Shame on Timberwolves fans for booing injured man

As much as I love to call myself a Minnesotan, and as proud as I am of the state I live in, I was completely ashamed of the Minnesota Timberwolves fans who boo'ed a man as he was being wheeled out of Target Center last night by paramedics.

The man had been hit in the face by a basket ball purposely tossed into the stands by all-star forward Kevin Garnett, who was then ejected from the game. To his credit, Garnett appologized to the dizzy fan and his hysterical little girl. To his discredit, Garnett's discussion of the incident to the media was laced with profanity.

So there's the man sitting with his special little girl. One moment, having a great time, treating his daughter to game. She had probably been looking forward to it for weeks. He looks up just in time to see a hard basketball hit him in the nose. In a split second, the entire target center is focused on him. His cage clearly rattled, paramedics rush to him, as his emotional daughter cries aloud, wondering if her dad will be alright.

Rather than expressing sympathetic concern to man and his little girl, Timberwolves fans passed immediate judgement.
"The ball wasn't thrown that hard," they thought.
"They guy is faking."
"It's his fault Garnett was ejected."
"He's setting himself up for a lawsuit."
"Boo!"

Being clocked in the head by a basketball, even one tossed lovingly and gently by K.G., can in fact inflict a serious injury. Perhaps it didn't look very bad from way up there in the cheap seats, but it certainly may have been serious. Study up on head injuries, and you'll learn that they all need to be taken seriously and that that symptoms can appear hours or even days after the injury.

It's a sad day for me to finally have to acknowledge that perhaps Minnesotans really are not as nice as we would delude ourselves into believing. But there it was: so-called fans booing one of their own while a scared little girl bawled her eyes out for the father she loved.

Shame on Timberwolves fans for their cynical, childish, and downright mean behavior last night. Shame, shame, shame.

Cheney's right to bear arms

I know I've been strangely silent during the past week. The news events just seem to keep speaking for themselves, without any help from me.

Regular readers of this blog, if there are any, probably remember that I'm a hunter, and proud of it. I think hunting is a great way to connect with the great outdoors, and encourages people to take up an interest in wildlife conservation and habitat preservation. Here's a link to one of my favorite hunting entries to MyMountain.

Here in Minnesota, I'm generally in good company when I express my love of the hunt. I have faced challenges expressing this opinion while residing in more urban environments, such as Chicago, where guns go hand in hand with gang activity and robbery and many people have never had the opportunity to experience a responsible hunt. Growing up in Minnesota your experience with guns is probably a positive one, as opposed to growing up in Cabrini Green.

So I have to say that my heart goes out to Dick Cheney. I can only imagine how aweful I would feel if I accidentally shot someone.

I am incredulous at how the White House has handled the entire situation. First a delay in releasing the news, which suggests to me a continuation of a policy of not being forthright.

Then they decided to blame Cheney's shooting victim. Yes, because it was apparently his fault for "stepping out of line." Every responsible hunter knows that if you pull the trigger and someone gets hurt, its the shooters fault. No question. You do NOT pull the trigger unless you know what your bullet (or pellets) are going to hit.

Then spokesman Scott McClellan thought a more lighthearted approach would be best. So he decided to find humor in the situation, which seemed to be working until the 78 year old victim had a heart attack. Not so funny now, eh?

Sadly, this entire tragedy we see playing out in the news just seems to be the latest in a series of communications blunders that the American people are coming to expect from this administration. I know being forthright is a near impossibility for an administration that is feeling besieged to the point it needs to authorize secret spy programs on its own people. But if George Bush were to ask me, I would give him two points in just four words so that even he could understand it.

1. Be honest.
2. Fire McClellan.

To wrap this up, no matter how you feel about guns, I'd ask you to consider not lumping responsible hunters in with "gun enthusiasts." The problem with the NRA is that they do not know the difference. So intent are they to protect the supposed right to bear arms, that they do the entire fraternity of responsible hunters a huge disservice.

However, I don't believe that my ability to share the magic of a hunt with my children is in any way compromised if I can't use automatic weapons. View this short video and you'll soon understand what I mean. People who use automatic weapons and who like to blow things up are not the kind of people that you will see me hunting with, ever.

Them, or Dick Cheney.

Snow day on the East Coast! New Englanders, try to make the most of it!

To those of you in the northeast who are enjoying a day off from work, I wish you a great day. I suggest leaving the TV turned off. It's a great day to read a book, or play a board game. Tell your kids a story. Days like this do not come along often enough.

Click here to see pictures of people in New York City dealing with the storm. They're actually very pleasant, a nice glimpse of life interrupted in NYC.

Christians Celebrate Darwin's Birthday

No, you read correctly. The birthday of biologist and evolution theorist Charles Darwin is this week, and some Christian churches are gearing up for a Darwin Day celebration. Are evolution and Christianity inherently incompatible? For an interesting perspective on the "you must choose between Darwin or God" debate, read this, and let me know what you think.

A Cultural Collision: Thoughts on the Mohammed Caricatures

Days of violent protests across the Muslim world stirred up my curiosity. I finally decided that I should view these cartoons in order to see what all the fuss was about. Perhaps I would learn something abou the Muslim world. If it were not for such a violent global reaction, I couldn't have feigned interest in this issue if my access to heaven depended on it.

Finding these pictures on the internet was not easy. It took me about 20 minutes of googling. I am not aware of a single U.S. newspaper willing to publish these caricatures. Most publications and websites seem to have pulled the content out of fear. Even the U.S. Government has sided with the Muslims to curry favor, which to me seems very disingenuous. For a country that talks about exporting its "values," apparently freedom of expression is not one of them.

I mean no disrespect to the Muslim world. Yet, I make no appologies that I am fighting to live in a world where ideas, even bad ones, can be shared and discussed and "outed" without the fear being killed.

Only in a world where ideas can be expressed freely will you and I be free to practice the religeon we are called to.

I wish you could come to know Jesus, yet I will not slay you, will not chant "death to you," will not cut off your hand, stone you, nor turn you into a pillar of salt if you do not come to know Him. If you want to talk about Jesus, I will talk with you. If you want to take a crucifix and plunge it into a decanter of urine, I will not stop you and I will still talk to you. I may speak out against your actions, but you must be free to reveal who you are through your words and actions. Beyond our differences we may become friends, or pleasant acquintances.

I will therefore do what no U.S. newspaper has dared to do. Here are the caricatures of Mohammed. Make up your own mind about these pictures. I think they're silly, and I can certainly see how a Muslim may be offended. If it were Jesus, I would be offended (such as the Jesus depicted on TV in the 'Book of Daniel.') You'll find the Mohammed images at http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/698

President and House to America: War Good. College Bad.

For the 100th post to My Mountain, I'm sorry to tell you that I'm a little upset today. I had hoped the 100th post would be more life affirming.

But someone has to ask the question: What the hell is going on up on Capital Hill?

Despite my earlier post, President Bush will soon ask Congress for an additional $120 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which would bring the total cost so far to $440 Billion, according to Knight Ridder.

And despite my rock-solid treatise on the importance of funding education, the U.S. House voted today to make a college less accessible, when they passed a budget reconcilliation bill that cuts a record $12 billion from government backed student loans.

Let me see if I have this straight: War good. Education bad.

I guess if you can't get a student loan, you can always join the Armed Forces. Afterall, they'll pay for your college, right? In any event, making college less accessible for high school kids can only be good news for military recruiting, given the increasingly stiff resistance recruiters face for access to teens.

Let me jump back to the cost of the war.

Just for kicks, go back and read this CBS article from 2003, where they discussed what the war could possibly cost: Budget director Mitch Daniels guessed $50 to $60 billion. Former White House economic adviser Larry Lindsey guessed $100 billion and $200 billion. "Defense officials" were estimating of $60 billion to $95 billion.

Three years later, we're closing in on a one-half Trillion dollar price tag, with no end in site, and no clear way to win this war. Although I supported this war in the beginning under the illusion that it would make our country safer, I don't feel safer. I just feel lied to, spied on, and embarrassed at America's soiled reputation in the world.

And those are just the financial costs. The human cost of this war is already more than any of us can bear. More than 2,000 U.S. lives lost. Nearly 20,000 soliders wounded. 30,000 civilians killed. Fathers, sons, mothers, who will never come home.

Its no wonder to me that Americans are running away in droves from this President. If his party isn't very, very careful, they will find themselves on the outside looking in after this next election. The surest way to defeat for the Republican Guard, er... I mean Republican Party, is to keep voting unlimited Billions to send our kids to war, and to keep cutting billions from a program that helps our kids pay their way through college.

Reaction to the State of the Union Speech