Posted on 11/07/2007 7:41:35 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
On the matter of Terri Schiavos right to life, which occupied the attention of the media and Congress in 2005, Thompson called that a family decision, in consultation with their doctor, and the federal government should not be involved. Thompson added, the less government the better. ...
In the case of Terri Schiavo, a severely disabled person, there was a family dispute. Her estranged husband wanted her to die and he eventually succeeded in starving her to death. Her parents had wanted her to live. ...
There was no moral justification for killing Terri because she had an inherent right to life and there was no clear evidence that she wanted food and water withdrawn. The morally correct course of action would have been to let her family take care of her. Nobody would have been harmed by that.
Meet the Press host Tim Russert brought up the death of Thompsons daughter, who reportedly suffered a brain injury and a heart attack after an accidental overdose of prescription drugs. Apparently Thompson and members of his family made some decisions affecting her life and death. Thompson described it as an end-of-life issue.
Bobby Schindler says he doesnt know what the circumstances precisely were in that case and that he sympathizes with what Thompson went through. However, he says that it is not comparable at all to his sisters case.
What no one is recognizing, he told me, is that my sisters case was not an end-of-life issue. She was simply and merely disabled. Terri wasnt dying. She was only being sustained by food and water. She had no terminal illness. She wasnt on any machines. All she needed was a wheelchair and she could have been taken anywhere. She didnt even need to be confined to a bed.
(Excerpt) Read more at aim.org ...
And here was my reply to that same post on this other thread.
The forum over at Intrade has some interesting discussions on how and why Fred has been tanking.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1922408/posts?page=183#183
To: ellery
Thanks for the articles. I note that even in 2004, Intrade had $2M being bet back & forth on GWB. There was an attempt to manipulate it per Wikipedia, but it failed. These markets are not perfectly efficient (no market is) but they are better predictors than anything else, including pundits and especially MSM Polls more than a year out. These markets are here to stay, and their presence is growing, especially in corporate america as internal vehicles to help get a handle on aggregated conventional wisdom.
From the article you pointed to:
Those Spurious Presidential Futures:
http://www.thestreet.com/p/_rms/rmoney/barryritholtz/10185976.html
Intrade.com claims to be the largest futures exchange in the world, and its biggest contract the George W. Bush futures has about $2 million invested currently.
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Excerpt from
A little before 1 a.m. with the Intrade odds at 37 percent CNN broadcast a live interview with John Aravosis, a liberal activist. We pretty much know where we are, Mr. Aravosis said. The Dems have the House. Republicans have the Senate. And, you know, I dont think thats going to change by morning.
It did change, of course. Mr. Allen soon conceded, and the Democrats began planning their majority. Mr. Wolfers, an economist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, sitting in the comfort of his living room, had been a better pundit than most of the professionals on television, thanks to a Web site that is based in Ireland.
Over the last few years, Intrade with headquarters in Dublin, where the gambling laws are loose has become the biggest success story among a new crop of prediction markets.
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Excerpt from
Were the InTrade prediction markets on the November 2006s Senate elections accurate?
Chris. F. Masse August 2nd, 2007
Revisiting the issue, almost one year later.
Lance Fortnow (University of Chicago) wrote:
So how did those predictions go? In short you can say the markets predicted every individual race correctly but got the senate wrong, but let us look a little more carefully.
At about 9 AM CST on the morning of election day I made a snap shot of the map for a Discovery Channel Website article.
Every state colored blue was won by a democrat and every state colored red went to a republican. But also note the 69% given to GOP (Republican) Senate control although this election will give control to the democrats. No outcome would have made all the states and senate control agree with the 9 AM map.
Were the markets inconsistent? No, because the markets predict not absolutely but probabilistically. For example, the markets gave a probability of winning 60% for each of Virginia and Missouri and the democrats needed both to take the senate. If these races were independent events, the probability that the democrats take both is 36% or a 64% chance of GOP senate control assuming no other surprises.
Of course the races were not independent events and there are other states involved making it more difficult to compare the probabilities of the individual races with that of senate control.
So how did the markets do as predictors? Quite well as the outcome seems quite reasonable given the markets. Other outcomes would have also been reasonable such as the Democrats losing Virginia and the senate remaining in republican hands, a possibility that came very close to happening.
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Excerpt from
New York Times on prediction markets REDUX
Chris. F. Masse February 14th, 2007
- New York Times.
- Justin Wolfers Interview - by New York Times - (MP3) - 2007-02-14
http://www.midasoracle.org/2007/02/14/new-york-times-on-prediction-markets-redux/
- Justin Wolfers comment on my 08 is two years away [*] comment:
Your concern about the accuracy of markets two years out seems entirely well placed. But again - and I think it is worth saying this over and over - the relevant question is whether the markets do a better job than alternative information aggregation devices. My own analysis (with Andrew Leigh) of Australian polling data suggests that any polling done more than a year before an election is essentially useless. That is, you are better off simply guessing that the previous election results will repeat themselves, than you are using early polls.
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Excerpt from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market
In the Tradesports 2004 presidential markets there was an apparent manipulation effort. An anonymous trader sold short so many Bush 2004 presidential futures contracts that the price was driven to zero, implying a zero percent chance that Bush would win. The only rational purpose of such a trade would be an attempt to manipulate the market in a strategy called a bear raid. If this was a deliberate manipulation effort it failed, however, as the price of the contract rebounded rapidly to its previous level. As more press attention is paid to prediction markets, it is likely that more groups will be motivated to manipulate them. However, in practice, such attempts at manipulation have always proven to be very short lived. In their paper entitled Information Aggregation and Manipulation in an Experimental Market (2005),[11] Hanson, Oprea and Porter (George Mason U), show how attempts at market manipulation in fact end up increasing the accuracy of the market because they provide that much more profit incentive to bet against the manipulator.
“Where there is life there is hope!” - Terri Schiavo
I don’t care if you think differently than I do. That’s what makes life interesting. But you need to have a better understanding of what went into the Constitution before you start tearing into it. It’s a very closely crafted and balanced document, and VERY well thought out.
And it is a compromise. In a recent post Tailgunner Joe raised the level of the discussion tangibly by quoting from Federalist No. 9. He and I might have disagreements about this or that, but at least we are giving proper respect to the opinions of those who actually did the work.
As far as voting is concerned, I agree. It is a bit disconcerting to know that there are millions of truly ignorant votes cast. It is an imperfect world when seen through that prism. But at least it’s good news for Democrats.
Thompson Tanking in Futures Markets (Intrade, IEM)
Intrade; Iowa Electronic Markets ^ | October 31, 2008
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1919127/posts
Intrade forum discussion
http://bb.intrade.com/intradeForum/posts/list/1805.page
“He is deliberately being held down in the press by all indications.”
MEGA DITTO.
"nor shall any state... deprive any person of life... without due process of law..."
You forgot that part.
Yawn...
Uh huh...
Anyways, I’ll take 3 eggs scambled, bacon...
Well, put.
Many earnest conservatives here made the reasonable decision to eschew nail-biting and make a choice. And many of them picked Fred.
As often happens, when we go more with our hearts and our hopes than our heads and the record, they are being disappointed. Fred is clearly not the man on the white horse that many had hoped and believed he was. For them, these are bitter days.
I respect you all, Fredheads. The choice of a candidate is a close call for many of us. Few of us see a perfect candidate but, once having picked one, many of us feel the need to put him on an unassailable pedestal. When he falls, it is painful.
Conservatism still needs you this season, Fredheads. You'll find a new candidate...and he may be a winner. A Hillary victory is not written...unless we write it.
Post #4 LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Fred is running 2nd in most of the polls and will be our candidate, and he is a winner. You will get on board in that effort when the time comes.
It's nice for you to dismiss any candidate that doesn't meet your well defined criteria, even Ronald Maximus had his failings, but his message was a one of hope and patriotism. He came at a time when we were in peril, lost in our way, and wandering.
His message was simple. America is strong and always will be, we just have to believe in it.
He also understood that the rule of law, not the rule of religion is what makes this nation great.
We are now again in a time of peril. Our enemies will not 'negotiate' as the Dims want, they want our heads, and have proven it over and over again. Our 'freinds' can be counted on one hand, and the rest just want us to be there to pay for everything.
Fred also sees that peril, the one of open borders, China, Jihadism, economic disaster, and the future of those yet unborn to pay for it. He has had revision of some of his earlier failings, AS ANY GOOD MAN WILL DO AS HE GAINS WISDOM.
As a nation of laws, we are bound to protect ALL views, even those we do not care for, and through the ballot box is the way we make change. Not by judicial fiat as with R v W or by decree that some want in an EO or other such nonsense that is more dictatorial than democratic.
Fred understands this one fundamental above the rest, the people need to decide, that is what the Founding Fathers wanted. Limited government, decisions made by the people, and not controlled from a central government.
That is why so many of us are with Fred. Sadly, you others can't see why, and probably won't until it's too late.
Bill O said he was finished last night too. Not surprised since he also picked Rudy for the nomination.
Killing Terri was wrong, and the government should not have been involved. Government passes laws for the common good, not for INDIVIDUALS!
Thompson was right and he’s not finished.
Fox News Channel isn't conservative: "Even employees of Fox News, which is widely regarded as a conservative channel, donate 81 percent of their contributions to Democrats."
Felons Smarter Than Liberals (Ann Coulter Early Bird Special Alert)
You can’t scold voters into being happy with your candidate.
God’s intent was to put her exactly where she was, and to have what happened to her, happen. There was a lesson in her death that people may, or may not have learned. I am not going to pretend to understand God’s will on all things, I do know where this incident directed me, though.
If investigation, at the time, shows my husband deliberately harmed me, then he should lose his decision-making powers and he should be criminally charged.
The point is that we, as a society, have created law to determine decision-making in these cases. In the vast majority of cases, the law works well.
Michael, being the husband, had the authority to determine Terri's "treatment". Terri's parents had no legal authority. Florida law stated that it was legal to withhold a feeding tube. No/little investigation was done at the time of injury to be able to say one way or another what happened. Case closed, IMO.
It bothers me tremendously that FReepers want to ignore written law, voted on by the people, and involve courts/State government/Federal government in making these decisions.
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