A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on September 25th, 2008 in US News

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Posted by XT on September 25th, 2008 in Campaign News

Sarah Palin really can’t handle an interview:

If you’ve never seen a deer stare down a Mack truck, take a look. It reminds me of Miss South Carolina

Technorati Tags: Sarah Palin

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Posted by XT on September 24th, 2008 in Campaign News

Time out on the campaign trail:

Republican John McCain said Wednesday he wants to delay Friday’s debate with Democratic rival Barack Obama and temporarily put aside their partisan campaign to resolve the nation’s financial crisis.

McCain’s announcement came after the two candidates held private talks about joining forces to address the Wall Street meltdown.

Someone is just being chicken here. McCain has already said that he doesn’t know that much about the economy - so why is his input needed so drastically? And, anyway, aren’t the contenders able to get updates no matter where on earth they are? I mean, I could and I’m not a Senator or anything.

The idea that they cannot hold a debate on foreign policy because there are other problems just seems a bit…stupid, doesn’t it?
Which one of these guys is running for President again?

Technorati Tags: John McCain, Barack Obama, meltdown, chicken

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Posted by XT on September 24th, 2008 in US News

We have a savior. His name is Warren Buffett. Of course, we have been through this before. Only back then, our savior was named JP Morgan.

It’s called the Panic of 1907. Wikipedia describes it this way:

The Panic of 1907, also known as the 1907 Bankers’ Panic, was a financial crisis which occured in the United States when the stock market fell close to 50% from its peak in the previous year. At the time the economy was in recession and there were numerous runs on banks and trust companies. The panic’s primary cause was a retraction of loans by a number of banks in New York City, and the sentiment quickly spread across the nation leading to the closures of both state and local banks and businesses. The 1907 panic was the fourth experienced in the States in 34 years.

The crisis was ignited by an attempt to corner the market in a copper company that had collapsed that October. When the bid failed, banks that had loaned money for the scheme experienced a number of runs which eventually spread to affiliated banks and trusts, leading a week later to the downfall of the Knickerbocker Trust Company, New York’s third largest trust company. From Knickerbocker, fear spread throughout the city’s trusts and across the country as regional banks pulled deposits from New York, and as nationwide people withdrew deposits from their regional banks.

Well, there was no attempt to corner the copper market, but the root cause was not the attempt to corner the market - that just gave the cause a reason to move forward. The cause was bad loans. Loans financed in the hope of copper rising to incredible prices.

What’s the cause of our current ills? Bad loans. Loans financed in the hope of real estate rising to incredible prices.

What happened then:

In a reprise of his role during the second Cleveland administration when the gold standard was under assault, J.P. Morgan acted to restore order. He summoned the leading bankers and financial experts to his home where they set up shop in his library. Over the course of the next three weeks, Morgan and his associates labored to channel money from the strong institutions to the weaker ones in an effort to keep them afloat.

What’s happening now:

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said Tuesday it was investing at least $5 billion in Goldman — a move Wall Street took as sign of support for the independent investment bank model. Besides buying $5 billion in preferred stock, Berkshire also got warrants to buy another $5 billion in Goldman’s common stock.

Government action then:

The hastily prepared Aldrich-Vreeland measure provided short-term aid to ease the ongoing credit crunch. The legislation allowed national banks to issue notes on a wider range of securities than previously allowed. The effect of that liberalization of policy was to put more money into circulation.

Government action now:

The rescue plan would give Washington broad authority to purchase bad mortgage-related assets from U.S. financial institutions for the next two years. It does not specify which institutions qualify or what, if anything, the government would get in return for the unprecedented infusion.

For long-term health, the government created the Federal Reserve to ensure “financial elasticity”. Now the government is proposing the creation of some new agency that will ensure elasticity in the mortgage markets.

Here’s the thing - if the federal government had acted to save millions of individuals from losing their homes, the mortgage brokers never would have gotten into dire straits. The crisis never would have happened. Anyone with one eye on the market and one brain cell to spare could have seen it coming. Ideology, however, tends to trump common sense all too often.

Technorati Tags: savior, Warren Buffett, JP Morgan

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Posted by XT on September 24th, 2008 in US News

From the AP:

The Bush administration proposed the rule last month. The rule, which applies to institutions receiving government money, would require as many as 584,000 employers ranging from major hospitals to doctors’ offices and nursing homes to certify in writing that they are complying with several federal laws that protect the conscience rights of health care workers. Violations could lead to a loss of government funding and legal action to recoup federal money already paid.

Okay, really. We’re talking about abortion - how many nursing homes perform that procedure on a regular basis? If nearly-comatose grandmas need abortions, then there’s a bigger problem afoot.

At best, this is a useless paper shuffle. At worst, it could leave a woman laying in a hospital bed with no one willing to care for her and nothing the hospital can do about it but maybe ship her to the next hospital down the line. Are we also going to allow nurses and doctors who don’t believe in blood transfusions refuse to give patients blood products? Can a doctor in an emergency room refuse to treat someone who has had a liver or kidney transplant based on their belief that harvesting organs is murder?

I support the idea of people living by their principles. Totally. But part of that has to be not putting yourself in the position for someone to leave their life in your hands if you are unwilling to take the action that might save it. To put a hospital in the position where it cannot remove someone who refuses to take such actions, even if the patient demands it, is simply irresponsible.

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Posted by XT on September 23rd, 2008 in General

I posted this at DKos - I took it down, and will shortly remove everything posted over there under my name. I don’t need the abuse from the Free Republic clones.

Forgive me if this is a duplicate, but I thought that this was important enough to push here.

If you write for any blog, you may be being robbed. Under United States law, anything you write, finished or not, is copyrighted automatically. You don’t have to register it to be able to exercise your rights. If you wrote it; then it’s yours. Period. A site called Sharpy News (sharpynews.com - I’m not giving them a real link) is taking Soapblox feeds and repackaging them - and claiming copyright for them on its front page.

At this moment, on their “Blue Political News” page (domain/politics/blog/category/blue-political-news/) they are displaying the following posts, without any identifying links or notes identifying the true authors (which means they are claiming authorship and copyright):

1) Today’s Polls, 9/12 - stolen from fivethirtyeight.com (Nate Silver).

2) Newsweek: Heard Any Good Stories Lately? - stolen from Swing State Project (James L.).

3) Joe Lieberman Has Lost It- stolen from Brad DeLong.

4) Where have all the children gone? stolen from The Daily Gotham (Dan Jacoby)

5) Post-convention Bounce State Polling stolen from Daily Kos (Kos).

6) I Agree With Barney Frank - No Bailout While Bonuses Are Flowing stolen from Americablog (Chris in Paris).

7) Polls Suggest Palin’s Star Is Fading; But Don’t Forget, She Did Wonders For Our Base Too stolen from Americablog (John Aravosis)
Aclu Urges Senate Judiciary To Subpoena Interrogation Documents stolen from the ACLU (just weird!).

A quick check on Google Alerts shows that no less than five of my posts at Blue Jersey and NMFBIHOP have been stolen since the beginning of the month. I have emailed a Cease and Desist letter to the owner of SharpyNews.

After receiving one such Cease and Desist (C&D), the owner replied:

well ok. We are web developers,not lawyers..but we do know the law about this,in reality we are not obligated to do anything until you fax proper papers and we could wait till the last minute and delete the entry goodbye..it was so far down the list or off the serach engine it wouldnt matter much to us we have 1000 blogs doing updates on auto cron every 3 minutes,so it will not hurt our flow and we are not even touching the legal boundries of our abilities yet..moral code wont allow me to do shady work, I would rather work with others..it is also possible we are not even pulling your feed..we may be pulling someone elses who pulls yours..knowone could never prove our software is DIRECTLY pulling your material..

so with that said we would gladly (I will do this personally right now) add a link in our blog roll and also work in unison with you or your developer to make your feeds richer and allow the re-posted data to work for you..If this is not something you will agree with send me your feed address and I will search our database for it to remove.

Sharpy News - Watching The World

None of the excuses matter. What matters is that they are stealing content, they know they are breaking the law, and they continue to do so. The owner’s email address is monsterwd@yahoo.com and lists his/her name as “Shadow”. Yeah. You didn’t expect a thief to use their real name, did you?

The email I sent read:

Dear Sir or Madam,

You are using a work of which I own the copyright. The name of the work involved is “Principles? Or lack thereof?”. It appears on a site apparently operated by you at 1) (LINK REMOVED); 2) (LINK REMOVED); 3) (LINK REMOVED); 4) (LINK REMOVED); 5) (LINK REMOVED). I have reserved all rights to this work, which was first published on 1) 9/16/08 at http://www.bluejersey.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=9037; 2) 9/9/08 at http://www.nmfbihop.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1672 ; 3) 9/3/08 at http://www.bluejersey.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=8909; 4) 8/28/08 at http://www.nmfbihop.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1605 ; 5) 9/04/08 at http://www.bluejersey.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=8921.
Your copying and or use of my work, which appear at the link above, is unauthorized. You neither asked for nor received permission to use the piece nor to make or distribute copies of them in the manner you have. Furthermore, you have taken credit for my work and caused confusion as to whom the original author of the work is. Therefore, I believe you have willfully infringed my rights under 17 USC §101, et seq. and could be liable for statutory damages as high as $100,000. Further, such copyright infringement is a direct violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and International Copyright Law.
I demand that you immediately cease the use and distribution of the work and all copies of it, that you remove any further works you may have stolen and that you desist from this or any other infringement of my rights in the future. Further, I demand that you remove all content, past and future, from your sites unless I provide expressed written permission for its use. Furthermore, I demand that you post an apology on the site clarifying who the real author is and that you inform others that might have been misled by your misuse of the works’ origins. Any and all profits unlawfully derived from the unlawful use of my work must be disclosed and remitted to me. I intend to notify your ISP provider of your unlawful acts immediately to protect my interests.
If I have not received proof of compliance from you within 72 hours, I shall consider taking the full legal remedies available to rectify this situation including contacting my lawyer and/or your site’s administrators.
Sincerely,

Thurman Hart
Blue Jersey http://www.bluejersey.com
NMFBIHOP http://www.nmfbihop.com
Xpatriated Texan http://www.xpatriatedtexan.com
NJ Voices http://blog.nj.com/njv_thurman_hart/

This site is engaged in internet piracy. Any and all profits they receive from their website, by law, belong to the authors whose work they have stolen. I’m asking any and all readers to help monitor and advise authors that their work is being stolen and refer to the template here for Cease and Desist actions.

I don’t mind people quoting me - I like it, in fact. But you have to say where the words came from. They are my intellectual property. Anyone who can write a code that will lift feeds in such a selective manner can also write a code that provides a link to the author. It isn’t that difficult. In fact, it’s more difficult to delete the author’s meta info and repackage it. But that’s what they are doing.

This is not an innovative aggregator website. It is a dishonest person trying to make money off of other people’s work and property. Help shut it down.

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Posted by XT on September 18th, 2008 in Campaign News

File this under, “Tell it like it is”:

On the Republican side much is made, in ads and other venues, of McCain’s military experience. His heroism as a navy pilot, being shot down, captured and tortured in a Viet Cong prison, deserves all the credit and gratitude we can possibly give. However, my understanding of the military is that soldiers, sailors and pilots are supposed to FOLLOW orders, not give them. His experiences resulted in well deserved medals and tributes from a grateful nation. But does five years in a foreign prison make you an expert on foreign policy?

If he had spent five years in a U.S. prison, I suppose they could claim he’s an expert on domestic policies.

A lot is riding on how the average voters will react on a number of issues, depending on their various viewpoints and experiences. To some of the people of Hamlin, the Pied Piper was a hero. To the SPCA, he would be a rat-killing trickster with a flute.

Thanks to the current Decider’s failed trickle-down economic policies, and questionable decisions as Commander in Chief, we’d better start paying close attention to the real issues and possible solutions, before one of those candidates does more MIS-leading than leading!

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Posted by XT on September 18th, 2008 in US News

How much is an Iraqi life worth? Seven months - but only if you waste four of them. Which means that one dead Iraqi is worth just over seven weeks worth of a US soldier’s life.

And you still wonder why they hate us?

Technorati Tags: How much is an Iraqi life worth

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Posted by XT on September 18th, 2008 in General

Back in the Depression, they were called Hoovervilles. I guess a modernization would be “Bushtowns”. It’s an indication that things are pretty bad, and likely to get worse.

And the next time someone tells you that regulation kills business, remember this. Stocks took off today when regulation was promised. Why? Because regulation, when done properly, enforces uniform business standards - something that is often referred to as “morality”.

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Posted by XT on September 18th, 2008 in This blog

Meet my first grandson, Addison. He got here 9/18/08 at 7lbs 15oz. Mother and child are doing fine.

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