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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 the 'Miscellaneous' Category

October 7, 2005

Welcome Spotted Horse readers

by @ 21:53. Filed under Miscellaneous.

It’s still a bit odd being on this side of things. Now, about that pizza, as long as there isn’t anchovies,…. ;-)

And yes, GBfan is the BlogFather.

More Miers

by @ 17:29. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Lance Burri over at the Badger Blog Alliance suggested that everybody read Thomas Sowell’s take on who is to “blame” for the Miers nomination. It is a wonderfully-written and -reasoned piece, but I can’t reach the same conclusions as Thomas Sowell.

Chief Justice Roberts was originally a replacement for Justice O’Connor, and his confirmation was already considered a foregone conclusion before Chief Justice Rehnquist died and Roberts’ nomination was changed to the Rehnquist/Chief Justice slots. While the Roberts-for-O’Connor vote probably wouldn’t have been 78-22, where did 22 Dems, 1 “independent”, and 6 RINOs go in the week between his confirmation and Harriet Miers’ nomination so that we couldn’t have another Roberts’-like nominee, much less attempt to push the envelope with a more-conservative one?

Sowell does answer where the ‘Rat support went; they’re backed into a corner after being beaten down so completely. However, where did the 6 RINOs go? Did not the 7 RINOs on the “Gang of 14” say that if a judicial filibuster was used and it wasn’t an “extraordinary circumstance”, that they would not automatically vote against a rule change to take that off the table? It would seem to me that a filibuster of a Roberts-like nominee for O’Connor’s seat, after they were willing to accept Roberts himself for O’Connor, would not be an “extraordinary circumstance”, but then I have a vested interest in seeing a more judicially-conservative Supreme Court.

Taking Sowell’s suggestion that the administration be held for its shortcomings, I can and will fault President Bush for campaigning for Sen. Specter in the Pennsylvania primary, ignoring the tradition of remaining neutral in primaries and knowing full well that Specter would stab him in the back like he did. I don’t automatically buy the line that Pat Toomey couldn’t have won the general election. The infamous “gang of 14”, which was left unmentioned by Sowell and is more responsible for this than anything else, is the fault of Senate Majority “leader” Bill Frist, who is following in the same general track as former Senate Pubbie “leader” Trent “Cave-A-“Lott. Again, I ask where the support that was there for the Roberts-for-O’Connor nomination went.

To me, it’s hard to imagine Miers being better than O’Connor on almost any issue. Her religious background is indeed encouraging, but I seem to recall a former Democratic failure of a President, Jimmy Carter being an evangelical Christian. As for how she would rule on individual cases, the larger record is rather contradictory.

On the abortion issue, the only one where there doesn’t seem to be a contradictory record, she does indeed seem to be a major improvement over O’Connor. Even there, that effect is limited. While states will likely finally be able to start regulating late-term (specifically, partial-birth) abortions as Roe v Wade allegedly allows them to do (and, if the polls are to be believed, the vast majority of Americans want), there still is a majority that supports the underpinnings of both Roe and the newer Casey.

Refinery bill passes House

by @ 15:54. Filed under Miscellaneous.

FoxNews reports that a House bill designed to make it easier to build new refineries (no new refineries have been built since the 1970s, though capacity at existing refineries has gone up to barely keep up with demand) made it out of the House 212-210 on an effective-party-line vote after House Republican leadership held the vote open more than an extra half-hour to try to get it passed. It notes that 2 Pubbies finally switched to give the vote passage, while the few Dems that had “aye” votes all went to the party line. I don’t know the exact order of vote-switching, but the ‘Rats switched first.

The final vote tally notes the following:

  • Dems/Socialists voting aye – NONE
  • Pubbies voting no – Boehlert (NY), Bradley (NH(, Castle (DE), Fitzpatrick (PA), Johnson (IL), Jones (NC), LaHood (IL), Leach (IA), LoBiondo (NJ), Saxton (NJ), Shays (CT), Smith (NJ), Weldon (PA)
  • Dems/Socialists not voting – Boswell (IA), Delahunt (MA), Hastings (FL), Neal (MA), Olver (MA), Payne (NJ)

    • Pubbies not voting – Beauprez (C0), Deal (GA), Norwood (GA), Paul (TX), Royce (CA), Schwarz (MI)

Guess all the House ‘Rats (at least those that bothered to show up to vote) and the Dirty Bakers’ Dozen RINOs like the idea of any little thing causing gas prices to go over $3/gallon. We’ve all seen what happens when you take out a couple refineries when they’re all running at capacity – price spikes, fuel shortages, calls for investigations into price gouging and fuel shortages. Yet when something constructive is suggested, many of the same politicians that bleat, “Big Oil’s gouging us!” turn right around and reject whatever is proposed to limit this cycle.

Sickening.

October 6, 2005

Doyle Anti-Freeze; a quick roundup

by @ 20:26. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Back when Gov. Jim “Craps” Doyle worked his veto pen to give us peons in Wisconsin a 2-year “freeze” (out of a 3-year freeze put in the budget by Legislative Republicans), he said, “The result of the freeze that I will sign will be that the average property tax on the average home will not go up at all next year, and will actually go down $5" in December 2006. Here it is, October, and as the temperature has dropped since July, Charlie Sykes points out a physical anomaly; the Doyle tax “freeze” has begun to melt even as the temperature is dropping. The latest news, included in the web posting of Charlie’s CNI Newspapers column, is that Madison will be able to increase the property tax by more than 7% (I haven’t seen any news on budget action out of that town yet).

Bloggers such as Owen of Boots and Sabers, Kevin over at Lakeshore Laments, and James Wigderson over at Wigderson’s Library & Pub have chronicled a 10% tax-and-fee levy increase in the city of Milwaukee, a $14 increase in the Dane County portion of the property tax bill for the average home there, a 4.68% increase in the Waukesha County levy (or a $10 increase on the average home there), and a likely budget-buster in the city of Sheboygan.

Sure looks like a melted Sno-Cone to me. To his benefit, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker has once again proposed a 0% increase in the tax levy. Of course, since he’s one of the two major Republican candidates for governor, the liberal-dominated County Board will likely follow their marching orders, stuff the budget full of pork, and like last year, override enough of Walker’s vetoes to make it an increase.

Freeh rips Clinton – Film on Sunday

by @ 14:25. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Matt Drudge has some juicy details on an upcoming “60 Minutes” interview (coming up this Sunday after NFL on CBS football) with former FBI Directer Louis Freeh. Freeh, plugging his upcoming book, My FBI : Bringing down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror, gave interviewer Mike Wallace 4 tidbits on his and the FBI’s dealings with former President Bill Clinton:

  • Freeh refused a White House pass that would have allowed him to enter the building without signing in, wanting every visit to be “official”.
  • Clinton refused to ask Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to allow the FBI to question suspects in the Khobar Towers bombings that the Saudis had captured, instead asking for a donation to the Clinton Presidential Library.
  • There’s a rather unsavory detail from the Lewinsky matter I won’t go into here.
  • Freeh ended up bound and determined to not let Clinton name another FBI director.

Looks like I found some new reading material, and I’ll be watching CBS for something other than football for the first time in ages.

Net war – update

by @ 12:36. Filed under Miscellaneous.

It appears that RoadRunner forged a back-door around the severed Level3/Cogent peer to make the Drudge Report available again. One major site back up, many to go.

Update – as of 8:30, RoadRunner has lifted its advisory of problems connecting to sites dependent on Cogent.

I didn’t break it; honest!

by @ 12:13. Filed under Miscellaneous.

First, there was the Level3/Cogent spat that blocked off sites like the Drudge Report. Then, BlogSpot/Blogger stayed down a bit longer than planned for maintenance. Now, HaloScan, one of the most-popular commenting systems, is nowhere to be found, at least for me.

What’s next in the steps to mass hysteria? Dogs and cats living together?

Update – HaloScan’s back

October 5, 2005

Net war

by @ 22:06. Filed under Miscellaneous.

For a while, I thought I broke BlogSpot, but at least that was just planned maintenance. On a more-serious note, CNET is reporting that Level 3 Communications has cut off its direct “peering” connections to Cogent Communications. It seems Level 3 wants payment from Cogent for the “privilege” to directly connect (“peer”) to it, while Cogent feels it’s large enough to continue the common courtesy for like-sized networks to have those peer connections. They couldn’t agree, so Level 3 shut off those connections to Cogent.

Bottom line; if your ISP has chosen sides, there’s a slew of websites you can’t get to until either Level 3 and Cogent reach an agreement or your ISP decides to “hard-wire” a back-door. For example, I as a RoadRunner customer can’t get to the Drudge Report because RoadRunner depended on Level 3’s “peering” to connect to the Cogent network.

Unnngh! My first typo (at least the first one I noticed). It’s fixed.
Update #2; where’s the blanking SpellCheck? :-)

Harriet the mushroom

by @ 10:59. Filed under Miscellaneous.

I want to believe that Harriet Miers is a judicial conservative. I want to believe the President Bush can break the cycle of Republican Presidents nominating conservatives only half the time. However, we have essentially a blank slate for a nominee; one with no judicial experience (not necessarily a disqualifying or even bad item), no apparent writings on Constitutional law to help discern a likely judicial philosophy, a thin, contradictory public record, and as of Tuesday night, only words repeated from Monday that say that she is a judicial conservative. For every item that would indicate that she has conservative leanings (her opposition to efforts to repeal of the Texas sodomy law that was recently voided by the Supreme Court in 1989-from Time, support from Dr. James Dobson), there is one that suggests otherwise (her support for full gay rights in that same questionaire, Senate Democrat leader Harry Reid’s support of her).

At this point, her nomination resembles a mushroom. It looks a lot like one that is edible, but there are some markings that make it look like a poisonous ‘shroom. If you like mushrooms, there’s three things you can do:

  1. You can ignore those markings, eat the mushroom like it was something you remember as edible, and hope you don’t get poisoned.
  2. You can throw away that mushroom, believing it to be poison and maybe miss out on a good morsel.
  3. You can study it more closely, identify it, and act accordingly.

The White House and other Miers supporters, like Texas Senator John Cornyn in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, are continuing to tell us to just blindly trust that she is a judicial conservative. Sen. Cornyn does succeed in making her, in another contest, er, context, Miss Congeniality, and in justifying most of the side issues, but all that does is polish up the mushroom. He does also promise that at some point, we’ll have evidence of her judicial philosophy. With the Senate’s track record of choosing, depending on whether a Dem Senate is facing a Pubbie President or not, politics or congeniality over a verification of a judicial philosophy, we’re likely going to find out whether the “instant proclamations” of judicial conservatism, not exactly backed up by anything, are accurate or not. Given that most “stealth” nominees turn out to be something less than judicial conservatives, I can only pray that we don’t get judicial food poisoning.

Check, 1, 2…

by @ 8:30. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Check.

Keyboard’s hot.

Welcome to No Runny Eggs. I’m your humble short-order cook, pigskin prognosticator, political pundit, mumbling edit and all-around quiet guy, steveegg. Don’t mind the mess; I got this thing nice and cheap (namely, free), and since I got invited over to The Wisconsin Sports Bar, I figured I may as well have a place to hang my hat instead of just mumbling about in various blogs and Free Republic.

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