“More with Less”

I now need to turn to the OctoMom on Dr. Phil for a good laugh. Unfortunately yesterday in Tucson, my man Tiger Woods was eliminated from his first tournament back after being out of golf competition for eight months.

My little brother will be in town visiting this weekend, and one of the things we had planned was to see Tiger on Saturday. That’s not going to happen. I’m supposed to attend the It’s Your Money Workshop this Saturday instead… Though, the more I think about, the more I realize it’d be much better for me to attend the workshop instead of the golf tournament.

My brother’s first visit in at least 6 months, and I had to make sure he had his own money, for his own food. I have very little money for a weekend that quite frankly, rarely happens. When I think about what I should have per month, and what I owe (in bills, rent, car payments, etc.) per month, someone with reasonable budgeting skills would have saved, or would have budgeted a sufficient amount of money for a weekend like this – and I clearly did not.

So I’m happy we’re going to the It’s Your Money Workshop this Saturday. I’m looking forward learning how best to budget my finances. Which really isn’t much, but I’ve seen first-hand how just a little, can feel like a lot.

Even though my brother and I won’t be going to see Tiger in Tucson, we will be getting some valuable information on Saturday, AND we’ll still get to see our Lakers beat the Suns again on Sunday. Should be a good weekend…

Hope yours is too

Producer SEAN

“Would A Parent Do This?”

Gaydos and I have this running joke - every day we come into the office and one of us says “Wonder if we have another Octo-Mom Octo-Update…”  We already know the answer.  We comb through dozens of websites and watch all the cable news channels to find out what’s going on for our show that day.  And since we’ve collectively introduced you to Nadya Suleman a couple of weeks ago, it’s now a running joke that something new pops up every day about this pathetic woman. 

Through daily Ocot-Mom Octo-Updates, we’ve introduced you to the Octo-Mom, the Octo-Grandmom, the Octo-Granddad, the Octo-Dad (or Donor) but nothing could prepare us for yesterday’s news: Octo-Mom got an offer that from an entertainment company to star in an adult film.  We called it “Octo-Porn.”

Sure, it’s a funny (or skeezy) premise, but it brings up a serious ethical dilemma.

You’re first instinct (like mine) is to wretch.  Who in their right mind would want to see this woman in an adult film?  But before you dismiss this as some cheap and tawdry way for an entertainment company to get some free press at the Octo-Mom’s expense, let’s consider the offer.  The company will pay her one million dollars for being in the film.   If she signs a contract with that company, the company pays for her and her children’s (all 14, not just the Octo-Babies) health care.

This is more than a hypothetical; it’s a real (albeit, tawdry) conundrum.  Should the Octo-Mom do the film to get the money?  Does she sign a contract to do more films to actually get her and all of her children the health care they will need the rest of their lives? 

I reluctantly say yes.  I say she has no choice as a parent.  As a parent, the number one duty you have is to provide for the children you brought into this world, freak show or not.

Octo-Mom has told Ann Curry as well as other journalists that she will do whatever it takes to keep those children and she will be able to provide for them, one way or another.  Even though I think this woman is delusional making statements like that (the hospital bill alone for all her kids will run over a million dollars), if she turns down the offer she loses those children to the state.

Unlike a delusion which is based on fantasy (like the Ocoto-Mom saying she is getting her master’s degree and will be able to pay for the children’s needs that way), let’s look at the empirical evidence:  She’s broke, has no job, no support system, doesn’t have a partner or husband to help her, and she’s living at her mother’s house which is in danger of foreclosure.  Oh, and the hospital won’t allow the children to go home with Octo-Mom because they say she doesn’t have a proper place to take care of the needs of eight kids, let alone 14.  

And there are no other offers on the table.  

In other words, she doesn’t have a choice.  If she doesn’t do the film and take the money, even though it’s crude and may be against her moral compass, she is a hypocrite.  She will lose her children.  She’s the one who said she’d do “anything.”

What would you do?

Mac

Jayla Cooper became a 9-year-old-bride because it was her last wish.  She has been living with leukemia for two years and is about to lose that fight.  Her childhood leukemia is expected to finally claim her life within two weeks.  To mark her final weeks on Earth, Jayla became the 9-year-old-bride of a fellow leukemia patient and friend, 7-year-old Jose Griggs.  The two children were married over the weekend vowing to be “friends forever.”  Unlike Jayla, Jose is on the road to recovery from his leukemia.  But doctors are convinced that Jayla is on a different path.

The question becomes should a 9 year old dying girl marry a health 7 year old boy.  The answer is no.  It goes without saying how sad this story is but I think what we are all forgetting about is that there will be a kid who is scarred for life.  The 7 year old boy goes from groom to widower.  Should anyone be widowed at the age of 7?!  I think not.  As much as I want this little girl’s dream wedding to come true, we must first think of how this will affect the little boy.  He has to live on.  He has to miss his girlfriend/wife every day.  He has to go to school and be looked at differently by his friends because they feel sorry for him now.  Maybe they feel awkward about speaking with him.  Maybe the other kids don’t know how to treat him anymore.  Maybe he’ll have nightmares and his future relationships will be affected because of this experience.  That’s a lot of pressure to put on the little boy.
 
It’s nice to grant someone a dying wish, but not when a little boy lacks the maturity to handle the death of his 9 year old wife; Bad job by his parents here.  Your first priority of being a parent is to protect your child.  Jose’s parents did not protect him from the enormous amount of pain he’ll feel when he walks into his wife’s funeral two weeks from now and sees the little casket with Jayla in it.

That’s How I Roll….
 
Gaydos

“Similar But Different”

An 11 year-old boy from Western Pennsylvania shot his father’s fiancé with a shotgun.  Two shots to the back of the head and then he went off to school.  It’s shocking and disturbing. 

And sadly, familiar.  This brings back memories of an 8 year-old who lives in St. Johns, Arizona charged with killing his father and another man with a .22 caliber rifle.  His crime was shocking and disturbing as well.

Killing can be, and for the most part, is a senseless, selfish act. When it’s done by an adult, we chalk try to explain it away socio-economic bombast, or try placing our collective selves in the mind of the killer.  It makes us feel as though we can truly understand murder.  But murder, killing, homicide, whatever you want to call it, has more facets, more layers than is comfortable for us to accept.  When something is truly gruesome or heinous we lamely (and in some cases, dismissively) label the person “crazy” or “insane.” 

But before you go and start comparing the western PA (alleged) child-murderer and the St. John’s Negligent Homicide boy, wait a minute.

There is a subtle but vast difference between the two cases.  In fact, you can’t compare the two at all.  The boy in St. John’s will never stand trial for what he did.  He pleaded guilty to a lesser crime and no evidence will be admissible, no experts will give their testimony and the most compelling part of all, the boy will never take the stand in his own defense.  In other words, unless the boy grows up and sells the movie rights or gets a fat book deal, we will never know what happened on November 8, 2008.

It’s been reported that the boy in western PA had a motive to kill his father’s girlfriend. He was jealous of the baby that was going to be born in two weeks.  It still makes the crime horrific, but at least we have a shred of something that explains the heinous act.

With the St. John’s boy, the only explanation is like the line from the old show hosted by Leonard Nimoy called “In Search Of.”  Theory and conjecture – that’s all we’ve got.

Mac

Bill Clinton vs. Reality – As Usual…
 
In an interview with Good Morning America (GMA) today, Former President Bill Clinton felt it necessary to give his opinion on how President Obama has handled the Economy during Obama’s first month in office – giving Obama an “A” grade for the job he’s done. However, Clinton also believes that Obama isn’t being optimistic enough, and told GMA, “I just want the American people to know that he’s confident that we are gonna get out of this and he feels good about the long run.” Now to some degree this is a valid point, President Obama DID use the word “crisis” 25 times in a 22 minute speech on Home Foreclosures at Dobson High School in Mesa (kind of sounds like Al Gore giving a speech on Global Warming), but Obama capped off his speech by saying, “if we move forward with purpose and resolve – with a deepened appreciation for how fundamental the American Dream is and how fragile it can be when we fail in our collective responsibilities – then I am confident we will overcome this crisis and once again secure that dream for ourselves and for generations to come.” Wow, what a pessimist. I’m of course, being facetious… but it didn’t stop there for Former President Clinton.
 
Continuing to ignore and deny that he was ranked 13th on a TIME Magazine list of people to blame for our current economic downturn, Clinton had this little tidbit of revisionist history for GMA, “I personally believe, based on my experience over the years with the economy, that if we moved aggressively on this home problem a year and a half ago, even a year ago, as much as 90 percent of the current crisis could have been avoided.” Remember, this is the man that signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (aka the “Financial Services Modernization Act”) in 1999, which essentially expanded the Government’s role in and diminished regulations of the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The CRA was designed to encourage institutions to “help” meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. Clinton’s Financial Services Modernization Act (FSMA) made the already idiotic concept of the CRA far worse by weakening the CRA’s regulations. I know, it sounds like a contradiction, but if you take a stupid concept that has its own rules and regulations, and you weaken those rules and regulations the stupidity of the concept expands – that’s what I’m getting at, and that’s what happened when Bill Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Therefore, Clinton is once again living in a fairytale. Many of the horrendous home loans (post-FSMA) that people invested in were established well before “a year and a half ago,” and it will take much longer to reverse the damage. Bill Clinton saying this is the equivalent of Former President George W. Bush claiming that Obama needs to work on his speech delivery and word pronunciation. It’s asinine.
 
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m neither a Democrat nor a Republican, and that I tend to believe if you’re a politician, you’re a snake by default. However, I’m trying to figure out where Bill Clinton is coming from. Why is he constantly giving interviews and critiquing current Administrations? Here’s my theory, as convoluted and cliché as it might be: Bill Clinton is a narcissist. He sees the amount of attention, popularity, and quite frankly “love” Obama is receiving, and he’s a bit jealous. Not to the point of sabotaging President Obama by any stretch of the imagination, but to the point of giving interviews and offering opinions almost to say without saying, “Hey, remember me? Remember how popular I was? And how you all loved ME so much?” I know, it’s absurd… but I guess I just can’t wrap my head around the unprofessional inanity of this man. Though, I tend to say that about ALL politicians (especially over the past few years). If President Obama is smart, he won’t acknowledge the Former President’s remarks, and will just continue doing what he’s doing – allowing US to determine what letter grade he deserves.
 
 
Producer Sean