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.

December 19, 2008

New NRE poll – Which of the Big Three (if any) will be in essentially its pre-12/2008 form come 12/2018?

by @ 16:28. Tags:
Filed under Business, NRE Polls.

Shoebox asked the question. While I can’t officially condone gambling (at least if you use Hot Rod Blago as your bookie), I can officially condone an NRE poll. You can take up to 3, but I will wipe out any multiple answers that include “None of them”.

Which of the Big Three (if any) will be in essentially its pre-12/2008 form come 12/2018?

Up to 3 answer(s) was/were allowed

  • None of them (43%, 36 Vote(s))
  • Ford (37%, 31 Vote(s))
  • General Motors (15%, 13 Vote(s))
  • Chrysler (5%, 4 Vote(s))

Total Voters: 75

Loading ... Loading ...

Oak Creek plowing – 12/19/2008 – much better

by @ 8:14. Filed under Politics - Oak Creek, Weather.

I don’t know if was me that got results, but for this snow-bomb, Oak Creek got out there well before 5 am. In fact, they were working on my subdivision at 4 am.

See how much easier it is when the 4-hour prohibition on parking on the streets is taken advantage of, and 11 hours’ worth of packed snow isn’t being fought? It makes even a lot of snow (9 inches and counting) easier to handle.

Revisions/extensions (8:20 am 12/19/2008) – Don’t say I never give the Soviets any props. My blogfather used to have this propaganda piece up at Spotted Horse when the White Death threatened us…

'

Everyone to the fight with the Blizzard!

R&E part 2 (4:05 pm 12/19/2008) – I can see pavement! MUCH better than last time.

December 18, 2008

Bolin out, Blickensderfer in as Kenseth’s crew chief

by @ 18:45. Filed under Sports.

This bit of good news comes straight from MattKenseth.com. After suffering through a winless year with Chip Bolin as crew chief of the #17 DeWalt Ford driven by Matt Kenseth, Roush Fenway Racing has returned Bolin to the team engineer position and promoted Drew Blickensderfer to the crew chief slot.

Blickensderfer is a very good crew chief. In 2006, he helped guide Danny O’Quinn to the rookie title. In 2007 and the first part of 2008, he and Kenseth teamed for 3 wins, 17 top 5s and an average finish of 10.3 over 28 starts before he switched to Carl Edwards’ Nationwide team. Those two teamed for 7 wins in 19 starts.

As someone who has seen Bolin blow late-race call after late-race call, with the last blown call of putting in only enough gas for 396 miles and change in the Ford 400 costing Kenseth a trip to New York City, I’m very happy. Bolin knows how to build fast race cars, so that part is still good.

December 17, 2008

Snow plowing in Oak Creek – FAIL

by @ 9:41. Filed under Politics - Oak Creek, Weather.

Let’s run through the timeline on this past storm:

– Snow starts falling at Mitchell International (just north of Oak Creek) – sometime between 12:52 pm and 1:52 pm.
– Accumulation in my driveway at 5 pm when I left to pick up my younger sister from the airport – approximately 1 inch
– County plows spotted – several times between 5 pm and 8:30 pm
– Majority of snow ends at Mitchell – prior to 8:52 pm
– Last of the snow ends at Mitchell – prior to 12:52 am
– Total amount of snow at Mitchell – 2.4 inches
– Major thoroughfares in the city of Milwaukee plowed – prior to 4 am
– First city of Oak Creek plow sighted – 5 am
– Time my subdivision got “plowed” (the term is used loosely because there is a layer of snow and ice still on the streets) – 7 am (there is a school in the subdivision that opens at 8 am)

This, in a city that last year, found enough additional spending to raise the property tax levy increase from a 3.80% increase to a 3.86% increase, in a city that just spent over $8 million on a new garag…er, Taj Mahal for the Street Department, in a city where the mayor wants to build a $20 million monument to himself under the guise of a new oversized city hall/library combo complete with underground parking, and in a city that, in addition to taxing to the max, is raiding just about every last fund that has a positive balance to mask the true increase in spending, is fucking unacceptable.

December 12, 2008

Who got $2 trillion in “emergency” Fed Reserve loans?

by @ 20:35. Filed under Business, Economy.

(H/T – Dad29)

Bloomberg L.P. is trying to find out, but the Federal Reserve has refused a FOIA request asking for the recipients of more than $2,000,000,000,000 in emergency loans from 11 Fed lending programs, as well as the assets the Fed accepted as collateral. A majority of that, $1.23 trillion, was sent out after the Fed started accepting collateral that was rated worse than AAA on September 12.

The Fed, in its denial, said that there were 231 pages of records stemming from a partial search. Also from the denial, written by Jennifer J. Johnson, secretary for the Fed’s Board of Governors: “Notwithstanding calls for enhanced transparency, the Board must protect against the substantial, multiple harms that might result from disclosure…. In its considered judgment and in view of current circumstances, it would be a dangerous step to release this otherwise confidential information.”

Jim Rodgers, a prominent international investor, speculates that most of the banks are bankrupt. Dad29 runs with that and says that “…the Fed doesn’t want another short-selling frenzy.”

Carlos Mendez, a senior managing director at New York-based ICP Capital LLC, has the $64,000 $2 trillion statement – “If they told us what they held, we would know the potential losses that the government may take and that’s what they don’t want us to know.”

Handy new plugin – Delete-Revision

by @ 16:56. Filed under The Blog.

I haven’t been a big fan of the revision system that has been in WordPress since 2.6. Yes, it has saved me a couple times, but it takes up a lot of database space, and there is no way to eliminate all the revisions.

Fortunately, a guy named goshy came up with Delete-Revision. It will go through your wp-posts database and let you easily and quickly take out all the revisions except the actual post. While it is not officially tested with WP 2.7, it does work seamlessly. The only operationally-bad part; it’s an all-or-nothing operation.

Santa goes color bli…er, “green”

by @ 10:00. Filed under Global "Warming".

(H/T – Josh Schroeder)

The Portage Daily Register reports on the use of Santa Claus and his friends to indoctrinate the young skulls full of mush at Lewiston Elementary School in Portage, Wisconsin. From thin snowmen to Coppertone-spreading elves to Rudolph’s new LED nose, the “Santa Goes Green” holiday program was dripping with every cliche from the Religion of Gorebal “Warming”. At least the color-blind who don’t have green can still wear red.

WFLD-TV (Chicago Fox affiliate) – Rahm Emanuel spoke with Blagojevich, Harris about filling Obama’s seat

by @ 9:30. Filed under Law and order, Politics - National.

(H/T – Ed Morrissey)

I’ll start with the standard disclaimers that this comes from an unnamed source, that Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has not been named in the criminal complaint against Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich (D) and Blagojevich’s chief of staff, John Harris, and that the report referenced below does not actually state that Emanuel was actively selling the seat to Blagojevich and Harris.

WFLD-TV, the Fox affiliate in Chicago, aired a report last night asserting that a “reliable source familiar with the investigation” stated that Emanuel had conversations with both Blagojevich and Harris about candidates for the seat that has now been vacated by Obama. According to that source, the conversations, which took place on “multiple occassions” after Emanuel was named as Obama’s chief of staff November 6 (and after the wiretaps began), included a list of names “acceptable to President-elect Obama” given to the governor’s office. The source went on to say that the conversations were likely recorded by the FBI. The report notes that the source did not say one way or the other whether those conversations invovled any quid pro quo.

My gut feeling on this is that Obama cannot have January 20 come fast enough so he can oust US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and shut this down before any indictment against Blagojevich and Harris can be handed down, and before the taint can officially spread to his closest advisor. If a grand jury comes down with an indictment before then, and especially if things are as they appear (or worse), Obama is screwed.

Good news and bad news on the Big Thr…er, UAW bailout (update – not good news)

by @ 7:50. Tags:
Filed under Business, Economy, Politics - National.

The good news – cloture on the bill failed in the Senate 52-35.

The bad news – President Bush and the Congressional Democrats are still bound and determined to explicitly bail out the UAW this year.

The ugly news – Once the 111th Congress comes into session on January 6, 2009, the filibuster roadblock will be no more. Let’s review how the bipartisan Party-In-Government will pick up the necessary 8 votes (I will assume that the seat vacated by Barack Obama remains vacated, that Norm Coleman, who voted against this, is seated, and that Hillary Clinton, who voted for cloture, and Joe Biden, who was absent, either remain in the Senate for the first couple days of the 111th Congress or their appointed replacements are seated):

– Harry Reid (D-NV; “No”) – Voted “No” only to keep the possibility of bringing this back in this Congress. When he will be able to get to 60, that will become a “Yes” vote.
– Wayne Allard (R-CO; “No”) – He’s retiring, and the seat will be filled by Democrat Mark Udall
– Joe Biden (D-DE; “Not voting”) – This is a special case; I don’t know whether this seat will be officially vacant come January 6, but if it isn’t, it’s another vote for cloture.
– Ted Stevens (R-AK; “Not voting”) – He was defeated for re-election by Democrat Mark Begich.
– John Sununu (R-RI; “Not voting”) – He was defeated for re-election by Democrat Jeanne Shaheen.
– Gordon Smith (R-OR; “Not voting”) – He was defeated for re-election by Democrat Jeff Merkley.
– Ted Kennedy (D-MA; “Not voting”) – They’ll wheel him in if needed to become vote #60.
– John Kerry (D-MA; “Not voting”) – He’ll definitely show up to vote for the UAW and welfare.
– Ron Wyden (D-OR; “Not voting”) – He’ll be around for the UAW.

Revisions/extensions (8:16 am 12/12/2008) – And the truly-ugly news courtesy CommentGuy over on the linked Michelle Malkin thread: That vote was on the annual AMT “fix”, not the UAW bailout bill. I didn’t see anything that suggested that the UAW bailout bill got appended to the annual AMT fix.

We’re not done yet.

December 11, 2008

The Morning Scramble/Open Thread Thursday – 12/11/2008

by @ 9:48. Filed under Open Thread Thursday, The Morning Scramble.

I was going to go with the usual Thursday blues, but Shoebox’s take on the Big Thr…er, UAW bailout shifted the musical focus just a little bit….

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nGS2yyODQg[/youtube]

Before I get to the heart of the Scramble, I must pass along a “clarification” from KHQA denouncing its 11/5 story (dumped into the ether) stating that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (D-Corrupt) and President-elect Barack Obama were to meet later that day. Of course, it doesn’t exactly address its 11/8 story from a different reporter that stated that a meeting did take place (which also got dumped into the ether).

  • Speaking of corrections, I need to correct a major oversight missing from yesterday’s Blago Scramble Special – Kate dug up a bunch of Blago toons.
  • Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin run the Lexis-Nexis numbers on Blago mentions by the presstitutes. Care to guess which is higher; mentions in the last 48 hours or mentions in all of November? Hell, I’ll wager there were more mentions in the last 48 hours than there were in any of the first 11 months.
  • Nate Beeler can’t put a price on the criminal complaint against Blago. I believe I can say with some confidence that “@$&*!’N” doesn’t really stand for “@$&*!’N”.
  • Gabriel Malor believes his lying eyes over Obama’s greasy assurances. I will note that it is only a pic, so we can’t even read lips on whether they discussed Obama’s replacement in the Senate.
  • Jim W. Ainsworth channels Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and various members of Congress answering some bailout questions.
  • Lance Burri found immigration wasn’t exactly a deal-breaker in November. Of course, there was no substantive difference between Obama and John McCain on shamnesty.
  • Mark Tapscott explains why there is a credibility problem in the DC power structure. Of note, Joe the Plumber wanted off the Straight Double-Talk Express after McCain tried to explain why he was in favor of the $700 billion $850 billion $8 trillion bailout of October.
  • Doug Mataconis points out that the current-year deficit is on pace to hit $1 trillion. The truly-scary thing is, other than the bailouts and the on-autopilot increasing welfare programs, the federal government is running on continuing resolutions until sometime after Obama is sworn in, and both he and the Congressional Democrats have a boatload of additional spending plans.
  • Uncle Jimbo lays the smackdown on Jimmy Carter’s candy-ass.
  • Jo Egelhoff has the proper solution for Wisconsin’s budget crunch – freeze and prune. It’s far better than increasing spending by nearly 10%, with over half of that increase coming from Wisconsin’s own bailout.
  • Tom Blumer plays Name That Party, ABC edition. In their montage of 14 political crooks (evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats), they named the GOP crook as such 5 of 7 times (4 in the first sentence, the 5th in the 3rd), but named the ‘Rat crook as such only 2 of 7 times (both in the first sentence).
  • Okie Campaigns found 650 scientists, many former Gorbebal “Warming” acolytes, committing heresy against the Religion of Gorebal “Warming”.
  • William Teach caught the UN cardinal of Gorebal “Warming” admitting that “(t)here is no clear evidence that global warming is an imminent danger to the world.”
  • Tracy Coenen reports Milwaukee County Board Chairman Lee Holloway wants to let others get away with the type of fraud he got away with. I wonder if he’ll try to bend any of his fellow supervisors over their desks this time; he does have a history of that.
  • Jim Geraghty wonders why the FBI is asking about Obama’s home purchase (with convicted briber Tony Rezko’s wife also involved).

That’s it; the thread’s yours.

Paul Ryan on the Big Thr…er, UAW bailout

by @ 9:06. Tags:
Filed under Business, Economy, Politics - National, Politics - Wisconsin.

Because I bashed Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI, my Congresscritter) for his vote on the UAW bailout, it is only fair that I present his side of the argument. From a press release that came into my mailbox a half-hour ago (only stripping off the announcement that it was a statement):

It is clear that the mounting hardships throughout Southern Wisconsin have been downright gut-wrenching. In addition to the imminent closure of the GM plant in my hometown of Janesville and mass layoffs elsewhere, hard-working Wisconsinites are finding it increasingly difficult during this recession to cope with strained credit markets, rising health care costs, and making their monthly mortgage payments.

The American automotive industry is under considerable distress, and various proposals have been put forth to provide aid to those in need. I’ve maintained that any assistance to the domestic auto industry should be drawn from previously approved funds from a U.S. Department of Energy loan package, rather than divert resources from the financial rescue package or rely on additional taxpayer dollars. H.R. 7321 cuts through the bureaucratic red tape and expedites these previously appropriated funds. Because no additional taxpayer dollars were appropriated, I was able to support this legislation.

At the forefront of my mind are jobs in Southern Wisconsin and the retiree commitments to workers that could be placed in jeopardy under certain bankruptcy scenarios. To be clear, this bill is not intended to save the American auto industry and makes no guarantees that layoffs in this industry will end. Congress must stop overselling what it can do. At the very least, I am hopeful that by extending these loans to the American auto manufacturers, bankruptcy will be avoided in the near term and protections for retirees will remain intact.

As Jules Winnfield once said, well, allow me to retort. The UAW workers, who are dwindling in number in Wisconsin with or without the bailout by the way, aren’t the only ones who are hurting. Sending $14 billion of everybody’s money down the rat hole known as GM, Ford and Chrysler just so they can survive the next 3 1/2 months without any permanent reforms, without any assurance that they would ever return to profitability, is the height of stupidity. The market forces are saying that the Big Three are sending too much money out the door in compensation, and the bailout only seriously addresses the white-collar portion (not even half) of that.

I suppose I could give a half-cheer that the bailout is using $25 billion that was already committed to the Big Three, and a quarter-cheer that it leaves $9 billion for the original purpose of plant modernization.

Chapter 11 bankruptcy is not the end of the world. Indeed, many of Ryan’s Republican colleagues suggested that a pre-negotiated Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which would allow the union portion of that compensation to be adjusted with less UAW interference, is the way to go. I agree.

December 10, 2008

WordPress 2.7 is live

by @ 23:32. Tags:
Filed under The Blog.

That’s right. After almost a month of delay, WordPress 2.7 is out. There are some nice improvements, both on the back end and the front end.

The biggest item on the front-end is threaded comments. To reply to a specific comment, just hit “Reply” just below the comment. I’ve enabled it all the way out to the maximum 10 levels of commenting.

Paul Ryan votes to bail out the UAW

by @ 20:48. Tags:
Filed under Business, Economy, Politics - National, Politics - Wisconsin.

This YouTube video is my insta-reaction to Paul Ryan joining the Democratic caucus in bailing out the Big Thr…er, UAW to the tune of $14 billion (warning, gratutious use of fuck-bombs involved). I especially like the stretch between 1:25 and 1:33 when Butch Coolidge goes ballistic.

Revisions/extensions (9:00 pm 12/10/2008) – I should’ve checked to see if was embeddible before trying to embed it. Sorry about that.

The Morni…er, Afternoon Scramble, 12/10/2008

by @ 17:57. Filed under The Morning Scramble.

This one goes out to Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich (D)…

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

  • Katie Favazza wonders what is on Blago’s iPod. He strikes me as a punk rock fan.
  • Charles Henrickson wishes all the DUmmies a Merry Fitzmas, complete with song.
  • Brian Ross confirms that Jesse Jackson Jr tried to keep the seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama in the Chicago family the old-fashioned way – with 10,000 Benjamins (or $1,000,000 for those who can’t do the math)
  • James Wigderson has a dozen questions for Obama. Judging by the complaint, Blago tried to buy favors from the Obama campaign/transition team in exchange for naming one of their prefered candidates for at least 10 days, which James compared with the “pro-forma” discussions Blago had with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL).
  • Mary Katharine Ham dug up a report from November 5 that stated Obama planned on meeting with Blago the afternoon of November 5. That would be right in the middle of the attempt to buy favors from the Obama campaign/transition team. The link “conveniently” died, but Yahoo still has it cached (and I have the cache saved in case the ObamiNation Net Scrubbers strike Yahoo as well). Meanwhile, Fred put up a screencap, knowing full well the ObamiNation Net Scrubbers would strike.
  • Rob reports that meeting did, in fact, take place. Of course, the station that had that report did the same thing it did to the one MKH found, and thankfully Yahoo still has it for the moment (I also saved this one).
  • To counter that, Ed Morrissey found a report from the Chicago Sun-Times on November 6 (between the two noted above) that says Blago and Obama didn’t meet.
  • Jim Lindgren runs the timeline some more and wonders why there was an initial denial of any knowledge of Blago’s attempt whatsoever from Obama.
  • Rick Esenberg reminds us that, absent something more substantial than what has already come out, this doesn’t say anything substantive about Obama. He also reminds us that Blago is a manifestation of the natural human condition, and that can’t be fixed by “clean government” reforms. While that is true, it can be mitigated by “open government” ones.
  • John McCormack found the Obamination Express finally throwing Blago under the bus after everybody else stomped a mudhole in him. Way to show courage, Barry – wait until everybody else disowns him and then send out a flack to finish him off.
  • Nick Schweitzer uses Blago as another example for smaller government. Amen.

Since you’re probably done with the first song, it’s time for another from the Blago iPod (uncensored, of course)…

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

  • Back to Katie – she found a Craigs List listing that “Hot Rod B.” put up. If it disappears, Asian Badger thoughtfully archived the text.
  • Stix1972 found an interesting eBay auction before it disappeared. The bad news – there were at least 17 bids before it was pulled.
  • Sister Toldjah found another yanked eBay auction. She also reports there is (actually, was; this also got yanked) a wish list for Blago on Amazon filled with things a guy in a “don’t drop the soap” federal pen needs.
  • Faux eBay part 3 – Iowahawk found exclusive documents from the Fed’s seizure of Blago’s eBay account </humor> (it saddens me that I have to include that tag for the humor-challenged).
  • Eric explains how Blago can survive. I will add that Blago strikes me as the type of guy who uses what isn’t there.
  • J. Gravelle takes a look at what the LeftStreamMedia, broadcast division, would have done had Blago hadn’t been so stupid as to put the squeeze on the Tribune Company.
  • Warner Todd Huston reports that didn’t stop The News Organization That Cannot Be Quoted™ from providing all sorts of cover for both Blago and Obama (but mostly Obama).
  • Michelle Malkin broke out the Crying River Flood Warning for Reuters.
  • Jim Geraghty tells the LeftStreamMedia, “I told you so.”
  • Teresa bugged the walls in Blago’s office and caught an interesting snippet of conversation of Blago returning to work.
  • Jayme Siemer asks who will take the lead on transparency legislation in Illinois. I’ve got “no current politician” in the pool.
  • Silent E makes it a three-song Scramble…

    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYi381lJoeQ&eurl=http://silentespeaks.com/?p=3313[/youtube]

  • Rick Moran, who knows more than the average bear about Illinois politics, terms Blago’s conduct “beyond business as usual”.
  • Tom McMahon 4-blocks (or should that be “8-blocks” the 3 Illinois governors prior to Blago to get sent up the river. He’s jumping the gun a bit on Blago (unless one counts the several hours cooling his heels in federal custody waiting for his bond hearing) – I’m willing to put cold, hard cash on the line in saying that Blago will walk despite the facts.
  • My blogfather Chris has a fitting punishment for Blago. In case those of you on the Left think he’s bluffing, do note he offers the same punishment for Ted Stevens.
  • Bill Quick found the pic the presstitutes won’t run, and compared it to the one they’re running.

December 9, 2008

Refinancing defaulted mortgages – FAIL

by @ 15:45. Tags:
Filed under Business, Economy, Politics - National.

CNN reports on a statement from US Comptroller John Dugan that states that over half of those that had their defaulted mortgages adjusted through the Hope Now Alliance, a coalition of lenders, servicers, investors and counselors, redefaulted on their mortgages within 6 months of having the adjustment. Some numbers from the article:

– So far in 2008, 1.7 homeowners have had their mortgages adjusted through this program.
– 53% of those who had their mortages adjusted in the first quarter of 2008 have redefaulted within 6 months.
– At least 51% of those who had their mortgages adjusted in the second quarter of 2008 have redefaulted within 6 months. This percentage could easily increase, as those who underwent the adjustment in June (and possibly part of May) have not reached the 6-month threshold.

Despite these failures, FDIC chairwoman Sheila Bair wants to extend this program to reduce payments to no more than 31% of gross monthly income by lowering interest rates to 3% and extending the mortgage to 40 years, with the government eating 50% of the loss of those who make it past 6 months without redefaulting to the tune of an estimated $24.4 billion.

Now, what did Albert Einstein say about insanity? I believe it had something to do with doing the same failed thing over and over while expecting a different result.

Congrats on the big 1-3 Scott

by @ 12:46. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Scott Feldstein has had a web presence for 13 years. Yes, he is one of the “old-timers” who had hard-coded his stuff, and he was around before there was such a thing as a “blog”. Little-known fact about Scott; he self-hosts rather than trusting a hosting company.

It’s Fitzmas! (now complete with indictm…er, criminal complaint)

by @ 8:45. Filed under Politics, Politics - National.

(H/T – Eric Odom’s Twitter stream)

The Chicago Tribume is reporting that Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich (D-with the reference in paragraph #4) was taken into federal custody this morning. This comes a few hours after the Trib reported that the federal investigation into pay-for-play allegations against Blagojevich led by US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald had been expanded to include Blagojevich’s choice for Barack Obama’s replacement in the Senate.

I’m under no illusions that Blagojevich will either be convicted or not pardoned. Fitzgerald has but 40 days to get a conviction before he is no longer US Attorney. Further, Blagojevich and Obama share a friend convicted on public corruption charges, Tony Rezko, and Obama will, as of January 20, have the power to make all of Blagojevich’s federal charges disappear.

Revisions/extensions (9:35 am 12/9/2008) – The Trib comes through with the two-count-apiece indictment criminal complaint against Blagojevich and his chief of staff John Harris. The first count involves multiple instances of play-to-play, including the attempted sale of Obama’s Senate seat for personal gain. The second involves a scheme to have members of the Trib’s editorial board, who had been agitating for Blagojevich’s impeachment, fired in exchange for help in disposing of Wrigley Field. The short-version press release is also available from the Trib.

R&E part 2 (12:24 pm 12/9/2009) – A few updates. First, I have to thank Emperor Misha I and Allen Fuller for linking to me. Welcome those of you from Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler and RootsHQ.

Second, I just got done listening to the press conference with Fitzgerald and the FBI Special Agent in Charge. One important item from the conference; in response to a question of whether Obama knew anything about the attempt to sell his vacated Senate seat, Fitzgerald pointed back to the indictment complaint/affidavit combo and said that it didn’t indicate that Obama or his team knew anything about that. He pointedly refused to say whether any evidence not included in that did indicate either Obama or his team knew anything, which is standard procedure regardless of whether the evidence exists or not.

I suppose I should answer the Emperor on how this will go away because I didn’t explain it very well above. I doubt it will get to the point of Blagojevich needing a pardon, but if it does come to that, it will happen. The fact that Fitzgerald included the shakedown of a childrens hospital as part of count #1 makes it likely that, if necessary, it will happen later rather than sooner (say the third quarter of 2011).

However, a pardon isn’t the only way that Obama could influence this. It has become customary for the entire US Attorney corps to be replaced by an incoming administration. I would expect the new US Attorney for Northern Illinois to “quietly” seek the dismissal of charges. Whether Blagojevich would have any legitimate juicy dirt on Obama or not, he strikes me as the type to try to use that to try to strike a deal. Obama can’t risk that dirt coming out, whether or not it is real.

R&E part 3 (12:29 pm 12/9/2008) – I really need to check my overbloated feed. I somehow missed doubleplusundead linking to me. Guess that’s why I’m a Moron.

R&E part 4 (12:33 pm 12/9/2008) – DrewM. live-blogged the press conference for those of you who missed it.

R&E part 5 (1:51 pm 12/9/2008) – I erred in calling this an indictment. It is a criminal complaint; the indictment will come from a grand jury. Sorry about that.

R&E part 6 (1:56 pm 12/9/2008) – Blagojevich and Harris are free on $4500 bond. They do have to turn over their passports and any firearms under the terms of the bond. They best not have any handguns because they’re both Chicago residents.

R&E part 7 (2:24 pm 12/9/2008) – Obama is “saddened and sobered” by the indictment, but says it’s “inappropriate” to comment on it at this time. He had “no contact with the governor or his office,” so he had no idea what was happening.

R&E part 8 (2:59 pm 12/9/2008) – Obama senior adviser David Axelrod contradicts those claims in an appearance on “Fox Chicago Sunday” from 11/23 (starting at the 1:14 mark, with the money quote at 1:20):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=konL35ur0Bo[/youtube]

Oops, Obama did it again!

R&E part 9 (4:16 pm 12/9/2008) – With a hat-tip to Allahpundit, I direct your attention to Jake Tapper, who has a couple more tidbits on Obama’s closeness to Blagojevich, and the $999 million questions – “But there remain questions about how Blagojevich knew that Mr. Obama was not willing to give him anything in exchange for the Senate seat — with whom was Blagojevich speaking? Did that person report the governor to the authorities?”

The Leftosphere thinks that Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel did tip off the authorities. He may have, and if he did, I’ll gladly give him a couple of “atta-boys”, but judging by the publicly-available timeline, I believe Fitzgerald and company knew about this the moment they reviewed the wiretaps.

R&E part 10 (4:46 pm 12/9/2008) – With a tip of the hat to EM Zanotti, I have bad news for friends of clean government – Blagojevich is going nowhere.

Meanwhile, Rick Moran has the definitive south-of-the-Waukegan-toll-plaza view. While I won’t be able to listen to Rick’s BlogTalkRadio show live because of Drinking Right, I will tune in sometime before 2 pm tomorrow. If you’re not going to DR, at least tune in to that.

December 8, 2008

Customizing comment output in WP 2.7

by @ 19:46. Tags:
Filed under The Blog.

One of the big things with WP 2.7 is paginated and threaded comments. That is great; however, there is one problem. The code masters had to create a new method of calling comments to get that, and as a result, I had been less-than-impressed with how WP 2.7 had been handling comment meta data (the “who” and “when”), and hacking the core was less-than-satisfactory. Instead of displaying my custom “…said on…/…pinged back on…with/…tracked back on…with”, it had a very ugly “…says:” with the when on a separate line.

Fortunately, Jeremy Clark found a way to allow customized comment meta data. The very-short version:

– Create a function in the theme’s functions.php that recreates, using the pre-WP 2.7 method, the customized styling. Don’t forget to add the new “reply” code, and don’t forget to save.
– Edit the “wp_list_comments” in the comments.php file to create a callback to that new function.

Thanks Jeremy. My one big complaint with WP 2.7 has been worked around. I can’t wait for it to hit public consumption.

As a side note; I’ve also done some further hacking of the Journalized 2.7.1 theme to get the threaded comments display the way I like it.

Eggs on the road – Double dose of Papa’s

by @ 13:34. Tags:
Filed under Miscellaneous.

Since it’s December, we of the Cheddarsphere have not one, but two outings scheduled for Papa’s Social Club, 7718 W Burleigh in Milwaukee.

Dose #1 – Drinking Right, 12/8/2008 at 7 pm. As Nick said, “Don’t give into the hype! Go out when it’s snowing!” Besides, the snow (it will be all snow well before then, with the freezing rain coming overnight tonight) will be tapering off.

Dose #2 – Cheddarsphere Christmas party, 12/28/2008 at noon. This one is strictly non-partisan, and there will be a gift exchange during the halftime of the Packers/Lions game.

Be there or be nowhere.

December 5, 2008

I’ll drink to this anniversary

by @ 11:38. Filed under History.

Doug Mataconis reminds us that today is the 75th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition.

Hoist a cold one.

December 4, 2008

The Morning Scramble/Open Thread Thursday – 12/4/2008

by @ 9:38. Filed under Open Thread Thursday, The Morning Scramble.

There’s finally enough snow on the ground outside the bunker to drive back the foot that’s slow.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae-LDQVrDUY[/youtube]

  • JammieWearingFool reports that the next Congress will be known as Teh Most (Un)Ethical Congress Evah Ver. 2.0™, partly because Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told Charlie Rangel (D-NY) that he will continue to write tax laws as long as he wants despite an ongoing House ethics investigation into his failure to pay taxes on various money-making schemes.
  • Rick Moran finds history about to repeat itself in Chicago. Of course, back in the day, Michael Bilandic blamed The Next Ice Age for the unremoved snow and consequently lost his mayoral office, while Richard M. Daley’s blaming Gorebal “Warming” and doesn’t face a challenge.
  • William Teach answers the question why a significant number of meteorologists (as opposed to climatologists, who are the altar boys and girls in the Church of Gorebal “Warming”) are not buying Gorebal “Warming” hook, line and stink..er, sinker – there is but one constant – back-and-forth change in the weather.
  • Lady Logician has a couple more nails in the coffin of the climatic truth Gorebal “Warming”, including the inveterate gamblers in Britain breaking The Man on a white Christmas.
  • Stephen Kruiser issued his Envirodork of the Day award to the LeftStreamMedia for applying their election template to the Gorebal “Warming” debate battle.
  • RadicalRon found a new hero for those of us who haven’t consumed the Gorebal “Warming” Kool-Aid – Czech President (and soon-to-be EU President) Vaclav Klaus.
  • Kat has a lesson from the Massacre of Mumbai – “Do not act as the terrorist expect. Do not be terrified into inaction. Expect no mercy and shrink their window of opportunity to act at every turn.”
  • Speaking of the Massacre of Mumbai, Stephen Green wonders how one says “DEFCON 2” in Hindi.
  • Dad29 found some serious respect for the US military from their French counterparts.
  • Rick Moran dubs Barack Obama “The Promise Breaker”. As Jim Geraghty said way back when, all statements by Barack Obama have an expiration date. All of them.
  • Jim Hoft reports the payoffs are starting to come in for the Missouri Obama “Truth Squad”, with one of their number the favorite to become eastern Missouri US Attorney. My advice to Jim is to get across the Mississippi STAT (and probably move south across the Ohio because Illinois isn’t exactly the best place to be – sorry Rick and my other readers south of the toll booths).
  • Jon Ham recycles a classic “Mad Magazine” cover for the incoming Obama administration. While he believes things are darkest just before the dawn, I tend to take the “darkest just before things go to pitch black” approach.
  • Allahpundit found a CNN poll that says 61% are now “dead set” against bailing out The Big Three automakers the United Auto Workers union.
  • Mark Pribonic takes us on a fabulous journey from Henry Ford’s “Let everybody fail, including me” attitude during the Great Depression to the Not-So-Big Three’s tin cups. Do read all the way to the end for Mark’s predictions of what will happen when they burn through their cash.
  • Speaking of tin cups, Nate Beeler pictures that as only he can.
  • Matt Lewis has a pair of frightening predictions from John Fund. While I agree that Dingy Harry and company will refuse to seat Norm Coleman, nationwide same-day registration will wait until abortion-on-demand is part of the United States Code.

The dogs of doom are howling as well because I have to go to the younger sister’s place for more tech support on their wireless network. Since it’s Thursday, that means the thread’s yours. I know there’s a bunch of stuff I haven’t touched on; I had to deep-six some very good items just to get this out before 10 so I can do said tech support.

December 3, 2008

How stupid are Obama voters and Democrats?

by @ 13:24. Filed under Politics - National.

(H/T – Pam)

You may or may not remember John Ziegler or his poll and video of Obama voters. For those of you who have short attention spans and don’t want to click back to the archives, Ziegler interviewed a dozen Obama voters right after they stepped out of the voting booth and asked them some basic current civics questions such as which party had control of Congress going into the election. He also commissioned a Zogby poll asking 512 Obama supporters those same questions. Needless to say, they blew chunks on that.

Also needless to say, the Nutroots were incensed, and claimed it was a misleading push poll designed to embarrass them. Ziegler offered to fund a follow-up poll involving McCain voters, and after getting turned down by Zogby, he went to Wilson Research Strategies and reran the poll among both McCain and Obama supporters, with an additional question on the Keating Five and a change on the “started his/her political career at an ex-terrorist’s house” question to name Bill Ayers specifically. The results are, shall we say, even more embarrassing for the Nutroots, at least among those that care about an educated populace.

Like everybody else, I’ll focus on the pre-election Congressional control question (pages 19-21 on the crosstabs), but run with something that hasn’t exactly been explored elsewhere. First off, let’s review the actual question (“Before this election, which political party controlled both houses of Congress?”), and the responses allowed (I assume in order because there isn’t a notation in the methodology to rotate, Republican, Democrat, neither Republican and Democrat were rotated with neither third; see Chris Wilson’s comment below). Among all 1000 participants, 51.4% got this correct by saying “Democrat”, 35.2% got it 100% wrong by saying “Republican”, 4.5% got it wrong by saying “Neither”, 8.5% admitted they didn’t know, and 2 of them refused to answer the question.

Let’s first delve into the Obama vs McCain voters that everybody else ran with. The designed split of 53.0% Obama voters versus 46.0% McCain voters is close enough to reality to run with. McCain voters got it right to the tune of 62.8% Democratic control, 26.5% Republican control, 6.1% “don’t know”, 4.1% neither, and 1 refusal. Obama voters got it wrong to the tune of 43.0% Republican control, 41.3% Democratic control, 10.6% “don’t know”, 4.9% neither, and 1 refusal.

Now, let’s deviate from the “blame the media” game everybody else is playing because while viewers of CNN and the broadcast networks couldn’t create a majority correct, they did manage a plurality. Instead, let’s take a look at the partisan splits on that question. This poll had a party split of 21.9% “strong Republican”, 10.1% “not-so-strong Republican” (or “soft” for short; for a 32.0% total “Republican”), 26.7% “independent/other”, 9.4% “not-so-strong Democrat”, 29.5% “strong Democrat” (for a 39.0% total “Democrat”), and 2.3% refusal (not reflected in the crosstabs). The highest percentage of those who got this question correct was among “strong Republicans”, at 65.8%. “Soft Republicans” were next at 60.4% correct, which gave the Republican universe a total of 64.1% correct. “Independents” were next at 55.1% correct. “Soft Democrats” could only manage a plurality correct of 45.1%. Worst were the “strong Democrats”, where only 36.6% got the question correct, and a near-majority of 48.5% got it 100% wrong.

If the GOP is “The Stupid Party”, what does that make the Democratic Party? No, you Lefties can’t appropriate “morons”, We AoSHQ Morons have already done that.

Revisions/extensions (2:39 pm 12/3/2008) – Chris Wilson, CEO of Wilson Research Strategies, points out that the first two prompted answers of the Congressional control question (Republican, Democratic) were rotated.

R&E part 2 (10:55 pm 12/3/2008) – Ed Morrissey interviewed John Ziegler late this afternoon.

R&E part 3 (11:03 pm 12/3/2008) – I thought I had corrected the link to the question list. Guess that’s what I get for assumptions. It is now pointing to the correct file.

December 2, 2008

Senate updates

by @ 20:31. Filed under Politics - Minnesota, Politics - National.

I bring good news and more good news on the Senate front, where the dreams of Harry Reid of a filibuster-proof majority got smashed against the rocks of reality:

Item #1 – Saxby Chambliss has won his runoff rather handily. At the point AP finally called the race at approximately 7:58 pm (my time, of course), the Georgia Secretary of State site had Chambliss up 882,385-570,598 (60.7%-39.3%) with 71% of the precincts reporting.

Item #2 – The semi-official Norm Coleman lead in Minnesota, taking the official pre-recount margin of Coleman +215 and the net Coleman +88 in the recounted precincts (taking the difference of Al Franken’s pre-recount 2,623-vote lead and Franken’s post-recount 2,535-vote lead among the recounted ballots), is 303. The Minnesota Secretary of State site states that as of 8 pm, 95.30% of the precincts and 92.69% of the ballots have been recounted. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which has Coleman up by the same 303, there are 8% of the precincts in Hennepin County (with 7% of the ballots cast in the county) that have yet to finish recounting, with the counties of Rock, Scott, Winona and Wright beginning their recounts tomorrow.

Before we start popping the corks off the champagne for Coleman, however, those totals do not include 3,093 ballots challenged by the Coleman campaign or 2,910 ballots challenged by the Franken campaign. Those will not be judged by the State Canvassing Board until December 16.

Decline and Fall of the British Empire – parts 3,432,125 and 3,432,126

by @ 19:25. Filed under Immigration, Politics.

Item #1 (H/T – Jon Ham) – The Daily Mail reports the “Catholic” bishops of England and Wales want to open up Muslim prayer rooms and facilities for Muslim pre-prayer washing facilities in every Roman Catholic school in Britain. The Mail reporter who wrote the piece, Simon Caldwel, notes that the recommendations (termed by Caldwell as “demands”) “go way beyond legal requirements on catering for religious minorities.”

Item #2 (H/T – Ace – Tory MP and immigration spokesman Damian Green was arrested and held for 9 hours while his home and House of Commons office tossed by Metropolitan Police for the “crime” of revealing various episodes of coddling of illegal aliens by the ruling Labour Party on the floor of the House of Commons. Roger Kimball has a rather good wrapup of reaction on the far side of the pond.

Filosofo Comments Preview 1.5-alpha test

by @ 18:29. Filed under The Blog.

Overnight, I reported that Filosofo Comments Preview 1.0.5, which I’ve used here for something north of a year, was broken in WP 2.7 RC1 with regard to threaded comments. Austin Matzko, the author, invited me to try out a version that works with threaded comments. The good news – for the most part, it works. The not-so-good; previewed comments have the “click here to cancel reply” replaced with “reply”, and clicking that unthreads the comment without warning.

I’ve temporarily enabled it here to see if it still is compatible with earlier versions of WordPress (2.6.3 in this case).

Revisions/extensions (6:32 pm 12/2/2008) – It works. Back to the release version here.

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