September 11, 2013

"Since 911, an entire generation has been born and grown to self-awareness.

Those young Americans have never known their nation at peace. 

They have never known a nation that is not divided.

They have never had a single day where they weren’t told to hate their neighbors and to report them if they don’t seem patriotic enough.

They have never lived a single day in a nation that wasn’t bent to the terrible business of revenge.

They have never known a nation that didn’t roil in fear and cringe in terror every single day.

They have never flown on an airplane without having been treated like a criminal.

They have never checked out a book from the library without having been subject to secret scrutiny.

They never sent an unmonitored email or made an unmonitored phone call.

They have never lived in a house that isn’t subject to unwarranted search.

They have never had the right to redress or legal challenge when their name is placed on secret lists – and in point of fact, they don’t even have the right to know if their name is on that list at all.

They have never lived in a nation where they have the right to confront their accuser and demand proof of more than just suspicion.

They have never lived without the threat, however unlikely, of being disappeared.

They have never lived in a nation that didn’t regard the torture of human beings as an acceptable option.

This new generation has lived under the shadow of those falling towers every single minute of every single day since the moment they were born.

The terrorists didn’t do that.

We did it to them"

Excerpt from 

911 Twelve Years On 

Read the whole essay

 at

Stonekettle Station

http://www.stonekettle.com

 

Is This What We Meant By "Never Forget"

Except for the largest terrorist attack on US soil in history.

Look you don't have to love Pres. Obama but you can't rewrite history just to try to make a point

Things I Wish I Wrote:Letter to a Future Republican Strategist regarding White People

* Warning- there is some strong language in both the excerpt and the whole article


"If you want to know exactly where you failed in 2012, and will continue to fail, here it is. Look you assholes, I’m as traditional an American as it gets, and I do not “want free stuff.”  I am a taxpayer, and ALWAYS HAVE BEEN. I got my first job – dragging bags of cow manure, horse feed and fertilizer around a farm store – when I was 12. I started my first company when I was 28. I have followed the vast majority of the rules set out for middle class white males (for good and for ill.) And if it weren’t bad enough that your policy positions are a complete clusterfuck for the reasons I lay out in great detail, you manage to follow up the whole exercise with insulting me, my wife, and my friends of every stripe who didn’t vote for your political party – all of whom are hard-working, taxpaying, job creating, law abiding, great AMERICANS of EVERY COLOR AND CREED."

Read the rest here

If you are a Republican, Please Skip this Post. Trust Me.

I do not want to share these on Facebook because I truly do feel bad for the Romney supporters today.  I know how bad it felt in 2004 and if you double my feelings about then President Bush, that's how I feel about Gov. Romney and I have no doubt the Romney supporters feel that way about President Obama.  I don't want to gloat but these are too darn funny not to share and since it is my blog, most of my readers are liberal and you have been duly warned about the upcoming content, here you go.....

A secondary disclaimer, may contain bad words

Andy Borowitz @BorowitzReport tweets:

BREAKING: Man Who Told Half the Nation to Fuck Themselves Somehow Loses Election #election #election2012 #vote2012

ONE TERM MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Once More With Feeling!

Words can't describe how happy I am right now

Happy Halloween

Another Great Political Parody

Political Commentary for Broadway Geeks

There is NOTHING about this video that isn't fabulous.

Possibly the Most Important Piece of Paperwork for an International Adoptee

International Adoptive Parents-

For the love of God , get your child's certificate of citizenship.  

And get it as soon as possible.

Even if you have to pay for it.  

It might be the best $400 you ever spend.

Joao Herbert was adopted from Brazil at the age of eight by a family in Ohio. A charge for attempting to sell marijuana, although a first offense, landed him in immigration detention, after which he was deported to Brazil in 2000. Joao Herbert was murdered in Brazil in May 2004.

Korean adoptee Matthew Scherer learned he lacked citizenship when he applied for a U.S. passport. He subsequently obtained permanent resident status, but upon traveling to Korea was identified by the Korean government by his original Korean name and now is blocked by Korean law from returning to the U.S. and threatened with conscription into the Korean army.

Jennifer Haynes was adopted at eight from India and sexually abused by her adoptive father, after which she passed through 50 foster homes on her way to adulthood. Married to a U.S. citizen and mother of two young children, Haynes was nonetheless deported to India in 2008.

Adopted as a toddler from Thailand in 1979 by a family in Florida, John Gaul completed a sentence for theft and check fraud in 1996 after the new immigration law went into effect. A judge was prevented under the new law from acknowledging adoption as an extenuating circumstance, and he was deported to Thailand in 1999.

Tatiana Mitrohina was born in Russia in 1978 with physical deformities that led to her adoption at fourteen to California. She suffered from childhood-related PTSD and postpartum depression. Following a charge of abuse of her son, the court recommended counseling and medication, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement have detained her in preparation for deportation.

And now Kairi Shepherd....   

How many more????

Falsified Document? Nope- Just My Kid's Birth Certificate

Did you know that at the finalization of an adoption the child's original birth certificate is sealed, and a new one is issued with the adoptive parents names on it. 

I will admit that this is not a topic I have given much thought about because I thought of it more as a domestic adoptee issue but in reading some adoptee and first mother blogs I realize how fundamental of an issue this is.  And then it occurred to me it really effects my kids too.  For K her Ethiopian issued birth certificate lists us as her parents, although I believe it says adoptive (vs. natural) parents- but without pulling out of the safety deposit box I am not 100% sure.  For D though, we do have her original birth certificate- but due to the nature of Chinese adoption there isn't really much information on it.  But when we re-adopted them a couple of years ago we had new birth certificates from the state issued.  We did primarily to have birth certificates that were in English and more user friendly (D's Chinese BC is 4 pages long in a A4 size folder).  

The girls' new birth certificates are identical to the boys with the exception of the information about hospital, attending doctor and time of birth. 

Identical.

Think about that.  We are listed as giving birth to them.  In one act, the state has legally erased their first families.   

Sign, sealed and filed away.  

  Yes I am their parent but I am not the parent who gave birth to them as the certificate says.

The new document is a legal fiction.

And not only is the document a legal fiction but in the vast majority of states the original birth certificate is sealed FOREVER.  Even after adulthood an adoptee in most states is unable to view their original birth certificate.

Luckily for my kids, because the state did not issue the original birth certificate, it is not sealed and we have multiple copies of them.  Most adoptees are not so lucky.

One thing that I saw clearly these past two weeks is the irrefutable was the way the deck is stacked in favor of the adoptive parents at the expense of the parents who brought the child into the world.   I know that there are adoptive parents who loudly proclaim they are the real parents and they want the paperwork to show that. 

 But at what cost to the child and first family? 

 Adoptees have two sets of parents and if you, as an adoptive parent, can't deal with that. maybe adoption isn't for you. 

I am at a loss to understand why states don't develop a birth certificate that respectfully identifies their original family, acknowledges their current family and does so in way to keep their adoption story private should they want it to remain private. 

However, what I am at a far greater loss to understand why the original birth certificates can not be issued to adult adoptees without question.  That document contains fundamental information about who they ARE, not just who they were.  

Why in 2012 is this even an issue?

Think about this- if President Obama had been adopted- it would have been impossible for him to get his birth certificate to prove he was born in the US. 

IMPOSSIBLE. 

For the President of the United States.

Makes you wonder what they are hiding

For more information about how to support the overturning of these archaic laws and to find out about National Adoptee Rights Day please click here

Make My School a Prison

Dear Governor Snyder [Walker, Kasich, Scott, Christie, Daniels, etc],

In these tough economic times, schools are hurting. And yes, everyone in Michigan [Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, New Jersey, Indiana, etc] is hurting right now financially, but why aren’t we protecting schools? Schools are the one place on Earth that people look to to “fix” what is wrong with society by educating our youth and preparing them to take on the issues that society has created.

One solution I believe we must do is take a look at our corrections system in Michigan [Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, New Jersey, Indiana, etc] . We rank nationally at the top in the number of people we incarcerate. We also spend the most money per prisoner annually than any other state in the union. Now, I like to be at the top of lists, but this is one ranking that I don’t believe Michigan [Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, New Jersey, Indiana, etc] wants to be on top of.

Consider the life of a Michigan [Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, New Jersey, Indiana, etc] prisoner. They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children.

This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison. The State of Michigan [Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, New Jersey, Indiana, etc] spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?!

Please provide for my students in my school district the same way we provide for a prisoner. It’s the least we can do to prepare our students for the future...by giving our schools the resources necessary to keep our students OUT of prison.

Respectfully submitted,

Nathan Bootz, Superintendent, Ithaca Public Schools

If You Can Read This, Thank a Teacher

I frequently watch The Daily Show and of course the big story is the anti-union bills pending in Wisconsin and Ohio. I am a teacher so I am more than a little interested in what is going on in both states.
And I have learned a lot about my job in the last few weeks.

I had no idea how easy my job was and that really anyone could do what I do.
Apparently I did not need to spend all that time and money on a Master's degree or achieving the highest credentials in the Nation and my state.

So here's my question for all the people who are currently decry teaching as an easy part time job with great benefits and high salary....

Is all that vitriol and disrespect that you are throwing at teachers really just sour grapes that YOU didn't think to hop on the gravy train and become a teacher?

If teaching is so easy even "bottom-feeders" can do it AND you get a salary that makes you "rich" AND you have benefits better than anyone else gets AND you receive a pension that is given to you by the taxpayers (as opposed to deferred comp) AND you basically only work "part time" each day AND you get 4 months a year off...

Why the hell didn't you choose teaching? I mean, seriously, how stupid do you have to be to not choose a career with all those perks ?

Well here's a thought...

Turns out that teaching is not easy.

It is demanding, it is draining, it is exhausting and it is rewarding.
It is being a teacher, a nurse, a social worker, a behavior specialist, a nutritionist, and in some cases a parent to our students all while trying to achieve a ridiculous testing standard that accurately measures nothing more than the income level of the parent.
And it is doing all of that while earning a salary that in many places qualifies a family for food stamps.
Yes the pensions are good, but that is because teachers have chosen a lower take home salary in order to defer some compensation into the pension ('cause news flash- we don't qualify for social security).
Even in the summer, teachers are planning and using their time to develop the innovative lesson plans that will engage young minds and allow them to become citizens of the world.

There is a saying
"Those who can, do and those that can't, teach."
which I will acknowledge makes great soundbite for those Americans who don't want to tax their brains with actual facts.

However, the reality is that those who can, do.
Those who can do more, TEACH!
(Feel free to comment. However, be forewarned that while normally I do not edit or deny comments-even if they don't agree with me- unless they reveal personal data about me/my family, if you slam/demean/degrade/disrespect teachers in your comment I will not post them. Teachers are getting enough sh*t these days- but they won't get it here)

I am Sure This Will Offend Someone

but in light of the current political climate around the US, especially in Wisconsin and Ohio I think that this provides some insight into the situation (and it is, in my humble opinion, pretty darn funny)

Sitting at a table are a CEO of a large corporation, a union leader and a member of the Tea Party.

On the table is a plate with 12 cookies on it.

The CEO takes 11 cookies, looks at the Tea Party member and says

"Look, that union guy is trying to take half your cookie."

What Sanity Looked Like (thoughts on the rally)

The line to buy Metro passes (and no you can't actually see the station in the photo)

On the platform- you can still see the line of people entering the station on the walkway- they are waiting to buy tickets

Sums up the day- this is yet another train they brought into the station heading toward DC only to turn it around and take it to the end of the line empty. Although on the plus side- I can now say I was there on the day the Metro set a new 19 year record for most riders in a single day

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/11/jon-stewart-rally-attendance.html

Once we finally got there.....

This is 2 hours after the rally ended and there are still people EVERYWHERE!!!

One last sign....

Back at the hotel

And before I go- there's has been a lot of talk in some circles that this rally proved nothing- that it was really just a big comedy show and was entertainment. A gathering of young liberal white people- First of all, while I will grant the crowd was mostly white folks, who likely lean toward the liberal- there were also signs that spoke to the other side- and the vast majority spoke to the middle. The average age there was not the 20 somethings. There were people in every age bracket but the vast majority would fall in the 35-55 year old range.

But moreover than that-

Trust me when I tell you that people were not there for the entertainment.

Most people don't fly across the country for entertainment- but they did for the Rally

Most people don't wait for hours for a Metro ticket- but they did for the Rally

Most people don't drag their kids out for entertainment- but they did for the Rally

This might have been hosted by comedians but make no mistake about it- people came- HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of people came to tell not only our leaders, but our media- enough already. We can no longer function in this climate of fear and insanity- sure it is a great soundbite and it makes you a buck but what does it cost us as a society.

We need to bring back sanity.

And although we did not make it to the actual rally (which looking at the photos of 250,000 people gathered on the mall- might have been for the best with the kids in tow) we stood on a Metro platform with a thousand other people to Rally to Restore Sanity.

And it was totally worth it!!

Sanity Here We Come!!!

We have arrived in D.C.

Of course, we brought the kids so we are already running in a sanity deficit mode....

More posts tomorrow from the rally

What President Obama SHOULD Have Said

regarding the BP oil spill.  

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

A fine example of penmanship...

So D has started preschool and is beginning to understand the concept of "writing" and she has begun to enjoy using pens and writing. The other day she was sitting at my desk writing on some scrap paper with a pen while I was working on my lecture for my college class. At some point she must have run out of paper and rather than ask for more she grabbed some from my file box and used that. At about the same time she decided that pens were boring and she switched from a pen to a Sharpie.

This is the result

Now my readers who are parents of internationally adopted kids probably already recognize what D used for paper- but for those of you who haven't had the joys of dealing with USCIS-

this is K's CERTIFICATE OF CITIZENSHIP.

D had outlined K's picture several times. I was able to get a lot of the Sharpie off (is there anything a Mr Clean Magic Eraser can't clean) but it began to rub of the certificate ink, too.

We were already annoyed that we had to pay $420 to get the thing in the first place (since D's was free) and if we have to replace it that will be another $380. B is going to take it to the social security office soon to see if they will accept it to change her status in their system. If they take it, then we will try to see if the Passport folks will accept it. If they do, then I go to the bank to deposit the certificate into the safety deposit box. If they don't then I go to the bank to withdraw $380.

Either way, it will be a long time before anyone finds the Sharpies again.

A Witness to History

We have witnessed the election of the first African American president. And while two of my kids can't (at least now) become president, they can see that a person who is brown like they are can be President of the United States. That positions of power are no longer held exclusively by White men. It gives me hope that eventually all people will be judged, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr, not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. What an amazing day yesterday was. We rejoiced at every state that "turned blue" and watched as the American people chose a leader, not based on the color of his skin, but on the content of his character. People from all walks of life came together to change the course of our nation, Time will tell what that course will be, but I am optimistic that this is the beginning of something remarkable and that Barack Obama will be the one leading our country back to becoming the amazing country we can (and should) be.

In the words of an anonymous man who was a preacher and a slave

"Lord, we ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we ought to be; we ain’t what we gonna be; but thank God we ain’t what we was.”

Today we are one step closer to being what we ought to be and today I am truly proud to be an American

The tale of a lost I-171h- an immigration fairy tale

Once upon a time there was a king and queen whose family had US government pre-approval to bring home one orphan from Ethiopia. The family received the glorious news of this pre-approval in February in the form of the much sought after I-171h. The family went happily throughout their days knowing that the local USCIS office had sent news of this approval to the National Visa Center, the new clearinghouse for the sending of these approvals around the world. Little did the family know that the NVC had other plans for them. The family found a baby, and the courts decided that the family and the baby should be together forever. The family was so excited to be able to go get the baby. One day an email arrived from their fairy god-agency that they had a date with the US embassy in Ethiopia to finalize all the rest of the paperwork. However, the agency also indicated that evil was afoot and that there were no approvals waiting for the family in Ethiopia. So the queen began making phone calls and soon realized that getting a competent helpful person on the phone was like searching for a mythical unicorn. For 2 days, the queen tried to make sense of what had happened- the local USCIS office resent all the paperwork again but still no one could find it. The fairy god-agency called and said that the approval (also known as a Visa 37 cable) was sent to Ethiopia. There was rejoining in the kingdom, but there was also bad news. The visa 37 cable had expired fingerprints with it- even though the king and queen both had current approvals, including fingerprints. Oh what should they do- more phone calls of course. Then after 3 days of calling a miracle happened. One person at the NVC noticed that the name of the petitioner was the king, but the queen’s date of birth was listed as the king’s- clearly causing much confusion for all. That explains why the paperwork they sent was expired- it was all for China from the princess’s adoption last year. Of course, finding the error was not enough to solve the problem- the NVC still could not confirm that it had sent the new, correct visa 37 cable to Ethiopia and the family was ready to depart on their journey in less than 48 hours. Enter the brave soldiers of the US Senate and House of Representatives. They had the magic powers to slay the incompetence at the NVC and get the correct visa 37 cable sent. The king and queen got word from the soldier’s local office staff that everything is in order. And joy reigned in the kingdom.

The moral of the story is- once you get a referral you need to get confirmation that the visa 37 cable has been received and if not begin work to fix it immediately. I know at least 10 families who have lived through this fairy tale (one of whom who had to try to get it fixed while in Ethiopia and one who found out is was a problem for the first time the day before their embassy appointment) Also- if you are dealing with it put your senators and members of Congress on speed dial- you are going to need them.

I-171h and other fun government forms

We finally received our new I-171h from USCIS this week. This is the piece of paperwork that says that the US government has declared we are fit parents and are approved to adopt one infant. It was our last piece of paperwork and we were on pins and needles waiting for it to come. But of course- there is always a complication- we found out though that until the local office of USCIS sends our visa 37 notification to the consulate at Guangzhou we are still stuck. Our original visa 37 cable was never received at the consulate but our agency said not to worry since we had to get a new approval anyway. Hopefully early next week, they will be able to confirm with the consulate that the cable is there. If it is not we get to begin to make lots of phone calls (likely to congress people) and hopefully we can get it there before we leave. Otherwise, we will leave for China without knowing for sure we will be able to come home. We are also waiting for our visas as well- if there is one theme to this whole adoption journey it would be wait and wait and wait some more. The visas should arrive at some point this week. Our travel agent has reported they have been sent to the Chinese embassy.
Less than 2 weeks to go. We have the last 2 major construction projects starting this week (and one is only on the exterior thankfully) so by Friday I will hopefully have the "after" pictures to post