No Runny Eggs

If I really cared about what Eugene Kane says, I would have done what Fred did and done a ReWriteâ„¢ of Kane’s bit in the Jountinel’s full frontal assault on this end of the Cheddarsphere.

I noticed that I started missing comments over here at NRE. After doing some testing, it seems that RoadRunner isn’t accepting the notification e-mails from Blogger anymore. Anyhow, I went and set up a(nother) throwaway e-mail on a mostly-dormant domain I have, tied it back into my main e-mail client, and am good to go again.

Considering we haven’t had sun for the last 15 days (BTW, that set a record for doom and gloom here in the land of cheese and beer), you might be confused by that bright yellow ball in the sky. Here are some helpful hints to prevent a host of sun-related injuries:

• Don’t look directly into the sun.
• Use sunglasses that block ultraviolet light.
• If outside for extended periods of time (it’s too warm to ice fish, there’s no snow so you can’t snowmobile or ski, and it’s too cold to do anything else), wear sunscreen on your face.

Revisions/extensions – Hope you didn’t blink; the clouds are back, and a wintry mix is headed in. Oh well; the NWS says it will be mostly sunny Tuesday and partly cloudy Wednesday, while TWC puts Wednesday as mostly cloudy. Oh, and the cold returns after next weekend and another round of wintry mix.

I’ll eventually figure out how I did in the regular season, but we have 11 games that matter left. The first 4 are this weekend, and they include 2 of the last 3 games to ever air on ABC.

Washington (+2.5/over 36.5) @ Tampa Bay – There just is no substitute for ‘sperience.
Jacksonville @ New England (-7.5/over 37.5) – The Pats are peaking at just the right time.
Carolina @ NY Giants (-2.5/under 43.5) – The dead Jimmys (Hoffa and “Masterlock” Duggans) agree; take the G-men.
Pittsburgh (-3/under 46.5) @ Cincinnati – The BenGALS are one and done.

Now that Brian Fraley officially launched Fraley’s Dailytakes, and I got around to remembering, it’s time to graft another blog onto the blogroll.

(H/T – Charlie and Aaron, who really belongs on Charlie’s blogroll)

The Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance reports that between 1995 and 2000, despite gaining 4,400 households (their numbers; I come up with a 240,000-person gain using Census Bureau numbers), Wisconsin lost $4.72 billion in household net worth and lost $454.8 million in income. No, that is not per-capita or per-household, that’s the total amount; and no, that was not during either Bush Presidency, that was during what lefties love to call “The Best Damn Economy Ever” in the Clinton Presidency.

During the same time (numbers again courtesy the Census Bureau), the total state and local tax burden in Wisconsin went up $3,545,704,000 (or if you prefer, $3.55 billion), from $9,029,488,000 in 1995 to $12,575,192,000 in 2000. Let’s review: population went up a bit; total net worth went way, way down; total income went way down; and taxes still went way, way up. Of particular note, personal income taxes went up $2,030,363,000 when personal income went down $454,800,000. And we still have gubmint types demanding we spend more and more and more and more money on gubmint?

Revisions/extensions – Dad29 points out that those state taxes went up while Tommy Thompson had an iron grip on the governor’s mansion. ‘Tis why we have a bipartisan Party of Gubmint in Wisconsin

Revisions/extensions – I forgot to mention that this particular version of the Anti-Tabor comes from Terry Musser, a Pubbie member of the Party of Gubmint.

(Major H/T – Dennis York)

Dennis really does do it all, from discussing MMSD’s favorite rainy-season product to the serious. This time, he heads to the serious (at least until the end) and takes on Assembly Joint Resolution 71, which can fairly be described (and is) as the anti-TABOR. It starts out flawed by exempting sewerage districts and the like from the limits on property tax/fee levies (previous year plus inflation in Milwaukee/Racine plus new construction) and the referendum requrirement to bust and reset the limits. Yep, that’s right, MMSD still gets to jack up the property taxes as much as they want so they can keep dumping the brown hostages into the lake.

Then it goes into the horrid by mandating the state spend AT LEAST the amount it did on local aid the previous year plus inflation plus new construction. So much for getting a handle on 60% of state spending (and before long, it will be 70%, then 80%).

There is a one more kicker to the taxpayers’ hindquarters (or will it be the family jewels?); a very-poorly written (from a taxpayer’s perspective, at least) “emergency” exemption to the limits that takes merely a 2/3rds vote by the governing body to invoke – …any expenditure of a local governmental unit that the governing body of the local governmental unit did not anticipate and in an amount that is greater than 10 percent of the amount of the local governmental unit’s fiscal year budget. Allow me to translate; if 2/3rds of your common council/school board/county board/et al can create a mid-year financial “crisis”, up go the taxes, and more importantly, the ceiling for the following year’s taxes and the floor for the following year’s state spending on local government.

The WMF vulnerability (documented by Dad29 here and here) has been patched for Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP SP1/SP2/x64 and Windows 2003 (all versions). If you have any of those systems, run Windows/Microsoft Update immediately, then you may reregister the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer by typing regsvr32 %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll

For those of you with Win98/ME, you’re SOL. Microsoft says that it’s not a “critical” security breach for you. And if you have NT x.x/2000 SP3 or earlier/95/3.x (the vulnerability of the last 2 are by heresay only at this point), you’re REALLY SOL; Microsoft wants your money for the newer OSes.

Dennis York started it, the Spice Boys picked it up, and Jib continued it, so I may as well jump on the turd picture bandwagon before the rest of my fellow bartenders do.

Warning – the following image should not be viewed by those under 13 unless accompanied by an adult, those with weak stomachs, Packer fans still distraught over 4-12, or those with no sense of humor.

Image courtesy Packers.com

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The newest additions –

Right off the Shore – Jenna’s one brave woman; not only is she in Madistan, but she goes to Karl Marx Univers…er, University of Wisconsin.
Reardon Report – Seems Mark Reardon got on the blogging kick, and he’s more of a quick-hitter than…
Wagner on the Web -…Jeff Wagner, who does opuses when he updates.

And no, I’m not going to put the blogroll in any sort of order anytime soon. I like the randomness.

The initial news that there were 12 survivors proved to be woefully and tragically wrong, with only 1 survivor rescued and 11 bodies recovered. Before the questions, the events of last night/this morning as they unfolded (at least the best I can reconstruct them because I was asleep; a HUGE hat-tip to Free Republic) –

• Just short of midnight EST – someone overheard a communication between the search party and the command post, apparently misunderstands either “all found” or “all found, at least one alive” (exact wording unknown) to mean “all found alive”, word spreads to families gathered at a church from what appears to be an unofficial source, they start celebrating.
• 11:59 pm EST – AP reports that the families were saying that the 12 miners were found alive, notes that neither the company that owns the mine nor the governor’s office was confirming this.
• Midnight EST – Everybody starts reporting that they were alive, not bothering to note that it was unconfirmed at that point.
• Roughly 12:20 am EST – word gets to the command post that there were not 12 survivors (what is unknown is the exact wording used).
• 12:40 am EST – Reuters carries a dispatch saying all 12 are alive, no disclaimer that this was still unconfirmed by any official. This story says that the word was spread to the families by a man who burst into the church saying, “It’s a miracle, it’s a miracle.”
• 1:12 am EST – AP carries an updated dispatch (no longer in the AP archives) quoting Governor Joe Manchin as saying, “They told us they have 12 alive.” The “they” is left unidentified, and the story notes that the company still was not confirming this. Side note; this appears to be the dispatch which Editor and Publisher uses to blast the AP in their larger blast of the media as a whole.
• 1:15 am EST – The first (and as it turns out, only) ambulance leaves the mine site with a survivor.
• 2:09 am EST – CNN reports that survivor was in critical condition.
• 2:45 am EST – The company’s CEO told the families in the church that there was only one survivor. Media goes into full self-righteous indignation mode, ignoring that they had run with the story for better than an hour with absolutely, positively zero confirmation.

Well, I have a few questions:

1. Where did “all found alive” first come about?
2. Who was the one that burst into the church with the false good news?
3. Why did the press run with this story for better than an hour without any confirmation, with many outlets not disclosing that there was not any confirmation? Do note that I give the AP itself a pass – their stories up through the wrong confirmation from the governor sourced this to the families and noted that it was unconfirmed, and their story quoting the governor also noted that the company had not confirmed the news.
4. Who told the governor that all 12 were alive with enough authority that he believed it?
5. When were the 11 that died declared dead?

Everybody and his brother has already commented on the firing of Mike Sherman by Ted E. Thompson (genius). Allow me to add my two cents’ worth of stats:

2-4 – playoff record under Sherman (0-2 on the road)
2-4 – home opener record under Sherman
12-12 – home record since the 2002 season (capped by the first home playoff loss in team history) Homer nod – that 12-12 is the regular-season record since 2002; make it 13-13 including the playoffs.

Sherman’s firing was a year late. Hopefully, Bob Harlan comes to his senses quickly and fires Wile E. Thompson (suuuuper genius) before the draft so we’re not also left a dollar short.

As for Brett Favre, it’s been a great ride. We’ll miss those bullet passes off the back foot 40 yards downrange, the fire with which he played, and the playground improvs – unfortunately with Aaron Rodgers, it looks like we won’t lose the bonehead passes that turn into picks. There had to be a reason why 23 teams between the Niners and the Packers, some of whom really needed a quarterback, passed on him in the draft when he was talked about in the same breath as #1 pick Alex Smith (oops, another bust).

May 2006 be good to you.