Vote Tuesday!

The polls are open from 7AM to 7PM.  Elected officials take office November 3, 2008.

Reactionary Endorsements:

For Huntsville Mayor - Tommy Battle.  Note that in last week’s mayoral debate, Battle announced that he supported Wayne Parker for Congress. [EDIT: I realize that Battle may have been coy when he said "I support Parker" - maybe I'm reading too much into his comment, but he has attended GOP events for about a year...]  I like Mayor Spencer but IMO she’s been resting on her laurels for the past few years [EDIT: Note that Mayor Spencer implicitly endorsed Senator Sessions when she said that the next Mayor would have to work with Sens. Shelby and Sessions].

For City Council District 5 - Richard Gipson.  Will Culver is his opponent.

For School Board District  1 - no opinion. Pat King versus Laurie McCaulley (State PTA President).

For School Board District 5 - Susan Currie.  Alta Morrison is her opponent.

Dr. Greg Cotter, one of the doctors named in the ‘Brady Report’, was interviewed this morning by Dale Jackson of WVNN.

What a mess.  Cotter defended Dr. Griffith and threw Dr. Olive under the bus. Since the ‘Brady Report’ reviews Griffith and Olive together, that may be a fair argument. However, Olive was fresh out of school at the time and Griffith was the supervisor.

Cotter said that Dr. Brady and Dr. Perez were ‘hired guns’ who were brought in to force Griffith out.  Cotter noted that the State Medical Board didn’t take any action against Griffith.

Dale Jackson asked “Did Huntsville Hospital, Dr. Brady, Dr. Perez, and Dr. Schneider conspire against Dr. Griffith?” Cotter replied “Yes”.  Cotter then said that “Huntsville Hospital had an environment of corruption”.

IMO Huntsville Hospital has some explaining to do.

After receiving the ‘Brady Report’, why didn’t the Hospital report Dr. Griffith to the State Medical Board? If Griffith is the monster that Huntsville Hospital portrayed him to be, then why let him loose on an unsuspecting public?

Or is Griffith correct in his ‘economic credentialing’ defense (business competition)?  Is Huntsville Hospital as corrupt as Cotter asserts? Were Brady and Perez stooges paid to lie about Griffith?

The Heritage Foundation was nice enough to share their thoughts in an email and link:

Now that a massive bailout of Wall Street is being debated, Heritage Foundation economic experts have laid out eight goals and strategies for lawmakers to keep in mind as they evaluate the proposed legislation.

1. Do not prop up failed or failing institutions. Government should not try to keep failed businesses afloat; instead, as with Bear Stearns, they should “ensure that they are restructured or wound down in a way that does not cause undue disruption in the financial system as a whole.”
2. Do not try to support prices. “Policymakers should not attempt to keep stocks or housing prices from falling to their proper market-determined levels.”
3. Do not allow the government to become the permanent “owner of last resort.” Any assets the government buys should be disposed of as expeditiously as possible.
4. Strictly limit legislation to the immediate need to stabilize the financial situation. “Lawmakers should oppose any and all attempts to expand the legislation being proposed” into a bonanza for special interests or pet liberal causes.
5. Avoid “moral hazard.” Policymakers must discourage others from seeking government support by ensuring businesses receiving taxpayer funds have “skin in the game” and suffer the consequences of their miscalculations.
6. Carefully define the Fed’s role. The Federal Reserve must avoid “unwarranted mission creep” as it exercises its “lender of last resort” responsibilities to ensure liquidity.
7. Limit taxpayer exposure and keep actions temporary. “Any new mechanism or authority to halt the deterioration in the market should ensure that affected firms pay a cost and be strictly limited in time and scope to minimize taxpayer exposure.”
8. Assure liquidity in markets but require full pricing of government insurance. As it considers providing insurance to money market funds, “the Treasury must ensure that the price of that insurance fully reflects the market risk.”

Dr. Luther W. Brady is the Oncologist who reviewed Dr. Parker Griffith’s work in his “Report to the Board of Trustees of the Huntsville Hospital Relative to the Program in Radiation Oncology at the Huntsville Hospital”, dated 17 and 18 November 1987.

Dr. Carlos Perez wrote the “Report on Radiation Therapy at Huntsville Hospital”, dated 9 August 1988.

Dr. Brady and Dr. Perez also wrote the book on Radiation Oncology: Perez and Brady’s Principles and Practice of Radiation Oncology. 

Here are highlights from Brady’s biography:

Luther W. Brady, M.D., one of the world’s foremost oncologists…

No one in the specialty of radiation oncology had had the breadth and depth of involvement as Dr. Brady. During his career, he has served as President of every major professional society related to the field. He is a Fellow of the American College of Radiology and a Fellow of the American College of Radiation Oncology. He has been a member of the American College of Radiology Board of Chancellors, Chairman of the Commission on Radiation Oncology, and has served on numerous College committees. As well, he was Chairman of the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group, a nationwide consortium to evaluate forms of cancer treatment. From 1991 to 1993, he served as appointed Chairman of the Radiation Oncology Committee for ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education).

Here’s an introduction to Dr. Perez:

Carlos A. Perez is an internationally recognized specialist is radiation oncology who has made important contributions to the clinical management of patients, especially those with gynecologic tumors and carcinoma of the prostate and of the breast.

I’m thinking that Dr. Brady and Dr. Perez are well-qualified to evaluate Parker Griffith…

Dale Jackson of WVNN has the Reports in a PDF file available here.

Dr. Rusty Shackleford at The Jawa Report has done yeoman’s work fighting the Jihad over the Internet (he is credited with interfering with Al Qaeda’s latest video).  In this post he sights a different target - the people and groups that spread smears about Sarah Palin -  Hope, Change, & Lies: Orchestrated “Grassroots” Smear Campaigns & the People that Run Them:

Our research suggests that a subdivision of one of the largest public relations firms in the world most likely started and promulgated rumors about Sarah Palin that were known to be false. These rumors were spread in a surreptitious manner to avoid exposure.

It is also likely that the PR firm was paid by outside sources to run the smear campaign. While not conclusive, evidence suggests a link to the Barack Obama campaign. Namely:

• Evidence suggests that a YouTube video with false claims about Palin was uploaded and promoted by members of a professional PR firm.

• The family that runs the PR firm has extensive ties to the Democratic Party, the netroots, and are staunch Obama supporters.

• Evidence suggests that the firm engaged in a concerted effort to distribute the video in such a way that it would appear to have gone viral on its own. Yet this effort took place on company time.

• Evidence suggests that these distribution efforts included actions by at least one employee of the firm who is unconnected with the family running the company.

• The voice-over artist used in this supposedly amateur video is a professional.

• This same voice-over artist has worked extensively with David Axelrod’s firm, which has a history of engaging in phony grassroots efforts, otherwise known as “astroturfing.”

• David Axelrod is Barack Obama’s chief media strategist.

The same voice-over artist has worked directly for the Barack Obama campaign.

Read the whole thing, it is very detailed and he names names…

UPDATE:  Astroturf is a fake grass roots movement.  The term is applied when a Public Relations firm creates a fake grassroots group on behalf of a secretive client to professionally manipulate public opinion. According to Business Week, Obama Chief Strategist David Axelrod’s firm ASK is known as “the gold standard in Astroturf organizing. This is an emerging industry, and ASK has made a name for itself in shaping public opinion and manufacturing public support.”  Business Week describes a successful Astroturf campaign:

ASK’s relationship with ComEd goes back much further: The Chicago-based utility says ASK has been an adviser since at least 2002. ASK’s workload picked up in 2005, as the Exelon subsidiary was nearing the end of a 10-year rate freeze and preparing to ask state regulators for higher electricity prices. Based on ASK’s advice, ComEd formed Consumers Organized for Reliable Electricity (CORE) to win support.

One TV commercial, penned by ASK, warned of a ComEd bankruptcy and blackouts without a rate hike: “A few years ago, California politicians seized control of electric rates. They held rates down, but the true cost of energy kept rising. Soon the electric company went bust; the lights went out. Consumers had to pay for the mess. Now, some people in Illinois are playing the same game.” CORE, which describes itself on its Web site as “a coalition of individuals, businesses and organizations,” was identified as the ad’s sponsor. After a complaint was filed with state regulators, ComEd acknowledged that it had bankrolled the entire $15 million effort.

Another example of a successful Astroturf campaign is the Orwellian ‘Hillary 1984′ viral video. Hillary ad traced to staffer of firm hired by Obama:

…the creator of the “Big Sister” YouTube ad attacking Hillary Rodham Clinton is a Democratic staffer who worked for an Internet firm on contract with rival Barack Obama’s campaign…

De Vellis was employed, until Wednesday, when he was unmasked, by Blue State Digital, the Washington, D.C., firm whose founders include Joe Rospars. Rospars is the Obama campaign’s new media director and oversees the extensive Obama Web operation.

President Bill Clinton’s comment about “typical Chicago thug” politics was a complaint and a warning. This campaign will get ugly before it’s over and WE NEED TO STAND UP!

“If you don’t count pigs who know Mary Kay…”

Huntsville Times columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson follows this bon mot with a list of some “common sense” changes:

Make education laws universal in all 50 states. Make kids go to school, the way they used to. Instigate a strict, uniform set of rules for the ever-growing number of home-schooling parents. Currently, some states register and test home-schoolers. Others allow willy-nilly, anyone-can-teach-anything approach to educating youth. Decide, once and for all, if education is imperative…

Nationalize health care…

Disallow tax-exemption status for churches, a change that would get rid of more charlatans and television bandits than anything else you could do…

Reinstate the draft so that poor young people aren’t the only ones who stand to lose when politicians start stupid wars.

Those of you who still read The Huntsville Times know that this type of Leftie blather permeates The Times. For those who don’t read the Times any more, note that this column appeared not in the Editorial section, but in the ‘Life & Leisure’ section, beside ‘Hints from Heloise’ (you can’t make this stuff up).

Huntsville Times editor Kevin Wendt, in an introductory column, said “One concern many readers have already voiced to me is their feeling the opinion pages lean to the left.”

Kevin, it’s not just the “opinion pages”…  Just about every section of The Huntsville Times is rife with liberal twaddle, from the in-the-tank for Obama Associated Press “news” articles to the Life section.

Note that Johnson’s column was not available online from the Times, but I found the same column at the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.

UPDATE: It should be no surprise that circulation of the Huntsville Times has been dropping even as Huntsville is growing:

The Huntsville Times’ circulation has fallen 1.5 percent during the same time (2006-2008), although it saw a 0.006 percent increase between 2007 and 2008.

Huntsville needs a good newspaper, and deserves a better one.

FBI serves search warrant against UT student in Palin case reads the headline in the Tennessean.

The FBI is stepping up its investigation into the hacking of personal e-mail of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin by a University of Tennessee student.

A person who identified himself as a witness tells WBIR-Knoxville that agents with the FBI served a federal search warrant at the Fort Sanders residence of David Kernell early Sunday morning…

A separate law enforcement source confirmed to WBIR that a search warrant was served on Kernell’s apartment.

Where are the cameras? The news media seems to be treating Kernell just like they treated John Edwards…

Another great essay from Bill Whittle, The Undefended City:

On February 9^th, 1933, the ruling elite of the world’s great Civilization held a debate in the Oxford Union. With thunderclouds growing dark across the English Channel, at a time when resolute action could still have averted the worst catastrophe the world has ever known, these elites resolved that “This House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.”

The Resolution passed by a vote of 275 to 153. Needless to say, this vote did not avert the fight. It guaranteed it.

…young men and women are taught that America is “a terrorist nation,” “one of the worst regimes in history,” that it’s twice-elected leader is “the son of the devil,” and dictator of this “fascist” country. Further, “patriotism” is taught by dragging an American flag across the classroom floor, because the nation’s truest patriots, as we should know by now, are those who are most able to despise it.

This is only high school, remember: in college things get much, much worse.

Two generations, now, are being raised on this poison, and the reason for that is this: the enemies of this city cannot come out and simply say, “Do not defend the city.” Even the smartest among us can see that is simple treason. But they can say, “The City is not worth defending.” So they say that, and they say that all the time and in as many different ways as they are able.

Read the whole thing.

The U.S. Geological Survey (of the Department of the Interior) released a compilation of “imperiled” fishies titled: Silent Streams? Escalating Endangerment for North American Freshwater Fish: Nearly 40 Percent Now At-Risk (here’s a link to the page where you can download the report), including the “threatened sicklefin redhorse from the Tennessee River”:

 
I’ve never seen one of these and had never even heard of it. But then I’m not alone, the fish was ‘discovered’ in 1992. From The Fish Geek:

It appears that this fish, recently discovered by scientists, was once a staple food item for Cherokee Indians in the southeastern U.S.  Officials report that the redhorse, which can grow up to 3 feet long and to weights exceeding 7 pounds, is found in only two river basins.

I’m bothered by the Fisheries Society ‘Silent Streams’ title playing off the Rachel Carson ‘Silent Spring’ name, IMO rekindling the same type of hysteria Carson created (banning DDT, which arguably lead to the deaths of millions of people from insect-borne disease).  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Malaria is a leading cause of death worldwide: “At least one million deaths occur every year due to malaria”.

Back to the report (pdf above).  Huntsville is in the ‘Tennessee’ ecoregion of the ‘Mississippi Complex’ of the ‘Atlantic Bioregion’.  We are among the worst places for “number of imperiled taxa in ecoregion” (imagine a swath of bad from Louisiana to Virginia, excepting Florida). The report should mention that our region is rich in biodiversity, so raw numbers may mislead.

The report does acknowledge that “the pronounced increase (in the number of imperiled fish) results from the addition of taxa that became imperiled, recent discoveries… regarded as imperiled, newly added distinct populations, and inclusion of extinct data”.

The “Tennessee ecoregion” imperiled fishes: alligator gar (vulnerable), Alabama shad (threatened), smoky dace (vulnerable), flame chub (vulnerable), pallid shiner (vulnerable), palezone shiner (endangered), popeye shiner (vulnerable), laurel dace (endangered), Clinch dace (endangered), Tennessee dace (vulnerable), blue sucker (vulnerable), harelip sucker (extinct - discovered in 1877), sicklefin redhorse (threatened), smoky madtom (endangered), Chucky madtom (endangered), saddled madtom (vulnerable), yellowfin madtom (endangered), pygmy madtom (endangered), spring cavefish (vulnerable), Alabama cavefish (endangered), southern cavefish (vulnerable), Barrens topminnow (endangered), Clinch River sculpin (vulnerable), Holston River sculpin (vulnerable), western sand darter (vulnerable), sharphead darter (vulnerable), coppercheek darter (vulnerable), Sequatchie darter (vulnerable), slackwater darter (endangered), ashy darter (endangered), crown darter (threatened), golden darter (vulnerable), Tuckasegee darter (vulnerable), lollypop darter (vulnerable), duskytail darter (endangered), redline darter (vulnerable), striated darter (threatened), Tippecanoe darter (vulnerable), Tuscumbia darter (vulnerable), wounded darter (threatened), boulder darter (endangered), blueface darter (threatened), blotchside logperch (threatened), olive darter (vulnerable), snail darter (threatened), sickle darter (threatened), spring pygmy sunfish (endangered).

That’s a bunch of fish. Threats cited include “habitat degradation, fragmentation, and loss; flow modifications; translocation of species outside their native ranges; over-exploitation; and pollution”.

UPDATE: The Birmingham News editorializes:

Alabama’s two chief river basins led the country for fish whose survival is on the line. The Tennessee River basin had 58 imperiled species of fish, the highest number in the country. The Mobile basin had 57 fish species at risk, the second-highest.

The study is the first national survey of fish in 19 years, and it found almost four in 10 fish species in the continental U.S. are in some degree of trouble. A report by the American Fisheries Society’s Endangered Species Committee listed 230 species as vulnerable, 190 as threatened, 280 as endangered and 61 as extinct…

The report is a timely reminder that we’re not doing such a great job of looking after all God’s creatures.

It’s also an encouragement to do better. We have been blessed with much, and much is required of us.

UPDATE: I like fish, but I like people more.  The ‘habitat fragmentation’ that the Fisheries Society notes as a ‘threat’ to fish is the series of dams that TVA built.  These dams provide electricity for almost nine million people, make the Tennessee River navigable from Knoxville TN to Paducah KY (Ohio River), control flooding, provide water supply, and allow recreation. A little bit of history trivia: the Tennessee River wasn’t navigable above Muscle Shoals until Wilson Dam was constructed - barges would unload at Muscle Shoals, load onto rail and go to Decatur, then either continue by rail or load onto barges again. More (nontrivial) trivia: “Because one barge can transport as much tonnage as 60 semi-trucks or 15 rail cars, water transportation also reduces highway traffic, fuel consumption, air pollution, wear and tear on highways, and the number of tires sent to landfills.”

September 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day: try the ever useful English to Pirate Translator, Pirate Name Generator, and the Pirate Ship Name Generator.

In real life, African and Asian pirates are a serious threat, and IMO are another front in the War on Terror:

French troops wearing night-vision goggles killed one pirate, captured six others and pulled the French Polynesian couple to safety in an overnight operation described by French President Nicolas Sarkozy in a triumphant press conference…

Sarkozy said piracy in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia has “literally exploded” this year, with some 54 attacks in the heavily trafficked zone so far this year.

He added that Somali pirates are holding 150 people and at least 15 ships, mainly in Eyl, a Somali area that serves as a base for pirates who have been seizing yachts, freighters and fishing boats.