There has been a slight lack of blogs from the southwest part of the Badger State on the roll. Fortunately, Tim Gray has rectified that with Use Your Gray Matter.
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.
October 25, 2010
Pizza Party for Leah Vukmir – tomorrow
If, for some odd reason, you haven’t already received the invite, Leah Vukmir, who is running against Jim Sullivan for the 5th Senate seat, invites you to Mama’s Italian Cuisine, 7718 W. Burleigh in Milwaukee, for a pizza party tomorrow evening starting at 5:30 pm. There is no charge for the event, but if you want to bring along your checkbook and haven’t already maxed out on your donation limits, her campaign would be happy to take some more money.
Zucker hits Senator Ma’am hard
Shoebox highlighted Senator Barbara Boxer’s (D-CA) Achilles heel (namely, the inability of dopers to concentrate for very long) yesterday, so I thought I’d bring in David Zucker to deliver the hard-working coup de grâce.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixiYZ9DPk8o[/youtube]
It’s time to call her Ma’am again.
October 24, 2010
Boxer’s Achilles Heel?
The race between Barbara “Maam” Boxer and Carly Fiorina is one the key Senate “toss up” races. With a couple of exceptions, the polls over the past couple of weekshave shown “Maam” up by a couple of points but with Fiorina within the margin of error. While the Senate race is the one that has the most national visibility, it’s possible that a separate vote by Californians is the one that will ultimately determine who controls the Senate.
One of California’s legendary Propositions is on the ballot a week from Tuesday. Proposition 19 would allow the legal growing of up to 25 sq. ft. of marijuana. It would also make it legal to posses up to one ounce of marijuana. In a poll released last Tuesday, SurveryUSAfound an interesting correlation between those supporting Proposition 19 and those supporting Barbara “Maam” Boxer. According to SurveyUSA, there is a strong correlation between those supporting the legalization of marijuana and those supporting Maam. I know, who’d of thunk it?
There is an old adage that says that a person’s greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. This adage may be sage for Maam Boxer. While Boxer has strong support from those supporting Proposition 19 and Proposition 19 had originally had strong support, that support looks to be waning as election day draws near.
In its report, SurveyUSA shows that support for Proposition 19 may have reached its apex with “no” reported as moving to 44%. While I generally respect SurveyUSA’s polling, they may be a ways off on this issue. Numerous polls, including this recent one reported by the LA Times, have “No” polling dramatically higher than 44%. The LA Times poll has “No” at 51% and growing. Worse, when the poll details are reviewed, supporters of Proposition 19 come from younger voters who are not expected to make up nearly the voting population of 2010 that they made up in 2008.
Maam Boxer’s ability to return to Washington and bristle against military personnel appears to be largely tied to the energy of young weed smokers. My observation has been that smoking weed doesn’t tend to increase an individual’s motivation. In fact, I typically see a definite laxness amongst potheads.
If I were Maam Boxer, I don’t know that I’d be sleeping very well these days. Even though the potheads who will likely determine her future, probably are. Maybe they’ll over sleep next Tuesday!
October 23, 2010
Nancy Pelosi Has Just Been Fired!
I’ve been waiting for this moment for several weeks.
Real Clear Politics keeps tabs on polls of races across the country. they accumulate the poll results and publish average results for each of the races. The “average” results help to keep either party from hanging hope on one or two outlier polls, avoiding reality. Upon completing the averages for individual polls, RCP puts races into one of seven categories ranging from safe Democrat to safe Republican. They also have some number of races that are within the margin of error and thus listed as “toss ups”.
For the past several weeks RCP has shown enough races in the Democrat categories that when added to the toss ups, there was a number that still had the potential to outweigh the anticipated Republican seats. However, with this morning’s updates, that is no longer the case.
As of this morning, RCP now has 178 seats in the Democrat category, 220 in the Republican category and 37 in toss ups. As of this morning, according to RCP, there is no way, even if they win all of the toss ups, that the Democrats can retain the House. This is all VERY good news for Republicans!
As if the above wasn’t bad enough, RCP has even worse news for Democrats. In the past 7 days, RCP has changed the category of 27 House races. Of those races, all but 2 have moved the direction of Republicans! Also in those 27 races are 4 races that have been moved from Likely to just Leans Democrat. Included in this last number is MN8 which is the district of Jim Oberstar a life long fixture of the House and a poster child for all a requirement for term limits.
As recent as yesterday, Democrat leadership had continued to spout irrational nonsense about Nancy Pelosi being speaker again next year. To any thinking individual, these statements have been obviously wrong for some time and make the speaker appear ignorant or of the belief that the listener is. Nancy Pelosi herself has been telling people that she would retain the House although recently, she had been building a stepping off point by intimating that she wouldn’t run for Speaker again even if the Dems retained the House.
With today’s news, we are happily saving Pelosi from the angst of deciding whether to run again or not. As of this morning, we can all say to Nancy Pelosi:
“You are the weakest link. Goodbye!”
October 22, 2010
Senate debate liveblog – last call
Republican Senate nominee Ron Johnson and Democrat Senator Russ Feingold will be appearing before Mike Gousha and a statewide townhall audience tonight for their last debate. The fun begins at 6:30 pm, and if you’re not in Wisconsin, you can head to wisn.com, the host of tonight’s debate, to watch. Meanwhile, saddle up to the bar, pour yourself a cold one, and come on in for another semi-drunkblog (how much I drink depends on how far Feingold goes off the rails). Do be advised that the language may become salty.
Who Does Harry Reid Think He Is?
Barack Obama?
October 19, 2010
October 16, 2010
Poster teacher for the “teacher” bailout losing her job…again
(H/T – Greg Pollowitz via his Twitter stream)
The (Toledo) Blade reports on the sad case of teach…er, Obama prop Amanda VanNess. VanNess, who was notified she would be laid off from her Toledo Public Schools teaching job when Obama came calling to her union, was invited by her union to DC to be present when Obama signed the “teacher” bailout bill.
She subsequently got another job with TPS as a permanent substitute teacher, not because of the $7.6 million TPS got from the $26 billion “teacher” bailout, but because that spot had unexpectedly opened up. Now, she’s about to lose that job because of continued collapsing employment.
That $7.6 million? It’s likely going to be used to create an “in-government” crossing guard corps to replace a contracted private company and rehire government bus drivers laid off to deal with TPS’ massive deficit.
October 15, 2010
Weekend Hot Read – Iowahawk’s “BELTWAY ADVENTURE”
Iowahawk’s latest missive brings back memories…
WELCOME TO ADVENTURE! WOULD YOU LIKE INSTRUCTIONS?
>YES
YOU ARE SOMEWHERE IN BELTWAY FOREST, WHERE SOME HAVE FOUND TREASURES OF GOLD ALTHOUGH SOME HAVE ENTERED AND NEVER BEEN SEEN AGAIN. MAGIC IS SAID TO WORK IN THE FOREST. I WILL BE YOUR EYES AND HANDS. DIRECT ME WITH SIMPLE COMMANDS.
YOU ARE IN AN OVAL OFFICE. THERE IS SNOW OUTSIDE. YOU ARE BEHIND A DESK. ON DESK THERE IS A BUST OF CHURCHILL.
YOU HAVE A CONGRESS.
YOU HAVE A SENATE.
YOU HAVE A MEDIA.
YOU HAVE A TELEPROMPTER.
YOU HAVE A MILITARY.
YOU HAVE A BIG JET.
YOU HAVE $3 TRILLION OF GOLD.
YOU HAVE 82% APPROVAL HEALTH.
THERE IS 7.2% UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE FOREST.
YOU HAVE A RACE CARD.
YOU HAVE INAUGURAL PARTY LEFTOVERS.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
To continue, please press play.
Here’s another name for you, Barrett – Kevin Clancy
Former ACORN worker Kevin Clancy pled guilty to a single charge of Falsely Procuring Voter Registration as a Party to a Crime today. Clancy was accused of submitting multiple voter registration applications for the same individuals, and also was part of a scheme in which he and other Special Registration Deputies registered each other to vote multiple times in order to meet voter registration quotas imposed by ACORN.
Clancy is the 12th person to be convicted by the Election Fraud Task Force for electoin fraud, created by the Wisconsin Attorney General’s and Milwaukee County District Attorney’s offices.
Wisconsin gubernatorial debate drunkblog, round 2
Tonight, it’s Mike Gousha’s turn with Scott Walker and Tom Barrett, in a 90-minute “townhall-style” debate hosted by WISN-TV starting at 6:30 pm. This one won’t be covered by C-SPAN, so if your local TV stations aren’t covering it, you’ll have to catch the stream on wisn.com.
This time, I WILL be here, so make sure you get a couple extra beverages, and come on back at 6:30.
We’re number 43 (again)
Forbes magazine came out with its 5th annual “Best States for Business” ranking, and for the fourth straight year, Wisconsin is in the bottom 10. Even the “improvement” from 48th last year to 43rd this year, which matches where Wisconsin ranked in 2008, is not exactly good news.
Since the story doesn’t mention Wisconsin directly, we have to draw conclusions from the somewhat-limited tables. The business cost rank, which measures the costs of labor, energy, and taxes, remained unchanged from 35th last year among the 50 states, which continues to be the worst position Wisconsin has been in that metric. The labor supply rank, which measures educational attainment, net migration and population growth, likewise remained unchanged at 36th. The regulatory environment rank, which includes not only regulatory and tort climate, but incentives, transportation and bond rating, somehow improved a spot to 36th this year. The quality of life ranking, a measure of schools, health, crime, cost of living and poverty rates, likewise improved a spot, from 11th to 10th.
The big “improvement” was the economic climate rank, which measures job, income and gross state product growth as well as unemployment and presence of big companies. That rose from 41st to 35th despite the gross state product declining from $198 billion to $196 billion, mostly on fact the recession hit Wisconsin earlier and harder than most other states. The August 2009 non-adjusted unemployment rate was 8.6% in Wisconsin and 9.6% nationwide, while the August 2010 non-adjusted unemployment rate was 7.7% in Wisconsin and 9.5% nationwide.
However, even that bit of news is not exactly rosy. On the current trajectory, Wisconsin’s growth prospects rating, a projection of job, income and gross state product growth as well as business openings/closings and venture capital investments, fell from 45th to 47th, its worst rating in the 5-year history.
Translation – If you want to have Wisconsin once again be among the 5 worst states for business, keep the Democrats in power. If you want a shot of improving Wisconsin’s business climate, give the Republicans a chance.
No Soup For You!
In case any of you are still wondering whether the current administration had the intellectual strength to handle the current economic challenges:
No Soup for you:
Social Security to announce no COLA for 2011
Oh, don’t get me wrong, COLAs are what they are and if zero, well, that’s what it is. It does however, seem a bit ironic that seniors who will be getting no COLA will also be getting the “benefit” of Placebocare which will actually increase their health care costs.
Because we’re still spending like drunken sailors:
Government to report on $1 trillion-plus deficit
The economic acts of the Obama administration continue to play out as if they were planned by the, out of touch with reality, Dr. Evil.
I wonder if Obama has found anyone to glue lasers to the shark’s heads yet?
US Economy held hostage….18 more days!
October 13, 2010
Presstitute follies – The Chicago Way
Dana Loesch put up some video of WLS-TV’s Charles Thomas and WBBM-TV’s Jay Levine aggressively protecting former White House Chief of Staff and Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel from the questions of independent journalist William Kelly. Levine went so far as to threaten to “deck” Kelly.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sce0TLA5UYE[/youtube]
Just as a reminder, both WBBM-TV and WLS-TV are owned by their networks, CBS and ABC respectively.
October 12, 2010
October Drinking Right – Half-hour warning
This is the Emergency Blogging System. It has been activated because Steve is about to head to Papa’s Social Club, 7718 W Burleigh in Milwaukee, for the October edition of Drinking Right. He has it on good authority Republican state treasurer nominee Kurt Schuller will be there.
Your official news, information, and instructions are to get to Papa’s somewhere around 7. This concludes this posting of the Emergency Blogging System.
October 10, 2010
Recommended Reading (10/10/10)
Here are, in my view, interesting, noteworthy columns and articles from the past week that I highly recommend (You will note that on occasion, I do not endorse the opinions of the author and may point that out. Despite my disagreements, I still feel the piece is worth a read).
Democrat candidates play down party
“One New York Democrat proclaims that he proudly opposed the federal government’s health care overhaul plan. Another one pledges, in the finest Tea Party spirit, to oppose any future financial bailouts. Still another has rolled out three Republicans in three separate commercials, all vouching for his credentials. But there is one word you will not hear mentioned in any of these campaign advertisements: Democrat. ”
“Some companies have a policy that once someone is fired, they aren’t allowed back on the premises out of fear they might do further damage to the company. It’s too bad Congress doesn’t have the same policy. Because before they’re replaced in January, all of the Democrats who are put out of a job in November will be able to come back and rob the nation blind.”
“One might think the resurgence of black Republicans, coming as it does at a time when a black Democrat is president, would rate more than a feature story or two in the national media. But that would conflict with the liberal meme that Republicans are racist.
Many liberals also say Republicans are anti-immigrant, even though Hispanic Republicans are poised to win a Senate seat in Florida (Marco Rubio) and gubernatorial races in New Mexico (Susana Martinez) and Nevada (Brian Sandoval).”
A letter from a Republican to Hispanics
“First, a message to those of you here illegally: You may be very surprised to hear this, but in your position, millions of Americans, including me, would have done what you did.”
Regulatory tsunami hurts job growth
“Regulations coming out of Washington, D.C., are impeding job growth and moving the United States away ‘from a government of the people to a government of the regulators,’ the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says.”
Five Societal Trends That Signal Our Nation’s Decline
“Each of these five trends taken separately could be viewed as a serious problem but not necessarily a signal of national decline. However, when these problems are considered collectively with their cause and effect and interrelationships, it becomes apparent why we are facing a society-transforming tsunami that our nation as a free market democracy is nearly powerless to stop — no matter how many millions of dollars our government throws at these problems.”
“The Supreme Court is now hearing the Snyder-Phelps case and the outcome is important for all Americans. With the rise of the internet, cyber-bullying and threatening behavior has become a plague upon the land. Kids are committing suicide because they are humiliated on the net and anyone can be targeted by sick individuals. Inflicting emotional distress on another human being is just a mouse click away.”
Shocking: Bigoted White Tea Party Woman Beats Petite Black Female Reporter
“I’m sorry, I got that wrong. Stupid me. I’m never going to make it in this business. It was actually a big black liberal woman who whaled on a petite white conservative female reporter last weekend.
Whew, thank God I corrected myself because we all know that if a hulking honky Tea Party mama with dragon nails had smacked down a svelte progressive black female reporter (and on film, no less) it would have caused a media firestorm.”
October 8, 2010
Wisconsin Senate race drunkblog, round 1
Since I have some family matters to attend to, I may or may not be back in time to catch the start of the debate at 8 pm Central. Fortunately, Shoebox will be staying up late to kick things off in case I’m not in.
Here in Milwaukee, there’s three choices for watching – Channel 4, Channel 10, and C-SPAN; in other parts of the state, it should be on one of the PBS stations as well as a local affiliate (likely the same one that carried the first gubernatorial debate), and for the national audience, C-SPAN will be covering it.
What is the cost of doing nothing* for Social Security?
* Nothing, other than combining the Old-Age and Survivors’ Insurance and Disability Insurance plans, that is.
The House Budget Republicans calculated what will happen to the Social Security benefits of those near retirement if the Social Security Trustees’ 2010 intermediate case is right and the combined OASDI “Trust Funds” are exhausted in 2037. At that point, the payroll taxes will pay for just 78% of scheduled benefits. They included a handy table of the cuts to the benefits of those who are now between 55 and 62 years old:
Click for the full-size pic
Of course, that assumes that Social Security does make it to 2037. In order for that to happen, not only does the assumption have to be right when recent assumptions have proven to be exceptionally rosy, but somewhere around $8 trillion in nominal dollars will need to be found to monetize the “Trust Funds”. There’s not so much as $0.01 available in cash to do that, so that represents an addition to the publicly-held debt, and $5.5 trillion of that represents future additions to the total debt (the $2.5 trillion in the “Trust Funds” now is part of the total debt, but not the public debt).
Employment estimate divergence, private enterprise versus government edition
On Wednesday, ADP said that seasonally-adjusted private-sector employment dropped by 39,000 in September, down to 106,949,000. Yednesday, Gallup asserted that their measure of non-seasonally-adjusted unemployment went up from 9.3% at the end of August (itself up from 9.1% in the middle of August) to 9.4% in the middle of September and 10.1% at the end of September. Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said seasonally-adjusted private-sector employment rose by 64,000 to 107,970,000, and that the non-seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate dropped from 9.5% in August to 9.2% in September.
One of these things is not like the others.
October 7, 2010
Clinton lawgiver-in-black – PlaceboCare, Communism mandated by the Constitution
(H/Ts – Allahpundit and Philip Klein)
Lawgiver-In-Black George Steeh, Michigan Eastern District judge appointed by Bill Clinton, ruled that any and every Congressional regulation of any economic decision that just might affect an aspect of interstate commerce that Congress decides to regulate is “Constitutional” under the Commerce Clause. Yes, you read that right – if Congress were so inclined, it can order you to buy a new Government Motors vehicle (and even tell you precisely which vehicle and which options) every three years.
FUCK THEM!
Hope and Change
In just the past week, the following articles have surfaced:
McDonald’s May Drop Health Plan
3M Eliminates Medicare-Eligible Coverage Beginning in 2013
Gee, Thanks, Mr. President
21,000 Iowans to lose Medicare plans
I thought Placebocare was specifically set up so that you, me, all these people, could keep their insurance plans? Where is all of the insurance plan keeping? Oh, here it is….
30 Companies, Other Groups Escape New Health Care Rule for Now
Hope and Change? Nope. Placebocare is nothing but blind ignorance and more “rules are meant for the little people” attitude from Washington!
The November Victory Preview video
From The Head Moron/Ewok/Hobo Hunter and my friends at Eyeblast.tv…
Now, get out there and make it happen! A good start is to your left (unless you’re viewing the mobile site, in which case, it’s one post down).
October 6, 2010
Tip the scales for Ron Johnson
Since Russ Feingold decided to lean on the likes of MoveOn.org for some quick campaign cash, the Ron Johnson campaign decided to launch a scale-tipping money bomb.
Revisions/extensions (9:54 am 10/8/2010) – The money bomb is over, with somewhere over $68,000 donated. Johnson does, however, still need your help, so if you do have some spare cash rattling around, and you haven’t already hit the general-election donation limits, do head to the campaign site and donate.
$17 billion down the hole to save UAW
TheTruthAboutCars.com found an interesting tidbit in the official TARP 2-year retrospective – $17 billion of the $80 $73 billion spent on General Motors/Government Motors, GMAC/Ally Bank, Chrysler/UAW Motors and the former Chrysler Financial will never be recovered. Let’s walk through the numbers, using the August 2010 monthly report to Congress and monthly interest/dividend report, and remembering the $6.71 billion “loan repayment” from Government Motors represented a writedown of TARP money promised to GM:
Net expenditures of $72.55 billion:
- $43.15 billion to GM (does not include the $6.71 billion “loan” that was “repaid” with unused DIP financing, which also came out of TARP)
- $12.26 billion to various entities using the Chrysler name (Old Chrysler, the former Chrysler Financial and UAW Motors – does not include $2.05 billion of available-yet-unused financing from the US Treasury)
- $17.14 billion to GMAC/Ally Financial
Net repayments of $4.09 billion:
- $0.36 billion from GM as payment for a loan for its warranty program (note; this does not include the $6.71 billion “repayment” made from unused DIP financing)
- $1.5 billion from former Chrysler Financial as full payment of loans made to it plus an additional $0.02 billion from Chrysler Financial for reasons unknown
- $1.9 billion from Cerebus (the former owner of Chrysler) to extinguish the remaining $3.5 billion Old Chrysler owed the Treasury and free the former Chrysler Financial from the lien placed on it.
- $0.03 billion in proceeds from the liquidation of Old Chrysler
Interest and dividend payments of $2.61 billion:
- $0.14 billion from pre-bankruptcy GM in interest payments
- $0.34 billion from Government Motors (New GM) in interest payments (it is impossible to separate the legitimate warranty loan repayment and earlier loan payments from the much-larger sham “loan repayment”
- $0.18 billion from New GM in dividend payments on preferred stock
- $0.01 billion from the former Chrysler Financial in interest payments
- $0.06 billion from Cerebus/Old Chrysler in interest payments
- $0.25 billion from UAW Motors in interest payments
- $1.63 billion from GMAC/Ally Financial in dividend payments on both preferred stock and trust preferred securities
That leaves somewhere around $65.85 billion in expenditures on Government/UAW Motors and their financing arms uncollected thus far. However, there’s still significant amounts of money the Treasury has claim to, and which the 2-year retrospective assumes will be repaid:
- $2.10 billion in preferred stock in New GM, which pays an annual 9% dividend (or $0.19 billion per year), which cannot be liquidated by GM until 12/31/2014 and until any outstanding dividend is repaid. That required dividend amount pushes the minimum preferred stock liquidation amount to $3.05 billion.
- $0.99 billion in loans still owed by Old GM, almost certainly not to be repaid anywhere near in full.
- $2.00 billion in loans to UAW Motors at a minimum 7% interest (or the 3-month LIBOR rate plus 5 percentage points if that’s higher), due at the end of 12/2011, and $3.09 billion in loans to UAW Motors at a minimum 9.91% interest (or the 3-month LIBOR rate plus 7.91 percentage points if that’s higher), due at the end of 6/2017. With a total of $2.55 billion in interest left if both loans go to maturity, that would bring the total amount due from UAW Motors to $7.64 billion.
- 228,750,000 Series F-2 Preferred shares in Ally Financial, which if Ally does not pay $11.43 billion plus any outstanding dividend (9% annual dividend, or $1.03 billion per year) to liquidate the preferred shares, will be converted to, at the present value, 988,200 common shares in Ally at the end of 2016. The dividend through the end of 2016 would net the Treasury $7.21 billion, at which point it will increase its holdings to a majority of authorized Ally common stock (it currently holds 450,121 shares, 56.3% of outstanding stock and 22.3% of authorized stock).
- Trust Preferred Securities in Ally Financial with a liquidation value of $2.67 billion plus any unpaid distributions, which carries an 8% annual distribution rate (or $0.21 billion per year) and is effectively a 30-year note.
Assuming the UAW Motors loans go to maturity and actually get paid back in full, Government Motors liquidates its preferred shares as soon as it can, Ally Financial manages to retire its Trust Preferred Securities at the end of 2011, and Ally decides that just-under-half its common stock is not worth $11.43 billion (likely because 51% of the company was bought by a consortium led by Cerebus for $7.4 billion in 2007), somewhere around $21 billion will come into the Treasury by the end of June 2017. That would leave $44.85 billion unpaid. Given the government assumes it’s still going to lose $17 billion, the sales of the 61% stake in Government Motors, 10% stake in UAW Motors, and 81% stake in Ally Financial together are expected to bring in somewhere less than $28 billion.
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