Bloggers, back up your work

Some Blogger blogs went down tonight because of a filer problem. This blog was one of them. I had chalked it up to Blogger being Blogger until I read this at Instapundit:

I'm writing you because you seem to have a finger on the pulse of the blogger world and maybe know some way to help me or at least to get the word out so that maybe Blogger will help me.

My blog disappeared from Blogger some time Tuesday. All I ge is a message that my blog wasn't found on their server. When I go to my Edit page, it doesn't show Betsy's Page as one of my blogs anymore. It's as if my identity was erased.

That inspired me to back up everything here at Jiblog. It's probably a good idea for all Blog*Spot bloggers to do so. You never know when Blogger is going to commit hara-kiri and destory all of your work.

NYT: "Wisconsin-Milwaukee Does It Again"

If UW Milwaukee isn't careful, they're going to become as annoying as Gonzaga:

Wisconsin-Milwaukee wavered, but never cracked. The Panthers almost never do at this time of the year.

Once again showing why they've stopped surprising themselves in the NCAA tournament, the Horizon League champions pulled off their third upset in two years by eliminating No. 6 seed Oklahoma 82-74 in the Minneapolis Regional on Thursday.

Wisconsin 1 for 2 in this year's tournament so far with UW yet to play. My gut says UWM will be making the deepest run in the tournament, mostly because Wisconsin will be joining Marquette and the other losers.

Cox Arena evacuated

620 WTMJ reported that the Cox Arena in San Diego, the venue that will be hosting the Marquette game this afternoon, was evacuated. The only report I can find thus far is from ESPN, which is reporting that a bomb sniffing dog got a hit at a hot dog stand. Hopefully this will just turn out to be a hungry dog.

Update
CBS is reporting that a "suspicious canister" was found.

Final Update
The mystery container held the following:

The contents of the package turned out to be non-food items related to the condiment stand – plastic eating utensils, napkins and Styrofoam cups, said Fire Department spokesman Maurice Luque.

All's well that ends well.

Hazy shade of winter

Such is March in Wisconsin. 60 degree temps and thunderstorms at the beginning of the week, a winter storm by the middle of the week. Sigh.

Presidential line item veto

George Will takes an excellent look at the idea of a Presidential line item veto. He touches on what I find to be the two biggest problems with the idea: First, it is probably still unconstitutional, and second, Presidents are just going to use the threat of the line item veto to get Senators on board with bigger spending plans. In a perfect world, I like the idea. I'm too much of a realist to think that Presidents will not use the line item veto as a bargaining chip for more spending, though. Ultimately, the responsibility for reigning in runaway pork spending lay with two groups of people. The first is Congress. The second is with the voter. If we quit rewarding out representatives for the pork they bring home and punish them for it instead, the line item veto won't matter or be needed. It is irresponsible on our part to think that a responsibility that we, the voters, won't take will somehow be taken by a President who is vulnerable to political pressures.

Side Note
In the last transportation bill, a large sum of money was earmarked to build up bike trails in some Wisconsin counties. I haven't checked back in on that, but I don't believe Jefferson county was a recipient of those dollars. You can bet I'll be double checking on that, though. Last year my adopted hometown built a nice bike trail through town, and near the river they built a nice little shelter. I noticed this week they are building another shelter not 3/4 of a mile from the first. It is excessive, and I'm going to be looking into where the funds came from for this redundant and unnecessary shelter.

University of Alaska Fairbanks, National Rifle Champs

The University of Alaska Fairbanks is the NCAA's 2006 NAtional Rifle Team champions. That's a pretty mundane story until you see who they beat:

Final Team Scores – Total Agg.:
1. Alaska Fairbanks – 4,682
2. Nebraska – 4,666
3. Army – 4,650
4. Navy – 4,625
5. Murray State – 4,621
6. Mississippi – 4,616
7. Kentucky – 4,600

In other news, the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the University of Nebraska rifle teams were called up for active duty in Iraq today. Suckers.

The invasion begins momentarily

It's about time we put Canada in its place:

For the first time since 1817, U.S. Coast Guard vessels on the Great Lakes are being outfitted with weapons – machine-guns capable of firing 600 bullets a minute.

Until now, coast guard officers have been armed with handguns and rifles, but the vessels themselves haven't been equipped with weapons.

I say we have the National Guard start lining tanks up at the border, just to see what they do. We'll laugh, they'll laugh, we'll exchange beers...

Paint My Pixels from Jon Baas

I receive a fair number of emails from bloggers who want me to link to something, and the majority of them ends up dying in my inbox. I received an email tonight from a blogger on the Jiblog & BBA blogrolls who has an interesting idea, so I'm actually going to pass this one along. I'll let Jon explain it as he did to me in the email:

"Paint My Pixels", is a creative art experiment that attempts to answer the following question, "Can thousands of artists all over the world work together to create a single painting, using only small blocks of colored pixels?"

For $1, anyone can choose a 100-pixel block and have it colored with one of 140 colors from a predetermined color palette. This block can also be "signed" and have a link to the website of the buyer's choice. But unlike the now stagnant idea of pixel advertising (currently sweeping the internet), the final result of all 5400 color blocks will be something more than just a random clash of tiny little ads. Buyers will have the chance to directly influence the direction of an actual work of art that will be painted on canvas (by me) and auctioned off at the end of the project.

Jon is an artist, so this could end up being an interesting project. He's also offering to share the wealth, if you will, with a couple of contests. If you are interested in reading more on his project, the details can be found here.

Nobody is safe from PETA

Nobody. Not even the Humane Society:

The ``No Animals Were Harmed'' disclaimer at the end of the movie has been part of the popular vernacular since 1989, when it first showed up in Paul Newman's ``Fat Man and Little Boy.'' It's even trademarked.

But animal-rights activists say the official-sounding phrase is nothing more than a hollow slogan when it comes to the great ape. Some are accusing the Denver-based American Humane Association, which grants the disclaimer to filmmakers, of failing to protect our closest animal-kingdom relative.

PETA must be running out of new enemies. The Humane Society takes the disclaimer so seriously that it denied it to "The 40 Year Old Virgin" because a fish died.

You too can be as big as HuffPo

I had no idea this blogging thing was so simple.

So imagine his (George Clooney's) ire when Arianna Huffington used some of his recent answers to political questions in a way that makes it look as if he wrote one for her Huffington Post blog site.

"He doesn't object to the quotes," says Stan Rosenfield, Clooney's rep. "He said those things and those are his views. Arianna asked for permission to use the quotes and he gave it to her. What he didn't give permission for was the use of his quotes without source attributions to make it appear that he wrote a blog for her site.

Next week at Jiblog there will be a guest posts from George Washington, Babe Ruth, and Ronald Reagan. I'll get this site over 200 visits a day yet!

Update
I received an email from Donkey Cons, informing me that they already have Reagan blogging at their site. I guess they aren't willing to share him. They also told me that they have Lindsey Lohan scheduled to blog in the nude.

On blogging, and the breathless waiters

Spivak and Bice today highlighted a post on the nature of blogging by Elliot. It is a good post on Elliot's part, but S&B picked it up largely because they think they are jabbing at bloggers by doing so. I particularly enjoy this line from the S&B post:

We expect this may offend a few bloggers, particularly those who think the world is breathlessly awaiting their thoughts about everything from the Iraq War to their favorite breakfast cereal.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I know for a fact that 3 of my 7 readers breathlessly await my next brilliant analysis. I know this because they've been parked in their cars out in front of my house, stalking me for months. When I post something new, their windows fog up. When it has been a while since I've posted, the fog clears from their windows, I can see their faces, and they are inevitably blue from waiting, breathlessly. Don't believe me? Read the comments on this post. Tee Bee once had to give Dean CPR when I snuck off on a business trip and couldn't post for a week.

On top of that, everyone clearly knows by now that I don't eat breakfast.

{/dripping}{/sarcasm}

The anti-McCain primer

Are you a conservative who has found yourself slightly seduced by John McCain's recent turn to the right? If so, do yourself a favor and head over to Right Wing News. Now. John Hawkins has a detailed post that should remind you why McCain is not to be trusted.

Imperfect solutions and unintended consequences

The New York Times has an article today that is a useful reference point for Wisconsinites. It is on Iowa's attempt to ban sex offenders from living within 2000 feet of schools. On the surface, I would applaud this effort by Iowa. There was a sex offender living in my neighborhood, just blocks from an elementary school, and at first I was incensed that this was possible. As I started to think about it, though, I started to see what the Times reports as Iowa's problem:

The men have flocked to the Ced-Rel and other rural motels and trailer parks because no one else will, or can, have them. A new state law barring those convicted of sex crimes involving children from living within 2,000 feet of a school or day care center has brought unintended and disturbing consequences. It has rendered some offenders homeless and left others sleeping in cars or in the cabs of their trucks.

And the authorities say that many have simply vanished from their sight, with nearly three times as many registered sex offenders considered missing since before the law took effect in September.

"The truth is that we're starting to lose people," said Don Vrotsos, chief deputy for the Dubuque County sheriff's office and the man whose job it is to keep track of that county's 101 sex offenders.

I had looked at the situation in my town. If sex offenders were forbidden from living within 1000 or 2000 feet of a school (let alone daycares, playgrounds, etc), it would virtually force them out of the city. While that is appealing, it only serves to pass the problem off on somebody else.

The other problem with laws like this is that they motivate sex offenders to disappear. Even sex offenders have to live somewhere, whether we like it or not. When living space becomes difficult to find because of government regulation, you are going to lose track of a lot of sex offenders who want to be lost so they can find a place to live. Believe me, I have zero sympathy for sex offenders, but I would much rather that the government not force them underground because that reduces the authorities' ability to keep track of them, which is an important part of prevention.

As I looked at my neighborhood's problem, I decided that the best way to handle the issue is to be involved in your own neighborhood. Know who the sex offenders are and where they live. Keep an absolute eagle eye on them. If you get a bad feeling about anything, don't hesitate to report it. This was influenced by what did happen in my neighborhood. The closest sex offender to my home (and his wife) seemed to have a lot of kids at their house, many more than their own. Somebody noticed and reported it. It turns out they were running an illegal daycare and both are now up on charges (no children were abused, thankfully). Government should be done as close to the individual as possible, and I believe that the montoring of sex offenders is one thing best done at the neighborhood level. Shucking the problem off to rural areas does not solve the problem, and it does not prevent sex offenders from re-offending. It only hands the problem off to others and in a way lessens the local observation of these depraved criminals.

I don't want these people in my neighborhood any more than the next guy, but there are a lot of them out there. It is a practical and geographic impossibility to segregate them from the community. Just look at the Times graphic on how few locations there are in Dubuque for sex offenders to live. Given that, the only realistic solution that I can see is very active and involved neighborhoods.

Can you break a billion dollar bill for me?

I should give this guy my Red Forman Dumb Ass Award (TM):

U.S. Customs agents in California said on Tuesday they had found 250 bogus billion dollar bills while investigating a man charged with currency smuggling.

Fake billion dollar bills? That ain't even trying, it's a cry for help.

Gay marriage amendment ambivalence

Wisconsin is sending a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the ballots for voters to decide on. If you haven't noticed, I've been pretty silent on the matter. I'll address it here, but I need to start with a quote from a post that I wrote on August 11, 2004:

Ultimately I think the current marriage problem is much deeper than the gay marriage issue. Marriage is ultimately a religious institution. Marriage's role in today's society is a direct result of its historical role in religion as the joining of a man and a woman as one, creating a union to meet the needs of each spouse, as well as the needs of children. Two things have happened which have begun the erosion of marriage. First, marriage became more of a legal union than a spiritual union. Legal bonds are much easier to break than spiritual. The second is the decline of religion. There is little fear of God today and even less regard for the ultimate spiritual consequences of ones actions. These two trends have combined to unravel the institution of marriage.

I'm opposed to gay marriage, but it is merely a symptom of a deeper illness for the institution of marriage. We can allow states to regulate marriage as they please, we can pass a constitutional amendment, or we can do nothing and allow the Supreme Court to dictate gay marriage legal to us. No matter what we do in that regard, it will not begin to solve marriage's deeper problems.

That's my position. To me, a gay marriage amendment is just a band aid. I know it is not realistic, but I'd actually prefer to see government get out of the marriage business. If government wants to endorse civil unions that run parallel to marriage as defined and supported by churches/synagogues/mosques/etc, I'm fine with that, but as it stands now government has crowded faith out of marriage, and that is one of the root problems.

I have a deep sense of ambivalence on the gay marriage ban. From a conservative standpoint, I have a few issues with using a constitutional amendment to strengthen what should be a legislated matter. At the same time, I do not support gay marriage and I don't really care to see Wisconsin's activist Supreme Court re-writing the laws on the book. For the time being, my ambivalence prevents me from really being strongly pro or con on the issue.

Beware the Ides of March, Starbucks Edition

Hey, are you addicted to ultra caffeinated $3 coffee yet? No? Well, consider tomorrow your downfall if you work/live near a Starbucks:

Customers are invited to visit Starbucks coffee houses tomorrow (March 15 ~ed) between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. for a complimentary tall (12-ounce) Starbucks® brewed coffee. The Company estimates it will serve more than 500,000 cups of coffee in its more than 7,500 U.S. stores during the two-hour event. Starbucks partners will take coffee to some who can't make it, using innovative, mobile-sampling, "Venti Vans" and insulated coffee backpacks. Starbucks Coffee Masters, certified coffee experts, also will be available to introduce customers to coffees from around the world and to offer tips on how to brew great coffee at home.

Personally, I avoid Starbucks like the plague except when I travel. The thought that there is a coffee stronger than that pot that has been on the burner at the local gas station for 16 hours somehow scares me. If Starbucks is your thing, tomorrow is your chance to take 12 ounces of their flesh after the $187,963 you've invested in their coffee. This year.

A crack forms in Iran

Iran has seemed very unified and impossible to dance with through out this nuke ordeal. Might internal economic woes finally contribute to a crack? The Washington Times is reporting that the Iranian elite are losing patience with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

Iran's clerical and business establishments, deeply concerned by what they see as reckless spending and needlessly aggressive foreign policies, are increasingly turning against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
...
Mr. Hadian predicted that senior Iranian clerics would continue to support Mr. Ahmadinejad -- or at least not move against him -- for about a year because of that popular support. But privately, he said, they feel he is isolating Iran internationally and putting its economy at risk.

Also at the back of their minds is the fear that his anti-corruption drive ultimately threatens their own considerable privileges.

Mr. Ghaninejad was one of 13 experts in economics who warned, in two petitions to the government just before Mr. Ahmadinejad was elected, that his populist, short-term policies would spell disaster for Iran in the long term.

The Times article also sheds some light on why Iran may be forcing this stand off, namely to mask internal problems in Iran and to also blame them on the West.

GOP Bloggers Straw Poll

Last weekend the Southern Republicans Leadership Council got to have all the fun with their 2008 Presidential Straw Poll. Now bloggers and blog readers can make their own hay. GOP Bloggers is hosting its own straw poll. Head on over there or vote right here at Jiblog. And don't forget that the 2006 Presidential March Madness has begun.

A thought on the Kos crowd

What would happen if the Democrats acquiesced to the wishes of the Kos crowd and made them the mainstream of the party? My sense of the "net roots" is that they get all of their energy, anger, and motivation from fighting the fights they can't win. When they fail, they are reinvigorated. What would happen if the Democrats actually gave into them? I think all the wind would be taken out of their sails and they'd start fighting with each other, just to have someone to fight with.

Feingold's folly

As everyone is now aware, on Sunday Senator Feingold called for a censure of President Bush on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. In his young campaign for the presidency, this is the most ham handed thing Feingold has done yet. With this one move, Feingold laid out his playbook for everyone to look at. He is going to try to ride the Kos Kids to the nomination. To hell with every Democrat to the right of San Francisco, to hell with stradling the line between far left and just plain left, Feingold is going to take a page out of the Howard Dean book and try to ride the "net roots" wave into the White House. It might get him into the top three come the spring of 2008, but the Kosites out there don't have the juice to propel anyone to the Democratic nomination. To your average Democrat, the one who doesn't think much about why they are a Democrat, Feingold's pandering to the "net roots" is going to reduce his stature. Oh, it will help fill his coffers and get plenty of activists in his corner, but when it comes to primary time, Democratic voters will step into their voting booth and vote for someone that they see as more serious and stable for the Presidency. Senator Feingold, you are about to waste the next two years of your life. Enjoy the ride.