define('DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT', true); define('DISALLOW_FILE_MODS', true); No Runny Eggs » steveegg

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 26, 2009

Brief CPAC Thursday AM update

by @ 10:49. Tags:
Filed under Conservatism.

– Listened to Paul Ryan open up CPAC. He got a lot of applause, as he was on a roll. One odd thing; he seems to be a bit of a goldbug. I do have audio and pics, but since I’m posting from a borrowed computer and cell coverage is at best spotty, I don’t have a way to pull it off the digital voice recorder and phone (respectively).

– There’s somewhere between 8,500 and 9,000 of us floating here. For those paying attention, that is a record.

– Last night, I ran into Sean Hackbarth, Melissa Clouthier, Ali Akbar, Matt Margolis, and a couple other silent types. Sean, Melissa and Ali put on Politics 625.

– Today, I ran into Katie Favazza, Rick Moran, Ed Morrissey, Fausta Wertz, and had my copy of the “Pretty in Mink” calendar signed by Amanda Carpenter.

– The BHO weekly passes for the Metro SUCK! First one demagnetized on me after 3 trips.

Oops; just missed a session I wanted to hit. DAMMIT!

Revisions/extensions (12:07 pm 2/26/2009) – Right after I posted, I ran into Krystle Weeks, and a bit after that, Doug Welch and Skye.

February 24, 2009

Doyle sabotages the future (and new NRE poll)

by @ 18:01. Filed under NRE Polls, Politics - Wisconsin.

Buried in the FY2010/2011 Budget in Brief is a stinker of a table called the “General Fund Condition Under Governor’s Budget”. This year, it’s Table 9, on page 36 of the printed copy (page 39 of the PDF). It projects what the Department of Administration believes the proposed budget will do to the general fund in the biennium, as well as what it projects continuing that budget will do in the next one.

I would like to draw your attention to the “Balances” section of that chart, specfically what the 2011-2013 (FY2012/2013) projected balances are. The gross balance in FY2013 is projected to be -$559,500,000. For those that missed the minus sign, that’s a deficit of $559.5 million. That does not include the “required statutory” positive balance of $130 million, which would make the net deficit $689,500,000.

That is the second time a Doyle budget has admitted that it would short the following biennium budget. That is before the initial agency requests for mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money create a multi-billion deficit that supposedly gets filled. Let’s review the history of the Doyle budgets, with the previous budget’s projected surplus/deficit, and the “agency requests” deficit:

– FY2004/2005

  • Previous budget (FY2002/2003) projected net surplus/(deficit) for FY2005 – unavailable (not part of Scott McCallum’s budget)
  • “Agency-request” net surplus/(deficit) for FY2005 (from Table 3) – ($966 million) (note: to match up with succeeding budget formats, this does not include FY2003 deficits and adjustments or a decision to increase shared revenue funding, but does include the structural deficit and adjustments to FY2004/2005 revenue)

– FY2006/2007

  • Previous budget (FY2004/2005) projected net surplus/(deficit) for FY2007 (from Table 6 of that budget) – $146 million (includes withholding a required statutory balance of $251.4 million)
  • “Agency-request” net surplus/(deficit) for FY2007 (from Table 1) – ($1,666 million) (note: this does not include a re-estimate of the FY2005 Medical Assistance shortfall)

– FY2008/2009

  • Previous budget (FY2006/2007) projected net surplus/(deficit) for FY2009 (from Table 5 of that budget) – ($232.7 million) (includes withholding a required statutory balance of $65 million)
  • “Agency-request” net surplus/(deficit) for FY2009 (from Table 1) – ($1,654 million) (note: this does not include FY2007 shortfalls)

– FY2010/2011

  • Previous budget (FY2008/2009) projected net surplus/(deficit) for FY2011 (from Table 8 of that budget) – $212.5 million (includes withholding a required statutory balance of $130 million)
  • “Agency-request” net surplus/(deficit) for FY2011 (from Table 1) – ($5,945 million)

With that history of blowing budgets in mind, I present the latest NRE poll. What will the “agency-request” budget hole be next time around?

What will the Wisconsin "agency-requests" FY2013 (released in or around November 2010) deficit be?

Up to 1 answer(s) was/were allowed

  • Over $5,945,000,000 (55%, 12 Vote(s))
  • Between $1,666,000,001 and $5,945,000,000 (32%, 7 Vote(s))
  • There won't be a deficit (9%, 2 Vote(s))
  • Between $966,000,001 and $1,666,000,000 (5%, 1 Vote(s))
  • Between $1 and $1,000,000 (0%, 0 Vote(s))
  • Between $1,000,001 and $100,000,000 (0%, 0 Vote(s))
  • Between $100,000,001 and $966,000,000 (0%, 0 Vote(s))

Total Voters: 22

Loading ... Loading ...

More Necro-Budget numbers via Dennis Yor…er, Christian Schneider

by @ 15:02. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

For those of you who came into the Cheddarsphere after February 2007, you missed the best anonymous blogger ever, Dennis York. The man behind the legend, Christian Schneider, really went to town yesterday over at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, apologizing to the future for the Necro-Budget.

I can’t even come close to duplicating the Schneider/York humor, but I can give the humor-challenged the hard, cold numbers gist:

– Included with $2.2 billion in tax hikes, supposedly only on the top 1% of wage-earners, is a $257 million cigarette tax hike. The cigarette tax is the most regressive tax that exists (i.e., it hits the poor harder)
– “Major cuts” equals an 8% spending hike (this number is rather fungible; but the lowest estimate, which is mine, is 5.4% and 6.3% once the budget “repair” bill is added in), funded in large part by the “one-time-only” $2.1 billion Generational Theft Law.
– The biggest, but not only, example was a swap of $498 million in state funds for the school equilization aid for $498 million in federal funds for the school equilization aid. Where do you suppose that $498 million is going to come from in 2 years?
– Despite the $2.2 billion tax hike in the budget, the aforementioned $2.1 billion from the Generational Theft Law, and the unmentioned $1.4 billion tax hike in the recently-signed budget “repair” bill (that itself increased the current-year deficit to something north of $400 million), the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles deficit in the general fund would only drop $138.1 million from FY2009 to FY2011 to $2,278.9 million (or $2.3 billion), and actually would increase $38.6 million from FY2009 to FY2010 to $2,455.6 million (or $2.5 billion).

Revisions/extensions (3:40 pm 2/24/2009) – If you want a truly-frightening experience, take a gander at Table 9 of the Budget in Brief, specifically the balances section for FY2012 and FY2013, found on page 36 (page 39 in the PDF file). For those of you without Adobe Acrobat, I’ll summarize:

  • FY2012 – Gross balance of -$127.6 million, net balance of -$257.6 million (there’s supposed to be a $130 million required statutory balance), and a structural balance of -$396.3 million
  • FY2013 – Gross balance of -$559.5 million (based off the gross balance of FY2012, not the net), net balance of -$689.5 million, and a structural balance of -$431.9 million

That’s right, all of those numbers are negative. For the first time in a Doyle budget, they are admitting that the following 2-year budget will be massively in the red.

Eggs on the road and Open Blog – rest of the week

by @ 13:48. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Tonight, 7 pm – Blog ‘n Grog, Sprizzos, 363 W Main in Waukesha (yes, this will preclude my participation in any ObamiNation address live thread)

Tonight, sometime after 9pm (if I’m not completely hammered from playing an ObamiNation drinking game) – Papa’s Fat Tuesday party, 7718 W Burleigh in Milwaukee

Tomrrow through Sunday – CPAC.

February 22, 2009

Two in a row!

by @ 21:36. Tags: ,
Filed under Sports.

Matt Kenseth has become the 5th driver in the history of NASCAR to win the first 2 races of the season in the premier series. While there was some rain this time, it was the Bees that made the difference. Other than one bad stop about mid-race, they picked up a lot of spots on pit road, and Matt held off Jeff Gordon at the end.

On to Vegas and a shot at doing what they say can’t be done – start the season 3-for-3.

February 21, 2009

By the numbers – Wisconsin budget

by @ 12:26. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

Revisions/extensions (11:38 pm 2/22/2009) – I used an initial estimate of $59.5 billion for state spending in FY2008/2009, $62.3 billion in initial requests for the FY2010/2011 budget, and some subtraction for the increases in spending in the Necro-Budget as I hadn’t seen hard numbers when I originally wrote this. A pair of sources, the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance and the Legislative Fiscal Bureau (H/T – Patrick McIlheran via Dad29), pegs the Necro-Budget spending at $62.7 billion, though both state the FY2008/2009 spending at lower numbers than my estimates. I’ll continue to use the $59.5 billion FY2008/2009 spending estimate.

Since I’m a numbers guy, I’ll reduce the end of the FY2008/2009 Wisconsin budget and the (proposed) FY2010/2011 Wisconsin budget to some easy to ang…er, understand numbers:

– Tax increases in the Wisconsin version of Porkulus (meant to be a budget “repair” bill; more on that in a bit) between 1/1/2009 and 6/30/2011: $1.4 billion
– Tax increases in the Necro-Budget proposal (thanks for the name, Kevin) over that same time frame: $2.1 billion
– Total tax increases between 1/1/2009 and 6/30/2011: $3.5 billion (13.4% increase over the pre-increase FY2007/2008 amount)
– Money anticipated from the federal Generational Theft Law of 2009: just over $2 billion
– Total additional money going to Uncle Craps between 1/1/2009 and 6/30/2011: $5.5 billion
– FY2008/2009 budget shortfall after Wisconsin’s Porkulus: $0.42 billion (up from $0.39 billion in November 2008)
– FY2010/2011 budget “shortfall” before the effects of all the tax increases and the Generational Theft Law of 2009 (hereafter refered to as the “initial FY2010/2011 budget”): $5.7 billion
– Spending increases in the initial FY2010/2011 budget: $2.8 billion (4.7% increase over FY2008/2009)
– Spending increases between Wisconsin’s Porkulus and the Necro-Budget (estimated; assumes no deficit on 6/30/2011 even though I’ve seen projections of a $2.1 billion structural deficit at that point): $2.2 billion (3.7% increase over FY2008/2009)
– Spending increases between Wisconsin’s Porkulus and the Necro-Budget (estimated; assumes a $2.1 billion structural deficit on 6/30/2011): $4.3 billion (7.2% increase over FY2008/2009)
– (Added 2/22/2009) Spending increases from the initial FY2010/2011 budget and the Necro-Budget: $0.4 billion (to $63.7 billion)
– (Added 2/22/2009) Spending increases from the FY2008/2009 budget and the Necro-Budget/Wisconsin’s Porkulus combo (includes $300 million from the Generational Theft Law stuck into Wisconsin’s Porkulus per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel): $3.7 billion (6.2% increase over FY2008/2009)

That’s right; even after the “to-the-bone cuts” and the through-the-roof tax increases, Jim Doyle and the Spendocrats (off-topic; I need to create a Josie and the Pussycats Photoshop) are massively increasing spending.

February 20, 2009

Today’s statistic – $2.5 trillion

by @ 18:37. Filed under Politics - National.

Fox News has some disturbing numbers on the rate of deficit spending:

– The January 2009 deficit – $83.8 billion (compared to January 2008 surplus of $17.8 billion)
– The 4-month FY2009 deficit – somewhere over $454.8 billion (which was a full fiscal-year record, set in FY2008)
– The projected pre-Generational Theft Law FY2009 deficit (via the Congressional Budget Office) – $1.2 trillion
– Private economists’ estimate of the pre-Generational Theft Law FY2009 deficit – $1.6 trillion

Once last year’s deficit and the FY2009 portion of the $787 billion Generational Theft Law (for which $0 was budgeted) are added in, between November 1, 2007 and October 31, 2009, the federal government will have spent $2,500,000,000,000 more than it took in over that period. That is almost a quarter of the current national debt (the Fox News story goes further and says it is almost a quarter of the entire amount of debt ever taken on by the Feds).

For those of you who don’t remember Paul Ryan’s warnings before Bailoutpalooza hit (to the tune of roughly $1.6 trillion), it would take a doubling of the amount of taxes taken in to fund the government inside of 40 years to 40% of the GDP (for those of you in Rio Linda, that’s $4 out of every $10 produced by the economy). With Bailoutpalooza, it’s far closer to, and I’ll wager, beyond 50%.

February 19, 2009

Elections have consequences, Wisconsin edition, part 1

by @ 12:57. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

The following just came in from Rep. Rich Zipperer’s office:

It’s official. The first major piece of legislation approved by the new majority in the Assembly included $1.2 billion of job killing tax increases. And, after 50 separate suggestions to improve the bill were offered by Republicans and each were summarily rejected by Democrats, not a single Republican voted for the tax increases.

The 389 page bill, dubbed by Governor Doyle as his ‘stimulus’ plan, was fast-tracked through the entire legislative process this week in less than 36 hours – a process that normally takes months. Unfortunately, the ‘stimulus’ bill is actually a budget bailout bill necessary because of yet another failed budget that has harmed our economy and failed to meet revenue expectations.

It became clear to me during the floor debate last night why the Democrat leadership wanted to fast-track this bill and deny the public an opportunity to see, debate, and comment on the legislation. The bill does what politicians in Washington have thus far refused to do – raise taxes in the midst of a recession. The Governor’s bailout plan, disguised as economic stimulus, is more accurately a laundry list of tax hikes that will only serve to further damage our state’s financial security and drive thousands of jobs from our state.

In an attempt to turn this package into a catalyst for economic growth and prosperity, I, along with a number of my Assembly Republican colleagues, offered 50 amendments that put taxpayers first and would have actually put stimulus ideas into the bill. Our taxpayer-friendly amendments would have:

  • Halted the $925 million Sick Tax
  • Eliminated $70.7 million in new sales tax collections
  • Exempted over-the-counter drugs from state sales tax
  • Ensured oversight over the federal stimulus money that is coming to Wisconsin
  • Eliminated the iPod tax, a $10.9 million tax proposed by Governor Doyle on digital downloads
  • Turned $1.6 million of earmarks given by Governor Doyle to labor unions into competitive public grants
  • Created an August sales tax holiday for back-to-school clothing shopping
  • Protected segregated funds, such as the Transportation Fund and the Injured Patients and Families Compensation Fund, from future raids and abuse
  • Stopped a new $215 million job killing tax on businesses
  • Made certain that tax dollars aren’t used to perform abortions
  • Provided immediate incentives for job creators to spend capital on research and innovation
  • Provided immediate tax relief to start-up small businesses

The people and businesses of Wisconsin can and will compete with anyone in the world if just given the opportunity. We have the can-do spirit. Unfortunately, Assembly Democrats stood lock-step with the Governor tonight and refused to accept a single amendment from our side of the aisle.

In this time of job loss and economic uncertainty, we need to make efforts to create jobs and make government accountable to taxpayers our top priorities. We must end the tax and spend culture that has taken hold in Madison. The actions this week by the majority party, however, will only help to shrink our state’s economy, drive jobs from our state, and still leave us with a current budget deficit of $416.9 million – allowing the potential for yet another budget bailout before the fiscal year ends on June 30th.

And this is all before we even begin to debate the over $1.4 billion in additional tax increases sought by Governor Doyle as part of his 2009-2011 proposed state budget.

Slight correction – it’s $2.1 billion of additional tax increases in the Necro-Budget, not $1.4 billion.

February 18, 2009

$1,941 – CORRECTION – $194

by @ 19:06. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin, Taxes.

That is the net per-capita annual tax increase in Jim Doyle’s Spendulus budget. Christian Schneider and the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute broke down all the tax changes, though I believe they grossly understated the oil tax.

Bonus item – give or take a few million, the $2,185,639,000 represents essentially the entire “structural” deficit portion of the $5,700,000,000 hole Doyle created for himself at the beginning of the year, with the remainder being previously-planned increases in spending.

Revisions/extensions (7:20 pm 2/18/2009) – Somewhere in the bloated reader, I read that the Doyle Spendulus budget still has an over-$2 billion structural deficit pushed over to the middle of 2011. So much for limiting spending.

R&E part 2 (8:47 pm 2/18/2009) – I should have known better than to trust the Craps numbers. They screwed up.

R&E part 3 (6:52 am 2/19/2009 – Speaking of screw-ups, I stuck an additional zero somewhere. Sorry about that.

Is it time to liquidate GM?

by @ 18:04. Tags:
Filed under Business, Politics - National.

In case you haven’t heard, General Motors has requested another $16.6 billion in federal “loans” taxpayer subsidies after burning through its initial $13.4 billion in bailout money. My math says that is $30 billion, which doesn’t include all the billions that GM got for “clean car” research, or its share of $15 billion given by the feds taxpayers to it and the other members of the not-so-Big 3 for plant modernization.

Why is that $30 billion significant? Dave Schuler over at The Glittering Eye (H/T – Doug Mataconis) points out that the value of GM’s assets is roughly $30 billion. That’s right, sports fans. when GM gets its additional bailout money, it will owe the federal government its gross liquidation value. That does not account for GM’s liabilities or the fact that, in a liquidation, the liquidated company does not get its full value.

Given the speed with which GM burned through its initial $13.4 billion from the feds the taxpayers, they’ll be through the next $16.4 billion by summer. Then what? At that point, they’ll owe more to just the feds taxpayers than they can get by going through Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation. Do we say at that time, “Okay, we’re in for a pound, we’re in for the ton?” GM won’t even begin to repay the loans until 2012.

Do we say at that time, “Enough! Sink or swim?” Since former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson put the feds at the front of the line in the event of liquidation, and since I expect current Treasury Secretary and Paulson acolyte Timothy Geithner to do the same, that would mean none of GM’s other creditors would get paid. Care to guess what would happen to them?

As painful as it may seem, now is the perfect time to tell GM to sleep with the fishes. We don’t have the money to burn (thank you, Obama and the Spendocrats), and at least some of the GM liquidation would make it to its other creditors.

Life doesn’t hand out “A for effort”

by @ 16:06. Filed under Education.

(H/T – Slublog)

The New York Times reports on a bunch of college slackers who got introduced to a bit of grade reality. They seem to think that a failed effort is worth more than a “C”. They should be thankful that the lesson is gentle; once they hit the real world, a failed effort, regardless of the amount of effort poured in, is a failure.

Gassed by taxes

by @ 15:54. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin, Taxes.

Yesterday, Gov. Jim Doyle (D) unveiled his “Back To The ’70s” budget, which features a whole host of tax increases. The largest is a $540 million tax on oil companies. Despite a claim that they will be prohibited from passing it along, it will be passed along, with interest paid to the oil companies from the state once that provision is adjudicated as unconstitutional.

I hope you didn’t spend your $13/week from Obama. More than half of that will be going right to Uncle Craps so he can build roads continue to raid the transportation fund.

Revisions/extensions (8:50 pm 2/18/2009) – The Doyle administration halved the effects. Still, considering all the other taxes that are in the budget, I hope you haven’t spent that $13/week from Obama (assuming, of course, you qualify for it).

Hypocrisy, DNR-style

by @ 15:24. Filed under Envirowhackos, Politics - Wisconsin.

Dr. Emil Shuffhausen found some serious hypocrisy from the Wisconsin DNR (or as Dad29 calls them, Damn Near Russia). Even as they demand that those that own rental properties rip out their current lighting and install high-efficiency lighting, they continue to light up the unoccupied interior of their building like a Christmas tree.

Need to get back in the groove

by @ 15:19. Filed under The Blog.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been too silent lately. I’m still chewing over an epic topic or two, but while I’m chewing, I should fire off some quick hitters.

In that vein, the Emergency Blogging System has issued a Freezing Drizzle Advisory for No Runny Eggs, to be in effect until I’ve emptied out my feed reader.

February 15, 2009

THIS is the way to start the season

by @ 18:07. Tags: ,
Filed under Sports.

There’s nothing like going from worst to first in a backup car that had to make an emergency trip back from the shop after being wrecked in last week’s Bud Shootout – Matt Kenseth won the Daytona 500, thanks to a couple wrecks, Kevin Harvick (who repaid the favor Matt gave him 2 years ago) and a rain dance.

Looks like I’ll be taking a road trip to Cambridge tomorrow.

February 14, 2009

Roll bloat – Latin edition

by @ 7:18. Filed under The Blog.

I guess that procrastination is a good thing sometimes. Warner Todd Huston moved Publius’ Forum from a Conservablogs host to his own host, so the time is definitely right to add him or correct your links if you haven’t.

February 13, 2009

Attention those with FeedBurner accounts

by @ 22:27. Filed under The Blog.

Google is finishing its absorbtion of FeedBurner at the end of the month, and as part of that, they are requiring those of us who use FeedBurner to tie it to a Google account. There is a poison-pill incentive at the end of the FAQ:

If you don’t tie FeedBurner to a Google account by the end of the month, you will lose your FeedBurner feed.

Besides the Google account tie-in, they’re stripping away Site Stats (because it competes with Google Analytics, which quite frankly sucks) and FeedBurner Network (because it’s too tied to FeedBurner Ad Network, which was dropped for AdSense).

Beyond that, there’s no changes that should be noticable. There are new addresses for feeds so that they’re on Google servers rather than FeedBurner ones, but the current addresses will redirect to the new ones.

Porkulus picture of the day

by @ 20:22. Tags:
Filed under Politics - National.

It is somehow fitting that the Generational Theft Act of 2009 will be passed on Friday the 13th. Seco Tributa and Americans for Tax Reform came up with a very fitting movie promo Photoshop.

friday_13th_stim-5_03
Click for the full-size pic

There’s shades of Zucker, Zucker and Abrahams in the credits. Note the transportation and gaffer.

Searchable version of the final Porkulus

by @ 18:01. Filed under Politics - National.

While there are copies of the final version of the Generational Theft Act of 2009 floating around (thanks, ReadTheStimulus.org), I haven’t seen a fully-searchable version of the final version of the Generational Theft Act of 2009 up yet. Specifically, there isn’t a searchable version of Division B, which deals with taxes, unemployment, health, the state bailouts, broadband bailouts, and limits on executive compensation. Since a friend of mine who works with the Senate Republicans, Sean Hackbarth, wanted a PDF copy of the entire bill, I decided to fire up something called PDF995 and create one from the “printer-friendly” version of the conference report on H.R. 1 from THOMAS.

Searchable version of the conference report on H.R. 1

It clocks in at 421 pages and 3.48 MB, so if you want to put it up on your own blog or website, by all means do so. I can’t guarantee that this place will survive any ‘lanches.

Revisions/extensions (6:12 pm 2/13/2009) – Would help if I actually put the pdf file up instead of the html one that I used for the conversion.

R&E part 2 (10:44 pm 2/13/2009) – Let the thieving begin – thanks to The Maine Blunder Twins and Scottish Law, and a taxpayer-financed charter flight that these same ‘Rats blast private enterprise for, the Generational Theft Act of 2009 is on its way to Obama’s desk.

Bumper sticker of the year

by @ 16:35. Tags:
Filed under Politics - National.

My blogfather Chris has the perfect sticker-sized answer to the Generational Theft Act of 2009, which is in the final stages of setting up for a sink of the fangs into the neck of the economy.

Obama Lied And The Economy Died!

The markets didn’t exactly like the House package, which happened despite bipartisan opposition.

One more tidbit – running with some numbers that Newsmax provided (H/T – Dad29), more than the entire reduction in the cost came from the elimination of tax breaks. They went down from $352 billion (42% of the original $838 billion) to $276 billion (35% of $789.5 billion). That’s a drop of $76 billion, $27.5 billion more than the $48.5 billion reduction in cost.

February 11, 2009

Oak Creek Mayoral forum

by @ 18:18. Filed under Politics - Oak Creek.

The three candidates for Oak Creek Mayor, Dick Bolender, Dimity Grabowski and Mark Verhalen, will appear at a joint forum between 6:30 and 9 tonight at the Oak Creek Community Center. Julie Becker of Oak Creek Now is running a liveblog, and I will be there with my voice recorder in hand to capture the whole thing.

Revisions/extensions (10:48 pm 2/11/2009) – The Community Center was rather packed, which was always good to see. Several other local candidates were there handing out literature.

The audio is now up. I’m still using the old Sony digital voice recorder, so the quality isn’t exactly broadcast quality.

The websites of the three candates are:
– Mark Verhalen
– Dimity Grabowski
– Dick Bolender

February 10, 2009

The Morni…er, Afternoon Scramble (part 2) – 2/10/2009

by @ 16:48. Filed under The Morning Scramble.

Sorry about being so late with Part 2…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zgtxoAsFV8[/youtube]

  • Dan Riehl find the formerly-Great Britain planning to ration air travel in the name of Gorebal “Warming”.
  • Shoebox asks, “How green is your ethanol?” If it’s corn-a-hole, it’s not exactly green.
  • Nick Schweitzer wonders just how sustainable is “sustainable” energy. It’s not exactly everything it’s cracked up to be.
  • Rep. John Shadegg raises the alarm on a $6.7 trillion tax increase in the name of Gorebal “Warming”. That would be roughly half last year’s GDP.
  • Jon Ham found an acolyte that wants to kill off over 2/3rds of the planet’s population. I wonder why the acolytes don’t have the strength of their convictions…oh wait, they want to be around to rule.
  • Christian Schneider and Dan Bice offer a few rules for those bloggers who want to cover government. I think I’ve broken them all.
  • Second dose of Christian – he outlines the latest attempt by the Government “Accountability” Board to ensure a silent election season followed by a re-ratification of ‘Rat control – the elimination of anonymous speech.
  • Trail-Mix debuts his Contract with America II.
  • Byron Audler lays out the case for using the O.H. Perrys in the role envisioned for the woefully-underequipped and -overpriced LCS.
  • Uncle Jimbo lays some serious lumber into Barack Obama’s CinC side. I don’t think “present” will work when the binary solution is “victory or defeat”.
  • Kevin Jackson explains as only he can why Obama is always late.
  • GayPatriotWest points out that Ronald Reagan never blamed Jimmy Carter for leaving stagflation behind. Unlike the current occupant of the Oval Office; despite being handed an economic mess so bad that a brand new term had to be coined to describe it, Reagan simply went to work to break the malaise.
  • Ed Morrissey wonders if Obama actually pays attention. When the essential characteristic of making a lie the “truth” is blind repetition,….
  • Stephan Tawney wonders what the presstitutes would say if Sean Hannity had received a front-row seat to George W. Bush’s first press conference as President. We know what they did to a blogger who got into the press conferences, and it’s not exactly what they did for semi-successful liberal talk-show-host Ed Schultz.
  • V the K is running a caption contest of Obama’s head/helo collision.
  • Bill Quick calls Bravo Sierra on the latest CNN 76% approval rating for Obama. Bonus item – they crow about getting the undecideds down to 1%. Let me put it this way – if a pollster asks what color a quarter is, there will be at least 4% in the “undecided” category.
  • Emperor Misha I decries the latest example of the death of the southern border – a rancher who had enough of his property being used as a border-jumping point is being sued for defending his property and country.
  • Sean M. proves BDS is alive and well in the Senate. They’re NEVER going to let it go.
  • Thomas Sowell outlines how to deprogram the young skulls full of mush after the screwels (™, Rush Limbaugh) get through with them. One slight problem; relying on simply asking whether one has been exposed to the other side isn’t going to work because critical thinking is not a natural trait.
  • Lawhawk bemoans the creeping auto-gratuity sneaking into restaurants. It is a sign of the socialist times we’re all living in now.
  • Adam hosts “24: Poker Night!” Watch Tony get drunk and Janis flub a field operation.

I need a drink. Unfortunately, it’s still over 2 hours until Drinking Right.

Rep. Paul Ryan conference call

by @ 15:06. Filed under Politics - National, Politics - Wisconsin.

Ed Morrissey is simulcasting the call right now on The Ed Morrissey Show. I’m over there.

Revisions/extensions (3:50 pm 2/10/2008) – The conference call is over. For those of you looking for just the conference call, it starts at about the 1h04m mark of the archived show (though I recommend you also listen to the first part; Ed did a Melt The Phones show). Besides Ed, Jo Egelhoff, Kevin Binversie and Todd Lohenry asked questions. My voice is still a bit on the gone side, so I simply enjoyed the call; besides, they had better questions than I could come up with.

Drinking Right – tonight

by @ 14:39. Tags:
Filed under Miscellaneous.

If it’s the 2nd Tuesday of the month, we’re drinking. As usual, the details are at the official home:

Date: February 10, 2009
Time: 7 pm – ???
Place: Papa’s Social Club, 7718 W Burleigh in Milwaukee

If you have to stay in Racine County to oppose KRM, we will keep the beer cold for you.

The Morning Scramble (Part 1) – 2/10/2009

by @ 10:48. Filed under The Morning Scramble.

Yes, we’re back to the multi-parters – somewhere north of 350 feeds to choose from will do that…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubZjbmA1Id0[/youtube]

  • The Death of Newsweek, Part I – Ken found them cheering the fulfillment of Karl Marx’s prediction. As the song says, “Mamama, we’re all crazee now.”
  • The Death of Newsweek, Part II – Jim Geraghty wonders why they’re cheering a 52% drop in single-copy circulation over 2 years.
  • The Death of Newsweek, Part III – Tom Blumer answers that they’re just being honest about being liberal partisans.
  • Lemur King compares and contrasts the presstitute coverage of the “talk-down” of 2000 to the “fear ‘n hope” of 2009.
  • Dad29 on Gubmint Spending, Part I – he points out that federal government spending, without TARP, without the bailouts, and without the Generational Theft Act, increased by roughly 7.2% per year under President George W. Bush. Only in gubmint is a rate of growth double inflation considered “starving”.
  • Dad29 on Gubmint Spending, Part II – he ran the numbers on Sen. Arlen “Scottish Law” Specter’s claim that it would cost “only” $195,000 per job saved and found that it’s 3.6 times the worth of the average job. Even if they were all UAW jobs, it would still be somewhere north of twice the worth of that job.
  • How much are all those bailouts, Part I – Doug Mataconis found that the amount committed to the various bailouts would be almost enough to pay off every last home mortgage.
  • How much are all those bailouts, Part II – John Walker found that liquidating all of the gold in the world at today’s prices wouldn’t even cover half the bill.
  • How much are all those bailouts, Part III – Ace found that the bailouts are worth 2/3rds of everything the economy produced last year. Ahem – it’s closer to 3/4ths.
  • Purple Avenger notes the beginning of health-care rationing in the Generational Theft Act. It’s no longer just the children they’re stealing from; it’s Grandma and Grandpa.
  • Ed Morrissey can’t believe that The News Organization That Cannot Be Quoted™ isn’t buying the “no pork in this Generational Theft Act” line of Bravo Sierra.
  • John Hawkins lists a few good reasons to kill the GTA (and no, I’m not talking about Grand Theft Auto).
  • Is all this pork getting you hungry? Michelle Malkin found your dish – the Turbaconduckhen. I think it’s missing some pork sausage stuffing.
  • Back to Michelle – she lists some of the things it’s not missing, like pork for golf carts, hybrids for federal employees, and Amtrak.
  • Asian Badger hosts an economics mini-lecture. Today’s topic – hyperinflation.
  • Dominic Rupprecht states that those who intentionally misrepresent history are doomed to repeat it. Can you say, “Lost Decade”?
  • Bruce proves that the road to serfdom is paved with “good intentions” married to incompetent actions.

Part 2 will be up after I’m done with some tech support.

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