If It Please The Court

Nashville Cats

One of Uncle Greer's Favorite Arrangements of Alexander's Rag Time Band. Mine Too.

Makes The Methodist Love The Baptist-Not Sure It Works The Other Way.

My Favorite Wedding Song, Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor-They Don't Make Um Like This Anymore.

New Cut Road

Orve Victimized By Internet Predator-Please Help.

Our beloved Orve, a contributor to this blog is being harassed by a woman he met on the internet.  She is constantly making lewd comments, telling poor Orve the many things she would like to do with him.  Orve admits that this was fun at first, but she just won't stop. It goes on every day, several times a day.  Please help Orve make this woman stop.  She is pictured here and her first name  is Julie. Additional information about her may be found at:
http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.php?sitepal

Has anyone run across her before? Any suggestions on how to handle it?
Thanks in advance for your help.

Florida Beat Arkansas By Using A New Twist On The Aggies's 12th Man Tradition.

Thanks to Karen.

A Christmas Story

Your Tax Dollars at Work.

Thanks to the other Bruce.

The Amazing Ms. Sharon and Niewidoczny the Wonder Dog

The Decline of the Family & The Solution

The decline of the family is related to industrialization, a mobile society, and the inability of a family to make it on one income. I bemoan the loss of traditional families. Extended families with aunts, uncles, and grandparents are even better for kids. The community or "Village" can share child care and take some of the burden off parents. This disturbing clip shows how far we have moved away from the ideal, but offers hope.

Glenn Beck's Tears-He Cries for His Country With the Help of Vick's Vaporub.

Thanks to Karen

Real Courage

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do." Atticus Finch.

DEMOCRATIC SUPERMAJORITY!!!!!

Well as usual Jon Stewart hits the nail on the head:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-september-30-2009/democratic-super-majority

Paul, Eileen, & Friends Circa 1969-Judge Henry May Not Have Been Proud Then, But He Was Later & IS Now.

Is Obama The AntiChrist? Inquiring Minds Want To Know. Don't Be Left Behind!

How to talk to complete idiots

See, also, How to talk to complete idiots
Three basic options. Choose wisely, lest you go totally insane

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

We'll Miss Ye Aunt Dorothy

Better than a shoot-out

The paid obituaries in the Democrat-Gazette sometimes dispense with the traditional obsequies in favor of plain talk. For those who don't subscribe, a remembrance of a Levy gal:

COLORADO SPRINGS - Dorothy Viola Southern, formerly of North Little Rock, passed away in Colorado Springs on July 9, 2009. She was preceded in death by her daughter, Angela Hill and son, Ronald Whitley, and survived by her children, Steven Grant of Colorado Springs, Linda Novak of Nashville and Pam Boyd of Dallas who are glad that she died peacefully and not in a shoot-out. Undoubtedly, she was quite a character, feisty, passionate, out-spoken and known for many shenanigans in her 83 years. In spite of her nine marriages and mostly turbulent life, Mom was a dedicated and conscientious mother to her five children.

Born in Levy to Sylvia and Chester Thorn on February 11, 1926, she married at the age of 13, had two children by the age of 16, was a jack of all trades, and lived in 12 states before she died. She was most proud of her career modeling shoes with her tiny little size-4 foot.

Her children have never ceased to marvel at her tenacity, work ethic, ingenuity, and sense of humor that she kept through it all. (Unfortunately she never learned the art of contentment or anger management which she desperately needed. But, understandably, she got off to a rocky start and really never had a fair chance.)

She sincerely delighted in (well, except sometimes when she was living near them) her 11 grandchildren, Ronnie Whitley, Heather Whitley, Christopher Grant, Tonia Bruce, Kim Vance, Chanin Koehn, Michael Novak, Susannah Hill, Justin Hill, and Hudson, Sydney, and Pammy Boyd. She also had four great-grandchildren who are only familiar with the urban legend of their crazy grandmother. Many nieces and nephews live in the Little Rock area, and who sometimes remember her fondly as their unusual and unpredictable Aunt Dorothy.

Almost to the end she was still making people laugh, cussing people out, and looking for the perfect husband.

Arkansas Times Blog, Posted by Max Brantly

Don't Kill The Lawyers Yet

Bashing the lawyers
BY BRUCE MCMATH SPECIAL TO THE DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
I see that the Democrat-Gazette has picked up the "It’s the greedy trial lawyers’ fault" chorus. This oldie goldie public relations ditty is periodically re-released by the liability insurance industry when it needs a scapegoat to cover high and rising insurance premiums, in this instance medical malpractice.
Hearing this refrain brings to mind the Shakespearean quote, "First, we will kill all the lawyers," which one often sees derisively displayed. What is rarely noted is that Dick the Butcher, who uttered those words, was a scoundrel and a rogue. The lawyers he would kill were members of society standing firm against chaos and tyranny.
Today, Dick the Butcher takes the form of "think tanks" funded by the liability insurance industry, pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturers, and others who desire to be freed of their responsibility to consider the consumer or society’s interest, not just their profits. While they accuse the "greedy trial lawyers," it is the law and individual rights at which they are aiming. The goal is to replace the common law with immunizing legislation purchased with political favors.
Convincing the average citizen that it is in his interest to restrict or eliminate his common law rights when injured by another’s conduct would obviously be difficult if honestly presented. The clever use of lawyers, with their unpopular image, as surrogates for those rights makes it feasible.
The trial lawyer’s image, at least in part, is derived from the fact that the law works on the dark side of human conduct-from insurance companies and financial institutions that bilk the old and unsophisticated to corporations that knowingly sell defectively designed vehicles because the market cycle demands a new product on time; from the sexual misconduct of ministers to an industry selling addictive toxins under false pretenses.
People don’t want to hear about these things, they don’t want to think they happen. However necessary the work, that trial lawyers make their livings dealing with such maters makes them easy public relations targets.
It is well and good to encourage morality and ethics in corporate and individual conduct, but society can never assume that it will universally take place. The genius of the free-market system is that it harnesses the inevitable impulse to pursue self-interest. This, however, is also its great weakness.
There will always be those, especially in the corporate setting, who will have trouble discerning the proper limits of this pursuit. Only a system of justice that makes a reckoning a probability can provide the moral corporate employee or officer the rationale to insist upon restraint in corporate behavior. Adam Smith’s invisible hand must, in fact, be a pair of hands if society is to uniformly benefit-one hand to do the nation’s commerce, the other to wash the former of its excesses and transgressions.
Our civil judicial system and the common law upon which it is based make it possible for our diverse, complex, democratic, free-market society to function. Unnecessary personal injury, fraud on consumers and investors, and conversion of the environment and other community resources all represent a cost to society, not just to the individuals who are the initial victims. Civil lawsuits measure the losses caused by destructive conduct and shift the loss to the source; they don’t cause that loss. This function will always make the law unpopular with those held responsible, and the latter will never cease to try and blame trial lawyers for the harm caused by their own conduct.
Medical malpractice insurance premiums are currently rising for two basic reasons. One is cyclical and relates to the interplay of the insurance industry‘s underwriting and premium practices and the difficult investment market the industry currently faces. The second is a long-term problem:
There is far too much malpractice.
A Harvard medical study has reported that less than one in 10 acts of malpractice is ever compensated. Other studies have confirmed this, and that most acts of medical negligence are from repeat offenders. Medical malpractice results in real losses to real people, medical bill and lost wages, loss of life or quality of life-losses not caused by lawsuits but measured by them.
The civil justice system is telling us that our health care system has problems. For sure, there is room for improvement in the civil justice system.
However, improvements there would on balance uncover more, not less medical malpractice costs. We can cut the tongue out of the messenger by closing the courthouse door on victims and pretending that these losses are not happening, or we can get serious about addressing the real problems.
Unfortunately, the solutions are not simple. They are entwined in issues related to the regulation of the insurance industry and the practice of medicine. They relate to how we pay for and ration health care; false economies of staffing; and inadequate pay for medical support staff.
Perhaps this inherent complexity explains the willingness of some to latch on to simpler explanations. That solutions will involve challenging a lot of special interests explains why we are going to continue to hear that it is the "greedy lawyers’ fault."
Bruce McMath is a past president of the Arkansas Trial Lawyers Association and a past member of the Board of Governors of the American Association of Trial Lawyers. He is a partner in McMath Woods, P.A., in Little Rock.