Waukesha Carnival 02/08/2009

Welcome to this week’s edition. It’s gettin’ late and I have to work tomorrow, so let’s get to it.

First sad news, Darryl Enriquez at Waukesha FYI tells us about the Waukesha Freeman layoffs. One of those laid off was photographer and Waukesha blogger Byron Houlgrave, who shared the last picture he clicked for the Freeman.

Continuing in Waukesha city, Jeff reviews the fish fry at Michael’s Italian America Restaurant at Five Points Blog.

James Wigderson went to the Waukesha Common Council meeting and shares his thoughts with us at Wigderson Library & Pub.

Spiralling out a little, Linda Richter at Inside New Berlin finds the security cameras in schools unsettling and it’s not just the price tag.

At peterepublic, Pete Fanning drops by to remind us he’s still alive, just very, very very busy.

Kyle Prast at Practically Speaking reminds us that US Rep. Sensenbrenner and state Rep. Leah Vukmir will have several town halls. One is past, two are upcoming.

In posts about state news, Wisconsin Sen. Mary Lazich (chief aide Kevin Fischer?) points out at Conservatively Speaking that the Wisconsin Covenant program could be costly.

In a couple of miscellaneous posts, Curt Otto gives us the question to last week’s answer, or something like that. Any way it’s all over at Maple & Main.

Meanwhile, over at the Spring City Chronicle, Michael Phelps gets the Bonehead of the Week award. Pretty much a unanimous vote, I would say.

Then in posts on national issues, MommaBlogger takes time out to rant over that Florida case of the botched abortion at Homemakers Guide to the Galaxy.

Dan Deibert shows us how fast government can move when they want to, with pictures at The D Spot.

Alex has some thoughts about Republican votes and raises at A Little off Main.

At The Other Side of  My Mouth, Tim Rock has some thoughts on the Republican vote on the stimulus package.

Silent e tells us why Democrats are unpatriotic at silent e speaks.

Cindy Kilkenny has a two-parter over at Fairly Conservative on building our own stimulus package.

Dad29 points out that the American people seem to be understanding the ramifications of the stimulus package.

Whew, that’s it for another long one. As usual, if you have one you liked add the link in the comments below or e-mail me at thoughtfulconservative [at] yahoo [dot] com. Same for posts you’d like to nominate for next week’s carnival. It doesn’t have to be one of your own. Links to our archives and future editions can be found here.

I’m a map geek

The best way to get my attention is with a map. I explore maps; I pour over maps; I collect maps.

I just love maps.

So here are some electoral maps I’ve run across.

The Washington Independent has a group of maps which answers the question, “What would the 2008 electoral map look like if the election were decided by [Fill In the Blank]”

The Electoral Map uses the first of a series of maps from the New York Times to state that the country is turning blue, but if you use the comparison from ’92 and ’96 we’re turning red. Obviously we’ll have to see what the next couple of elections tell us.

The USATODAY.com has a time lapse of when counties were declared one way or the other.

Frontloading HQ has a map of the 2012 projected Electoral College votes.

And last, but not least, Christopher Healey from the Computer Science department at North Carolina State university has a series of maps which subdivides each congressional district into four quadrants and visualizes

“four elections of interest: President (upper-left), U.S. Senate (upper-right), U.S. House (lower-right), and Governor (lower-left).”

In addition,

“saturation [of color] represents the winning percentage (more saturated for higher percentages); the small disc floating over the state shows aggregated state-wide results; incumbent losses are highlighted with textured X’s; the height of the state represents the number of electoral college votes it controls.”

Whew.

These maps also dispel the notion of Red State-Blue State, for the most part.

Republicans fault both campaigns for negative ads

Via RealClearPolitics

Leading Republicans on Sunday faulted both presidential campaigns for the increasingly negative tone of their advertising, suggesting the bitter attacks undermine John McCain and Barack Obama’s credibility with voters and could backfire.

One could wonder why no Democrats have criticized both campaigns.

I guess they think Obama’s ads have not gone over the top.

Daily Kos has jumped the shark

Palin’s faked “pregnancy”?  Covering for teen daughter?

Classy. I hope the left just keeps on driving women to McCain.

A tip of the conservative ball cap to The Jawa Report.

Waukesha Carnival 05/04/08

First of all, my apologies to anyone who has been submitting via Blog Carnival. It seems every time I try to logon (which was not often, I admit), they were down. I still get all the e-mail notices, as far as I know.

With that welcome to this week’s carnival. Let’s get to it.

The Asian Badger starts us off with this thought,

Local politicos and some screwy business leaders are blind to the obvious. They think business will relocate to Wisconsin simply because we have water availability thanks to Lake Michigan.

Josh at Blog Waukesha wants to identify wasteful spending locally and so he’s learned about the laws concerning public information and checked out some spending.

Fox Head shares a humorous story on government regulation.

Bryon Houlgrave has a stunning picture of a lightning strike.

In state related topics, Sen. Mary Lazich (or perhaps, aide Kevin Fischer) shares a study of what Americans say when asked about voter ID.

Dad29 looks toward the next Wisconsin Supreme Court election next April.

Closer to home, j gravelle points out that the Journal Sentinel thinks more highly of Eugene Kane (Laurel Walker, too, for that matter) than Patrick McIlheran.

Cindy Kilkenny shares a link to a Racine Post Blog post on what digging on Sixth Street has revealed.

Jeff at Five Points Blog attempts to answer a question posed at Tuesday night’s Blog n Grog. “If you could change one thing about Waukesha, what would it be?”

Speaking of Blog n Grog, Sancho announces at Hobo Springs that Blog n Grog will be a monthly event. He again stresses that any one who can get to Waukesha is invited.

Silent e celebrates his 2nd blogoversary. Congratulations.

Kyle Prast posts her observations on the recent Sensenbrenner town hall in Brookfield.

Linda Richter criticizes a couple of New Berlin school board members at Inside New Berlin. Matt Thomas replies.

James Wigderson will be guest blogging at FoxPolitics on Thursdays.

Nationally, Troy Fullerton examines Republican empathy for Hillary Clinton.

Tim at The Other Side of My Mouth made me crack-up, even though my ideology is the one he’s making fun of. I couldn’t help it.

Finally, David B. Bohl presents Do you have a personal plan for success? Want a Free One?

That concludes this edition. If you’d like to submit something, you can either us this form, or email the link directly to me at thoughtfulconservative [at] yahoo [dot] com. Past and future editions can be found on this page.

Voting gap

Thursday’s Journal Sentinel tries to make a point I’ve seen a few bloggers on the left (Jim Rowen here for example) trying to make more directly, that voting turnouts may be indicative of some switch in loyalties or some appeal of Obama’s and/or Democrats that bode well for the general election.

In some states, particularly the early ones, one may assume that and turnout in those states may be troublesome in some respects.

But in Wisconsin, I don’t think it holds very much water.

1. The Republican nominee has been decided, no matter what Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul may say or think. This would logically drive down turnout. Jib represents those folks (I make no criticism of Jib’s or anyone else’s decision here).
2. Partly because of #1, many Republicans crossed over to vote in the Democratic primary. I almost did. You can certainly infer that steveegg did.

Looking again at the Democratic exit polls, 9 per cent considered themselves Republican and 14 per cent said they were somewhat or very conservative. They are not synonymous but it would point to a bloc that, perhaps, crossed over.

But, hey, I hope the Democrats get complacent thinking they can’t lose this election, just as many of them thought they couldn’t lose in ’04.

It will make victory that much sweeter.