Wisconsin Goes At It Again

Posted on January 15, 2012 by msjs0315

The deadline for this year’s crop of recall signature gathering was yesterday.  Something close to 1.5 million signatures will be carted to the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB) on Tuesday.

And the fun begins again.

Because of a recent court ruling, the GAB will need far longer than its mandated 31-day limit to deal with the paperwork.  A new software system and some 4 dozen extra employees will be needed to scan and verify the signatures, and the best guess for when recall elections may be held is late spring to early summer.

This favors the D’s, who can use the extra time to build name recognition and campaign war chests for their challenger candidates.

But pretty much everything else favors the R’s, which gets me wondering why the D’s decided to go through with it.

First, there is inertia.  Last summer’s recall elections demonstrated that it’s basically impossible to unseat an incumbent who got at least 52% of the vote in the prior election.  Of the four state senators likely to face a recall election this year, all surpassed that threshold.  Even if the incumbent squeaked by in the last election, it’ll be tough (remember Alberta Darling barely won her 2008 state senate race but successfully fought off a strong recall challenger last summer).  BTW, Walker won the governor’s race with 52.25% of the vote, putting him in the ‘inertia will out’ column.

Second, there’s money.  Due to a quirk in the state’s campaign finance laws, those R’s facing possible recall have been able to raise unlimited amounts of cash from individuals since mid-November.   Their D challengers, whomever they may be, can’t.

Third, there’s name recognition.  The R incumbents have it.  The challengers, especially those who enter the 4 state senate recall contests, may well not.

Fourth, the D’s have a depth-of-bench problem.  They need a strong statewide candidate to told onto retiring Herbert Kohl’s US Senate seat.  And a strong statewide candidate to unseat Gov. Walker.  It’s not clear they’ve got one such person, let alone two.  Current sentiment towards D’s from the Milwaukee and Madison areas isn’t high in other parts of the state and the D’s can’t win without rural/small city swing votes.  Every article I read still wistfully mentions former US Senator Russ Feingold, even though he’s been consistent and adamant about not running.   Now that signature gathering is over, voters will inevitably ask, “If not Walker/Kleefisch/Fitzgerald/Moulton/Wanggaard/Galloway, then who?”  The longer the D’s wait to present their answer, the more it hurts them.

Fifth, it seems more strategically important in the short term for the WI D’s to retain Kohl’s US Senate seat and ensure Obama wins Wisconsin in November.  Anything else is a distraction.  The D’s then can focus on developing homegrown talent to unseat Walker and a few state senators in 2014.

Filed under: 2012 | Tagged: , | 6 Comments »

Sunday Morning Political Post

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Michigoose

Because, after all, we are a political blog!

“The State”, South Carolina’s biggest newspaper, has endorsed Jon Huntsman this morning. As they say,

Mr. Huntsman is a true conservative, with a record and platform of bold economic reform straight out of the free-market bible, but he’s a realist, whose goal is likewise to get things done. Under his leadership, Utah led the nation in job creation, and the Pew Center on the States ranked it the best-managed state in the nation.

He also is head and shoulders above the field on foreign policy. He served as President George H.W. Bush’s U.S. ambassador to Singapore and President George W. Bush’s deputy U.S. trade representative and U.S. trade ambassador, and the next entry on that resume is even more impressive: He was a popular and successful governor in an extremely conservative state, well positioned to become a leading 2012 presidential contender, when Mr. Obama asked him to serve in arguably our nation’s most important diplomatic post, U.S. ambassador to China. It could be political suicide, but he didn’t hesitate. As he told our editorial board: “When the president asks you to serve, you serve.”

I would like to test embedded blockquotes, said Kevin Willis, editing this post. This should be removed later.

We don’t agree with all of Mr. Huntsman’s positions; for but one example, he championed one of the nation’s biggest private-school voucher programs. And with George Will calling him the most conservative candidate and The Wall Street Journal editorial page endorsing his tax plan, independent voters might find less to like about his positions than, say, Mr. Romney’s or Newt Gingrich’s.
What makes him attractive are the essential values that drive his candidacy: honor and old-fashioned decency and pragmatism. As he made clear Wednesday to a room packed full of USC students on the first stop of his “Country First” tour, his goal is to rebuild trust in government, and that means abandoning the invective and reestablishing the political center.

As a Utahn, and a liberal who wishes the Republicans would put up a realistic candidate, I’d love to see Jon Huntsman get the nomination. I still don’t think he’ll make it past South Carolina because I don’t the the Republican primary voters are in any mood for anything realistic, but there’s always hope for 2016.

Now the Dems just need to start thinking about 2016!

Filed under: 2012, politics | 91 Comments »

ADMIN & PREFERENCES redux

Posted on January 14, 2012 by okiegirl

It seemed to work well for us for a couple of days when we started on Blogspot, so here’s a post to serve as the place to ask questions, add tidbits for a future faqs page, share your newly acquired wisdom, publish your wish list and sound off on what you do and don’t prefer to see in terms of functionality and appearance.  At least until next Monday.

And I’m oh-so-sure that not one of us will post admin/pref comments on any other thread.

okiegirl

Filed under: administrative | 30 Comments »

Bites & Pieces (Shrimp Scampi)

Posted on January 14, 2012 by lmsinca

Admin Note:  Admin thread up for the weekend….please post questions, comments and observations there.  We want to hear from you.

When I turned 21, two things happened, my son was born and I was able to work as a waitress in a dinner house finally.  You couldn’t get a waitress job in a fine dining establishment until then because of the age requirement for serving alcohol.  I worked at two really up scale restaurants and those two jobs, working three or four long nights a week, are what kept me in school through my Masters.  I used to go in early occasionally at one of them to watch the chefs do their prep work, and that’s where I learned to make shrimp scampi.

As with many of the recipes I post here, the ingredients are approximations and you may need to be a little creative to make the recipe work for you.  I wish I had a picture to show you but I didn’t think of it when I made this dish on Jan. 1.

Shrimp Scamp

Serves 4

Ingredients:

2 lbs jumbo raw shrimp with shell on (about 5 or 6 per person)

1/2 lemon

1/4 cup melted butter

2-3 cloves of crushed garlic

1/4 cup parmesan cheese (I use Kraft not fresh for this recipe)

1/4 cup unseasoned bread crumbs

1 small jar capers

Directions:

Here’s the tricky part.  Cut the shrimp down the back until you’ve almost cut them in half but leave the little leggy things attached as well as the tail and shell.  You’re butterflying them from the back.  Clean the vein out and open them up and rinse and then drain on a paper towel.

Arrange shrimp in one or two shallow baking dishes with the little legs down, the flesh flattened out a little and facing up, and the tail bent a little so it points up.  Combine melted butter, lemon juice and garlic and drizzle over shrimp.  Combine bread crumbs and parmesan and sprinkle over shrimp.  Toss about 6 or 7 capers on top of each shrimp and broil for 7 to 10 minutes in the oven.

Voila!!!!

lmsinca

The World’s Most Ridiculously Easy Steamed Crab Legs

I think that I’ve mentioned before that I’m a big fan of Alton Brown (of “Good Eats” fame on FoodTV); he approaches food from a scientific standpoint and explains why the things happen that you do (and sometimes don’t) want to happen to make it come out right.  This is his method for making wonderful crab legs at home.

Hardware

  • Pliers
  • Large tweezers
  • Wooden or rubber mallet
  • Paper towels
  • Plastic wrap
  • Microwave oven

Software

  • Ghee (yes, you could make it, but you can also buy it in Indian markets)
  • 3 frozen crab legs from the butcher’s case at the store
  • 3 fresh dill sprigs

Tear off a looooong piece of plastic wrap (30 inches or so).  Wet two paper towels and stack them one upon the other on the plastic wrap.  Break the legs into two sections each and lay them on the paper towels along with the dill sprigs.  Wrap the paper towels around the legs, and then the plastic tightly around the paper towels–you shouldn’t be able to see any of the crab shell peeking out.

Microwave on high for two minutes.

Break the shells open with the pliers and/or mallet and pull the meat out with the tweezers. Dunk it in melted ghee and devour.

Serves two (or one, if you’re me).

michigoose

OK, bsimon, do tell about the time you almost gave your girlfriend food poisoning for Valentines Day. . .

Filed under: recipes | 35 Comments »

Am I there yet?

Posted on January 14, 2012 by okiegirl

Turn my back for just a few short days (weeks?), and just look what you folks do without adult supervision!  Everything is changed.  LOL.

I’m testing to see if I’m in or not.

 

okiegirl

Filed under: Uncategorized | 10 Comments »

Bits & Pieces (Friday Night Comics)(aka Figuring Out How to Create a Post and Schedule It)

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Michigoose

NOTE for scheduling posts it appears that the default is Greenwich Mean Time, so you’ll have to do a little math to figure out when you want it to post; at least, we’ll know if I’m right if this pops up at 1800 EST/1700 CST/1600 MST/1500 PST this afternoon!

Update as of 1/13/2012 2219 MST: the blog is now set to MST (as the “old” ATiM was) so as long as we don’t muck around with the time zone–as I was doing today–everything should be fine.

For Scott, Mr McWingnut, and any other AGW deniers out there. . . you know who you are!  🙂

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Never forget the science. . . science is our friend!

Overboard

It’s all the Muppets’ faults.  Maybe we should stop linking their videos–it might have a bad influence on us and whether or not we believe in Universal Healthcare and the ACA. . . oh, wait, too late!

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At least one of my cats has never figured out that this is how my beagle gets away with things:

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Never thought about it that way!

Frazz

All of the above were in Wednesday’s paper here in SLC–I haven’t laughed out loud at so many comics in one day in ages.  And, finally, in honor of Tuesday’s story in The Advocate:

image

Pat Bagley, our local editorial cartoonist.  Yee-haw!

Well, that seemed to be pretty painless–and, too cool! The buttons along the top (like bold and italic) automatically show you the html code if you’re editing in that window, so you don’t have to remember the code.  Now we’ll see if it’s scheduled correctly. . .

Forgot to change the scheduled time to MST, so we’ll see what happens in four minutes.

Let the countdown begin!

Update again as of 1/13/2012 2225: you can edit the size of the images (in this case, the comics) by clicking on them and then selecting the little icon that looks like a jpg icon in the upper left hand corner of the image (“Edit image”). I just reduced the size of each of them.

There’s a bit of a learning curve that we’re having to go through again, but I’m thinking that this site is going to be even better than Blogger was at its best. . . thanks, Kevin, lms and Scott!

Michigoose

Filed under: Bits and Pieces, comics, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | 66 Comments »

Sorry For Screwing Up The Invite

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Kevin S. Willis

I invited a lot of people as followers, then re-invited them as Editors. Hope that works. If anybody needs to be re-invited, let me know in comments or at Blogger. Whoops! Sorry about all the unnecessary email, everybody. And the confusion. That’s not WordPress, though, that was just me being in a hurry.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 131 Comments »

Bain Capital: The Principal Concern

Posted on January 13, 2012 by nsullivan12

The Romney campaign understandably touts the activities of Bain Capital during Romney’s tenure there, and perhaps its activities in general, as beneficial. The argument, as I understand it, is that the country, presumably the economy in particular, is better off
than it would have been otherwise. We are, generally speaking, better off because of Bain Capital and, in particular, because of the activities of Bain Capital when Romney was in charge.

That a case for regarding Bain Capital as, ultimately, beneficial can be made. That such a case has been made is evidence for that and a presentation of that argument here would be redundant. Moreover, such a presentation is probably best left to others more knowledgeable
than I.

An argument for Bain Capital being, on the whole, a benefit is in danger of missing a crucial point, however.

Consider that there were costs, or pain, as a result of the activities of Bain Capital. I assume that is not controversial. Companies were eliminated, employees were laid off, lives were disrupted, individuals suffered financially and saw there opportunities diminished, and so forth, as a result, in part, of the activities of Bain Capital. Now grant, for the sake of argument, that the activities of Bain Capital resulted in more good than bad. Grant that the country, the economy, what one will, was ultimately improved by the activities of Bain Capital during Romney’s tenure. Furthermore, grant that the individuals harmed, the individuals who bore the costs, are now better off than they would have been without Bain Capital. Grant, that is, that those negatively affected by the activities are, at present, in a better financial situation, than they would have been if Bain Capital had not acted.

Even granting all that, the problem for Romney is that he, and a few others, evidently benefited immensely without sharing the pain and that he, and a few others, presumably benefited far, far more than those who suffered. Even if one looks at the activities of Bain Capital as activities that were, ultimately, beneficial for all concerned, even if one assumes that those who suffered as a result of said activities ultimately benefited, it seems clear that Romeny was willing to engage in business practices which, in the end, resulted in the concentration of tremendous wealth in the hands of himself and a few others and the concentration of the costs, and some benefits, in individuals other than himself and a few others.

Romney, and others, can argue, with some justification, that firms like Bain Capital, private
equity firms, are ultimately beneficial and necessary. That said, it is, arguably, not clear what answer should be given to the concerned individual who points out that Romney appears to have been comfortable with a process that distributed costs and benefits in a way that dramatically favored him and a few others.

If Romney’s argument is, in part, that he should be president because of what he accomplished at Bain Capital, then it seems reasonable to ask why the country favor a candidate who was, in his career in private industry, decidedly enthusiastic about concentrating benefits in the hands of a few and costs in the hands of others.

Note also that arguing that Romney behaved precisely as he should have, that he sought to maximize profits and that he had a fiduciary responsibility to do so, does not address the concern. One could take the position that Romeny’s activities were entirely acceptable, even
laudable, and look askance at a candidate who has, in the past, endeavored to ensure that
a few benefit tremendously and that others bear the costs.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 11 Comments »

Hi! I’m Testing WordPress for All Things in Moderation

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Arcanaut

To see how it works. Please try and comment. Yes, Memetrics is me but I’m going to have a more traditional login later, if we decide to go this route.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: | 2 Comments »

Seems good to me

Posted on January 13, 2012 by ScottC

Although I like the color on the other site, I assume that is easily changeable.  Otherwise it seems just as easy to use as blogger.  Have not tried it in IE yet, though.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 22 Comments »

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