Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! Whether your celebration tonight be wild or tame, be careful and stay safe. Use DD's, and even if you do, remember that the other guy on the road may not be using one.

France uses tsunami as an excuse for an international dick contest

Well, well, well. A tsunami hits, thousands upon thousands die, and the wise old nations of Europe use it as an opportunity to flop out their national penises in a game of "whose is bigger?" Pardon my language, but that's how I'm viewing this story. Lovely. The leaders of some of the most important nations on earth have the maturity of 15 year old boys. Haven't heard the story? I think these are some key parts of the article:

One-upping the United States, France nearly doubled its aid pledge for tsunami victims to $57 million Thursday and briefly claimed the role as leading donor nation, following barbs from Washington about French generosity.

But Britain quickly topped France by more than tripling its donation to $95 million and Sweden promised $75.5 million. Spain's Cabinet, meanwhile, approved a $68 million package, although about a fifth was in loans rather than outright grants.

And this:

Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin's boast that France vaulted to "the head of all the contributors" appeared to be a response to comments from Andrew Natsios, chief of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which distributes American government aid.

Nice to see everyone is being generous out of the goodness of their heart, and not out of an effort to look better than the other guy. (Heavy sarcasm).

*FLOP*
Does this mean we win?

Chicago landmark (to me) coming down in the name of progress

The Chicago Sun-Times building in downtown Chicago (which suffered a small fire the other day) is coming down in the name of progress. As most fans of the Apprentice already know, Donald Trump purchased the Sun-Times building recently and is building a Trump Towers in its place. This saddens me because I am a geek and a loser.

As a child, I read the local newspaper almost religously. My favorite columnist of all time was Mike Royko. I did not always agree with Royko's politics, but I always enjoyed his columns. After Royko died, I devoured every book I could on Royko. Although I've never been to the Billy Goat Tavern (one of Royko's hangouts), I always took great pleasure in standing between the Trib and the Sun-Times buildings on Michigan Avenue, knowing that my op-ed hero had worked in both buildings. Soon the squat Sun-Times building on the river will be gone, and in it's place will be a gleeming tower of Trump opulence, and my joy of standing between the two buildings will be gone, as will be one connection I have to my favorite columnist.

Nick Coleman's lack of Professionialism

As those of you who tool about the blogosphere know, Time Magazine's Blog of the Year, Powerline, has had a long running feud with their local newspaper the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (which they refer to as the Strib). Being that I grew up on the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram, the Chippewa Herald, the Star-Trib, and the St. Paul Pioneer Press, I've watched with detached bemusement. I was always a Pioneer Press guy because their paper cost a quarter and they had better Wisconsin coverage, so I have no sympathies in this fight for the Star-Trib. Star-Trib columnist Nick Coleman decided to go after the guys at Powerline with this column this week, and it is one of the most unprofessional pieces I've ever seen from a columnist. I'm not going to add much commentary to this, as it seems much of the blogosphere is already buzzing about it, but if I edited or published the Star-Trib, I wouldn't be very happy about this. They had the chance to take the high road, and Coleman has dragged them into the gutter. The Star-Trib doesn't have a lot to gain in this fight, so it should have been one that they worked to avoid.

Bomb laden bus driven onto Virginia Military Base?

TMJ4 TV out of Milwaukee is reporting that someone has driven a bus onto a military base in Virginia and is threatening to blow it up. Sounds like a mentally unstable individual, not terrorism, but more to come.

UPDATE

• The military base is Norfolk Naval Station
• Not a lot online on this story yet. WVEC TV is covering it (registration required)
• Another link to local information on this.

EVENING UPDATE
It was a hoax.

Bush finally kowtows to UN wisdom

After receiving criticism from the United Nations, aid organizations, and NewJersey.com for not sending enough aid money to Tsunami ravaged areas of Asia, the Bush administration today agreed to further balloon the US deficit by providing a $35 billion aid package to the Asian nations.

"We have have heard the cries, and we realize that we were blatantly wrong in not promising scads of unsecured funding to Asia to cover all the costs of the tsunami," said Bush Press Secretary Scott Mclellan. "We are confident that throwing all of this money around will make the world love us. After all, that is the goal of the United States-to be the most popular nation in the global lunch room."

Kofi Annan thanked the United States for coming to its senses on Wednesday.

"This is clearly a small step in the right direction for the United States. This just goes to show that our emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland was correct when he said politicians 'believe that they are burdening the taxpayers too much and that the taxpayers want to give less. That's not true. They want to give more'. Tax payers of all rich countries are very generous people who believe as we do that their money should be spent by government dictate."

Annan also offered this warning to the United States.

"I hope that the United States doesn't think that they can just throw money at the world's problems and walk away. Nothing makes the people of the world hate Americans more than their arrogant attitude that their riches can solve the world's problems. President Bush is going to have to come to the site of this disaster and apologize to the world, since this disaster is his fault. Had he signed on to the Kyoto agreement, we would not have global warming, and this tragedy can be clearly attributed to global warming."

Annan went on to praise the other nations of the world, as well as to announce UN plans for the tsunami ravaged region.

"I can't say enough for the generosity of the remaining nations of the world. We passed a hat around the UN offices and came up with 37 Euros. I'd like to remind stingy Americans that 37 Euros comes up to about 43 of your dollars. France alone scraped up 6 Euros. Norway, one of our most generous aid givers, agreed to raise taxes in 2005 to come up with their 8 Euro donation. China even offered to dispatch one of their armies to the region to help restore order under the Chinese flag. As for the UN, we will be organizing a US Aid for Food program, which will be headed by my son. I'm also looking at buying a new yacht sometime after we get the program set up."

Ted Kennedy (D-MA) commended the Bush administration for its new found generosity, and then criticized the administration for its runaway spending.

(The above was satire. Well, okay, maybe it was more blatant sarcasm. But its my site, I'll call it what I want.)

Yay me!

I am the first to admit that I am partially HTML illiterate. That's why I'm so happy for me right now (though I do hold my breath). For the first time since I added my Technorati Profile, I was able to get my Truth Laid Bear status up by futzing around with my template. I was also able to center my Technorati Profile, although now I have an ugly tan block extending to the right of the rest of the body. Another project, another day, I guess.

Using this Blogger stock template irritates me to no end. Now that I've had a few tastes of mid-level blogging, I want this site to have the independent authority that comes with it's own unique look. Problem is, I don't know how to do it. I've been pondering having Lisa at Just a Girl skin me, but I think I'd be best served moving off of Blogger if I do that. And then that also leads into the fact that I'm not sure I want to invest capital into the site yet. Grrr. I have no delusions that Jiblog could be the next Instapundit, but I would like to see Jiblog as a nice mid to upper level site.

If I were a scoche more HTML literate, then the Badger Blog Alliance would be more than this empty shell right now.

Oh yeah, Firefox sucks.

(Just kidding. I use it about 30% of the time now. I'm just trolling for comments.)

Priorities-where are yours?

Prior to my discovery of the blogosphere, I kept an irregular paper journal of my thoughts. I own 3 of them. Only one has writing in it. The entries in it range from 1998 to 2004. I have this vanity problem, so as I would write in it, I'd imagine some historian coming upon it at a yard sale 500 years from now, and using to help build context into a topic he was researching from our times. Hey! I said I have a vanity problem. Anyway, that thought popped back into my brain tonight, and I realized that future researcher would have a field day with me. Here we are, witnessing first hand perhaps the worst natural disaster of our lifetimes, and I pretty much ignore it in favor of professional American football.

It's really not that I the Asian Tsunami is any small matter. For me, it's an issue of scope. We are at what, a 60,000 death toll? And that number seems to be rising by the hour. Outside of publishing a compendium of first hand accounts, I don't know what to say about it. This is a disaster that really defies words.

All I can say on the topic is that sometimes poverty leaves humanity vulnerable to such events. That is truly the case here, and several big blogs are pushing economic growth as the solution to these disasters. I offer one note of caution, though. Sometimes modernity and arrogance leads to great tragedy, too. We are ripe in the Western world for an epidemic illness or a natural disaster which we feel invincible to because of our technology and our wealth. When it comes, be it next week, next year, or in one hundred years, it will humble us. And there will be no one out there to offer us in the first world any aid.

Pro Football Hall of Fame declines waving 5 year wait rule for White

In a move I find strangely fascinating, the Pro Football Hall of Fame has decided not to wave it's 5 year waiting period for sure fire first ballot Hall of Famer Reggie White.

Why do I find this so fascinating? Well, the Pro Football Hall of Fame is not the most difficult of Hall of Fames to gain entry into. The standard for enshrinement is much lower than it is for say, baseball players at Cooperstown. In fact, baseball may have the most difficult Hall of Fame to become enshrined in. I'll make a rough comparison. I'd say James Lofton is the Dale Murphy of football. They both had some great, dominate years, followed by mere good years. Lofton is in Canton, Murphy has to buy a ticket to get into Cooperstown. Now when a definite first ballot Hall of Famer, Roberto Clemente, died in a plane wreck, the Baseball Hall of Fame did the right thing and waived the waiting period. The almost pedestrian Pro Football Hall of Fame cannot do the same for White? We are not talking about a guy who may or may not make it, and for whom sympathy could push him in if the waiting period were lifted. We are talking about a guy for whom enshrinement is a matter of when, not if.

If I could be permitted to expand this out into a bigger issue (since this is my site, I can), I'd like to compare the Pro Football Hall of Fame's approach to the trend in society for everything to be equal for everyone, and that everyone feel good about everything. Adhering to a policy of everything being fair and equal, and everyone feeling good, has two side effects. Bad decisions are made in the name of fairness, and the bar to excellence is lowered. The Baseball Hall of Fame, on the other hand, has some very high bars a player has to vault to be included. The Baseball Hall of Fame is not about everyone feeling good. If it were, players like Dale Murphy, Fred Lynn, and Jim Rice would be enshrined. Instead, the Baseball Hall of Fame is a celebration of excellence. It recognized the excellence of a Clemente, and used common sense to waive it's waiting period. I'm sure the Pro Football Hall of Fame recognizes Reggie White's excellence, but common sense is apparently second to giving out equal treatment.

K. I've made my mountain out of a mole hill today. In a decision I do respect, Packer President Bob Harlan basically told those opposed to the lowering of the flag at Lambeau to half staff to bugger off. Hooray for Harlan for exhibiting good common sense.

UPDATE
The Packers have decided to no longer lower their flag to half staff for the deaths of former players.

The controversial Reggie White

If you are Christian or if you are Republican, certain media outlets are incapable of speaking nicely about you without a not so subtle jab, even in death. Take as examples the following jabs in pieces on the passing of Reggie White:

New York Times Obituary:

White created a stir in March 1998 with a speech to the Wisconsin State Assembly. In it, he referred to homosexuality as "one of the biggest sins in the Bible" and used ethnic stereotypes for blacks and whites.

AP (via St. Pete Times):

White worked tirelessly with disadvantaged youths. But his image was tarnished when he gave a speech in which he denounced homosexuality and used ethnic stereotypes. White later apologized.

First and foremost, how necessary were these comments? What purpose do they serve besides tossing some tar and feathers on a dead man? Secondly, I'm willing to bet that neither source ever read or listened to White's comments. I viewed White as a man who had the faith of child, which is high compliment to a Christian. I also viewed him as a man who was able to maintain or re-discover a certain amount of his innocence. In that context, his comments were not malicious. In fact, his comments that included stereotypes were actually meant as complimentary. When he said that Latinos were able to fit a lot of people into a house, he was not making a joke of it, he was saying that the Latino heritage was blessed with a strong family ethic. When he said that Native Americans were good at sneaking up on people, he was trying very clumsily to say that this was why they were not enslaved by whites. What White was attempting to do in that speech was show that all people bring very different gifts to the larger table of humanity, and thereby reflecting the face of God. Did he do it clumsily? Yes. Did it have malign intent? Certainly not. As someone who could possibly be offended by part of White's comments, I found them baffling at first, but certainly not offensive or mean spirited.

In regards to White's opinion on homosexuality, again, White did not do anything more than make what is a statement of fact to most Christians. White has every right to disagree with any lifestyle he chooses, as long as he does nothing to harm people. He didn't. In fact, he was willing to reach his hand out to homosexuals:

Now, I believe that one of the reasons that Jesus was accused of being a homosexual is because he spent time with homosexuals. I've often had people ask me, would you allow a homosexual to be your friend. Yes, I will. And the reason I will is because I know that that person has problems, and if I can minister to those problems, I will.

If a homosexual did not choose to accept Reggie's outstretched hand, that was that person's choice.

I'm going to do something I rarely do. I'm going to agree, in part, with Eugene Kane of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In a column on White, Kane had this to say:

As Packers fans mourn White's death, it's best to keep him in perspective. He was a great athlete who wanted to have a positive influence beyond the gridiron, and he did.

Sometimes he might have promised us a bit too much. But let's admit it - it was the promise of Reggie White that always captivated us.

I think that's what we will miss most.

Kane pretty much hit the nail on the head with those words. White was a very good person. He was also human. He made mistakes, as we all do. I'll give an example. When White's church burned down, Wisconsin Packer fans donate $250,000 to rebuild it. It was never rebuilt, and White would not comment on where the money went. A lot of people in Wisconsin began to grumble, especially as evidence mounted that the Pastor of the church had a drug problem. It was a story that WTMJ 620 AM was still following up leads on. On the day of Reggie's passing, WTMJ Sports host Bill Michaels was sent an email, instructing him to watch the episode of "Behind the Glory" on Reggie White. In the episode, White discusses how he had become aware of corruption and addiction issues with the Pastor of the church, and how instead of funneling money back into that problem, instead used it as loan money to help rebuild infrastructure in inner cities. Reggie's mistake? He did not tell the people of Wisconsin about all of this, the people who donated the money. People became concerned with what Reggie had done with the money they had donated, and Reggie's respect for the privacy of and love for a very troubled Pastor kept him from doing so. But was there any ill intent on White's part? No.

My point? Read White's speech below. Then tell me that what White said was so bad that major media outlets need to snarkily jab at him and his family in his death.

More sources of information:
Michelle Malkin
Focus on the Family
White's Comments to the Wisconsin State Assembly in 1998 (recommended reading)

Update
Philly.com writes a respectable obituary for the Minister of Defense.

Blogging etiquette

Drew over at Darn Floor discusses blogs as a first source of breaking news in this post, in which he discusses learning about the passing of Reggie White here at Jiblog. While I think he is correct that more and more people are getting their breaking news from blogs (I get a lot of breaking news myself from The Corner, Instapundit, etc, etc.), but his post lead me to think about my failing as part of the news breaking process as a blog: I failed to offer up my sources. It was this part of his post which got me thinking about that:

Obviously Jib heard it first via a traditional news outlet; or even if he read it first on another blog, that blogger might have heard it first by the mainstream news. But either way, it may be that blogs get news out more quickly to more people.

One of the reasons blogs work well as news breakers is because they act as news aggregators, giving their readers links to additional information. A blog that covers a breaking news story but which does not offer its readers additional information sources really is not doing a great job. I did not really do a great job.

On Sunday, My parents had just left our house, heading back up north after a very nice Christmas visit. I had sat down in my recliner when I overheard on the news that a Reggie White had died at age 43. Since I had overheard it, the news was out of context for me. I immediately turned to the web. I went to ESPN, Fox Sports, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in the hopes that I had heard wrong, or that it was not "our" Reggie White. All sources I had checked had only very brief information, so I decided against linking to them, instead going with a brief eulogy to White. What I ended up doing was creating frantic searches for information amongst my readers, instead of being the place where they could also immediately link to mainstream sites to confirm what they read here.

A succesful blog is a thorough blog. Lesson learned.

Christmas Miracles

Christmas is over, and you have the post Christmas blues. You hop on the net, and you come to Jiblog. Jib proceeds to depress the living hell out of you. You need Christmas Miracles, as presented by Michelle Malkin.

The situation in Iraq, another view you aren't seeing

If you read this blog, you know my position on Iraq. If not, scroll down a bit and you'll learn it soon enough. So I'm not going to add any comment to this excellent article at Strategy Page. It does a nice job of breaking down how and why things have occurred in Iraq since conventional warfare activities have ceased.

Asteroid impact on April 13, 2029?

Well, the news is just all happy go lucky this post Christmas season, isn't it? In other news, we learn that there is about a 1 in 42 chance that there will be an asteroid impact with earth on 4/13/29. That is still a pretty small chance, but it is a number most of us can understand, which makes it seem pretty big. My question is, what happens if NASA comes back over the next couple of years and refines that forecast to say, a 20% chance, or maybe a 50% chance? How does mankind react? Do we set our best minds to the solving the problem? If so, do they succeed? What about the rest of society? Do people radically alter their behaviors, turning our laws of economics, as well as our moral standards on their head? In other words, would people turn to a dangerous live for today mind set? And where would God fit into all of this?

Personally, I think we'd see a little bit of all of that. I think our best minds would succeed in averting disaster. I think there would be both a spiritual revival as well as a live for today, do what feels good movement. If I were an economist or sociologist, it would be a one fun, if morbid, topic to investigate.

UPDATE
Good news. We can all take April 13, 2029 off our calendars as "end of humanity day". The latest observations indicate that there is next to no risk of impact from this asteroid. I hope none of you awkwardly hit on anyone with an end of the world come on line in the last few days.

Tsunami kills over 13,000 and counting

I can't help but weigh in on the Asian earthquake and tsunami, even though I'm not sure I have anything new to add to the issue. The death toll is stunning, though. The current AP death toll sits at 13,390. That is more people than the populations of each of the three cities I've resided in during my life. That number is very likely to rise as more help arrives in the affected areas.

The Sidney Morning Herald reports that the death toll was exacerbated by the failure of affected countries to have monitoring and warning equipment, and that likely is true. This event provides us with a very distant reminder that nature rules the roost around here. As much as we like to think we can control it and affect it, our efforts have about as much affect as a spit wad shot at a freight train.

R.I.P. Reggie White

Jiblog offers its condolences to the family of Reggie White, who passed away this morning of a massive heart attack. While we did not know him but from afar, Reggie seemed to all Packer and Eagle fans to be a very special football player, but more importantly, a very special human being. The world is better off because of him, but this morning we are a little worse off without him.

It is uncomfortable to mix football into a situation like this, but since it is through football that we got to know him, I think it appropriate. Packer fans will mourn Reggie deeply. Reggie's unfathomable decision to come to Green Bay made football in the city and the state respectable again. Not only was he a great football player, but he gave credibility to every single person in that locker room. Rarely have I seen any professional sports team which so openly embraced God. We all looked forward to have Reggie as a part of our lives for years to come as we d0/did with the likes of Bart Starr, Paul Hornung, Max McGee, Willie Davis, and Ray Nitzchke. Our heart breaks that we will not have him periodically in out lives for the years to come, and our hearts break for all who knew and loved Reggie personally.

Merry Christmas to All! (even you libs)

Thank you to everyone who has stopped by Jiblog this year. It's been fun for me to revive my dormant writing skills, but it wouldn't have been as fun without readers. I wish you all a Merry Christmas from a frigid Wisconsin, and I hope your Christmas is safe, enjoyable, and memorable.

Merry Christmas v. Happy Holidays

IF you are the type who follows the political commentary media closely, then you know that a big topic of discussion this month has been the Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas debate. A lot of conservative commentators have been unhappy creeping elimination of Christ from Christmas, and one of the areas they have focused on is "Happy Holidays", that generic catch all term that so many people say in place of of "Merry Christmas" today. I'm going to agree with these commentators-it is a sad state of affairs that make "Merry Christmas" a politically incorrect statement. And now I'm also going to hang my head and admit that the money whore businessman that I am for much of every week says "Happy Holidays" almost exclusively to anyone who isn't family or a close friend.

Here's my reality. Unlike the conservative commentator, whose success depends partly on how many people he/she can piss off, my success depends partly on how few people I can piss off. There are a few hot button areas where I do not go with my customers; one is politics, and the other is religion. When it comes to politics, if a customer brings it up, and I completely whore myself out. I have one customer who thinks I'm just to the left of Stalin, and that makes him happy. When it comes to religion, I do everything in my power to avoid it. That means pondering to the lowest common denominator, which means at this time of the year, when you have to acknowledge Christmas in some way since most business either shut down or are dead because of vacations, 'Happy Holidays' becomes the accepted term.

I noticed something the past week. People want to say 'Merry Christmas', but they are afraid to. I've exchanged Merry Christmas a few times with customers, and every time they have been halting, uncomfortable greetings. Not because people don't want to say it, but because they are afraid to say it. Not afraid because they think they'll be imprisoned, but because they are afraid they will lose a valuable business contact or customer. In some ways, 'Happy Holidays' is almost a clandestine 'Merry Christmas' amongst believers. Hear me out on this. In my experience, the most die hard anti-Christians will not acknowledge Christmas in any way, shape or form. They will not utter Happy Holidays to you. Happy Holidays is the de facto way a celebrator of Christmas can say "I observe and celebrate Christmas, and I hope you enjoy the holiday as much as I will." What is most sad is that we have come to the point where there is such a poisonous anti-Christian element in American society that we feel that we have to do this.

Having said all this, I'm not going to excuse 'Happy Holidays'. I choke on it every time I say it because I feel like I'm Peter and the rooster has just crowed for the third time. Christmas is the crown jewel holiday of this holiday season, and we should not hesitate to wish others a Merry Christmas, even if the other person is not a Christian. Christianity is, after all, the most inclusive religion the world has ever experienced, and it is only right to extend the greeting to all. I just think that those who see 'Happy Holidays' as some sort of an attack against Christmas are missing a little piece of the story.

Put a Mosul on it

How long will the insurgents be able to hide in Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city that happens to be in Sunni-Kurdish territory? Zarqawi has spent time in the area before when he ran the Ansar al-Islam camp prior to the U.S. invasion a couple years ago. He’s not real popular there. Either are the Baathists, for obvious reasons. Chemical Ali’s trial is approaching – he was the first of Saddam’s henchman to appear in court a week ago. The Kurds need to be reminded on a daily basis of what Ali did to them back in the 80s. That should fuel the fire a little bit.

I don’t suspect the general populace in Mosul will care much for the Baathists and foreign terrorists who have inhabited their city after being chased from Falluja. I’m hopeful the Iraqis will finally step up to the plate and take a couple hacks this time around. The Kurds are ruthless warriors who like to fight dirty, just like the insurgents. I seem to recall that Israeli anti-terror forces were in Kurdish territory a year or so ago, training them on counter-terror and –insurgency techniques. I could be a different story than Fulluja.

Spread Eagle-not an unusual name

In my wanderings, I stumbled across a list of unusual place names at Wikepedia. Intrigued, I was curious to see if some of the odd places I've been to like Climax, MI and Newcomersville, OH, were on the list (Climax was). I was shocked to learn that Spooner, WI, is on the list, but not Spread Eagle, WI. Oh the humanity.