Letter to the President

Dear President Obama,

I openly admit that I voted for you during the election and happily sport an Obama/Biden sticker on the back of my car. However, I just don't understand the need for your recent "beer summit" with Vice President Biden and two guys from MA. Now I realize Professor Gates is a friend of yours and that, as an African American, racial equality is extremely important to you. But, c'mon man, just send a couple of fruit baskets or something. That time, regardless of how short, could have been devoted to the much bigger issues that you inherited from the four presidents before you. On the other hand, at least you didn't stick your nose into a private matter between a husband and his dying wife and sign legislation to inhumanely keep the woman alive like your predecessor did in Florida a few years ago. Thanks for not being that jackass! Keep it real.

Mark Hall
Port Haywood, VA

The Epitome of Crazy

It is utterly astonishing to me that, despite the fact President Obama is already more than six months into his term, the conservative nutjobs continue to openly doubt the legitimacy of President Obama's birth certificate and, in turn, his citizenship. I guess these right wing idiots think that, if they keep discussing this topic, then President Obama's election victory will be magically overturned. This is especially ironic considering the questions (whether they are valid or not) surrounding the citizenship of his opponent during the presidential campaign, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). With that being said, I want to make sure that the other side of the argument is kept out there so the following links (http://theharrowdownhill.blogspot.com/2008/12/sore-losers-of-week.html and http://theharrowdownhill.blogspot.com/2008/12/they-finally-got-big-one-right.html) for two of the postings that I previously published on this topic. At the same time, it is nice to see that the editors of the National Review Online (with which I rarely agree) published an editorial (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTRjMTFhMzQxYmEzNjA2YWIwOTU4YWVjNzRmODE2NTI) against the dimwitted individuals who continue the debate on President Obama's citizenship.

One of the leaders of this group of tin foil hat wearing rocket scientists is Orly Taitz. Aside from being a birther (as the people who believe President Obama is ineligible to hold that office are now called), Taitz is also an attorney, a dentist and a real estate agent. (Yes, you read that correctly.) However, before we start listening to the ramblings of a lunatic, let's take a closer look at Ms. Taitz's various actions, background and "credentials".

• Taitz claims that, in order to be classified as a natural born citizen, both parents must be U.S. citizens. But the fact that his father was a British citizen has no effect on President Obama's status as a natural born citizen of the United States. Section 1401 of Title 8 of the U.S. Code states that an individual born either inside or outside of this country is considered to be a national and a citizen of the United States at birth if one of the parents is a U.S. citizen (his mother).
• Ironically, there is no evidence of Taitz's immigration to or arrival in the United States or documentation of her naturalization although records for those events are publicly available for the years from her birth in 1960 through the present day. There is also no evidence of her name being on the list of registered voters in California, a state in which Taitz has lived since 1987.
• Although she is a member of the State Bar of California, Taitz is not listed as a member of the American Bar Association (ABA). By the way, the Office of the Chief Trial Counsel of the State Bar of California is currently conducting an investigation after an official complaint was filed regarding Taitz and her actions.
• The law school from which she graduated, William Howard Taft University, is not accredited by the ABA. The school also does not require applicants to complete the LSAT, which is an examination administered by the Law School Admission Council for prospective law school candidates.
• Since William Howard Taft University is a distance learning institution only, Taitz’s degree entitles her, at most, to practice law in California.
• Taitz describes herself as an expert in constitutional law. However, before her interest in Obama's citizenship began, her only cases involved defending herself against medical malpractice and breach of contract suits. And if that's not enough, her husband Yosef has appeared in court on multiple occasions for various charges (including fraud and assault and battery) but never utilized his wife as his attorney. (That's a shocker.)
• The address listed for her law practice is the same as for one of her dental offices.
• Taitz claims to have earned her Master's degree in dentistry from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem but the institution does not have her listed as an alumnus.
• Her real estate license from the Department of Real Estate in California expired in February of last year.
• Along with President Obama, Taitz has accused the following individuals of treason: (1) all of the Supreme Court justices, (2) every member of the United States Congress, (3) U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, (4) U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan and (5) other officials from the federal government.
• Taitz is encouraging her supporters and fellow wackos nationwide to organize themselves as wholly unlawful "citizen's grand juries" and presenting their "indictments" of President Obama to government officials.
• Taitz claimed that Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Carroll Childers was listed as a plaintiff that she and Maj. Stefan Cook filed against President Obama. However, in an e-mail to the "Ledger-Enquirer", Maj. Gen. Childers stated "You have bad information. I have not joined the lawsuit brought by Maj. Cook. Please retract that information and do not print it again...I have notified Dr. Taitz that I am no longer a plaintiff in any motion she might process." Taitz's response? "Probably it’s some kind of mistake. I don’t know what happened." Well, there's nothing like playing around with the reputation of a career military man.
• Philip Berg, another infamous birther, filed a lawsuit against Taitz which accuses her, among other things, of harassing Berg and other plaintiffs in the case and plagiarizing the briefs Berg used in his birth certificate related actions for her own filings.
• Earlier this year, Taitz contacted local law enforcement, the FBI and the Supreme Court and claimed that her two previous web sites were being hacked and sabotaged. As a result, the PayPal accounts she used to collect donations would not receive any further contributions. However, her New Jersey based webmaster, Lisa Ostella, disagreed with Taitz's claims. Why? If Taitz’s web sites were actually hacked, then the security of all of Ostella’s clients would have been compromised. Ostella has challenged Taitz to provide her PayPal records but refuses to do so. Maybe the size of her and her husband's house has something to do with it: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/birds-eye-view-map/25575662_zpid/#birds-eye-view.

Recommended Films of the Week

Earlier this evening, I watched an amazing documentary called "Food, Inc.". The film does a tremendous job at detailing various food safety issues, the plight of the American farmer and other scary aspects of food production in the United States. For those individuals interested in this subject matter, I would also recommend another documentary called "Death on a Factory Farm". By the way, my favorite quote from tonight's documentary was from Joel Salatin, the owner of Polyface Farms (http://www.polyfacefarms.com/), which is a family owned, multigenerational, pasture based, beyond organic, local market farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. When discussing, among other things, genetically modified foods, Salatin stated that "I'm continually amazed by our ability to hit the bull's eye on the wrong target".

You Couldn't Ask For a Better Source

Wendell Potter, the Senior Fellow on Health Care at the Center for Media and Democracy, recently appeared on the "Bill Moyers Journal" on PBS to discuss, among other things, the scare tactics used by health care companies. With a twenty-year as a corporate public relations executive, Potter was the Director of Corporate Communications at CIGNA until he resigned last year to join the socially responsible Center for Media and Democracy. Potter's appearance with Bill Moyers was certainly timely, given the current debate regarding President Obama's health care plan. And after listening to Potter speak for almost an hour, I certainly understand why many individuals, including myself, feel that the health care system needs to be drastically reformed. If you have not done so already, I certainly encourage you to watch Michael Moore's documentary "SiCKO" to full appreciate the clips included in this interview but I have included some other quotes from Potter's appearance below:

• "I thought that [Michael Moore] hit the nail on the head with his movie. But the industry, from the moment that the industry learned that Michael Moore was taking on the health care industry, it was really concerned."
• "The industry has always tried to make Americans think that government run systems are the worst thing that could possibly happen to them, that if you even consider that, you're heading down on the slippery slope towards socialism. So they have used scare tactics for years and years and years to keep that from happening. If there were a broader program like our Medicare program, it could potentially reduce the profits of these big companies. So that is their biggest concern."
• "In memos that would go back within the industry, [Moore] was never, by the way, mentioned by name in any memos because we didn't want to inadvertently write something that would wind up in his hands. So the memos would usually-- the subject line would be-- the e-mails would be "Hollywood". And as we would do the media training, we would always have someone refer to him as Hollywood entertainer or Hollywood moviemaker Michael Moore."
• "You know, we have more people who are uninsured in this country than the entire population of Canada. And that, if you include the people who are underinsured, more people than in the United Kingdom."
• "I was watching MSNBC one afternoon. And I saw [Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN)]. He's just down the road from where I grew up, in Chattanooga. And he was talking-- he was asked a question about health care reform. I think it was just a day or two after the President's first health care reform summit. And he was one of the ones Republicans put on the tube.
  And he was saying that, you know, the health care problem is not necessarily as bad as we think. That of the uninsured people, half of them are that way because they want to 'go naked'."
• "The industry doesn't want to have any competitor. In fact, over the course of the last few years, has been shrinking the number of competitors through a lot of acquisitions and mergers. So, first of all, they don't want any more competition, period. They certainly don't want it from a government plan that might be operating more efficiently than they are, that they operate. The Medicare program that we have here is a government run program that has administrative expenses that are like three percent or so...[The health care companies] spend about 20 cents of every premium dollar on overhead, which is administrative expense or profit. So they don't want to compete against a more efficient competitor."
• "Back in the early '90s, or back during the time that the Clinton plan was being debated, ninety-five cents out of every dollar was sent, you know, on average was used by the insurance companies to pay claims. Last year, it was down to just slightly above eighty percent. So investors want that to keep shrinking."
• "A big chunk of [a health care premium] goes into shareholders' pockets. It's returned to them as part of the investment to them. It goes into the exorbitant salaries that a lot of the executives make. It goes into paying sales, marketing and underwriting expenses. So a lot of it goes to pay those kinds of administrative functions -- overhead."
• "The people who are enrolled in our Medicare plan like it better. The satisfaction ratings are higher in our Medicare program, a government run program, than in private insurance."

Words to Remember

From the very first posting of this blog in 2006, I have never commented about sports (even though I love the subject more than politics). But this is different. Ever since ESPN Radio started the auction to support The V Foundation for Cancer Research five years ago, I have sent an e-mail about this various topic on the day of the auction to the other individuals in my office. In case you are unfamiliar with his back story, Jim Valvano was the former head men’s basketball coach at North Carolina State University, winning the national championship in 1983 as an enormous underdog and eventually leaving in 1990 after ten years with the institution. He was unfortunately diagnosed with bone cancer in June 1992 and then, at the inaugural ESPY Awards show in March 1993, delivered the following speech (http://www.jimmyv.org/remembering-jim/espy-awards-speech.html) after accepting the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. Now Valvano is certainly not a man without flaws but, aside the funny moments (especially the part about the Green Bay Packers), no one can deny that the speech is extremely moving and inspirational. I included the link to the text and video of the speech but I just love to see the words in front of me. By the way, Valvano passed away less than two months after his famous speech. His tombstone in Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh, NC reads: "Take time everyday to laugh, to think, to cry."

Jim Valvano's Speech:
"Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. That's the lowest I've ever seen Dick Vitale since the owner of the Detroit Pistons called him in and told him he should go into broadcasting.

I can't tell you what an honor it is to even be mentioned in the same breath with Arthur Ashe. This is something I certainly will treasure forever. But, as it was said on the tape, and I also don't have one of those things going with the cue cards so I'm going to speak longer than anybody else has spoken tonight. That's the way it goes. Time is very precious to me. I don't know how much I have left and I have some things that I would like to say. Hopefully, at the end, I will have said something that will be important to other people too. But I can't help it.

Now I'm fighting cancer, everybody knows that. People ask me all the time about how you go through your life and how's your day and nothing is changed for me. As Dick said, I'm a very emotional and passionate man. I can't help it. That's being the son of Rocco and Angelina Valvano. It comes with the territory. We hug, we kiss, we love. When people say to me, 'How do you get through life or each day?', it's the same thing. To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. Number three is you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.

I rode on the plane up today with Mike Krzyzewski, my good friend and wonderful coach. People don't realize he's ten times a better person than he is a coach and we know he's a great coach. He's meant a lot to me in these last five or six months with my battle. But when I look at Mike, I think, we competed against each other as players. I coached against him for fifteen years and I always have to think about what's important in life to me are these three things: where you started, where you are and where you're going to be. Those are the three things that I try to do every day.

When I think about getting up and giving a speech, I can't help it. I have to remember the first speech I ever gave. I was coaching at Rutgers University--that was my first job and I was the freshman coach. That's when freshmen played on freshman teams and I was so fired up about my first job. I see Lou Holtz here. Coach Holtz, who doesn't like the very first job you had? The very first time you stood in the locker room to give a pep talk. That's a special place, the locker room, for a coach to give a talk. So my idol as a coach was Vince Lombardi and I read this book called 'Commitment to Excellence' by Vince Lombardi. And, in the book, Lombardi talked about the fist time he spoke before his Green Bay Packers team in the locker room and they were perennial losers. I'm reading this and Lombardi said he was thinking, 'Should it be a long talk or a short talk?'. But he wanted it to be emotional so it would be brief. So here's what I did. Normally you get in the locker room, I don't know, twenty-five minutes, a half hour before the team takes the field. You do your little x and os and then you give the great Knute Rockne talk. We all do. Speech number eight-four. You pull them right out, you get ready. You get your squad ready. Well, this is the first one I ever gave and I read this thing. Lombardi, what he said was he didn't go in, he waited. His team wondering, 'Where is he?'. Where is this great coach? He's not there. Ten minutes, he's still not there. Three minutes before they could take the field, Lombardi comes in, bangs the door open and I think you all remember what great presence he had, great presence. He walked in and he walked back and forth, like this, just walked, staring at the players. He said, 'All eyes on me'. I'm reading this in this book. I'm getting this picture of Lombardi before his first game and he said, 'Gentlemen, we will be successful this year if you can focus on three things and three things only. Your family, your religion and the Green Bay Packers.'. They knocked the walls down and the rest was history. I said, 'That's beautiful. I'm going to do that. Your family, your religion and Rutgers basketball.'. That's it. I had it. Listen, I'm twenty-one years old. The kids I'm coaching are nineteen and I'm going to be the greatest coach in the world, the next Lombardi. I'm practicing outside of the locker room and the managers tell me, 'You got to go in'. Not yet, not yet. 'Family, religion, Rutgers basketball. All eyes on me.' I got it, I got it. Then finally he said, 'Three minutes'. I said, 'Fine'. True story. I go to knock the doors open just like Lombardi. Boom! They don't open. I almost broke my arm. Now I was down, the players were looking. Help the coach out, help him out. Now I did like Lombardi--I walked back and forth and I was going like that with my arm getting the feeling back in it. Finally I said, 'Gentlemen, all eyes on me'. These kids wanted to play, they're nineteen. 'Let's go', I said. 'Gentlemen, we'll be successful this year if you can focus on three things and three things only. Your family, your religion and the Green Bay Packers', I told them. I did that. I remember that. I remember where I came from.

It's so important to know where you are. I know where I am right now. How do you go from where you are to where you want to be? I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. You have to be willing to work for it.

I talked about my family--my family's so important. People think I have courage. The courage in my family are my wife Pam, my three daughters here, Nicole, Jamie, LeeAnn, my mom, who's right here too. That screen is flashing up there thirty seconds. Like I care about that screen right now, huh? I got tumors all over my body. I'm worried about some guy in the back going, 'Thirty seconds'? You got a lot. Hey, va fa Napoli, buddy. You got a lot.

I just got one last thing. I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have. To spend each day with some laughter and some thought, to get you're emotions going. To be enthusiastic every day and, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, 'Nothing great could be accomplished without enthusiasm'. To keep your dreams alive in spite of problems, whatever you have. The ability to be able to work hard for your dreams to come true, to become a reality.

Now I look at where I am now and I know what I want to do. What I would like to be able to do is spend whatever time I have left and to give and maybe some hope to others. Arthur Ashe Foundation is a wonderful thing and AIDS, the amount of money pouring in for AIDS is not enough but is significant. But if I told you it's ten times the amount that goes in for cancer research. I also told you that 500,000 people will die this year of cancer. I also tell you that one in every four will be afflicted with this disease and, yet somehow, we seem to have put it in a little bit of the background. I want to bring it back on the front table. We need your help. I need your help. We need money for research. It may not save my life. It may save my children's lives. It may save someone you love. And ESPN has been so kind to support me in this endeavor and allow me to announce tonight that, with ESPN's support, which means what? Their money and their dollars and they're helping me--we are starting the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research. And it's motto is: 'Don't give up, don't ever give up.' That's what I'm going to try to do every minute that I have left. I will thank God for the day and the moment I have. If you see me, smile and give me a hug. That's important to me too. But try if you can to support, whether it's AIDS or the cancer foundation, so that someone else might survive, might prosper and might actually be cured of this dreaded disease. I can't thank ESPN enough for allowing this to happen. I'm going to work as hard as I can for cancer research and hopefully, maybe, we'll have some cures and some breakthroughs. I'd like to think I'm going to fight my brains out to be back here again next year for the Arthur Ashe recipient. I want to give it next year!

I know, I gotta go, I gotta go. And I got one last thing and I said it before and I want to say it again. Cancer can take away all my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever. I thank you and God bless you all."

The V Foundation for Cancer Research awards 100% of all direct donations and net proceeds from the organization's events directly to cancer research and related programs. The foundation has raised more than $80 million to fund cancer research nationwide.

For All of Those Parents Out There

An oldie but a goodie to hopefully make things a little brighter:

The Price of Children

The government previously calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to eighteen years old and came up with $160,140 for a middle income family. Talk about price shock! That doesn't even touch college tuition. But $160,140 isn't so bad if you break it down. It translates into $741.38 a month, $171.08 a week and a mere $24.24 a day. Just over a dollar an hour. Still, you might think the best financial advice is: Don't have children if you want to be rich. Actually, it is just the opposite.

What do you get for your $160,140? Naming rights: First, middle and last. Giggles under the covers every night. More love than your heart can hold. Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs. Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds and warm cookies. A hand to hold, usually covered with jelly or chocolate. A partner for blowing bubbles and flying kites. Someone to laugh yourself silly with, no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day.

For $160,140, you never have to grow up. You get to finger paint, carve pumpkins, play hide and seek, catch lightning bugs and never stop believing in Santa Claus. You have an excuse to keep reading the adventures of Piglet and Pooh, watch Saturday morning cartoons, go to Disney movies and wish on stars. You get to frame rainbows, hearts and flowers under refrigerator magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, handprints set in clay for Mother's Day and cards with backward letters for Father's Day.

For a mere $24.24 a day, there is no greater bang for your buck. You get to be a hero just for retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof, taking the training wheels off a bike, removing a splinter, filling a wading pool, coaxing a wad of gum out of bangs and coaching a baseball team that never wins but always gets treated to ice cream regardless. You get a front row seat in history to witness the first step, first word, first bra, first date and first time behind the wheel. You get to be immortal. You get another branch added to your family tree and, if you're lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called grandchildren and great-grandchildren. You get an education in psychology, nursing, criminal justice, communications and human sexuality that no college can match.

You have all the power to heal a boo-boo, scare away the monsters under the bed, patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever and love them without limits so one day they will, like you, love without counting the cost. That is quite a deal for the price! Love and enjoy your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It's the best investment you will ever make!

A Village Is Losing Its Idiot

In a surprise announcement, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin declared earlier today that she is resigning from her position, which would be effective at the end of this month. In an absolutely confusing and horrible speech (she is a truly horrendous speaker), Palin stated that she is not seeking re-election because she plans to "work for and campaign for those proud to be American and those who are inspired by our ideals and won't deride them". According to Palin, another reason for her decision is because she has always promised "no more politics as usual", a ridiculous phrase she uttered on five separate occasions during her speech. Her constant use of bad cliches reminds me of a quote from artist Salvador Dali: "The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot".

Palin's announcement comes on the eve of the release of e-mails between her and Steve Schmidt from October of last year, who was the senior campaign strategist and advisor to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) during the 2008 presidential campaign. Highlighting the tension within the McCain campaign, the e-mail chain centers around Palin's husband, Todd, and his membership in the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP), an organization which advocates an in-state referendum containing the option of Alaska seceding from the United States and, in turn, becoming an independent nation.

Palin (in an e-mail to Schmidt, campaign manager Richard Davis and campaign advisor Nicole Wallace): "[Please] get in front of that ridiculous issue that's cropped up all day today - two reporters, a protestor's sign and many shout-outs all claiming Todd's involvement in an anti-American political party. It's bull and I don't want to have to keep reacting to it...[Please] have statement given on this so it's put to bed."

Schmidt (replying to everyone less than five minutes later): "Ignore it. He was a member of the AIP? My understanding is yes. That is part of their platform. Do not engage the protestors. If a reporter asks, say 'It is ridiculous. Todd loves America.'"

Palin (adding five more staff members to the distribution list): "That's not part of their platform and he was only a member because independent Alaskans too often check that 'Alaska Independent' box on voter registrations thinking it just means non-partisan. He caught his error when changing our address and checked the right box. I still want it fixed." Note: So her husband made a mistake and then quickly resolved the matter? I believe that Schmidt has something to say to the contrary.

Schmidt, finally putting the matter to rest once and for all: "Secession -- it is their entire reason for existence. A cursory examination of the web site shows that the party exists for the purpose of seceding from the union. That is the stated goal on the front page of the web site. Our records indicate that Todd was a member for seven years. If this is incorrect, then we need to understand the discrepancy. The statement you are suggesting be released would be inaccurate. The inaccuracy would bring greater media attention to this matter and be a distraction. According to your staff, there have been no media inquiries into this and you received no questions about it during your interviews. If you are asked about it, you should smile and say 'Many Alaskans who love their country join the party because it speaks to a tradition of political independence. Todd loves his country.' We will not put out a statement and inflame this and create a situation where John [McCain] has to address this."

In case you were wondering, Palin was silent after Schmidt's second e-mail and the McCain campaign did not issue the statement Palin demanded.

New Address, Same Attitude

My family and I moved to a new house in the middle of June so we have spent the last few weeks cleaning, decorating, unpacking boxes, etc. But since the majority of that work has been completed, it is now time for me to start voicing my opinions again. Keep your eyes open for a new posting very soon!