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.

October 11, 2011

The obligatory “Rats to start Walker recall 11/15” post

by @ 14:54. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

The DemocRAT Party of Wisconsin seems to think it has the timing, the GAB, and the “pre-planned signatures” all in its back pocket; last night, they announced that they’re going to attempt to cause a minimum of 5 elections in Wisconsin in 2012 and kick off the recall effort against Gov. Scott Walker on November 15. Of course, it got off to a rocky start as the announcement went up against the Brewers. I guess Mike Tate is a Cubs fan.

November 15 is not an “accidental” date. On November 9, the GAB is expected to take up several proposed changes in the circulation of recall petitions, from “single-signature” petitions (not witnessed by anybody) to online petitions as part of the process to “pre-populated” petitions, where all that’s needed is the signature. This comes after the GAB tried to force all three via unchallengable opinions but temporarily backed off after the Legislature threatened to force the GAB to adopt rules which could be reviewed and reversed by the Legislature. Given that former Democrat Gov. Jim Doyle appointed 5 of the 6 members of the board, the original 6 Doyle appointees hired the staff that attempted to “nudge” the board to do just this, and if Walker serves a full term, another 3 of the 5 Doyle appointees will come off the board to reduce the Doyle-appointee contingent to minority status come June 2014, I wouldn’t put it past the board to do what they originally intended on doing and to dare the Legislature to try to stop them in the less-than-a-week before the Rats start a “stacked-deck” recall effort.

Revisions/extensions (3:06 pm 10/11/2011) – Corrected the GAB meeting date.

October 8, 2011

Saturday Hot Read – WSJ’s “103,000 vs. 1.1 million”

by @ 8:30. Filed under Economy Held Hostage.

Tom Blumer has been noting the failure of the current “recovery” versus the recovery from the 1981-1982 recession for some time. Before I take you to the main event, I do encourage you to look at the latest from Tom; he also explains how the “103,000 jobs added in September” isn’t quite all in September.

This morning, The Wall Street Journal jumped on board this train, with a front-page story (unfortunately, behind the paywall), a banner companion must-see graphic (fortunately, not behind the paywall), and a little look at the third Septbembers of Ronald Reagan’s and Barack Obama’s terms. The devastating part:

As it happens, the biggest one-month jobs gain in American history was at exactly this juncture of the Reagan Presidency, after another deep recession. In September 1983, coming out of the 1981-82 downturn, American employers added 1.1 million workers to their payrolls, the acceleration point for a seven-year expansion that created some 17 million new jobs.

Bear in mind that is, depending on whether one measures the end of the 1981-1982 recession as October 1982 or November 1982, a mere 11 or 10 months (respectively) after the end of the recession, while we’re in the 27th month of “recovery”. The similar point in this “recovery” is either April 2010 or May 2010. April 2010 saw a seasonally-adjusted job growth of 277,000, and May 2010 saw a seasonally-adjusted job growth of 458,000.

The bigger problem is what happened after that 10th/11th month of recovery. The next month after that point in the 1980s where there was job contraction was June 1986, and after that, July 1990. Meanwhile, June 2010, July 2010, August 2010 and September 2010 all saw job contraction.

October 6, 2011

Liberal Republicans told me if I supported Sharron Angle, an extremist would be the Class III Senator from Nevada…

by @ 21:29. Filed under Politics - National.

…and they were right! Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada, Class III) twisted the rules of the Senate like a pretzel to deny the Senate the ability to vote on Obama’s Son-of-Porkulus bill.

I would label this another exhibit of how the Senate GOP is nothing more than the minority half of the bipartisan Party-In-Government, but I’ve run out of letters. Own it, RINOs.

Revisions/extensions (9:22 am 10/7/2011) – After further review of the Senate rules (specifically V and XXII), I am convinced Senate Minority “Leader” Mitch McConnell wanted precisely this result. If he wanted to maintain the tradition (which, actually, is a violation of the Senate rules) of allowing the minority to offer non-germane amendments after cloture, he would have given written notice of the motion to suspend the rules yesterday and have it taken up today.

Open Thread Thursday – Witless version

by @ 9:56. Filed under Open Thread Thursday.

Unless you see it on Twitter, and probably not even there, I’ve got little to nothing today. That, and the fact that it’s Thursday, means it’s Open Thread Thursday. Maestro, music…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmT8AeU2xKk[/youtube]

Don’t be as shy as me. Pipe up!

October 5, 2011

Falklands Part Deux?

by @ 23:13. Filed under International relations, War.

(H/T – The Old Pooners Facebook Group, specifically Christopher Irvine)

Nile Gardiner of The Telegraph outlined the latest bout of words between Great Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands. The gang has kicked around the possibility of it going beyond words off and on for a while, and given at least some of them are/were naval operators, they’re a lot better at it than I am.

If memory serves, both the Royal Navy and the Argentine armed forces have atrophied since 1982, though the RN has really suffered. Unless the RAF figures out a way to get either the Tornado or Typhoon 8,000 miles in number before the Argentines close the airfields (and then have the RN get reloads down), the Brits won’t have any air cover. On the other hand, with a fair bit of warning, a British sub could put a real crimp in the ability of the Argentine Navy to actually land any troops given they have exactly 1 troop carrier and 4 destroyers.

The big question is how much support the US would give Britain, if any in this scenario. Back in 1982, the US gave Britain significant off-battlefield logistical support once the Argentines decided to not negotiate.

Has it been 6 years?

by @ 17:09. Filed under The Blog.

I keep on forgetting these blogiversaries. First, I have to give a nod to Sister Toldjah and Ed Morrissey for hitting their 8th blogiversaries (note the plural) 2 days ago. They’re both good friends of mine; ST has guest-blogged here (and I over at her place), and Ed has for reasons beyond comprehension given me a key to Hot Air’s Green Room.

That leads me to my own blogiversary. 6 years ago today, I decided (more like was dragged by the unfortunately-absent GBFan) to open up shop after getting an invite onto the dearly-departed WisconsinSportsBar. I’ve gone through fits and spurts, moving from Blogger to a less-than-satisfactory stay at Yahoo Small Business while hosting WordPress to a long, though not profitable, tenure with BlueHost. Along the way, I’ve picked up way too many friends to count, a very-successful-in-the-real-world co-blogger in Shoebox (we could tell you how successful, but first we’d have to kill you), and even some notoriety.

Lately I haven’t been doing as much blogging as I really should. Oh well; like Jib, and decidedly unlike Robert Stacy McCain, I’ve never saw it as a means to a financial end (which reminds me; if you can rattle your favorite bloggers’ tip jars if they have them, they all would appreciate it).

Thank you, the readers, for being around for the ride, and let’s see if we can make it another 6.

21 of the last 25 months

by @ 16:43. Filed under Social Security crater.

For those of you who think that Social Security is doing just fine (cough…Mitt Romney…cough…Harry Reid…cough), I’ve got some bad news for you. The Office of the Chief Actuary has finally caught its financial operations reports up to the present after not updating it for several months. The numbers are, in a word, horrible:

  • Except for the “double-taxation” (both quarterly estimated income tax and taxation of benefits) months of January and June, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance program has not had a monthly positive primary (cash) balance since July 2009.
  • The 12-month OASI primary deficit peaked at $20.16 billion in the June 2010-May 2011 period, and isn’t expected to ever become a surplus again by the Social Security Trustees, the Congressional Budget Office, or me. My re-estimation of the 2009 Trustees’ intermediate-case scenario, the last one I have any confidence in, has that never dropping below $10.6 billion (in the February 2012-January 2013 period).
  • The last time the Disability Insurance program had a monthly primary surplus, and indeed, the last time it likely will ever have a monthly primary surplus, was April 2009. If it weren’t for the temporary ability to monetize the DI “Trust Fund”, in most months, less than 75% of the scheduled benefits would be able to be paid out as its annual primary deficit has crossed the $34 billion level on annual costs of just over $131 billion.
  • Speaking of the DI “Trust Fund”, its book value has dropped below $165 billion, and even with interest paid, its annual “burn rate” has crossed the $25 billion level. That makes it likely the person who serves the next Presidential term will have to deal with an exhausted DI “Trust Fund”.

Ponzi Scheme?

First things first; since it is written as law, Social Security cannot meet the illegality portion of the definition of a Ponzi scheme. Of course, if what Charles Ponzi did was written into law as being lawful, it wouldn’t meet the illegality portion of the definition either.

While a full collapse of a Ponzi scheme is almost always the end result of the process, the point where it collapses with the promoter still around is when that promoter is unable to return what he or she promised to the “investors”. Because it is a compulsory government entity, Social Security will always be taking a lot of money and paying “something” in benefits unless a majority of Congress has the gumption to call “Bravo Sierra” on the wealth-transfer scheme and pull the plug.

It matters not a whit that Social Security is a defined-benefit plan rather than a defined-contribution one. Actually, that’s not quite true; the fact that Social Security is a defined-benefit plan means that when it becomes unable to meet the payments promised, or when the terms are altered for those already in the system (I’ll be generous and say “heavily” invested in the system to cover only those who are at least 55 years old), it also meets the “inability to meet returns” definition of a Ponzi scheme regardless of whether it continues to pay benefits.

As current law stands, the only sources of funding for both the DI and OASI programs are the payroll taxes (supplemented this year by transfers from the general fund to replace the temporary cut in the payroll tax), the taxes on benefits (really, just a recapture of money that has the effect of reducing net benefits and net cost) and the “Trust Funds”. Once the “Trust Funds” run out of money, or the SSA is unable to monetize them, the net benefits paid out in a particular month are limited to whatever comes in via the payroll tax (or more-properly, what is projected to come in via the payroll tax, less any interest due the Treasury on that particular “float”) that month.

That’s where the primary deficits loom large. For 21 of the last 25 months, the OASI program needed additional funding from the monetization of the “Trust Fund” to fully-pay its scheduled benefits, while the DI program needed additional funding from the monetization of its “Trust Fund” for the last 28 months and all but 22 of the last 97 months since its latest (and probably last) dip into the red began in August 2003.

October 4, 2011

Communis…er, Occupy Wall Street goons release their “demands”

by @ 17:52. Filed under Politics - National.

Via Fred (no, I won’t give the proto-Commies the traffic), here’s their list of demands, along with a heaping of fisking:

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

Unless they’re trust-fund babies (with the emphasis on babies), they won’t exactly be able to afford the Starbucks and iPads that have sustained them anymore.

Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.

Because that’s worked out sooooooooo well for Canada, Great Britain, Cuba, North Korea,….

Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

I believe the Soviet Union tried that. The quality of both goods and medical services, quite frankly, sucked precisely because the factory worker and the doctor serving the narod were paid the same. I also believe that, the machinations of Mad Vladmir Putin notwithstanding, the Soviet Union is as dead as fried chicken.

Demand four: Free college education.

I’m surprised they didn’t say “free bongs”.

Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.

And exactly how many of them drove their Nissan Leafs and Trek bicycles to Lower Manhattan? This ought to be renamed, “Travel for me but not for thee.”

Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.

How convenient of the Communis….er, Occupy Wall Street crowd to put this right after the previous demand in their manifesto. Since there won’t be any transportation or energy, the second coming of the Works Progress Administration will be even less useful than the first.

Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America’s nuclear power plants.

Again, how are they going to recharge their Leafs and iPads without any fucking electricity? Only a couple of them will be as lucky as the Krazy Kims they want to emulate, though eventually most of them will end up in the other well-lit places, namely the prison camps.

Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

Translation – Kill The Man!

Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.

I note they’re not telling Castro and Krazy Kim to open up their borders.

Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.

Like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, where he always won “re-election” with 110% of the vote?

Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

“You fucked up. You trusted us with your money.”

Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

“And our children will be no better with debt.”

Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union

But, but, but I thought that equal-and-inflated wages for all meant that there would be no need for a union.

October 3, 2011

At least a 4-way dance for the GOP US Senate nomination

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

After the creation of an exploratory committee for former governor/HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson and the creation of a campaign committee by former Congressman Mark Neumann scared off former state Senator Ted Kanavas, Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Horicon) and state Senator Frank Lasee (R-DePere) have both formed exploratory committees. Assuming the exploratory committees all turn into campaign committees, it sets up a old-versus-“new” both in southeast Wisconsin and outstate.

Meanwhile, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Madison/DC investor Eric Hovde is looking at trying to duplicate Sen. Ron Johnson’s path. Considering both the Madison and real estate aspects (but mostly the Madison ones), I’d have to rank him closer to Terrence Wall than Johnson.

There is a reason why Thompson ally Brian Schimming is all-but-salivating over a crowded field – there is far less anti-Thompson sentiment outstate than there is anti-Neumann sentiment in southeast Wisconsin.

Monday Hot Read – Fran Tarkenton’s “What if the NFL Played by Teachers’ Rules?”

by @ 7:07. Filed under Education.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Fran Tarkenton fired one more touchdown over the heads of the teacher unionistas:

Imagine the National Football League in an alternate reality. Each player’s salary is based on how long he’s been in the league. It’s about tenure, not talent. The same scale is used for every player, no matter whether he’s an All-Pro quarterback or the last man on the roster. For every year a player’s been in this NFL, he gets a bump in pay. The only difference between Tom Brady and the worst player in the league is a few years of step increases. And if a player makes it through his third season, he can never be cut from the roster until he chooses to retire, except in the most extreme cases of misconduct.

Let’s face the truth about this alternate reality: The on-field product would steadily decline. Why bother playing harder or better and risk getting hurt?

No matter how much money was poured into the league, it wouldn’t get better. In fact, in many ways the disincentive to play harder or to try to stand out would be even stronger with more money.

Of course, a few wild-eyed reformers might suggest the whole system was broken and needed revamping to reward better results, but the players union would refuse to budge and then demonize the reform advocates: “They hate football. They hate the players. They hate the fans.” The only thing that might get done would be building bigger, more expensive stadiums and installing more state-of-the-art technology. But that just wouldn’t help.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, the NFL in this alternate reality is the real -life American public education system….

Not bad for an ex-Viking.

September 30, 2011

Mexico City – 2-year contracts are good for both cell phones and marriages

by @ 7:08. Filed under Miscellaneous.

I’m actually surprised that California isn’t the first one out of the gate with the latest effort to make marriage no more consequential than a cell-phone contract. From Reuters:

Mexico City lawmakers want to help newlyweds avoid the hassle of divorce by giving them an easy exit strategy: temporary marriage licenses.

Leftists in the city’s assembly — who have already riled conservatives by legalizing gay marriage — proposed a reform to the civil code this week that would allow couples to decide on the length of their commitment, opting out of a lifetime.

The minimum marriage contract would be for two years and could be renewed if the couple stays happy. The contracts would include provisions on how children and property would be handled if the couple splits.

Why 2 years? It’s because in Mexico City, the average marriage lasts as long as a cell-phone contract. There’s no word on what the early cancellation fee will be, or if it will be pro-rated if one makes it past the first year.

September 29, 2011

Researchers hate Eggs (or at least the runny kind)

by @ 21:13. Filed under Health.

(H/T – Hot Air Headlines)

The Daily Mail reports on a Harvard study that claims that eating as few as 3 eggs a week increases the risk for prostate cancer by 80%.

We’re all gonna die!!!!

Seriously, this came a few years after the British Heart Foundation dropped their recommendation to stop eating more than 3 eggs a week. It also comes immediately before a report from the NRE Institute that consuming a copious amount of well-cooked eggs actually improves your health.

In Abrahamson’s world, 1 > 4

by @ 11:26. Filed under Lawgivers-In-Black, Politics - Wisconsin.

(H/T – Kevin Binversie)

Wisconsin Supreme Court “Chief” Justice (only because she’s been around the longest) Shirley Abrahamson tried to seize total control of the Supreme Court Wednesday by declaring a majority of four justices not a quorum unless they’re meeting on a schedule set by her. Fortunately, the motion was tabled without a vote.

Justices Annette Ziegler and Patience Roggensack were far more “diplomatic” in their reactions to this power grab than I am (it helps that, unlike the two justices I don’t have to work with Abrahamson), but Roggensack said she was “blindsided” by it.

Kanavas out, Thompson sucking money back into donors’ wallets

by @ 8:31. Filed under Politics - National, Politics - Wisconsin.

Former state Senator Ted Kanavas announced he won’t be entering the race to be the GOP nominee for the soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat currently held by Herb “Nobody’s Senator” Kohl (who apparently decided owning an NBA team during a lockout that may well last the entire season before the election might be a political liability). I can say the decision is mildly disappointing, and the reason for the decision is more than mildly disappointing. Quoting from the linked press release (via WisPolitics):

It is evident that if former Governor Thompson enters the race, his entry would tie up many resources. Privately, many donors stated that they would refrain from supporting anyone out of respect for Thompson’s 45 year political legacy. Those factors ultimately led me to my decision.

News flash to those donors; the Democrats won’t reciprocate.

September 27, 2011

The opposite of PlaceboCare

by @ 19:30. Filed under Health Care Reform.

Those of you who have been paying attention to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI, and my Congressman) know the main parts of his ideas on health care. At the Hoover Institute today, he added a new twist – a full shift of the tax credits from the employer to the employees. You can read the speech or listen to it and a question-and-answer session…

I’ll give some highlights, along with the obligatory commentary:

Today, I will attempt to make the case for optimism. Specifically, I come bearing three pieces of good news.

The first piece of good news is this: The urgent need to repeal and replace the President’s health-care law, coupled with the urgent need to deal with the drivers of our debt, will present us with an unavoidable time for choosing, allowing us to confront health-care inflation head-on.

Ryan isn’t counting on the Supreme Court using the lack of severability in PlaceboCare to overturn the entirety of it by finding the individual insurance mandate unconstitutional, even though it is likely the Supreme Court will decide on that in the next 9 months (hmmm, what else in the health care field takes 9 months?). Instead, he’s not letting this crisis go to waste.

…And yet, across the federal landscape, choice and competition are undermined by poorly designed programs and tax policies.

In Medicare, the government reimburses all providers of care according to a one-size-fits-all formula, even if the quality of the care they provide is poor and the cost is high. This top-down delivery system exacerbates waste, because none of the primary stakeholders has a strong incentive to deliver the best-quality care for the lowest cost.

If you’re using Medicare, good luck finding a doctor because of this.

In Medicaid, a flawed federal-state matching formula is blowing out state budgets. There is no limit on the federal government’s matching contributions to state spending, so state governments spend most of their energy devising ways to maximize how much they can get from the federal government, rather than focusing on delivering high quality, cost-effective coverage for their most vulnerable citizens.

A prime example is former governor Jim “Craps” Doyle’s (WEAC/HoChunk-For Sale) increase in the hospital bed tax. It was sold as allowing Wisconsin to suck more money out of the federal teat.

Beyond these two programs, our current tax code provides additional fuel for runway health care inflation. Under current law, employer-sponsored health insurance plans are entirely exempt from taxation, regardless of how much an individual contributes to their policy.

This tilts the compensation scale toward benefits, which are tax-free, and away from higher wages, which are taxable. It also provides ways for high-income earners to artificially reduce their tax-able income by purchasing high-cost health coverage – which in turn can fuel the overuse of health services.

There’s countless examples of people taking and hangong onto jobs they don’t really want, or not taking jobs they’re suited for, just because of the presence of or lack of employer-sponsored health insurance. Elsewhere in the speech, Ryan pointed out the current scheme of insurance decouples the amount visibly paid to the proviers from the actual cost.

Why the POR Economy is not recovering

by @ 11:01. Filed under Economy Held Hostage, Politics - National.

(H/T – Monty)

This is a few months old, but this piece from Rob Arnott relayed by John Mauldin explains why we’re headed into a double-dip recession (all emphasis in the original):

Consider a simple thought experiment. Let’s suppose the government wants to dazzle us with 5% growth next quarter (equivalent to 20% annualized growth!). If they borrow an additional 5% of GDP in new additional debt and spend it immediately, this magnificent GDP growth is achieved! We would all see it as phony growth, sabotaging our national balance sheet—right? Maybe not. We are already borrowing and spending 2% to 3% each quarter, equivalent to 10% to 12% of GDP, and yet few observers have decried this as artificial GDP growth because we’re not accustomed to looking at the underlying GDP before deficit spending!

From this perspective, real GDP seems unreal, at best. GDP that stems from new debt—mainly deficit spending—is phony: it is debt-financed consumption, not prosperity. Isn’t GDP, after excluding net new debt obligations, a more relevant measure? Deficit spending is supposed to trigger growth in the remainder of the economy, net of deficit-financed spending, which we can call our “Structural GDP.” If Structural GDP fails to grow as a consequence of our deficits, then deficit spending has failed in its sole and singular purpose.

By this measure, the economy is no better off than we were in 1998. Indeed, our soverign debt problem is even worse than it appears. From the conclusion:

Even our calculation of the national debt burden (debt/GDP) needs rethinking. Is the family that overextends correct in measuring their debt burden relative to their income plus any new debt that they have accumulated in the past year? Isn’t it more meaningful to compute debt relative to Structural GDP, net of new borrowing?! Our National Debt, poised to cross 100% of GDP this fall, is set to reach 112% of Structural GDP at that same time, even without considering off-balance-sheet debt. Will Rogers put it best: “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”

September 11, 2011

9/11 Hot Read – Allahpundit remembers 9/11

by @ 7:27. Filed under History.

Editor’s note: 2 years ago, Allahpundit tweeted out his day 10 years ago. Back then, he lived in lower Manhattan, close to the World Trade Center, close enough that he heard the planes hit the twin towers. Once again, I’ll repost them because it still is as moving as when I saw them show up in my timeline live.

Eight years ago, I remember opening my eyes at 8:46 a.m. in my downtown Manhattan apartment because…
…I thought a truck had crashed in the street outside
I remember pacing my apartment for the next 15 minutes thinking, stupidly, that a gas line might have been hit in the North Tower…
…and then I heard another explosion. I hope no one ever hears anything like it.
All I can say to describe it is: Imagine the sound of thousands of Americans screaming on a city street
It was unbelievable, almost literally
I remember being on the sidewalk and there was an FBI agent saying he was cordoning off the street…
…and then, the next day, when I went back for my cats, they told me I might see bodies lying in front of my apartment building (I didn’t)
We held a memorial service in October for my cousin’s husband, who was “missing” but not really…
He worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. They found a piece of his ribcage in the rubble not too long afterwards.
This is the guy who conspired to murder him: http://is.gd/38h7y
Had a friend from the high school speech and debate team who disappeared from the 105th floor
Had another friend of a friend who worked on the 80th floor or so, married six weeks before the attack…
Speculation is that he was right in the plane’s path, and was killed instantly when it plowed through the building
Did a bit of legal work for a couple whose son worked in the upper floors. Was dating someone else up there at the time…
I was told that she managed to call her parents while they were trapped up there and that the call “was not good”
Never found out if it was cut off by the building collapsing or not
I remember opening my eyes at 8:46 a.m. thinking “I hope that was just a pothole.” Then I heard a guy outside my window say, “Oh shit”
Opened the window, looked to my left, saw huge smoke coming out of the WTC
Left at around 9:30, decided to walk uptown thinking that the buildings would never collapse and that…
…I’d be back in my apartment by the next night. I never went back. It was closed off until December.
I remember thinking when I was a few blocks away that the towers might collapse, and so I walked faster…
…although I sneered at myself later for thinking that might be true and for being a coward. Although not for long.
To this day, you can find photos of thousands of people congregated in the blocks surrounding the Towers, seemingly…
…waiting for them to fall that day
When I got to midtown, rumors were that Camp David and the Sears Tower had also been destroyed. I remember looking around…
…and thinking that we had to get out of Manhattan, as this might be some pretext to get us into the street and hit us with some germ
I callled my dad — and somehow miraculously got through — and told him I was alive, then headed for the 59th street bridge
To this day, the scariest memory is being on that bridge, looking at the Towers smoking in the distance,
and thinking maybe the plotters had wired the bridge too to explode beneath us while we were crossing it.
I remember talking to some guy on the bridge that we’d get revenge, but…
…you had to see the smoke coming from the Towers in the distance. It was like a volcano
I remember being down there two months later. There was a single piece of structure…
…maybe five stories tall of the lattice-work still standing. It looked like a limb of a corpse sticking up out of the ground.
They knocked it down soon after
At my office, which I had just joined, I was told that…
…some people had seen the jumpers diving out the windows to escape the flames that morning
There was a video online, posted maybe two years ago, shot from the hotel across the street,,,
…and it showed roughly 10-12 bodies flattened into panackes lying in the central plaza
Maybe it’s still online somewhere
You have to see it to understand, though. You get a sense of it from the Naudet brothers documentary hearing…
…the explosions as the bodies land in the plaza, but seeing it and hearing it are two different things
I remember after I got over the bridge into Queens, I heard a noise overheard…
…that I’d never heard before. It was an F-15, on patrol over New York. Very odd sound. A high-pitched wheeze.
I remember on Sept. 12, when I got on the train to go downtown and try to get my cats out of the apartment…
…the Village was utterly deserted. No one on the streets. Like “28 Days Later” if you’ve seen that
We made it to a checkpoint and the cop said go no further, until my mom intervened. Then he took pity…
…and agreed to let me downtown IF I agreed that any exposure to bodies lying in the streets was my own fault.
Didn’t see any bodies, but I did see soldiers, ATF, FBI, and so on. The ground was totally covered by white clay…
…which I knew was formed by WTC dust plus water from the FDNY. It look like a moonscape.
There was a firefighter at the intersection and I flagged him down and asked if I could borrow his flashlight, since…
…all buildings downtown had no power. He gave me a pen flashlight.
The doors to my building at Park Place were glass but had kicked in, presumably by the FDNY, to see if there were…
…survivors inside. When I got in there, all power was out. No elevators, no hall lights…
…I had to feel my way to the hall and make my way up to my apartment on the third floor by feeling my way there…
…When I got there, the cats were alive. There was WTC dust inside the apartment, but…
…for whatever reason, I had closed the windows before I left to walk uptown that day, so dust was minimal. I loaded them…
…into the carrier and took them back to Queens. That was the last I could get into the apartment until December 2001,…
…and then it was only to get in, take whatever belongings were salvageable (i.e. not computer), and get out. I lived…
in that apartment from 7/2001 to 9/2001, but given the diseases longtime residents have had…
…I’m lucky I decided to move
My only other significant memory is being in the lobby of the apartment building on 9/11…
…and trying to console some woman who lived there who said her father worked on the lower floors of the WTC. I assume…
…he made it out alive, but she was hysterical as of 9:30 that a.m. Who could blame her?
I do remember feeling embarrassed afterwards that…
…I initially thought the smoke coming out of the North Tower was due to a fire or something, but…
…it’s hard to explain the shock of realizing you’re living through a historical event while you’re living through it.
For months afterwards, I tried to tell people how I thought maybe the Towers…
…were going to be hit by six or seven or eight planes in succession. Which sounds nuts, but once you’re in the moment…
…and crazy shit is happening, you don’t know how crazy that script is about to get.
When I left at 9:30, I thought more planes were coming.
I left because I thought, “Well, if these planes hit the building the right way, it could fall and land on mine.”\
I remember getting to 57th Street and asking some dude, “What happened?”
And he said, “They collapsed” and I couldn’t believe both of them had gone down. Even after the planes hit…
…I remembered that the Empire State Building had taken a hit from a military plane during WWII and still stood tall
So it was never a serious possibility that the WTC would collapse. I assumed…
…that the FDNY would get up there, put out the fire, and the WTC would be upright but with gigantic holes in it
It took an hour for the first tower to go down, 90 minutes for the second.
Even now, despite the smoke, I’m convinced most of the people trapped at the top were alive…
…and waiting, somehow, for a rescue. The couple whose legal case I worked for told me that…
…their son and his GF contacted her father very shortly before the collapse. Which makes sense. As much smoke as there was…
…if you have a five-story hole in the wall to let air in to breathe, you’re going to linger on.
So for many people, the choice probably quickly became: Hang on, endure the smoke, or jump
If you listen to the 911 calls, which I advise you not to do, some of the chose “hang on”
Although needless to say, if you ever saw the Towers…
…you know how dire things must have been up there to make anyone think the better solution was “jump”
They were ENORMOUS.
Another weird memory: Shortly after I got my apartment in lower Manhattan, on Park Place…
…I remember taking my brother to see “The Others,” which had just opened.
And afterwards I remember taking him up to the rooftop of my building to admire the Towers. According to Wikipedia…
“The Others” opened on August 10, 2001, so this must have been within 10 days or so afterwards. Very eerie.
And I remember we also went to Morton’s and Borders right inside the WTC complex to celebrate my new job
That Borders was gutted, needless to say, on 9/11. You could see the frame of the building in the WTC lobby after the attack
I was reading magazines in there the week or two before
One of the weirdest feelings, which I’m sure everyone can share, is that I remember distinctly feeling…
…in the month or two before the attack that “important” news no longer existed. It was all inane bullshit about…
…shark attacks and Gary Condit and overaged pitchers in the Little League World Series. To this day…
…I try never to grumble about a slow news day because the alternative is horrifyingly worse
After the attack, maybe a month after, I remember going to see “Zoolander” in Times Square and…
…coming up out of the subway tunnel having the distinct fear that…
…the sky would light up and a mushroom cloud would appear instantly above my head in my lost moment of consciousness. No joke. In fact…
..I ended up going to bed around 6:30 p.m. for maybe three months after 9/11.
Even when I ended up working downtown for years after that, with a luxurious view of upper Manhattan from the top floors…
…I always feared looking out the window because I was paranoid that at that precise moment, the flash would go off…
…and that’d be the last thing I see. And in fact, for a moment in 2003 when the power went out city-wide,
…I did think that was what was happening. The wages of 9/11.
I leave you with this, my very favorite film about the WTC. If you’re a New Yorker, have a hanky handy. No. 3 is golden http://is.gd/38qsT
One more note: If you’ve never seen a photo of the smoke coming from the Trade Center after the collapse, find one.
Watching it from the 59th bridge, it looked like a volcano. There was so much smoke, it was indescribable. Just *erupting* from the wreckage

For the benefit of those who haven’t seen the photo AP was talking about, here’s one from the United States Coast Guard (hosted on Flickr):

September 7, 2011

Clueless – Milwaukee County Executive edition

by @ 10:18. Filed under Politics - Milwaukee County.

Charlie Sykes received a letter from County Board Supervisor Joe Sanfelippo on the dysfunctional budgeting process that is happening under County Executive Chris Abele:

Charlie:

I heard you talking about Abele on your show today and how he will say one thing and do another. There is another problem with his leadership at the county; he has none.

Everyday I get complaints from department heads that tell me they are getting no direction whatsoever from the County Executive or his staff. Last week I had a meeting with the leadership at the War Memorial. They stated that by now, they usually would have met with the Exec’s staff to go over line by line their budget requests for the next year. That is just standard operating procedure. Abele will be presenting his budget to the board on September 29th. He or anyone from his staff has yet to return a phone call let alone meet regarding the War Memorial budget request.

I have heard that there are department heads that have yet to meet him at all. …

One of the issues he spoke of during his campaign was fixing the problems at the Mental Health Hospital. I have met with his Chief of Staff twice to discuss ideas for reform and there seems to be no interest in doing anything.

There is a real vacuum of leadership right now at the county. Even the career staffers who disliked Walker with a passion said at least when Scott was there they had a clear direction to follow. That is lacking. His inexperience at running anything is showing through and the board is smelling blood in the water. They feel they can lead him around by the nose.

This is going to be an interesting budget season. Taxpayers beware!

Joe

I wonder if the voters in Milwaukee County realized they were electing Cher Horowitz back in April…

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

September 6, 2011

An Open Letter to National Conservative Groups from Wisconsin’s Conservative Bloggers

by @ 6:00. Filed under Politics - Wisconsin.

This morning, several bloggers released a letter to the heads of the Club for Growth and Senate Conservatives Fund asking them to reconsider their early endorsement of former Congressman Mark Neumann in the Republican primary for the US Senate seat being vacated by Herb Kohl:

To: Chris Chocola, Club for Growth
The Honorable Jim DeMint, junior Senator from the Great State of South Carolina

It is with great disappointment that we have learned of the efforts of some conservatives on the national level to try to dictate to Wisconsin conservatives their choice for the United States Senate seat being vacated by Democratic Senator Herb Kohl. This is a tremendous opportunity for Wisconsinites to elect a second conservative senator worthy of holding the office, and one that Wisconsin conservatives will take very seriously. This is not only a choice of ideology but of character, and it is our responsibility to bring Mark Neumann’s lack of character to your attention.

While we do not question Neumann’s past contributions to conservatism while he was a Congressman, his actions during last year’s campaign are completely unbecoming of a conservative candidate.

We respectfully request the national conservative groups and individuals to take a second look at their endorsement of Neumann. We ask that since many of them missed the opportunity to come to Wisconsin during the recent battles over collective bargaining for state employees and the recall elections, they come to Wisconsin now to talk to true Wisconsin conservatives to find out what they think of Neumann before attempting to foist their choice upon Wisconsin.

We do not write this under direction or duress from any candidate, potential candidate, or candidate’s campaign. We write this under the knowledge that as the primary for United State Senate commences in earnest, we will likely go our separate ways and support any number of candidates. That is our right as Americans.

If the past election in Wisconsin has shown national conservatives anything, it is to trust in the faith of Badger State conservative activists. We had the foresight to supply the movement with current leaders and rock stars like Janesville Congressman Paul Ryan, Ashland Congressman Sean Duffy, Green Bay Congressman Reid Ribble, Governor Scott Walker, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, and even Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.
That is just in the past two years, and we assure you, there are plenty more where they came from.

Thank you,

Owen Robinson
Blogger, Boots and Sabers, since 2003
West Bend, WI

Kevin Binversie
Blogger, Lakeshore Laments, since 2003
St. Francis, WI

James Wigderson,
Blogger, Wigderson Library & Pub, since 2005
Waukesha, WI

Steve Eggleston
Blogger, No Runny Eggs, since 2005
Oak Creek, WI

Patrick Dorwin
Blogger, Badger Blogger, since 2004
Milwaukee, WI

Tim Gray
Blogger, UseYourGrayMatter.com, since 2010
La Crosse, WI

Ben Froland
Blogger, BenFroland.com, since 2009
Neenah, WI

In my case, my beef with Neumann is strictly about the conduct of his gubernatorial campaign, and specifcally with respect to CFG and SCF, his repudiation of the First Amendment while campaigning outside the Democrat Party of Wisconsin convention in 2010. Meanwhile, my beef with CFG and SCF is their early endorsement, especially with the likelyhood of several other candidates besides Neumann and Thompson that would be deserving of at least a look by those groups.

September 5, 2011

APP Palmetto Freedom Forum liveblog

by @ 12:44. Filed under 2012 Presidential Contest.

This effort from American Principles Project, starting at 2 pm Central, promises to be a rather unique experience. They invited all the GOP candidates, both actual and potential, who had at least a 5% average in a recent version of RealClearPolitics’ average of polls to appear one at a time before Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and APP founder Robert George. Since the potential candidates who qualified, Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani, didn’t respond to the invite, and Texas governor Rick Perry had to go back to Texas last-minute to deal with the wildfires in his state, that means we’ll get Rep. Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rep. Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney.

The forum will be on both CNN and Townhall with the latter also carrying a post-forum show.

Do try to be on your best behavior this time around; I’ll try not to swear even when dealing with Paul. Besides, we’ve got a full-throated drunkblog of MSNBC’s Wednesday debate ready to go. The “old” liveblog method of often-paraphrased questions in italics, in-line answers in plain text and in-line comments in parentheses will apply for as long as I can keep up. As always, CoverItLive will be handling the hosting, which means that you shouldn’t need to refresh to get the latest.

September 4, 2011

Tech notes – September 2011 edition

by @ 14:00. Filed under The Blog.

There’s a couple of them:

– If you’re using Internet Explorer 9, you’ll notice the Twitter widgets are inoperative. That is a Twitter fuck-up; they changed something in the serving Javascript without checking to see if it worked in IE9. While they have the bug fixed as it relates to the actual Twitter service, they won’t be fixing the widgets until Monday at the earliest. Sorry about that; in the interim, you can follow Shoebox here and me here (or you could use another browser).

– For those blogs that still have the dead-10-months-ago Blogrolling.com blogrolls on them, some enterprising cybersquatter bought the domain and started forcing a page change to a spammish ad page through the Javascript that used to serve the blogrolls. If you still have one of those widgets on there, GET IT OFF YOUR BLOG!

Live-blogging schedule – Monday and Wednesday Presidential debates

by @ 12:55. Filed under 2012 Presidential Contest.

Due to scheduling conflicts, we won’t be bringing you Obama’s speech on Thursday. However, we do have two opportunities for you to jump on a live-blog this week:

  • Monday at 2 pm (Central), CNN and Townhall.com will have a rather unique debate/forum from South Carolina put on by the American Principles Project. Instead of reporters asking cattle-call questions, they’re going to have the APP founder, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Rep. Steve King (R-IA) grill those candidates who have gained some traction one at a time.
  • Wednesday at 7 pm, MSNBC will have what promises to be a train wreck, and an opportunity to drink heavily.

Stop on in for one or both. There may or may not be salty language on Monday, but I will guarantee salty language on Wednesday (known by TEMS chatizens as F-Bomb Wednesday).

September 1, 2011

New NRE Poll – What should NBC do with the NFL pregame and the Obama jobs speech

by @ 14:21. Filed under Media, NRE Polls, Politics - National, Sports.

In case you’ve been in a cave the last 24 hours, President Obama tried and failed to upstage a long-scheduled GOP Presidential debate by scheduling a speech before a joint session of Congress for 7 pm (all times Central as that’s where I am) September 7, which “just happened” to be the precise date and time said debate is to start over on MSNBC. After House Speaker John Boehner, citing logistical issues with House votes scheduled for 5:30 pm 9/7 and a claimed 3-hour requirement for a security sweep to “sanitize” the House chamber, suggested the following day, the White House jumped at that.

The new date of September 8, however, poses, at least potentially, a different conflict – one with the start of the NFL season, with the 13-time (and defending) World Champion Green Bay Packers hosting the New Orleans Saints. NBC, which is to carry the game starting at 7:30 pm, also has a 1-hour pregame scheduled for 6:30 pm. As of roughly a half-hour ago, CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller reported that, while the start time of the speech had not been finalized, it would be done before the 7:30 pm kickoff. Earlier reports had widely speculated that the speech would begin at 6:30 pm.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, before it became clear (or at least as clear as the White House gets) that the speech would be done before kickoff, that Steve Wexler, vice president of radio and TV operations for Journal Broadcast Group, had Milwaukee’s NBC affiliate, WTMJ-TV, request that, in the event there was a conflict between the game itself and the speech, NBC make both feeds available to the NBC affiliates and that they be allowed to choose which feed to air where, and that WTMJ, if given the choice, would air the game on the main channel and the debate on a digital subchannel.

There hasn’t been any discussion regarding a potential pre-game conflict, which opens up the door for an NRE Poll. Do note that I am NOT asking what you would rather watch, or even what feed you would like seen on what part of the broadcast spectrum controlled by your local NBC affiliate. With that in mind, have at it.

What should NBC do with the NFL opener pre-game and the Obama jobs speech?

Up to 1 answer(s) was/were allowed

  • Bin the speech, tell the White House that they're just one network of many and that their cable news channel MSNBC is covering it anyway. (63%, 38 Vote(s))
  • Offer both to the local affiliates, let all of them choose what to air on what channel. (33%, 20 Vote(s))
  • Bin the pre-game and tell the NFL that they're just not that important. (3%, 2 Vote(s))
  • Offer both to the local affiliates, let the affiliates in the Packers and Saints markets choose what to air on what channel, force the rest to air the speech on the main channel. (0%, 0 Vote(s))

Total Voters: 60

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Thursday Fun Read – WSJ’s “How to Measure a Storm’s Fury One Breakfast at a Time”

by @ 9:03. Filed under Business, Weather.

The Wall Street Journal has your post-Irene feel-good story of the day – how the Waffle House recovers so quickly from a disaster like a hurricane. In fact, FEMA director Craig Fugate uses Waffle House as a gauge on how bad a disaster is.

I’ll give you how the Weldon, North Carolina Waffle House dealt with Irene as a tease to get you over to WSJ.com to read the entire thing:

The company began tracking Irene 10 days ago, moving ice and eggs to staging sites outside the potential damage zone.

On Friday, the company’s mobile command center—an RV named EM-50 after Bill Murray’s urban-assault vehicle in the 1981 movie “Stripes”—headed north from the Norcross, Ga., headquarters.

Power went off at the Waffle House just off Interstate 95 in Weldon on Saturday evening as Irene churned through. The restaurant kept serving until it got too dark for the grill cook to see when the food was cooked, then it shut down.

It reopened the next day at dawn. The overhead lights and walk-in freezer weren’t working, but the gas grill was. The cooks boiled water on the grill, then poured it through the coffee machine, over beans ground before the power went out. The district manager, Chris Barnes, handed employees copies of an emergency grill-only menu. The fare included ham-and-egg sandwiches for $3.15 and quarter-pound hamburgers for $2.70. Servers nudged customers to order sausage instead of bacon, because four sausage patties fit on the grill for every two slices of bacon.

By 9 a.m., cars were lining up to get into the parking lot. At 10 a.m., the power came back on, the ceramic waffle irons were plugged in and waffles were added to the menu.

August 30, 2011

Tax the rich? They’re already becoming extinct.

by @ 22:47. Filed under Economy Held Hostage, Taxes.

(H/T – Dad29)

Buried in an early-August Reuters story on the preliminary 2009 Statistics of Income tables produced by the Internal Revenue Service is this little “gem”:

The number of Americans reporting incomes of $10 million or more also plunged even more than the steep drop in income for the population as a whole.

Just 8,274 taxpayers reported income of $10 million or more in 2009, down 55 percent from 18,394 in 2007. Compared with 2007, total real income of these top earners in 2009 fell 58.6 percent to $240.1 billion, but average income slipped just 8.1 percent to $29 million.

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