Having driven a number of Toyotas to more than 100,000 miles with little if any problems, and now driving a Hyundai Santa Fe with 104,000 miles and few, if any, problems, I used to wonder what was wrong with American car companies.

Why couldn't they build a car that lasted? That's engine ran as smoothly at 100,000 miles as it did when it was new? (And I'm telling you right now, the Hyundai, at 104,000 runs as smoothly and easily and quietly as it did new.)

Then I spent three weeks in a Ford Focus.

American car companies are doomed. They can't even make a decent cup holder.

Bob Jones III, of Bob Jones University fame, announced today this presidential race is "all about beating Hillary," and shudders thinking of the possibility of a Hilliary/Rudy Guiliani race, the sheer "disaster" of having to pick from two pro-choice candidates for President.

He told the Greenville (SC) News today, if his choice is between Hillary with her "lack of religion," Rudy and his pro-choice stance or the Mormon, Mitt Romney, he'll take the guy who practices the "erroneous religion."

(I gotta love that. From him claiming some kind of spiritual X-ray vision that sees inside Hillary and knows she's got no religion or him in all his spiritual wisdom proclaiming another religion erroneous. Never let it be said that we don't have fun in Greenville, SC. Maybe the X-ray vision thing is connected to the Gay-Dar that Bob Jones was going to use a few years back to stop homosexuals at the gates and not let them on campus. Maybe they've updated it in the past few years to spot those with no religion, too, and all the erroneous religions.)

Not surprisingly, the Greenville (SC) News is defending Bush's veto of SCHIP. I fumed for a day and then sat down to write. Clicked around on the web and found some easy numbers anyone can use for their own LTE.

From our county-wide school district, the most recent enrollment figures: 67,383 kids. From the US Census Bureau, most recent estimates 11.2 percent of US kids without health insurance.

Which means, my county has more than 7,500 uninsured, school-age children. (Make it local. Make it real to people. Make them think.)

My LTE follows.

A new religious/political group has just moved into South Carolina to take on the bullshit of the so-called Religious Right. In a full-page ad in the Greenville, (SC) News, on Monday, the groups called Faith In America warns:

"Religion-based bigotry has been used by those who wanted us to believe:

"Women are Inferior    (pic of Hillary and Laura Bush)
"Races are Unequal    (pic of Obama & Family)
"Interracial Marriage should be banned  (pic of Jeb Bush & wife)

"Bigotry disguised as religious truth is also used by those who oppose full and equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

"History has proven that's wrong

"Faith in America. Don't accept Bigotry Disguised as Religious Truth."  

Hi,
 Anyone take on Geico and actually get them to pay a car insurance claim? Because I could use some advice. If they tell me one more time I could always file a claim with my own insurance company I'll scream! (Actually, I've already screamed. It didn't help.)
 A Geico client hit my son in a parking lot 10 days ago, freely admitted fault and the police report clearly says it was the Geico's client's fault. Ten days later, the car is still sitting at the place where it was towed, no claim approved, no repairs started, no rental car for my son.
 Excuse after excuse and five times -- five times -- the Geico lady telling me I always have the option of filing the claim with my insurance so they can pay, I don't know what to do next.    

Though my son swears he googled the subject and found that no mother ever died of sadness, due to being abandoned by her beloved son for a college education, I am not so sure.

After all, broken-heart syndrome was just discovered in the last year or two, and in case people don't remember it, scientists argued that hearts can literally break from sadness. (I am not making this up, I swear!)

And I have to apologize right away to all of those people here with sons and daughters in the military. I feel guilty even whining about sending my son to college, when I know many of you are dealing with much, much harder separations and that the danger to your children is real and ever present. I am in awe of the courage that must take every day. I know what I'm facing is so little compared to what you're facing. So please forgive me for what follows.

I left my beloved son, a Freshman, at Clemson University yesterday.    

The Ron Paul Revolution (signs where they highlight love spelled backwards in Revolution) has hit Greenville, SC! And as I saw three, cheap and unprofessional-looking signs for Ron Paul, I realized... I hardly see any signs for anyone else, right here, deep in conservative territory.
Saw one Romney sign a few weeks ago, and the thing that struck me was how incredibly dull even his sign was. It was similar to the one at the top of his web page: http://mittromney.com/ . Except, even duller, if that's possible. And it was the first one I remember seeing, which strikes me as odd, considering that the candidates, dems and repubs, have been in town.
The local paper was practically salivating a few weeks ago over the idea of Fred Thompson running, ( http://www.greenvilleonline.com/... ). I read it and could just imagine the editorial board going, "Please, God, maybe this guy will generate some excitement." But even with them trotting out Thompson talking points, nobody seemed to pick up on it. They floated him, and he sank.

 My idea of a great July 4th holiday -- looking for ways Judge Walton can still screw with Bush & Libby (Yes, I enjoyed it. So what?). Jeralyn at TalkLeft has an article full of legal talk. For the whole thing, see http://www.talkleft.com/...

  I'll try to summarize. Basically, Bush has unlimited powers to commute the sentence and apparently, to do away with Libby's prison time but keep the "supervised release" (like parole) in place for two years, despite what the statute says.

  But the judge, apparently, has powers of his own under the "supervised release" statute which include:
  -Ordering Libby into custody for nights, weekends or any period of time that's less than one year.
  -Keeping him from associating with certain people, say Dick Cheney, Karl Rove?
  -Home confinement, with or without monitoring.

   

It keeps coming up, that sweet, sweet idea: kick the Bastards out. And we get our hopes up, and then... nothing. And we've all been burned before. All thought so many times that things are changing, that they'll get better, and yet here we are, into the 7th staggeringly horrible year of the Bush/Cheney presidency, and I don't mind admitting, I'm tired.
I'm really tired.
It's hard to hope. It's hard to watch. It's hard to speak out and write another letter, sign another petition. It's hard to believe.
So I just want to know what people here think. Not what you believe is the right thing to do, but what you think will actually happen.
Give me your best guess.
Will we find the balls to do it or won't we?

Obama came to Greenville and Spartanburg, SC, on Friday and drew a crowd of 3,500 in Greenville.
I didn't get to attend, but you can read what the local paper had to say here: http://greenvilleonline.com/...  
Greenville is heavily Republican territory. You just don't see Democrats drawing a crowd like this here. The local paper, while taking its expected digs at him, noted that Obama's audience "dwarfed" Hillary Clinton's in her last visit here in late April, where she drew only a few hundred people.
Obama also spoke to an invitation-only crowd of 300 in neighboring Spartanburg, a story on that here: http://www.goupstate.com/...

One that says "I support the troops" and one that says "Bush/Cheney," while I drive a vehicle that gets 9 mpg.
I honor the troops by pretending Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 and that he is more evil than George W. Bush.
I honor the troops by pretending not to notice our soldiers don't have basic tools of war like body armor and metal-plated vehicles.
I honor the troops by pretending Walter Reed isn't a disgraceful mess.
I honor the troops by never, ever, ever attending a single funeral of a fallen soldier.
I honor the troops by pretending there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
I honor the troops by believing we're fighting a global war on terror and that it's possible to fight a war on terror.

Dear Jessica Lynch,
 You are my hero today. You told a congressional hearing that you're not a hero, that the real ones were your fellow soldiers who died the day you were attacked, along with your brother, who still serves.

But you also limped into that hearing room and then, calmly and simply and so convincingly, spoke your truth.

"The bottom line," you said, "Is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they don't need to be told elaborate lies."

You said the word.

Lies.

So many lies have been told by the Bush administration, and yet so few people have been willing to stand before those in power and call them what they are: Lies. But you did, and it had been so long since we heard such truths spoken on a national stage, that the sound was absolutely extraordinary.

Hers is "estrogen receptive" which means its growth is fueled by the hormone estrogen, which means some of the newest hormone-based, non-chemotherapy treatments should help slow the growth of her cancer.

"She said her doctor expected she had the most aggressive 'triple-negative' cancer, but testing found that she had two of the three key hormonal receptors _ estrogen and progesterone."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Briefly, estrogen is natural hormone that, among other things, triggers cells to divide. Block the estrogen in some way, you should slow cell division, and cancer grows by cells dividing.

She's taking a drug developed within the last five years or so, Femara, an aromatase inhibitor. It's so new, they don't seem to have finished any 5-year survival trials yet. But the drug seems to be well-tolerated (especially compared to chemo) to work for more patients than Tamoxifin and slow cancer growth more than Tamoxifin.  

The question from MSNBC, Do George Bush's actions warrant impeachment.

The answer, "Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial"

Survey says... 87 percent?

4 percent say, he's a bad guy, but doesn't deserve impeachment

Only 7 percent kool-aid drinkers left in America, saying he's done nothing wrong?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...

Can this be right? Or is the Republica base just pissed over the election?

UPDATED: with 6 of 2,000 or so precincts reporting, Dem. Tommy Moore is ahead! Moore (D) 2,709 55.17 Sanford GOP 2,201 44.83 Just read that on the Greenville News' web site (www.greenvilleonline.com), a prediction by the county elections supervisor. If we continue at this pace, he expects 65 percent turn-out, which seems hard to believe in a mid-term election with... I swear... no races expected to be competitive.

Yes, we're electing a governor, but most likely re-electing a Republican nobody likes. There is a group of Republicans for Tommy Moore, the Democratic challenger, but nobody really expected anything to come of that or any other race, except maybe Lt. Gov., but who cares about Lt. Gov.?

Double-checked -- last poll I found, dated mid-October, had Gov. Sanford (R) up 57 percent to Democratic challenger Tommy Moore's 34 percent. Found another poll that had the race at a 16 point spread.  

So what are all these people doing at the polls?

Caught a few minutes of the HBO documentary on hacking the vote, and I have to say, when they got to the 04 election and flashed a bit of one of the news anchors saying Ohio had just been called for Bush, it took me right back to that horrible, horrible night. (Early, early morning, I should say.)

I was up. Remember feeling absolutely sick to my stomach, stunned and thinking, I guess this means things will have to get even worse before Americans figure out how stupid they've been to support George Bush and his incredibly stupid, arrogant policies.

But even then, who knew how truly bad things could get. I didn't imagine what we've seen in the last two years. I don't think anyone could have. (Unlike imagining Bin Laden striking the US upon receipt of an intelligence briefging saying, Bin Laden Determined to Strike US. That one, I could have figured out.)

But I digress.

Kissell within 468 VOTES! All precincts in. Recount coming! Shuler wins big, 55-45

Election Results Live Blogging project.  This diary will be used to cover the results of the following elections: NC-08, NC-11.

If you have questions about these races, please contact teresamhill@earthlink.net.

NC-08 - 1 precinct uncounted
Robin Hayes (R)	60,489	50.13%
Larry Kissell (D)	60,032	49.81%

NC-11 - SHULER WINS!
Heath Shuler (D)	113,348	55%
Charles Taylor (R)	94,391	45%

Results as of 11/07/06 at 11:30 Eastern. For a wrap-up of all live-blogging results tonight, please go to http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/11/7/165911/736

In the mid-80s, when I was in my early 20s, I started having awful pelvic pain. My abdomen would feel so swollen and tender that I couldn't stand to have the waistband of my panties touch it at times. I cut the elastic band out of my underwear to wear during those times. Believe me, your panties don't stay up that well without the elastic, but  I couldn't stand something as simple as the waistband of loose underwear. I guess it just hit at exactly the wrong spot.
I'd collapse on my sofa with a heating pad and just exist. I'd go to my doctor and cry on the examining room table.
He finally diagnosed me with endometriosis, which can be incredibly painful, a disease where menstrual tissue grows outside the uterus and creates big sores inside your body, wraps itself around your internal organs and gets a choke-hold on them.
It can also leave you infertile.