Here is another link to Billo, that would not embed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtxDs3Rk_vE
Sorry, you will have to cut and paste for now.
Monthly Archive for November, 2008
Page 2 of 2
To the America that I have always known and believe in still, today more than ever before.
To an America whose leaders rise above partisanship and show its citizens a better way, united and together.
To an America that creates its own problems, but which will solve those problems, not as quickly as it could, but in due course.
To an America whose youth, solely by virtue of their exuberance for freedom, will always take the reigns of leadership from a generation that fears change.
To an America that honors work more than wealth, realizing that there is no success for the few without the blood and sweat of the many.
To an America that believes each individual has worth, and possesses a right to expect and receive justice and fair play from government.
To an America that understands the burden and responsibility of moral leadership, at home and to the ends of the earth.
To an America that sacrifices to achieve worthy goals.
To an America that does not hide its errors in judgment from its people in order to protect special interests to the detriment of the nation.
To an America that survives extremes, whether it be revolution, slavery, the Civil War, WWII, Joseph McCarthy or George W. Bush.
To an America whose people live with a confidence that no one man will ever be able to rip its love of freedom asunder.
To an America that meets the challenges of the present with faith in tomorrow and trust in a form of government that should not fail.
To an America where citizens once again ask what can they do for the good of the country and not what can they do for the good of themselves.
To an America that embraces diversity, appreciates the rebel and creates opportunity for each one of us to practice our faith, believe our beliefs, and chose the courses of our lives,
That after all is said and done, We, the People, prosper in spirit, mind and body.
John McCain can drape himself in the American flag all he wants, but as long as he thinks violating every American constitutional principal of freedom and civil justice if just fine, he remains nothing but an unprincipled Republican hypocrite!
I challenge anyone to listen to this interview with Candace Gorman, an attorney representing two of the detainees being held at Guantanamo. Listen and see if you are proud of what this country has done to the lives of these men who have been imprisoned for years and have never been charged with anything! If you are angry at the way the moron at the Social Security Office or the Tag Office treat you, you should be enraged at what is going on in Guantanamo, Cuba. If you are fine, like McCain is, with a government that ruins the lives of innocent people, I feel sorry for you. (Actually, that is not how I feel, but it is the only thing I can write without shaming my mother!)
Candace did not get involved with Guantanamo detainees until 2005. At the time she thought this would take a few months of her time. Since then she has closed her private law practice and is engaged full-time in trying to get her clients out of Guatanamo. At the time of this interview she was in the Netherlands.
Did you know that of the 900+ detainees at Guantanamo, there are only 200+ left? Where did they all go? Only a handful have ever been charged or tried, including Saddam’s extremely dangerous driver. What happened to them? After holding these people for years the U.S. is sneaking them out of Guantanamo under the cover of darkness and putting them on planes to places that will take them.
What is absolutely criminal is the treatment that one of Candace’s clients has received. The client, an Arab, a baker from Afghanistan, is ill and although he has been held for more than 4 years, still doesn’t know what he is accused of. One tribunal found there was no evidence to hold him. A second tribunal reviewed the same evidence and declared him an enemy combatant. The strange thing is that if Candace could find a country that would take him, the U. S. would let him leave, as well. You would think that would be easy.
Candace convinced Switzerland to accept him. The U. S. response? If Switzerland will ask for him, he can go. Problem? Switzerland doesn’t “ask” for people seeking asylum, they “accept” them after someone else asks. Thus, the U. S. won’t let him go. Now, Candace is looking for another country to “ask.”
How anyone running for president can condone this travesty of American justice is beyond me, but I sure as hell won’t be voting for McCain!
This is a joke, at the expense of real humans who have done nothing to us, certainly nothing deserving this kind of treatment.
Erick Erickson is in D.C. to monitor the election for RedState. In this interview Erick offers election eve insight into what is tight and what is not. Worth a listen, I assure you.
In an effort to get this posted, I will forgo a lot of commentary. Here are the highlights–as I heard them:
Voter turnout: 60%! I thought it was supposed to be above 75%. Early voting always favors the Democrats, but the Republicans will be at the polls in the closing days.
McCain can pull it out if he wins Pennsylvania. It is closer than we think.
Chambliss is vulnerable, Martin could win. Runoff will hurt Chambliss. Criticizes Chambliss’ campaign manager, Tom Perdue.
Barrow (D-12th), Broun (R-10th) and Kingston (R-1st) are safe wins.
Jim Marshall (D-8th) is in a tight race. Voter turnout for Obama in the district will help him. Close!
Erick thinks 2010 will be the year to pick off Marshall, after the Democrats have been in power for 2 years!
In the General Assembly, the Republicans may lose 5 or 6 seats in the House. If they lose more than that, it may impact whether or not Glenn Richardson is Speaker again. The election for Speaker is scheduled for November 10th, quick, quick, before anyone has a chance to gang up on Glenn.
Beth Belton is a Senior Editor for Economics at Kiplinger, the source for personal finance and business forecasting. The Kiplinger Letter has been around since 1923 and, as far as I know, the various Kiplinger publications are well known and respected. Thus, I thought I would ask them what the heck they thought about this economy. Beth was a great help. I canceled my plane ticket to the unknown Pacific island.
The good news is Beth is encouraging, not overly pessimistic. She thinks the economy is almost, maybe not quite, at the bottom. She does not believe we are entering a “great depression,” although we probably entered a recession a few months ago. She does not think the recession will last a long time, less than two years. Unemployment, currently around 6%, will go to 7.5%, maybe higher. Remember, it was 10.2% in the ‘81-’82 recession, which was a bad one for Americans. For a guy like me, that has been thinking soup lines, this is pretty good news. I feel much better!
As for the stock market, it may go a little lower. She cautions against pulling money out of the market, if you don’t need it. If you can leave it in for 3 years, she believes things will turn around. She even says that if you have extra money (who does?), now is the time to invest, because there are a lot of good opportunities out there. You know, buy cheap! If my stock broker (I don’t have one!) told me to buy now, I would assume he/she/it was lying to me and trying to make his/her/its next mortgage payment. Since neither Beth, nor Kiplinger recommend particular stocks or make money selling stocks, her recommendation has a lot more credibility for me.
She mentions Alan Greenspan’s recent testimony before Congress in which he admitted that his basic assumption that banks and financial institutions would act in the best interest of their shareholders was wrong. Apparently, Greenspan’s brain is a lot older than he looks. This guy was Chairman of the Federal Reserve for 19 years! Had I known that was an underlying assumption of his economic policy, I would never have bought his damn book!
Was the baleout a good thing? According to Beth, it is not whether the baleout was ideologically good. It was necessary, unless of course, you prefer chaos and more chaos. Beth says the credit crunch was the big problem, not the failure of the banks, per se. According to Beth, companies like McDonalds and General Electric, good solvent companies, were advising the Treasury Department that if they could not borrow money, short-term, they were not going to be able to make payroll within the week. That would mean businesses close, workers are laid off, and instead of trying to solve a short-term problem, a long-term problem is created. Of course, I don’t even begin to understand how McDonalds could have a cash flow problem making payroll, much less a credit problem, but this is a good example of the degree to which confidence in commercial paper (short term loans) had evaporated overnight.
One result of these recent banking collapses is that we will return to credit standards that were in effect years ago. If you clearly can’t afford the monthly mortgage payment, you won’t be able to buy a house. No more buying a house without a downpayment.
Beth advises that it is going to take time for the banks and the Treasury Department to weed through all the good and bad mortgages and determine which ones will be subject to the terms of the baleout.
She notes that the recent decrease in the price of oil is going to make it easier for consumers to deal with a recession. It was $147 a barrel in July and is now around $65. She says that this wild fluctuation in the price of oil is due to the world markets, not OPEC manipulation. The economies of India and China have experienced a slow down and that is responsible for the decrease in the price of oil.
I feel better. Hope you do too!
Obama: 344 Electoral Votes
McCain: 194 Electoral Votes
Obama: 52.2 % Popular Vote
McCain: 46.6 % Popular Vote
FiveThirtyEight.com says:
Today’s Polls, 11/1
This is beginning to look like a five-state election. Those states are Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada. Essentially all relevant electoral scenarios involve some combination of these five states.I should caution that by far the most likely scenario is that Obama wins some relatively decisive victory of anywhere from 3-12 points in the popular vote. If Obama wins the popular vote by anything in this range, he will find plenty of blue territory, accumulating somewhere between 300-400 electoral votes. The electoral math will matter very little.
We can probably assume, however, that IF the national polls tighten significantly (and to reiterate, the likelihood is that they will NOT), McCain will edge out a victory in North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, North Dakota, Montana, Georgia, and Missouri; put those states in the McCain column for the time being. Likewise, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa all appear safe for Obama, even in the case of significant tightening. Put those in the Obama column.
That leaves our five states in play. The victory conditions for Obama involving these five states proceed something as follows:
1. Win Pennsylvania and ANY ONE of Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, or Nevada*
2. Win Ohio and EITHER Colorado OR Virginia.
3. Win Colorado AND Virginia AND Nevada.(* Nevada produces a 269-269 tie, which would probably be resolved for Obama in the House of Represenatives.)
Now, suppose you think that Colorado is already in the bag for Obama because of his large edge in early voting there. We can then simplify the victory conditions as follows:
1. Win Pennsylvania
2. Win Ohio
3. Win Virginia AND NevadaThat’s basically what it comes down to, although I’m sure each campaign would claim that there are a larger number of states in play.
*-*
Sorry to get off on such a tangent about this; I wanted to talk, for a change, about something other than whether the POLLS ARE TIGTHENING (!!!) or not. But as to that question, the evidence is again somewhat mixed. Contrary to other recent days, Obama gained ground in the national trackers on average, picking up points in Research 2000, Gallup and Rasmussen. The Zogby that Matt Drudge went on about turned out to be the only poll where he lost ground, while ABC/Post, IPD/TIPP and Hotline held steady.
However, our model does perceive about a point’s worth of tightening in the state polls. And the Pennslyvania polls have probably tightened by more than one point, although it is important to note that the four polls that show the state in the mid- single digits (Rasmussen, Mason-Dixon, ARG and Strategic Vision) have all had Republican leans so far this cycle. Pennsylvania is still an extreme long shot for John McCain — Obama is more likely to win Arizona than McCain the Keystone — just not quite the long-shot that it had looked like a couple of days ago.
As a final word of warning, proceed cautiously with any polls that were in the field last night. Friday nights are difficult enough to poll, and holidays are difficult enough to poll, but when a Friday night coincides with a holiday (in this case, Halloween), getting an appropriate sample is all but impossible
And, if you are interested in the Senate races…
Meanwhile, the three Southern seats in Georgia, Kentucky and particularly Mississippi are increasingly looking close-but-not-quite for the Democrats. The surges of Jim Martin and Bruce Lunsford in the first two races appeared to be dictated principally by the financial crisis and the attendant bailout, as the Republican incumbents in both races voted for the bailout bill. However, given the relative lack of bad financial news over the past couple of weeks, it is not surprising that they have stalled out some. Martin, though, probably remains in a stronger position than our numbers indicate, as I think some of these turnout models are conservative in Georgia given what has transpired in the early voting; at the very least, he has a good chance of salvaging a run-off.
Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! There is Justice for the common man, in spite of our misguided, special interest controlled Republican legislature and Governor!!!!
What is all this about? CAPS are dead. Dead. Dead! DEAD! (Well, practically speaking, anyway!)
Many of you may be living in ignorance, but listen up, and you shall hear, a story as significant as that of Paul Revere, the freedom rider.
In 2005, within months of gaining a stranglehold majority on the Georgia Legislature, the Republican leadership and Governor Perdue repaid their campaign promises to the Chamber of Commerce, the doctor lobby and the insurance companies by depriving the citizens of Georgia of the right to hold negligent doctors fully responsible for the harm they cause. They did it by enacting, as the very first piece of litigation, a bill infamously referred to as “tort reform,” SB-5. That piece of legislation was rammed down the throats even of the Republicans who knew it was bad legislation, no amendments were allowed, vote up or down, and don’t ask questions.
One of those provisions said this:
In any verdict returned or judgment entered in a medical malpractice action, including an action for wrongful death, against one or more health care providers, the total amount recoverable by a claimant for noneconomic damages in such action shall be limited to an amount not to exceed $350,000.00, regardless of the number of defendant health care providers against whom the claim is asserted or the number of separate causes of action on which the claim is based. Official Code of Georgia 15-13-1 (b)
(Note: This is only a portion of the statute. There are other provisions which allow this amount to increase to just over $! million in limited cases, but not in suits where you sue just one doctor.)
So, no matter if you were a quadriplegic, unable to move anything other than your eyeballs as a result of a doctor’s negligence, those wise fools in the legislature decided that you couldn’t possibly be entitled to more than $350,000 for pain and suffering, even if you lived and suffered for 40 more years in that condition.
To add insult to injury, the bastards applied this law only to medical malpractice lawsuits. It a truck driver put you in that condition, there was no limitation.
Well, it took over 3 years but on April 30, 2008, a Superior Court Judge in Fulton County declared the limitation on non-economic damages to be unconstitutional. It was not surprising when the insurance company appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court of Georgia. The case was scheduled for argument before the Supreme Court before the end of the year, but that will never happen. Why?
A couple of days ago, the insurance company chickened out, decided they would probably lose in the Supreme Court and rather than have the statute declared unconstitutional, they settled the case with the injured person. I don’t blame the injured person for taking the settlement (which by the way is super confidential, a secret).
What does all this mean? It means:
(1) The insurance company can still tell everyone that Georgia has caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases.
(2) Lawyers know that the insurance companies are chicken and will be more likely to pursue cases without regard to the caps.
(3) Some lawyer, some where is going to get the same issue in front of another judge in the state and it will get to the Supreme Court for a final decision.
(4) The Chamber of Commerce and the insurance companies are going to focus their attention on judicial appointments and hopefully get the people they want on our Courts before the case gets there again.
(5) YOU AND EACH AND EVERYONE OF YOU NEED TO BE VIGILANT IN WHO YOU VOTE FOR IN JUDICIAL RACES, PARTICULARLY ON THE COURT OF APPEALS AND SUPREME COURT OF GEORGIA.
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