Fw: The Next American Idol

From: David
To: Tess H; Dwight; Norman
Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2008 9:19:41 AM
Subject: FW: The Next American Idol

Even Palin had more political experience than the Hawaii Born next Pres.

David

You couldn't get a job at McDonalds and become district manager after 143 days of experience.You couldn't become chief of surgery after 143 days of experience of being a surgeon.You couldn't get a job as a teacher and be the superintendent after 143 days of experience. You couldn't join the military and become a colonel after a 143 days of experience. You couldn't get a job as a reporter and become the nightly news anchor after 143 days of experience. But time Barack Obama was sworn in as a United State Senator, to the time he announced he was forming a Presidential exploratory committee, he logged 143 days of experience in the Senate. That's how many days the Senate was actually in session and working. After 143 days of work experience, Obama believed he was ready to Commander In Chief, Leader of the Free World .... 143 days. We all have to start somewhere. The Senate is a good start, but after 143 days, that's all it is - a start. AND, strangely, a large sector of the American public is okay with this and campaigning for him. We wouldn't accept this in our own line of work, yet some are okay with this for the President of the United States of America? Come on folks, we are not voting for the next American Idol! Please, please forward this before it's too late!!!!

From: Tess H
To: David; Dwight; Norman
Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2008 10:12:19 AM
Subject: Re: The Next American Idol

While I would have preferred somebody more experienced, apparently people found Hillary too polarizing a figure. Barack is the only choice that makes sense.

I cannot see how continuing to have a republican administration will be the solution to our current problems. After 8 years of Republican leadership, we have gone from a budgetary surplus to our economy being heavily leveraged overseas, on the brink of depression and more divided as a country than ever. We have a president who is again trying to tell us that the sky is falling, but his credibility is so low, nobody wants to believe him. Sad thing is, he may actually be right for once. Hank Paulson is a smart guy but he raised major red flags by including no oversight in the initial bill he put before the house. WTF? Was that supposed to be a carrot so we could fight about it and feel like we won something when it was struck from the bill?

What I fear is that people will support McCain because they wish they had a do-over. A do-over from voting Bush through in the primary of 2000. I have always said that I like McCain. His mistake was being a proponent of deregulation. Deregulation that is at the core of the republican economic theory is largely responsible for the economic crisis we are in right now. Rules have always been in place to prevent the kind of lending that has lead us here. But deregulation and lack of enforcement is finally showing its ugly teeth.

A vice-presidential candidate choice often covers the areas that a presidential candidate lacks. It is a telling choice. In Biden, we have experience in spades and a compelling personal story. Just about as American as you can get. Cut him and boy bleeds red, white and blue. He is hardly a rich fat cat senator as he routinely is ranked as one of the "poorest" senators on the hill. In Palin, we have youth, a shaky reputation as an agent of change, and a social conservative with a uterus. I still am puzzled as to how she ever said "yes" to McCain when he asked her to be his running mate. She knows her own knowledge level and has not considered the national stage and international stage before she was asked to be veep a month ago. Even conservative pundits are calling for her to step down as the veep candidate. In her, McCain's campaign is showing its opinion of women, they should be seen and not heard. 3 interviews. 3. And might I add, they were disastrous interviews. She may be bright and a quick study, but there is a strong chance that she would be president. McCain is old. He would be the oldest president if he were elected. McCain is healthy. Now. But it is conceivable he's put a dangerous but pretty neophyte in the #2 slot of his ticket.

McCain has a reputaion of a hot head. In this time where we need more diplomacy, do we really need a hair trigger president? We watch the debates waiting for him to blow up. He didn't. Good on him. This time.

ugh. done now. Why did you get me started?

Tess

Deja-vu all over again

Here's the thing, to quote our sitting president, "...Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

Remember the last time our congress was urged to act -- quickly and decisively? Remember how we were rushed and coerced and bullied? Remember how we're still paying the price heftily?

So here were are again. It is the same administration going to the well. This time it is Hank Paulson asking us to had over $700 Billion dollars. (I don't know if the word billion should be capitalized but I think maybe it should just because of the immense nature of the word. I don't think I can keep the concept of "billion" in my head without it blowing up.) If Hank has his way, we'll be signing over $700 Billion by Friday. With NO oversight. With NO transparency.

Seriously?

Guess what, Hank. You can talk all you want about how you welcome oversight and transparency. If your proposed bill you're pressuring Congress to pass by Friday didn't have that phrase in there, I might have believed you. Were you hoping that we wouldn't notice? I bet you were. Shoot, the American public has pretty much proved that we can be victimized over and over and not really ever notice.

Not no, but hell no. Let's say we bail out these banks and insurance companies. But let's say that we put conditions for the bail out. Let's say we have complete transparency and oversight. Can we say regulation? Yeah, de-regulation has worked just so well. I'm kind of thinking we could use a dose of old fashioned regulation, administered just like the nuns used to in parochial school -- with a firm ruler snap to the knuckles if you step out of line. Make the $700 Billion a loan that they must pay back with interest. Make a moratorium on home foreclosures. After all, there was a lot of predatory lending that happened. We also have an opportunity here to raise some revenue for the United States Government. Housing prices tank much more, we'll have further shrinkage of the dollar, further loss of confidence, further loss of GDP.

This administration is totally against oversight and holding people accountable. Unless you're a teacher. Then by all means, hold them accountable.

Oh man, more rants to come.

Fw: Response from Senator Murray

From: Senator@murray.senate.gov
To: tesshaddon
Subject: Response from Senator Murray
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:45:06 -0400


Dear Mrs. Haddon:

Thank you for contacting me about S. 1738, the Combating Child Exploitation Act of 2008. It was very good to hear from you.

The Combating Child Exploitation Act was introduced by Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) to provide additional resources, strategies and coordination to combat crimes against our children. The bill is currently before the full Senate for consideration. You will be happy to know that I am a cosponsor of S. 1738 and I fully support this effort to give our children greater protection from those who would harm them.

As you may know, S. 1738 would increases penalties for crimes against children. It would create a National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction and establish within the U.S. Department of Justice a National Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force. It would also create a grant program to support state and local ICAC task forces. Finally, the Combating Child Exploitation Act would authorize increased numbers of agents in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other federal agencies to combat these types of crimes.

As a U.S. Senator, I have made the health and safety of our children one of my top priorities. I will continue to fight for strong federal support for programs that prevent child exploitation, aid victims and assist in the investigation and prosecution of these despicable crimes. Please rest assured that as the Senate considers legislation on this issue, I will keep your concerns in mind. Please keep in touch.

I hope all is well.

Orders from Empress O

I rarely watch Oprah. But clever Oprah knows that a lot of people don't watch her show during the afternoon because who has time to watch her show in the afternoon? She now re-broadcasts her show at 9pm.

Last night's show gave me nightmares.

Oprah did a show called "Internet Predators: How Bad Is It?" One of her guests was a cop who wrote a computer tracking program to find child pornography. These cops have to watch gut wrenching videos of children -- infants & toddlers -- getting raped. Oprah showed a pedophile manual detailing how to molest little girls based on age, the youngest group being 0-4 years.

She interviewed a cop who has to make a judgment call every day on which pedophile to arrest and investigate. He said that it made him sick that every piece of paper, every case left on his desk, meant that another child would be raped that day.

This cop she interviewed said that with the internet, the pervs have a major advantage. They're able to interact with each other and normalize their deviant behavior. They're proliferating exponentially and the kids are getting younger and the activity more and more violent. Imagine how many of these criminals could be caught, how many children could be rescued, if we had the funding for law enforcement. Look, I know this is a major downer, but you'll be glad to know that Empress O has a battleplan.

Here is where you come in.

Help pass Senate Bill 1738 -- The Protect Our Children Act. The act gives more funding to law enforcement and establishes a national task force to find the perpetrators. It only takes a few moments. You go to www.senate.gov and from there you can find your senators' home pages and email them directly. Empress O has even made it easy with a form letter you can email if you don't feel like you can write something on your own.

There is a little bit of politicking here because this bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden (D), and has been endorsed by both Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton. The republicans have a similar bill (S. 3344) co-authored by Sen. McCain that has also been stalled. McCain's bill is actually a complimentary bill to 1738.

Who cares who gets credit? At this point, I don't care who gets bragging rights. I only care that the bill passes. Look, I don't claim to know or understand these bills and their differences.

But I do know that as a mother, my stomach clenches every time I think about the fact that there are these monsters amongst us. I think about all those other children enduring this abuse. I just want to scream.

Obama and McCain sure make a lot of talk about reaching across the aisle. How about some action on this?

Pass. The. Bill.
Make. It. Law.

(I hate writing like that but sometimes jarring punctuation is the only way to make a point.)

PUMA-MA

I think I'm a Pumama. If you're not too familiar with that term, it is because I've modified it a little bit. There are Hillary supporters who are calling themselves P.U.M.A. which stands for "Party Unity My *ss." I think I have an extra M.A. on the end of my acronym because I think it is a load of manure to think that if you supported Hillary, you should go support Palin since she's being unfairly portrayed in the media because she is a woman. That's crazy making.

Here's the deal, the differences in the stances between Hillary and Barack were pretty small. They agreed on all the big issues -- where it counts they supported the DNC platform. It looks like Barack has taken some notes from Hillary as far as health care and that is great.

But as a litmus test, I did a very unscientific quiz put up on ABC.com. On *every* point, I agreed with Obama's statements. It is hard to do better than *every*.

So -- I'm a PUMA-MA. I'm in the Obama camp.

Fw: fundraising for the kids

Forwarded Message ----
From: Tess H
To: Dwite; Lola ; Uncle Nofre ; Mom & Dad Haddon
Sent: Monday, September 8, 2008 9:26:06 PM
Subject: fundraising for the kids

I'm figuring I'm going to end up asking you all for money for the 3 kids activities so why not today, right?

Just got back from Lil' T's preschool meeting. Looks like the fundraising goal for the parents is going to be in the ball park $350 per family. Princess's is far more reasonable at $100. I haven't gotten word from That's school, but it is probably going to be around $100 too.

Lil'T's school is a non-profit organization so you can send a tax deductible donation directly to the school. Another way you can help is to go to www.eScrip.com and sign up your Safeway card for their school. It doesn't matter where you live, they'll hook you up to send the donation to her school. The school is really hurting because the location they were in when Princess was their student flooded last year. This left them to move to a new location. It is a great space, but to move the play structure, it will cost $12,000 -- which is far more than they can afford. Until then, the kids will be playing on some pretty cool boulders and the dirt. Imagine Lil'T in dirt. I know, pathetic.

Princess is going to be in a jogathon, where she does exercises for the day and you sponsor her. Checks can be made out to the PTO.

That has a similar thing in the math-a-thon, where he does math problems in a quizbowl type setting and you sponsor him. Checks can be made out to the PTO.

I'll leave you with this -- Lil' T in the dirt playing with rocks.

Worse -- Lil'T playing in the MUD with rocks.

 

Tess

I sent this email to my usual suspects in the family. My brother without kids of his own and the grands. But I am sharing it with all of you because buried in there is a great program for fundraising which is absolutely painless -- www.eScrip.com -- and all you have to do is sign up your Safeway or Vons or whatever participating grocery store club membership card number is and you'll be able to funnel money to your cause. Now, for my 3 kids, all of their schools are participating. It is a great source of year round revenue. My Safeway card garnered about $10 for the school in half a year. It isn't much, but if you consider how many families are participating, that turns into real money real fast. You can also register your Macy's card or local participating retail credit card.

So reader, if you'd like to give your Safeway pennies to Lil'T's school so she won't be playing in the dirt for much longer, please email me and I'll send you her school number. You can select 3 schools, churches or other nonprofit organizations to recieve your eScrip dollars.

And really, can you stand thinking about my sweet Little T being left to play in the mud? Heartbreaking, isn't it?

Beach party

The beach party was thrown by our neighbors at this little community where we own a small parcel of land. Really great people and darned good cooks. It was a little strange to be amongst these folks because for the most part, they're retirees. What was sweet was how they all doted on Lil'T. There are grandmas out there who can't help but feed and chat with little kids like her. It's been a long time since I've been one of the young ones at any function. The one other family who brought their children were older than us. One of them was driving the family car and the youngest had clearly gone through puberty.

There are days that I miss the beaches in Hawaii more than others. Today was one of those days. It was a perfect day for the beach. There was a cool breeze. The sun was shining. It must have been about 70 degrees out. Perfect.

But this was Dabob Bay on Hood Canal. These are not tropical waters.

Hubby decided to go for a dip in the water. Yeah, the water tends to be cold but usually, you can stand in it for a bit and you become adjusted to the temperature. This time however, he said after a good 15 minutes, it still felt like pins and needles all over his legs. Undeterred, he jumped in and swam to the floating dock. About half-way there, he thought only 2 things. 1. "Why am I doing this?" 2. "I think I might die." Too darned cold.

There was one funny moment at the beach though. Princess was standing behind me when I heard a scream of abject terror. I turned around to see Princess holding a slice watermelon with an investigating bumble bee on her hand. The bee had landed on her fingers. Princess had the sense not to move. She was trembling but reasonably still. Hubby shooed the bee away and Princess was a little shaken up but didn't get stung. We reassured her that the watermelon was just too yummy a treat and that she should not worry about the bees. I told her that the bee just wanted a sip of that sweet watermelon juice.

Lil'T had watched the whole event with fascination but what was priceless was how she looked at Princess, then looked at the slice of watermelon in her own hand. You could see the cogs turning in her head. Then she spun around looking over her shoulder both ways just to see if a bee was sneaking up on her.

Neither girl had another slice of watermelon for the rest of the day.