rainout. While higher-profile drivers buying a “field-filler’s” starting spot is nothing new in NASCAR, usually it involves the owner of the bought-out team getting the owners’ points earned by the replacement driver.

What makes the Menard/Roush purchase so unusual is that they paid 5 teams (the drawn-into-the-show-and-scheduled-to-be-start-and-parked #97 NEMCO Chevy of Jeff Fuller, plus the 4 teams between them and the 43rd spot) to withdraw from the event. The significance of that is that the #98 not only gets the 150 owners’ points instead of the 16 they would have picked up in the “normal” deal, the teams that pulled out, which includes a couple of teams that hoped to run the full schedule, don’t get either the points or the attempt credit. Of course, since only the start-and-park NEMCO team would have otherwise picked up cash, and Menard was easily strong enough to have made the field had there been qualifying, maybe it’s time for a poll.

– Speaking of Menard, he took out the first of two females in the race, Chrissy Wallace, just as the cars got all the way up to speed.

– The other female in the race, Danica Patrick, took a car from an organization (JR Motorsports) that is capable of putting a front-running car out there and ran mid-pack until she drove right into the first Big One. In short, just another rookie performance.

– Speaking of JR Motorsports, her car owner, Dale Earnhardt Jr., was the biggest victim of the second Big One, taking a ride on the roof after he got turned on the backstretch.

– In the end, another spring Daytona race, another Tony Stewart win. Except for the snake-bit heartaches in the Daytona 500 and 5 fewer Cup trophies, it’s fair to say that Smoke is this generation’s Dale Earnhardt St.

February 12, 2010

Official – NRE to be in the CPAC Bloggers Lounge

by @ 7:58. Filed under CPAC.

I got the official and good news from Erick Erickson that I will be in the CPAC Bloggers Lounge presented by RedState.

For those of you who haven’t yet made it to CPAC, it is not too late to register. They’ll have Sen. Jim DeMint kick things off, Glenn Beck close things out, and a heap of fun in the middle (and only some of it during the official activities).

For those of you who are young, or at least young at heart, Kevin McCullough and Stephen Baldwin put together XPAC. They’ll have WiFi, the Fox News Strategy Room, games, and all-day/all-night Thursday and Friday activities.

Poll-a-copia, right-of-center edition

by @ 7:39. Filed under Politics - National.

John Hawkins over at Right Wing News once again took the temperature of the right end of the blogosphere, this time in response to a rather kooky Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll of “self-identified ‘Republicans'”. I honestly don’t remember (Shoebox:  I did it.  Usually I forget these things.  This one didn’t require a lot of thought and I’m good at that!)  whether it was Shoebox or I that provided the answers for the blog (it’s been that kind of week), but I’ll fire in my two-cents’ worth (my answers are bolded, and the “not sures” from the Kos poll, which are not tabulated in the RWN straw poll, are not copied here):

Would you favor or oppose giving illegal immigrants now living in the United States the right to live here legally if they pay a fine and learn English? (RWN – 24% favor/76% oppose, Kos – 26% favor/59% oppose)

That doesn’t go far enough. Illegal aliens also need to go back to their country of orgin, apply properly, and enter the line at the point they do so.  Shoebox:ditto

Do you believe Barack Obama is a racist who hates White people? (RWN – 29% yes/71% no, Kos – 31% yes/36% no)

Obama hates conservatives regardless of skin color.  Shoebox:  Ditto

Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election? (RWN – 20% yes/80% no, Kos – 21% yes/24% no)

Allow me to clarify. Without ACORN and affiliated groups, including the Soros-bought-and-paid for secretaries of state, Shoebox and Birdman would not be calling Al Franken “Senator”. However, Obama’s election was by beyond the margin of fraud.  Shoebox:  I voted no because this was based on the Presidential election.  I agree with Steve on the Franken mess.

Should openly gay men and women be allowed to serve in the military? (RWN – 53% yes/47% no, Kos – 26% yes/55% no)

The key word here is “openly”. For the record, I am also against co-ed military units where fraternization cannot reasonably be limited. What a military member does off-base, so long as it doesn’t violate the laws or involve intimate relations with another military member, does not matter.

Shoebox:  This was the hardest one for me.  I believe in equal employment opportunities regardless of sexual orientation, therefore I voted yes.  The “openly” for me is almost irrelevant because as best I know, it’s not a good thing to be caught “openly” having heterosexual sex while on duty.  I believe the real issue comes down to performance.  As long as we keep the ACLU out of it, I think the military has plenty of ways to deal with disruptive behavior of any kind.  I don’t think the government needs to micromanage this one.

Should same sex couples be allowed to marry? (RWN – 24% yes/76% no, Kos – 7% yes/77% no

For those who say that marriage is simply a religious function, explain why the former Soviet Union sanctioned marriages and specifically limited it to one man and one woman.

Shoebox:  ditto 

Should Barack Obama be impeached, or not? (RWN – 11% yes/88% no, Kos – 39% yes/32% no

Obama meets the Constitutional requirements of the office of President, was duly elected in accordance with the Constitution, and hasn’t done anything like lie to a grand jury or direct a coverup of a break-in.

Shoebox:  I’ll put one caveat on Steve’s point; we haven’t heard the testimony on the Blagojevich case yet!

Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not? (RWN – 86% yes/14% no, Kos – 42% yes/36% no)

See above.  Shoebox:  distraction.  Move on!

Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist? (RWN – 89% yes/11% no, Kos 63% yes/21% no)

If one seizes companies like a socialist, one parcels out pieces of said seized companies to favored political interests, specifically unions, like a socialist, and one dictates the maximum level of compensation at companies not quite completely under the ownership of the government like a socialist, one is a socialist.

Shoebox:  I marked yes but I actually think he is a Marxist.

Do you believe your state should secede from the United States? (RWN – 6% yes/94% no, Kos – 23% yes/58% no)

We’re not at that point in the course of human events where it is necessary to dissolve those political bands…yet.

Shoebox:  Besides, at least while I’m living in MN, there’s no way we’d leave the losing side!

John also asks a question not asked by Kos/Research 2000 that has had (see below) Shoebox on one side, Birdman on the other, and me somewhere in limbo.

Do you think the Democrats are going to pass a health care bill? (26% yes/74% no)

Call me hopeful, but I don’t see how Nancy Pelosi has 217 (yes, the majority is 217 now that there are two vacancies) votes for the abortion-and-payoffs Senate version of PlaceboCare. I also don’t see the troika of Obama/Pelosi/Harry Reid accepting anything less than full socializatin of health care complete with full abortion-on-demand funding. If they couldn’t ram the full monty through in the 6 months they had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, despite having said full monty allegedly certified for “reconciliation”,….

Shoebox:  anything is possible but I think this is dead.  I think there are too many electoral bodies stacking up even for ideologues like Pelosi, Reid and Obama.

February 10, 2010

Cartilage from stem cells

by @ 18:00. Filed under Health.

(H/T – Kevin Binversie)

ScienceDaily reports that researchers at a Big Ten university found a way to do the naturally-impossible using stem cells – create new cartilage in adults:

Northwestern University researchers are the first to design a bioactive nanomaterial that promotes the growth of new cartilage in vivo and without the use of expensive growth factors. Minimally invasive, the therapy activates the bone marrow stem cells and produces natural cartilage. No conventional therapy can do this….

Damaged cartilage can lead to joint pain and loss of physical function and eventually to osteoarthritis, a disorder with an estimated economic impact approaching $65 billion in the United States. With an aging and increasingly active population, this is expected to grow….

Type II collagen is the major protein in articular cartilage, the smooth, white connective tissue that covers the ends of bones where they come together to form joints.

“Our material of nanoscopic fibers stimulates stem cells present in bone marrow to produce cartilage containing type II collagen and repair the damaged joint,” Shah said. “A procedure called microfracture is the most common technique currently used by doctors, but it tends to produce a cartilage having predominantly type I collagen which is more like scar tissue.”

The Northwestern gel is injected as a liquid to the area of the damaged joint, where it then self-assembles and forms a solid. This extracellular matrix, which mimics what cells usually see, binds by molecular design one of the most important growth factors for the repair and regeneration of cartilage. By keeping the growth factor concentrated and localized, the cartilage cells have the opportunity to regenerate.

As Kevin noted, embryonic stem cells are (once again) not involved. Why do I get the feeling that UW backed the wrong end of stem-cell research?

Evan “Waldo” Bayh (D-not exactly IN)

by @ 17:03. Filed under Politics - National.

Remember when the Left made hay with former Sen. Norm Coleman’s DC housing arrangements? Jim Geraghty the Indispensible found that Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN Who Knows Where) used the business address of his campaign treasurer as his “home-state address of record” on his current Statement of Candidacy. Said Statement of Candidacy was filed with the secretary of the Senate, and signed by Bayh, in July 2005.

While the Constitution is silent on the DC-area living arrangements of Senators, it isn’t exactly silent on where a Senator must be living at the time of his or her election. From Article I, Section 3 (emphasis added):

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

Roll bloat – Owning the roll edition

by @ 16:13. Filed under The Blog.

BigFurHat found the Obamese thread Shoebox put together, and his (or perhaps her) readers kicked in some seriously-good suggestions. Based partly on that, partly on The Obamas comic, and partly on the other work the gang does there, it’s past time to add iOwnTheWorld to the seriously-overstuffed roll.

February 9, 2010

Tuesday Hot Read Part Deux – David Dodenhoff, Ph.D’s “Government Doing What Government Does: The Case of Food Stamps in Wisconsin”

by @ 8:04. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

David Dodenhoff, Ph.D, took a look at the shocking growth of food stamps in Wisconsin for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, specifically the 50% growth between 2002 and 2008. The takeaway (emphasis in the original):

That, unfortunately, is the way government tends to work. When elected officials act, they typically claim to be addressing some public policy problem or other. It’s funny, though, how the solutions they proffer always seem to solve a political problem, namely, “How can I maximize my chances for reelection?” New programs and extensions of existing programs, like SNAP, allow politicians to distribute benefits to particular constituencies, while spreading the costs over a broad base of taxpayers. The political benefits are obvious; whether or not progress has been made on the underlying policy issue is almost beside the point.

Bureaucrats have a similar problem to solve: “How can I keep my job?” Negotiated civil service and union protections are part of the answer. Another answer, though, is this: “Make yourself indispensible.” New programs and extensions of existing programs mean that there’s always more work to be done, which makes the idea of bureaucratic downsizing a very hard sell.

The result is a public sector that sees its own unrelenting growth not as many Americans see it—that is, as an urgent problem—but as a solution; in fact, as the one solution that always makes sense.

Tuesday Hot Read – Matt Lewis’ “Questioning the trajectory of Rep. Ryan’s rising star”

by @ 7:42. Filed under Politics - National, Politics - Wisconsin.

Matt Lewis remembers that voting record matters, which tends to be bad news for one Paul Ryan –

Though he talks like Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, some of Ryan’s most high-profile votes seem closer to Keynes than to Adam Smith. For example, in the span of about a year, Ryan committed fiscal conservative apostasy on three high-profile votes: The Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP (whereby the government purchased assets and equity from financial institutions), the auto-bailout (which essentially implied he agrees car companies – especially the ones with an auto plant in his district—are too big to fail), and for a confiscatory tax on CEO bonuses (which essentially says the government has the right to take away private property—if it doesn’t like you).

While Ryan’s overall voting record is very conservative, the problem with casting these high-profile votes is that they demonstrate he is willing to fundamentally reject conservatism when the heat is on.

Because it is impossible to believe the highly intelligent and well read Rep. Ryan was unfamiliar with conservative economic principles, one must conclude he either 1). Doesn’t really believe in free market economics, or 2). Was willing to cast bad votes for purely political purposes.

From my standpoint, ignorance can be forgiven and overcome; the other explanations, however, seem to be disqualifiers for higher office.

Yes, folks, that is Nick Schweitzer Matt linked to. Speaking of that, Nick was prophetic on what the bailouts of GM and Chrysler would lead to…

What this bailout proposes is to replace that system with one in which the Executive branch, through a “car czar”, and also through various financial carrots and sticks, take control of that reorganization. The danger in doing so is that not only will the bailout money be wasted, but now politics will enter into how the reorganization takes place. If you thought the current system of ear marks, and special favors in bills was bad, just wait and see what little favors GM, Ford and Chrysler are forced to do… whether it will actually help make a successful company again or not. This is once again an unprecedented growth in executive power, which makes our President even more like a King that before.

As for the charges, damn near everybody who doesn’t have a conspiratorial mind got fooled on TARP. However, by the time the auto bailouts came around, the “fool me twice” principle came into play. Ryan’s suggestion was to use previously-programmed-yet-unspent money for plant modernization to do the bailout, which given that the bailout was used as leverage for a takeover, is not exactly defensible. I’ll note that neither the GM truck plant in Janesville (Ryan’s hometown) nor the Chrysler engine plant in Kenosha got saved in the end.

Regarding the pay limit, that is an off-the-record answer.

February 8, 2010

Bounce? What bounce?

by @ 12:54. Filed under Politics - National.

Rasmussen Reports’ Daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows that whatever bounce Barack Obama got post-State of the Union speech has gone. This weekend’s numbers:

Saturday – -15 Approval Index (26% strongly approve/41% strongly disapprove), -11 overall differential (44% approve/55% disapprove)
Sunday – -17 Approval Index (26%/43%), -12 overall (44%/56%)
Monday – -15 Approval Index (26%/41%), -8 overall (46%/54%)

The average between the beginning of the year and the SOTU address is a -14.42 Approval Index (26.21% strongly approve/40.63% strongly disapprove) and a -5.71 overall differential (46.79% approve/52.50% disapprove). I believe the operative word is, “Splat!”

Talk to the hand, Palin/Hawkins edition

by @ 11:06. Filed under Politics - National.

John Hawkins answers the complaints from the oh-so-“tolerant” Left about Sarah Palin’s use of her hand to hold a couple of bullet points on her speech before the “National Tea Party Convention” Saturday. John, you should’ve used the backhand.

Monday Hot Read – Eric’s “Super Bowl XLIV Recap”

by @ 10:57. Filed under Sports.

All you need to know about the 44th edition of The Championship Game That Cannot Be Named™ can be found at Eric’s recap of the game:

One thing is certain in all of this. The Saints are no longer losers. They are now the very best.

On this day, we all wanted to be in that number. The Saints went marching in.

In 213 days, the NFL 2010 season kicks off. Before that is the NFL Draft.

The Saints are the defending champions, and Super Bowl XLIV is in the history books forever.

31-17 Saints

I strongly recommend you read the entire writeup. It is far better than anything you’ll find on any sports page, local or national.

February 5, 2010

Friday Hot Read – Matthew Continetti’s “The Assault on Paul Ryan”

by @ 9:59. Filed under Politics - National.

The Weekly Standard‘s Matthew Continetti deconstructs the One Week Hate unleased by the Left upon Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI, and my Congresscritter):

Key fact: Ryan’s plan preserves the current entitlement system for everyone over the age of 55. The rest of us will see dramatic changes in the structure of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the tax code–changes the CBO says will solve the long-term budget problem, in ways that increase individual choice and limit government’s scope. If nothing is done, America faces high interest rates, inflation, and economy-crushing tax rates. Is this the future Democrats prefer? After all, they have provided no alternative way to achieve the Roadmap’s outcomes.

As a matter of fact, they do prefer that to one with low interest rates, low inflation and low tax rates, especially if that invovles a limited scope of government and increased individual choice. In fact, the Left is more afraid of limits on government and the corresponding increase in individual freedom than they are about going the route of the Soviet Union.

February 4, 2010

Open Thread Thursday – Demon Sheep edition

by @ 8:06. Filed under Open Thread Thursday.

If you haven’t noticed the #demonsheep phenomenon on Twitter, head here for Carly Fiorina’s glass-house rock-throw at one of her opponents in the California GOP gubernatorial race. There can be only one song for today…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6U4XakchT0[/youtube]

I’ve done enough wonky posts for a while, so somebody, anybody, step up and feed me material.

February 3, 2010

Another look at the mid-term Social Security crater

by @ 22:41. Filed under Social Security crater.

(H/Ts – Dad29 and Hot Air Headlines)

Back in September, Ed Morrissey found, and I expanded upon, a dire look at the Social Security “Trust” Funds from the Congressional Budget Office that said the combined OASDI “Trust” funds would start running primary (cash) deficits in FY2010 and run them for much of the decade. Allan Sloan over at Fortune found some worse news in the January 2010 CBO budget outlook:

Instead of helping to finance the rest of the government, as it has done for decades, our nation’s biggest social program needs help from the Treasury to keep benefit checks from bouncing — in other words, a taxpayer bailout.

No one has officially announced that Social Security will be cash-negative this year. But you can figure it out for yourself, as I did, by comparing two numbers in the recent federal budget update that the nonpartisan CBO issued last week.

The first number is $120 billion, the interest that Social Security will earn on its trust fund in fiscal 2010 (see page 74 of the CBO report). The second is $92 billion, the overall Social Security surplus for fiscal 2010 (see page 116).

This means that without the interest income, Social Security will be $28 billion in the hole this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30….

If you go to the aforementioned pages in the CBO update and consult the tables on them, you see that the budget office projects smaller cash deficits (about $19 billion annually) for fiscal 2011 and 2012. Then the program approaches break-even for a while before the deficits resume….

I did so, and just like in September, I found some rather “curious” claims of economic boom. In fact, the new “boom” is even more unbelievable than the old “boom” (note; the September 2009 CBO GDP estimates come from summer 2009 budget update).


Click for the full-size chart

Between this fiscal year and FY2019, instead of a cumulative Social Security primary deficit of $100 billion, we’ll have a cumulative Social Security primary deficit of $157 billion. That is, of course, if we actually do get all the economic and tax growth that the CBO seems to hope we will. If we don’t, the chart I put together back in September showing just how easy it was to turn the CBO’s hope into red ink as far as the eye can see will be rosy.

That also doesn’t include Obama’s plan for a second round of $250 checks to every Social Security recipient. That is a drag of another $13 billion on this year, which would make this year’s cash deficit somewhere around $51 41 billion.

Revisions/extensions (4:42 pm 2/4/2010) – The internal copy editor failed me, as I made a basic math mistake. Thanks to Hot Air commenter WashJeff for the catch once Ed Morrissey made the news a front page post.

Wednesday Hot Read – Warner Todd Huston’s “Illinois Shows Limitations of Tea Party Movement”

by @ 12:39. Tags:
Filed under Politics, Politics - National, Tea Party Movement.

Warner Todd Huston has some lessons for the Tea Party movements in the wake of yesterday’s elections in Illinois:

Let’s take the race for Senate in Illinois as exhibit “A.” Of course the good old boys in the state party went with Mark Kirk, the center left candidate from a northern suburb of Chicago. He was the he-can-win candidate and the establishment choice. Not one Tea Party group, though, wants Kirk and for good reason — and I heartily concur with them, as it happens. So who was the “Tea Party candidate,” the one meant to beat out Kirk, the one backed by the newly found power of the Tea Party movement? There wasn’t one. There was three.

Sadly, the Tea Partiers in Illinois split their vote all up. Some Tea Party Groups went with Don Lowery and some went with Patrick Hughes. A few even went with John Arrington. Hughes, of course, was the only one that had even a remote chance as far as voter polls were concerned. Hughes at least registered in the polls, Lowery and Arrington barely showed up at all….

The sad fact is that the Illinois Tea Party groups didn’t spend any time organizing, polling each other, coordinating with each other. There was no effort from one Tea Party group to reach out to another one and work together. They all stayed in their own little area, met in their own little meetings, had their own little candidates forum, and made their own little decisions….

One thing is sure, if Tea Party groups want to become a political force for good, they have to coordinate farther out than their own towns and county. If they don’t they will risk making themselves irrelevant just as they did in the Senate race and Governor race in Illinois. That means organizing, whether they like it or not because organization wins elections. It’s just that simple.

The Tea Party folks certainly do not have to take on all the characteristics of the failed Party organizations they oppose. But they must get over this fear of organizing. If they don’t they will not be able to wield the power they might actually have behind them. Worse the parties that are a bit scared of them right now will surely find themselves able to ignore the Tea Parties if they ultimately find no threat from them.

February 2, 2010

4-Block of the Day – The Evolution of The New York Times

by @ 18:50. Filed under Press.

Tom McMahon does it again…

As is my custom when I “borrow” Tom’s 4-Blocks, the comments are off here to encourage you to go on over to his place. Tom truly is one of the unsung geniuses of the Cheddarsphere.

Social Security on the brink

by @ 14:12. Filed under Social Security crater.

Last month, I explored the very-disappointing preliminary Social Security numbers, using the December Monthly Treasury Statement and the investment holdings report from the Social Security Administration. The time-series report for December 2009 from the SSA’s Office of the Chief Actuary is finally available, and the news is even worse.

First, a note; while the other reports included an acceleration of some Social Security payments from January into December, the time-series report does not. That allows an “apples-to-apples” comparison of both monthly and yearly changes.

Also, I still don’t have a satisfactory answer why the various numbers given for the trust fund assets don’t reconcile. I don’t expect to be able to give an explanation until the January time-series numbers are released.

Total income, including $58.514 billion in misleadingly-labeled “interest” was $105.475 billion in December, both within the margin of rounding of my earlier numbers. Total outgo was $58.268 billion, which while higher than the margin of rounding than my earlier estimate is still within the margin of estimation. That makes the December primary (cash) deficit a record $11.307 billion (nearly double the previous modern-day record set in November 2009 and more than double the primary deficit in December 2008), and the 2009 calendar-year primary surplus only $3.338 billion, easily the worst modern-day 12-month performance.

Now, the bad news. Unless January and February revenues increase by at least 2.75% over the revenues received in those months in 2009, Social Security will be running 12-month primary deficits by February. Unfortunately, the total tax take doesn’t exactly suggest that level of short-term turnaround is in the cards. The January 29, 2010 Daily Treasury Report (the last business day in January) has January 2010 total tax revenues at $156 billion, down from January 2009’s $168 billion and January 2008’s $181 billion. While the January 2009 Social Security income was about 2.2% higher than the January 2008 income because the recession affected high-income earners disproportionately, this year’s total tax drop is greater than last year’s.

Projecting forward through the rest of 2010, the situation is even more bleak. It will take an over-4% increase in tax revenue each and every month this year for Social Security to be above the break-even line at the end of the year, and that only knocks the underwater point to sometime in 2011.

The ugly is that does not take into account the $250 “makeup” checks Obama wants to hand out to everybody on Social Security because there was no cost-of-living increase this year. That’s a drain of $13.5 billion, or a bit short of a quarter of the monthly outgo.

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